Thousand Drops Of Rain Makes Great Christmas Present — We last discussed Pete Crittenden back in September and now we can review his other book, A Thousand Drops of Rain.
One of the reasons it took so long to finish is because we didn’t want it to end.
It was that good.
It’s an old school compilation of short stories about adventure, mysticism and science fiction with Mike, a proprietor of a hotel and bar in Thailand on the shores of the Andaman Sea, being the glue that holds it together.
Pete is a retired Green Beret who grew up in Thailand and now lives in Chester County, Pa.
Some of the stories are inspired by things he actually experienced like a python sliding down a banyan tree to the terror of a dachshund, or a soldier participating in a voodoo ceremony to resolve a political issue.
For those concerned about the dog, he ends up fine.
And for a retired Green Beret, there is little shooting or blood and guts. The book is the perfect Christmas gift for a boy entering adolescence.
Chesco United To Discuss Election — Chesco United has scheduled a town hall, 7 p.m., Dec. 1, at 21 Hagerty Blvd., West Chester, Pa. 19382 to discuss the 2022 Midterm Election and Chester County’s certification.
Iranians Show Solidarity In Philly, NYC And D.C. With The Oppressed In Their Homeland
By Olivia Braccio
The people of Iran have finally had enough.
It’s been 43 years since the horrific Islamic Regime took over Iran, and the desperately needed revolution that will hopefully topple the dictatorship is happening. Most of us, by now, are aware of the massive protests currently taking place in nearly all major cities not only here in the U.S., but around the world. We know that this uprising was set in motion by the senseless killing of Mahsa Amini on Sept. 16, when she was captured by the Iranian police force and subsequently beaten to death for “improper hijab,” meaning that her hair was partially visible beneath her headscarf. It is incomprehensible—a person was punished with murder for showing some hair.
Demonstrator in Stanton Park, Washington D.C., Oct. 15
I’ve been photographing these rallies in the three cities nearest to me—Philadelphia, New York, and Washington D.C.— and sharing the photos to social media as well as my own website in the hopes of raising awareness about and funds for the cause. Some have asked me why people on American soil are rallying on behalf of another country and how the situation in Iran concerns us at all. It’s a good question, one that deserves a thorough answer.
As per Middle Eastern news network Al Jazeera, “The Biden administration has announced a new round of sanctions against Iran, vowing to impose financial penalties on a ‘regular basis’ in an effort to ‘severely restrict’ Iranian oil and petrochemical exports. Since President Trump withdrew from the nuclear deal in 2018, various sectors of the Iranian economy have been under heavy US sanctions. In response, Iran has been advancing its nuclear program, including uranium enrichment, well beyond the limits set by the agreement. Biden is seeking a return to the pact, which saw Iran scale back its nuclear program. On Sept. 29, 2022, the Biden administration said it will continue to rigorously enforce sanctions until Iran returns to the deal.
“This is all happening while Iran is witnessing nationwide protests sparked by the murder of Mahsa Amini. Washington has expressed vague support for the demonstrators but said it is still willing to restore the nuclear deal based on mutual compliance. The deal would put money in the pockets of the Islamic Republic only; not the pockets of the people of Iran. It would strengthen the government’s power and ability to further oppress those protesting the regime. Vague support and a continuation of nuclear talks with Iran is unacceptable while the country continues to protest and riot against countless murders, human rights violations, and the continued suppression of women in Iran.”
The Iranian-American community is imploring this administration to stop funding the terroristic regime for the sake of oil. We need to work towards energy independence in this country in order to keep money out of the hands of murderers. Pennsylvania’s Governor-elect Josh Shapiro’s adamant resistance to fracking is contributing to the problem, seeing as this state has the potential to be one of our nation’s top oil-producers. His refusal to tap into this supply keeps us dependent on imports and continues the cash flow to the Middle East. We, as the constituents, must hold him accountable and impress upon him the significance of this matter in the hopes that he’ll change his mind.
When it comes to fracking, we have to think not only of ourselves. Of course, it’s infuriating that Pennsylvanians are forced to pay more for gas than citizens of all the surrounding states, not to mention the skyrocketing costs of heating our homes for the winter. But these struggles seem insignificant compared to what Iranians are facing in their country. Women, gays, and the disabled community in Iran are treated as subhuman and have been for decades now. The long list of things women aren’t allowed to do includes but is not limited to entering stadiums, traveling abroad unaccompanied by their husbands, riding bicycles, and showing their hair—women in the country have routinely been subjected to dress code-related violence after wearing a hijab was deemed mandatory rather than optional in 1979 under Sharia law.
At the Capitol, Oct. 15
Protests and riots having been going on throughout Iran for more than two months now. The death toll rises daily as protestors are captured by police and then tortured, or simply shot during demonstrations. Nearly five hundred people have been killed in just the two months since Mahsa’s murder. More than sixty of them were children—those as young as seven have been shot while walking home from school, after they were overheard singing anti-regime chants.
In the beginning of November, 227 members of the 290-seat parliament in Iran have called on the Judiciary to issue death sentences for people arrested during the ongoing protests. The number of people arrested so far is estimated at roughly 15,000. The Islamic republic historically uses the death penalty as a tool of repression and intimidation. Nine people have been sentenced so far; their charges are “assembly and collusion against national security,” “corruption on earth,” and “confrontation with the Islamic republic.” Oct. 31 is when they stood trial and had a short hearing—with no legal counsel. They will be executed soon. The other 15,000 or so people are at high risk of the same fate given that this authoritarian regime has proven over the past 43 years that they are capable of massacring their own people on a whim. They are currently being held in jail as political prisoners where they are subjected to rape and other forms of torture.
Demonstrator in Washington D.C. On Oct. 22 holding a photo of Mahsa Amini
It’s easy to mistakenly assume that Iranian citizens, being native to a country that was never a political ally of the U.S., are our enemies. Nothing could be further from the truth. The sad fact is, the main victims of any terroristic government are usually its own constituents. These individuals are no less deserving of the same rights and privileges afforded to those born in other nations. Those who have already immigrated to the U.S. from Iran are physically safe here, but the emotional toll it is taking on them to know mass death and destruction is occurring in their homeland is unimaginable. We can’t choose where we’re born. All humans are created equal and yet grow up in drastically dissimilar ways depending on arbitrary circumstances such as whose land we live on and how it is governed. When you get down to it, the only difference between myself and Mahsa Amini is that I had the good fortune of being born in the free world and she didn’t. The tremendous unfairness of this is not lost on me.
I’m in awe at the amount of people showing up to protest on behalf of Iran in Washington D.C. and other cities. The protest at the National Mall on Oct. 22 garnered an estimated 31,000 people. It was truly a phenomenal thing to witness and photograph as people waved the Iranian flag and chanted in both Farsi and English; some wept openly as they marched through the streets of our capitol city to stand on the White House lawn and let their voices be heard. They are warm and welcoming to their non-Iranian allies such as myself, seeing as support from other ethnicities is vital to the movement, and they thanked me for being there to document since the situation isn’t receiving much coverage from mainstream media.
Admittedly, I never thought a lot about Iranian people prior to the past several weeks. I didn’t even know there were this many of them living in the United States. Realizing this, I felt pretty ignorant. Forgive me. It is interesting to note how life shifts once you become aware of certain things. It’s a harrowing thought, but this is the reality of the world we live in: at any given time, while you’re eating breakfast, walking your dog, laughing with friends, or overspending at the store, someone is being brutally murdered by their own nation’s tyrannical government. Going about the business of daily life distracts you from this fact. Your own problems, which pale by comparison, almost shield your mind from having to acknowledge these types of things. But once you know, you can’t keep ignoring it. Those who have died and their suffering families will be in your thoughts even as you’re doing something unrelated to the matter. Attending to menial tasks will feel different as the gravity of other peoples’ crises weighs upon your soul.
I’ve read that energy, such as that which is found within a human being, cannot truly be lost. It can only be transformed. I hope this is the case, and that somehow, some way, in some other dimension, Mahsa and all the others who have been murdered at the hands of this horrific regime are witnessing the revolution their unjust and untimely deaths have spawned.
Proceeds will be donated to the Iranian-American community here in the Philly area in order to help them continue organizing events.
Iranians Show Solidarity In Philly, NYC And D.C. With The Oppressed In Their Homeland Iranians Show Solidarity In Philly, NYC And D.C. With The Oppressed In Their Homeland Iranians Show Solidarity In Philly, NYC And D.C. With The Oppressed In Their Homeland
Tech Workers Brace for Possible Omnibus Job-Killer
By Joe Guzzardi
Like the proverbial bad penny that keeps reappearing, lousy immigration bills are hard to kill off. Consider the EAGLE Act of 2022, also known as Equal Access to Green Cards for Legal Employment, or formally recognized as H.R. 3648. The newest proposed legislation is another iteration of the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act. Although it passed the House by a 365-65 vote, eventually it stalled in Congress.
Introduced by immigration lawyer, amnesty advocate, enforcement foe and expansionist champion Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), the new and the old versions of her proposed legislation both share the same ruinous-to-U.S. tech workers’ feature: the legislation would rob thousands of U.S. tech workers of access to well-paid, white-collar, high-skilled jobs in the science, technology, engineering and math fields, STEM jobs for which they are fully qualified.
Along with her like-minded congressional allies that include Rep. Tom Emmer (R-Minn.), who was just elected as House Majority Whip for the 118th Congress and thus became the third highest ranking Republican in the House, Lofgren has scheduled a vote on the EAGLE Act, which has bipartisan support, when Congress returns from its Thanksgiving recess.
Briefly explained, the EAGLE Act would dramatically revise portions of the Immigration Act of 1990. Almost any alien who has been on the visa waiting list for at least two years with an approved petition for an employment-based green card could apply for adjustment of his status which then wouldn’t count against existing numerical caps. Stated another way, employers can sponsor a temporary foreign-born worker for an H-1B nonimmigrant visa and convert that worker to permanent by merely sponsoring him for a green card. Aliens go from temporarily present to permanent residents. With the stroke of a pen, job searches become more challenging for U.S. tech workers – Congress’ twisted idea of sound legislation.
The bill also eliminates the per-country caps for employment-based visas, which means that within about a decade Indian and Chinese nationals will receive virtually all such visas, especially the H-1B; other countries’ nationals would have an uphill climb to obtain a visa. Under current law, no countries’ nationals can comprise more than 7 percent of any visa category. This provision ensures that skilled workers from around the globe have an opportunity to come to America. The EAGLE Act, however, seeks to entirely remove all caps from employment-based visas and more than double the existing family-preference visa from 7 percent to 15 percent, a hike that would, because of family reunification, ensure significant population surges. The proposed visa cap elimination is ironic because Lofgren and the EAGLE Act’s cosponsors claim to embrace diversity, but the bill heavily favors Chinese and Indian citizens to the exclusion of most others.
Moreover, dependent children of the aliens granted the new status would be allowed to retain their legal standing, a form of amnesty, as dependents of their parents for the duration of the green card application process; they would be protected from aging out while their parents move up in the backlog. An estimated 190,000 minors would be protected.
Time was when Democrats purported to care about America’s minority workers. But their empathy toward U.S. workers is long gone, and is now redirected to foreign nationals, particularly Chinese and Indians. Blacks, Hispanics and other minorities aspire to IT jobs, too. But they’ve had little luck in obtaining those coveted STEM jobs. Pew Research found that black workers make up 9 percent of the STEM workforce, while Hispanics also comprise about 9 percent. The low STEM representation among blacks and Hispanics is largely unchanged from 2016.
For rational thinkers, few and far between in Congress, a push for liberalized immigration laws and amnesty in light of the border surge and its 2 million-plus encounters in 2022 is beyond the pale. But those sound-of-mind types don’t understand the congressional mindset; nothing stops its amnesty drive. And if the EAGLE Act doesn’t get Senate approval, Lofgren always has the option to attach it to a must-pass Omnibus bill. With the 118th House about to transfer into GOP hands, EAGLE Act supporters view December as their last chance to subvert U.S. tech workers.
Joe Guzzardi is a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist who writes about immigration and related social issues. Joe joined Progressives for Immigration Reform in 2018 as an analyst after a ten-year career directing media relations for Californians for Population Stabilization, where he also was a Senior Writing Fellow. A native Californian, Joe now lives in Pennsylvania. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org.
Tech Workers Brace for Possible Omnibus Job-Killer
Dawn Bancroft Story Of An Insurrectionist — Dawn Bancroft crawled through a broken window of the Capitol, took a video, then crawled back out again. Her life might not have changed if that was it. On the way home, though, she made another in which she said “We were looking for Nancy to blow her friggin’ brains out, but we didn’t find her.”
She sent it to a friend and the friend sent it to the FBI.
It was Jan. 6, 2021.
She was 59 years old, the divorced mother of three children, and the owner of Cross Fit Sine-Pari, a gym in Doylestown that she started in 2009.
Dawn Bancroft not defeated
What ensued was the loss of her business, the loss of friends, the loss of her accountant, the loss of her bank, a conviction of the misdemeanor of parading in the Capitol, and a 60-day sentence along with three years probation and 100 hours of community service all capped with a lecture from the pompous and partisan federal Judge Emmet Sullivan.
What Ms. Bancroft did can’t be defended and she doesn’t try, but on the grand scale of evil it’s just not up there with bombing weddings and schools and bragging about it, or body-slamming a U.S. senator you dislike nearly killing him. Rene Boucher, by the way, was initially sentenced to less time than Ms. Bancroft for his attack on Rand Paul, albeit that was raised to eight months after outraged prosecutors objected. Boucher still served less than a lot of the Jan. 6 protestors, though.
Ms. Bancroft, who was never in trouble with the law, expected to serve her time in a halfway house or minimum security prison. Instead she was sent to the federal correctional facility in Hazelton, W.Va., a medium security prison.
She was 60 years old.
She said was strip searched twice upon arrival and her first 10 days were served in the Secure Housing Unit or SHU which is solitary confinement.
She was held in a 8-by-10 foot cell. It was cold and her clothing was thin, similar to a medical scrub with short sleeves. She was forbidden to sleep on the bed during waking hours and the blanket was required to be kept folded upon it.
Guards ignored her when she sought their attention albeit one responded with abuse when she caught her laying on the bed in the daytime.
There were no clocks in her cell. She asked why and the guard said “I don’t know.”
She said “I don’t know” was the answer the guards always gave.
She said when she became anxious she’d pray the rosary.
“I would pray the rosary using my fingers in place of the beads for I was not allowed an actual rosary,” she said. “I always became more calm at the conclusion of the session.”
She was not allowed to contact her family. She learned, though, that her daughter was calling every morning as was a friend in the evening. As the two shared a first name, prison authorities assumed it was the same person and a real pest.
This was a good thing, at least for Ms. Bancroft.
The prison limited phone calls to once every 30 days but one of the guards volunteered to contact the caller. She ended up contacting the friend to whom she made up a story about what a great time Ms. Bancroft was having.
And when she was transferred to the general population things improved. The other inmates liked her. One woman saw she was into fitness and asked to train with her.
Her new friends would ask what she was in for and were shocked when she told them it was for “parading”. The population, after all, included murderers, and child abductors, including one who with her boyfriend abducted two Amish children and sexually abused them. When the boyfriend went for a shovel with the intent to kill and bury them, she got cold feet and drove off with the children abandoning them in a corn field. They survived.
Ms. Bancroft pledged not to let the state break her.
And they didn’t.
She learned about “fishing” which is unraveling thread from a blanket and tying it to a folded up piece of toilet paper roll and using it to slide small objects between cells. She said an inmate sent her a stamp that way after she heard her worrying about how to contact her family.
She wrote a letter to her son and sent it to her home as that was the address with the only zip code that she could remember. Her son was picking up her mail.
She’d watch Fox News as that was one of the few news options they had. She thinks it leans a little too much to the left just not as much as the others. Others would watch with her. She’d have political debates with them. She says she converted many Democrats into Trump Republicans.
Terms of her probation have prevented her from contacting the women who remain at Hazleton but they are in her thoughts as are those still incarcerated without bail for the January 6 protests.
Prison reform has become an issue for her as a result of her experiences.
Ms. Bancroft says the Bucks County Republican Party has removed her from her committeewoman’s seat in the 2-2 Precinct in Doylestown, a seat which she won last spring with the voters having full knowledge of her involvement in the protests.
Regarding Jan. 6, she says she saw one incident that may have involved provocateurs where a group on some scaffolding was trying to break windows in the Capitol and the crowd below objecting accusing them of being Antifa.
Answer to yesterday’s William Lawrence Sr Cryptowit quote puzzle: And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.
Colossians 3:17
Everything in the name of the Lord Jesus William Lawrence Sr Cryptowit 11-28-22
Healing Of A Disabled Woman — Moreover, in this infirm woman, it is like the figure of the Church which presents itself when it has fulfilled the measure of the Law and of the resurrection, in this endless rest, raised to the summit of greatness, she will no longer be able to experience the curvature of our infirmity. And this woman could be healed only be means of the Law and grace: The Law by its precepts, in baptism, and the grace by which, dead to the world, we are resurrected for Christ; for in the ten words is the completion of the Law, in the number eight the fulness of the resurrection.
So this work of a Sabbath signifies what will happen: Whoever has fulfilled the Law and grace will be rid of the miseries of this crippled body through the mercy of Christ.
This is why sanctification was first given in the figure by Moses, because the practice of future sanctification and spiritual observance was to abstain from works of the century.
Even God rest from the works of the world: not of (all) works, since activity is perpetual and continual, as the Son says: “My Father is still working now, and I too are acting” (John 5:17), so that the example of God will cease for us in the works of the world, not those of religion.
It is for lack of understanding that the head of the Synagogue did not want anyone to be healed on the Sabbath while the Sabbath is the image of of future recreation.
So it is not the good works but the bad ones which are idle.
Answer to yesterday’s William Lawrence Sr Cryptowit quote puzzle: Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees the others.
Aristotle
Courage is the first of human qualities William Lawrence Sr Cryptowit 11-27-22
