Animal Farm in the Tropics

Hollywood’s hero…
by Robert A. Waters

A new book has finally lifted the veil from another fat-cat dictator.

The Hidden Life of Fidel Castro, authored by Juan Reinaldo Sanchez and co-authored by Axel Gylden, was recently published in France.  (It’s nowhere to be seen in America.)  Sanchez, a former bodyguard for Castro, exposes Hollywood’s hero as no other writer has done.

After the Revolution, El Comandante became dictator of an island with more natural resources than many continents.  Instead of making life better for the proletariats, Castro insisted on instituting the typical communist redistribution schemes and anti-capitalist crusades—as a result, the masses have lived in squalor for decades.  Those who resisted the takeover of their homes were imprisoned or murdered.  And anyone who questioned the communist philosophy was eliminated.  Many of Castro’s 11 million subjects dream of fleeing across seventy miles of ocean to the United States, even though tens of thousands have lost their lives in the attempt.

While the prols sputter down rut-filled streets in sixty-year-old cars, El Comandante lives like no other Cuban could imagine.

Hollywood’s hero resides on a plush tropical island, surrounded by servants who cater to his every whim.  His personal worth is said to be 100 million dollars.  His days are spent diving, drinking fine wine, and, with a heady thrust from Viagara, screwing women.  The People’s Revolutionary keeps many secrets from his subjects, including his opulent lifestyle.  According to an article in UK Daily News, Castro’s “palatial residences on the mainland include a Havana estate complete with rooftop bowling alley and indoor basketball court, and a coastal villa next to a private marina with pool, Jacuzzi and sauna.” A food-taster, professional look-a-like, and heavily armed body-guards help keep the dictator safe.

When celebrities come to visit, Castro’s spies follow them twenty-four-seven.  Hotels are bugged, and, according to the book, lots of movie stars love underaged girls.  (Maybe this is why Castro gets such good press from Hollywood.)  A few of the leftist icons who have visited and dripped praise on Castro are: Steven Spielberg; Jack Nicholson; Chelize Theron; Chevy Chase; Oliver Stone; Harry Belafonte; Gina Lollabrigida; Kevin Costner; Naomi Campbell; Ralph Nader; Robert Redford; Spike Lee; Woody Harrelson; Leonardo DiCaprio; and Nobel Prize winning author Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Nicholson once said, “Cuba is simply a paradise.”  (Wonder why everyone wants to leave.)

Spielberg described his dinner with Castro as the most important eight hours of his life.  Hmm.

I once speculated on this blog as to why no movies critical of communism are ever made.  Now I understand.  Hollywood’s hero may have blackmailed the celebs into silence.

The Felony Lane Gang

Clockwise from upper left: Alyssa Trierweiler, Holly Eckert, Marcus Thomas, and Tavaras McBride

Wouldn’t it be easier just to work for a living?

by Robert A. Waters

In Florida, a loose-knit group of thieves called the “Felony Lane Gang” have added a new wrinkle to the old smash and grab robbery routine.  Made up mostly of ex-cons, they got their name by using the outside lane at banks when cashing stolen checks.  The gang’s theory is that bank officials have a harder time identifying customers who use the far lane.  Kind of sly, ain’t it?  Unfortunately for the gang’s members, they keep getting caught and keep ending up back in the slammer.

The Felony Lane Gang members roam the state, zeroing in on churches and other public places where they smash windows of cars and steal anything of value.  Then they use women (mostly prostitutes who disguise themselves) to cash stolen checks, usually in different counties from where they were stolen.  The thieves use stolen credit and debit cards for gas and food.

An example of the Felony Lane Gang’s exploits happened this week in my hometown of Ocala.

According to the Ocala Star Banner, “Within two hours Wednesday afternoon, 16 vehicles were burglarized at three locations in southeast Ocala.  The burglars smashed windows and snatched valuables, including wallets and purses hidden under seats and in center consoles.”  In nearby Alachua County, 11 similar cases, thought to be related, occurred the evening before.

Tavaras McBride and Holly Eckert were captured after police officers spotted a car with a stolen license plate.  The two attempted to flee but were quickly collared.  It didn’t take long for the cops to link McBride and Eckert to the Ocala smash and grab robberies and check-cashing scheme.

Later that day, Marcus Emmanuel Thomas and Alyssa Trierweiler were seen driving a stolen Mercedes.  After a chase in which the Mercedes crashed into a sign pole, officers captured the suspects.

Police told reporters that stolen property had been found with the suspects, and they had confessed to the robberies.  All the suspects except Trierweiler have served time in Florida’s prisons.

Have any of these people ever heard of getting a job and working for their money?  Might be a lot easier in the long run.

Help Find Jovana Hill

http://www.tuscaloosanews.com/article/20140507/news/140509798

Jovana Hill is missing from Tuscaloosa, Alabama.  She is thought to be with a convicted rapist.  Click into the link to read about her case.  This thirteen-year-old girl needs to be found.  If you have any information, please call Tuscaloosa County Sheriff's Office at (205) 752-0616.

“An Empty Home Full of Memories…”

The Real Victim
by Robert A. Waters

A recent Los Angeles Times story about the “botched” execution of Clayton Lockett gave exactly one sentence to his victim, Stephanie Nieman.  That’s why I decided to publish the other side of the story.   (WARNING: This material is extremely graphic.)

**********

On June 3, 1999, an innocent victim stared evil in the face.  Nineteen-year-old Stephanie Neiman had just graduated from Perry High School in Oklahoma where she played saxophone in the high school band.

The following court document describes the full story of her murder. 

“At around 10:30 p.m. on June 3, 1999, Bobby Bornt was asleep on the couch at his home in Perry, Oklahoma, when his front door was kicked in.  Three men, Appellant [Clayton Lockett], Shawn Mathis, and Alfonzo Lockett, entered his house and immediately started beating and kicking him.  Bornt recognized Appellant because Appellant had recently covered a tattoo for him.  Appellant was carrying a shotgun which he used to hit Bornt.  After the beating, Bornt’s attackers used duct tape to secure his hands behind his back and they gagged him and left him on the couch while they ransacked the house looking for drugs.  As Bornt lay restrained on the couch, his friend Angel Hart [name has been changed] approached the open door.  She was pulled inside, hit in the face and thrown against a wall.  One of the men put a gun to her head and ordered her to call her friend, Stephanie Nieman, who was outside sitting in her pickup.  When Nieman came inside, they hit her several times to get the keys to her pickup and the code to disarm the alarm on her pickup.

“The men put all three victims in the bedroom where Bornt’s nine-month old son, Sam, had been sleeping.  Alfonzo Lockett came into the bedroom and got Hart.  He took her into the bathroom where he made her perform oral sodomy on him.  He then took her into Bornt’s bedroom where he told her to get undressed and raped her.  When he was finished, he left her there and Appellant came into the bedroom.  He raped her vaginally and anally and he made her perform oral sodomy on him.  When he was finished, he told her to get dressed and she went back into Sam’s bedroom with the others.  Alfonzo Lockett came into the bedroom and used duct tape to secure Hart’s and Nieman’s hands behind their backs.  He also put tape across their mouths.

“Appellant instructed Mathis to look in the garage for a shovel.  When he returned with a shovel, the victims were loaded into Bornt’s and Nieman’s pickups.  Bornt and his son were placed in his pickup with Appellant.  Hart and Nieman were placed in Nieman’s pickup with Mathis and Alfonzo Lockett.  They took off driving with Apellant in the lead.  They left Perry and drove to a rural area in Kay County.  Appellant stopped on a country road where he got out of the pickup he was driving and went over to Nieman’s pickup.  He made Hart get out and go with him to a ditch where he raped her and forced her to perform oral sex on him.  When he was finished, he took her back to Bornt’s pickup.  While Hart was sitting in the pickup, Mathis got her and took her back to Nieman’s pickup where he made her perform oral sex on him.  He grabbed her by her head and said, ‘In order for you to live, this is what you have got to do.’

“While stopped on the country road, Apellant told Mathis to get the shovel and start digging.  When Mathis was digging in the ditch, Bornt heard Appellant say, ‘Someone has got to go.’  Nieman was taken to the hole dug by Mathis and Appellant shot her.  The gun jammed and Appellant came back to the pickup to fix it.  While he was doing this, Bornt heard Neiman’s muffled screams.  When the gun was fixed, Appellant went back to the ditch and shot Nieman again.  While Mathis buried Nieman’s body, Apellant and Alfonzo Lockett warned Bornt and Hart that if they told anyone they would be killed, too…”

Bornt, Hart, and Sam were released.  The next day, Bornt and Hart reported the murder to police.  An autopsy revealed that Nieman had been buried alive.

Lawmen arrested Clayton Lockett and he quickly confessed.  This senseless murder of a completely innocent victim outraged the community and Lockett was sentenced to death, while Alfonzo Lockett and Mathis received life.

Stephanie’s mother and father, Susie and Steve Nieman, later wrote of their loss: “Every day we are left with horrific images of what the last hours of Stephanie’s life was like.  Did she cry out for us to help her?  We are left with the knowledge that she needed us and we were not aware of it therefore unable [to] help her.

“We go through the motions of living, we eat, we sleep, Steve goes to work and comes home again. We do what we have to do to make it through the day and we start all over again the next. We exist.

“We were left with an empty home full of memories and the deafening silence of the lack of life within it’s [sic] walls. We have moved, but in our new home Stephanie also has a bedroom which is filled with her treasures and belongings.”

 

Sailing Through Tempests

So Jameis Winston has been “cited” for stealing crab-legs and crawfish from a grocery store.  His sentence is 20 hours of community service.  In addition, the Florida State University baseball team relieved him of his duties for a while.  (Not to worry, I predict it won’t be long and the golden boy will be throwing that high hard one once again.)

For some people, life is a tempest of their own making.  For Sir Jameis, it’s more like a surfer gliding over rough waves as throngs of on-lookers cheer him on.

With the help of coaches and administrators at Florida State University, cops at the Tallahassee Police Department, and high-priced attorneys, Sir Jameis has sailed around storms before.

An accusation of rape was barely investigated by TPD and shoved under the rug by FSU.  In the meantime, evidence disappeared (a student videotaped the sexual encounter but later “lost” the tape) and witnesses, including Sir Jameis himself, went silent, on the advice of their attorneys.  The accuser could barely get her case heard—TPD is now being investigated by the state of Florida for its handling of the complaint.  In fact, it was the accuser who was interrogated, not the accused.  The co-ed also stated that she felt coerced by police to drop the charges.

But none of that matters to the Seminole Nation.

Neither does the fact that a month before the rape accusation, another woman, according to the New York Times, “had sought counseling after a sexual encounter with Mr. Winston.”  Although the woman didn’t call it “rape,” she said she felt “violated.”

The winner of the Heisman Trophy and leader of the Seminole team that won last year’s national championship represents hundreds of millions of dollars for the university and Tallahassee.  So maybe the Seminole faithful think Sir Jameis is just reaping the rewards of victory by screwing every woman he meets, whether she wants him to or not.  Whatever the case, this sordid story exemplifies athletics in today’s world.  (I’m not picking on FSU—I believe football corruption is prevalent at almost every major university.)

Maybe FSU football coach Jimbo Fisher should take a page from Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones.  When his star wide receiver, Desmond Bryant, beat up his own mother after a string of other unlawful incidents, Jones hired a round-the-clock bodyguard (some would call him a “baby-sitter”) to help keep Bryant out of trouble.  So far it seems to have worked.

If they give Sir Jameis a babysitter, maybe the crab-legs and crawfish will be safe.  But I doubt even that will protect the pretty co-eds at FSU.