Stealing Valor the book trailer

Stealing Valor is the book - Stolen Valor is the Law

BOOK LINK

As a Vietnam Veteran, in the United States Army, I have observed the practice of Stolen Valor in various practices whether it be minor in nature or major in the manner of exaggerating the military record as it is defined on the DD214. I served with honor from July 1967 to July 1969 and as an MOS Medical Specialist Corpsman, I have seen or witnessed great heroism that should never be understated or slighted by the insult or disrespect of those who never saw combat or worn the uniform with Honor. Anyone who wears medals, ribbons, patches or symbols not earned is an impostor and should be challenged as being such a person.

Stealing Valor is a mini-book on the 2013 Stolen Valor Act passed by Congress and signed into law by President Obama. It is in fact, the second edition of the first Act passed in 2006 and struck down as being unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 2012. There is much controversy around the law as it, in fact, criminalizes lying when the lies facilitate profit, financial gains or a means to promote something that has a monetary value.

The issue of Free Speech is the center of the book as it differentiates the meaning of the phrase - Stolen Valor. Various examples are cited and the book is a great stepping stone for further examinations of the law that is still sitting sideways with many veterans and organizations - In fact, some national organizations are actively referring imposters or alleged impostors to vigilante committees that review the military history of the person identified to be a fake- a fraud and an opportunistic person seeking self-important or financial gain for self. Consider this a guidebook, a resource for reference and let it open up your mind on the matter.

Filled with citations and other sources that cover the matter in more detail with specific cases, it opened the door to the discussing of stealing valor, when in fact, the person may be innocently doing something wrong but going about it the wrong way. On the other hand, there are examples of blatant and deliberate manipulations of the law before the passaged of the second act and how they benefitted from using their stolen valor to their own personal benefit and greed.

Lawlessness Strategy

Lawlessness Strategy

As I plan to develop and design my own message on lawlessness in our country, I want to make sure you understand my motive and my decision to do so. Whether I make my point of relevance on this urgent matter is up to the reader and the energy of the content and context he or she takes the message.

Secondly, it is with high hopes that I will reveal the complete idea or concern expressed in the message to get you to think about it and share it without someone who has a common ground of concerns related to these matters. In all actuality, law and order effects everyone and impacts our lives much more than we ever realize until we break it down to where we are in the midst of this issue.

It is with some degree of certainty that the first part of my point of relevance is fairly simple. We are all worried about lawlessness and the chaos around us. I want to demonstrate its relevance over and over without being redundant but the reliance on the reader to buy into the matter is most important.

I can’t assume anything and to suggest the urgency of this topic can only be demonstrated by those who have been directly impacted by such behaviors on the street or in their neighborhoods. Relevance to the topic is based on your personal safety, your family’s wellness and welfare and your ability to cope and function without being victimized by lawlessness in your own space or world.

My words are mere illustrations and demonstrations that the threat is real and worthy of a few minutes of time to understand its severity and effect on your life. I cannot assume you don’t care about yourself or others. I should not take for granted that the world is a utopia with unicorns and purple flowers everywhere. It’s not and we know it to be hostile and dangerous.

How your life exists with peace or hate is up to you but having the intimate or specific knowledge of your surroundings gives you a distinct advantage of awareness needed to survive. In other words, we need to step up our game to be safer. This means a new attitude or intuition related to our well-being.

The main idea or strategy for me is to make this message clear that we are experiencing a dire and growing problem in our streets and communities. Through my own deductive reasoning, added by your own experiences as reported by crime reports, we can accumulate the awareness to the point where you are better informed and more aware of the perils that surround you today.

This is not a sermon or politically correct message – it is simply a time in space where you need to face the reality that things are drastically wrong and that it can be fixed if we stand together with the knowledge of what the problem is and how to address it.

We don’t have to know all the answers, we just need to know the approach to take to make it a stronger voice of clarity and concern with respect and simplicity that everyone can understand. Giving you access to these concerns makes you a more aware citizen and creates a better vigilance on the problem.

There are a lot of negatives in this message. The reason is based on the fact that violence, chaos, disruptive behaviors and such are not things we can write about in a positive light as they distort the severity if given in a brighter light than it deserves. If it is dark, we should call it dark.

The final word is yours. You can reject my words and message or your can accept them, modify them or discard them. The choice is entirely up to you. People may want to fill in the rest of the message as soon as they hear the idea and they might not like what they anticipate is coming but dealing with reality is still the best way to talk about it.

This is not a short-term event – this is a long-term epidemic. There are no quick solutions and there are questions that may not be answered right away but with persistence and perseverance, they will be answered. It can be intense for some and immense for others. Keeping it short and clear is the goal but some things have to be elaborated on for content and context to be a proper fit.

Furthermore, it tends to be less offensive at the start if people are not going to agree with the substance of the message.That means that in some cases, whatever is written can become offensive and cause disagreement but that is a positive thing – thinking is the best way to approach a problem.

If you check out before the end is written you have lost the connection while I at the same time, lost you as a reader. It is much harder to keep your attention than to write the message and keep you going. If I do it well and keep you informed, then the whole experience will pay off one way or another.

It is difficult to keep the tension tight. I can’t control  your mind but if you focus on the message and know where it is going, I have helped you get a better understanding of the problem. For me, that is a positive experience. If I underdeliver, I take the blame and if I over deliver, then it is not done so in vain. The whole experience can be up or down or even somewhere in the middle.

However, it is difficult to maintain tension for the amount of time necessary.  If listeners have to check out (or if you lose them and they mentally check out), it can be much harder to re-enter the listening experience.  Worst of all, if you promise well, but under-deliver, then the whole experience can be very negative.

Organized Lawlessness - the rage Part IV

Mob Crimes – Organized Lawlessness is the Rage Part IV

If you have followed my blogs on the law of retaliation, revenge and common law, you will understand where this particular part of my concern falls into the picture. The world has changed dramatically since 2009. Crime is spiraling out of control throughout parts of the world as police officers, brave men, and women, have been faced with a new high level of lawlessness than ever experienced before.

Even the police are protesting and denouncing to what they say are insufficient, inadequate resources to fight the mounting insurgency, lawlessness and defiance of government everywhere. From Paris to London, Washington DC to LA, they are unable to stop the unauthorized protests and demonstrations that so often lead to violence, assaults, and arson.

Whether you believe it or not, Donald Trump is right – this election is about law and order. The government has lost control of its people and the direct cause can only be blamed on inconsistency in the enforcement of laws and the permissive culture of the bureaucracy in the state and federal governments. This kind of complacency of enforcement has impacted immigration, social order and terrorist-type of perils.

Today, the police are more focused on terrorist plots, active shooter cases and mass demonstrations than the enforcement of law and order within the communities. They have neither the resources nor the funding to handle it all.

Political opponents have seized on the discontent to accuse the government of letting violent crime and everyday lawlessness proliferate despite a large police recruitment drive in various countries as well as large cities inside the USA. Resignations are happening on two ends of the continuum of law enforcement. Letters of resignation from dissatisfied police officers are growing exponentially. These men and women, who risk their lives daily to protect and serve, are being victimized and criminalized by their own insiders.

Today, they are being criticized for their actions and decisions as the government turned weak policies into even weaker ones. The second element of dissatisfaction is from the people who are being provoked by political groups to create racial unrest and civil disobedience marches turned violent. The streets are unsafe to walk or travel and the number of attacks is mounting.

This is the anger of the police. They are experiencing a gross erosion of their authority through weak government actions and support. The respect for cops has been diminished as their role in the community goes beyond the parameters of their own abilities to take control of their assigned duties responsibilities.

The thinning of the blue line leaves few options open for the government not to use military troops to supplement law enforcement. This is a very unpopular move but one that is being considered every time a neighborhood goes up in flames by riots in the streets. To make matters worse, police and soldiers throughout the world are being deployed to boost airport security and other vital spots where public transportation or assembly is a great concern for safety from militant Islamic attacks in which hundreds of people have died from already in the past two years and the count is rising.

Thousands of police and soldiers have been deployed to boost security at airports, train stations, and schools after a string of militant Islamist attacks in which more than 230 people have died in the past two years. So far, the police officers of our communities have held their own fighting crime but are stretched so far out at times, stress, fatigue, and morale is becoming serious concerns for tomorrow.

A stressed cop is always a concern for the citizen as they are human like us and react to events the best they can but without the benefit of the doubt that we give others. They are always held to a higher decorum or standard than other citizens. We strap body cameras on them to observe them enforce the codes of conduct for law enforcement as well as the citizen but criticize them more harshly than the person breaking the law.

Society has turned the morality of good versus evil around to where evil prevails in many cases. Rather than focusing on the criminal, the camera is used to review and hold the officer to a higher level of restraint and constraint while the criminal acts out in a most violent and brutal fashion. This has demoralized many police agencies and caused many vacancies within major police departments.

Our society is now focusing on the cops and how they perform on and off duty, how they use their training and their equipment and hold them accountable for every line written in departmental or agency policies while the criminal is given due process to the excess and basically a free ride out of jail because of social justice pressures.

Our peacekeepers are under attack by the lawless persons who roams our streets and attack innocent people. This type of scrutiny only results in a diminished capacity to work under and be more cautious in their official role as lawfully appointed agents of various areas of law enforcement. While the cops are being restrained, the protesters are given more freedoms. Their actions go beyond shouting and pushing cops, they are now burning and looting and destroying police cars and attacking police personnel deployed to keep law and order.

Warnings don’t work any longer. These lawless mobs are empowered by politicians who want them to riot, they are being paid to riot and cause a public disturbance. Through legitimate means, they have been warned to tone down the demonstrations but instead, they have failed to respect those rules and announced more demonstrations coming down the line while organized groups fund and flout them.

Protesters have ignored warnings and similar appeals from the government and are threatening to invoke more violence that can only mean more assertive responses from the police and government including martial law sanctions. What was once a task for cops to fight gangland crime has now turned into mob crimes organized by big business and politicians who have their own agendas in destroying the American way of life.