Teh One Who Knocks
01-19-2017, 01:15 PM
By Stephen Miller - Heat Street
http://i.imgur.com/sAHmUAUh.jpg
When the White House unveiled President Obama’s latest round of prison sentence commutations, one name jumped out immediately, catching the attention of activists and elite media institutions. That name, of course, was Chelsea Manning.
Within minutes, thousands of tweets propelled Manning’s name to the top of Twitter trends and Facebook news feeds. The commutation of Manning’s sentence was a bold move — exactly what Obama’s left-wing activist supports in Hollywood and academia and the mainstream media had been craving.
On the other hand, it was an odd move for a president whose party had recently suffered a humiliating loss at the ballot box, and has been complaining about how Wikileaks, the group to which Manning was found guilty of leaking state secrets, torpedoed our democracy.
Manning’s name dominated headlines across media platform. The Obama Administration probably expected this, which is why they also decided to announce a sentence commutation for Oscar Lopez-Rivera on the same day.
Apart from an opinion piece in the New York Daily News, urging Obama not to commute the 74 year old FALN domestic terrorist’s sentence, there was scant attention paid to Rivera and the crimes for which he was convicted.
If not for Bernie Sanders praising Rivera on Twitter — and now a star studded performance of Hamilton in his honor (in the city of Chicago of all places), with Lin-Manuel Miranda reprising his lead role — Rivera’s commutation might have escaped the media’s notice.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="es" dir="ltr">Lin-Manuel Miranda to play Hamilton in Chicago to honor Oscar Lopez Rivera <a href="https://t.co/QxVxj6yAma">https://t.co/QxVxj6yAma</a></p>— USA TODAY (@USATODAY) <a href="https://twitter.com/USATODAY/status/821728885549256704">January 18, 2017</a></blockquote><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
But Miranda did shine a light on who Rivera is, and the fact Obama had commuted the sentence of a man with a record resembling that of Bill Ayers.
The New York Daily News summarized why Rivera, a Puerto Rican militant agitating for independence, is such a problematic figure:
During the 1970s and 80s, López Rivera’s FALN placed more than 130 bombs in American cities. Their goal was to destabilize what they called the “Yanki capitalist monopoly” and achieve Puerto Rican independence. Their method was terrorism.
In 1974, the FALN began planting booby-trap bombs around New York. While most of these early explosions caused only property damage, the group’s clear intention was to kill and maim. In December 1974, an NYPD officer responding to a report of a dead body in an abandoned building on 110th St. was seriously injured by an FALN incendiary device.
In January 1975, a 10-pound dynamite bomb killed four people and injured dozens at Fraunces Tavern. The powerful blast was felt blocks away. In an eerie foreshadowing of 9/11, dust-covered victims staggered through downtown streets. The FALN quickly took responsibility for the deadly deed.
http://i.imgur.com/CWrSOYO.jpg
When the FBI apprehended Lopez-Rivera in Chicago in 1981, authorities found six pounds of dynamite in his apartment. He was convicted on multiple counts of seditious conspiracy and possession of illegal weapons. He refused to repent, telling a federal judge years later, “I am an enemy of the state.”
That didn’t stop Manuel, or Bernie Sanders, or even the current mayor of New York, where people were killed by bombs planted by members of Rivera’s FALN organization, from praising Obama’s leniency.
“Thank you @POTUS for freeing #OscarLopezRivera. Congratulations to all who fought for this day,” Mayor and groundhog murderer Bill de Blasio tweeted on Tuesday.
John Schindler, a national security expert, columnist and author, noted on Twitter: “In reality, FALN was a bunch of Stalinist murderers organized & trained by Cuban intelligence, with basically zero support in Puerto Rico.”
So while the Obama White House threw out the shiny object (Manning) for the media to obsess over, the much more troubling, and seemingly ideologically-driven release of Rivera poses a far trickier problem for an outgoing administration that was often criticized for embracing anti-American radicals with domestic terror tendencies.
It’s a good bet Obama had no intention of drawing attention to the Rivera case, but thanks to the Hamilton star, who was so readily embraced by Democrats and media over the course of this past election, Democrats are now left having to explain away another controversy just as Obama exits.
http://i.imgur.com/sAHmUAUh.jpg
When the White House unveiled President Obama’s latest round of prison sentence commutations, one name jumped out immediately, catching the attention of activists and elite media institutions. That name, of course, was Chelsea Manning.
Within minutes, thousands of tweets propelled Manning’s name to the top of Twitter trends and Facebook news feeds. The commutation of Manning’s sentence was a bold move — exactly what Obama’s left-wing activist supports in Hollywood and academia and the mainstream media had been craving.
On the other hand, it was an odd move for a president whose party had recently suffered a humiliating loss at the ballot box, and has been complaining about how Wikileaks, the group to which Manning was found guilty of leaking state secrets, torpedoed our democracy.
Manning’s name dominated headlines across media platform. The Obama Administration probably expected this, which is why they also decided to announce a sentence commutation for Oscar Lopez-Rivera on the same day.
Apart from an opinion piece in the New York Daily News, urging Obama not to commute the 74 year old FALN domestic terrorist’s sentence, there was scant attention paid to Rivera and the crimes for which he was convicted.
If not for Bernie Sanders praising Rivera on Twitter — and now a star studded performance of Hamilton in his honor (in the city of Chicago of all places), with Lin-Manuel Miranda reprising his lead role — Rivera’s commutation might have escaped the media’s notice.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="es" dir="ltr">Lin-Manuel Miranda to play Hamilton in Chicago to honor Oscar Lopez Rivera <a href="https://t.co/QxVxj6yAma">https://t.co/QxVxj6yAma</a></p>— USA TODAY (@USATODAY) <a href="https://twitter.com/USATODAY/status/821728885549256704">January 18, 2017</a></blockquote><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
But Miranda did shine a light on who Rivera is, and the fact Obama had commuted the sentence of a man with a record resembling that of Bill Ayers.
The New York Daily News summarized why Rivera, a Puerto Rican militant agitating for independence, is such a problematic figure:
During the 1970s and 80s, López Rivera’s FALN placed more than 130 bombs in American cities. Their goal was to destabilize what they called the “Yanki capitalist monopoly” and achieve Puerto Rican independence. Their method was terrorism.
In 1974, the FALN began planting booby-trap bombs around New York. While most of these early explosions caused only property damage, the group’s clear intention was to kill and maim. In December 1974, an NYPD officer responding to a report of a dead body in an abandoned building on 110th St. was seriously injured by an FALN incendiary device.
In January 1975, a 10-pound dynamite bomb killed four people and injured dozens at Fraunces Tavern. The powerful blast was felt blocks away. In an eerie foreshadowing of 9/11, dust-covered victims staggered through downtown streets. The FALN quickly took responsibility for the deadly deed.
http://i.imgur.com/CWrSOYO.jpg
When the FBI apprehended Lopez-Rivera in Chicago in 1981, authorities found six pounds of dynamite in his apartment. He was convicted on multiple counts of seditious conspiracy and possession of illegal weapons. He refused to repent, telling a federal judge years later, “I am an enemy of the state.”
That didn’t stop Manuel, or Bernie Sanders, or even the current mayor of New York, where people were killed by bombs planted by members of Rivera’s FALN organization, from praising Obama’s leniency.
“Thank you @POTUS for freeing #OscarLopezRivera. Congratulations to all who fought for this day,” Mayor and groundhog murderer Bill de Blasio tweeted on Tuesday.
John Schindler, a national security expert, columnist and author, noted on Twitter: “In reality, FALN was a bunch of Stalinist murderers organized & trained by Cuban intelligence, with basically zero support in Puerto Rico.”
So while the Obama White House threw out the shiny object (Manning) for the media to obsess over, the much more troubling, and seemingly ideologically-driven release of Rivera poses a far trickier problem for an outgoing administration that was often criticized for embracing anti-American radicals with domestic terror tendencies.
It’s a good bet Obama had no intention of drawing attention to the Rivera case, but thanks to the Hamilton star, who was so readily embraced by Democrats and media over the course of this past election, Democrats are now left having to explain away another controversy just as Obama exits.