by Peter Boyles | Jun 25, 2015 | Blasting with Boyles
If this were three months ago, there is no way I would’ve said to myself, “Peter you are going to be sitting down and trying (with great help) to write a column for the Chronicle about a trip to Lebanon, and a chance to meet Hezbollah.” But here I am sitting in the Chronicle office, surrounded by ink-stained scribes, talking out the story of my trip to Lebanon.
This all has its very strange beginning, a phone call from longtime friend and legendary car dealer John Medved. Medved tells me that I have to meet this interesting priest that he’s gotten to know, and he gives me a date and a time to be in his office. It’s before Cinco de Mayo, snowing, and off I go to the giant Medved autoplex. This was first time I met the priest, Father Andre Mahanna, a priest in the Maronite tradition of the Catholic Church of Lebanon.
He begins to tell me about what is happening to Christian people in the Middle East. John Medved, a very devout Catholic, wants me to help gain attendance for an ecumenical prayer breakfast at Father Andre’s church. Father Andre, Medved, myself and one of Medved’s staffers go to lunch. Outside it’s a snowstorm. Inside at lunch, I’m captured by the utter brilliance of this priest. He speaks English, Arabic, French, Italian and a smattering of Greek.
I’ve written about all of this before — as a little boy, my parents were a long way from what people considered middle class. My mother used to take us in the summer to the Carnegie Library and we would take out books — six each every two weeks. I read Ivanhoe, Richard the Lionheart, Robin Hood, and Men of Iron. I read about the crusaders (when they were the good guys). We sang “Onward Christian Soldiers.” It was the period of my life that preceded when I thought dinosaurs were everything.
In that period, I thought being a feudal knight and making a clear path to the Holy Land for devout people would’ve been the ultimate job.
That was also the beginning of me being drawn to the mysterious Templars; knights. Even later in life I find myself so intrigued by Templars, Jacques de Molay, why Friday the 13th was an ominous day, and do the Templars actually have the lost cup of Christ? PS — Any of you who saw “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” have an idea of what a Templar is so I mentioned the Templars to Father Andre. His eyes lit up and I thought, anyone who knows that history of the Templar deserves my affection and my attention.
Using the power of 710 KNUS, we were going to fill up the prayer breakfast that John Medved had wanted me to help Father Andre promote. It was mission complete. As they say, “we sold the joint out.”
By this time, I became fully involved in reading about what ISIS was doing to Christian people in parts of Iraq and Syria that have become captured lands. ISIS (Barack Obama’s JV team) systematically and brutally murders, rapes and kills any and all that stand in their path to create the Islamic state.
The Islamic state is a Jihad-waging Sunni-extremist group that hopes to create an Islamic nation in the modern Middle East. ISIS was formed by several fringe movements that formed into a single large force. No one is quite sure of the number of fighters, but it certainly is close to 30,000 Middle Eastern nationals and foreigners that make up ISIS.
They have been successful against Syrian and Iraqi governments, as well as other insurgent groups. As we write, ISIS forces now control Ramadi, the capital of Iraq’s Anbar province; they also have solidified footholds in Libya to expand their reach. ISIS — ISIL — I believe has an operational presence in the U.S. as well. The ultimate plan is for the entire modern Middle East to become the caliphate — an Islamic state that will stretch from Kuwait through Jordan, Saudi Arabia and of course, Lebanon.
I became so intrigued with all of this, thinking to myself — we are watching history happen in the Middle East and that I absolutely should go. But for the life of me, I can’t explain to anyone why I’ve done this. I’ve bought my own plane tickets, paid for my own hotel room. And if anyone knows me, I’m like crime — crime don’t pay. But there I was in Beirut, riding in a car from the Beirut airport with a couple of young men who I have never met in my life — a couple of Maronite kids — and we were off to the see the Wizard.
ISIS fighters are about 90-100 miles from Beirut on the other side of a mountain range in Syria. Beirut is an incredibly beautiful, cosmopolitan enlightened city with some of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen. It’s vibrant and exciting but I’m sure it has elements of danger. At the end of the second day, I was on a rooftop restaurant with some members of the faculty of the Lebanese Maronite university, surrounded by beautiful people, the latest fashions and laughing. My first thoughts were that these are the French in 1938-39. They are having the times of their lives, going to see Charlie Chaplin films, American jazz, smoking cigarettes and going to the follies, and on the other side of that border are the Nazis. By the prickling of my thumb, something wicked this way comes.
The Lebanese people that I got to know, Muslim and Christian alike, had one principal question, Why did George Bush invade Iraq? They used the term “Twin Towers” — they don’t say “9/11.”
I am beginning to realize that there was a wake up in the United States of America that people were beginning to see that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with the attacks of 9/11; on this statement of truth, the Lebanese are way ahead of us. In fact, most of the information supports that the Saudi Arabians were involved and not the Iraqis. In fact, I’ve tried to make the case that ISIS-ISIL is George Bush’s Frankenstein. That is, if Saddam was still there, they would not be.
The other interesting question they asked me is if they thought Barack Obama is a Muslim. They are all great Internet readers and know that I am known as a “birther.” So they would ask me if I believed him to be a Muslim — I told them that I have no idea as to the answer to both those questions. But then the most critical was asked: What did I think of Hezbollah? And do I think that they are a terrorist group?
Today in the war against ISIS-ISIL, there are three factions fighting against them. In the north, it’s Kurdish people and in Syria, it’s Bassar al-Assad, the dictator of Syria, today’s version of Saddam Hussein, and last but not least is the Hezbollah. In fact, outside of Baghdad today, the Shia militia is backed by Iran and the Hezbollah, fighting for the American backed gout in Baghdad, the party of God, in Lebanon. And that’s it. Barack Obama’s position that al-Ashir Assad should go, which is equally as stupid as George Bush pushing out Saddam Hussein. If al-Assad goes, it’s “Katie, bar the door.”
And Hezbollah and the Lebanese army will be all that stands between the Lebanese people and the viscious ISIS murderers. When I told some people one night that I knew this all to be true, they asked me if I wanted to meet the head of Hezbollah. And so that next morning, I was taken by car to meet Mohammad Raad. After going through a number of checkpoints, and driving in the city of Beirut, I was ushered into a large room, and there I met Mohammad Raad, President of Loyalty to the Resistance bloc of Hezbollah. I was told that I was the first western media guy that he ever met.
We were only supposed to have a limited amount of time. We ended up talking for two hours. I told him that in the late ’70s when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, I was part of a fundraising committee that was called “The Committee for a Free Afghanistan.” I was on the committee with a lot of very great people and some doctors at Children’s Hospital; we managed to get some children into the U.S. that had been brutalized by the war. He kind of sat up a little in his chair when I told him that and I told him that members of the mujahideen had come twice to Denver. When I stared into their deep black eyes, I knew right then that the Soviets were not going to defeat them. And I said to him, in that time period, that the mujahideen were heroes in the West.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend. These were the men who were fighting the Soviet Union. We were locked in the Cold War. The Soviets were our enemies and the mujahideen were our friends. In fact, they were seen as heroes. Today Hezbollah is fighting the enemies of our country, the Unites States of America, and it’s almost the opposite of the mujahideen of the late ’70s. I’ve seen what ISIS is capable of doing — these are the Nazis. This is 1939 and as FDR and Winston Churchill made a decision, after the invasion of the Soviet Union by Adolf Hitler, it went back to back Stalin.
When we talk about the contemporary world — when I tell you what’s coming our way from these barbarians, religious fanatics, crazed killers, ISIS and ISIL, it’s imperative that you believe me. I don’t believe American foreign policy can do much, if anything, in that part of the world. The enormous mistakes of the Bush administration, followed by the Obama administration are done. But we must help save the incredible people of Lebanon. I visited centers of Iraqi and Syrian refugees — Christians who had crossed the desert to get away from ISIS and found refuge in Lebanon.
When I initially went to Lebanon, it was to help Father Andre find help for the 1.3-1.6 million people fleeing from ISIS. Lebanon is the end of the line. The population of Lebanon is about 4 million people. Lebanon is about the size of the state of Delaware. They just increased their population by a quarter. It’s important to know, Lebanese are not Arabs; they are Phoenicians. They gave the world the alphabet. They taught the world commerce.
I stayed close to an 11th century French crusader castle; I walked on Roman roads, and I saw where Phoenicians sailed out to begin trade in an ancient world. The invaders enter through Lebanon and always leave Lebanon to go to Spain. I saw a bunker where the German army was during WWII and remnants of the invasion of the PLO. The Israeli army has come and gone; the Syrian army has come and gone; the Romans have come and gone; and the French have come and gone. If ISIS comes, it’s not going to go. The religious war is not being fought in Israel. The religious war for Western civilization is being fought in Lebanon. The Maronites celebrate Christianity as it was done in the centuries following Jesus and they continue that tradition. If the light goes out in Lebanon, the light is going out in the world.
I got back on the airplane by myself at 8 o’clock in the morning two days before Ramadan was set to begin. That’s a long way from reading Ivanhoe realizing that perhaps we need to be modern Templars. And I’m not at all talking about the most overused statements in recent memory, “Boots on the ground.” That has gotten this country nowhere. But rather to find a way to help the right people defeat what’s waiting for all of us.
The picture that I am showing in the column is called the “Nun,” the 14th letter in the Arabic alphabet; it stands for “Nazarene,” equivalent to the put-down words for Jews and Blacks. (You know them, I don’t need to tell you those words.) So as these new barbarians come into and capture small towns and cities, they find out who the Christians are — be they Coptics, Maronites, Orthodox, or evangelical Protestants; they mark their houses with the Nun using spray paint, reminiscent of the Kristallnacht when the Nazis marked with the star of David, broke their windows, burned temples, and stores so the brown shirts knew who they were.
Only now, when the next wave comes behind the markers, everyone in the homes is killed and they play soccer with the heads of the children. Hardly a JV team. I don’t know what I’m going to do next, but I know that maybe for the first time in my life, I see something that has to be done. We must stand against these medieval monsters.
— Peter
by Valley Gadfly | Jun 25, 2015 | Valley Gadfly
Aaah, summer — that long anticipated stretch of lazy, lingering days, free of responsibility and rife with possibility. It’s our permission slip to be lazy. Summer — the season when we take the time to do nothing and have it count for something. It is our opportunity to lie in the grass and count the stars or study cloud formations.
This is the season when we’re held in a hypnotic spell. The sheer force of summer’s presence mesmerizes us with splashes of serenity and solitude.
Here are our playful, carefree choices for shopping, dining and entertainment offering peace and tranquility to ensure you’ll have it made in the shade:
3 Enjoy the pleasant sounds of summer at Four Mile Historic Park on Wednesday evenings during the Shady Grove Picnic Series July 1-Aug. 19, 6:30 p.m. It’s melodic musical bliss. Information: 303-777-1003.
3 Hit the farmers’ market in Cherry Creek (Sat. and Wed.), City Park (Sun.) to fill your pantry with fresh produce. Information: 303-442-1837.
3 Step into summer by revolutionizing your home with imported tile and stone from CAPCO Tile & Stone. The largest locally based distributor is your stepping-stone to home beautification. Information: 303-759-1919.
3 Spend a day ambling among plants and pyramids during Elements Day at Denver Botanic Gardens July 16, 6-9 p.m. Information: 720-865-3501.
3 Enjoy harmonies by the Denver Municipal Band and Summit Brass Soloists at Gates Concert Hall, July 16, 7:30 p.m. Information: 303-871-7720.
3 Spend a day with friends trying on glamorous and crazy outfits at Cherry Creek North’s Sidewalk Sale, July 16-19. Information: 303-394-2904.
3 Warm up to the dog days of summer at the juried art show depicting dogs in the Niza Knoll Gallery, July 17-Aug.22. Information: 303-953-1789.
3 Settle back and unwind on the Inn at Cherry Creek’s Terrace during Summer Bluegrass & Grub, July 31, 5-9 p.m. Information: 303-377-8577.
3 Be spontaneous and travel to Paris for a summer night during the Alliance Française Soirée d’Été Benefit July 11, 7-11 p.m. The proceeds from the event in the Space Gallery on Santa Fe Drive support the organization’s cultural events and scholarships. Let loose, go dancing and bring back auction souvenirs or a Dream Trip to Paris. Information: 303-831-0304.
This summer began a little late; the weather was unsure whether it would install summer at all. Most days began in stops and starts of intermittent rain showers followed by a cloudburst. With summer in limbo for a while, everyone is hoping the mosquitoes got confused and forgot to be born, albeit unlikely with all of the rain.
Soaking up in the Valley’s natural summertime amphitheater invokes a sense of connection to the environment that is a one-of-a-kind experience.
There’s something about sunshine, long days and breezy nights that make us feel like anything is possible. Now’s the time to take chances, try new things and live life to the fullest. Take an evening walk without checking your smartphone. You’ll know summer is here when you no longer get wet feet but the asphalt is getting sticky.
— Glen Richardson
The Valley Gadfly can be reached at newspaper@glendalecherrycreek.com.
by Mark Smiley | Jun 25, 2015 | Feature Story Bottom Left
Whatever your opinion is of Bruce Jenner taking on his new identity, Caitlyn Jenner, you have to respect the courage it took her to be and act in a way that completes her and gives her personal ease. Personal ease is a very elusive notion that spans way beyond being “able to sleep at night,” taking it much further.
Having the ability to share what moves you on the inside without being affected by judgement from the outside world is a very liberating way to live. Is it easy to do? No. Of course it’s not easy. Unfortunately, the day and age we live in promotes a social norm standard that insists people think and live a certain way, and when you don’t, you are opening yourself up to ridicule, scrutiny and abandonment. You’ve heard the saying, “what will the neighbors think?”
I get how scary it is to open your life up. There is much you can lose by expressing yourself in a way that’s true to your own beliefs, wants, needs and desires. But what are you gaining by being such a suffocated soul? How well do the people you associate with really know YOU? That’s a serious question…
How well do people actually know you? Moreover, how well do you actually know them? Are you truly able to develop true intimate relationships with people who project who they want you to believe they are? Or worse, with people who hide or tell nothing of substance about themselves to you? Are these strawman relationships worth having?
I’m not saying you have to be a bleeding heart to everyone you meet and wear everything about yourself on your sleeve. What I am saying is relationships are not even worth creating on a false premise. They’re as fake as the people who are afraid to put themselves “out there” in a true manner. I know we all dance to a different beat, but at the same time we all have a need to be accepted. Here is what you’re missing out on by living your life driven by fear, fear to be yourself.
- If there are things burning inside you that you refuse to express or unearth you may be missing the solace of finding a likeminded person to share that passion.
- If you are suppressing feelings from your past because they hurt too much or you are ashamed of something you did keeping that bottled up will only push you further away from the people who want to be close to you but give up at some point because the mountain that is you is too hard to climb.
- Finding an intimate relationship with an open soul person will be next to impossible. Sooner or later they will want to know YOU and all the time you spend hiding and suppressing will catch up to you and they will eventually be drawn in a different direction, away from you.
- Living as a shell is lonely. You’re never truly fulfilled and you never will be until you liberate whoever you are and who the person is that you’re afraid to reveal. Nothing sadder than two shells that attach themselves together in a relationship. Or as I like to call it “strangers on the same couch.”
- You’re missing out on life! Life in the sense of being liberated by people having no mistake about who you are and your proclivities. It’s a weird thing… Once you put yourself out there the relationships you develop WILL have meaning. People will believe in you only as much as you believe in yourself. When that spiritual shift takes place you will be on the way to the personal ease I referred to earlier.
Again, I don’t know how you feel about Caitlyn Jenner, and truthfully I don’t care. It’s just very sad to me Bruce spent most of his existence on this earth building fake relationships when he could have been true to his own needs. Time is very precious so if there is something keeping you from opening up and singing your truth about who you are I encourage you to find a way to expose yourself. I promise you’ll be better for it and you will start really enjoying the people you choose to have relationships with because you’ll know they will like you for who you are rather than who you want them to think you are.
Enjoy yourself.
Your pal, Sheik
by Mark Smiley | Jun 25, 2015 | Editorials
In the 1957 musical The Music Man by Meredith Wilson, the protagonist Professor Harold Hill pulls a scam on a small Iowa town to sell non-existent musical instruments and lessons for a boys band he claims he will form to thwart off the purported malicious effects of a pool hall in the town. In the award-winning melody “Ya Got Trouble” Professor Hill breaks into song including the lyrics:
Well, ya got trouble my friend, right here
I say, trouble right here in River City
. . . .
Pockets that mark the diff’rence
Between a gentleman and a bum,
With a capital “B”
And that rhymes with “P” and that stands for pool!
One of the reasons that the musical became so popular is that underlying premises have some believability concerning human nature. The Institute for Justice is a Virginia-based non-profit public interest law firm that somehow managed to lose by a 5-4 margin in the Supreme Court of the United States the case of Kelo v. City of New London whereby the court perniciously authorized the use of eminent domain to seize private property for the benefit of other private citizens in the name of economic development. The Institute has been raising money off its massive legal incompetence ever since.
The Institute for Justice was formed in 1991 by Clint Bollick and University of Denver Law School graduate “Chip” Mellor with seed money from moneyman Charles Koch of the famous, or infamous depending on your political views, Republican Koch Brothers. The Institute has revenues of only $18 million and must engage in endless money raising which depends on taking on highly public fights with municipalities and other governmental entities.
That is where Glendale comes in. The city sent out an innocuous notice that it was going to reauthorize the right of eminent domain for its urban renewal authority as it had in 2004 and 2013. Except this time the Institute for Justice had come to town. The Institute convinced the owners of Authentic Persian and Oriental Rugs on Colorado Boulevard that Glendale must want to condemn their three to five acres for its “Riverwalk” project renamed “Glendale 180.” Except no one in Glendale apparently has any plan whatsoever to condemn the Kholghys’ or anyone else’s property in the city.
As reality doesn’t matter when you are ginning fake outrage, a massive publicity campaign went out to save the Kholghys’ property from a condemnation that is never going to occur. Camera crews from all major stations descended on the city as well as reporters from The Denver Post and other publications in the metropolitan area to report on and to condemn the non-existent condemnation of the Kholghys’ property.
When Phillip Applebaum from the Institute came before the Glendale City Council to pontificate, it was assumed he was an attorney since he did not identify exactly what he did. But lo and behold he is, in fact, an “Activism Coordinator” who took over the publicity campaign. He wanted the Chronicle to know that the Institute was not “retained” by the Kholghys for legal work but his department is instead engaged in “grassroots activism” whose ultimate goal we assume is fund raise over a made up crisis in Riverwalk City.
Of course the Kholghys are hardly innocent dupes. They bought the land in 2006 from Jimmy O’Connor after they saw an article in The Denver Post that the city was planning an entertainment development along Cherry Creek to be called the Riverwalk. They overpaid for the property, but they assumed that the Riverwalk project would greatly increase the value of the land, as landowners along Cherry Creek helped plan the entire project. It has been indicated that they want $20 million or more for property worth half that amount. They are apparently hoping they can raise enough of a ruckus that the city can cheat its own taxpayers and pay them whatever they want.
For any redevelopment project to work the city needs tax revenues to help pay for roads and other improvements. According to state law Glendale can capture county and special district taxes for the project, provided there is so called “blight” which East Virginia Avenue clearly fits.
The Institute for Justice somehow convinced the Kholghys that a finding of blight, like the existence of a pool hall in River City, is the devil’s work and even helped organize a Saturday event to protest the assertion of “blight,” even though it would be helpful in any re-development of the Kholghys’ property by the Kholghys themselves. The Kholghys have brought at least two lawsuits against Glendale regarding the non-existent condemnation plans. The media in Denver, like the parents in River City, can however be easily conned and panicked into running to help prevent a non-existent threat.
Glendale, at its last City Council Meeting, approved a Downtown Development Authority that includes most of the southern side of East Virginia Avenue along the creek excepting the Kholghys’ property. Apparently the rest of the landowners want a project even if it doesn’t include the Kholghys.
In the end, the Kholghys will have spent a small fortune on frivolous lawsuits against the city for a non-existent threat of condemnation and their property will be worth considerably less not being part of Glendale 180. The one group that will gain will be the lawyers as well as the Institute for Justice with Phillip Applebaum as Activism Coordinator in an updated version of The Music Man crooning:
Well, ya got trouble my friend, right here
I say, trouble right here in Riverwalk City
. . . .
Blight marks the diff’rence
Between a gentleman and a bum,
With a capital “B”
And that rhymes with “C” and that stands for condemnation!
The Kholghys will be free to develop their property in any way they see fit except having to obey the zoning laws of the city just like every other landowner in the city. In the past the Kholghys seem to believe they are above the laws that apply to everyone else including providing parking and open space for any redevelopment. As with The Music Man one cannot help but admire the con the Kholghys and the Institute for Justice have pulled off on the media. But in the end most of the residents and businesses of Glendale hope that the Kholghys get what they justly deserve and that the laws are fairly and honestly applied to them as they would be applied to anyone else. The Institute in turn, will leave Glendale to go on raising money off of other made up River City crises, all the while losing legal cases that should never have been lost in the first place.
— Editorial Board
