The Obama Library

This article first appeared in New English Review. 

This past week's opening of the Obama Presidential Library on Chicago's South Side was a real masked ball as we all expected it to be. There was Hillary Clinton, the Empress Dowager, wearing some preposterous black hat she probably stole from an Oktoberfest. She was even accompanied by her erstwhile husband, Bill. In addition, there were Jill and Joe Biden, and the optics were predictably terrible. The most embarrassing scene was ex-President Obama and Jill walking off the stage, Obama pretending to play a guitar with poor Joe left behind to wander alone across the stage with his now famous "Land ahoy" imitation. It was funny and sad at the same time. Unfortunately, he has a wife who will drag him all over the country so she can be seen by her adoring public.

Also present was Los Angeles mayor and current front-runner in the November mayoral election, Karen Bass. The day she flew to Chicago, another big fire broke out in the Boyle Hts. area of the city. Unlike the Pacific Palisades fire, where two communities burned down, it was just a factory this time. The LAFD estimates it should be extinguished by Friday!!! During the previous fires, Bass was in Ghana attending a presidential inauguration, which couldn't go off without the mayor of Los Angeles present. She was warned before she left that weather and wind conditions were making a major conflagration highly likely, but she went anyway.

Our California governor, Gavin Newsom, was there, interrupting his busy schedule running for president in 2028. Oprah Winfrey, Stevie Wonder, Nancy Pelosi, the list goes on and on.

But I am seriously digressing here.

Back on topic, I am not a fan of presidential libraries to begin with. Not every president can get their mug on Mt. Rushmore, but they can all have their own presidential library, a monument to their ego.  There are currently 15 presidential libraries in the US, beginning with Herbert Hoover and not including President Trump (location as yet to be determined).

In the case of Chicago, particularly the South Side, the last thing they needed was this library. The city is bleeding-literally and figuratively. Its NFL team is leaving town, if not the state entirely. Its political leadership is horrendous, largely thanks to one-party rule, and the murder rate is a national scandal. No doubt there will be a lot of homicides committed in and around the spacious library grounds in the days, weeks, months, and years to come. What the city needs are more quality schools, hospitals to treat the gunshot victims, and jails to hold its burgeoning criminal population.

But instead, the city can proudly show off its Barack Obama Presidential Library. Or can it? I don't know who designed this thing, but I'm guessing he or she is a graduate of the Albert Speer School of Architecture. It looks like a cross between Hitler's Berlin bunker and the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City. If you are actually planning a visit, be forewarned that you may never be able to get back out. There don't seem to be a lot of doors and windows. Hopefully, there is at least a fire exit.

Albert Speer, Hitler's architect (left).

"Where are the windows, Albert?"

And then it is crowned, if you will, with a series of famous Obama quotes, like "You didn't build this. I did." Or something like that.

Now I know some wise guy is going to come along and say, "What about Trump? Have you seen that massive ballroom he is building at the White House? What about that Arc de Trump supposedly celebrating the country's 250th birthday? Have you seen the design?"

Fair enough. Most presidents have massive egos, and Obama and Trump are both champs in that regard. People like that tend to build monuments to themselves. But in the case of Chicago, could they not have at least built a structure that was attractive-something that would have added a touch of beauty to a part of the city that badly needs it?

Italy: Local Mayor Receives Threatening Letter Regarding Settlement of Israeli Families

Varallo, (Piemonte) Italy

This week in the northwestern Italian town of Varallo, located in a series of valleys in the Piedmont region known as Valsesia,  the town mayor has received an anonymous threatening note from somebody identifying themselves as the "Anti-Zionist Movement". Written in stencil, the note refers to the settlement of 70 Israeli families in the area and threatens to "start shooting" if any more arrive. a bullet was also enclosed in the envelope.

The article below from La Stampa is pretty self-explanatory and is translated by Fousesquawk. I will have more to write on this in the very near future. 

"This is the only warning before shooting," an envelope with a bullet addressed to Mayor Bondetti

In the message, the self-described "Anti-Zionist Movement" contests the presence of Israeli families who have been established for years in Varallo.

-By Andrea Bucci and Francesca Rivano

19 June 2026 at 0:500

A yellow envelope containing a letter apparently written in stencil headed, "Fuck Israel" and a 40 caliber Smith and Wesson bullet. "This is the only warning before we begin shooting". The threatening letter was delivered yesterday to the mayor of Varallo, Pietro Bondetti, signed by a self-described "Anti-Zionist Movement". Aside from the first citizen of the Valsesia town, also targeted is Ugo Luzzati, who, through his "Baita Project" in 2023, brought about 70 Israeli families to settle in Valsesia.

The envelope was delivered to the town hall during the late morning along with regular mail. On the sheet of paper, 16 lines oozing hatred, written in block letters and in ungrammatical Italian, implicate, aside from Bondetti and Luzzati, "mayors of Valsesia", accusing them of favoring the settlement of "Nazi Zionists" in the area. In the letter is also written: " We will not permit the transfer of more families".

"A very serious and unexpected event," comments Bondetti, who immediately filed a complaint with the Carabinieri station. A file has been opened with the prosecutor's office on the sending of the letter by persons unknown at this time. Public Prosecutor, Mariaserena Iozzo, under the direction of the head of the judicial office, Ilaria Calo, believes it is a crime of "threat". For now, there is caution at the courthouse. In the coming hours, the Dda, the district Anti-Mafia office, will be brought in since the victim of the threat is the mayor.     

But who could have an issue with the Israeli families? It is a mystery that the investigators will have to solve. Prior to this, in Varallo and in all of the Valsesia, nobody would have ever complained about the arrival of these new residents. On the contrary. Now, however, someone has apparently decided to act, raising the level and spreading hate. 

'The arrival of the Israeli families," comments the mayor of Varallo," is a very positive element for our territory. Those who have chosen to live in Valesia, have acquired and renovated residences abandoned for years and brought villages back to life that were depopulating. The children attend our schools, and, personally, I have never had the sense of tensions or problems." Profoundly embittered and worried about the incident, the mayor has shared the received threat, personally contacting Luzzati and the realtor who is handling the arrival of other families on property matters. They are people of every age, who often work from remote and who prefer an area in which one can live in the middle of nature.

"In these years, I have never felt myself the object of a threat," says Luzzati, born in Genoa, who arrived in Valsesia after having long lived in Israel. "This letter, certainly worrying, is absurd also in its content," he adds. "For a Zionist Jew to leave Israel is a betrayal. (Such a person ) would never relocate, not in Valsesia, nor anywhere else."

Driving the families who have chosen Varallo and its villages, on the contrary, is the search for a place to live without the tensions, the political pressures, and the wars that bloody the Middle East. "In the Valsesia territory, there are currently 70 families," Luzzati adds. "People who are integrating themselves into the local community and who, for the most part, are not even practicing from the religious point of view.  

Fousesquawk Architectural Wonders

 

Hitler's Wolfschanze

Hitler's bunker in Berlin 1945

Moscow State University

Present-day remains of Nuremberg Party Rally tribunal

Milan, Italy Central Train Station

Bates Motel (from "Psycho")

Tropicana Field, Tampa

Oakland Memorial Coliseum 

Metropolitan Correctional Center, New York City

Obama Presidential Library, Chicago

Italy: The Case of the Phony Palestinian Charity in Italy

Mohammed Hannoun

In the past several months, we have been reporting on the case of Mohammed Hannoun, a Jordanian-Palestinian resident of Genoa, Italy, who runs a "charitable" organization called  Associazione Benefica di Solidarietà con il Popolo Palestinese (Charitable Association in Solidarity with the Palestinian People-Abspp). Hannoun has been arrested in a massive investigation and is charged with sending donations to his associates in Hamas, specifically designated for the children of Hamas terrorists who have died in battle or in conducting suicide terror attacks against Israeli civilians.

Giulia Sorrentino, investigative reporter for Il Giornale, has written another piece outlining the case against Hammoun and others.

I should note here that Sorrentino, her editor, Tomasso Cerno, and the newspaper itself are under considerable threat from Islamists due to their continuous coverage of cases like this, as well as issues of migrant crime and clandestine mosques in Italy.

The article below is translated by Fousesquawk.

Prosecutors dismantle the charity cause. The money? To the children of the terrorists.

The wiretap on the flow of money: "This file will cost us 25 years in jail"

-Giulia Sorrentino

20 June, 2026 at 12:00

Evidently, we do not imagine the Palestinian children in the same way. Or better, we, who think of those who are suffering innocently in Gaza, do not imagine them in the same way as Mohammad Hannoun. He who, thanks to the Palestinian cause, has managed to have a name and fame, has had the extraordinary ability to promote the campaign in the name, "Hot meals project" or "food parcels", which, however, according to the detailed documentation provided by the indictment, was allegedly destined to 21 orphans of "shahid", the children of 9 "martyrs of war," who are reportedly the soldiers of the Al Qassam Brigade, the military wrong of Hamas. This involves material discovered from the analyses of some of the devices that were seized, in which the association's accounts were also registered. 

And for this very reason, they evidently attempted to erase the traces. Could they not have known? No, otherwise, they would not have discussed and worried about certain contents on several occasions.

It is Raed Dawoud who, during a conversation with Elasaly (those two are the principal managers of the Milan office), addresses the problem if law enforcement were to seize their telephones. Due to this, emerges the desire of the accused to erase the data considered dangerous and to format the devices.

Because of this, Dawoud, referring to the counts involving Osama Alisawi, says: "This is the most dangerous file there is! Because this is the one that comes from down there... this will cause us.....25 years in jail."

They had an Excel file labeled "2021 martyrs," and the names were discovered on the same site of the Brigades, where the identifying data and date of death were indicated.

But there is more because a folder was labeled, "Usama 2025" referring to the face of Hamas, Osama Alisawi, and it is a constantly updated account of the money sent from Abspp and received by him that details the amount in dollars or local currency. The mechanism was as follows: The Abspp issued a document attesting to the sending of money to the designated charity to financially support "the specifically identified orphans."

Then Osama Alisawi reported it on the Excel file, saved on the server under the name "Osama 2025", how much he received from Abspp, reporting the name of the recipient charity, and at that point, the charity confirmed the receipt of the amount sent by Abspp, issuing a kind of receipt.

Aside from the money laundering, the investigators are able to reconstruct another aspect far from secondary: They have also outlined, beginning in the year 2000, the well-established relations of Hannoun outside of Italy. As the judge writes, "the investigations conducted prove the existence of a network of relationships that link Hannoun and other subjects who operate within the organizations dedicated to pro-Palestinian activity abroad."

In 2003, Hannoun had direct relations with people in Germany, where the Al Aqsa Foundation of Aachen then operated. On August 5, 2002, it was declared illegal by a decree by the German Interior Minister due to its relations with Hamas in the financial support of families of terrorists who had carried out suicide attacks. Hannoun had maintained relations with members of the association subsequent to the measure by the German authorities, as emerged from additional conversations.

Here were also acquaintances back in 2001 with the Austrian representative, with Dutch representatives, and with Belgium rather than France.

It is, indeed, noteworthy that the current investigations have confirmed the well-established relations between him and his closest collaborators in Italy and persons certainly linked to Hamas.

Money and contacts that lead to only one place: Gaza. 

UC San Diego Campus Newspaper Accused of Anti-Jewish Bias

 

The Guardian, campus newspaper of the University of California at San Diego, is one of countless campus newspapers that make little if any pretense of being fair and even-handed when it comes to sensitive issues. The rule in campus journalism is to closely follow the rules of political correctness. 

For years, I have been reading campus newspapers online as to how they report the Israel-Palestinian  conflict and issues of pro-Palestinian activism, as well as campus anti-Semitism. What I have found is that while some will give an occasional op-ed to a conservative or pro-Israel student, the reporting and the editorial writing are overwhelmingly anti-conservative, anti-Republican, anti-Israel, and pro-Palestinian. Given the overall culture dominating academia today, this is hardly surprising. 

Now, several news sources are reporting complaints of anti-Jewish, anti-Israel bias on the part of the Guardian. The article linked here in the Jewish news site, Algemeiner, is written by a UCSD student, Ellia Torkian, who uses statistical arguments, specific examples, and personal experiences dealing with the Guardian, as well as those of another student-writer, identified as JS, who had difficulty getting an innocuous article about the campus Hillel chapter's work helping Jewish students deal with anti-Semitism past the editors before eventually giving up. 

As of this writing, I have not found any mention of this controversy in the current edition of the Guardian.

Germany: Alice Weidel Reads the Riot Act to German Government Over Nuremberg

This past week, Alternatif fuer Deutschland party leader Alice Weidel spoke in the Bundestag and as usual, she took no prisoners. On this occasion, she had an especially damaging point to make against the German government and Chancellor Friedrich Merz. 

Nuremberg. 

Last week, we posted an article on how gangs of men from Pakistan, Syria, and North Africa 

are grooming underage German girls in Nuremberg, a shameful development similar to the sexual grooming (exploitation) of young girls that has been going on for years in the UK. Weidel clearly stated that this scandal in Nuremberg was a direct result of the lax immigration policies of the German government. And as she spoke, the leftist deputies in the Bundestag, from the Green party, SPD, and others did what they always do. They rained catcalls down on her. 

 The above video from ARD and ZDF (Germany) is subtitled by RAIR Foundation USA, Vlad Tepes, and Gates of Vienna. Translation by Brunhilde.

Remembering an Old Homicide in Germany

 

In my recently published memoirs ("My years in DEA and beyond: The drug war, anti-Semitism, and Islamist extremism"), I described an event that occurred in the late 1960s when I was a US military policeman stationed in Germany. While spending a month TDY in the US Army Field Training area at Grafenwoehr, I was assigned to act as an investigator at the MP station, basically doing interviews and following other leads for the Criminal Investigation Division (CID). At that time, I was paired with one of the MPs regularly stationed at Grafenwöhr, whose name I don't recall. This was in December 1967. 

During the evening of December 17, two American soldiers were spending the evening drinking in the nearby town of  Amberg. They hailed a taxi, and while being driven by Walter Datzko, a 32-year-old taxi driver, one of the soldiers, Thomas Stanton Overko, 23, of New York State, pulled a gun and shot the driver to death with two bullets in the back of the head. The motive was apparently robbery. The other GI, Larry Allen Miller,19, of Junction City, Kansas, tried to drive the taxi away, but an automatic alarm in the vehicle prevented that. Overko made his escape on foot while Miller was shortly arrested by German police wandering not far from the cab. Miller identified Overko as the shooter, and the German and American military police began a massive search for Overko. 

Early the next morning, Overko made his way to the Grafenwoehr caserne weather station, where he called the MPs and told them where he was. The MPs, including my assigned partner, responded to the location, arrested Overko and seized the murder weapon.

So it was that around 8 am, that same morning, I reported for duty at the MP station and saw my partner and other MPs in the holding cell with Overko. He was being administered a paraffin test for gunpowder residue. I also recall the CID officer at the station arriving and instructing the MPs not to advise Overko of his rights or ask him any questions, that he would do that personally. 

Recently, I was going through old pictures from those days in Germany, and I came across an article I had cut out from the Overseas Weekly* dated December 24-31, 1967, describing the killing and providing much more detail than I had written in the above book (in which I had incorrectly described the incident as happening in 1968.) 

Heretofore, I had never followed up on the story of the judicial disposition of the case or whatever had happened to Overko and Miller. Turning to the Internet, I was able to determine that the two had both been convicted in a German court and sentenced to life imprisonment.

But what became of them?

I was able to determine that Overko died in Brooklyn, NY in 1999. 

Here is Overko's entry from the Overko Family History page:

OVERKO, THOMAS STANTON, also known as THOMAS S OVERKO, was born 9 August 1944, is listed with the following 3 birthplaces: BEACON, New York; BUFFALO, New York; BROOKLYN, New York, son of ALEXANDER M (father) and JANE ANUSZKIEWICZ, was assigned Social Security number 072-34-3709 (indicating New York) based on interview documentation establishing he was a U.S. citizen or alien allowed to work, with evidence other than a birth record submitted, is listed as a U.S. citizen, and died 28 June 1999, while residing in Zip Code 11235-6204.
Check the Source file [free] and Archives.com for THOMAS STANTON OVERKO. [$]

Miller proved to be a tougher nut to track down with his common name. No longer privy to law enforcement criminal records, I was forced to resort to open-source documents, and, as you may imagine, many of those sources involve subscription fees. It appears certain that both were released by the Germans at some point, but when? 

I am still trying to determine when Overko and Miller were released and what ensued in their lives. I will update this story as more information becomes available.

*The Overseas Weekly was an English-language newspaper out of Frankfurt published by former US servicemen who had remained in Germany after discharge. Their focus was on sensational stories like these involving GIs and various scandals on the US military posts. I even subscribed to it for a while after returning stateside and civilian life. Opened in 1950, it closed down in 1975.

Germany: Sexual Grooming Case in Nuremberg

Nuremberg Central Train Station

For years now, we have learned about sexual grooming gangs operating in the UK. Gangs of grown and middle-aged men, overwhelmingly Pakistani, who have preyed on vulnerable British girls, runaways, and drug addicts. The expression grooming refers to the practice of these men to lure these girls into even more vulnerable positions, largely through drugs, and to turn them into virtual sex slaves for themselves and their friends. To make it even more disgusting, British authorities in some areas turned a blind eye for years out of fear of being called racist if they went after these predators.

Now, it appears that the problem has surfaced in Germany, more specifically in Nuremberg, where a gang of men described as Syrian, North Africans, and Pakistani have preyed on young German girls, getting them addicted to drugs and turning them into prostitutes. Not surprisingly, much of this activity is taking place near the Central Train Station. Like most large German cities, the central train stations at night become a hangout for all kinds of low-lifes.

When I was a young Army MP just outside Nuremberg in the 1960s, it was common to see many middle-aged German men drunk in and around the station. I always speculated that they were former Wehrmacht soldiers, burned out with guilt over atrocities some of them committed in the war.

Now the problem is mostly migrants who should never have been let into Germany in the first place except for the policies of former Chancellor Angela Merkel, who let in millions of military-age men during the Syrian civil war. And they are still there. 

Now we can add a new list of innocent victims whose lives have been destroyed by the misguided policies of their leaders. Ironically, the center for all this activity is reportedly Nelson Mandela Platz, which was opened in September 2020 near the train station and heralded as "an oasis" by the city. 

Nelson Mandela Platz

"The Oasis"

Nelson Mandela Platz- Central Train Station on right

The article below from the conservative German website, Junge Freiheit, is translated by Fousesquawk. 

Forced into prostitution with drugs? Migrants allegedly have abused girls

Germany, 22 May 2026

In Nuremberg, a migrant gang has allegedly systematically hooked girls on drugs and prostituted them. The police are investigating with a special squad. The youngest victim is reportedly 13 years old.

Nuremberg- The police have initiated an investigation into a group of criminal migrants who have allegedly exploited several girls. The police have established a special squad named "Kajal" to investigate the group. "There is suspicion that, in this context, sexual attacks and rapes have also occurred," said the spokesman for the Middle Franconia police headquarters, Andreas Gramlich, to the Nürnberger Nachrichten. The youngest victim of the migrant gang, made up of men from Syria, North Africa, and Pakistan, is reportedly 13 years old.

The authorities believe that the suspects repeatedly approached girls on Nelson Mandela Square near the Nuremberg Central Train Station with gifts like clothing and cosmetics, and later with hard drugs like Chrystal Meth to get them addicted. When the girls became addicted to the drugs, they reportedly now could only get them through sexual traffic. As the Nürnberger Nachrichten reported, the police now reportedly have identified at least 10 suspects. A 23-year-old is reportedly already in custody, 2 men are on the run, and another 18-year-old is under investigation.

Youth Welfare Office is concerned over the extent of  drugs and prostitution

As of now, the police see no clear, identifiable group structure but are sure that a connection exists between the alleged persons involved. Police spokesman Gramlich describes the sequence of events and stressed that the victims apparently "went voluntarily into the apartments with them", but that there was no recognizable organized structure on the perpetrators' side. He promised that his authorities would follow the case "thoroughly". The goal is "to shed light on the entire dark picture." They currently believe that Nelson Mandela Square served as the meeting place.

The Nuremberg Youth Welfare Office spoke of the cases as representing "a new dimension." Problems at large train stations are not unique to Nuremberg, stressed the deputy chief of the Youth Welfare Office, Frank Schmidt. But it is new that young girls are so openly prostituting themselves for drugs. The city has a shortage of care for young people using risky drugs. The waiting lists are too long, the services are too few," Schmidt laments. 

Two of the girls involved have now been placed in establishments outside of Bavaria. Nelson Mandela Square in Nuremberg and the neighboring Celtis park have been considered for years as places with rampant drug criminality.

SJP at Colorado University Demands Release of Terrorist Killer

 Hat tip to The College Fix

Mohamed Sabry Soliman

Just when you thought Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), a national network of university chapters that has wreaked havoc on most every campus where it exists, could get any lower, we get this from Colorado University. The campus chapter of SJP has demanded the release of a convicted Egyptian terrorist, Mohamed Sabry Soliman, who carried out a firebombing that killed one person and injured several others at an event last year dedicated to the release of hostages taken by Hamas on October 7, 2023. You can read the details from The College Fix here.

Is there a more despicable organization in the US today than SJP, which was co-founded by University of California at Berkeley professor Hatem Bazian, who has made anti-Semitic statements publicly ever since he washed up on our shores as a student at San Francisco State University? With chapters on about 150 campuses across the country, this group has gone far beyond advocating for the Palestinian cause and condemning Israel (which are within their rights). It engages in tactics of disruption, threats, bullying, and violence against those who defend Israel. It defends Hamas, a terrorist organization, and condones the horrors of October 7, 2023. And now, this bunch in Colorado is demanding the release of Soliman. Free speech? Yes. Despicable? Absolutely.

When will universities all over the nation stand as one and ban this bunch permanently? When will our Justice Department treat SJP as it is in my opinion, a criminal organization? As to the former question, I don't have a lot of faith in our universities to take such action. All I see are temporary suspensions, which are cosmetic and insufficient. (According to the linked article, SJP is "unrecognized" at CU.) And yet, universities have every right not to allow disruptive groups that advocate hate and violence on their campuses. Would any university allow a KKK chapter on its campus? No.

As to the latter, I have considerably more faith that the current Justice Department, under Trump, is looking at this very possibility, maybe under our RICO statutes. That was almost certainly not the case under Biden, but it would not shock me if something appropriate might occur under this administration. 

*Update (June 12, 2026)

To its credit, the University of Colorado has issued a statement condemning SJP's demand. It is posted in the campus newspaper, CU Boulder Today. It was posted on June 2, and my bad for not having found it earlier.

Explaining the DOJ Lawsuit Against the University of California

Aftermath of UCLA encampment, 2024

I am cross-posting an article appearing in The Hill and written by my friends, Tammi Rossman-Benjamin and Leila Beckwith of the Amcha Initiative. Their article explains the Dept of Justice lawsuit against the University of California, largely based on events at UCLA, in which the university failed to protect the rights and safety of Jewish students, largely during the 2024 encampment controversy over the fighting in Gaza.

The article can be accessed here.

It goes without saying that I am in total agreement with the arguments in the article. Even before the encampment saga at UCLA, for years, that institution has had a documented history of ignoring the safety concerns of Jewish students in the face of insults, intimidation, and threats coming from the pro-Palestinian mobs on campuses, aided and abetted by far too many faculty members in departments like the Center for Near Eastern Studies. The worst excesses, at least in my opinion, occurred under the previous chancellor, Gene Block, who served from August 2007 to July 2024.

I hope this lawsuit is successful.

8 University of Michigan Pro-Palestinian Activists Indicted by DOJ

The US Department of Justice has announced the indictments in the Eastern District of Michigan of 8 people associated with the University of Michigan for conspiracies to engage in a campaign of threats, intimidation, and violence against university officials, the Jewish Federation of Detroit, and other entities, on or off campus in support of the Palestinian cause. 

Those indicted by a federal grand jury are:

 Zainab Aliasgar Hakim (Canton, Michigan) (age 23), Amatullah Aliasgar Hakim (Ann Arbor, Michigan) (age 21), Paige Elizabeth Feyock (Ann Arbor, Michigan) (age 26), Ahmet Kerem Korkaya (Milwaukee, Wisconsin) (age 28), Jonathan Hongru Zou (Ann Arbor, Michigan) (age 22), Alexander Matthew Sepulveda (Chicago, Illinois) (age 23), Mariam Muhammed Odeh (Dearborn, Michigan) (age 24), and Colin Hunter Weger (Ann Arbor, Michigan) (age 24).

The DOJ announcement can be read here.

Here is additional detail from Michigan Advance.

Here is how the University of Michigan campus newspaper, The Michigan Daily, is reporting the news.

The Karmelo Anthony Verdict

 This article first appeared in New English Review.  It was written on June 10, the day after the conviction and sentencing.

Yesterday’s conviction of 19-year-old Karmelo Anthony and his sentencing to 35 years in prison for the murder of 17-year-old Austin Metcalf have opened up old wounds in our troubled black-white relationships. Once again, the racial divide in our society has been exposed; two groups of people perceive the same set of facts differently. Different perceptions based on differences in life experience and environment. 

What we know is this: In April 2025, Anthony and Metcalf crossed paths at a school track meet in Frisco, Texas, not far from Dallas. Separate schools were in separate tents on a rainy day, and Anthony wound up in a tent assigned to Metcalf’s school. When he was repeatedly asked to leave, an argument between the two escalated, with Anthony acting in a belligerent manner, according to multiple witnesses' testimony.

It appears at one point that Metcalf gave Anthony some sort of shove, the force of which is open to question. At this point, Anthony pulled out a knife and stabbed Metcalf in the heart, killing him. Anthony, who was charged (and convicted) of first-degree murder, claimed he was acting in self-defense. Since Anthony was black and Metcalf white, the case quickly degenerated into a racial issue, which played out outside the courthouse during and immediately after the trial when the verdict was announced.

A few thoughts: We all know that kids in high school sometimes get into fights for no good reason. The important legal point is this: If a person pushes you or even hits you with his fist, that does not justify pulling a knife and responding with deadly force. Anthony’s claim of self- defense does not hold water since he could not reasonably show that he was in fear of his life.

At the same time, Anthony’s defenders are invoking the Treyvon Martin case. Martin, who was 17 at the time, was killed in an incident with George Zimmerman, a 28-year- old neighborhood watch volunteer in Sanford, Florida in 2012. Here again, Martin was black while Zimmerman was white (and partially Hispanic). Zimmerman was charged with killing Martin during a physical struggle in which Zimmerman pulled out his gun and shot Martin to death. Zimmerman was acquitted when a jury decided that he truly was in danger of losing his life since Martin was repeatedly banging his head into the pavement. Nevertheless, many in the black community saw it as another example of “white justice”, hearkening back to a different era in the South when white juries would routinely acquit whites charged with murdering blacks while convicting blacks charged with murdering whites. (In my opinion, the acquittal of Zimmerman was the only reasonable outcome. Likewise, I believe that Anthony’s conviction was the proper verdict.)

In addition, it has been pointed out that the Anthony jury was all-white. It is my understanding that three prospective black jurors were excused from the jury pool because they indicated they would have a hard time convicting Anthony in this case. Three other blacks were successfully challenged by the prosecution, largely due to their advanced academic background. One should keep in mind that in Washington DC and certain other judicial districts, white defendants can expect to be judged by predominantly black juries. Of course, we all remember the OJ Simpson trial, which should have been tried in Santa Monica rather than downtown Los Angeles. Unfortunately, the District Attorney, Gil Garcetti, was beseeched by leading black activists in Los Angeles to hold the trial downtown in the interest of a more diverse jury pool. Garcetti agreed, and a jury consisting of 9 blacks took only a couple of hours of deliberation to acquit Simpson of a double murder he most certainly committed. Previously, in my DEA career, I knew several prosecutors who welcomed black jurors, who had enough life experience and common sense to know when a defendant was guilty-even if he or she was black.

Finally, the videos coming from outside the Texas courthouse in the Anthony trial are appalling. Especially troubling was the image of a middle-aged black man, obviously old enough to know better, repeatedly calling a white man a “motherf---ing cracker” while challenging him to a fight. In addition, there were repeated scenes of whites and blacks arguing face to face while police tried to maintain order. Another sad reminder that we still have a way to go in achieving a final and lasting reconciliation.

I still hold to the belief that those people outside the Texas courthouse are not representative of the average black Americans, who are law-abiding and realize that it is precisely their own communities that suffer the most from crime and violence at the hands of people like Karmelo Anthony. In this case, Anthony’s victim was white. Most likely, his next victim would have been black.