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Earlier this month, we reported on the murder of Grammy nominee Nipsey Hussle, and have pointed out that he had been working on a documentary that was to address a cure for cancer and AIDS. Police arrested Eric Holder on suspicion of murder in the case. Now, they are investigating Holders getaway driver who is seen in a new video aiding Holder to flee the scene.

The following video was from the surveillance camera that captured the moment of the shooting, though cars blocked the full view of what took place. It appears that the shooter enters from the left portion of the screen.

According to TMZ:

Trending: Minneapolis: Muslim Cop Who Killed Unarmed Woman Says He Shot Her To Stop The Threat

Nipsey Hussles murderer made a mad dash to a car with a driver who was waiting to speed away from the murder scene and its all captured on video.

TMZ has seen the video shot from a surveillance camera in the area. You see the shooter race down an alley to the waiting car. The killer stops at the car for a second, then gets inside the passenger seat and the driver floors it. Its apparent from the video the driver was waiting to bolt from the scene.

Its now been several weeks and the driver still has not been arrested, although, our law enforcement sources tell us the LAPD and the L.A. County D.A. are actively investigating.

One law enforcement source tells us, one of the hangups is whether thedriver had knowledgethe killer whom police believe isEric Holder had a gun and was intent on murdering Nipsey. Were told the driver insisted she did not know his intent or that he was armed.

The outlet then added:

Our sources say when the car initially rolled up to The Marathon Clothing store, Holder was driving and the woman was the passenger. Were told Holder parked in the mini-mall parking lot next to the store. As the woman waited in the car, Nipsey and Holder had their initial conversation, in which Nipsey rebuffed him after suggestinghe was a snitch which Holder denied.

Contrary to some reports, were told the conversation continued without animosity. The 2 engaged in some sort of friendly hand gesture, after which, Holder walked over to the burger joint in the same mall, ordered something and eventually got in the car and left.

Were told the car returned a short time later to a street that is connected to the alley that leads to the mall. The woman was driving and Holder was a passenger. Were told after Holder got out and walked toward the mall, she kept the car running and waited for him to return.

Page Six reported:

The driver was interviewed by cops after Hussles March 31 killing, but they let her go.

The woman told police she did not know Holder intended to kill Hussle or that he had a gun, according to the website.

The obvious question should be, was this really a personal beef charge, as alleged by police, or was there something more sinister going on?

Holder has pleaded not guilty.

Many may think because of the kind of music that Hussle engaged in, it is unimportant, but the questions still remains: did Hussles murder have anything to do with his documentary?

Article posted with permission from The Washington Standard

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Eric Holder's Driver Now Investigated In Fatal Shooting ...

Stopping short of calling for immediate impeachment proceedings, Hillary Clinton Tuesday said special counsel Robert Mueller's report is only the beginning of a reckoning on election meddling. (April 23) AP, AP

WASHINGTON Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged Democrats to proceed with caution when it comes to the possibility of impeaching President Donald Trump in the aftermath of special counsel Robert Mueller's report.

In an opinion piece for the Washington Post, Clinton, the former Democratic nominee who ran against Trump in the 2016 presidential race, wrote that Mueller's findings detailed an assault on the U.S. and a "serious crime against the American people" but said it'sfoolish to believe Democrats only have two choices on how to hold President Donald Trump accountable:immediately impeach or do nothing.

"Obviously, this is personal for me, and some may say that Im not the right messenger. But my perspective is not just that of a former candidate and target of the Russian plot," Clinton wrote, touching on private emails stolen from her and the Democratic Party during the 2016 election by Russians. "Our election was corrupted, our democracy assaulted, our sovereignty and security violated."

She goes on to describe her experience as the first lady during impeachment proceedings aimed at her husband, President Bill Clinton, her experience as an attorney for the House Judiciary Committee during the Watergate hearings against President Richard Nixon and as a senator in New York during the 9/11 terror attacks.

More: After months clamoring for Mueller's findings, Congress weighs what's next. First, a subpoena for everything

More: Trump thought Mueller would 'end' his presidency and other takeaways from the Mueller report

More: GOP Sen. Mitt Romney: 'I am sickened' over Trump's conduct revealed in Mueller report

Clinton wrote it wouldn't be wise to rush into impeaching Trump and instead, Democrats in the Houseshould focus on holding "substantive hearings that build on the Mueller report and fill in its gaps" while also focusing on key issues that affect Americans across the country. She suggested that Congress could create a bipartisan commission to examine ways to protect U.S. elections from foreign actors.

"What our country needs now is clear-eyed patriotism, not reflexive partisanship," Clinton wrote, noting what went right and wrong during previousimpeachment proceedings against President Clinton and President Nixon.

Mueller reported across 448 pages about"sweeping and systematic" Russian effortsto benefit Trump in the 2016 election and campaign aides eager for the help, though itultimately found no conspiracy between Americans and Russians. Mueller also foundTrump tried repeatedly to thwart the inquiry but declined to decide whether that was a crime. Attorney General William Barr and others in the Justice Department later said there wasn't enough evidence for obstruction-of-justice charges.

The redacted version of the Mueller report is now available from the attorney general. Here are the key takeaways from it. USA TODAY

Since the release of Mueller's report, Democrats have latched onto its findings to explain their rationale for continuing their investigations and some have debated whether the report should be used to start impeachment proceedings. Leaders in the House have expressed a similar notion of proceeding with caution due to the divisiveness of impeachment and what effects it could have on the country.

More: Here are the 2020 candidates who want President Trump impeached

Clinton wrote that Mueller's report was a "road map" and, "its up to members of both parties to see where that road map leads to the eventual filing of articles of impeachment, or not."

While urging caution, Clinton said it's important that both Russia and Trump is held accountable for the behavior outlined in Mueller's report, which she called a "warning about the future." She wrote that if that doesn't happen, Russia along with other foreign actors would likely attempt to meddle in future elections.

And when it comes to Trump, Clinton alleged that, "unless hes held accountable, the president may show even more disregard for the laws of the land and the obligations of his office. He will likely redouble his efforts to advance Putins agenda, including rolling back sanctions, weakening NATO and undermining the European Union."

"A crime was committed against all Americans, and all Americans should demand action and accountability," Clinton wrote. "Our founders envisioned the danger we face today and designed a system to meet it. Now its up to us to prove the wisdom of our Constitution, the resilience of our democracy and the strength of our nation."

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We must do things, I have been sometimes told, because everyone is doing them.

At an early age, I was first exposed to this sort of reasoning, and the reverse of the coin: we must not do things because nobody is doing them. It struck me as a weak argument. I made a mental note, never to use it.

But it is stronger than first appears. If the great majority in any society were to do entirely as they pleased, we would have anarchy: genuine anarchy, not the kind that Hollywood celebrates in movies. Ones life would be worth little, and anyone who wished to survive to the end of the day would go about heavily armed.

Perhaps thats why God made most of us conformists, why the world is discernibly ordered, and man is able, however vaguely, to distinguish up from down, good from evil, the beautiful from the ugly and so forth. But God also gave us freedom, and the consequences of our choices, not only to ourselves but to others.

Gentle reader may suspect that I am making an argument for censorship. I am.

It is in the nature of any culture, society, civilization (choose your weapon) to introduce signposts. Focus our eyes, and we may see them everywhere, even along paved roads. We have laws, too, not always hung in signs, but available for public inspection. And there are unwritten laws.

Consider the law, Thou shalt do no murder. This has been spelled out in detail, with exceptions, and acts of murder may be tried in our courts, but we didnt actually invent the law. It was written into our hearts; it was inscribed on a tablet to Moses long before we were born.

We use the criminal code merely to finesse this natural law; we use lawyers and legislators to get around it, should it turn out to be inconvenient in certain circumstances. Abortion, euthanasia, and whatever will come next, are now among our exceptions.

Freedom is our watchword. Freedom from children, freedom from grandparents always assuming they are unwanted are now among our man-made goods. Freedom from such constraints as being a man or a woman, or being rich or poor, or from any other accident of our being, have been added to the watch list.

It is true there are some traditionalists like me, who regret the overthrow of the moral order, and sometimes even those who support it have twangs of conscience that need to be suppressed. But in the main, society is progressive. We go along to get along.

In the olden time I refer here to very deep ancient history, going back to my childhood we went along with ideas wed inherited, and kept our little murders to ourselves. Today, we have begun to put them on Facebook.

Why not?

Recently a younger acquaintance decided to have herself killed. She had cancer; things were not looking up. Her case shocked me in two especial ways. One, she was a brave soul, who was doing a sterling job of facing down adversity. Two, she was what we call a conservative, who had cheerfully taken heat for various politically incorrect views. She even had Christian tendencies.

Yet she suddenly opted for the exit plan, and quickly found support among her friends, who gathered round the execution bed with smiles of encouragement. When Id queried her life/death choice privately, her argument was in effect, Everyone is doing it.

The stigma had lapsed, gone. The advocates for killing off the old and the ill, even the young and depressive, had overturned the stigma. This made overturning the law a cinch. And by the time the law had been changed, demeaning human life becoming an important step forward, the bulk of society had come round.

Everyone is doing it, in a certain sense. It is convenient. They dont all have themselves executed, for some human instincts have survived, but this everyone would like to have the option should they ever find themselves desiring it.

Pain is no fun. I admit that. The notion that it could have not only a physical, but a moral purpose, has been extinguished. The idea that suicide is self-murder is now taken to be ridiculous. The old laws that banned it could not be enforced (the person who commits suicide has gotten away with it, from a glib point of view). They could only punish those who assisted.

Many things once unthinkable were thinkable all along. Murder is a good example. Infanticide, for instance, is something that must have occurred to many mothers, in moments of child rearing. But one throws a fit instead, perhaps breaks something, or makes a joke of it. You wouldnt actually do what was unthinkable.

It was unthinkable, narrowly, because the laws of God were reinforced by the laws of the State, and of the culture. You did not go there because, Nobody goes there. Except those who do, and become infamous as a consequence.

Among the travesties of the Right (well leave the Left alone for a brief moment) is that censorship is the enemy of freedom. Those on this side are inclined to argue that everyone has the right to his opinion, except those who cry Fire! in cinemas. Let any who disagree with anything make their argument, and then we will vote.

We should have learned, in our wild ride since the sixties (or from the Garden of Eden, should we wish to trace it back), that this view is nave. Some things ought to remain as unthinkable as they were in those old, oppressively Christian times, when dissent was censored.

There is nothing wrong with censorship. Even those on the Left take pride in what they censor: racism, sexism, transphobia, whatever. Unfortunately, by their perverse definitions, they give censorship a bad name.

The real question is not whether censorship is a good thing, but what we should censor.

*Image:An Unhappy Family or Suicide(Une famille malheureuse ou le Suicide) by Octave Tassaert, 1852[Muse Fabre, Montpellier, France]

2019 The Catholic Thing. All rights reserved. For reprint rights, write to: info@frinstitute.org The Catholic Thing is a forum for intelligent Catholic commentary. Opinions expressed by writers are solely their own.

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On Censorship - The Catholic Thing

How can we study modern warfare through the lens of culture? Different armies fought in different ways for reasons that dont look very rational without considering cultural context. The ritualized tribal warfare of twentieth-century New Guinea looks more like middle school dodgeball than battle to us, but it probably would have been very familiar to the Mycenaean Greeks of the Iliad. When different cultural systems collide, the results can be devastating to one side until it adapts: in the initial Mongol invasion of Japan in 1274 the samurai challenged the invaders to single combat, only to discover with disastrous results that the Mongols did not share their idea of what a battle was supposed to be. And this isnt just a topic for military historians. Understanding how culture bounds the way we (and our enemies) think about warfare will help to ensure were on the winning side in future conflicts; better to be the marauding Mongols than the stupefied samurai, looking for a divine wind to save them from their lack of cross-cultural understanding.

The Push of the Hoplites

While many contemporary Westerners might assume that the ancient Greeksto whom we trace much of our cultural lineagemust naturally have had a similar cultural perspective on war as we do today, looking closely at the conduct of their wars shows this not to be the case. In most Greek city-states in the late Archaic period, only the wealthier members of society could become hoplites and serve in the military. Rather than using their income to hire others to fight for them, the yeoman farmers of the Greek city-states bought heavy armor and went to battle themselves. Clashes between city-states could arise from practical concerns like trade disputes, but they also could have their roots in longstanding grudges (like between the Argives and Spartans). Whatever the conflict, the Greeks met their adversaries, who were similarly composed of heavy infantry, on open ground and fought a decisive battle to resolve the issue at hand. Whoever won the battle erected a tropaion (from which we get the word trophy) of enemy armor to commemorate their victory, an act which would get an American soldier time at Leavenworth rather than accolades.

The cultural bounds of warfare arent irrational or crazy; in fact, they could be highly effective, as evidenced by the trouncing the hoplites gave to the Persians at Marathon in 490 BC and later at Thermopylae and Plataea. Throughout history, cultural influence has also reinforced domestic regimes and helped to limit the bounds of warfare. When the Athenians broke with tradition by refusing to meet the Spartans in open battle at the start of the Peloponnesian War, instead choosing to hide behind their Long Walls, it began a uniquely long and devastating war. To us, this seems obviousif you are facing a superior enemy force, you avoid battle. To the Greeks, however, this was a revolution. By unmooring war from its previous cultural bounds, the Athenians opened the way for all sorts of social change. Mercenaries became common, the Greeks started using light missile troops called peltasts, and there was domestic upheaval. When Athens began hiring the poorest members of society as rowers for long periods of time, for example, it empowered them and led to a more radical democracy.

The relationship between culture and warfare for the Greeks, then, was not static but evolved over time. Ascribing specific characteristics to particular groups over wide periods of times (all Europeans fight this way or Greeks have always fought like this) leads to mistaken analyses. Nor is culture a rigidly deterministic rule: there are always exceptions. But culture does demonstrably have an important macro-level impact on war, which can be sorted into three categories: who fights, how they fight, and why they fight. What do we find when we move beyond historical examination and apply this framework to modern combatants?

Ideal Society, Ideal Army

The cultural ideal of a society manifests itself in the way that society structures itself for war. In the case of the Greeks, the societal ideal of a landed yeomanry translated into a uniform phalanx of heavy infantry. For many feudal cultures, however, the division between noble and peasant was reflected by a contrast between well-armored mounted knights and lowly foot soldiers. Today, by contrast, given the sophistication of contemporary weaponry, there are comparatively fewer situations in which culture defines the equipment of individual soldiers.

Instead, culture is reflected in the command-and-control structures of contemporary militaries. One of the most insightful commentaries on this aspect of contemporary conflict and culture can be found in Kenneth Pollacks Arabs at War, which seeks to explain why Arab countries since the Second World War have not done well in war. Pollack cites the extremely hierarchical nature of Arab regimes, often centered on a strong man, as a cultural factor that has led to a lack of initiative and mutual suspicion between officers. Only members of the military close to the strong man can give orders, and closeness is often determined by family ties, as was the case under Saddam Husseins regime. Contemporary social structures are not expressed in modern Arab warfare by owning a suit of mail and a horse, but rather by having the cell phone number of the chief.

Cultural ideals in modern warfare do, however, influence who can and who cannot fight. The most striking example of this is in the role of women. While most combatant groups reflect particular societal values by not allowing women to fight, othersthose with leftist ideology roots like the FARC in Columbia or various Kurdish militias, for examplereadily use women as combatants.

Alls Fair in Love and War... Except for What Isnt

What tactics are acceptable in combat? Between societies of similar cultural backgrounds, the array of permissible tactics can be very circumscribed; between groups with different cultural norms, the use of certain tactics by opponents can seem abhorrent. On the modern battlefield, for instance, utilizing soldiers as suicide warriors is generally viewed as repugnant by Western audiences, but is perfectly acceptable to other groups. Radical Islamists who undertake suicide bombings interpret the Koran to define such attacks as not only allowable but also commendable. From a tactical standpoint, suicide attacks make a lot of sense: human beings can provide sophisticated guidance for explosive payloads without the need for the technological systems and industrial capacity of Western militaries. This is made especially clear by videos of suicide bombings by ISIS in Mosul; without computer chips or laser designators, a human can deliver high explosives to a very specific target. But while this makes sense tactically for many armed groups without high technology, only some of them use it because of cultural constraints.

Suicide bombing also illustrates the many difficulties we have in defining a culture. Ascribing the use of suicide tactics solely to Islamic militant groups is clearly incorrect; non-Islamic groups like the Tamil Tigers used suicide bombing, and the Japanese had their kamikaze pilots during World War II. Even within the Iraqi insurgency, religiously motivated groups like al-Qaeda used suicide bombing extensively, while nationalist Iraqi groups tended not to. Some cultural aspects extend uniformly throughout a society, while others are confined to specific, sub-societal organizations (for instance, we often discuss the Armys culture vis--vis that of other services).

Besides suicide bombing, we see other disagreements on the bounds of proper warfare: while the Assad regime and ISIS both use chemical weapons, most members of the international community view them as anathema. In making predictions about the Russian intervention in Syria, someone who assumed that they had the same cultural attitudes towards collateral damage as Americans might have expected only limited Russian bombing because the effectiveness of strikes in the absence of real-time intelligence and high-precision munitions is certain to be low. A student of the differences in Russian and American strategic culture, however, might have predicted that the Russians would adopt a satisficing close-enough philosophy that would allow them to be militarily effective by bombing targets in civilian areas with unguided munitions. Different cultures continue to produce different battlefield tactics in the twenty-first century.

Why Are We Even fighting in the First Place?

When different cultures meet, even the causes of conflict can be confusing. Take, for example, the meeting between the conquistadors and the Aztecs. The conquistadors fought wars to conquer territory and eliminate rivals, while the Aztecs fought to take sacrificial victims rather than to conquer opponents. Different perspectives on why a conflict is occurring inevitably complicate efforts to end it.

Cultural misunderstandings of the causes of conflict have bedeviled efforts in Americas post-9/11 wars. In Iraq, American leaders initially attributed the nascent insurgency to regime dead-enders, without understanding the tensions between Sunni and Shiite Arabs. In the event of a breakdown of the government in America, the battle lines would probably not be drawn along ethnic (Irish vs. Italian) or religious (Mormon vs. Protestant) lines; in the cultural context of Iraq, however, this was the case.

In Afghanistan, too, an inability to understand different cultural frames of reference has hurt us. Some authors like Sarah Chayes attribute the breakdown in security in Afghanistan to corruption; if all government employees in the United States started demanding bribes to do their jobs, we would similarly be upset. In cultures across the world, however, governments are endemically corrupt but there are no rebellions; corruption does not lead ineluctably to grievance. As a Marine officer in Afghanistan, we held several shura (townhall) meetings in Sangin in 2011. Invariably, the locals complained about our patrols staying overnight in compounds, which was offensive to them because they had women there. And invariably, the commanders expressed their sympathy and continued to do it. This was nowhere near as egregiously offensive to Pashtun culture, however, as the efforts to educate and empower women; while eminently sensible and moral in our eyes, it was a huge cause for grievance in the eyes of a different culture. While the importance of cultural sensitivity was often mentioned in our interventions, it sadly was not really understood.

Culture and Modern War

Culture is a nebulous term that is always changing; it would be great to be able to talk about a uniform American culture or an unchanging Arab one, but alas, the world is more complicated than that. Changes in culture within the same society can lead to dramatic battlefield results: take, for example, the levee en masse. The cultural shift created by French Revolutionary ideals allowed France to mobilize a massive citizen army in the levee en masse; subscribing to different cultural ideals of traditional authority, the other European monarchies could not mobilize its subjects in the same way. The result was that the French could stave off the combined forces of the other European powers and even, under Napoleon, defeat them until they adopted similar reforms. If we didnt understand that political culture impacts war fighting, we would be baffled as to why France, who had struggled for centuries to achieve hegemony in Europe, was suddenly able to do so. We would similarly be unable to understand why ISIS uses suicide bombing but the Kurds do not or how Russia has been able to prop up the Syrian regime. If we dont recognize how culture influences why people fight, we wont be able to recognize coming wars until its too late. And if we dont see how cultures shape how people fight, we wont be able to win those wars when they come.

Matthew Cancian is a PhD student in Security Studies and International Relations at MIT. He formerly served as an artillery officer in the Marine Corps, deploying to Sangin, Afghanistan as a forward observer. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, the Department of Defense, or the US government.

Image credit: Kurdishstruggle

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Philip Kotler is the S.C. Johnson & Son Distinguished Professor of International Marketing at the Northwestern University Kellogg Graduate School of Management in Chicago. He is hailed by Management Centre Europe as "the world's foremost expert on the strategic practice of marketing." Dr. Kotler is currently one of Kotler Marketing Group's several consultants.

He is known to many as the author of what is widely recognized as the most authoritative textbook on marketing: Marketing Management, now in its 13th edition. He has also authored or co-authored dozens of leading books on marketing: Principles of Marketing; Marketing Models; Strategic Marketing for Non-Profit Organizations; The New Competition; High Visibility; Social Marketing; Marketing Places; Marketing for Congregations; Marketing for Hospitality and Tourism; and The Marketing of Nations.

Dr. Kotler presents continuing seminars on leading marketing concepts and developments to companies and organizations in the U.S., Europe and Asia. He participates in KMG client projects and has consulted to many major U.S. and foreign companies--including IBM, Michelin, Bank of America, Merck, General Electric, Honeywell, and Motorola--in the areas of marketing strategy and planning, marketing organization, and international marketing.

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