Good Samaritan Arrested for Help

I cant help but find this to be the most ridiculous charges that I have ever seen someone be arrested for. A New Jersey woman who was walking by the scene of an accident where a woman was hit by a van was asked by the police if she spoke Spanish. They needed her to speak Spanish so that they could communicate with one of the parties in the accident, the woman agreed to help them and was acting as an interpreter for them. Moments later she was arrested, placed in handcuffs and put in the back of a squad car. The charges that she was arrested under stemmed from the fact that she was being "uncooperative" and was arrested for obstruction of justice and resisting arrest. Now resisting arrest is a bogus charge police use all the time and has very flimsy pretenses for using. I really don't understand how she can be arrested fro obstruction of justice for being uncooperative. She entered into the arrangement as a good samartin who would attempt to offer her services to interpret the Spanish being spoken for the officers. At any point should she feel she doesn't want to do this anymore she can walk away she isn't bound by anything to continue helping. Therefore how can she become uncooperative? She isn't part of the accident she isn't a witness she is a passerby who was trying to help and was arrested on what appear to be some bogus charges. For the link to the article and video of the event check out this link.

Drug War

Here is a great Article I just found a link to on Collegehumor of all sites. It provides some pretty good info on the war and drugs and its fraudulent link to the war on terror by the government. He highlights the history of Marijuana in this country and its use in medicine as far back as 1937 amongst other things the actions of two presidents Clinton and W. Bush who are very vague with their history of drug use but have no problem locking people up for it. Anyways I ramble. Give it a read. Here's the link DRUG WAR.

Freedom

I apologize to Francois Tremblay over at Check your Premise for stealing his post. But it was just so good I had to put it up for my meager(if any) readers to see. Much apologies and thanks Mr. Tremblay.

From a Rudy Giuliani speech in 1994:

…freedom is not a concept in which people can do anything they want, be anything they can be. Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do.

You have to love that line of thinking from a man that wants to be your president dont you? According to him, freedom means you cant make a decision for yourself, so let some other guy who cant decide for himself make the decision for you. Stupendous.

Against the Wind

...And the years rolled slowly past
And I found myself alone
Surrounded by strangers I thought were my friends
Found myself further and further from my home and I
Guess I lost my way...

Yep, that pretty much sums things up for me.

Al-Qaeda = Everybody

George Bush is on his heels with the current conflict in Iraq. Nothing is going as planned and even some high ranking republican law makers are beginning to turn on him. Only 8 of his 18 bench marks are showing progress and even these are not fulfilled and the troop surge appears to be doing very little to prevent sectarian violence in and around Baghdad and actually is seeing an increase in areas outside the capital. However Bush maintains his stay the course strategy despite the loss of popular support from the people of this country and the growing disdain from politicians. With the loss of support Bush turns to an old friend of his to try and increase his strength on the issue and that is Al Qaeda. Somehow, someday every enemy in Iraq turned into Al Qaeda, no longer is it insurgents or sectarian attacks.

Most references by bush refer to Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia (AQM) which is a Sunni insurgent group in Iraq. Bush would have you and I believe that this group is a direct descendent of the original Al Qaeda. Fact of the matter is that Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia did not even exist until the US invaded Iraq in 2003. At that point AQM made its appearance and became a strong Sunni insurgency force which saw its numbers swell due to the intense hatred for the over 100,000 occupying US troops and the installment of a Shiite dominated government. The American military and American “intelligence” groups see AQM as “a ruthless, mostly foreign-led group that is responsible for a disproportionately large share of the suicide car bomb attacks that have stoked sectarian violence.” This is not in concurrence with the goals of Al-Qaeda but rather is the foundation of an insurgent group bent on removing an occupier and fomenting civil war, not attacking US interests abroad or even in country. Also differing from Al-Qaeda, the majority of members of AQM are Iraqi and the financing is derived from local sources as opposed to other Arab governments. None of these factors show any relation to the actual Al-Qaeda.

The only reason Bush is playing AQM as the same people who attacked us on Sept. 11^th is because the war he has gotten us into is the biggest foreign policy failure in US history. He is distorting facts and trying to play to emotions of a public who at this point in my opinion is not swayed by these tactics. While the overall goal of AQM is to fight America and to make the war impossible for us to maintain because of high political costs, the fact that they are now being compared the Al-Qaeda only reinforces their strength as a terrorist group doesn’t have to kill people to spread terror but rather make people worried which is what Bush’s constant doctrine of fear does.

The main point here is that Iraq is not the main battlefield for fighting Al-Qaeda, but rather a quagmire bogged down in a civil war. Despite our fight with Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia, Al-Qaeda itself is back to strength levels it had not approached since 9/11. If we were actually making a difference in Iraq this would not be the case, it would be weakened by our continued attacks. The proof is in the pudding and at this point I don’t see any reason why the war in Iraq should continue, bear in mind that the Iraqis do not see democracy as synonymous with freedom as we do. No Middle Eastern country does and for us to continue trying to impose our beliefs on an unwilling populace with force is just plain wrong.

America is an Empire?

This is a topic that has been discussed by numerous people at various levels. Im now one of those various people, but I am no doubt on one of the lower levels to discuss this. I dont pretend to have all the info or all the answers but I do have some questions and wonder as to how people cant consider the US an empire.

It seems to me that we are dangerously still wrapped up in the cold war way of thinking which involved establishing satelites in areas where we could strike an enemy (Russia) with ease. Obvious the threat of Russia is moot so this is no longer the case. But let us look around and you will see that we still are occupying numerous countries under the premise of protecting them. From what are we protecting them at this point in history? We still have 38,000 troops in South Korea yet South Koreas military is well equipped and well trained and more than capable of handling the rowdy neighbor they have to the north. We are still in Japan in gigantic numbers with dozens of military bases and why? One answer will be that we are protecting Japan but no one can say from what, the other answer is that we are protecting the rest of the world from Japan. It cant be both if a nation is so strong other countries need protection from it then it does not need to be protected and the facts remain that Japans military also has more than enough defensive capability to repel even an attack from the Chinese. We can also look all throughout Europe for more examples. How silly would it seem to an American to have an Italian army base in Nebraska or some other state, but this is the case with almost all European countries, they have a US military presence right in their back yard when they need no protection. We continue to project our power in the fashion of the Roman empire or more recently the British and the French. If anyone can explain to me the need to have so many active duty troops defending incredibly safe and stable countries I would love to hear it. These troops valiantly defend Germany, Italy and Japan while the US Army tries to press a reservist into a 5th tour of duty, also explain how that makes any sense. Sorry this is a bit of a rambler, im writing it late with no real framework, I promise something a little more organized coming soon.

Congress gets away with murder

I got this from The Onion, I found it to be Hilarious! Give it a look.


Live From Congress: Rep. Ingersoll's Murder of a Hobo

911 on deactivated cell phones

I was perusing the Chicago Tribune today as I always do, it is one of my 4 online newspaper subscriptions. An interesting article caught my eye of a 4 year old who had made nearly 300 calls to 911. Never was there an emergency and never were the operators able to track the call except to an apartment complex. Using their cunning and wits to outsmart the 4 year old (after 300 calls) they asked what she wanted, she said McDonalds and they asked for her address so they could deliver it. That took care of the calls.

The calls were being made however on a deactivated cell phone. All cell phones, even when deactivated must still be able to dial 9-1-1. As a matter of fact if you have an activated cell phone, you are paying for everyone with a deactivated phone to be able to call 9-1-1. Now I am not saying this is a bad thing I mean emergencies do happen and people should be able to call 9-1-1. I guess my complaint with this is that why does I have to pay for it? I don't have a home phone and I know many people who don't, but in the event you do have a land line home phone, when it gets disconnected you cant dial 9-1-1. Why is it so important for a cell phone to have free 9-1-1 service but a land line not? Do more accidents happen outside of the home than in the home? What is the reasoning, any thoughts are appreciated.

Rules of Engagment

Now I am no military scholar I am not well versed in all aspects of combat or the rules of engagement. However I did assume that the rules of engagement stipulated that you did not fire until you were fired upon, at least with the US military. Apparently this doesnt apply for the brave(sarcastic) Israeli Defense Forces. While on an illegal raid into the West Bank town of Hebron today, IDF forces shot and killed a 15 year old with a toy gun. Below is the report which I got off of Al Jazeera online.

Palestinian With Toy Gun Shot Dead

Israeli soldiers have shot dead a Palestinian teenager in the occupied West Bank town of Hebron, mistaking him for a gunman.

An Israeli army spokeswoman said troops "saw armed men and fired at one of them", thinking he was holding an assault rifle, but further checks showed that he had in fact been holding a toy gun.

A Palestinian hospital official also confirmed that the 15-year-old boy had been killed by soldiers in Hebron's Loza district on Tuesday.

Seems to me like this action was a shoot first case one which Israel is famous for. Not to mention a military that is also famous for taunting Palestinians with vulgar comments and the like to incite them to throw rocks so they may fire upon them. For more on Israeli crimes you can go here or here. My personal favorite Israeli crime can be found at this link about the USS Liberty. For those of you not familiar the USS Liberty is a US Ship that was attacked by IDF forces in the attack 34 men were killed and 297 wounded, but as Israel said, it was just an honest mistake. I encourage reading it, get the real story.

Transformers

I just returned home from an early screening of the new Transformers movie and I have to say I am floored by it. It is a great movie from start to finish, plenty of action but there is more to it than that and for a movie based mainly about robots, it has some pretty good humor mixed in as well. I strongly recommend seeing the movie and as a matter of fact I plan on seeing it again which is highly unusual for a guy who never goes to the movie. All of the main characters are there and the CGI they used for them is amazing. I dont want to give away to much which is tough because I want to tell all about it at the same time. Again, well worth the ticket price, well worth the 2.5 hours and it doesnt even seem like that, great great great movie, go see it, do it, do it now. Thats all for me now, I know this isnt in the same vain as most of my posts, but it had to be said.