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PAGE NINE Vol. 39 |
| by Alan Korwin, Jan. 15, 2008 |
Contents: 1- Gun Sales Increasing The new 2008 Traveler's Guide to the Gun Laws
of the 50 States is now available!
---------- CORRECTIONS Waterboarding is torture, according to the 2006 U.S. Army Field Manual on Intelligence Interrogation. It also bans hooding, hypothermia, forced or simulated sex acts, religious degradation and certain types of threats. The Geneva Convention says, "Prisoners of war who refuse to answer questions may not be threatened, insulted, or exposed to any unpleasant or disadvantageous treatment of any kind." The Field Manual allows 19 "approaches" to questioning, including
incentives, emotional appeals, Mutt-and-Jeff routines, various
deceptions, rapid-fire questions, falsely accusing the captive of a
crime to elicit denials, posing as agents of another government and
more. Muslim jihadis are not known to have a similar policy in
place. What irks me, I guess, is the incessant news-media pounding that there is equivalence between what we have done and what Muslim jihadis do. Equivalence is a dangerous and bogus standard used to sway debate and promote a destructive agenda of the socialist left. "We're completely corrupt and as bad as they are because waterboarding is torture." I don't buy this news-media and leftist-promoted reasoning, and you shouldn't either. One source (of five I checked, including DOD and the Code of Military Justice) specifically forbids waterboarding, and the Geneva Convention basically allows nothing. So what's right? It seems to me we must differentiate between: beating a person to death, dismemberment, crushing, electric shock, stabbing, poisoning, whipping, amputation and mutilation of civilians and soldiers -- from extracting information from non-uniformed murderers by using harsh techniques -- or else we're arguing for moral equivalence. The media and the left want you to believe that Muslim prisons and torture chambers reeking with the smell of death, are the same as American interrogation rooms, clean from all the water they pour, and prisons where detainees are forced to wear panties. Hey, in American prisons, women's clothing is considered a benefit. I'm not saying waterboarding isn't cruel and unusual. I'm not saying the practice should continue, I don't know. But I am saying we don't peel back fingernails to punish people or get at information. Our enemies do. That's a significant difference. Congress isn't debating the propriety of using a blowtorch on a suspect, because they don't have to, because we don't. Our enemies do. How rough can you get in an interrogation when innocent lives are at stake? That's a tough question, one I have not addressed and can't really answer. If you're angry at me (seven people unsubscribed citing my waterboarding entry as cause), because I raised the issue and questioned one group's logic, so be it. I have to say what seems obvious to me. If the debate's too harsh for you, go have a few glasses of water and chill. Plenty of reader comments and a few further notes conclude this Page Nine report. Quote worth noting: "You know, I wanted to sit on a jury once and I was taken off the jury. And the judge said to me, 'Can you tell the truth and be fair?' And I said, 'That's what journalists do.' And everybody in the courtroom laughed. It was the most hurtful moment I think I've ever had." --Diane Sawyer, Good Morning America, 7/12/07 ---------- 1- Gun Sales Increasing The lamestream media told you: Nothing. The Uninvited Ombudsman notes however that: Data released by the FBI's National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) reported a total of 11,177,335 for 2007, up from 10,036,933 reported by NICS in 2006. After a state-level adjustment, background checks showed an increase of 4.1 percent from 2006 to 2007. The increase coincides with an uptick in excise taxes reported by firearms and ammunition manufacturers, another key economic indicator for the firearms industry. Experts predict a massive burst of gun sales if a Democrat is elected president in November, on the understanding that Democrats will oppose Second Amendment freedoms as they typically do. ---------- 2- The Race Ended The lamestream media told you: Candidates are battling it out in a tight competition for second place in the Iowa caucus, according to Wolf Blitzer, reporting breathlessly on CNN after the voting ended. The Uninvited Ombudsman notes however that: What really happened was that data from the race, which had already been decided, trickled in slowly due to limits of technology. A battle or competition was no longer involved. But it sounds better that way, so CNN (and all the others without exception) falsely presented the slow data stream as an exciting "event." Shame on them. ---------- 3- Robot Warriors Coming The lamestream media told you: Nothing. The Uninvited Ombudsman notes however that: The U.S. armed forces are monitoring the successful development of a
robotic exoskeleton that allows a soldier to effortlessly lift huge
loads and exert tremendous energy without tiring. The next step, also
under development, makes the system freestanding, to mimic a soldier's
actions by remote control. This allows the human to remain in a
protected area while the robot takes the risks and does the fighting. A
police version is not currently mentioned. Take a look: ---------- 4- Gun Manufacturers Protected The lamestream media told you: Cities across the nation are suing evil gun manufacturers for the harm their dangerous products cause. The Uninvited Ombudsman notes however that: A unanimous 3-judge decision of the District of Columbia Court of
Appeals has dismissed a municipal lawsuit brought against firearms
manufacturers, in District of Columbia v. Beretta et al.
The court ruled that the suit was barred by the Protection of Lawful
Commerce in Firearms Act, which was drafted and promoted by the NRA, and
passed by Congress in 2005. Its carefully crafted terms apply to all
pending and future cases. All of D.C.'s arguments were defeated. ---------- 5- New Crime -- "Muzzling" The lamestream media told you: A student was sent home and suspended for wearing a t-shirt that said "NRA." Other students were reprimanded, forced to apologize, suspended, or denied space in the class yearbook for criticizing homosexuality, posing with a shotgun-competition trophy, mentioning Jesus, saying, "That's so gay," and making other insensitive or politically incorrect remarks. The Uninvited Ombudsman notes however that: The increasingly frequent crime of political-correctness censorship needs a good name, and the Uninvited Ombudsman recommends "muzzling," for its simplicity and directness. Muzzling means interfering with a person's sacred First Amendment freedom of speech for partisan political purposes. Political correctness, a basic socialist tool for controlling thought and manipulating public policy, should never be allowed to trump your First Amendment right to free speech. Anyone attempting to do so should face a serious violation -- and it turns out a suitable federal law is already on the books. That would be 18 USC §242, which basically says: Anyone who, under color of any law, statute, ordinance, custom or regulation, willfully deprives any person of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States, shall be fined, or imprisoned for up to one year, or both. If bodily injury results, or if the violation includes the use or attempted or threatened use of a dangerous weapon, explosive or fire, the prison term rises to up to ten years. If death results, or if such acts include kidnapping, attempted kidnapping, aggravated sexual assault, attempted aggravated sexual assault, or an attempt to kill, the violator may be fined, imprisoned for any term of years up to life, or put to death. All that's needed now is for Americans everywhere to start noticing instances of muzzling or attempted muzzling, and pointing it out. "Be careful, ma'am, you've muzzled that student and could go to prison for it." All it will take is one cooperative states' attorney and one case to begin to put a chill on the runaway train of politically correct suppression of freedom of speech. Don't get caught muzzling anyone. Point out muzzling -- loudly -- when you see it. If you're the victim of such hateful intolerance, look into filing charges. ---------- 6- Gunning For Drugs The lamestream media told you: Agents said Thursday they found 42 weapons in a storage locker about 10 days ago, "enough weapons to equip several carloads of drug runners." The guns were worth $250,000 in all: Belgian-made "FN" handguns, semiautomatic AK rifles and other pistols. They also found four olive boxes loaded with 50-caliber bullets -- "big enough to take out an airplane," according to AP reporter Chris Kahn. ATF officials said gun runners typically gather large caches of weapons anonymously through "straw" purchases. They might give someone cash to go into a gun show or a WalMart and buy a few rifles at a time. They might buy guns over the Internet. This year the ATF Phoenix office learned that about 300 assault-type weapons were taken south on one occasion, and another 200 assault-type weapons were smuggled on a separate occasion. "Certainly, these narcoterrorist organizations have unlimited source of income." The Mexican government has called on the United States to stop the flow of guns into the country, but America's firearms laws make it hard to stop gun running. "What's been useful is there has been a lot of cooperation" between the countries to stem the gun trade, Saavedra said. "If weapons are seized in Mexico, they pass that information to U.S.
authorities, and they can track that number to where it was bought, and
they can at least confirm if the sale was done legally," he
added.
The Uninvited Ombudsman notes however that: Using an olden investigative tool known as a "calculator" we see that Mr. Kahn, parroting the government agent's numbers without question or research, values the seized firearms at an impossible $6,000 each. The rest of the tale is equally accurate. Guns smuggled into Mexico for drug gangs can't be bought "legally." WalMart sells none of the guns mentioned in the story. Buying guns directly over the internet for use by drug runners is strictly illegal. It is also traceable, which authorities could use to arrest the perpetrators and enforce the law. 50-caliber "bullets" can't take out anything, since a bullet is only one fourth of useable ammunition. Cartridges in .50 caliber have no greater capacity to "take out an airplane" than any other ammunition, which must strike a precise and sensitive spot, of which there are few. Even olden fighter planes in WWII could absorb numerous .50 caliber rounds and make it back to base for repairs. In studying possible cockpit gunfire during the "arm the pilots" debate after 9/11, experts found there was no significant threat to aircraft from an accidental discharge, and proceeded to put guns in planes. The most important aspect of the story is omitted. The confiscations are not about guns, they're about war -- the government run war on some drugs. Predictably, the warriors on both sides are armed to the teeth, use their guns in battles and contribute to war deaths (called "gun deaths" by lamestream reporters). While the war continues to be waged, both sides continue to fight, re-arming and reloading as needed. The chances that government will declare either defeat or victory and end the war are considered slim according to experts. An increasing number of voices are calling for an armistice, and taxing the vegetable products at the heart of the conflict. Libertarians have been calling for a truce for years, but are ignored by everyone but themselves. How officials learned of 500 smuggled weapons once it was too late and then did nothing about it was not explained. How a straw purchaser could make repeated buys and not alert 900 employees at the FBI NICS background check center was not explained. Why Mexican government officials said they seek U.S. cooperation but instead cooperate with drug cartels in order to stay alive and feather their nests, was not explained. The idea that "America's firearms laws make it hard to stop gun running" is editorializing where news is supposed to appear and complete nonsense -- anti-gun-running laws are strict and plentiful, but enforced loosely to help supply all the cartels' needs. In other news, Mexico's prison are overflowing as a result of U.S.-backed drug raids. "In every 6 x 8 meter cell there were six beds and 10 guys, and that was a VIP room," says Sergio Solache in a report from Mexico City. Mexican officials are complaining that the current $1.4 billion U.S. aid package doesn't provide enough money to ease prison overcrowding. Reporters forgot to ask U.S. taxpayers if they support giving billions to Mexico, artificially raising the price for drugs. ---------- 7- Global Cooling Danger The lamestream media told you: The world is getting warmer, it's our fault, and if we don't reorganize our economy collectively and change our lifestyle like Nobel-prize-winning documentarian Al Gore recommends we'll all suffer from apocalyptic heat, storms, flooding and worse. The Uninvited Ombudsman notes however that: In an inexplicable disaster for global warming predictions, the Boston Globe is now reporting that, despite expectations for 2007 to be the warmest year on record: a) Brazil has suffered a brutal cold wave with record low temperatures, b) Buenos Aires has seen its first snow in 89 years, c) hundreds have died from cold in Peru forcing the state to declare a national emergency, d) Chile is enduring its toughest winter in 50 years; Johannesburg has had its first significant snow in 25 years, e) New Hampshire got 44.5 inches of snow last month, breaking the record set in 1876, f) Canada is predicting its coldest winter in 15 years, and g) a noted Russian scientist says the data suggest that Earth has passed its peak warmth and will cycle back to cooler climes. Most major news outlets missed the weather reports, but continued the global warming rumors. In news last week, residents of downtown Baghdad stood in awe at a dusting of snow "for the first time in memory." The Uninvited Ombudsman has also noticed that, despite dire predictions of calamity, the hurricane season, now four months old, has been absent so far. The predictions were plentiful. Notice of the absenteeism have been missing. Cold weather routinely causes more human deaths than warm weather, but warming is still considered intolerable by lamestream outlets. Adapting to changes in the weather, through migration, mating habits, growing seasons and evolution, is routine, but does not involve tax increases or new regulations. According to leading experts, we might be able to cool the planet by reducing the less-than-half-a-percent of CO2 that comes from humans. They also note that if we can actually make such a change, and then the planet cools off on its own, now THAT would be a disaster. A 20% reduction of human CO2, currently considered unobtainably huge, would shrink global CO2 by less than 1/10th of 1%, assuming the main contributors -- oceans, decaying matter and volcanoes, don't change. Water vapor, unmentioned in all this, has a 1,000-times greater effect on global heat absorption and reflection than the trace amounts of CO2 in the air which, incidentally, plants need to survive and produce breathable oxygen. http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/ ---------- 8- SuperBowl's Gaseous Nonsense The lamestream media told you: The NFL has moved to make the Super Bowl greener, to help offset greenhouse-gas emissions from the game, and will be "planting thousands of trees in Arizona's forests blackened by wildfires." The NFL has received praise from its environmental partners and public agencies, but some say the league isn't doing enough. "In the age of Al (Nobel Prize winner Al Gore) and with global warming worries at a fevered pitch, the NFL is taking visible measures to shrink its carbon footprint," writes Scott Wong for the Arizona Republic, in the state where the game is being held.
The Uninvited Ombudsman notes however that: Doing as they were instructed, the nation's news media have reprinted handouts from the NFL claiming the Super Bowl will be more environmentally "friendly" because it plans to plant some trees. How much CO2 a tree can absorb, how long that takes, where the trees will go, how much CO2 a single private jet emits flying cross country to the game, any inkling of how much CO2 an event this complex creates and anything even remotely logical, scientific or common-sense was noticeably missing from the stories. That's why they're called stories. One report did indicate the NFL has a 3,000-vehicle fleet in Arizona for the game. If each vehicle uses a single 20-gallon tank of gas, (a gallon of gas creates about 20 pounds of CO2), those vehicles alone will produce 600 tons of the gas plants need to breathe -- or double that if they refill once. According to the NFL Environmental Program, cited by "news" outlets, "350 tons of greenhouse gas will be generated by the NFL during Superbowl WEEK." Not mentioned are 50,000 spectators who will drive to the game, electric generation for a building big enough to hold a football field, energy to transport and prepare food for everyone, and this list goes on for miles, or according to the NFL, for a week. Reporters did not return phone calls asking if their calculators were broken. When asked if any human activities are "environmentally friendly," environmental experts stared blankly and stood mute. ---------- 9- Instead of silly global-warming gestures, cancel the Super Bowl By Craig J. Cantoni This season's Super Bowl will be played about 10 miles from my home in Scottsdale, Ariz. In one of the silliest gestures produced by the unwarranted mass hysteria over global warming, the host stadium is planting trees to counteract carbon dioxide produced by the game. If global warming is truly man-caused, and if environmental catastrophe is as imminent as Al "Zinc Mine" Gore says, then the Super Bowl should be cancelled. After all, what's more important: a football game or the inundation of Florida and death of life as we know it? Consider the carbon dioxide produced by fans flying on jet aircraft to Phoenix from around the country for the game: Assuming that 40,000 will do so, the carbon dioxide spewed in the air by jet engines could total more than 40 million pounds, or more than 1,000 lbs. per passenger. No doubt, some of the 40,000 are wealthy left-liberal greens who idolize Mr. Zinc Mine and throw their empty Perrier bottles in the recycling can in his honor. Then they spew 1,000 lbs. of carbon dioxide into the air to fly to something as unessential as a football game. Their hypocrisy is as astonishing as the hypocrisy of gaseous Gore, who flies around the world instead of teleconferencing. Similarly, take the example of a green guy from San Francisco who has corresponded with me about global warming. He's so distressed about the destruction of the planet that he wants a world government to dictate the reduction of greenhouse gases. He also thinks that tribal life in New Guinea is superior to life in a democratic, capitalistic, industrialized society. This is a guy who has visited New Guinea and has climbed Mt. Everest and other peaks on other continents. Just one of his trips produced more carbon dioxide than what a big SUV spews in six months. Maybe his world government will execute mountain climbers for befouling the planet. Or maybe it will outlaw Super Bowls. If I were czar of the world, I'd ban Super Bowls, not because I believe that humans cause global warming, but because I think the games don't match the hype and are played by goons, who, if they were fighting in the Roman Coliseum, would hear me rooting for the lions. Hmm, come to think of it, how will the world government determine whose ox should be Al Gored in a futile attempt to end global warming? The answer is that the determination will be made by political calculations, just as they are now. Al Gore is not a master scientist, but he is a master politician (and demagogue). He would never suggest canceling the Super Bowl, because he knows that working stiffs would get angry if their bread and circus were taken away. Instead, he advocates measures that hurt working stiffs without them realizing that he is responsible for the hurt. For example, now that he has achieved fame and fortune with the help of his family's zinc mine, Gore advocates measures that will have the indirect effect of closing mines and putting miners out of work. He can count on his fellow propagandists in the mainstream media to not connect the dots for the proletariat. Don't get me wrong. I think it's a good idea to plant trees. I'd like to plant one in Al Gore's behind. An author and columnist, Mr. Cantoni can be reached at ccan2@aol.com. |
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