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2009 April 25 — Why Now?
On-line Opinion Magazine…OK, it's a blog
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The Fire Is Being Contained

FireThe latest from the Myrtle Beach Sun News: Roads reopen, crews still busy as wildfire still burns

Crews are keeping an eye on a water treatment plant near Long Bay Road that could be threatened by the fire as Red Cross volunteers hand out supplies in damaged neighborhoods.

The fire, which has raged since Wednesday, has charred 20,500 acres, destroying 76 houses in North Myrtle Beach and in rural Horry County. No one has been injured.

The fire is about 80 percent contained, according to Horry County, but crews also are busy responding to hotspots.

If the winds kick up again, all bets are off. Rain is the only way to really extinguish wildfires, so you have people this year hoping for a visit from a tropical storm to refill reservoirs and ensure that the peat bogs get soaked.

April 25, 2009   6 Comments

Just Senseless

The Northwest Florida Daily News reports: Two Okaloosa deputies slain, gunman dead:

CRESTVIEW – A gunman shot and killed two Okaloosa County sheriff’s deputies Saturday afternoon as they were attempting to arrest him for an earlier domestic violence incident.

The gunman then fled in a pickup truck to DeFuniak Springs, where he was killed in a shootout after lawmen rammed his truck.

Joshua Cartwright, 28, shot deputies Warren “Skip” York and Burt Lopez just before 1 p.m. at the Shoal River Gun Club, according to the Sheriff’s Office. The deputies were pronounced dead at Sacred Heart Hospital in Pensacola a short time later.

The deputies were at the gun club responding after a domestic violence call from Cartwright’s apartment in Fort Walton Beach – the Consul Apartments on Monahan Drive.

[Read more →]

April 25, 2009   5 Comments

Consequences

If you drive West out of Baghdad passed the airport you get to Abu Ghraib. If you stay on that road the next town is Fallujah. They aren’t that far apart.

In January of 2004 the Defense Department announced, with little notice taken by the US media, that they were investigating charges of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib. We have seen the pictures, so this had been going on for quite some time.

At the end of March, 2004, four Blackwater convoy escorts were ambushed in Fallujah. They were killed, burned, dragged through the streets, and finally displayed on a bridge.

Americans couldn’t understand why that happened. They didn’t have a clue as to why people would be so enraged as to do something like that. The Americans screamed for revenge.

The Iraqis in Fallujah screamed for revenge first, and they made sure the world saw their revenge.

This is what torture does. This is how torture threatens military personnel. It turns people into a mob.

April 25, 2009   8 Comments

ANZAC Day

Australia & New Zealand flags

It is ANZAC Day in Australia and New Zealand, which is similar to the American Veterans Day, in that it began as a remembrance of World War I, and has become more generalized over the years.

“Anzac Day commemorates the involvement of Australian and New Zealand troops in a World War I campaign on the Gallipoli peninsula in Turkey.”

The Gallipoli Campaign began as a Winston Churchill [then First Lord of the Admiralty] plan that spun out of control and got a lot of people killed on both sides with nothing much changing, but then, that was quite common in World War I.

Peter Weir’s made a movie, Gallipoli, which, if nothing else, proves that Sergeant Alvin York, and T.E. Lawrence weren’t the only people who fought in World War I.

April 25, 2009   6 Comments