This time it’s a chemical tanker. There were, apparently, three security guards onboard, but that was far too small a force to repel the pirates. A NATO helicopter in the area arrived within 15 minutes but was too late to stop the attack.
Someone has the right idea, but it won’t likely be adopted until the cost of paying ransom becomes significantly higher:
The U.S. navy says it is impossible to patrol all 2.5 million miles of dangerous waters. It has called on ship owners to hire private security contractors to protect vulnerable vessels
Another UCLA scientist has been targeted by terrorists in the name of animal rights.
Activists with the group Students and Workers for the Liberation of UCLA Primates claimed responsibility for the attack
Crimes like this really give you a good picture of the level of morality on the far left. Groups such as this value animal life far more than human life, in this case putting completely uninvolved people at risk since, the police note, they destroyed vehicles which didn’t belong to the scientist in question.
It really shouldn’t be impossible to track down the cretins who boasted about the attack on the web. Hopefully they’ll wind up in a cage of their own.
The World Health Organization would like to see universal AIDS testing, claiming it would cut rates by 95%. Here’s an alternative from the old fashioned, conservative school of thought: keep it in your pants. That’s not only 100% effective, but free.
The patronizing tone of Europeans toward Americans for our stance on gun ownership shines through in a recent BBC article. Many here in the U.S. consider gun ownership not only as a fundamental right but a serious responsibility. Not so in Europe.
Top Gun [a shooting range and gun store in Houston] is the kind of business that simply could not exist in Europe – the staff wear holstered handguns both in the shop and on the shooting range. …
No area of American daily life makes this country feel more foreign to Europeans
I always find it amusing when foreigners appear shocked that the employees of a gun store would be carrying guns. Heck, in Arizona more than 1% of adults have concealed carry permits and open carry is legal and not terribly uncommon, so chances are very good that there are handguns being carried in every store (or other public venue) you visit. You often simply don’t know it because it’s not a problem because law abiding citizens don’t misuse guns.
England really should take notice. According to The Times Online, gun crimes have almost doubled since England banned handgun ownership. And the Dutch Ministry of Justice (Criminal Victimization in Seventeen Industrialized Countries, 2001) notes that
Many of the countries with the strictest gun control have the highest rates of violent crime.
Australia and England, which have virtually banned gun ownership, have the highest rates of
robbery, sexual assault, and assault with force of the top 17 industrialized countries.
The author does get one thing right. There are a lot of us who consider restrictive gun regulation as a first step in eroding our rights as Americans. I’ll take the American view of gun ownership any day.
Seattle’s mayor wants to ban guns from all city property.
“Our parks, our community centers and our public events are safer without guns,” Nickels said at a June news conference when he announced his executive order for the ban.
The problem is, that’s simply not true. Banning guns from city property won’t keep criminals from carrying. Witness the effectiveness of the gun ban at the Southcenter mall last weekend. Fortunately for Seattle residents, Washington has a state preemption law under which all authority for regulating gun ownership and possession resides in the state. So in addition to being irrational, the mayor’s order is itself illegal and unenforceable.
A court in Stuttgart has ruled that Christian Klar, a leader of the Red Army Faction in the 1970s and 80s, will be released on parole after serving 26 years. They can’t find a reason to continue his incarceration. How about this: he’s served less than one year for each of the known killings of the terrorist group (30, though he was convicted of 9 plus 11 attempts). I lived in Germany during the period his Baader-Meinhof gang was in high swing and can attest that it was a truly frightening time. His victims, their families, and the German people deserve better.
An annual boat parade dropped Christmas from its name, and lost about a third of its attendees, and at least one sponsor, in the process. Seems a “Boat Parade of Lights” just isn’t as popular as a “Christmas Boat Parade.” Kudos to Fireworks by Grucci for dropping their sponsorship. Despite the lower turnout,
Organizers say the parade still was a success.
I guess if you consider losing a third of your attendance a success. Assuming they continue kowtowing to political correctness, let’s wish them even more such success next year.
Another totally ineffective restraining order failed to provide any protection whatsoever, as a man killed his two children and injured his wife.
They said the man, Jorge Cruz Iraheta, and his estranged wife, Marta Iraheta, argued early Friday evening. The man had violated a restraining order by confronting his wife, police said.
The only good news? The guy killed himself, saving the taxpayers of California the cost of a trial and imprisonment.
Your safety is your responsibility.
For unstated reasons, the country is denying entry to former President Jimmy Carter and former UN secretary general Kofi Annan. Now I’m positive the reasons are entirely wrong. Zimbabwe is run by thugs who’d be horribly embarrassed to have their actions further exposed to international scrutiny. There are much better reasons to keep these two out of your country. Annan was head of the UN during the Iraq oil-for-food scandal, which tied directly to his son. And Carter? He’s a leftist (which wouldn’t overly concern the Zimbabwean government) who has contributed exactly zero to lasting international peace or prosperity. [Please list even one Carter accomplishment which has had a long-term positive effect.] Heck, those are two good reasons to deny these guys entry into the U.S.!
Maybe, but you really have to dig for it. The often violent reaction of the radical left over California’s passage of Proposition 8 comes as no surprise to many of us. Liberals like to propound diversity and tolerance, but there’s one group toward whom they refuse to extend those ideals: social conservatives. Tolerance, to the left, generally means lending an ear to all opinions except those based upon traditional morality. There is a small flicker of light here.
[Bill] Condon, the gay writer-director of “Dreamgirls” and a Film Independent board member, offered this retort to what he calls the “off-with-his-head” crowd: “If you’re asking, ‘Do we take discrimination against gays as seriously as bigotry against African Americans and Jews?’ . . . the answer is, ‘Of course we do.’ But we also believe that some people, including Rich [Raddon], saw Prop. 8 not as a civil rights issue but a religious one. That is their right. And it is not, in and of itself, proof of bigotry.”
He is, of course, correct. California is one of the most liberal states in the nation, and yet a majority of voters agreed that it was wrong for their courts to impose a redefinition of marriage. I simply cannot be convinced that the majority of Californians hate gays. They simply believe there is something valuable to retaining the traditional definition of marriage. Let’s hope against hope that the rational voices on the left, such as Condon, prevail.