Wednesday, December 28, 2005

T-Shirts and Pockets

Go to a resort, casinos, vacations, and there are always "souvinueres" one of which include T-shirts.

Note: None of them have pockets.

They have their own logos (walking advertisements) on them, they want you to wear them so others can see it, yet they NEVER put pockets on them: and how many people wear glasses and sunglasses? around 90% of the US wear one or the other.

The shirt pocket is the best place to put a set of glasses - reading or sun - and yet this one highly functional bit of cloth that would cost 20 cents to add onto a t-shirt - is no where to be found.

Just like a golf shirt without a pocket - pretty but useless in an operational functional sort of way for people who want to wear sunglasses between holes but want to have someplace to put them when hitting the ball.

Electonic Listening and War

The basic rule of war is that any enemy commuication can be intercepted and listended to without asking permission of the emeny first!

The people FIGHTING the USA - whether uniformed or not - are therefore exempt from all CIVIL rules in place to prevent blantant interception of any communication.

The arguements that people are putting forth that intercepted phone, radiophone, mail, internet communiation etc cannot be used without a warrant is false - when fighting an enemy any and all electronic and physical means are allowed to learn of what the enemy is telling to each other.

Thus, any enemy has NO CIVIL protections at all - only those protections under the USCMJ - which is almost none - as to what is allowed in a MILITARY court.

Tuesday, December 27, 2005

POWS and Rights

The talk show hosts say a lot - they have airtime to fill - and yet never summarize down the base problems on prisoners caught on battlefields that are not in an officially reconized military formation.

During WW II the NAZI party, not one often to deal humanely with prisoners, granted POW status to the Polish Home Army personnel captured in the 1944 Warsaw uprising (The Communists later killed a lot of them when they returned to Poland.) Partisans captured, if in large numbers, were usually shipped off to concentration camps. Individual captures were random: if no German had been killed they were usually shipped off, if some Germans were killed then they they might be shot on site depending on the commander there. This meant the partisans usually fought to the death alone since their likelyhood of living was low.

Rights of enemy combatants is defined by treaties and the culture of the capturing army. As a foreign person you have NO natural rights to any legal status in the country you are fighting against like a citizen of that country has. Only rights you have are those that captured country has reconized through international multiple-country treaties or directly to the country you are from.

As such, many US laws are always said shold be granted to all foreigners which is wrong. They are NOT citizens of the US. The same is true of US Citizens who commit crimes abroad - many laws that we have do NOT exist elsewjhere, how can US impose OUR laws onto them when it comes to our citizens if we do NOT then impose THEIR laws on their citizens who commit a crime here? If that was true then we would have to use THEIR laws when trying their citizens. That does not work.

Laws on the books are for CITIZENS of that country - anyone captured in combat is NOT a citizen of your country, and if not wearing a reconized uniform or symbol (The Polish Home Army wore armbands so they could be identified as being a "uniformed" combatant) have no rights to POW status at all since they are NOT uniformed soldiers.

The people held by the US fall outside POW status - they are like the Partisans of WW II - and thus have NO rights at all under treaties for POWs. They are classified as terrorists and saboteurs and thus can be shot when captured. We did that to the Germans who landed in the US in WWII (the US Supreme court ruled that the military has juristiction and did not grant them US citizen rights to US courts so they hung 6 of the 7 - the 7th turned himself and the others in and was almost hung anyway!)

The people in Guantamo fall under US military courts, are not soldiers in the Geneva convention sense, and thus never have the same rights as true soliders on the battlefield and due to the WWII supreme court ruling belong in the military court.

Monday, December 12, 2005

School Slogan / Bumper Sticker

Massage Therapists Always Get "Hands On" Training
 
Thought this one up on the way to work today while listening to KPOJ.

Friday, December 02, 2005

TWA Flight 800 - What is not seen

Ever notice that any clip ever shown of the wreckage of that a/c NEVER shows images of the wings?

All video / stills just show the main fuselage of the aircraft.

A heat seeking missing goes toward the engine. A radar guided missile goes for the largest apparent aspect object - from below that is a WING.

I have never been in combat, just flew in Hueys but I have talked to a lot of people who have been blown out of the sky - B-17, B-24, B-26 pilots and crew. Avgas - 100 octane - is MUCH more explosive than any JP4 fuel. JP4 in commercial a/c has additives in it to prevent foaming and other "bad" things to keep it solid. Thus it is harder to make it explode.

Remember when in the late 70s (maybe early 80s) when some Palestinian hijackers took three a/c to the desert and then blew them up with explosives - and it was filmed? Did you notice that even after the explosion of the bombs, when fire got to fuel tanks the planes did NOT explode? The fuel just burned.

If the JP4 was so explosive then most of the Hueys shot down in Vietnam would have exploded and burned - and they almost never burned. (A maintenance officer friend of mine did Hueys recovery in the war and got a Purple Heart doing so, they almost always were repairable and almost never burned when shot down.)

A lot you can learn by what they show - and don't show - and on past history - operational analysis type stuff. NTSB really does this type of stuff - but when they always exclude certain images of TWA 800 and other crashes then you see some spin being put on it and you wonder why that portion is being suppressed.