Inward Focus (Split Canyon Distraction Mix)

[#resist]

There is nearly a joke waiting here—

Hundreds of Tunisians protested on Saturday in the streets of the capital against a widely contested new law that grants officials from the former regime involved in corruption amnesty from prosecution.

Tunisia’s parliament on Wednesday approved a law protecting officials accused of graft during the rule of autocrat Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali, triggering angry protests by the opposition and activists.

Waving flags and banners saying “No to forgiveness”, “Resisting against mafia rule”, around 1,500 people marched through the capital’s central Avenue Habib Bourguiba in the company of opposition leaders.

After months of protests, the law was amended from an original draft which would have also granted amnesty to corrupt businessmen. Now they will be liable to prosecution for crimes committed during Ben Ali’s 24-year rule.

(Reuters)

—because it should not be quite so easy for Americans to empathize so proximally.   

Why Grown-Ups Shouldn’t Play Army Soldier

I think back when I was a little kid, I did what little kids did—played war ’til I didn’t want to play no more. Hey, and that’s when love stepped in, changed everything again.

―Styx

The problem with playing Army soldier is that playing Army soldier is a child’s game. Or, for some people, it is apparently an act of patriotism, because nothing says, “America!” like threatening a bunch of scientists because you’re too stupid to konw what is actually going on while you tromp around in the dark, looking for someone to threaten, pretending you’re some sort of soldier.

Or maybe we just call it responsible gun ownership. After all, what’s the point of owning a gun if you don’t have anyone to threaten?

Three scientists who were studying bats in a cave near the U.S.-Mexico border in southern Arizona were confronted by heavily armed militiamen who mistook them for illegal border-crossers or smugglers . . . .

. . . . The Arizona researchers reportedly told a sheriff’s deputy they were walking back to their campsite on Aug. 23 when a group of men who later identified themselves as a militia group shone a spotlight and started shouting at them in Spanish, the Nogales International reported.