COMMENTARY: U.S. Jet Crashes in Libya; Fighting Rages in Cities
I had a lot of dreams last night (2 am - 9 am PST, 3/22/2011). I sometimes wonder what my Subconscious Mind is doing while I'm asleep.
I was disappointed to see an American Jet shot down, but I'm glad the pilot was safe when he landed in a friendly field in the village of "Bu Ma-RI-EM."
One of the things I was saying is that you can't stop bad things from happening, but you can choose where and when. Today is also a good day since it's William Shatner's birthday as Captain Kirk.
On 1/13 of 2011, the U.S.S. Enterprise left port without its Commanding Officer Owen Honors because of a scandal regarding inappropriate videos.
I said that everything is pulled inside out. So the opposite of the U.S.S. Enterprise launching with a corrupt Commanding Officer would be an "honorable" (?) Commanding Officer, William Shatner as Captain K(IRK), "launching his career" without a "corrupt Enterprise."
I think the words that haunted me in this news article were:
"Gadhafi is killing civilians inside AJ-(D[A]b)/I-Y[A]," said KH-AL/Ed H-Am/Id, a rebel who said he been in Gadhafi's forces but defected to the rebels. "Today we will enter Ajdabiya, God willing."
The "God willing" is what haunts me because I never forgot what Scott had told me when he said I was suffering from Megalomania.
The turmoiil or conflict is that if you know you have a God Software Program that works and it is within your power to use it or wield it to help people, shouldn't you in their time of need?
The fear is mostly tied around how many angry people. They're going to be upset if they find proof that I used it. It's kind of the same way you see Conservative Republicans upset with Liberal President Obama for the U.S. exercising military force regarding Libya.
Though, in my opinion, you can't really take politicians seriously. When President George W. Bush was sending troops into Iran, the Democratic Party was criticizing military involvement, how much it costs, etc. You didn't hear a peep out of the Republican Party.
Now that it's a Democratic President, you don't hear a peep out of the Democratic Party and it's the Republican Party kicking up a storm about it.
For the record, I felt sorry for President Bush as well as President Obama.
People seem to have short term memory in bashing Obama and have forgotten how President Bush used to get chewed out all the time as being a moron or criticized for just about any supposedly "bonehead" decision or action.
Being the Leader of a Natino is hard.
The fact is: You can't please everybody.
There's always going to be someone who's going to dislikes you and hate your decisions.
Sometimes they're valid. Sometimes they aren't.
However, one of my favorite lines is from "Wedding Crashers" when Christopher Walken as the dad says to the daughter is:
ALL WE CAN DO IS USE THE INFORMATION AT HAND TO MAKE BEST DECISION POSSIBLE
That's all anyone can ever do. Even when it comes to people who don't understand the Psychic Field or don't believe it exists, that's okay. It's okay to feel that way because you're making the best decision possible based off of what you know.
There are 2 things I don't like:
1) People are guilty is when they neglect their education from not having paid attention in school that creates ignorance
2) People who go out of their way to be cruel and nasty toward others as a result of ignorance.
When a person doesn't agree with someone's theory, one does not have to take a condescending, snobbish, or insulting tone. I put up with it all the time about how stupid I am. I'm constantly ridiculed. Most of the time, it's by people who really don't know anything about the subject of the Psychic Field or they're basing their decisions off something they heard from someone else.
They didn't really go out there and find out for themselves. That goes back to the limited education or neglecting their studies.
In my opinion, Ignorance is Evil. So many problems in the world are created by Ignorance or people exploiting other people's Ignorance to pursue causes that are unjust.
When people are educated and socially aware, they are more empathetic and less likely to be vile. That even goes for all the nasty behavior you see online where you have individuals hiding behind Cyberspace in that Veil of Anonymity to verbally abusive and cruel to others.
Communication is Power. You see people abusing the Gift of Voice to be nasty to other people and take pleasure in seeing other people hurting after they drop a "verbal bomb" that is designed to wound.
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U.S. Jet Crashes in Libya; Fighting Rages in Cities
AP/Anja Niedringhaus
Libyans pose with the wreckage of a US F15 fighter jet in the village of Bu Mariem, east of Benghazi, eastern Libya. More photos »
AP
Libyans stand on the wreckage of a US F15 fighter jet after it crashed in an open field in the village of Bu Mariem, east of Benghazi, eastern Libya AP - Libyans stand on the wreckage of a US F15 fighter jet after it crashed in an open field in the village …
* Libya Slideshow:Libya
* Coalition strikes change balance in Libya Play Video Video:Coalition strikes change balance in Libya AP
* Libya: Who Are We Fighting For? Play Video Video:Libya: Who Are We Fighting For? ABC News
By RYAN LUCAS and MAGGIE MICHAEL, Associated Press Ryan Lucas And Maggie Michael, Associated Press - 1 hr 34 mins ago
BU MARIEM, Libya - An American fighter jet crashed in Libya's rebel held east, both crew ejecting safely as the aircraft spun from the sky during the third night of the U.S. and European air campaign. Moammar Gadhafi's forces shelled rebels regrouping in the dunes outside a key eastern city on Tuesday, and his snipers and tanks roamed the last major opposition-held city in the west.
The crash was the first major loss for the U.S. and European military air campaign, which over three nights appears to have hobbled Gadhafi's air defenses and artillery and rescued the rebels from impending defeat. But the opposition force, with more enthusiasm than discipline, has struggled to exploit the gains. The international alliance, too, has shown fractures as officials struggle to articulate an endgame.
China and Russia, which abstained from the U.N. Security Council vote authorizing the international intervention, called for a cease-fire Tuesday, after a night when international strikes hit Tripoli, destroying a military seaport in the capital.
The U.S. Air Force F-15E came down in field of winter wheat and thistles outside the town of Bu Mariem, about 24 miles (38 kilometers) east of the rebel capital of Benghazi.
By Tuesday afternoon, the plane's body was mostly burned to ash, with only the wings and tail fins intact. U.S. officials say both crewmembers were safe in American hands.
"I saw the plane spinning round and round as it came down," said Mahdi el-Amruni, who rushed to the crash site with other villagers. "It was in flames. They died away, then it burst in to flames again."
One of the pilots parachuted into a rocky field and hid in a sheep pen on Hamid Moussa el-Amruni's family farm.
"We didn't think it was an American plane. We thought it was a Gadhafi plane. We started calling out to the pilot, but we only speak Arabic. We looked for him and found the parachute. A villager came who spoke English and he called out 'we are here, we are with the rebels' and then the man came out," Hamid Moussa el-Amruni said.
The pilot left in a car with the Benghazi national councill, taking with him the water and juice the family provided. They kept his helmet and the parachute.
A second plane strafed the field where the pilot went down. Hamid Moussa el-Amruni himself was shot, suffered shrapnel wounds in his leg and back, but he could still walk. He used an old broomstick as a crutch and said he held no grudge, believing it was an accident.
He said the second crew member came down in a different field and was picked up by a helicopter, an account that coincided with the U.S. explanation of the rescue.
The U.S. Africa Command said both crewmembers were in American hands with minor injuries after what was believed to be a mechanical failure.
Most of eastern Libya, where the plane crashed, is in rebel hands but the force has struggled to take advantage of the gains from the international air campaign.
Ajdabiya, city of 140,000 that is the gateway to the east, has been under siege for a week. Outside the city, a ragtag band of hundreds of fighters milled about on Tuesday, clutching mortars, grenades and assault rifles. Some wore khaki fatigues. One man sported a bright white studded belt.
Some men clambered up power lines in the rolling sand dunes of the desert, squinting as they tried to see Gadhafi's forces inside the city. The group periodically came under artillery attacks, some men scattering and others holding their ground.
"Gadhafi is killing civilians inside Ajdabiya," said Khaled Hamid, a rebel who said he been in Gadhafi's forces but defected to the rebels. "Today we will enter Ajdabiya, God willing."
Since the uprising began on Feb. 15, the opposition has been made up of disparate groups even as it took control of the entire east of the country. Regular army units that joined the rebellion have proven stronger and more organized, but only a few units have joined the battles while many have stayed behind as officers try to coordinate a force with often antiquated, limited equipment.
The rebels pushed into the west of the country in recent weeks, only to fall back to their eastern strongholds in the face of Gadhafi's superior firepower.
Misrata, Libya's third-largest city and the last major western redoubt for the rebels, was being bombarded by Gadhafi's forces on Tuesday, his tanks and snipers controlling the streets, according to a doctor there who said civilians were surviving on dwindling supplies of food and water, desperately in search of shelter.
Speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals if the city falls to Gadhafi's troops, he accused international forces of failing to protect civilians as promised under the United Nations resolution authorizing military action in Libya.
"Snipers are everywhere in Misrata, shooting anyone who walks by while the world is still watching," he said. "The situation is going from bad to worse. We can do nothing but wait. Sometimes we depend on one meal per day."
Mokhtar Ali, a Libyan dissident in exile elsewhere in the Mideast, said he was in touch with his father in Misrata and described increasingly dire conditions.
"Residents live on canned food and rainwater tanks," Ali said. He said Gadhafi's brigades storm residential areas knowing that they won't be bombed there. "People live in total darkness in terms of communications and electricity."
Monday night, Libyan state TV said a new round of strikes had begun in Tripoli, marking the third night of bombardment. Col. Abdel-Baset Ali, operations officer in the port, said the strikes caused millions of dollars in losses, but no human casualties
Warehouses containing military equipment were hit, apparently by missiles that punched through a corrugated roof and left a crater in one building. Four trucks loaded with rocket launchers were destroyed, as was other transportation and equipment.
But while the airstrikes can stop Gadhafi's troops from attacking rebel cities - in line with the U.N. mandate to protect civilians - the United States, at least, appeared deeply reluctant to go beyond that toward actively helping the rebel cause to oust the Libyan leader.
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates and others said the U.S. military's role will lessen in coming days as other countries take on more missions and the need declines for large-scale offensive action like the barrage of Tomahawk cruise missiles fired mainly by U.S. ships and submarines off Libya's coast.
A senior defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss classified data, said Monday that the attacks thus far had reduced Libya's air defense capabilities by more than 50 percent. That has enabled the coalition to focus more on extending the no-fly zone, which is now mainly over the coastal waters off Libya and around the rebel stronghold of Benghazi in the east, across the country to the Tripoli area this week.
In his first public comments on the crisis, Army Gen. Carter Ham, the lead U.S. commander, said it was possible that Gadhafi might retain power.
"I don't think anyone would say that is ideal," the general said Monday, foreseeing a possible outcome that stands in contrast to President Barack Obama's declaration that Gadhafi must go.
The Libyan leader has ruled the North African nation for more than four decades and was a target of American air attacks in 1986.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/af_libya
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William Shatner Turns 80
By Mike Krumboltz, Yahoo! Buzz Log | Tuesday, March 22, 2011, 9:05 AM
193 comments
William Shatner, then and now
Paramount Pictures and FilmMagic.com
Happy birthday to William Shatner. The man behind Captain Kirk, T.J. Hooker, and about a zillion other TV and film roles is 80 years old today.
Web lookups for "william shatner" and "william shatner quotes" are higher than you might expect. Over the past 24 hours, online interest in the delightfully hammy thespian is up more than 96 percent. Related lookups for "william shatner biography" and "william shatner novels" (yes, he is a writer), and "william shatner songs" (oh, yes, he is a singer, too) have also shot skyward.
Of course, it's rare for an actor/singer/writer/pitchman to have such a long shelf life. But Shatner is anything but typical. One of his earliest professional successes came during a classic episode of "The Twilight Zone" called "Terror at 20,000 feet."
The episode, which was directed by Richard Donner ("Lethal Weapon," "Superman") and later parodied by "The Simpsons," featured Shatner as an airplane passenger who sees a creature attacking the plane's engine. Of course, no one believes him. It gave Shatner a chance to show off his skills, and he never looked back.
It wasn't long after that he landed the role of Captain James T. Kirk in "Star Trek." The landmark show, which ran only a few seasons, cemented Shatner as an icon. Many films would follow, and though he would go on to star in other successful shows, including "T.J. Hooker," "Boston Legal," and "$#*! My Dad Says," his role as the debonair explorer is still what he is most closely identified with.
Shatner's famous crew members on the USS Enterprise still draw the Web searches. Leonard Nemoy, who played Spock, will turn 80 on March 26. He's as popular as ever. And George Takei, who played Sulu, will turn 74 next month. Nichelle Nichols, who played Lt. Uhura, is 78. On a 1968 episode of "Star Trek," Nichols and Shatner shared what is commonly believed to be television’s first interracial kiss. DeForest Kelley ("Bones") passed away in 1999 at the age of 79. And James Doohan ("Scotty") died in 2005 at the age of 85.
Shatner is all too aware of his connection with outer space. On an epic skit on "Saturday Night Live," Shatner told a group of Trekkies that they needed to get lives. And back in the '70s, he performed a hilariously odd spoken-word version of Elton John's "Rocket Man" at the Sci-Fi Awards. The clip is still popular in searches to this day.
So, there you have it. Author, actor, singer, Priceline pitchman. And, of course, birthday boy. Happy 8-0, big guy.
http://tv.yahoo.com/blog/william-shatner-turns-80--2586