Alanz Eyes

World events

February 22nd, 2007 - Posted by Alan Howard

I haven’t had the same focus on world events this past month as I used to. I think I used to be focused on it ’cause I had a lot of time at work. Since I haven’t been working I’ve found all these other things to take up my time - mostly to do with organising the leaving of NZ, and then organising the settling in at Canberra, like living costs, transport, and work.

I still get updated about things that fit into my ‘daily outrage’ category, but I just don’t have the same emotional attachment to the outrages as I used to. However, I’ll summarise some of the things that have outraged me the past few weeks.

• an elderly couple in the US took photographic evidence of an off duty cop’s illegal speeding through their neighbourhood. The police weren’t interested. The cop in question then arrested the couple for stalking him. The police supported their ’stalked’ officer. Couple is now going to court for stalking, even though they have been doing this for some time now, helping the police with speeders in their neighbourhood. The police look after their own, of course.

• SWAT teams are being used for standard drug checks. What happened to SWAT being used only as emergency response teams to violent crime? Well, now they invade people’s houses, shoot dogs and even shoot innocent people - because shooting people first and asking questions later is what they do.
• Russia tells the US to pull it’s head in as it’s become the biggest threat to global security since… oh, since Russia! (I like that, that’s not an outrage. Someone needs to stand up to the US, and it may as well be Russia.)
• a cop (in the US, of course) tasers a man who was comforting his wife after she was in a road accident because the man refused to leave his wife’s side. Gotta love that. “My wife’s injured.” “Leave her alone and get out of the car.” “She’s injured, call an ambulance.” “Get out of the car.” “This is my WIFE!” Bzzzzzzzt. “AAARRRGGGH!” Same cop some time later tasers an innocent woman after she called police to report child abuse. He tasered her four times, because he became agitated with her. He was unable to say why she agitated him, or why she deserved to be tasered four times. The court fined him $3000 and sentenced him to six months house arrest. Do you think that if the average person tasered someone that agitated them they would only be fined and sentenced to house arrest?

Maybe I’ll get back into the swing of things in the near future, when everything starts to settle down again in my life.

Entry Filed under: Outraged