In the past five days we have all heard about a North Korean ship attempting to hide "sophisticated" missile parts as they passed through the Panama Canal, a Judge in Texas being shot and Jodi Arias being back in court, right? Or did you only hear about the difference between 'nigg*' and 'nigg*r', the "fact" that George Zimmerman is white and Al Sharpton pushing for civil rights charges against Zimmerman? If you've heard about all six of these, thank you, I commend you for being an active citizen and you can probably stop reading. If you haven't heard about the first three but have heard the other three, well that might not be your fault... completely. If you haven't heard about any of this, well I will just assume you were in a coma, really drunk or live under a rock...
So, why is the country and media making a huge deal out the tragic death of Trayvon Martin after the man that killed him was acquitted of all charges? Why are there death threats being made to Zimmerman? Why were many cities from coast to coast up-in-arms after hearing about this verdict? What made the State of Florida v Zimmerman the "must-see" case of the year? Why was it so important that it took up the news channels for most of three days?
I have only one answer that isn't even a definite answer: people have listened to outrageous exaggerations of the truth pushed by those in power. Yes, Obama, I'm looking at you. You have no reason to involve yourself in state murder/ manslaughter cases. You have no reason to pull crap about gun control into this situation. If you are going to address this case, in the very least you should say something about Zimmerman being acquitted, but why would you do that when you can "honor Trayvon Martin" by pushing your gun control agenda? (Also, Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson should look to Allen West for some quality leadership...)
Anyway, what I would really like to talk about is this North Korean-Panamanian fiasco. So there's this ship that left Cuba and headed for the Panama Canal. Naturally, the Panama government flagged this ship as a suspected drug-carrying vessel. The ship was brought into port and Panama began to search the ship. Then, the captain of this ship decided it would be best for him to kill himself and the crew decided it was in their best-interest to start rioting. This, of course, raised concern by the leaders of the Panama search crew as they began taking sugar out of the cargo. Suddenly, they discovered containers that are suspected to contain missile parts.
The President of Panama, Ricardo Martinelli, came and tweeted pictures of the missile containers. Martinelli has declared that he and the Panamanian government will not allow for undeclared weapons to be transported through the Panama Canal and they will be taking an increased interest in the shipping between Cuba and North Korea.
The ship, Chong Chon Gang, has been suspected by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute of arms trafficking for some years. In 2009, the ship was attacked by pirates off the coast of Somalia. In 2010, the same ship was stopped in the Ukraine. Chong Chon Gang has been caught trafficking drugs and small arms munitions in the past.
Hopefully this was an isolated incident, but the pessimistic-realist in me has to say that this was not a one-time occurrence. Luckily for the entire world, this ship was stopped before it could get back to North Korea, but how many ships have made it through with similar cargo? This is definitely a wakeup call to the entire world that we need to keep a closer eye on suspected arms trafficking.
Back to the regularly scheduled programming... don't forget about the All Star Game tonight!
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