I wanted to see if I could find the real court finding, to see on what basis they decided in his favor.

I had some trouble with that. It would be an understatement to say that this man has spent a lot of time in court over the last decade. Here's a decent summary from Mother Jones; it's Lt. Col. Donald Sullivan.

So, I found the opinions of him being laughed out of court for claiming that his property taxes are unconstitutional pretty much every year for as far back as the court has records. He's tried to get cases up to the SCOTUS on illegal passage of the 16th amendment (that's the one that permits income taxes), he's trying to make a case that Barack Obama's birth certificate is fake. He also tried to sue that the Iraq and Afghanistan wars were illegal because they were undeclared.

All that said, I haven't found any record of him winning a court case about a "right to drive" except this Youtube video, and it's accompanying article on the local TV station (which is basically a transcript of this video), and a blog entry by Donald Sullivan telling a story about how his son got arrested for refusing to answer an officer's questions when pulled over. He did this because the officer first read him his Miranda rights and then asked for license and proof of insurance (at which point the son exercised his right to remain silent).

Regardless, I think all rights have limits. You are free to speak, but you may not incite people to violence. You are free to "bear arms" but I'm pretty sure land mines are not permissible. You are guaranteed the right to a trial, but you do not have the right to infinite appeal.

People should indeed be able to move about without restriction. This does not mean I may use a 3000 lbs. device to convey myself without limits on how that device is used and operated.

Personally, I think if you want to take a "right to free movement" to some sort of extreme, the real meaning would be that trespassing shouldn't be a crime, and things like locks and fences should be illegal since they restrict people's freedom of movement.

After all, if you cause no damage to the person's property, it's a victimless crime...

Well, what else is he gonna say?

Build the wall, put land mines and troops on the US southern border and wait for the Mexicans to overthrow sh;theeled kleptocrats like this guy.

They might as well have said that "landmines can costs as little as $0.01 to purchase." If they were trying to come up with some reasonable reliable numbers, $0.80 was about 300% off the mark according to most reports posted here. Also, they video description says that it costs "about $1,000 to TRAIN SOMEONE to remove them." It doesn't say that it costs $1,000 to remove ONE.

And why does it cost $1,000? Who is that money going to? The UN? Since when did they become the ones who are responsible to remove land mines from the face of the earth?

Also, if I owned some property that could at all have any probability of containing land mines, I would freaking teach myself how to remove them. Then the only cost would be in time and effort to scour the land (dependent upon how much land I owned).

Oh, and the landmine isn't the criminal. It's the MAN who PLANTED the landmine, and ONLY insofar as he planted it in such a way as to harm someone who did not deserve it.

i didnt say that you were blind to land mines, i said you were less sensitive to them and what they are doing. you are right when you say the video is absurd, but i just cant see anything funny about land mines.

A certain death is inevitable just like the end to a great book, but a death such that a land mine or a car crash provides is like ending a book by having the last half of the pages torn out before you get to read them.

>> ^Sniper007:
I'm not sure which figure is more bogus. The 80 cents or the $1,000.


Neither figure is significantly exaggerated.

"Perhaps 110 million mines lurk in 64 nations around the world, and each year they kill or maim about 30,000 people, usually civilians. The heaviest concentrations of mines are in poor countries like Cambodia, Somalia, Bosnia, Mozambique, Afghanistan and Angola that have survived years or even decades of civil war. Five million new mines are laid each year, and only 100,000 are cleared. A new mine costs $3; uprooting one costs between $200 and $1,000."

But the numbers might have changed since this 1996 Time Magazine article. I don't know if the "butterfly" landmines that this man talks about are newer or cheaper then the $3.00 price that the 1996 article cites.

Death is funny to me. Because its inevitable.

I know more about weapons of war than I care to.

You think that because I'm American I don't know what happens in countries where land mines are distributed by air, or designed to have chain reaction kill zones?

What a .40 caliber will do to impact on soft tissue? What a mark II frag will do when the spoon pops?

Or what an air bursting artillery shell will do to a squad? Or what a cluster bomb will do to a structure, let alone any living thing inside that house. Ive never seen it first hand, but I venture to say you haven't either.

Ive seen what a careless person in a minivan can do to a husband and his happy wife, laughing just before they get broadsided. Then being their to pick up the pieces.

Don't think that because I am American I am blind to land mines, and I know where half of the mines where manufactured.

That's the point of the video, to be absurd.

Not funny.

Benny Hill might make topics that are ALOT less tragic than landmines or the Holocaust funny, maybe 911? even then maybe not funny, even if its less sad.

maybe nordlichreiter is less sensitive to landmines since it seems like he is an american, and America is one of the few countries left which still manufactures landmines; right along with Russia, China, Iraq, Iran, North Korea and India.

Land mines kill 7000 people each year, almost all casualties are civillians and the majority are children; so laugh it up.

Seem like a nice enough chap, but i did a little research...



'He fully acknowledges giving financial support for Muslim combatants.

A police search of his home reportedly found night vision goggles, a bulletproof vest, and extremist Islamic literature.

He was again arrested in 2000 under British anti-terrorism laws during a raid on the Maktabah Al Ansar bookshop in Birmingham, which he had founded. The British government retrieved encrypted files from his computer and ordered Begg to open them, but Begg refused.

in 2000, his store was found to offer such titles as The Virtues of Jihad and Declaration of War. In 1999 the store commissioned and published a book which said such things as "Terror works and that is why the believers are commanded to enforce it by Allah.


A Summary of Evidence memo of the following allegations against him:

a. The detainee is a member of al Qaida and other affiliated terrorist organizations.

1. The detainee recruited individuals to attend al Qaida run terrorist training camps in Afghanistan.
2. The detainee provided money and material support to al Qaida terrorist training camps.
3. The detainee has received extensive training at al Qaida run terrorist training camps since 1993. He has been trained on the AK-47, Rocket Propelled Grenades (RPGs), handgun, ambush theory, detection of land mines and he manufacture of improvised grenades.
4. The detainee provided support to al Qaida terrorists by providing shelter for their families while the al Qaida members committed terrorist acts.
b. The detainees engaged in hostile acts against the United States or its coalition Partners.
1. The detainee was armed and prepared to fight on the frontlines against US and allied forces alongside Taliban and al Qaida fighters.
2. The detainee retreated to the Tora Bora Afghanistan along with other Taliban and al Qaida fighters.
3. The detainee engaged in these hostile actions while neither he nor his fellow fighters wore distinctive military emblems on their clothes, not followed a typical chain of command.
4. The detainee provided support to Usama Bin Laden's al Qaida terrorist network with full knowledge that Bin Laden had issued a declaration of war against the United States and that the al Qaida network had committed numerous terrorist attacks against the United States and its citizens.

Begg's known and suspected contacts with extremists:

Shahid Akram Butt
* Leader of the 'Lynx Gang', in Birmingham, England known associate of Begg arrested in Britain for fraud and in Yemen on conspiring to cause death and destruction
Khalil al-Deek
* lived in Peshawar, Pakistan while Begg lived there;
* invested with Begg
Abu Zubaydah
* an associate of al-Deek;
* Begg claims never to have met Zubaydah, but United States Department of Defense (DoD) says he admitted to it during interrogation.
Richard C. Reid
* DoD suspects links
Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi
* DoD suspects links
Abu Qatada
* DoD suspects links
Dhiren Barot
* Wrote a book that was commissioned and published by Begg's bookshop'




Just saying...

(Did you expect people in extremist groups to be big scary green monsters?)

Linking Al-Jazeera youtube clips really doesn't mean shit to me. Sorry.
Back to this video, which is what the conversation should be about, it is fucking stupid to presume that if a bomb is "safe" it can be tumbled in a cement mixer for an indefinite amount of time. It is obvious they were intending to detonate it. Do you think someone just walked by a cement mixer with a bomb in it and then turned the camera on? It's a purposeful detonation. The video is intentionally misleading. They are not land mines.

Let's say the failure rate is true. (which it isn't) 10% is laying on the ground undetonated. If you look at the cluster bomb detonations in the video you linked, tell me, would you allow your children to go anywhere near that area? It's not like 90% of the bomblets explode in one spot and the other 10% are placed in some other location.

And I wasn't cavalier about the loss of innocent life at all. I said several times that it is tragic. But I see you have a habit of reading things the way you want to see them.

Go look up Textron, sensor fuzed weapons, and clean battlefield.

Wow rougy you are pissed off tonight ... I don't even want to get in your way lol.

I'm not sure what to make of the "people bomb" thing. We do want to immobilize the enemy when we are at war.
But really, cluster bombs are not war crimes. They're weapons. Sometimes weapons in war kill innocent civilians. I'm not saying this is OK but it's just a fact. They shouldn't be looked at as land mines. Think of it as a dumb bomb that was dropped in WWII but didn't go off. Is that a war crime? No. It sucks. It should never happen but it does.

I can tell you they put a tremendous amount of technology, (R&D cash that most countries wouldn't bother with) into the devices to prevent it from happening, but nothing is perfect. I'm personally proud of the smart weapons and great lengths the US and others have gone to in ensuring minimal civilian casualties.

Generally, explosives should not be tumbled in a cement mixer. And who knows, really, how long this thing was bounced around in there? Maybe we're seeing the last minute of a 2 hour mix. 2 days? There's no way to know. They clearly had every intention of filming a detonation.

This guy (the Paul Giamatti look-alike in the doorway) is what I like to call a human land mine. He looks like a total dweeb, so douchebags like to play around. Then boom that shit blows up in your face and you're left on the floor with half your front tooth stuck in the dweeb's knuckle. The existence of these people is truly one of the best things about the human race.

This guy was 15 when he was caught, but he is admittedly more than just a "suspect". He was the sole Taliban survivor in a fire fight in Afghanistan. When just he and one other fighter were left a grenade was thrown that killed an American soldier. It's a sad commentary on America that his treatment is so deeply in question, but that doesn't change the circumstances of when Khadr was caught. There is video of him laying land mines as well. The really ugly part is how young he was when he was caught. What do you do with someone this deeply troubled and dangerous when they are barely past being a kid?

@ Octopussy: Omar was offered a Combatant Status Review Tribunal a few years ago to determine if he had already been correctly proven to match the US administration's definition of an "enemy combatant." Participation by the captives was voluntary, and Khadr chose not to be involved in his tribunal.

Khadr's "Summary of Evidence Memo" summary alleges that he has admitted he threw a grenade which killed a U.S. soldier, attended an al Qaida training camp in Kabul and worked as a translator for al Qaida to coordinate land mine missions. In addition, he was accused of helping to plant the landmines between Khost and Ghardez (Which actions are caught on video), and having visited an airport near Khost to collect information on U.S. convoy movements.

The unfortunate thing is that he turned 16 before being taken to Guantanamo so he was treated as an adult. We should consider that all of his alleged offenses were committed when he was a 15 year old boy or younger. In my book, he deserves a little mercy for that.

Very cool! This was a while ago - here is the wikipedia entry. This video has some nice demos - nails, land mine, segway off a ramp.

Looks like this would be a lot lighter.. there is a noise issue @50 MPH, but it'd be fine for an NEV.

I can't remember anything
can't tell if this is true or dream
deep down inside I feel to scream
this terrible silence stops me

now that the war is through with me
I'm waking up, I cannot see
that there's not much left of me
nothing is real but pain now

hold my breath as I wish for death
oh please God, wake me

back in the womb it's much too real
in pumps life that I must feel
but can't look forward to reveal
look to the time when I'll live

fed through the tube that sticks in me
just like a wartime novelty
tied to machines that make me be
cut this life off from me

hold my breath as I wish for death
oh please God, wake me

now the world is gone I'm just one
oh God, help me hold my breath as I wish for death

darkness imprisoning me
all that I see
absolute horror
I cannot live
I cannot die
trapped in myself
body my holding cell

land mine has taken my sight
taken my speech
taken my hearing
taken my arms
taken my legs
taken my soul
left me with life in hell