Okay, so the U.N. wasn't involved in Desert Storm, but didn't they have something to do with those "no fly zones"? I seem to remember that Iraqi violation of the no fly zones was one of the justifications for the second Iraq war. The other justification was those elusive WMDs. First there were U.N. inspectors looking for them, but Saddam wouldn't let them go into some areas. Then he kicked the inspectors out of the country, then he let them back in, but they still couldn't find those WMDs. At that point W started talking about "regime change", WMDs or no WMDs. I remember that the U.N wouldn't support an invasion, so W started putting together his "coalition of the willing". Some people were pissed at France for being unwilling and threatened to boycott French fries unless their name was changed to "liberty fries", but I don't think anything ever came of that.
Is Israel allowing Palestinians to become Israeli citizens now? Last I heard they weren't, but lots of things change without me hearing about it. I read on Wiki once that, when they first proclaimed the modern State of Israel, they offered citizenship to any Palestinians living within their borders. Most of the Palestinians were not interested in that, preferring to leave the country and vowing to come back some day as conquerors. I also remember reading or seeing on TV that the Palestinians today are not citizens, although some of them want to be. As it is, they can't get a passport to travel out of the country because, technically, they have no country, because Palestine is not a sovereign state. Was it ever? Before the occupied territories became the occupied territories, were they ever organized into a Palestinian state? Some time ago, I remember hearing something about elections in the Gaza Strip, but they elected Hamas, which nobody outside of the Gaza Strip would deal with because they were terrorists. What ever became of that?
Michigan had their open carry law long before they passed the concealed carry law, but you never saw anybody openly carrying, and you still don't. I read somewhere that this was because Michigan also has a law against "brandishing" a firearm or other weapon. One of the justifications for passing the concealed carry law was that the open carry law was ineffective because of that brandishing law. Last I heard, our legislature was looking into the problem. It turns out that the brandishing law doesn't define exactly what it means to brandish something, so they are trying to come up with a legal definition of the word. I don't know if the gun nuts really want to openly carry their pieces all over town, maybe they just want to prove that they can. It is presently illegal to carry a concealed weapon into a school building, but it's legal to openly carry one in there. I have not heard of anybody actually trying to do that, and my guess is that they wouldn't get very far if they did. If I felt the need to carry a gun downtown well, first of all, I wouldn't live in a town like that, but if I did, I would much rather carry it openly than concealed. My intent would be that the bad guys, knowing that I was carrying, would leave me alone and I wouldn't have to shoot anybody.
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