Napoleon died aged 52 on St Helena in the south Atlantic where he had been banished after his defeat at Waterloo.
His post mortem showed he died of stomach cancer, but it has been suggested arsenic poisoning or over-zealous treatment was to blame.
Now Swiss researchers say his trousers show he lost weight prior his death, confirming he had cancer.
The research, by scientists from the anatomical pathology department of the University Hospital in Basel and the Institute of Medical History at the University of Zurich, looked at 12 pairs of Napoleon's trousers.
Four were from before his exile and eight were pairs he wore during the six years he spent in exile on St Helena, including the pair he wore while dying. I certainly hope they were washed well.
The researchers also collated information from post mortems on the weights of patients who had died of stomach cancer.
They then measured the waists of healthy people to work out the correlation between that measurement and their actual weight.
This information was then used to calculate Napoleon's weight in the months leading up to his death.
The largest pair of trousers Napoleon wore had a waist measurement of 110cm (43"); those he wore just before his death measured 98cm (38"). For a short guy he was rather rotund.
This, they say, shows he lost between 11 and 15kg over the last six months of his life.
The Swiss team say the presence of arsenic in Napoleon's hair, the source of the poisoning theory, was linked to this enthusiasm for wine.
At the time, it was the custom of winemakers to dry their casks and basins with arsenic.
Dr Alessandro Lugli, who carried out the study which appeared in the American Review of Human Pathology, told the BBC News website he thought theories about alternative explanations for Napoleon's death would continue to be put forward.
But he said: "We are sure that the autopsy report speaks clearly in favour of gastric [stomach] cancer."
The demise of the French Emperor has provoked numerous theories.
Last year, researchers from the San Francisco Medical Examiner's Department said in New Scientist magazine that it was regular doses of antimony potassium tartrate, or tartar emetic a poisonous colourless salt which was used to make him vomit, that killed him.
He was also given regular enemas.
The researchers, led by forensic pathologist Steven Karch, say this would have caused a serious potassium deficiency, which can lead to a potentially fatal heart condition called Torsades de Pointes in which rapid heartbeats disrupt blood flow to the brain.
Dr Karch told BBC News Online at the time that he studied similar modern cases.
He said: "There is a very strong argument for this - but it's not as sexy as the idea that he was murdered.
"The arsenic wasn't killing him - his doctors did him in!" There was a post a few months ago about Napoleon's death and this is a follow-up.
I still believe he died when he stuck a pistol in his pants and accidently pulled the trigger an blew his bone apart.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
05/09/2005 10:49 ||
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Maybe it was because he kept playing with his belly button, and one day he popped it and deflated.
EFL: Meanness in girls can start when they still are toddlers, a Brigham Young University study found. It found that girls as young as 3 or 4 will use manipulation and peer pressure to get what they want.
They needed a study to tell them that?
"It could range from leaving someone out to telling their friends not to play with someone to saying, 'I'm not going to invite you to my birthday party,'" said Craig Hart, study co-author and professor of marriage, family and human development at BYU. "Some kids are really adept at being mean and nasty." They regularly exclude others and threaten to withdraw friendship when they don't get their way. The "mean girls" are highly liked by some and strongly disliked by others. They are socially skilled and popular but can be manipulative and subversive if necessary. They are feared as well as respected.
The study is the first to link relational aggression and social status in preschoolers. It appears in the current issue of the journal Early Education and Development. David Nelson and Clyde Robinson of BYU are the other authors.
Researchers have long known that adolescents, particularly girls, engage in this sort of behavior, called relational aggression, to maintain their social status. In fact, a number of books and movies have come out recently exploring this phenomenon, including the best-selling "Queen Bees and Wannabes" and the movie "Mean Girls." "But it is striking that these aggressive strategies are already apparent ... in preschool," Nelson said. "Preschoolers appear to be more sophisticated in their knowledge of social behaviors than credit is typically given them."
It's hardwired in the DNA, getting more attention also meant you were more likely to get first crack at the roots and berries mom was gathering from the plains of Africa back in the day.
Hart said other research has found that about 17 percent to 20 percent of preschool and school-age girls display such behavior. It also shows up in boys, but much less frequently. "The typical mantra is that boys are more aggressive than girls, but in the last decade we've learned that girls can be just as aggressive as boys, just in different ways," he said.
Posted by: Steve ||
05/09/2005 10:55:12 AM ||
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#1
In other news, stabbing a needle in your eye still hurts.
#3
Wonder how much of a grant paid for that research?
Posted by: Fred ||
05/09/2005 13:28 Comments ||
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#4
I dunno, Fred, but I could have told them the same thing for half the money. ;-p
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
05/09/2005 16:32 Comments ||
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#5
Wait until the Naomi Wolf feminists hear about this ... you know, the ones who assume that women are sweet and we just need to eliminate testosterone poisoning for the world to be wonderful.
Posted by: too true ||
05/09/2005 16:36 Comments ||
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#6
The NWFs are fools -- testosterone can be a wonderful thing in the right people! ;-)
Drudge Radio... Drudge got a "flash"... an anonymous tip from NY Times... Staffer says tomorrow's NY Times will show a study on NY Times Readers conducted by NY Times... that only 21 percent of NY Times Readers believe what they're reading.
UPDATE: The Times itself has an article up on this study. I've updated the title for this entry too.
#5
Here's a tip for the NYT: quit making stuff up.
Posted by: Matt ||
05/09/2005 11:35 Comments ||
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In order to build readers' confidence, an internal committee at The New York Times has recommended taking a variety of steps, including having senior editors write more regularly about the workings of the paper, tracking errors in a systematic way and responding more assertively to the paper's critics.
The committee also recommended that the paper "increase our coverage of religion in America" and "cover the country in a fuller way," with more reporting from rural areas and of a broader array of cultural and lifestyle issues.
In other words, they'll more abrasively attack rurals as rubes and hicks, and snarl at the paper's critics...."Quit making stuff up" isn't addressed
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/09/2005 11:42 Comments ||
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#7
Yeah, yeah, all god's chilluns' got religion now. That's beside the point. It's about a news model based on one organization's extraordinary market power that's now disappearing.
Until the web, the Times abused enjoyed something like Microsoft's market domination, using its syndication agreements and exhaustive reseller network and its sway over the east coast establishment and TV networks to push their own monopolized information product. Like MS Windows, the Times' product was full of bugs and in many ways inferior to competing products which the Times used its market power to eliminate or push out of public view.
No matter: the Times Knows Best. A "single standard" opinion-setter for the nation's elite, like a single standard operating system, had certain benefits. But even that argument's lost its validity. Linux in OS, and the blogosphere re news and opinion: open source, as messy as it is, becomes more and more stable and reliable, and customers are beginning to realize this.
Today the NYT's basically a lifestyle guide for upscale urban liberals. The National Conscience pose was always absurd, but there's no more monopoly power to enforce it, and the east coast elite no longer dominate the nation's agenda or its thinking.
#11
The committee asserted that The Times must respond to its critics. The report said it was hard for the paper to resist being in a "defensive crouch" during the election but now urged The Times to explain itself "actively and earnestly" to critics and to readers who are often left confused when charges go unanswered.
"We strongly believe it is no longer sufficient to argue reflexively that our work speaks for itself," the report stated. "In today's media environment, such a minimal response damages our credibility," it added. As a result, the committee said, the newsroom should develop a strategy for evaluating public attacks on The Times and determining whether and how to respond to them. "We need to be more assertive about explaining ourselves - our decisions, our methods, our values, how we operate," the committee said, acknowledging that "there are those who love to hate The Times"' and suggesting a focus instead on people who do not have "fixed" opinions about the paper. A parallel goal of this strategy, the committee said, was to assure reporters "that they will be defended when they are subjected to unfair attack." The defense should be led by journalists in the newsroom, the report said, "with support and advice from our corporate communications, marketing and legal departments."
In other words; "Say nice things about us or we'll sic our lawyers on you!"
Posted by: Steve ||
05/09/2005 15:25 Comments ||
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So are they going to send foreign correspondents to 'fly-over' country. This should be more fun than the Guardian urging their readers to help 'advise' Ohio voters prior to the last presidential election. Cry havoc and let slip the prose of condescension ...
A Pakistani man was executed on Sunday for attempting to smuggle heroin into the kingdom, said the Interior Ministry. Salim bin Khan Abdul Rahman had entered Saudi Arabia using a fake passport. He was arrested while trying to smuggle heroin he had hidden by swallowing it, said a ministry statement. He was executed in Jeddah, bringing the number of people executed in Saudi Arabia this year to 43. Last year, 35 people were executed.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/09/2005 00:00 ||
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Saudi Arabia beheads Pakistani
I would like to see some reciprocity.
;-)
Aren't AQ-istas trafficking hash to get funding? Well, any time Soddies would like to get a rid of 'deviants' if they did not shoot first them by a sheer luck, they can plant a little stash of hash.
A leak of highly radioactive nuclear fuel dissolved in concentrated nitric acid, enough to half fill an Olympic-size swimming pool, has forced the closure of Sellafield's Thorp reprocessing plant.
The highly dangerous mixture, containing about 20 tonnes of uranium and plutonium fuel, has leaked through a fractured pipe into a huge stainless steel chamber which is so radioactive that it is impossible to enter.
Recovering the liquids and fixing the pipes will take months and may require special robots to be built and sophisticated engineering techniques devised to repair the £2.1bn plant.
The leak is not a danger to the public but is likely to be a financial disaster for the taxpayer since income from the Thorp plant, calculated to be more than £1m a day, is supposed to pay for the cleanup of redundant nuclear facilities.
The closure could hardly have come at a worse time for the nuclear industry. Britain is struggling to meet its target of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 20% of 1990 levels by 2010, despite a substantial programme of wind farm construction, while generating capacity will also be hit by the rundown of some of Britain's coal-fired power stations.
The decision on whether to build a new generation of nuclear power stations is among the most sensitive Tony Blair faces at the start of his third term.
A leak of a briefing paper to ministers on the nuclear option yesterday revealed that the contribution new nuclear capacity could make to cutting greenhouse gases had not yet been considered because of opposition from Margaret Beckett, secretary of state for environment, food and rural affairs.
The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, a quango which took over ownership of the plant from British Nuclear Fuels on April 1, has a £2.2bn cleanup budget for this year, its first year of operation, of which £560m was to come from the Thorp plant.
Richard Flynn, spokesman for the NDA, said: "If the income from the plant is not forthcoming then obviously it will put back plans for cleaning up."
On Friday the British Nuclear Group, a management company formed to run the Sellafield site on behalf of the NDA, held a meeting with the government safety regulator, the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate (NII), to discuss how to mop up the leak and repair the pipe. The company has to get the inspectors' approval before proceeding.
A problem at the plant was first noticed on April 19 when operators could not account for all the spent fuel that had been dissolved in nitric acid. It was supposed to be travelling through the plant to be measured and separated into uranium, plutonium and waste products in a series of centrifuges. Remote cameras scanning the interior of the plant found the leak.
Although most of the material is uranium, the fuel contains about 200kg (440lb) of plutonium, enough to make 20 nuclear weapons, and must be recovered and accounted for to conform to international safeguards aimed at preventing nuclear materials falling into the wrong hands. The liquid will have to be siphoned off and stored until the works can be repaired, but a method of doing this has yet to be devised.
The company has set up a board of inquiry to find out how the leak occurred. The NII will set up a separate investigation and has the power to prosecute if correct procedures have not been followed.
The Thorp plant produces uranium and plutonium from spent fuel in such large quantities that only a tiny proportion of it can ever be reused for reactor fuel. Its critics also claim it is uneconomic because it has never operated to design capacity since it opened 12 years ago, and is years behind schedule in fulfilling orders.
This has angered some customers and the British Nuclear Group is embroiled in a court case with one of its customers, the German owners of the Brokdorf power station, which is withholding fees of £2,772 a day for storage of spent fuel, claiming it should have been reprocessed years ago.
In 12 years Thorp has reprocessed 5,644 tonnes of fuel from its first 10-year target of 7,000 tonnes. Last year it failed to reach its target of 725 tonnes, achieving 590.
Martin Forwood, of Cumbrians Opposed to Radioactive Environment, said the NDA had been "naive" in placing trust on income from Thorp, given its track record. "Reprocessing is blatantly incompatible with the official cleanup remit of the NDA, which will now find itself out of pocket as a result of the latest Thorp accident. The new owners would do the taxpayer the greatest service by putting Thorp out of its misery and closing it once and for all."
The managing director of British Nuclear Group, Sellafield, Barry Snelson, who ordered the plant to be closed down, said: "Let me reassure people that the plant is in a safe and stable state."
#3
Oh loward, now the "We're gonna glow green and DIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEE" loonies are getting the Moonbat call.
Posted by: Laurence of the Rats ||
05/09/2005 16:17 Comments ||
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I find it hard to believe there are 20 tonnes of fuel in half an Olympic size swimming pool. I don't remember just how much uranium is in a critical mass but it's a lot less than 20 tonnes. It doesn't take a lot of uranium to make up a tonne volume wise and it is dissolved in nitric acid, which is very nasty stuff itself, but that number still seems quite high. One can have a critical mass but not a nuclear explosion if the concentration and shape aren't right. A nuclear reactor has more than enough for a critical mass but there isn't a nuclear explosion because the fuel rods are long and not concentrated. You do get extremely high heat as seen in the Chernoybol and 3 Mile Island accidents. Hmmm, I'll have to do some cipherin' on that 20 tonnes.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
05/09/2005 16:34 Comments ||
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At one time, fast breeder reactors running on plutonium seemed like good idea and reprocessing was needed to make it work. Since then reprocessing has provided way to much ammunition for the anti-nuclear ideologues. Let's accept reprocessing is a bad idea, shut it down, bury nuclear waste in disused coal mines and start building uranium fueled reactors.
Plutonium is removed from spent fuel by chemical separation; no nuclear or physical separation (as for example in uranium enrichment) is needed. To be used in a nuclear weapon, plutonium must be separated from the much larger mass of non-fissile material in the irradiated fuel.
The jargon 'head end' is applied to those operations which must be carried out before the separation process itself begins. They include receipt of the fuel in the head end plant and mechanical operations to reduce the fuel elements to a more suitable form for the processes which follow.
Once free of the supporting structure, the elements are cut up, placed in a dissolver and dissolved in hot nitric acid. During this process, the 'dissolver off-gases' krypton, xenon, iodine and carbon dioxide, together with nitrogen oxides and steam (from the nitric acid) are released. All of these, except krypton and xenon which are chemically inert, but radioactive, gases, are typically trapped or recycled for re-use. Any particles of fuel cladding or fission products which have not dissolved are removed by filtering them out in a centrifuge.
After being separated chemically from the irradiated fuel and reduced to metal, the plutonium is immediately ready for use in a nuclear explosive device. If the reactor involved uses thorium fuel, 233 U, also a fissile isotope, is produced and can be recovered in a process similar to plutonium extraction.
B-2 bombers, F-15E fighters in Guam, Aegis ships in Japan
The U.S. military is beefing up its military capabilities in the Pacific by deploying high-tech aircraft and Navy vessels amid worsening assessments of the prospects of an early solution of the North Korean nuclear standoff.
B-2 Spirit stealth bombers and F-15E fighter jets were deployed in Guam recently on a rotation basis. Experts noted the bombers and fighters have the range to strike North Korea`s nuclear facilities and high-profile stocks of missiles in the event of any conflict.
The U.S. military plans to introduce two newer Aegis combat system vessels in Japan this summer, replacing one Aegis-equipped vessel and another old destroyer, making the total number of Aegis-equipped warships seven.
The Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force runs four Aegis-equipped ships, making 11 Aegis ships in East Sea in emergency.
The U.S. military would not provide any official confirmation, saying that "as a matter of policy, we do not discuss exercise scenarios or specifics of any operations."
"However, several Aegis-equipped destroyers and cruisers have operated in the East Sea as part of several exercises held in conjunction with the Republic of Korea Navy in the past several months," said David Oten, chief public information official at United States Forces Korea. "Each of these exercises was held in accordance with international maritime law and in full compliance with the principles of freedom of navigation."
These military developments in the western Pacific are part of the U.S. deterrent against any possible North Korean aggression, but also could heighten tensions on the Korean Peninsula as Washington`s patience wears thin in dealing with Pyongyang, some Korean military officials said.
"Though the U.S. military says the deployments are part of rotations planned beforehand and unrelated to any particular threat, the updated capabilities as well as current military capabilities are remarkable," said a Korean military officer on condition of anonymity.
For the first time, a B-2 Spirit bomber squadron with stealth functions was deployed in late February for a two-month tour of duty at Andersen Air Force Base in Guam to enhance regional security in the western Pacific, according to U.S. Air Force officials. But the squadron is extending its stay for an indefinite time.
More than 270 airmen of the 393rd Expeditionary Bomb Squadron were deployed from the 509th Bomb Wing at Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri, currently the only B-2 unit in the U.S. Air Force.
Twelve F-15E Strike Eagles from Mountain Home Air Force Base, Idaho, arrived at Andersen in Guam recently on indefinite deployment, according to Stars & Stripes, the U.S. military newspaper.
The fighter presence is supported by the New York Air National Guard`s 107th Air Refueling Wing, which means the fighters can extend their combat activities through aerial refueling, rolling in over a wide range of the Korean Peninsula.
Adding to the significant U.S. deterrent are the Aegis-equipped warships.
U.S. Navy officials announced the newer, advanced Aegis combat warships will replace two guided-missile vessels leaving Yokosuka, Japan, for decommissioning in San Diego.
The Aegis-equiped destroyer USS Lassen is expected to arrive at Yokosuka Naval Base around June, replacing the cruiser USS Vincennes. The USS Stethem will be deployed in September, replacing the USS Cushing. Both vessels are presently based in San Diego.
Additionally, three warships from the 7th Fleet are on rotating patrol duty in the East Sea (Sea of Japan) to detect any ballistic missile firings by North Korea and relay the information immediately to systems capable of shooting down any missiles. The ships are the USS Curtis Wilbur, USS John S. McCain and USS Fitzgerald.
The other two are the USS Cowpens and USS Chancellorsville, both Yokosuka-based Aegis guided-missile cruisers.
The Aegis combat system is part of the U.S. deterrent against North Korea, military officials said, recalling remarks this past week by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice after North Korea test-fired a short-range missile.
Rice said on Monday that the United States "maintains significant deterrent capability of all kinds in the Asia-Pacific region" to thwart the communist state`s nuclear ambitions.
South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon`s blunt assessment Wednesday of prospects regarding the stalled six-party talks also reflected a growing negative atmosphere in the region.
Ban said the standoff on North Korea`s nuclear program has reached a "level of considerable concern" and the prospects of reopening the six-party talks to resolve the dispute are not bright.
His comments raised speculation that the United States might have notified the Seoul government it could discuss increasing pressure against Pyongyang if the North shows no signs of returning to the six-way talks in a specific period.
"When a diplomatic chief says the issue is difficult to get resolved diplomatically, then the remarks indicate it is already a serious situation," a Korean military official commented.
#3
I don't think the Aegis changes are really significant. We've been planning on replacing the cruisers with the DD's all along. Heck the new Aegis DD's are nearly the size of some cruisers to begin with.
The fighter presence is supported by the New York Air National Guard`s 107th Air Refueling Wing, which means the fighters can extend their combat activities through aerial refueling rolling in over a wide range of the Korean Peninsula.
Posted by: too true ||
05/09/2005 10:29 Comments ||
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If you air refuel the F-15 then it can go all the way to China if need be. The limitation becomes the pilot and not the aircraft. The fact that the F-15E is deployed would indicate that a ground attack. Perhaps we are going to stop the Norks nuke test before it starts?
#6
Or give a warning not to try to act while we do something in Iran, perhaps?
Or most likely of all, be prepared for any of these scenarios.
Posted by: too true ||
05/09/2005 10:37 Comments ||
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won't be unarmed, unescorted, P3's next air confrontation with China, I bet
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/09/2005 10:53 Comments ||
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#8
Since the Aegis ships are planned to be part of the first (or second) tier of the missile defense shield, two questions need to be asked. The first is, are the anti-missiles in Alaska fully operational? And second, are the airborne laser 747's operationally deployed?
#11
My guess is because the oldest members of the Ticonderoga class don't have the Vertical Launch System and the navy didn't want to spend the money to retrofit it in.
Posted by: ed ||
05/09/2005 15:32 Comments ||
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Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
05/09/2005 15:58 Comments ||
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#6
the coalition against the EU constitution does include some far right groups, however it also includes some far left groups and some mainstream groups and some small business groups and some Islamic groups
it is one of the most diverse coalitions in history
the coalition to support the EU constitution is however is, in some ways, not very diverse; its made up of establishment newspapers, establishment politicians, establishment unionists, subsidized businesses, regulated oligopolies, etc.
Posted by: too true ||
05/09/2005 16:12 Comments ||
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Frank G, Careful - you can probably guess where its been... Yuck!
She blamed the Second World War on "nationalistic pride and greed, and ⦠international rivalry for wealth and power". The EU had replaced such rivalry with an historic agreement to share national sovereignty.
Instead she wants the wealth and power concentrated to the Arians Comissioners. I seem to recall someone else who wanted that as well... hmm.... lets see what was that name again.... Adolf... someone....
#15
She blamed the Second World War on "nationalistic pride and greed, and ⦠international rivalry for wealth and power". So say the Marxists. Others say it was a war between different visions of the future of socialism.
#1
Outside of the fact that the UK is not a member of the EMU and still retains the pound sterling any decrease in their economic fire power should be a bow shot to the others in Europe especially France and Germany who are still in a decade long denial.
Posted by: Jack is Back! ||
05/09/2005 9:45 Comments ||
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#2
imo, the slump in the UK is unfortunate but not really decisive. Right now, much of the world economy is keeping close tabs on what is happening in China. The cost of oil much be taking putting a big hit on their economy but we don't know how much of a hit. If the Chinese economy weakens, it is much, much more serious psychologically than a slump in the UK economy even though the GNP of the UK is bigger than the GNP of the PRC.
#3
There is going to be major worldwide trauma starting the day that China floats the Yuan. The word has gone out among governments and financial players that everybody should be doubly ready to slam on the brakes--big time. It should prove to be very entertaining.
#5
'Euro' was short for European. For the last decade the UK has been the most robust economy in western Europe and an abrupt slowdown is a surprise. Japan is in recession. Germany is almost there and France and Italy are looking none to heathy. Otherwise, I agree with the Moose. China will revalue the yuan to curtail domestic inflation and all hell will break loose.
Turkey's broadcasting watchdog has come under fire for banning four adult television channels, with critics charging that the move flouted the country's efforts to expand individual liberties in its quest to join the European Union.
Note the slight conflict there: Turkey's a democracy; individual liberty's un-Islamic. What to do? Consult your local holy man.
The Higher Board of Radio and Television announced its decision to take off air Playboy TV, Adult TV, Exotica TV and Rouge TV on Friday, saying that broadcasts should "conform with the public interest ... and the national, moral, human, spiritual and cultural values of the Turkish nation."
Obviously, all those channels were about to go out of business for lack of viewers, since their content's against the national, moral, human, spiritual and cultural values of the entire Turkish nation.
The board chairman denied suggestions that the ban might have been imposed under pressure from Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government, a conservative movement with Islamist roots, while officials from Erdogan's Justice and Development Party (AKP) also joined the critics.
That does come as a surprise...
The four banned channels were broadcast late at night on a private network and were available only to subscribers. "If certain people pay money to watch programs with sexual content, this is their personal choice," senior AKP member Faruk Celik told the mass-selling Hurriyet newspaper yesterday. "This choice concerns not the society but the people who buy that service," he said. "Their liberty should not be restricted."
But I suspect it will be...
Posted by: Fred ||
05/09/2005 00:00 ||
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What a bipolar basketcase of a nation. When the EU finally says "sorry we actually don't want you" the Turkish ministry of virtue and suppression of vice will come crawling proudly out of it's hole.
Indonesian police have arrested a Muslim preacher for leading daily prayers in both Arabic and Indonesian, a practice mainstream clerics here have condemned as against Islamic teachings, police said on Sunday. Police are planning to charge Yusman Roy with "despoiling an organised religion," a crime that carries a maximum punishment of five years in jail.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/09/2005 00:00 ||
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Misleading a bit.
The article continues:
"Muslims believe that God revealed their faith to Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) in Arabic. Regardless of their proficiency in the language, Muslims worldwide use the language when performing prayers, the five-times a day prayer in which verses from the Quran, Islamâs holy book, are ritually recited. Roy, who local media have described as an ex-boxer and convert from Christianity, reads out the Arabic verse followed by an Indonesian translation when leading prayers at his Islamic boarding school in east Java province."
So, he is being prosecuted not for leading daily prayers in both Arabic and Indonesian, but for the Indonesian translation.
That is very serious. If people would know the content and start to analyse it, who knows what may happen!
#2
Muslims hold that any language other than Arabic cannot carry the exact meaning of the Quran and therefore any writing in another language is an interpretation, and is therefore suspect.
Sobiesky has a good point.
I cannot say too much about this, as I wish to protect my source; but it's amazing what happens when people who have been reading Arabic characters for prayers they don't understand suddenly get their own language written out, using the Arabic characters, and new information coming to them.
I've had the same type of discussions with Moslems who have just learned what the Quran actually is about. A lot of them are disgusted by the incompetant writing style, a lot of them are horrified by the violence, a lot of them are surprized by the contradictions. However, some of them, who take the meaning seriously, are inspired to commit to violent Jihad.
#7
This is the same reason the medieval Catholic church insisted that all church services be performed in Latin and all bibles written in Latin. If the followers could read the scriptures for themselves they might develop their own interpretations of God's word. Which is exactly what happened when bibles were translated into the common languages - the Prostestant reformations began and the church lost alot of wealth and power.
Something like this could happen in Islam. Translate the work and let muslims find out what is actually in the Koran and Hadiths, not just what they have been told is there by some Imam with an agenda.
As for only one language being 'proper' to convey scripture, IMHO if it is really the Word of God then the divine message should come shining thru in ANY language.
TEHERAN - Iran insisted on Sunday its new main international airport was safe despite warnings to travellers by Britain, Canada and Australia that the runway may be unsound.
Britain and Canada angered Iran by issuing a travel warning against using the Imam Khomeini International Airport on April 29, the day before the airport began operating. Australia last week echoed the advice, warning that, "Reports indicate that the runway at the new Imam Khomeni International Airport in Teheran may not yet be suitable for use".
Iran has rejected the advisories, which were based on information that the airport's runway may be built on top of some ancient underground irrigation channels. "There is no doubt that this airport is safe. Planes are landing and taking off at this airport," Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told a weekly news conference.
As safe as anything designed by Mad Mullah Engineering Consultants could be. They also do earthquake-proof housing ...
The airport, located 30 miles (48 km) south of Teheran, is currently only handling flights to and from the United Arab Emirates. Other Gulf destinations are due to be added in coming days and all international flights to Teheran should be switched there by next March.
Iranian anger about the travel warnings has focused on Britain with one parliamentarian accusing London of having demanded the airport's name be changed. Britain has denied that accusation and says its travel warning is based solely on its duty to inform British citizens of any information that could jeopardise their safety. "We don't see this as a technical issue. We see it mainly as a work of propaganda," Asefi said. "As officials from different organisations including the Roads and Transport Ministry have said, this airport is fully secure and we have not received any report regarding a lack of safety at this airport," he added.
Who would dare?
Posted by: Steve White ||
05/09/2005 00:00:00 AM ||
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I hope that, pretty soon, that airport is going to be a lot safer than their "peaceful nuclear power" research labs.
On the financial side of the summary, Huffington stressed the profit potential of her venture. And I'm told that, in conversations with those she fingered as potential investors, she spoke of her ambition to raise $5 million to underwrite her new company, which she amusingly likened to getting in on the ground floor of AOL "pre-merger."
The words are in English, but they don't make any sense. It costs $5 million to blog? I'm sure glad I got in on the ground floor, before the prices went up...
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/09/2005 19:36 ||
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#1
I took a brief peek at Arriana Huffinpuff's blog; looked like it was targeted at folks who find People magazine too cerebral.
Posted by: Dave D. ||
05/09/2005 19:44 Comments ||
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#2
the takedown in the article is a fisking for sure LOL
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/09/2005 19:56 Comments ||
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#3
That's a righteous smackdown, lol!
Whassup with all the Big $$$? Blogs don't cost Big $$$. I'l bet Matt Drudge doesn't spend Big $$$ - though he prolly makes Big $$$. Sheesh. If blogging, real blogging, was an expensive proposition, it wouldn't be as common as fleas on a Hollyweird starlet. So what was the Big $$$ for? Stock? Lol!
Can anyone post the URL for this thingy? - I'd like to have a look. I presume it doesn't offer the ability to post comments, unless you're a registered luminary. Geez, ya think those Hollyweird types could remember a password with mixed alphanumerics? Heh.
Too funny - Thx Frank.
And someone post the URL so we can all share in the joy.
I still want to know where the money is supposed to go - what Isee here is a bunch of donated content. No way they need a web team for more than 2 people to handle this - especially since it's an MT (Moveable Type) site. Huffy must be paying herslf, lol!
#10
I dunno what it is, but when I read it, I hear her annoying f*&king voice LOL
an earworm from hell.
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/09/2005 21:06 Comments ||
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#11
Crankcase's contribution is to promise future contributions. Obviously, no one read what he wrote or they would've headlined it differently. There is no there there, lol!
#14
Arianna's an outsider, and will always be one. One thing Hollywood and the entertainment world can be counted on is to not spend their own money; it will be their 'time' or Other Peoples' Money (the former used to gather the latter).
#15
Nice wrist-work on that evisceration by Finke. This, I thought, was over the top: Her blog is such a bomb that it's the box-office equivalent of Gigli, Ishtar and Heaven's Gate rolled into one.
Come, come, I thought. Nothing's that bad. Now I don't know. For example, the attempt at a satirical jab at the anti-gay marriage crowd revealed hitherto unknown meaning in the phrase WTF? (I'm glad Finke told us who this Louis-Dreyfus woman is, because I didn't know.)
And Mike Nichols's meditation on metaphor comes close to saying that we need to do away with pesky old facts in favor of fantasy. (At least, inasmuch as he seems to be saying anything, that's what he seems to be saying.)
Well, a source of high protein and rich in iron[y], for as long as it lasts.
Why don't we just hang up a sign saying "America's Bath House" and be done with it?
- From bondage to "breath play" and zoophilia, it's not easy keeping up with society's fast-developing sexual trends. That's why some of North America's top sexologists are hunkered down with academics and therapists at a Fisherman's Wharf hotel this weekend: to swap findings about everything from teens with underwear fetishes to transgender couples.
And this differs from a average day in San Francisco, how?
"These couples have problems that I didn't know how to deal with," said Olga Perez Stable Cox, president of the Western U.S. region of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality.
Really, we don't have to make this stuff up.
"You have to understand the culture, otherwise you're an outsider, and you don't get laid it." The theme for the society's four-day conference is "Unstudied, Understudied And Underserved Sexual Communities."
Running out of gay and/or lesbian and/or bisexual and/or transgendered and/or hermaphroditics volunteers and/or gender-confused, are we?
Presentations range from autoerotic asphyxiation, or "breath play," to zoophiles, or animal lovers, to more mainstream topics like sex motives of dating partners.
"So, what's your sex motive?"
"Getting laid, what's yours?"
"Let me tell you, it was not easy finding these pictures," Hunter College professor Jose E. Nanin told his audience in a seminar about "specialized" sexual behavior among gay men.
Funny, people keep trying to send them to me every day. That, and the millions they have stashed in African bank accounts.
Nanin's photos are more than an explicit how-to of exhibitionism and sadomasochism, he says; they are examples of safe alternatives to sexual intercourse that need to be de-stigmatized in order to fight diseases like HIV/AIDS.
Right. Rather than taking a chance on catching HIV/AIDS, put a plastic baggie over your German shepherd's head. And de-stigmatize it.
Researchers say their greater goal is to help the medical community, the public and legislators figure out what behavior is merely out of the norm versus downright dangerous.
San Francisco: The Nation's Bathroom, Where We Spend Too Much Time Exploring our Sexuality. Does the city produce anything anymore, other than sexual freak shows?
Posted by: Steve ||
05/09/2005 3:30:53 PM ||
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#1
Hard to find? Where the heck are they looking, the church bulletin? I run across it every time I fire up Kazaa, and I ain't even looking for it.
#4
Cox reported that researchers are intrigued by the news of a bizarre act believed to be performed by residents of the central US regions. "Apparently, these weirdos are doing it with members of the opposite sex! Ewww!"
1. copulation with a blender while it is running.
2. oral stimulation of an old-style wringer washing machine.
3. Use of lighted roman candles as sex toys.
4. Fetishistic abuse of killer bees.
5. Same as #3 but with razor blades.
6. Three- or more-some with Lynne Stewart and Michael Moore.
7. Orgies at Ramsey Clark's house.
8. Anthrax spores as an aphrodisiac.
9. Any involvement with this woman(?)
10. This (can't bear to describe it, view at your own risk).
#1
Summary: Boston Globe publishes article by English journalist Geoffrey Wheatcroft who says OK we had to fight Hitler, but did we really have to be so nasty about it? And as for the Pacific war, the Marines were truly upleasant chaps: Still, the Marines scarcely pretended to take prisoners (even when the Japanese wanted to surrender), while the score for Pearl Harbor was more than settled at Hiroshima. And it all shows that Bush is bad, QED.
Posted by: Matt ||
05/09/2005 11:59 Comments ||
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#2
"The power to cause pain is the only power that matters, the power to kill and destroy, because if you can't kill then you are always subject to those who can, and nothing and no one will ever save you." - Ender Wiggin
#3
The Marines stopped taking prisoners when the Japs would "surrender" and then blow themselves up after they were near our troops. They would also play dead, then blow themselves up or shoot the Marines in the back (Austrailians too) after they passed by. The Marines then started shooting and bayonetting every corpse they came across. They would also force the few Japs that surrendered to strip to make sure they didn't have any explosives. If the Japs wouldn't do it, they got shot. Kinda like what the Marines faced in Iraq.
#4
I didn't even see the "Bush is bad" concept, except by a long stretch of the imagination. Maybe he made the same mistake as others - about the war starting the day of a sneak attack.
I did see a lot of "for a good war, it was pretty nasty", and we were a lot nastier to the Japanese than the Germans, and the Soviets took the most casualties - and - oh by the way - the most territory.
He noted Studs Terkel called it "The Good War", which would've been in comparison to Vietnam, meaning that the achievements of WWII were more clear 25 years after the end of WW II than the causes and effects of the Vietnam war were when Terkel said it - I'm guessing 1970.
So there is no such thing as a good war, and not finding WMD's in Iraq doesn't make it a bad war, either. This one's better executed than Vietnam, or WW II. More "bang for the buck", so to speak.
Posted by: Bobby ||
05/09/2005 12:49 Comments ||
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#5
It's not astonishing that such an idiotic article with sweeping historical distortions linked to modern political potshots is publishable in Boston's Globe. The author and editors would do well to get some remedial education. Perhaps they might want to look into personal accounts of combat vets from Tarawa or Saipan.
#7
I don't see it as such a bad article--he brings up some good points from different perspectives. The Soviets do deserve a lot of credit for absorbing the most casualties and occupying the bulk of the German army while we got our footholds established in Africa, Italy, and France.
However it should be noted that the Soviet style of fighting certainly led to more casualties than necessary. There was no widespread use of human wave-style attacks with political commissars trailing behind to shoot shirkers by the Western Allies.
I don't care for this statement, however: Not only did it take the Western Allies nearly three years after the German attack on Russia seriously to engage the German army in Normandy, but even then most of the fighting was still on the other side of Europe.
To that I say: Egypt, Libya, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Malta, Sicily, Italy, the Mediterranean, the Atlantic, the bombing campaign... any of that ring a bell?
If we're supposed to feel that our contribution is somehow lesser because we didn't incur as many casualties as the Soviets, I say that's crap. We had different styles of fighting and a material advantage to exploit to keep our casualty numbers lower--and we DID--all the while supplying our forces from across an ocean. I think we should be even prouder for those reasons.
Posted by: Dar ||
05/09/2005 13:45 Comments ||
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#8
Oh, and one more beef--what's the big deal about when the war started? For us, it was Dec. 7, '41. For most of Europe, Sept. 1, '39. For the Chinese, it was years earlier. It's a matter of perspective, and that's our perspective! Deal with it!
Posted by: Dar ||
05/09/2005 13:52 Comments ||
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Soviet incurred casualties of around 11.5 million. On the Eastern Front the Germans lost 9.5 million.
The remainder can be explained by losses to other Axis partners.
So, losses were about equal between the combants on the Eastern Front, but you can't explain high Axis casualties from 'human wave' attacks.
Human wave infantry attacks did happen from the Red Army, but they were not widespread and routine, and they do not account for the huge number of casualties for the Red Army.
The proximate cause of casualties are, in my opinion and from what I read are:
1) Artillery strikes. Especially heinous when you consider that many Red Army soldiers did not wear helmets to protect themselves from head injuries.
2) Captivity and starvation/exposure in captivity.
3) Poor tactics and interference by the political element of the Red Army (commissars)
Much of the above losses can explained by the dearth of professional officers during the war. Stalin didn't just decapitate the Red Army officer corps. He immolated it.
#11
A good example of US power is this; When Hitler launched the Ardennes Offensive he and his Generals calculated it would take at least a week for Eisenhower to regroup and get reserve troops commited. They calculated that Patton would not be able to attack for at least a week, either. Within 2 days of the German attack Eisenhower had moved 250,000 troops, guns, ammunition et al to positions where they stopped the German advance and in addition Patton was able to attack almost immediatly. They Germans didn't count on the 82 and 101 Airborne being able to stop them, either.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
05/09/2005 14:12 Comments ||
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#12
It's just another 9/10 maunder from the politically correct. All wars, even those for self-preservation, are bad.
Having been there and done that, I can agree that all war is bad. All surgery's unpleasant, too. I put crap like this down to background noise and ignore it.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/09/2005 14:16 Comments ||
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#13
badanov -- May I ask where you got those figures? Everything I have seen has stated the Soviets had much higher casualties than the Germans, at 10 million vs. 4 million respectively.
One site went through several sources, accumulated their totals, and found median figures of 10 million Soviet military casualties vs. 3.5 million German military casualties.
Posted by: Dar ||
05/09/2005 14:38 Comments ||
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#14
I am recalling the German figures from memory. Now that I see the compendium, I retract that claim on the German side. The Russian figures from the Rusisan MOD is here.
The 9.5 million I recall from a news group but now that I see those numbers, well I was wrong. but when you add the Axis allies you come up with a total of around 5 million for the Axis side for all nations on the Eastern front, and since I use the numbers from the link you provided I use amedian number as well. Could be higher and could be lower.
#15
Dar: The Soviets do deserve a lot of credit for absorbing the most casualties and occupying the bulk of the German army while we got our footholds established in Africa, Italy, and France.
The Soviets made WWII (in both Europe and Asia) possible, by making a separate peace with Germany to divide up Poland. Hitler mounted an invasion of the West, secure in the knowledge that his eastern flanks were secure, due to the Molotov-Ribbentrop non-aggression pact. Once Western Europe was conquered, the Japanese were able to launch their invasion of Southeast Asia, secure in the knowledge that the European powers that ran the region would not be able to respond, given that their industrial heartlands were under German control. As far as I'm concerned, the Soviets got no more than they deserved - without their deal with Hitler, WWII might never have happened.
You guys are one of the reasons I love this site. Civilized discussion with a good debate of the facts. No name calling or other liberal crap. Well done guys!
We should never, never, never forget that if at one point the Allies had beeen expelled from the continent and were not in contact with Axis ground forces it was due to Soviet Union cooperation with the Nazis.
Remember Poland? Germany attacked Septemeber, 1st. That was dangerously close to the dates, were weather worsens significatively (thus grounding the Luftwaffe). In addition in aa country who was not so developped, and the road network not so good, the coming of the bad weather would have meant the German ammo and fuel trucks having to struggle with the mud. That means the campaign could have dragged into the winter thus letting the Wehrmacht too exhausted for a serious Western campaign in 1940. But the Germans needed a quick knockout of Poland since their Westen border was nearly unmanned and the more time they spent in Poland, the greater the danger for the French government overcomming the pusillanimous Gamelin and the French invading Germany and taking the Ruhr virtually unopposed. And the German bluff was close to being exposed when the Poles counterattacked around the 12 Septemeber and forced several German divisions to withdraw but just when the Poles began to believe the worst had passed and that they could survive until the French attack they were stabbed in the back by Soviet Union.
I will also mention the material help given by Soviet Union to Germany in winter 39 thus allowing the Wehrmacht to be much stronger in Spring 1940. I will also mention the work of demoralization, sabotage (some of them tresulting in the death of French soldiers) and interference on military operations (like civilians not allowing the Frenchy Army to make a stand in their towns) performed by the French Communist Party under direct orders of Moscow. If France, had not fallen, thanks in no small part, to Soviet Union efforst and those of its minions then it would have been far easier for the Allies (German submarines having to deaprt from Germany instead of France, no need for D-Day
Also, when you consider the war effort of Soviet Union don't forget that: -the Soviets didn't built a single locomotive after the invasion: the plants were converted to tank production. It was the Allies who kept the railroad-dependent Soviet economy working through sending locomotives. It was also massive imports of Allied trucks who allowed the Red Army to advance west: look carefully at the pictures and you will notice many of them were GMCs (don't doubt Soviet photographers tried to hide them). I will pass upon the clothing, boots or machine tools sent by the Allies and who played a crucial role. I will of course pass upon the effects of Allied naval blackade, or in those of the bombings both direct and indirect (by forcing Germany to muscle its air defence instead of its troops in the eastern front).
So, let's not ourselves be impressed by Soviet/leftist propaganda: Soviet Union had a major responsability on WWII being as bloody and hard fought as it was, Soviet Union had a major responsability in it being very close to end in disaster, Soviet Union had a major responsability in the woes who fell upon it. And Soviet Union would have not have survived without Allied help.
#18
So true, JFM. And one more: from the time the Germans invaded Poland to the moment they invaded the Soviet Union, the Soviets were also Germany's best trading partner, providing vital oil, coal and steel to the Germans at bargain prices. For many reasons it was idiotic for Hitler to invade the USSR, and one of the reasons it was idiotic was that Stalin was giving him a lot of what he wanted anyway in trade and assistance.
Posted by: Steve White ||
05/09/2005 15:22 Comments ||
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#19
These guys are making academic arguments. To anyone with relatives or friends in combat, the issues are not so academic. To me, what it boils down to is who gets to live and who has to die. Call me callous, but the Axis powers had shown by their wartime atrocities against the defeated powers that this wasn't a joust, fought by chivalric rules. Losing to them would have meant mass death. Against such a possibility, I would kill 1,000 of their innocent to save 1 of my own.
#20
I failed to mention that Soviet Union didn't care at all for the fate of those of its Soldiers who had fallen in German hands (1) meaning that its soldiers never got food or medicines from their countryland and died as fleas in the German prisoner camps (of course, there were also many cases of downright assassination: it was Russian prisoners who were used in the demo of gas chambers given at Treblinka for the commander of Auschwitz). Then, in 1945, the surviving Russian prisonners went directly from Nazi camps to Gulag, according to Solzienitzin
(1) And in 1941, millions of them were captured both due to Stalin's criminal tactics and, until it was clear that the German invasion meant genocide, due to a lack of combativity of Soviet troops who thought Germans could be better than Stalin.
#21
JFM: And in 1941, millions of them were captured both due to Stalin's criminal tactics and, until it was clear that the German invasion meant genocide, due to a lack of combativity of Soviet troops who thought Germans could be better than Stalin.
Hitler may have been a good tactician, but he must be one of the dumbest strategists ever to achieve major battlefield successes. Since possibly the beginning of time, captured soldiers have been pressed into service so as to utilize their valuable military skills. Many don't really care who they're fighting for, as long he treats them well and he wins. Hitler treated them like dirt and tried to wipe them out, despite the fact that many hated Stalin. What a bozo.
This diminuation of the Soviet role in WWII from the standpoint of the idealogue is all well and good but consider this:
1) The Red Army was the first Army to conduct a successful offsensive against the Wehrmacht and it happened in JULY of 1941.
2) The Red Army was the first army to decisively defeat the Wehrmacht in December 1941, in the battle of Moscow. Neither the Frogs nor the Tommys can make that claim, only the Red Army.
Yes, the treatment of the Red Army soldiers was criminal, but I do not believe that should in any diminish the sacrifice those brave men and woman made WWII. They are part of the brotherhood of all soldiers and they as well as all others deserve our respect and thanks for what it took to defeat the German Army.
#23
"Apart from the way it was fought, that war was pretty much a traditional contest for imperial hegemony. The Philippines did not belong to Japan by right, nor to America."
When the war in the Pacific began, the United States had already agreed to grant the Philippines its independence. The scheduled year for the handover was 1946. After the war, we kept the schedule. When do you suppose the Japanese Empire would have granted the Philippines their independence?
"...the Third Reich practiced a kind of evil different in kind even from Japanese atrocities."
Japanese occupation policy in China was killing ca. 100,000 Chinese a month by 1945. It would have taken longer for the Japanese to reach the kind of mass-murder numbers that the Nazis acheived, but it was just a matter of time. And Mr. Wheatcraft really ought to read up about a place called Nanking.
Oh, and this business about how the US was more pissed at the Japanese than the Germans? News flash: the British were more angry at the Germans than they were at the Japanese. As any buffoon who can read a basic history book could tell you, there are reasons for both attitudes.
Posted by: Pat Phillips ||
05/09/2005 15:40 Comments ||
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#24
"Behind this lies an awkward truth, one we didnât learn in the cheerful war comics and books of my boyhood in the 1950s, but on which all serious military historians are now agreed. From the beginning to the end of that war, whenever the British Army met the Wehrmacht on anything like equal terms, the Germans always prevailed. And that pretty much goes for the US Army too, from their first disastrous encounter with the Germans, at Kasserine Pass in North Africa, in early 1943. American and British commanders always took good care thereafter that they had an overwhelming superiority in men and especially in weaponry before engaging the enemy."
Sigh. Wehrmacht Worship, the strangest affliction of amateur strategists. It's certainly true that the learning curve against the Germans was pretty step for every army that faced them, but I'm hard-pressed to see how anyone could think the US and British armies by 1944 weren't perfectly capable of winning one-on-one fights with the supposed German super-soldiers. Oh, and here's another note for Mr. Wheatcraft: making sure that you have "overwhelming superiority" over the enemy is indicitive of good strategy and tactics -- not of of a failure of nerve or skill.
Okay, I'm going to stop now. There's no point in elevating my blood pressure any further because of this BS.
Posted by: Pat Phillips ||
05/09/2005 15:44 Comments ||
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#25
ZF -- Let's not forget how many Soviets welcomed the German invaders in the first few weeks as well, seeing them as liberators instead of oppressors. That changed once the SS and Einsatztruppen came in and let them know they went from the frying pan to the fire. The Germans converted a good source of willing manpower from their own cause to the partisan cause with their brutality.
Posted by: Dar ||
05/09/2005 15:49 Comments ||
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#26
Oh, and here's another note for Mr. Wheatcraft: making sure that you have "overwhelming superiority" over the enemy is indicitive of good strategy and tactics -- not of of a failure of nerve or skill.
Well put, Pat, but I would add that the Wehrmacht did the same thing as well. And it is indeed considered good operational art if you can catch your enemy with a local superiority.
The Russians routinely did attack with massive local superiority, but the Germans used mobile tactics to diminish that advantage. I think Gen. Walton Walker took a page from German defensive tactics during the Korean War in fighting the NorKs.
#27
Pat -- Actually the Japanese did promise the Filipinos independence, and it was to be granted earlier than the original '46 target date set by the Americans. However, by and large the brutality of the Japanese and their installation of a non-elected puppet government subservient to Japan made it a sham, and many (most?) Filipinos welcomed the Allies back in '44.
Posted by: Dar ||
05/09/2005 15:53 Comments ||
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#28
Yes, the treatment of the Red Army soldiers was criminal, but I do not believe that should in any diminish the sacrifice those brave men and woman made WWII. They are part of the brotherhood of all soldiers and they as well as all others deserve our respect and thanks for what it took to defeat the German Army.
Badanov -- Well put. I have nothing but respect for the typical Soviet soldier for what he endured and accomplished. His leaders and his government were almost as hostile to him as the Germans he faced and he still persevered.
My contention is the author's apparent viewpoint that because the Western Allies didn't suffer as much we shouldn't be as proud of our own fighting men and women, as if there were nobility in suffering. I can't agree.
Posted by: Dar ||
05/09/2005 16:02 Comments ||
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#29
Interesting thread guys. One point about the Soviets being the first to defeat a German army. The winter of 1941/42 was the coldest in more than a century. Arguably General Winter inflicted the first defeat on a German army in WW2. That was certainly the view of Germans who fought there based on first hand accounts I have read.
#31
badanov: This diminuation of the Soviet role in WWII from the standpoint of the idealogue is all well and good but consider this:
1) The Red Army was the first Army to conduct a successful offsensive against the Wehrmacht and it happened in JULY of 1941.
2) The Red Army was the first army to decisively defeat the Wehrmacht in December 1941, in the battle of Moscow. Neither the Frogs nor the Tommys can make that claim, only the Red Army.
None of what I have written detracts from the Soviet role in defeating the Germans. They were instrumental in the German defeat, because for them, it was a war of survival in a way that it wasn't for either Britain (once the Battle of Britain was won) or for the United States. What I said was that the Soviets made Hitler's invasion of Western Europe possible and WWII necessary. If the Soviets had not made a separate peace with Hitler, the Nazis might have continued ruling Czechoslovakia and Austria, but they would not have been able to mount a successful invasion of Western Europe. And the Japanese would not have had the confidence to invade Southeast Asia, including the Philippines. Next to the Nazis and the Japanese, the Soviets were the major villains of WWII.
#32
Pat -- "Wehrmacht Worship"--LOL! That's the first time I've heard that description, but not the concept. I think a lot of amateurs look at the German weapons, especially the monster tanks, and wonder how they managed to lose. I've also heard plenty describe that the outcome would have been different in a 1:1 "fair" fight--as if there is such a thing.
Posted by: Dar ||
05/09/2005 16:09 Comments ||
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#33
I've also heard plenty describe that the outcome would have been different in a 1:1 "fair" fight--as if there is such a thing.
Fair fight? LOL! Imagine greater Germany attempting to cross the Atlantic... :) Upper-Middle sized Euro power with weak enemies.
#35
Dar: Pat -- "Wehrmacht Worship"--LOL! That's the first time I've heard that description, but not the concept.
I don't have a real problem with saying that the Germans, on a man-for-man basis, were probably the best soldiers of the war. They fought all the major powers simultaneously in land wars and came pretty close to winning, despite being inferior in quantities of both material and men. Much of this had to do with the number of years they had to prepare. Middle school kids had elementary military training that was supplemented later on by a full-scale draft that involved no-nonsense training. All prior to any wars being fought. The US military adopted a lot of the concepts used by the German military, which is partly the reason why Uncle Sam has such a formidable military machine today. The Germans weren't a superior race, but they did know how to put together a war machine. (By contrast, the entire US standing army was 100,000 in 1941, and there were no draftees or provisions for a draft. Uncle Sam geared up fast, but quality-wise, he relied on firepower to make up the difference in training - a level of firepower made possible by superior industrial capacity and the fact that his plants were safe from German attack).
#36
Part of the problem was that the British spent most of the war catching up in the tank and anti-tank gun domain. It goes like this: the British Army had to let behind all of its equipment at Dunkirk. The British had to rearm and fast, that meant stopping development of newer guns (the 6 pounder, ie 57 mm, ie 2.2 inches) and concentrate on weapons already in production: the 2 pounder, ie 40 mm, ie 1.6 inches. The 2 pounder was quite adequate for operating in France against the thinly armored German tanks of 1940 but in the desert its short range allowed the Germans to pound it from a distance. In 1942 the British began equipping their troops with limited numbers of 6 pounders (who would have been devastating in 1941) but by then Rommel was receiving the Mark III special (and its equivalent for Mark IV) who had a new armor technology who broke the anti-tank shell and was not easily defeated by the 6 pounder. Of course the 6 pounder was out of its league when Tigers arrived to North Africa after Torch. But by mid 1943, the British produced the very powerful 17 pounders (76 mmm but it was much more powerful than the American 76 mm), but they had no carriages so they mounted it on carriages for the 25 pounder (88 mm) field gun. But the recoil of the 17 pounder was so much stronger than the one of the 25 pounder that it frequently broke the carriage or exited from it (in addition field guns need to fire with a high degree of elevation thus their carriages have to be tall while AT guns need low carriages to make them harder to spot). It was only in 1944 that the Brits began getting "full" 17 pounders (with the anti-tank carriage) and were for the first time since Dunkirk, really able to deal with any German tank. The mounting of the 17 pounder on the Sherman gave the Sherman Firefly, the one allied tank who was feared by the crews of Tigers and Panthers. But the one allied tank some criminal idiot in the American army refused on the basis of Not Invented Here so Americans continued to die when their weaker 76 mm gun failed to deal with the "cats".
We also have to remember that until El Alamein when they got the Sherman (I omit the Lee-Grant) the British had no tank able to fire a decent high explosive shell so British armor was virtually powerless against anti-tank guns.
Other problems for the British in the early years were inferior infantry tactics and the lack of cooperation from the RAF who was more interested in grandiose plans of strategic bombardment than in providing ground support. Cf the near zero damage inflicted by the RAF to the Afrika Korps when it had to witdraw from El Alamein.
#37
ZF -- It is, to me, a real paradox that a rigid, controlled, and totalitarian society as Nazi Germany could field such a flexible army. Despite the army's rigid discipline, they really allowed their junior officers and senior NCOs an incredible degree of flexibility that was unheard of at the time even in the armies of the democracies. I think that ability to change the plan based on the evolving situation without having to wait for permission gave them a significant edge in most tactical situations.
I can't say they were the best soldiers, but they probably had the best training and tactical doctrine.
Posted by: Dar ||
05/09/2005 17:03 Comments ||
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#38
Pat, if you want to see some serious Wehrmacht worship (great expression, by the way) read Overlord by Sir Max Hastings (whose father was actually in the war, IIRC.) Normally Sir Max sticks to bashing us ignorant colonial types, but if someone from Mars (or a Columbia journalism student) who didn't know the outcome of the war read Overlord, he'd be solidly convinced that Germany won.
Posted by: Matt ||
05/09/2005 17:10 Comments ||
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#39
The German soldiars were good in that they "borrowed" best prctices from the Romans.
#40
And then there is a graet T shirt for sale somewhere on the web that is appropriate to this thread:
In a perfect world,
The Police are all English,
The Engineers all German,
The Lovers are French
The Chefs Italian
and they are all organized by the Swiss.
In Hell, The Police are all German,
The Engineers French
The Lovers are all Swiss
and the Chefs English.
And they are all organized by the Italians.
#41
dar: I can't say they were the best soldiers, but they probably had the best training and tactical doctrine.
To me, that's just another way of saying they had the best soldiers, by which I mean people who actually fight. We had better logistics and more of everything else, which is why we beat them. Even their limitations were understandable - Germany's geographical location was exposed on every side, and wasn't particularly rich in mineral resources. Uncle Sam was bounded by oceans on both sides and the Saudi Arabia of oil. Russia had a huge empire with massive resources inherited from Czarist times. Britain had the English Channel and an empire upon which the sun never set, including India, the Jewel of the Crown. It took Uncle Sam and every European power to beat Germany. We crushed the Japanese fighting pretty much alone with 20-25% of our national resources. If the Germans had stopped to consolidate their holdings instead of attacking the Soviet Union and then unnecessarily declaring war upon Uncle Sam, the Third Reich might still be around today. Unfortunately for them, Hitler decided upon both Operation Barbarossa and a declaration of war upon Uncle Sam, and the rest is history.
#42
Matt: Pat, if you want to see some serious Wehrmacht worship (great expression, by the way) read Overlord by Sir Max Hastings (whose father was actually in the war, IIRC.)
I don't think the English have any particular affection for the Germans - a good number think not enough Germans died. But they recognize a worthy opponent when they see one. My ROTC buddies in college thought the Germans were really something, even though they had no affection for them - they thought the Germans did not pay a high enough price in the postwar period. If Germany had anything like manpower or material parity, most of Europe would be speaking German today.
ZF, I have no doubt that the Germans fought hard and in fact I led off the other WWII thread today with a remark to that effect. But some writers take it to the extreme and remind me of Grant's remark, IIRC, that his generals should stop imagining that General Lee was going to do a double-somersault and wind up on both their flanks and in their rear.
Posted by: Matt ||
05/09/2005 17:41 Comments ||
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#45
WOW. Is this a classic yet?
Posted by: Bobby ||
05/09/2005 17:47 Comments ||
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#46
Yeah the Soviets took many more casualites but they were the ones that carved up the buffer zone between them and the NAZIs instead of propping up the buffer zone (with UK help hopefully).
#47
bobby: I did see a lot of "for a good war, it was pretty nasty", and we were a lot nastier to the Japanese than the Germans, and the Soviets took the most casualties - and - oh by the way - the most territory.
Actually, we were a lot nastier to the Germans - we burnt their cities down with 1000 bomber raids and killed just over a million city-dwellers. Japan had civilian deaths of just a few hundred thousand, and we spared the old imperial capital of Kyoto, whereas we burned Dresden to the ground using napalm bombs, killing an estimated 100,000 people, more than Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. As to battle casualties, the Japanese were renowned for committing suicide (by shooting themselves or charging with fixed bayonets or sabers when their ammo ran out) rather than surrendering. Dozens of bitter-enders were discovered alive in the jungles of the Central and South Pacific decades after the war's end. Nothing comparable happened with German troops.
#48
This repeats the standard leftist dogma about the Pacific War, there is nothing new here. It emphasizes the lefty strawman that "Hiroshima was revenge for Pearl Harbor." This is repeated so often on college campuses, and with so little elaboration, that many undergrads take it literally. The idea is to invite the assumption that we beastly Americans nuked a whole city full of innocents as a reprisal for an attack on a military target. Lefty-liars usually also invite the conclusion that these events happened in a direct sequence over a relatively short period, meaning a matter of weeks rather than years. At least that is what many undergrads conclude, just ask some. In that context, this statement is rather interesting:
"Still, the Marines scarcely pretended to take prisoners (even when the Japanese wanted to surrender), while the score for Pearl Harbor was more than settled at Hiroshima."
The sentence order, and the obvious conclusion, at least invite the inference that Hiroshima occurred before the Marines were so mean and nasty to innocent Japanese jihadis conscripts, reinforcing the implied but widely believed lie that Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima were close together in time. If this is not the case, why is Hiroshima counterposed with the Marines' alleged misconduct? What is the point if Hiroshima didn't happen first (that is, what is the consequent conclusion)? In fact, the sentence makes sense if we assume that Hiroshima happened first, it is pointless otherwise.
The unvarying purpose, as with most academi-lies, the unvarying purpose is to demonize the United States, undermine the confidence of its people, and indulge the urge to demonstrate absolute power by destroying the truth itself.
The writer of this piece is not mistaken, he is not naive, he is not confused, he is not someone with a different and fresh perspective. He is a monster, a nihilist conciously seeking our destruction as an expression of his own will.
#50
in honor of a 49 comment thread that makes sense, allows opposing views and treats everyone equally knowledgeable, let me add a somber note: Aris reports for military duty on Wednesday the 11th. Wish him good luck and a learning experience. Maybe the result will be a better man
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/09/2005 19:17 Comments ||
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#51
I could write so much here...
To start with the subject of the piece, it's your standard revisionist crap. It's impossible to understand Hiroshima unless you know what happened at Okinawa and Iwo Jima. The Japanese in effect said "to take ground from us, you will have to fight inch-by-inch, losing people every one." We said "OK, we won't invade then." Hiroshima was more a response to the Kamikazes than Pearl.
As for the "dirty" fighting the Marines and Army did, well, that's what happens when a dishonorable enemy attacks you. The Japanese violated nearly every concept of the honorable war: attack during peacetime, faking death then attacking, mistreating POWs, personal brutality towards civilians... If you are going to fight the US, it's a very bad idea to piss off the Jackonians in that manner. They tend to take the gloves off and follow LeMay's advice:
"War is about killing people, and when you kill enough, they stop fighting."
If a US submarine torpedoes your ship and tries to rescue you from the water, you probably should not hide weapons and kill them after being hauled out. This tends to result in the next sub that sinks a transport surfacing and machine-gunning the lifeboats. Expect the Captain to receive, not a court martial, but a medal, too.
Compare that to the way Germany formally declared war, generally treated the American POWs acceptably (not well, but acceptably), didn't use "treacherous" tactics (clever, yes. sneaky, yes.) Note that after Malmedy, the SS was in the same boat as the Japs. Very few black-uniformed men captured at the front made it back to the POW camps.
#52
Going on the Germans, they showed a strong graduation over the levels.
Tactically, they were best, even towards the very end, though in '45, all the green troops did degrade quality somewhat.
Operationally, they were pretty good, but not great. It's just that intially their opponents were downright inept. After late 1943, the Russians were at least as good as the Germans in the operational art (Kiev comes to mind), and I would say were actually superior in 1944-45. The Western Allies caught up and were superior later, fall 1944 or so.
Strategically, the Germans were idiots. I'm sorry, but getting in a war with the British Empire, the USSR, and the USA simultaneously shows complete incompetence. Their one danger to the Brits was the U-boat arm, which was starved of funds and men until it was too late. If the effort spend on the Bismarck and Tirpitz had gone into U-boats...
They were very good at combined arms, and even AirLand battle. Air-Sea was a whole 'nother matter, culminating in the Luftwaffe sinking two DDs. German DDs.
Technologically, they were pretty poor. Oh, sure, jet airplanes and ballistic missile look impressive, but they were unable to make enough to make a difference, and those they did build were too unreliable. Meanwhile, their mass-produced front line weapons, which were world class in 1939, became obsolete by 1944. They never came up with a long-range fighter. Most of the second-generation airplanes (Me-210, He-177) were complete flops. Their tanks were very powerful, but very expensive (their yearly production was about equal to the monthly production of the US or USSR), highly unreliable, and hard to repair. The Sherman was the Honda Civic of its day. Not all that impressive, but cheap and highly reliable. (The tracks on a Sherman lasted longer than the engine of a Panther or T-34.)
To sum it up, I'll quote Maxwell Smart:
"If you're so smart, how come you lost two World Wars?"
#53
"If you're so smart, how come you lost two World Wars?"
because they were a small country that crushed their acquisitions so harshly they alienated the populations....the world-conquering army has to smash, then absorb their opponents....IMHO
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/09/2005 20:18 Comments ||
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#54
Ah, the Russians. Quite complicated.
The Red Army killed more German ground troops than all the other allies combined. That's why they usually get the credit for being "the" country to defeat Germany. And if they had fallen, the Allies would have had a devil of a time trying to get back onto the continent; perhaps they simply would have waited for the B-36 to nuke Berlin.
The Germany Navy was 99% engaged with the Western Allies. Far fewer people killed, but lots of time, equipment, and expense (labor, materials).
The Allies engaged over 50% (I think around 65%) of the German air force. They did over 99% of the bombing (yes, the Russians did a little strategic bombing very early and very late in the war). One of the reasons the Germans were handicapped at mobile defense on the eastern front was that the Allies had destroyed their fuel reserves. And, every 88mm and 105mm on Flak duty in Germany was one fewer in Russia blowing up T-34s.
That's all for now. Hope this wasn't too short.
Without lend-lease, the USSR would have fallen. It wasn't so much actual weapons, since those were only about 10% of the Russian native production, but all the parts and raw materials, plus the unglamorous items that are essential.
Food. Russia would have starved without American preserved food.
Aluminum. The Germans held Tikvin long enough to destroy all native production. 100% was lend-lease, and went to their most advanced fighters (Yak-9, etc.).
Fuel. The Allies supplied 100 octane fuel to allow high-performance airplane engines. Germans used 87 and the native Russian stuff was worse. With the high-power engines, Russian airplanes were actually faster than German airplanes by late 1942.
Telephone wire. The Russians were very big on land lines for communications (radios can be intercepted, wires can't without physically digging them up). Russian telephone wire wasn't waterproof (99.9% isn't good enough; it has to be 100%).
Trucks. Count how many tanks were in a Mechanized Corps. Now count how many trucks there were. 95% of those were from the USA. In fact "Studebaker" became the term for military truck well into the 50s.
Oh, and for the quality of the weapons? The Russians thought of the P-39 as better than any of their ground-attack planes (even the IL-2). I'd have to dig out My sources, but a Guards Mechanized Corps (the elite) converted from T-34/85s to Shermans in 1944. The T-34 was better in battle, but the Sherman was better at getting to the battle, or racing through a gap without wearing out and breaking down. The Tank Corps and Breakthrough Regiments kept the T-34s and JS-IIs, though.
As I mentioned, the Red Army wasn't just a huge pile of inept barbarians (after 1941, anyway). They were operationally and strategically at least as good as the Germans after Kursk.
While the Ukranians and Baltics greeted the Germans with flowers, over 1,000,000 men volunteered for the Red Army in the first 6 weeks of the war. They may not have liked Stalin, but they loved Mother Russia.
#55
"The Allies engaged over 50% (I think around 65%) of the German air force."
According to Heinz Magenheimer in HITLER'S WAR: GERMANY'S KEY STRATEGIC DECISIONS 1940-45, only 45.2 percent of the Luftwaffe (LF 1, LF 4, and Luftwaffen Command East) was concentrated against the Soviets as early as June of 1943. (p. 192)
The requirements of AA defense alone required 500,000 men at the start of the German Blitz and found 1.1 million in that role at war's end. (p.230)
Granted that many of them were schoolboys and war prisoners, that is still an enormous drain of manpower that could have been used elsewhere in infrastructure repair and manufacturing.
Magenheimer also argues that Stalin was angling to go after Hitler, and that the "bad defense
(BTW, you can get the book from BARNES & NOBLE for $7.99 as a bargain book ISBN: 076073531x. It is dry but extremely detailed, in the Teutonic tradition)
Posted by: Ernest Brown ||
05/09/2005 20:55 Comments ||
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#56
Oops, I hit the submit button too quickly:
Magenheimer also argues that Stalin was angling to go after Hitler, and that the "bad defense" setup familiar to all of us who have wargamed or read about Barbarossa was actually his preparation to offensively attack Hitler via a "left hook" against Warsaw to the Baltic Sea. Hitler just beat him to it.
Posted by: Ernest Brown ||
05/09/2005 20:59 Comments ||
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#57
May I recommend "Hitler's Mistakes," by (Ronald?) Lewin?
President Joseph Kabila has flown to the Democratic Republic of Congo's second city, Lubumbashi, after reports of an armed uprising in the area. Some 109 people, including soldiers, have been arrested in recent days. Officials talk of an "aborted insurrection attempt", while there are reports of a secessionist uprising in the resource-rich Katanga province. Katanga's leaders failed in their attempt to secede in the 1960s, after a three-year war.
We interupt our story for a musical interlude: Through '66 and 7, they fought the Congo war
With their fingers on their triggers, knee deep in gore
For days and nights they battled the Bantu to their knees
They killed to earn their living and to help out the Congolese
A presidential aide told the BBC that Mr Kabila had gone to Lubumbashi accompanied by the defence minister to reaffirm his authority in the town. His father Laurent Kabila came from Katanga.
Gregoire Molamba, of the Katanga-based Centre for Human Rights, said that there had been arrests in Kinshasa, Kananga, Mbuji Mayi and Lubumbashi in the past few days, with some being questioned by the intelligence services in Lubumbashi. Acting Katanga governor Nkunda Milandou told the BBC that the people arrested are being questioned over their participation in a network whose aim was to destabilize the Congolese institutions. But he has refused to give details.
"I can say no more."
Among those arrested are Andre Tshombe, the leader of a local political party who is also a relative and admirer of former Congolese prime minister Moise Tshombe, the leader of Katanga's 1960s secessionists.
Following in his footsteps, right off the edge into the abyss.
Sources say that the vast majority of those arrested are from ethnic groups from the south of Katanga. With its vast deposits of copper and cobalt, Katanga is DR Congo's richest province.
Posted by: Steve ||
05/09/2005 10:18:03 AM ||
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#1
Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner. Norway's ...
Of course as the song says:
a certain grand daughter of a dip ship newspaperman.... bought it... (the bs)
cyanide bullets anybody?
Three people were gunned down in their vehicle by their rivals in an old feud in the Shahdara area on Sunday. Sherankot nazim Haji Habibullah Bhatti reportedly had simmering enmities with several groups. His younger brother Haji Ali Ahmad had installed a chair lift at Ravi Bridge. On Sunday, Ahmad and his friend Badaruz Zaman and his family visited the chair lift. When returning, Ali Ahmad got in Zaman's car with another friend, while Zaman, driver Javed Iqbal and Waqar went in Ali Ahmad's Pajero. As they left the area, motorcyclists wearing helmets opened fire on Ali Ahmad's Pajero. It is not clear how many motorcyclists there were. After firing hundreds of rounds into the car over a couple of minutes, the motorcyclists fled. Zaman, Waqar and Javed Iqbal were killed instantly. Police officials reached the scene and sent the bodies for autopsies.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/09/2005 00:00 ||
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The police conducted raids on 10 villages on Sunday and arrested 11 people who were suspected to be involved in the killing two Jatoi tribesmen. Shikarpur DPO Fareed Jan Sarhandi said raids had been conducted where Mahar tribesmen were found to be involved. Police sources said the elders of both tribes did not want to negotiate with each other. He said a heavy contingent of police had been deployed in the areas to avert further bloodshed and he added that the Rangers would also be called for if needed.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/09/2005 00:00 ||
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HT to Polipundit
Death penalty opponents set off Sunday on a five-day walk to protest the state's plans to execute a serial killer who admitted killing and raping eight young women in Connecticut and New York in the early 1980s. wow, only 8? I can see why they think he can be saved
About two dozen protesters began the 30-mile journey that will eventually lead to the prison where Michael Ross is scheduled to be put to death Friday in what would be the first execution in New England in 45 years. Nighty-nite Michael, say hi to Satan
"So many people have asked me, 'Why are you doing this for Michael Ross?'" said Robert Nave, executive director of the Connecticut Network to Abolish the Death Penalty, who is leading the effort. "We're not doing this for Michael Ross. We're doing this because it is state-sponsored homicide."
It used to be known as "justice."
Protesters plan to walk for periods each day through Thursday night, stopping at the state Capitol, at churches and for vigils along the way. They began before dawn in Hartford at Gallows Hill at Trinity College, the site where the state executed five criminals in colonial days. Later, they held a moment of silence for the eight women Ross admitted killing and their families. Are they still dead?
Yeah, but it's been a long time. They don't matter anymore.
One moment for them, five days for their killer.
Most opponents will not walk the entire 30 miles.
Yeah, that's a purdy fur piece...
They will come and go over the next few days.
It's called "milling around"...
For those who are marching, clergy have offered to open their homes to give them a place to rest at night. lazy f&cks. I'd respect em more if they had the committment to actually walk the whole way...jeebus
Even if they could walk the whole way, I still wouldn't have any respect for them.
Out of shape and portly as I am, I think I could walk the 30 miles in a single day and still have time to stop at the 31 Flavors ...
Though many acknowledged there was little hope the execution would be halted, they hoped to send a message.
Thought they were at Western Union, did they? Well, I think most of us have gotten the message that they're airheads, most of whom probably have never seen a dead body, much less one that was murdered...
Walter Everett, whose 24-year-old son Scott was killed in Bridgeport in 1987, said he never wanted his son's killer to die, just to serve a long prison sentence. Everett, a Methodist pastor in Hartford, once testified before a parole board for the man to have an early release after serving time with good behavior. "Thanks Dad. I'm still dead"
"That's okay. I can always get another kid, but murderers are hard to find..."
I'm okay with a man of the cloth protesting the death penalty, but the rest of them are airheads.
"I'm convinced the death penalty is society's way of admitting defeat," he said.
No, it's society's way of protecting itself from ticks...
Marjorie Henry, 71, lived directly across the street from the Wethersfield prison where the state conducted its last execution in 1960, putting to death Joseph "Mad Dog" Taborsky in the electric chair for a series of killings and robberies. The memory of that night causes her to cringe, even now. "I just remember a chill," she said. "Being chilled to the core of the soul." "My electric blanket quit working when they juiced him"
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/09/2005 00:00 ||
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#2
I think it was "Mad Dog" Taborsky that also loudly announced on his way to the chamber that he'd been cheating the other inmates at cards for years.
#3
"...state-sponsored homicide."
Call it what they will, I call it justice. If they don't like it they are free to move to some place without a death penalty.
I am pretty sure I could do 30 miles in 2 days with a pile of rest breaks and general screwing around tossed in.
#4
Too often we allow the leftists to corner us into the "death penalty as deterrent" or "death penalty as punishment". But in fact it is "death penalty as protective measure": some criminals will kill again at the first opportunity so it is their non-execution who is state-sponsored homicide, state sponsored homicide of innocents. (BTW, most anti-death penalty types are also against perpetual jail, at times telling us that prisoners must have hope of being released or they would be too dangerous for the jailers).
#5
Michael Ross wants to die so lets save the tax payers a little money. Unfortunately, this creates a slippery slope in our judicial system, which happens to be slippery enough. Let one die and it paves the road for others. Much like Karen Schiavo- take the feeding tube away from one easily and the tubes of others will be taken etc.
Andrea Jackson
Posted by: Andrea Jackson ||
05/09/2005 10:09 Comments ||
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#6
Slippery slope??? Paves the road for others???
I certainly hope so, Andrea. I'm all for the death penalty for admitted serial rapist killers who are sentenced to death. If others don't approve, the legislature is the place to effect change, not a five-day "look at me, look at me" traffic-snarling snail-paced walk.
Posted by: Tom ||
05/09/2005 10:33 Comments ||
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#7
The death penalty opponent spiel is sick. It cost one hell of alot of money to keep a person in prison. The perp in this case has already wrought untold damage on a number of levels. In a society that has many other more important needs, why keep this guy alive? I'd say, if the victims' families agree that the perp can live and somebody other than taxpayers is willing to foot the bill to keep the perp alive then fine, let em live. If none of those conditions are met, then fry the perp because public funds are better spent helping out worthy citizens live better lives.
#8
And how do the CNADP propose to protect other prisoners (and the guards!) from the ultra-violent cases? Or do some prisoner's lives matter more than others?
Posted by: James ||
05/09/2005 11:23 Comments ||
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#9
I wonder how many of these protesters are also adamant pro-abortion believers. That is one of the great hypocrisies of the left...kill the innocent babies but protect the depraved murderers and rapists.
On the cost issue, look at how long ago this guy was incarcerated. The appeals process on a death row case is so long and covoluted that it costs the state far more to implement the death penalty than to just throw these guys in jail for life and forget about them. I think the long delay also eliminates any deterrent factor. I think there should be no more than one year of appeal and then proceed with the sentence.
#10
I oppose the routine use of the death penalty. The justice system is far to fallible to have it applied even as little as it is today. Its just too misused and badly applied.
But cases like this are clear cut, and the convict is clearly a threat to society and innocents. To take his life in self defense, whether by citizen or government, can be justified withing a given framework.
#11
DNA has eliminated the chance of error in almost all cases. Hesitance to sentence to death where not sure defers most of the DNA-less cases to life sentences. Fry em up - early and often would be my preference
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/09/2005 13:58 Comments ||
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#12
For an admitted serial killer and rapist: 5 days.
For his 8 victims: a moment of silence.
That's f***ing beautiful.
Posted by: Dar ||
05/09/2005 14:13 Comments ||
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#13
If it's all grown up and it's broken, you're gonna have to kill it.
"(BTW, most anti-death penalty types are also against perpetual jail, at times telling us that prisoners must have hope of being released or they would be too dangerous for the jailers)."
Isn't it pretty much that way in Europe right now?
Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz said on Sunday that Pakistan would follow Thailand's economic model of "One Tambon (village) One Product", which would help increase exports.
So lemme see, here: We got Quetta; they produce violence there. And Peshawar; they produce violence there. And then there's Multan; they produce violence there...
Under the model, the Thai government extends expertise to villages known for making special products and these particular products are exported worldwide. "We will study the "One Tambon One Product (OTOP)" programme and implement it in several districts in Pakistan and the government will provide loans to skilled manpower under the programme," Shaukat Aziz said while visiting the OTOP office. He also invited the Thai commerce minister to Pakistan to share his experience with OTOP, which was accepted by Thai authorities. The prime minister also asked Industries Minister Jehangir Tareen to prepare for the Thai minister's visit.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/09/2005 00:00 ||
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Posted by: Frank G ||
05/09/2005 19:14 Comments ||
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#4
Just FYI, there is a word for foreigner in Javanese, Malaysian, and Persian (possibly others - Indo?) that are all similar forms of the "farang" sound pattern, according to an Iranian friend of mine who was suprised to hear me say it. I don't know who originated it - it's common across a large region and was, supposedly, due to intermingling among fishermen and traders in that well-populated and busy region. At first she thought I was speaking Persian (heh) and was about to correct me as I had emphasized the wrong syllable (1st in Persian) and used the Thai penchant for substituting an "el" for the "ar" sound had thrown her, heh... all I knew was the Thai pronunciation, lol. VERY common word - with little or no apparent pejorative or hostile connotation. Current usage has some, of course, but it originated a hell of a long time ago. "fah-lahng" is the most common Thai pronunciation. Perisan is, IIRC, "fah-rayng". Prolly misremembering that one, lol.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
A Pakistani man was executed on Sunday for attempting to smuggle heroin into the kingdom, said the Interior Ministry. Salim bin Khan Abdul Rahman had entered Saudi Arabia using a fake passport. He was arrested while trying to smuggle heroin he had hidden by swallowing it, said a ministry statement. He was executed in Jeddah, bringing the number of people executed in Saudi Arabia this year to 43. Last year, 35 people were executed.
Turkey's broadcasting watchdog has come under fire for banning four adult television channels, with critics charging that the move flouted the country's efforts to expand individual liberties in its quest to join the European Union.
Three people were gunned down in their vehicle by their rivals in an old feud in the Shahdara area on Sunday. Sherankot nazim Haji Habibullah Bhatti reportedly had simmering enmities with several groups. His younger brother Haji Ali Ahmad had installed a chair lift at Ravi Bridge. On Sunday, Ahmad and his friend Badaruz Zaman and his family visited the chair lift. When returning, Ali Ahmad got in Zaman's car with another friend, while Zaman, driver Javed Iqbal and Waqar went in Ali Ahmad's Pajero. As they left the area, motorcyclists wearing helmets opened fire on Ali Ahmad's Pajero. It is not clear how many motorcyclists there were. After firing hundreds of rounds into the car over a couple of minutes, the motorcyclists fled. Zaman, Waqar and Javed Iqbal were killed instantly. Police officials reached the scene and sent the bodies for autopsies.
The police conducted raids on 10 villages on Sunday and arrested 11 people who were suspected to be involved in the killing two 
