Blunderov
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"We think in generalities, we live in details"
  
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Executed Today...
« on: 2009-10-18 02:36:25 » |
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[Blunderov] The Executed Today (voted,IMS, one of the most macabre sites on the Web) site often provides material which is topical to Virion discussions and precepts. And I think it is also to be commended for keeping the issue of capital punishment in the spotlight; too often the matter is furtively swept under the carpet once the nasty proceedings are over. Given the wider context available at Executed Today, it must become apparent to even the most reluctant observer how frequently highly principled and also entirely innocent persons are executed. My own view is that a reasonable person will conclude from this presentation that capital punishment has been far too prone to abuse, error and whimsey, both historically and as currently implemented, to be entertained.
This particular posting makes apt reading in the light of another thread. http://www.churchofvirus.org/bbs/index.php?board=69;action=display;threadid=42746;start=64;ms
Re:Obama - Put to the test fails dismally.
« Reply #64 on: 2009-10-17 17:18:36 »
A historian's account of Democrats and Bush-era war crimes~Hermit
[Bl.](many hyperlinks and two videos available on site.)
http://www.executedtoday.com/2009/10/16/1946-nuremberg-trial-war-criminals/
1946: The Nuremberg Trial War Criminals
16 October 2009, 10:54:57 PM | Headsman
Victor’s justice was never better served than this date in 1946, when the brass of Third Reich hung for crimes against humanity during the late World War II.
The landmark legal proceeding* is covered well enough in many other sources for this humble venue to break new ground.
Apart from trailblazing international law, the trial was notable for the gut-punching film of German atrocities; this relatively novel piece of evidence is available for perusal thanks to the magic of the Internet. Caution: Strong stuff. An hour’s worth of Nazi atrocities.
The climactic hangings in the predawn hours this day in Nuremberg were conducted by an American hangman who used the American standard drop rather than the British table calibrated for efficacious neck-snapping. As a result, at least some hangings were botched strangulation jobs, a circumstance which has occasionally attracted charges of intentional barbarism.
Media eyewitness Kingsbury Smith’s taut report of the night’s executions (well worth the full read) described just such an ugly end for propagandist Julius Streicher.
At that instant the trap opened with a loud bang. He went down kicking. When the rope snapped taut with the body swinging wildly, groans could be heard from within the concealed interior of the scaffold. Finally, the hangman, who had descended from the gallows platform, lifted the black canvas curtain and went inside. Something happened that put a stop to the groans and brought the rope to a standstill. After it was over I was not in the mood to ask what he did, but I assume that he grabbed the swinging body of and pulled down on it. We were all of the opinion that Streicher had strangled.
There were in all 12 condemned to death at Nuremberg; all hanged this day except Martin Bormann (condemned in absentia; it was only years later that his death during the Nazi regime’s 1945 Gotterdammerung was established) and Hermann Goering (who cheated the executioner with a cyanide capsule two hours before hanging). The ten to die this day were:
Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, whose name adorns Nazi Germany’s shortlived truce with Stalin.
Arthur Seyss-Inquart, Reichskommissar of the occupied Netherlands.
Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, a career military man whose “only following orders” defense was rejected by the tribunal.
Waffen-SS General Ernst Kaltenbrunner.
Nazi intellectual Alfred Rosenberg.
Gauleiter of Poland Hans Frank, notable for his postwar conversion to Catholicism and profession that “a thousand years will pass and still Germany’s guilt will not have been erased.”
Minister of the Interior Wilhelm Frick.
Slave labor organizer Fritz Sauckel.
General Alfred Jodl, who signed the German capitulation in May 1945 and was posthumously acquitted of his war crimes charges by a German court.
Streicher, whose anti-Semitic frothing on the scaffold was the only overtly Nazi display of the night.
* Its resultant Nuremberg Principles comprise a lofty articulation of principles whose actual application, as Noam Chomsky has observed, would have meant that “every post-war American president would have been hanged.”
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