Slava Novorossiya

Slava Novorossiya

Sunday, August 26, 2012

ARTICLE ON THE DEATH PENALTY OF THE WEEK [SUNDAY 26 AUGUST 2012 TO SATURDAY 1 SEPTEMBER 2012]


NOTICE: The following article is written by the author itself and not by me, I am not trying to violate their copyright. I will give some information on them.

ARTICLE TITLE: Time to institute the death penalty for terrorists
DATE: Tuesday 18 October 2011
AUTHOR: Jonathan Rosen
AUTHOR INFORMATION: Jonathan Rosen, novelist, memoirist, editor, and journalist, is the author of the new novel, "Joy Comes in the Morning" (2004), a playful, probing novel about Jewish faith and identity. The novel follows the growth of a romantic relationship between Deborah Green, a Reform rabbi, and Lev Friedman, a science writer and skeptic. Writing in the "New York Times," reviewer Art Winslow said, "Not since E. L. Doctorow's 'City of God' have we seen such a literary effort to plumb the nature of belief- in Jewish-American culture, in Talmudic study, in prayer, in sexual relations, in the very soundness of one's own mind." The "New Yorker" said, "Rosen's touching novel of Jewish manners thoughtfully addresses the question of whether piety can teach us faith."

Rosen's first novel was "Eve's Apple" (1997), the story of a young woman's struggle with anorexia. The "New Yorker" called "Eve's Apple," "An impressive debut--a highly original addition to the distinguished line of Jewish-American romances." Writing in the "New York Review of Books," Sue Halpern called it, "A realistic and emotionally complex narrative . . . Intention and desire, love's chaos, sadness that cannot be extinguished--the emotional nuances that Rosen brings to 'Eve's Apple' are haunting."

Rosen is also the author of "The Talmud and the Internet" (2000), a family memoir as well as a meditation on Judaism, literature, and technology. In advance praise, Cynthia Ozick said, "Its wisdom is in its mixture of rapture and elegy and honesty and reverence. Its learning leaps into living contemporaneity; it honors father and mother and grandparents; it thinks into both past and future; it shines with beauty and originality."

Rosen is the former cultural editor of the English language Jewish weekly, "The Forward," and a frequent contributor to the "New York Times" and the "New Yorker." He currently serves as series editor of the "Jewish Encounters Book Series," a collaboration between Schocken Books and Nextbook.org. The first two books in the series include the short biography, "Maimonides" (2005), by author and physician Sherwin Nuland, and "The Life of David" (2005), a prose biography of the biblical king by former U. S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky. Other forthcoming books include Stephen J. Dubner on Moses, Stephen Greenblatt on the city of Vilna, Hillel Halkin on medieval poet Yehuda Halevi, Ben Katchor on kosher dairy restaurants, and David Mamet on Jewish self-hatred and anti-Semitism.


Jonathan Rosen

 










Time to institute the death penalty for terrorists
By JONATHAN ROSEN
10/18/2011 22:24

Lopsided hostage deals make a mockery of the Israeli justice system.

Much has been written and said about the risks posed by the lopsided Gilad Schalit deal. Some arguments focus primarily on the threat posed by potential recidivism among the newly-released prisoners, which stands at 60 percent based on previous deals. Others touch upon the encouragement presumed to be drawn by Palestinian organizations to kidnap additional Israelis for bargaining purposes. Still others address the implicit message to the prospective perpetrators of future attacks: your sentence is likely to be commuted, the punishment will almost certainly not fit the crime.

The risks are all very real and, regrettably, are likely to have a personal and painful impact on Israeli individuals in the future, either in the form of violent attacks or kidnappings.

Beyond that, however, another danger lurks beneath the surface, a danger that is posed to Israeli society as a whole and which threatens its democratic and law abiding nature.
It should be eminently clear that a recurring decision by the political echelon to circumvent due legal process and to grant clemency to murderers and other convicted terrorists will necessarily produce a loss of public faith in the justice system, which is a pillar of any democratic society.

Without popular confidence in the justice system, anarchy and vigilantism are sure to reign. After all, one of the central purposes of the criminal justice system is for the state to wrest responsibility for serving justice out of the hands of the injured party. But if the state repeatedly demonstrates that it cannot be trusted to mete out justice, individuals are liable to begin to do so themselves.

The erosion of public confidence in the criminal justice system is not caused by inherent flaws in that system, as would be the case in the event of corrupt judges, for example. Rather, it stems from the intervention by external forces, the executive branch in this case, that override the decisions made by the criminal justice system.

As a rule, Israelis take pride in their justice system and have faith in it. They are right to do so. It is to the Israeli justice system’s credit that a former president was convicted this year of rape and was sentenced to seven years imprisonment, that a former prime minister is currently on trial for charges of corruption and that a former finance minister is now in prison for corruption. A justice system that is courageous enough to prosecute the most powerful is praiseworthy.

THE DANGER to public confidence stems from the excessive use the executive branch has made of its prerogative to circumvent due legal process in the 26 years that have elapsed since the 1985 Jibril deal. Because repeated political intervention in the legal system – and that is precisely what a government decision to grant clemency en masse in a prisoner exchange deal is – renders the legal process a farce. If used sparingly, this intervention can be tolerated by the public. But the more frequently it recurs the more inescapable it becomes to all the parties involved – the state, the accused and the citizens – that they are participating in a sham.
Take the example of Said Ibrahim Shalaldeh, who up until yesterday was serving two life sentences, one of which was for brutally stabbing to death the 51-year-old Sasson Nuriel in 2005. He was released yesterday, less than a decade after his arrest.

What is the Israeli public supposed to think about the next such arrest and trial, in which someone of Shalaldeh’s ilk is prosecuted and sentenced to one, two or ten lifeterms in prison? How is the defendant going to view those proceedings as anything but a farce, given the lessons of Shalaldeh’s commuted sentence and release, one among hundreds? Serial government-sanctioned miscarriages of justice undermine the integrity of the criminal justice system and violate the confidence that every citizen must have in the state’s commitment to ensuring that justice is served. Without that confidence, Israel will most certainly devolve into a regressive society like its scorned neighbors’, in which individuals who want justice will resort to revenge and other forms of vigilantism.

How can this situation be remedied? How can Israel forestall the loss of public confidence in the sentences that are meted out to terrorists upon the completion of due process? One obvious option is to introduce, in the most extreme cases, the use of the death penalty. Particularly heinous crimes can and perhaps ought to be punished by death, a punishment that cannot be reversed as a result of political pressure. The death penalty ensures that the worst of all criminals are fully and irrevocably punished by the state and that justice has been publicly served.

To date, the use of the death penalty in Israel has been reserved for Nazis, and was carried out only in the case of Adolf Eichmann.

It could be that the time has arrived to reconsider those restrictions, which are anachronistic in more than one way at the close of 2011.

For better and for worse, Israeli society and Israeli governments have been unable in the past 25 years to withstand the pressure to release convicted murderers and others in exchange for kidnapped soldiers. Ultimately, the lengths to which the state and society are prepared to go to save each individual Israeli is something to take pride in. That said, this comes with a cost that is borne by individual Israelis who are the victims of pursuant attacks, and to democratic Israeli society as a whole. One way of mitigating this cumulative damage caused is to begin to instate the death penalty for the most heinous and extraordinary crimes.

The writer is a veteran Israeli writer and translator.

PRO DEATH PENALTY QUOTE OF THE WEEK [SUNDAY 26 AUGUST 2012 TO SATURDAY 1 SEPTEMBER 2012]





















QUOTE: "I've looked at all those sentenced to be executed. No one will shed a tear. Prison is too good for them. They don't deserve to live. I represent the victim and the family. I don't care about killers. All of our cases now are multiple gunshot executions, houses set on fire and six children burned to death. This is Bosnia."

AUTHOR: Lynne Abraham (born 1941) served as the District Attorney of the City of Philadelphia from May 1991 to January 2010. She was the first woman to serve as Philadelphia's District Attorney. Abraham won election to that position four times. As District Attorney, she oversaw the largest district attorney's office in Pennsylvania. The office prosecutes approximately 75,000 cases every year and is the largest appellate litigator in the Commonwealth. Abraham oversaw a professional staff of 300 assistant district attorneys and 275 support staff. Lynne Abraham was born and raised in Philadelphia and educated in its public schools. She studied at Temple University for her undergraduate degree and also received her Juris Doctor from Temple University Beasley School of Law. She was married to Frank Ford until his death in March 2009. Abraham is a former assistant DA. She served as a legislative consultant for the City Council of Philadelphia, where she assisted council in conducting investigations, drafted legislation, testified at public hearings, met with citizens' groups and revised portions of the Philadelphia Home Rule Charter. She served as the head of the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority during the administration of Mayor Frank Rizzo. She was elected Judge of the Philadelphia Municipal Court in 1977, then was elected to the Court of Common Pleas in 1980, where she presided over criminal trials until she became District Attorney in 1991. Abraham was elected by her fellow judges to take over as District Attorney in 1991 when then-DA Ron Castille, now on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, stepped down from the post in order to run for mayor. As an incumbent, Abraham was elected to a four-year term in 1993. She was re-elected three more times; in 1997 (defeating challengers Jack McMahon and Leon Williams), 2001 (defeating challengers Alexander Talmadge and Leon Williams) and 2005 (defeating challenger Seth Williams, who would succeed her as District Attorney five years later). In September 2006, she announced that she would not seek re-election in 2009. She held the office of District Attorney longer than anyone in Philadelphia history. Abraham earned the nicknames "Deadliest DA" and "Queen of Death" many years ago, for the high rate at which her office sought the death penalty in past decades. In the 2004 presidential election, she served as one of Pennsylvania's electors, casting her ballot for John Kerry. In the 2008 election, she cast her electoral ballot for Barack Obama.


PRO LIFE QUOTE OF THE WEEK [SUNDAY 26 AUGUST 2012 TO SATURDAY 1 SEPTEMBER 2012]


QUOTE: "Many feminists insist that abortion is necessary for women to participate freely and equally in society. Anyone who disagrees, they argue, has merely adopted patriarchal standards and accepted women's 'place' in society. Yet this argument demonstrates how deeply the roots of sexism run in our culture.

Its premise is a sexist one-- that women are inferior to men and that, in order to be equal, we have to change our biology to become like men -- wombless and un-pregnant at will. What other oppressed group in history has had to undergo surgery in order to be equal?"

AUTHOR: Marilyn Dickstein Kopp, pro-life feminist

Thursday, August 23, 2012

WEAPON OF THE FORTNIGHT [SUNDAY 19 AUGUST 2012 TO SATURDAY 1 SEPTEMBER 2012]


707 years ago on this day (23 August 1305), Sir William Wallace was executed in Smithfield London. In memory of this martyr, I will post about his weapon, the Wallace Sword from Wikipedia.



Stained glass portraying the Warrior William Wallace



The Wallace's Sword is an antique claymore purported to have belonged to William Wallace (1272–1305), a knight and Scottish patriot who led a resistance to the English occupation of Scotland during the Wars of Scottish Independence. It is said to have been used by William Wallace at the Battle of Stirling Bridge in 1297 and the Battle of Falkirk (1298).

The shaft of the sword measures 4 feet 4 inches in length (132 cm) and including the tip 5 feet 6 inches (168 cm). The breadth of the blade varies from 2.25 inches at the guard to 0.75 inches before the point. The sword weighs 6.0 lb (2.7 kg).

History:
It has been alleged that after William Wallace's execution in 1305, Sir John de Menteith, governor of Dumbarton Castle received the sword in August of that year. But there are no records to that effect. Two hundred years later, in 1505, accounts survive which state that at the command of King James IV of Scotland, the sum of 26 shillings was paid to an armourer for the "binding of Wallace' sword with cords of silk" and providing it with "a new hilt and plomet" and also with a "new scabbard and a new belt". This repair would have been necessary because, according to legend, Wallace's original scabbard, hilt and belt were said to have been made from the dried skin of Hugh Cressingham, one of the English commanders at the Battle of Stirling Bridge.

No other written records of the sword are found for a further three centuries. In 1875 a letter from the War Office informed that the sword, in 1825 was sent to the Tower of London to be repaired. At that time it was submitted to a Dr Samuel Meyrick by the Duke of Wellington for examination.

Dr Meyrick was an authority on ancient swords but he estimated the age of the sword by examining the mountings only, which as we know were replaced early in the 16th century. Thus he concluded that the sword could not date from earlier than the 15th century. However he did not take account of the blade which must have been of some importance for James IV to have it bound in silk and give it a new scabbard, hilt and belt and it was also described then as the "Wallas sword". The sword was recovered from Dumbarton by Charles Rogers, author of The Book of Wallace. Rogers, on 15 October 1888 renewed a correspondence with the Secretary of State for War, with the result that the Major General commanding forces in North Britain was authorised to deliver the weapon to his care for preservation in the Wallace Monument.




Historical accuracy:
There is reason to believe that this sword did not belong to William Wallace. The blade does not possess a fuller — a near universal feature of blades with this type of cross-section (lenticular) except in processional swords of the Renaissance. The blade in its original state would have likely been Oakeshott type XIIIa (also known as Espee de Guerrel or Grete war sword) which became common by the mid-13th century. Such swords would have a long, wide blade with parallel edges, ending in a rounded or spatulate tip. The grip, longer than in the earlier Scottish swords, typically some 15 cm (almost 6 inches), allows good two-handed use. The cross-guards were probably down-sloping (in the later highland style) or straight, and the pommel either regularly Brazil-nut or disk-shaped but this case perhaps a lobed pommel inspired by the Viking style.

Close inspection reveals that it may be made up from pieces of different swords fitted together. Part of this could have come from a late 13th century sword.



Check this two videos to see how the sword was used: