Filling up space and time

I'm just writing this to kill time and fill up some space. It will be the last post of 2013. 2013 was definitely not the best year on record - too many bad things happened. If you keep up with the news, you know what I mean. We didn't find the Forrest Fenn treasure either. 

Executed

Well, it looks like the Chinese could not be persuaded to let this guy off - Akmal Shaikh was executed on Tuesday. In China, the penalty for drug smuggling is death. They consider it a very serious crime because it destroys the fabric of society - slowly but surely. The Chinese tend to think as one. They protect their economy too - in the same way. They have executed some men who stole money from investors. They also executed people involved in manufacturing poisoned milk and defective toys. They do not execute topless women. Topless women are not a threat to anyone. On the contrary.

Culture clash

“RIYADH, Saudi Arabia – A Saudi court on Saturday convicted a female journalist for her involvement in a TV show, in which a Saudi man publicly talked about sex, and sentenced her to 60 lashes. Rozanna al-Yami is believed to be the first Saudi woman journalist to be given such a punishment. In the program, which aired in July on the Lebanese LBC satellite channel, Mazen Abdul-Jawad appears to describe an active sex life. The same court sentenced Abdul-Jawad earlier this month to five years in jail and 1,000 lashes. The case has scandalized this ultraconservative country where such public talk about sex is taboo and the sexes are strictly segregated. The government moved swiftly in the wake of the case, shutting down LBC's two offices in the kingdom and arresting Abdul-Jawad, who works for the national airline.” This case illustrates perfectly the differences between western culture and Middle Eastern values. Actually, the west used to hold these same conservative values back in the 1700s – now, however, this topless woman can legally walk down a New York City sidewalk without fear of arrest. Figure that one out.

Justice

From an internet news story: “BEIJING – China executed two businessmen for defrauding hundreds of investors out of more than $127 million, calling the scam a serious blow to social stability, state media said Thursday. China puts to death more people than any other country, although last month a high official for the Supreme People's Court, which reviews every death sentence, said the punishment should be used more sparingly. Though usually reserved for violent crimes, death sentences are also applied for nonviolent offenses that involve large sums of money or are seen to threaten social order.” I only have one question: If these men knew they could be executed for stealing large sums of money, why did they persist? And why didn’t they just get out of China and go hide somewhere? And, if they were so good at persuading people to let go of their money, why didn’t they come work in the U.S.? Here, you get about five years for a little crime like that. And the prison food is terrific, along with the minimum security accommodations. Our model has no opinion about this - she is just enjoying her tanning time. Please.

Public execution

Wikipedia knows everything. That's where I found the following: "Robert Damiens, who was mentally unstable, had been a servant of members of the Parlement of Paris where he had heard much criticism of the king (Louis XV). This, combined with the violent pamphlets and general discontent with the king, convinced him that he had to murder him in order to save France. Other sources say that he did not want to kill the king, but merely to give him a warning and thus force him to change his behavior. In any case, it was the first attempt at regicide in France since the murder of King Henry IV in 1610.
Tried by the Parlement of Paris, Damiens was executed on 28 March 1757, following the procedure applied to regicides: after numerous tortures, Damiens was carried to the plaza in the cold afternoon of that day. There, he was first tortured with red-hot pincers; his hand, holding the knife used in the attempted murder, was burnt using sulphur; molten wax, lead, and boiling oil were poured into his wounds. Horses were then harnessed to his arms and legs for his dismemberment. Damiens's joints would not break; after some hours, representatives of the Parliament ordered the executioner and his aides to cut Damiens's joints. Damiens was then dismembered, to the applause of the crowd. His trunk, apparently still living, was then burnt at the stake. There was an immense crowd to watch the spectacle, which nobody had witnessed in 147 years. Balconies in buildings above the Place de Grève were rented to women of the aristocracy for the exorbitant price of 100 pounds per balcony (approx. $775 in 2008 US dollars). This tale of Damiens' brutal execution, recounted in the opening pages of some well-known book, has been disputed by numerous historians." I wasn’t there, but I believe the story. Historians, like economists, don’t know anything. Pretty soon, they'll be telling us the Spanish Inquisition never happened. There was money to be made in public executions, especially if they were gory and strange and gruesome. Poor Damiens, he lived in the wrong epoch. Today, he would have been judged not guilty by reason of insanity. He would have enjoyed a life of leisure in some sanatorium, watching cable TV, reading the latest books, the finest magazines and newspapers, and eating plenty of healthy food.

Forget it

You and everyone else knows about the murder at the Olympics. A defenseless man from Minneapolis - Todd Bachman - and his wife were attacked by a deranged lunatic at a tourist site near the Olympic site. It seems like a completely random tragedy. People everywhere are asking why them? Why do innocent, defenseless children suffer every day? Why does the evil so many times gain the upper hand against the good? Surely God knew these people were about to be attacked at least a few seconds before it happened. Most likely He knew days in advance and perhaps even years. Why did He allow it then? That, my friends, is the ultimate question. And the honest answer is: nobody knows. We will have to wait for an answer. All we know is we - the entire human race - are subject to all sorts of bad things. The only thing we can do is try to cope. Remember we are also subject to a lot of good things. On that topic, we seldom ask, why us? Why are we the beneficiaries of so much good? Nobody really knows.