Musings
and History
Quote
of the day:
When
asked how he got the actor playing Jesus in the movie to convey so
much suffering he said “I forced him to watch Lethal
Weapon 4.”
Mel
Gibson
A
while back I asked a long time friend living in central Texas what
she thought of the new law that was passed by the state of Arizona
that apparently is driving the illegal aliens from Arizona into
Texas. She was somewhat sympathetic to the plight of those Latinos
that take jobs that no one else can or will do. From what I can
gather is that Arizona has had an influx of members of the Mexican
Mafia crossing the border and attempting to establish a permanent
base for drug distribution. We all have all read about the bloodbath
taking place in Mexico between rival drug gangs and between drug
gangs and law enforcement. I suspect Arizona was trying to stop that
enterprise before it got established. My friend and I both agree
that the last thing we need is the establishment of a permanent drug
distribution center. The question is this: Do we try to help those
Mexicans that want to work at unseemly jobs but accept some Mexican
drug gangs or just plain gangs (M-13 for instance) in the process?
My answer is no. My friend down there near Killeen is in agreement
with the rejection of the crime faction but neither of us knows the
solution.
This
Date in History May 5
1981
Sixty-six days before, the British army had arrested several
members of the Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland and threw
them in prison in Belfast. One of them was a man named Bobby Sands.
Bobby and the others were arrested as criminals and Bobby complained
that he was not a criminal but a political prisoner and began a
hunger strike. Bobby refused to eat anything and would only drink a
pint of water a day. On this date Bobby Sands died of starvation as
a martyr to the Catholics in Northern Ireland. Almost as soon as the
word got out about Bobby’s death, the members of the IRA came out
of the woodwork in Northern Ireland and some serious rioting and
arson began. The British Army suffered many casualties and so did
the IRA and many other prisoners begin hunger strikes causing even
more turmoil. I have told y'all before the problem with Northern
Ireland but I will give y'all a brief synopsis. In the early 1600’s
King James I (also the financier of Jamestown settlement in Virginia)
of Great Britain got fed up with the irascible Catholic Irish in
Ireland rebelling against the rule of Great Britain. He decided the
best way to resolve this was to turn five shires (counties) in the
northeast corner of Ireland into a Great Britain friendly area. He
seized the property of the Catholic landowners and even the Catholic
Church in those five shires. He then gave that property to Scottish
Lords if they would bring their Presbyterian tenant farmers with
them. James named that land Ulster and some of the Scottish Lords
came over along with their farmers and that particular area was
Protestant in a land full of Catholics. Those five shires are known
now as Northern Ireland. Eventually Ireland raised enough hell that
they became independent from Great Britain. That is except for
Northern Ireland, they voted to remain part of Great Britain.
Therein lies the rub. The Irish Catholics want Northern Ireland to
become part of independent Ireland so the British Army will get the
hell off the island. There is no question that the Irish Catholics
discriminate against the Irish Protestants and vice versa. I don’t
get it.
1821
On this date one of the greatest military tacticians and
strategists in recorded history died on the south Atlantic Island of
Saint Helena while in exile. Napoleon Bonaparte had begun his rise
to power right after the French revolution in the late 1700’s. He
essentially defeated the entire continent to Europe, one country at a
time. He underestimated the resolve of the Russians when he tried to
take them on, but it wasn’t the military might of the Russians that
beat him, it was the winter. Napoleon was planning to use Moscow and
a few other large cities in Russia as protection from the oncoming
winter. But the Russians burned their own towns down to deny
Napoleon shelter from the ferocious Russian winter. When Napoleon
found this had happened he had no choice but to turn around and head
back to France. The return trip was one of the most brutal in
recorded history. The Russian army would wait until most of
Napoleon’s troops had crossed a bridge and then they would set the
bridge on fire. This would trap a small group of the French troops
into the hands of the Russians where they were killed off at their
leisure. Napoleon lost about 2/3rd
of his troops to exposure and starvation. After this disaster
Napoleon was arrested and sent to exile on the island of Elbe in the
Mediterranean Sea. In 1812 he escaped from Elbe, raised another army
and tried to regain the glory days of old. This time he ran across a
combined army of Lord Wellington of England and the Prussian General
von Blucher near Waterloo, Belgium and absorbed an enormous
ass-kicking. After this he was exiled to St. Helena off the coast of
Africa from which there was no escape. He was 52 years old when he
died, probably of stomach cancer. What a military mind this man had,
but it cost the lives of about 7 million people. By the way, I
looked up where St. Helena was. It is 30 degrees south latitude and
about 1,100 miles from Africa and 2,000 mile from South
America...talk about remote.
1990
On this date Jesse Tafero was executed in Florida after three
malfunctions of the electric chair causing a flame to shoot out of
the top of Jesse’s head. It was this event that started the move
toward injecting poison in the convicted person’s veins. The
states had two problems now. There were very few people in the
country that could repair electric chairs and there were also very
few people that could assemble the right amount of poison and of what
type and what method to kill someone quickly without pain or
paralysis. There was another case where a 350 pound person was
electrocuted and his life ended with him screaming and blood running
down his chest. So the states got into high gear perfecting a poison
machine for execution purposes. I remember one case in my home state
of South Carolina where a man convicted of murder was electrocuted
and his heart burst and partially came out of his chest. After this
the media had a conference with our Attorney General Henry McMaster
and gave him hell about it and he said “All I can say is don’t
come to South Carolina and commit murder because “Old Sparky” is
waiting for you. I am more worried about the victim’s family than
I am of him.” I liked Henry.
1877
Almost a year after US General George A. Custer and most of his
7th
Cavalry were annihilated at Little Big Horn, Sioux chief Sitting Bull
and his followers were able avoid several different cavalry units and
on this date crossed into Canada to safety. He and his group lived
in Canada for four years. The first year was idyllic. There was
plenty of buffalo and Sitting Bull had time to play with his
grandchildren. After a couple of years Sitting Bull’s young braves
became bored and began making trouble with the native Canadian
tribes. This did not please the Canadian Government. Eventually the
buffalo even in Canada began to disappear and Sitting Bull was forced
to ask the Canadian Government for rations. A series of American
emissaries came to visit Sitting Bull in Canada trying to persuade
him to bring his tribe back into the United States and the Canadian
Government encouraged him to go home so his braves would stop causing
trouble. Eventually, Sitting Bull and most of his tribe did indeed
come back and was sent to the Standing Rock Reservation in South
Dakota. Sitting Bull was killed while resisting arrest for allowing
his tribe to do the outlawed Ghost Dance which normally was a prelude
to war.
Thanks for
listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow
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