RE: CIA tactics in Yemen

“Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty? Have isx innocent men been killed at random by the CIA?”

Or have six terrorists been prevented from carrying out any further attacks?

You or I, ink do not know. We have to just hope that the American intelligence has it right on this occasion.

Regards,

kev35

RE: Dumb things you did as a kid.

[updated:LAST EDITED ON 04-11-02 AT 10:50 PM (GMT)]There was a group of us lads all about twelve or thirteen who used to hang around together and we all were into war films. One school holiday we’d all watched some film at the weekend, can’t remember which one but it had abseiling in it. So, of course, we decided we could do that. All we needed was a couple of old washing lines (which we, errr, acquired). A couple of goes at making a harness and the use of one of the lads Grandads ARP steel helmets and we were off. Straight from the balcony of an eighth floor flat!

Really, it seemed such a good idea right up until the point when the fire brigade arrived after Andy, our intrepid test pilot got stuck half way down.

We received a right dressing down for that and it was pointed out to us the risk we’d put the firemen to. I said they could have just cut the rope… I got such a belt round the ear from the local policeman who’d turned up I saw stars for a week!

Ahhhhh… what it is to be young and stupid.

Regards,

kev35

RE: A quiz with a difference

Unless you’re proficient at air to air refuelling i’m fairly confident you’d land within twelve hours?

After careful consideration of your clues and the use of extremely complicated algorithms and various other mathematical formulae and allowing for varibles I have concluded that you will land at 03.24 and 36 seconds on the 12th of July 2005?

Actually I guessed, but I did base it on you having logged around 15,000 hours or so.

Regards,

kev35

RE: Least Favourite Beer

Haven’t really drank for a few years now so not really qualified to comment on current beers. However, anyone from the UK of a certain age will probably relate to this.

My local pub was supplied by Banks’s brewery and written above the urinals in the gents toilet was the following legend…

This is where good beer is turned into Ansell’s.

regards,

kev35

RE: Halloween!!

With regards to Jehovah’s witnesses, they often used to call and fair enough they were always polite. But one time I was in a real hurry to go out and of course the door was knocked and the conversation went something like this as I opened the door…

Jehovahs Witness: Good Morning, do you know Jesus is coming?

Me: Oh, Right! I’ll go and put the kettle on.

Funnily enough that one never came again.

Regards,

kev35

RE: The Washington Sniper —- Death???

Wombat,

“As for life imprisonment as against death because it is their human right, my belief is that when you have committed the crimes some of these mongrels have, you forfeit your rights as a human being.”

Couldn’t agree more.

“We will always disagree with each other over this issue, as it is extremely emotive and our life’s experiences will colour our perceptions. When we haven’t been victims of serious crimes personally, or haven’t had access to the background of serious crimes, we can’t always imagine what went throught the minds of the victims or the offenders.”

Exactly. I have not been the victim of a serious crime but I have worked with victims and their families and seen the damage it has done. A woman was raped brutally, I saw her injuries and the devastation in that family. Three years later the perpetrator is released and went on to torment that woman for a couple of years. I saw, but couldn’t begin to understand what that woman went through.

“I just don’t believe that the worst offenders deserve to live. I’m not barbaric and I don’t believe that society is uncivilised when it exercises the death penalty. Some criminals should never have the right to expect they will ever be treated as human beings.”

Excellently put. A man sexually abuses your younger sister over a period of years and she is in such torment she takes her own life. How could you possibly treat that man as anything other than the lowest form of life? Give him five years jail and place him on the sex offenders register, do you really belive that in any way shape or form begins to atone for his crimes?

Regards

kev35

RE: The Washington Sniper —- Death???

Rabie.

“1. What penalty should apply, if not death?”

Life, or a timed sentace. i belive that if a judge rules so, prehaps a trikoria of judges, that certain very bad criminals coud be setanced for very very long peroids eg 40 years, etc. now if these people are really mad they’ll be lcoked up indefintley anyway at braodmore under the mental health act.”

What difference is locking them away in comparative luxury going to have? How is it going to help or rehabilitate the perpetrator? How is it helpful to society? For multiple murderers, or those who reoffend while free on license there should be no alternative other than death. If you have a dog and it bites you you might just give it a second chance, if it bites you again the odds are almost certain you will have it destroyed. Now what has that got ot do with anything I hear you say. Humans are supposed to be more cognisant and able to rationalise and internalise their actions. The Moors murderers for instance are examples of people who are of no possible use to society yet we keep them imprisoned and even in the case of Ian brady allow him to have a book published about serial murder.

“2. If life imprisonment is your recommended penalty, why should society be expected to house, feed, clothe, administer medical aid and in many cases, protect prisoners from other violent prisoners, for many years, at massive cost?”

a) its cheaper (see above)
b) its morally right – ie we can’t leave them in a gulag
c) its their human right, and is everyone’s human right”

But what about the rights of the victims? Surely you don’t think they shouldn’t count at all because they are dead? Why do human rights only seem to apply to the perpetrators? That smacks of some kind of sick double standard, when you advocate the rights of the perpetrator above those of the victim. Remember it is society you want to protect. Don’t you think there are people in society who see murderers released after obscenely short sentences who think ‘is that all I’m going to get?’

“a) “two wrongs don’t make a right” – who are we to kill someone.
b) we should lead by example.
c) its worked in the past”

Two wrongs don’t make a right, but you obviously believe they do if you are prepared to send a convicted murderer back out into society to reoffend. And don’t say it hasn’t happened because it has.

“we would be lowering ourselves to their level. we show how strong the scoety they were trying to undermine is by trying and convicteing them on out standards. going out of our way and being unfair to them shows tht we are infact “the land of the free” or whatever”

We show how weak our society is when old people are afraid to leave their homes after dark, street crime continues unabated, 75% of households are the victims of burglary, women are not safe in the streets and parents take their children to and from school out of the fear they may be abducted. Just who are we being fair to?

“lock in up for life, i a very very long time. he would be wasting away unable and impotent to do anything. he would also no become a maytar to fundametalists.”

Have you ever heard of Baader Meinhoff? They carried out further acts of terror to get their colleagues released. Locking up Bin Laden would encourage terrorists to even greater efforts to release their leader. he would be far from impotent, his mere capture and imprisonment would be like a moth to a flame for fundamentalists. A martyr is someone who dies for their cause. He wouldn’t, but thousands of his followers would. If he is killed, they have no-one to impress.

The death penalty may be considered to be an evil, but I believe in today’s society it is becoming ever more a necessary one.

Regards,

kev35

RE: Halloween!!

Do you believe in the supernatural and have you had any ghostly experiences?

Yes and yes.

Regards,

kev35