WORLD OF ALL

Sabra & Shatila Massacre. On 16.09.1982, the Israeli army controlled West Beirut, sealed off the 2 Palestinian refugee camps Sabra and Shatila and fired shells at them. Later, the Israeli military command gave the Israeli-allied Lebanese Phalangist militia the green light to enter the refugee camps.  For the next 40 hours the Phalangist militia raped, killed, and injured a large number of unarmed civilians, mostly children, women and elderly people inside the “encircled and sealed” Sabra and Shatila camps.  These actions, accompanied or followed by systematic roundups, backed or reinforced by the Israeli army, resulted in dozens of disappearances.  During the massacre, the Israeli army prevented civilians from escaping the camps and arranged for the camps to be illuminated throughout the night by flares launched into the sky from helicopters and mortars. sabra014The number of victims varies between 700 (the official Israeli figure) and 3,500 (in the inquiry launched b...

Mary Eleanor Wheeler aka Pearcey – “The Hamstead Tragedy”. Mary Eleanor Wheeler was born in Kent on the 26th of March 1866 to James and Charlotte Wheeler, but little detail is known of her childhood. At the time of her arrest, she was 24 and was described as being 5’ 6” tall with "lovely russet hair and fine blue eyes."   She was of normal build and had “nice shapely hands”. Her face was not overly pretty but she seemed to have no difficulty in attracting men.  In her late teens, she had a relationship with a carpenter named John Charles Pearcey and although they never married, Mary took his name and continued to use it after they split up.   She was arrested, charged and tried under this name.  Mary associated with better off men and had never worked or ever needed to. One of her several admirers, Charles Creighton, had rented rooms for her at 2 Priory Street, Kentish Town in North London around 1888, when she met Frank Samuel Hogg.   She was kno...

On 22 December 1941, men of The Royal Tank Regiment pose on and around a Matilda tank, southwest of Gazala in Libya.  The men are said to have been fighting continuously in the desert for more than a month, but are still in a cheerful mood. During the British Eighth Army's Operation Crusader, lack of supplies forced Rommel to shorten his lines of communication and on 7 December 1941, the Axis forces withdrew to the Gazala position and on 15 December began a withdrawal to El Agheila. For ten days, the Axis forces withdrew to a line between Ajedabia and El Haseia, maintaining their lines of communication and avoiding being cut off, unlike the Italians in 1940–1941.  The mere presence of the British armour had prompted Rommel to withdraw from Gazala, but the opportunity for the British to gain a big victory had been missed. Up to early 1942, in the war in North Africa, the Matilda proved highly effective against Italian and German tanks, although vulnerable to the larger calibre ...

Tunnel Rats: The Underground Search-And-Destroy Soldiers Of The Vietnam War. A soldier trained to enter enemy enclosed spaces like tunnel systems to search them and eliminate and/or capture any occupants.   The tunnel rats were American, Australian, and New Zealand soldiers who performed underground search and destroy missions during the Vietnam War. These fearless combat engineers descended into the complex Viet Cong tunnels to gather info and disarm bombs — often at the cost of their own lives. For a soldier during the Vietnam War, one of the most dangerous of obstacles was faced by a select few soldiers known as “tunnel rats.” These unsung heroes of the Vietnam War were American, Australian, and New Zealand soldiers specially trained as combat engineers, who carefully crawled through the cramped Viet Cong underground to perform perilous covert search and destroy missions. The tunnel rats gently prodded for potentially armed mines in order to disarm them and prayed that they...

"Mechanics of Ki*lling. From the first torture rack to the latest gas chamber, science has transformed the criminal’s execution from a human butchery into a skilled profession. WHEN the world was younger, the law’s method of exacting an eye for an eye and a life for a life was crude. Today the mechanics of executions have been made both deadly and scientific. Not so always! In ancient Rome a condemned man, clad only in a loin cloth, was shoved by his executioner into a large sack.  Into the sack also was placed a dog, a rooster and a poisonous snake. The writhing bundle was hurled into a swamp, and the execution had been carried out. In England, in the Middle Ages, a victim was chained to the stone floor of his cell, and he was forced to lie prone with heavy weights clamped to his back.  Each day the jailer brought a slice of moldy bread, a cup of stagnant water, and added another weight. The bread and water got smaller in quantity each day. The weights grew heavier. Finally, ...

The Garrote. Execution by garrote were first introduced in 1812 as an alternative to hanging.  At least 736 people were executed by garrote in Spain during the 19th century.  Usually, those who were condemned to suffer this method of capital punishment were found guilty of crimes like murder, banditry, or major acts of terrorism.  Prisoners would be seated with their backs against a post, and a rope loop which was also attached to the pole would then be placed around their necks.  Executioners would then use a stick inserted into the loop of the rope to strangle them.  There was also a Chinese variation of this execution method involving the use of bowstring. Don't forget to leave your thoughts in the comment section below.

SOME FAR EASTERN DEATH PENALTIES FROM THE EARLY 1900'S Beheaded revolutionists in Wuchang, 1911 (lower right) The death penalty in the Far East has a notorious past, with some extremely inhumane execution methods having been practiced.  In the 19th century "death by elephant" – in which elephants were used to crush, maim or otherwise torture prisoners – was one method of public execution that was still being practiced. Garrote Execution, Manila, the Philippines, 1901 (upper right) The man above is being garrotted to death in Manila Bilibid Prison. Garrotting is essentially strangling someone to death using a chain or a wire.  However, during executions, a post with a seat to which the captive was tied was generally used, with a metal band placed around the victim's neck that was tightened until the condemned suffocated to death.  In some cases (especially in Spain, which used the garrotte until 1973) there was a spike on the band to break the spinal cord more quickly....

Few people know that the Japanese constructed seven concentration camps on American soil during World War II and imprisoned American nationals there.  In fact, the Japanese fascist warmongers who occupied Guam for two years and nine months, slaughtered 10 percent of the population, raped most of the women on the island and conducted numerous war crimes.  We in American need to never forget what happened to people who trusted us to protect them and who served in our military and paid their taxes.  In order to understand this unknown chapter of American history, one needs to know the background of the United States involvement with Guam and how it all began. The United States acquired Guam as a result of the Spanish-American War in 1898.  Guam, the largest and most populous of the Mariana islands in the Micronesia in the North Pacific, was a convenient stop on the route from North America to the Asian continent, the Philippines and Japan. Coconut groves flourished unde...

Germany’s invasion of Poland in 1939 had started WWII in Europe, but by 1943, the tide was turning.  The Soviet Red Army was advancing from the east and Nazi Germany’s armies were in retreat. All the while, the Soviets were picking up territory, liberating millions from Nazi-occupation.  The further Russian advances in June and July 1944 had succeeded beyond all expectation, and they eventually began moving into more disputed ground, beginning with the eastern Poland territory that Stalin had taken as part of his prewar deal with Hitler and that was now under German control. The Soviet advance presented the Polish resistance and the Polish government-in-exile with a terrible problem.  They knew that Stalin had already massacred tens of thousands of Polish officers and officials. Stalin had even set up his own puppet Polish government in the liberated city of Lublin.  Cutting a deal with Stalin would mean surrendering national sovereignty and accepting the massacre of...

February 1945: The Rape of Manila. Faithful’s duty to fight human. To this day, much is heard of the Rape of Nanking when the rampaging Japanese Imperial Army killed 300,000 from 1937 to 1938, and raped 20,000 women in that Chinese capital. Pitifully few, though, in the Philippines and even fewer elsewhere, know that in Manila, in February 1945, World War II at its agonizing climax brought forth 100,000 burned, bayoneted, bombed, shelled and shrapneled dead in the span of 28 days.   Unborn babies ripped from their mothers’ wombs provided sport: thrown up in the air and caught, impaled on bayonet tips. With rape on the streets and everywhere else, the Bayview Hotel became Manila’s rape center.  After the dirty deed was done, nipples were sliced off, and bodies bayoneted open from the neck down. William Manchester in his book “American Caesar,” wrote that “Once Rear Adm. Sanji Iwabuchi had decided to defend Manila, the atrocities began, and the longer the battle raged,...