"It's like déjà vu all over again".

Okay---

From the sublime flautist Ian Anderson to the completely ridiculous:



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Okay---

Now for the way it really went:



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lol... yeah right. As if the Fuckwad Alcoholic Troll just breezily gave up his entire life, which is trolling these boards as Z. Errrr.... no. To claim that he doesn't care about his Z personna is pretty much out there.

I'm just waiting to see whether he got banned for his comments about pedophilic attacks on the children of other ET members or his defense of child rape.

 

history lesson
Lincoln's Laws of War
How he built the code that Bush attempted to destroy.
By John Fabian Witt
Posted Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2009, at 6:54 AM ET

One of Abraham Lincoln's little-noted accomplishments has become his most unlikely legacy. He helped create the modern international rules that protect civilians, prevent torture, and limit the horrors of combat, the body of law known as the laws of war. Indeed, he was probably our most important law-of-war president, having crafted the very rules that George W. Bush and his Justice Department tried to destroy.

At the beginning of the Civil War in 1861, few Americans had given much thought to the laws of war. Lincoln was no exception. He had never been a soldier of any note. In middle age, he joked about his youthful service as a militia captain, observing that although he had fought and bled in "a good many bloody struggles," all his fights were with mosquitoes. As an Illinois lawyer, his bustling commercial law practice did not bring him into contact with the 19th-century laws of war, either.

When the shooting started at Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, Lincoln became a war president barely a month into his first term in office. As a novice commander in chief, his inclination was to deny that the international laws of war had any relevance to the South's war of rebellion. The rebels were criminals, he insisted, not soldiers. Members of Congress and European statesmen pressed him to take international law more seriously. But Lincoln dismissed "the law of nations," as international law was then called, as a curiosity that country lawyers like him knew little about.

Lincoln's skepticism about the laws of war culminated a year later, in July 1862, in one of the Civil War's most famous early scenes. After weeks of deadly fighting and a demoralizing Union retreat in Virginia, Lincoln traveled to the front lines to encourage more aggressive action by Gen. George McClellan's Army of the Potomac. To win the war, Lincoln was beginning to think, the Union would have to attack the social fabric of the South. But McClellan resisted. The man known as "Little Napoleon" was one of the few Americans versed in the highly idealized rules of war handed down by the professional armies of 18th-century Europe. As McClellan saw it, the more aggressive campaign that Lincoln urged would undermine the European laws that had sought to make war resemble a kind of gentleman's duel.

Instead of embracing Lincoln's new urgency, McClellan lectured Lincoln on the laws of civilized warfare and the sharp constraints they placed on his prosecution of the Union war effort. A war among Christian and civilized people, he told the president, should not be a war against the people of the rebellious states, but a war between armies. He warned against the seizure of private property and especially against the "forcible abolition of slavery." Civilized wars, in McClellan's conception, left the fabric of society virtually untouched.

Lincoln grasped immediately that McClellan's conception of the laws of war would make it virtually impossible to win the war and preserve the Union. Just when a more aggressive war effort was required, McClellan was advocating rules of engagement that would have treated the South with kid gloves. At this same time, Lincoln was encountering a series of excruciatingly difficult problems that led him to reconsider his previous disdain for laws of war. On the high seas, the powerful nations of Europe demanded that the Union adopt a consistent set of predictable rules in its treatment of vessels from neutral foreign states. In the South, Jefferson Davis denounced Lincoln's decision to execute Confederate commerce raiders as pirates and threatened to retaliate in kind against captured Union soldiers. And in the West, guerilla fighting among civilians on both sides threatened to drag the conflict into a war of unremitting slaughter and destruction.

 

Continued:

Most of all, Lincoln's increasingly firm conviction that the war needed to be brought home to the people of the South—and to the slave system on which they depended—cried out for new rules. After meeting with McClellan, Lincoln began to think about what advantages new laws of war might offer the Union effort.

The first stage of Lincoln's re-evaluation came in the Emancipation Proclamation. Less than a week after meeting with McClellan, Lincoln confided for the first time to members of his Cabinet that he intended to issue his controversial emancipation order. The proclamation was an utter rejection of McClellan's limited war model. But as Lincoln later explained it, his new view was that the laws of war authorized armies to do virtually "all in their power to help themselves, or hurt the enemy." Lincoln insisted that there were "a few things regarded as barbarous or cruel" that were beyond the pale. But there could be little doubt that Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation would extend the war effort beyond the battlefield and into plantations across the South.

The second stage came that winter, soon after Lincoln finally fired the slow-moving McClellan. After appalling casualties on both sides at Antietam in September 1862 and in the midst of a devastating defeat at Fredericksburg, Va., in early December, Lincoln commissioned a new compilation of the rules for war. Written by a committee of veteran Union officers led by a professor at Columbia College named Francis Lieber, the code aimed to update the laws of war for modern conditions. It would enable the new, more aggressive war that Lincoln wanted to wage in the spring campaigns of 1863 while preventing aggressive modern warfare from sliding into total destruction.

The code reduced the international laws of war into a simple pamphlet for wide distribution to the amateur soldiers of the Union army. It prohibited torture, poisons, wanton destruction, and cruelty. It protected prisoners and forbade assassinations. It announced a sharp distinction between soldiers and noncombatants. And it forbade attacks motivated by revenge and the infliction of suffering for its own sake. Most significantly, the code sought to protect channels of communication between warring armies. And it elevated the truce flag to a level of sacred honor.

In the spring of 1863, Lincoln's code was given not just to the armies of the Union but to the armies of the Confederacy. The code set out the rules the Union would follow—and that the Union would expect the South to follow, too. For the next two years, prisoner-exchange negotiations relied on the code to set the rules for identifying those who were entitled to prisoner-of-war status. Trials of Southern guerilla fighters and other violators of the laws of war leaned on the code's rules for support. The Union war effort became far more aggressive than it had been under McClellan's rules. As the Union's fierce Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman put it, Lincoln brought the "hard hand of war" to the population of the South. But this more aggressive posture was not at odds with Lincoln's new code. It was the code's fulfillment.

As the code's Confederate critics noticed immediately, the laws of war Lincoln announced in 1863 were far tougher than the humanitarian rules McClellan had demanded a year earlier. The code allowed for the destruction of civilian property, the bombardment of civilians in besieged cities, the starving of noncombatants, and the emancipation of civilians' slaves. It permitted executing prisoners in cases of necessity or as retaliation. It condoned the summary executions of enemy guerillas. And in its most open-ended provision, the code authorized any measure necessary to secure the ends of war and defend the country. "To save the country," the code declared, "is paramount to all other considerations." Lincoln's code was a body of rules not for McClellan's gentleman's war but for Sherman's March to the Sea.

In the decades after the Civil War, Lincoln's rules went global. International norms become international law only when great powers agree to comply with them, and Lincoln's code seemed to allow the great powers of the world to prosecute war aggressively without descending into wars of total destruction. Translations of the code spread through the armies of Prussia and France and into multinational treaties signed at The Hague. Following World War II, its provisions reappeared in the Geneva Conventions that are in effect to this day. Eventually, Lincoln's code would make its way into the pockets of men and women stationed around the world, in the field manuals and wallet cards that soldiers carry with guidelines for the laws of armed conflict.

Yet if soldiers still today carry around a little bit of Old Abe Lincoln in their pockets, the appeal of his approach to the laws of war has waned in recent decades. Today, the two leading paradigms for the laws of war are a humanitarian model and a war crimes model. The former would base the laws of war in individual human rights, the latter in the criminal tribunals like the one at Nuremberg after World War II.

In 1862 and 1863, Lincoln was up to something very different. His personal passage from law-of-war skeptic to law-of-war reviser in the midst of the Civil War offered him a distinctive vantage point. His code sought to organize the laws of war not around individual human rights or war crimes trials, but around reciprocity and coordination between armies. Lincoln's code set limits on his army's conduct, to be sure. But it also aimed to win a war. The function of Lincoln's laws of war was thus to identify and protect opportunities for cooperative behavior even in the clash of armed conflict.

In our own time, Lincoln's pragmatic model of the laws of war can help us in Iraq and Afghanistan. There is little prospect of reciprocity with terrorists, of course. But if one thing has become apparent in the cross-border security threats of the 21st century, it's that cooperation among the decent states of the world will be indispensable to policing against common threats. This is what Secretary of State Hillary Clinton meant when she stated in her confirmation hearings, "Today's security threats cannot be addressed in isolation." Combating terror, according to Clinton, requires "reaching out to both friends and adversaries, to bolster old alliances and to forge new ones." Lincoln's laws of war did just that. They were ways of reaching out to bolster cooperation even in the midst of conflict.

For the past seven years, America has repeated the journey Lincoln completed in 24 grueling months. Strong majorities of Americans now call for the dismantling of detention facilities at Guantanamo. Even stronger majorities oppose the use of torture in interrogations. As a nation, we have walked in Lincoln's footsteps, down an uncertain path from skepticism about the laws of war to a rediscovery of their pragmatic mix of toughness and humanity. President Obama, in his inaugural address, pledged to reconcile our interests and our ideals. This is precisely what Lincoln's laws of war sought to accomplish, rejecting lawlessness while relentlessly pursuing threats to our way of life.
John Fabian Witt is a professor of legal history at Columbia University and the author of Patriots and Cosmopolitans: Hidden Histories of American Law.

Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2210918/

 

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US worried over prospect of right-wing gov't
Feb. 11, 2009
hilary leila krieger, the jerusalem post, washington , THE JERUSALEM POST

US officials are publicly taking a wait-and-see approach to the formation of a new Israeli government, but privately many have expressed concern that Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu might preside over a right-wing coalition.

"There would be great unease" at the prospect of such a government, said one Capitol Hill source.

He predicted that a governing coalition of parties from the Right could embolden the left flank of the Democratic party and turn up pressure, particularly in the US Congress, to pass measures that made clear demands on Israel.

He distinguished, however, between a Netanyahu-led right-wing coalition and Netanyahu-led national unity government.

Despite the Likud's second-place finish to the centrist Kadima party, parties on the Right won more of the vote, which means Netanyahu might have an easier time forming a hawkish coalition but could try to work out a formula for a unity government, as could Kadima head Tzipi Livni.

The Capitol Hill source, who didn't want to be identified speaking about another country's internal politics, noted that Netanyahu had made a strong effort to reach out to the Obama administration and made the case to the US and the Israeli public that he could work with the White House.

He said that attitude could help assuage US concerns when presented in a national-unity package, whose positions - whether under Netanyahu or Livni - would be more in line with the US's own policies of engagement on Arab-Israeli reconciliation.

"The hope is that there is a government that is really committed to peace with the Palestinians," The Washington Post quoted one senior administration official saying.

Even if Netanyahu prevails, the official added, "he's grown over the years. Getting back to the talks with the Palestinians is really the only solution."

Ron Dermer, a senior adviser to Netanyahu, said Wednesday that the Likud leader strongly preferred to put together a national-unity government that looked toward the center of the country's political spectrum rather than a right-wing coalition.

"He's said his biggest mistake when he was prime minister last time was not reaching out to Shimon Peres," who then headed the Labor party, Dermer said on a conference call with the United Jewish Communities and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs. "I do not believe he will make the same mistake this time.

"I very much hope that Tzipi Livni will put politics aside" to sit in a Likud-led government, Dermer added.

Still, many political analysts say there's no doubt the Obama administration would prefer to see a national-unity government headed by Livni.

"The impression in Israel is that the Obama administration has already made its preference known and that its preference is for Kadima - and that impression isn't going anywhere," said Georgetown University professor and Israel expert Michael Oren.

"They'd rather work with a centrist government than a right-wing government."

He added that the preference of the Obama camp, with its interest in intensive diplomacy, was "legitimate," noting that many Israelis preferred Republican presidential candidate John McCain because they observed a greater alignment of views.

When it comes to Livni, the administration sees someone who has spent the last year working with the Palestinians as part of a negotiating process and made the two-state solution an important part of her campaign, while Netanyahu has been much more circumspect on the extent of his support for that formulation, focusing his campaign on the need for security.

And while Netanyahu did sign agreements that gave control of West Bank areas to the Palestinians as prime minister in the late '90s, he had a troubled relationship with many of the American officials who served under then president Bill Clinton, several of whom are returning to office under Obama.

Dennis Ross, Clinton's Middle East envoy and likely to be a top regional representative, described Netanyahu as "overcome by hubris" after his first election to the premiership and recalled him being "nearly insufferable, lecturing and telling us how to deal with the Arabs" in his book on the Oslo peace process.

Still, publicly US officials are welcoming the Israeli democratic process and indicating their readiness to work with whoever becomes prime minister.

"This is a choice these Israeli people will have to make. Once that new government is formed, regardless of who is in that government, we will work with that government," said US State Department Acting Spokesman Robert Wood on Wednesday.

"We look forward to working with that new government once it's formed. We have a robust agenda with the government of Israel, as you know. And so we're looking forward to getting down to business with the new government."

When questioned about whether a government with right-wing leadership would hurt American peace efforts, Wood responded, "We certainly hope that a new government will continue to pursue a path to peace. I see no reason to think that a new government would do something otherwise."

He added that he knew of no change to Middle East envoy George Mitchell's plans to make his second visit to Israel at the end of the month.

"The administration is being very cautious," said an Israeli official about the silence from US officials right now.

He noted that regardless of their views, they understood that they could have to work with both leaders and didn't want to prejudice either relationship.

Oren said the US leadership had done better at keeping a lid on its feelings than many previous US and Israeli governments.

"This administration is more constrained and more controlled in saying whom they prefer," he said.

He added that if the US expressed its preference for Livni too loudly, it could backfire and hurt her position. He compared the situation to the boost in the polls Israel Beiteinu leader Avigdor Lieberman received from the police's pursuit of corruption charges, since some of his supporters felt he was being unfairly targeted.

"It could boomerang, just like Lieberman picked up [support] from the police investigation," he said.

 

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23
Pete Maravich
POSITION: Guard
HEIGHT: 6-5
WEIGHT: 190
CLASS: Senior
EXPERIENCE: 3L
HIGH SCHOOL: Edward Military Institute
HOMETOWN: Aliquippa, Pa.
Updated 01/03/2007

ALL-CENTURY TEAM MEMBER

Full Name: Peter Press Maravich
Born: 6/22/47 in Aliquippa, Pa
Died: 1/5/88
High School: Daniel (Clemson, S.C. from 1961-63); Needham Broughton (Raleigh, N.C. from 1963-65); Edwards Military Institute (Salemburg, N.C. from 1965-66)
College: LSU (freshman team in 1966-67; Three-year Varsity letterwinner from 1967-1970)

Pete Maravich was billed as the one who would put Louisiana basketball on the map from the first day he joined his father Press at LSU. People weren’t disappointed. His freshman year they packed the old John M. Parker Agricultural Center (known as the “Cow Palace”) to watch the freshman team and then left quickly as the varsity Tigers won just three games in 1967.

By Pete’s senior year, the Tigers would improve to 20-8 and wind up in New York City at the National Invitation Tournament, a fitting place for the big-city Maravich Show to close its LSU run.

To those who never saw him play live, but only watched what few games were on television or listened on radio, the Maravich story at LSU may seem larger than life. But his skills were perfected through hours and hours of repetitious drills at all hours of the day and night and in all kinds of settings.

Maravich ended up receiving the richest contract ever offered a college player at the time to sign with the Atlanta Hawks ($1.9 million), but during his 10-year career with the Hawks, the New Orleans and Utah Jazz and the Boston Celtics, his dream of a championship wasn’t fulfilled.

Maravich’s Records and Highlights:

* All-Time NCAA Career Scoring Leader with 3,667 points, an average of 44.2 points for 83 games.
* Ranks first, fourth and fifth for most points in a single season in NCAA history. Averaged 44.5 points in 1970, 44.2 points in 1969 and 43.8 points in 1968.
* Scored 69 points vs. Alabama, Feb. 7, 1970.
* Led LSU to the NIT Final Four in 1970, its first postseason appearance in 16 years.
* Unanimous first-team All-American in 1968, 1969, 1970.
* Naismith Award winner in 1970.
* Member of the National Basketball Association Hall of Fame after 10-year career with Atlanta Hawks, New Orleans and Utah Jazz and Boston Celtics.
* Named one of the NBA’s 50 greatest players in 1997.

LSU Career Highlights:
Three-year letter winner (1967-70)
The Sporting News College Player of the Year (1970)
Naismith Award Winner (1970)
The Sporting News All-America First Team (1968, 1969, 1970)
Three-time AP and UPI First-Team All-America (1968, 1969, 1970)
Holds NCAA career record for most points (3,667, 44.2 ppg, three-year career) in 83 games
Holds NCAA career record for highest points per game average (44.2 ppg)
Holds NCAA record for most field goals made (1,387) and attempted (3,166)
Holds NCAA record for most free throws made (893) and attempted (1,152)
Holds NCAA record for most games scoring at least 50 points (28)
Holds NCAA single-season record for most points (1,381) and highest per game average (44.5 ppg) in 1970
Ranks 1st, 4th and 5th for most points in a single season in NCAA history, averaging 44.5 points in 1970, 44.2 points in 1969 and 43.8 points in 1968.
Holds NCAA single-season record for most field goals made (522) and attempted (1,168) in 1970
Holds NCAA single-season record for most games scoring at least 50 points (10) in 1970
Holds NCAA single-game record for most free throws made (30 of 31) against Oregon State on Dec. 22, 1969
Led the NCAA Division I in scoring with 43.8 ppg (1968); 44.2 (1969) and 44.5 ppg (1970)
The 44.5 ppg average ranks best in NCAA history; 44.2 ppg (fourth); 43.8 ppg (fifth)
Averaged 43.6 ppg on the LSU freshman team (1967)
Scored a career-high 69 points vs. Alabama (Feb. 7, 1970); 66 vs. Tulane (Feb. 10, 1969); 64 vs. Kentucky (Feb. 21, 1970); 61 vs. Vanderbilt (Dec. 11, 1969);
Holds LSU records for most field goals in a game (26) against Vanderbilt on Jan. 29, 1969 and attempted (57) against Vanderbilt
All-Southeastern Conference (1968, 1969, 1970)
Led LSU to the NIT Final Four in 1970, its first post-season appearance in 16 years
In 1988, Louisiana Governor Buddy Roemer signed legislation changing the official name of LSU's home court to the Maravich Assembly Center
In 1970, Maravich led LSU to a 20-8 record and a third place finish in the NIT
All-Time NCAA Career Scoring Leader with 3,667 points, an average of 44.2 points for 83 games.

Professional Basketball Career | Full Bio from NBA.com:
Drafted: Atlanta Hawks, 1970 (third overall)
Transactions: Traded to New Orleans Jazz, 5/3/74; Jazz move to Utah, 1979; Waived by Utah, 1/17/80; Signed with Boston, 1/22/80
NBA Atlanta Hawks (1970-74)
NBA New Orleans Jazz (1974-79)
NBA Utah Jazz (1979-80)
NBA Boston Celtics (1979-80)

Pro Playing Highlights:
NBA All-Rookie Team (1971)
All-NBA First Team (1976, 1977)
All-NBA Second Team (1973, 1978)
Five-time NBA All-Star (1973, 1974, 1977-1979)
Scored 15,948 points (24.2 ppg) in 658 games
Led the NBA in scoring (31.1 ppg) in 1977, his career best
Scored a career-high 68 points (12th best in history) against the New York Knicks on Feb. 25, 1977
Led the NBA in most field goals attempted in 1974 (1,791) and 1977 (2,047)
Shares NBA single-game record for most free throws made in one quarter (14) on Nov. 28, 1973 against Buffalo and most free throws attempted in one quarter (16) on Jan. 2, 1973 against Chicago
Member of the National Basketball Association Hall of Fame after 10-year career with Atlanta Hawks, New Orleans and Utah Jazz and Boston Celtics (1987)
NBA 50th Anniversary All-Time Team (1996)

Pete Maravich was billed as the one who would put Louisiana basketball on the map from the first day he joined his father Press at LSU. People weren't disappointed. His freshman year they packed the old John M. Parker Agricultural Center (known as the "Cow Palace") to watch the freshman team and then left quickly as the varsity Tigers won just three games in 1967. By Pete's senior year, the Tigers would improve to 20-8 and wind up in New York City at the National Invitation Tournament, a fitting place for the big-city Maravich Show to close its LSU run.

To those who never saw him play live, but only watched what few games were on television or listened on radio, the Maravich story at LSU may seem larger than life. But his skills were perfected through hours and hours of repetitious drills at all hours of the day and night and in all kinds of settings.

Maravich ended up receiving the richest contract ever offered a college player at the time to sign with the Atlanta Hawks ($1.9 million), but during his 10-year career with the Hawks, the New Orleans and Utah Jazz and the Boston Celtics, his dream of a championship wasn't fulfilled. Pete was finding that life wasn't very fulfilling either. There were hard times when he went in search of something to make his life complete. He had money, he had fame. He didn't have real happiness. But in 1982, Pistol Pete accepted Jesus Christ.

He began enjoying life, enjoying times with his wife and children. Television executives were discovering his knowledge of the game again as a color commentator and best of all for LSU fans, a rift that grew between star and college had diminished and was forgotten.

But the Pistol's life suddenly ended on Jan. 5, 1988, just over a month after appearing at the Assembly Center for an emotional ceremony to formally present a portrait of Pete and his father to him.

Other honors

Member of LSWA Top 25 Louisiana Athletes of the Century,1999
Member First-Team LABC All Louisiana Team of the Century, 1999
Member Sports Magazine's Top 10 Men's College Players of the Century, 1999
Member of National Basketball Association Hall of Fame
Honored as 2003 "Legend" at the SEC Basketball Tournament

 

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