Hi,merry Christmas everyone,hope you all have a great time.
I just saw this news article that Alan Turing,one of the,if not the greatest
mind of the twentieth century has been pardoned by the Queen.Long over due,
without his leadership and thinking the outcome of the second war may have been
totally different.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/world-war-two/10536246/Alan-Turing-granted-Royal-pardon-by-the-Queen.html

Have a good un cheers Rick

email (option): richardholt@rocketmail.com

But surely Bill Gates invented the computer and it was the Americans that broke the Enigma code..I know that's right because it was in the film... ....Ian

email (option): ian@wright52.plus.com

Ian.
Just a little history for you, the inigma machine was first developed in Germany for use in the banks but later used by the german military, the Polish were the first people to break the code of the original inigma machine but then it only had thre reels, which was later increased.
I'm sure you are correct about the Americans, I'm sure I saw the same film

TTJohn

email (option): Jomichael@aol.com

If you're ever near Bletchley Park, (Milton Keynes, roundabout city) go and have a look in the museum, fascinating!!!

Cheers,

Lex

email (option): welbike at same.net

Excuse me for being cynical, but I see it as a well timed announcment by the government to make them appear caring, intellectual and progressive.
They are not showing such sympathy, understanding and forgivness to marine Alexander Blackman.

Well said Peter

When I was on the GPO/British Telecom, they sent people to Bletchley for different training courses as it was still owned by them.

email (option): horror@blueyonder.co.uk

Horror

Well said Peter

When I was on the GPO/British Telecom, they sent people to Bletchley for different training courses as it was still owned by them.

email (option): robmiller11(at)yahoo.co.uk

Wasn't he the guy that built the experimental computerised ignition for the WM20, wheighing only 32 Lbs without batteries it should have given an extra 0.5 HP.

Regarding Alan Turing, he certainly got a raw deal. But a couple of points, even if he should not have been chemically castrated (which he shouldn't have been), it's hard to see why someone should be pardoned if the offence they committed was on the statute books when they committed it.

In other words, he broke the law, so he was punished. It was a stupid law, of course. But I'm not sure people should be pardoned simply because the next generation have decided that an older law was stupid. It undermines and dilutes the principle of a pardon - which should happen when the justice system is found to have failed someone (such as the Derek Bentley "Let him have it" case in which a mentally feeble minor criminal was hanged for allegedly inciting the murder of a police officer).

Turing's case is difference. He transgressed. He got a fair trial. He later killed himself. Certainly he deserves recognition for his huge contribution to the war effort. No argument with that. But pardons are a very different animal. Is the government, after all, going to pardon everyone who was prosecuted under the homosexuality laws? Probably not.

Regarding Alexander Blackman, I put a piece on Sump regarding that case. And I agree that the sentence is harsh. But there's an important point here, and it's that this is (supposedly) a judicial matter (albeit a military court), not a governmental matter. God help us when the government does control the judiciary (as it does in Russia, for instance).

Here in the UK, we at least have some separation. Blackman, it seems, deserves a sentence for what he did, but murder on the battlefield has to be treated very differently to murder on domestic streets.

The sorry shame is that successive governments in the UK have always treated the military personnel badly in terms of wages, retraining, accommodation, injury payments, pensions, etc. Look at how they treated the Gurkhas until Joanna Lumley and friends stepped into the breach. Sadly, it seems that they've at least sorted out Blackman's accommodation, for the next ten years, that is.

email (option): dannydefazio@sumpmagazine.com

I agree about Alan Turing..I don't think he merits the pardon.

I don't think the Marine got 'rough justice' either..

There's no way you can be seen to sanction or even condone the shooting of unarmed, wounded combatants...even if they would have treated you in a similar fashion..After WW2 we hung Germans for similar offences....Ian

email (option): ian@wright52.plus.com

Hi Ian, it's not the punishment that's wrong. Just the degree. Also, you might want to take a peek at my piece on Sump. The difference here is that the Germans had signed up to the Geneva Convention(s). The Taliban hasn't. Instead, we have a different kind of enemy that warrants a different approach and treatment. And we know a lot more than we did about psychological pressures of soldiering. In WW1, for instance, they shot you for cowardice; just for being afraid.

Times are more elightened now. In theory.

Also, political expediency has a way of letting combatants return to the battlefield. The coalition troops in Afghanistan are aware of this. That must increase the pressure on them to destroy that enemy completely.

Also, we have aerial bombardment and drones that cause huge amounts of "collateral damage". It's a little hypocritical to throw the book at Blackman when NATO quietly plays by other rules - never mind rendition, Guantanamo, etc.

Yes, he's guilty. But not as guilty as many others.

http://www.sumpmagazine.com/classicbikenews/december-2013/alexander-blackman.htm

email (option): dannydefazio@sumpmagazine.com

#1 I agree 100% wth Peter Stowe.


as for all this moral guff re shooting PoW.... either us or the Americans, I can't remember the source, had explicit instructions not to take prisoners on D-Day and following days.
We were no angels, I know a guy whose father was a Chindit and his boast, because thats what it was, was that he never took a prisoner. That same guy went on to be a Selous Scout and they did not mess around either.
Plenty of records of our troops shooting prisoners but it does not suit the history distorters to bring it up.

one or two allegedly 'civilians', because they are all 'civilians' out there when it suits are as nothing compared to the bombing of German cities and the slaughter of civilans; The allied forces killed more french civilians by they actions than the Germans did.
In WW1 there are lots of stories about soldiers shooting Pow on the way back to our lines.

I am not justifying anything, but lets get it into some kind of proportion.

That Taliban would possibly have been airlifted to a hospital treated maybe life saved and he'd have gone back to killing more of our blokes.If he had been left and had a weapon he would have used it on our man.

I would have done the same without compunction.

The people to blame are those shady anonymous groups who have been behind every european conflict, the ones who fund it and who make money from it.

end of rant.

happy new year to you all. and an early release to Marine Blackman.

Leave the cameras and mobile phones back at the camp not on duty with you.This would never have come to light of day.

OK..Very civilised....Forget the Geneva Conventions and engaging in any attempt to make the individual soldier or group of soldiers behave in an ethical way within the context of an armed conflict..

Forget the fact that having trained, armed and authorised your soldiers to kill that they should abide by the conventions you have signed up to for that very reason.....

Also forget the fact that to have the same lack of ethics as the enemy might not be morally justifiable, desirable or even acceptable by our own standards ...

Shoot prisoners, shoot the wounded, shoot civilians....shoot everyone....Welcome to war without limits...Ian

email (option): ian@wright52.plus.com

Hi Ian, as I said, Blackman was wrong. It's just that it's unrealistic to expect Queensberry Rules on an open wound like Afghanistan. But I can't see that it's any more ethical to drop a cluster bomb on a village from 10,000 feet than it is to shoot a wounded combatant on the battlefield.

Is it more ethical to save a fighter who, in all probability, would sooner or later return to the fray after a spell behind bars only to murder others?

I don't know.

The fact is, the Taliban guy effectively died in combat. He had been armed. He was dangerous. He was ready to die. And he was ready to do a lot of killing of his own. But suddenly he's injured and his enemy are expected to climb down instantly from full battle mode to Mother Theresa mode? It's a tough call. Walk a mile in that marine's boots, etc.

They says that the first casualty of war is the truth. And the second casualty is the plan. Well, maybe the third casualty is the ethics.

I would have sent Blackman to jail. No question. But not for a minimum 10 years. I (like to) think I would have shown him a little more mercy than he showed the wounded Taliban fighter.

Blackman did what he did. It's now really a question of collective responsibility. Maybe we should all do ten years in jail seeing as it was effectively the rest of us who sent him off to war.

We might not be complicit in a murder charge. But there's got to be manslaughter in there somewhere seeing as his actions (or a similar action from another soldier) were foreseeable.

email (option): dannydefazio@sumpmagazine.com

somebody explain to me the moral difference between killing an armed enemy combatant with one bullet or two?
If your rapid fire weapon wounds him with the first bullet,will the second one know not to kill him?

maybe it would have been better to have left the wretched taliban to die in pain and misery like one of his IED victims? Seems an attractive other option to me.

Do the US troops have to put up with all this angst? Watch the utube videos of them using Apache armament on them.

We should not be out there at all, I only hope that in years to come the forces remember the support they have had from the rest of us. Someone will need to arrest those who have been in charge of this debacle, and supress the enemy within.
I can only dream.

One, two or a hundred bullets...morally it makes no difference at all. The morality of the situation is governed by the circumstances in which the bullets are used...

I feel there are few people that would argue there is no moral difference between killing a civilian from an enemy country with a single bullet to the head or killing an armed enemy soldier during a battle by the same method..
The former would be deemed unacceptable..the latter would be deemed a necessity...

If you elect to kill wounded, unarmed enemy combatants or civilians after the battle because your enemy do, then you have descended morally to the same level as your opponents....

It is frequently the case that the whole reason you are in a war in the first place is because of those moral standards....

War is neither physically or morally a precise activity, in fact, it is not really a 'moral' activity at all...so it will always be possible to argue particular moral and ethical points as there are numerous anomalies..
However, the Geneva Conventions were introduced specifically to try and introduce some limit to the barbarity which it is possible during the act, particularly at the level of treatment of the individual..and we signed up to them.

Consequently, measured by the standards of behaviour we have chosen to adopt the actions of this Marine were entirely wrong and morally unsupportable.

I suspect that if a Taliban soldier had been caught and found guilty of shooting an unarmed, wounded British soldier a 10 year jail sentence would be considered lenient by many...

As far as Apache crews are concerned they do not operate without sanction.. If you listen to the on board recordings, it is clear they have to establish visually that the insurgents are either armed or involved in the emplacement of an IED, for example, before they are cleared to engage the target....Ian

email (option): ian@wright52.plus.com

In esssence I mostly agree,but.....

"If you elect to kill wounded, unarmed enemy combatants or civilians after the battle because your enemy do, then you have descended morally to the same level as your opponents...."


.??....whose "morals" encompass mass slaughter,even of their own co-religionists, car bombing, beheadings on video, running down and beheading unarmed soldiers in their home country,shooting school girls and more.? we will not touch on the respect for our dead and injured they demand for theirs.


when you put credit the Taliban, al crapda and their fellow travellers with appreciation of any kind of morality then you are on the road to
defeat. They are not concerned with morals they are out to defeat not just us, but our entire society.

liberal arguments fall down flat in the face of the il-liberal, as does tolerance in the face of intolerance, the intolerant will always win.

Exactly my point....If you consider the actions, the 'morals'..or the lack of them..that the Taliban and other extremist elements display are unacceptable, you have to take a 'moral' stand against them...

Sanctioning, condoning or not strongly punishing such acts among your own troops will lead inevitably to a degredation of your own position and a slide from killing unarmed prisoners to all the crimes you have listed above...

I am not taking a liberal stance...far from it..I would suggest that anyone who condones the actions of that Marine or suggests that in some way his offence can be morally justified is doing that...His duty was to operate within the codes of war accepted and demanded by our society, something he deliberately failed to do...

My opinion is that we shouldn't be 'lenient' because he's 'one of ours' or because our enemies on this occassion are morally corrupt..and we haven't been....The clear message has been given that what is, in international law, a war crime will not be tolerated within our own Army...Ian

email (option): ian@wright52.plus.com

Easiest way to solve it is to bring our guys home and let these medieval retards fight it out amongst themselves.

But the 'Common Purpose' & Co won't allow it. Too much money at stake.

The life of an arab or the liberty of a British soldier is less than nothing in their scheme of things.

There we are in agreement...This is one war we will never win and one that will never end unless we choose to leave....

We only had to look at our own military history in that country and the experiences of the Russians in more recent times to realise that prosecuting a war against the Afghans is something you will have to do for generations...and even then you probably won't get a conclusive result..
The terrain of the country simply does not lend itself to the deployment of modern armies and modern armies are not suited to guerrilla warfare...Also you have a population who are not only prepared to fight ad infinitum for there particular beliefs but also purely because you are there....

The lives of our solders have been utterly wasted in an ill considered and fruitless campaign, in which we have achieved virtually nothing other than the expenditure of human, material and financial resources that we can ill afford to lose...

I personally believe the years following our extrication from this self inflicted mess will illustrate fully the folly of the entire strategy...Ian

email (option): ian@wright52.plus.com

I think we might be better of just talking about motorcycles than getting caught
up in all this .

Of course, in "Queensbury Rules meets Geneva Convention" warfare the Taliban and co., being irregular, out of uniform combatants, would be deemed spies and be subject to field summary justice and immediate execution. Don't confuse fanatics with soldiers. Not only they are not the same, they are not even similar. If you want to make the point that they are entitled to some rights you will have to find those rights somewhere other than the rules that apply to modern "civilized" act-of-state warfare. I'm not saying such rights don't exist, just that they are not found where you are looking.

As for the Alan Turing thread, revisionist history is worse than Churchill's statistics. The law is applied as of the time of the conviction, not with the liberal standards of 60 years later. If not, then every historic warrior king and noble should be convicted of lots of crimes by today's standards. If we can "excuse" an old crime because our mores have changed why can't we similarly now impose a crime for the same reason? Surely Henry V hacked lots of bodies in combat even though they would have died with just the first blow. Why not convict him of crimes against humanity and confiscate the property of all his descendants? And isn't William the Conqueror guilty of waging a war of aggression, which was deemed to be a supreme crime by the Nuremberg tribunal, albeit 800 years later?

History is written by armed victors. Live with it.

email (option): jonny.rudge@verizon.net

That's Good, shall we we say this thread now closed, Andrew.h.

email (option): warbikes@gmail.com