BS: I wish I believed in hell, again

Subject: BS: I wish I belived in hell, again
From: Paul Burke
Date: 17 Jun 08 - 04:44 AM

Yet another bastard kills his kids to spite his wife.

I'd suggest tarring the corpse and gibbetting it.

Subject: RE: BS: I wish I belived in hell, again
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 17 Jun 08 - 04:52 AM

'man of the year' - just thank your lucky stars he wasn't into folk music. I have a feeling the obnoxious git might have fitted in quite well.

Subject: RE: BS: I wish I belived in hell, again
From: Little Hawk
Date: 17 Jun 08 - 08:57 AM

If you wish to believe in hell, Paul, go to a casino and watch the people on the slots for a half hour or so...

(I realize that has nothing to do with the subject of your post, but I still had to say it)

Subject: RE: BS: I wish I belived in hell, again
From: GUEST,number 6
Date: 17 Jun 08 - 09:00 AM

LH ... I believe you have mistaken Hell with Fool's Paradise.

biLL

Subject: RE: BS: I wish I belived in hell, again
From: Little Hawk
Date: 17 Jun 08 - 09:05 AM

LOL! Well, maybe. But it still looks like hell to me.

As to the git who killed his children...well, it's the sort of individual human tragedy that's been occuring here and there for about the last 50,000 years when people's most cherished personal dreams come crashing down and they can't handle it. No one on Earth is more likely to kill you, statistically speaking, than a close relative of yours. That's because family situations generate extremely strong emotions in people.

Fortunately, most of us are a bit better at controlling those murderous impulses we have from time to time than this man was.

Subject: RE: BS: I wish I belived in hell, again
From: SINSULL
Date: 17 Jun 08 - 09:16 AM

I suspect this man was living in his own hell as was his child.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/06/17/toddler.killed.ap/index.html

Subject: RE: BS: I wish I belived in hell, again
From: Little Hawk
Date: 17 Jun 08 - 09:47 AM

For sure, SINSULL. These are usually cases of people who have, for some reason either wholly or partially unknown to others, reached a point of total and absolute desperation. In that extremely disturbed state of mind they kill their children, their spouse or someone else.

It could happen to anyone, in my opinion, although it doesn't happen to most people.

That's why I do not set about trying to judge such people after the fact, nor do I wish them to be tortured in some fanciful hell...because it's abundantly clear to me that they were already experiencing a personal hell of some kind anyway.

What good does it do for me or anyone else to go into a frenzy of revengeful thinking against such a person? Isn't that a bit like what they themselves just did against whoever they killed?

Subject: RE: BS: I wish I belived in hell, again
From: Rapparee
Date: 17 Jun 08 - 09:55 AM

Like this guy, LH? Or others I could mention, from the US, Canada, the UK, Germany, Ireland and other places?

Subject: RE: BS: I wish I belived in hell, again
From: GUEST,number 6
Date: 17 Jun 08 - 10:01 AM

I agree LH ... "frenzy of revengeful thinking" ... such acts are Hell on earth, seeking revenge in such a manner can anly ignite a larger frenzied Hell.

biLL

Subject: RE: BS: I wish I belived in hell, again
From: Wesley S
Date: 17 Jun 08 - 10:45 AM

It does suprise me that this Joseph Duncan has his own blog from prison. Is that the best use of freedom of speech? I know we don't have to read it but still.....

Subject: RE: BS: I wish I belived in hell, again
From: Peace
Date: 17 Jun 08 - 10:46 AM

"I wish I believed in hell again"

Read the entire "more session rudeness" thread. You will.

Subject: RE: BS: I wish I belived in hell, again
From: Wolfgang
Date: 17 Jun 08 - 11:20 AM

I love statistics

No one on Earth is more likely to kill you, statistically speaking, than a close relative of yours. (Little Hawk)

I might be wrong if the English word "relative" is used differently from its German translation. If it is used in the same sense as in German then the sentence is wrong, for the most dangerous person to you is someone who is (living) very close to you but isn't related biologically. Stepfathers are much more likely to kill than fathers are.

BTW, the killers are predominantly or even nearly exclusively males. Only for toddlers below 2 years of age, the mother is a considerable danger (in particular,very shortly after birth).

Another angle on the same sentence:
No one on Earth is more likely to kill you, statistically speaking, than a close relative of yours.
So what happens if a woman leaving a bus at night some hundred meters from her house sees a male figure leaning in the darkness of a shadow and when the figure steps forward realises that the male is her partner? Is she more or is she less afraid than seconds before when she didn't know the identity of the male?

LH's (basically correct) statistic can be misleading, as this example shows, because it is averaged across all times of the life including for instance infanticide by the mother immediately after birth. But we spend much more of our daily time among people we know closely and relations than we spend with strangers. So there is much more opportunity for closely related people to run into a fatal argument than for complete strangers.

If we look at identical time periods the statistic is different. One hour spent with a stranger is much more dangerous than one hour spent with a relative. We just spend so much more hours with relatives.

Such use of statistics reminds me of that stupid therapist who once advised students to leave the kitchen or the bathroom when they seriously quarreled with the partner, because statistics show that most family murders happen in these two rooms.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: I wish I belived in hell, again
From: Rapparee
Date: 17 Jun 08 - 01:30 PM

Or the cops who installed crime mapping software and discovered that nearly all of the murders occurred at two addresses. Checking showed these to be the local hospitals, where the victims were declared dead.

Subject: RE: BS: I wish I belived in hell, again
From: GUEST,number 6
Date: 17 Jun 08 - 01:43 PM

LOL .... Peace, I'll be the first to admit I'm a bit slow on the take but I now get it !!

Good one.

biLL

Subject: RE: BS: I wish I belived in hell, again
From: jacqui.c
Date: 17 Jun 08 - 01:58 PM

Re the original story hear it's the mother of these two children who is in hell now. She'll wake up every morning to the realisation that she will never see, touch or hear her children again and will most likely be castigating herself for not having prevented this from happening even if, rationally, there was no way in which she could have predicted the event.

I'll try and keep my emotion for sympathy and compassion for the bereaved in cases of this kind. However, for some people, I still believe that the death penalty is warranted.

Subject: RE: BS: I wish I belived in hell, again
From: Peace
Date: 17 Jun 08 - 02:07 PM

"2001 - Murders of children [in Canada]

Biological fathers 16
Biological mothers 16
Step-fathers 4
Step-mothers 1
Sibling 3
Spouse 0
Other family 3
Total non-family homicides 26
Acquaintance 4
Stranger 11
Unknown 5
Total solved homicides 69"

Subject: RE: BS: I wish I belived in hell, again
From: Amos
Date: 17 Jun 08 - 02:21 PM

Is that the best use of freedom of speech? I

Wesley,

I would suggest that the actual freedom of speech, as a backbone requirement for a consittutional republic, does not stand for any test as to best uses.

It has to include speech you yourself would not want to hear.

And, in a sense, having a convict free to spout opinions from his jail cell is, indeed, an excellent use of free speech! :D


A

Subject: RE: BS: I wish I belived in hell, again
From: Wesley S
Date: 17 Jun 08 - 02:37 PM

It's just a shame that anyone would want to read it. If prisoners have to give up the right to vote when they are sentenced - should they give up their blogging rights too? They are locked up - they lose the freedom to come and go at will. But they still get to roam the world via the internet? That doesn't seem balanced somehow.

Subject: RE: BS: I wish I belived in hell, again
From: Rapparee
Date: 17 Jun 08 - 03:46 PM

Some people (if I can call them that) are unfit to live with others or in society.

Subject: RE: BS: I wish I belived in hell, again
From: Peace
Date: 17 Jun 08 - 04:00 PM

IMO, that's NO reason to vote for them, Rapaire.

Subject: RE: BS: I wish I belived in hell, again
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 17 Jun 08 - 04:03 PM

I wish I didn't believe in hell, or purgatory either. I plain do not like torture and I don't know what else to call it. I have no problems at all with the death penalty under extreme circumstances. I would do brain surgery on the most violent people to make them docile or do other nonreversible biological interventions. But I would never torture Adolph Hitler, Pol Pot, anyone, forever and ever. AMen. mg

Subject: RE: BS: I wish I belived in hell, again
From: Little Hawk
Date: 17 Jun 08 - 04:24 PM

You're like a human electron microscope, Wolfgang. ;-)

Naturally we are in more danger from those we spend more time around! We have far more opportunity to make them become hostile towards us, and vice versa.

Why, for example, would I kill a complete stranger? He hasn't been making my life hell for the last 10 or 20 years! Also, I don't really have any expectations of him. Now if he was in my family...well, that's different. Then the chances of him making my life hell rise considerably, don't they? And my expectations of him or her can also become quite unrealistic, can't they? People tend to kill family members because they lose control over some longstanding (and seemingly unresolvable) issues that have built up to a pressure point.

As Rapaire points out, "Some people (if I can call them that) are unfit to live with others or in society." Yes, some are...but they were not born that way, and they didn't become that way overnight. Given a set of different influences and circumstances in their early years, they might have grown up into people entirely fit to live with others in society.

Therefore, I do not judge them (in terms of their intrinsic worth as human beings). I judge their acts. As a law enforcement person I would deal with them accordingly, precisely as the law dictates, and on the basis of their acts. Protection for society by incarceration. Enforcement of the law. No revenge for the sake of revenge.

I understand revenge, I understand why people feel that way, but I think that when they let that feeling control them they lose their own humanity in the process. I realize, however, that there's an entire Hollywood action movie industry and a few billion people out there who don't agree with me at all on that... ;-) Well, that's life.

Subject: RE: BS: I wish I belived in hell, again
From: Peace
Date: 17 Jun 08 - 04:29 PM

Drop 'em in large vats of H2SO4. Return in a half hour to get them out. If they have gone, they are free.

Subject: RE: BS: I wish I belived in hell, again
From: Rapparee
Date: 17 Jun 08 - 04:36 PM

No, not revenge.

But if someone has, by his or her own actions and history, made his or her self unfit to live in society they should either be incarcerated for life with no contact with society or society should simply destroy them and get on with living, much as I would delete a email: without rancor, as humanely as possible, and in private.

Subject: RE: BS: I wish I belived in hell, again
From: Wesley S
Date: 17 Jun 08 - 04:41 PM

I'm reminded of Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch in "To Kill a Mockingbird" when he shoots the rabid dog. Regrettable but necessary for the safety of others.

Subject: RE: BS: I wish I belived in hell, again
From: Little Hawk
Date: 17 Jun 08 - 05:19 PM

Yes, agreed, there are cases when that is probably the most sensible thing to to.

The Indians, for instance, felt that it was the sensible thing to do with Custer's men who attacked their village. I fully understand the Indians' view of the situation, and would have done the same under those circumstances.

Subject: RE: BS: I wish I belived in hell, again
From: jacqui.c
Date: 17 Jun 08 - 06:31 PM

So would I LH

Subject: RE: BS: I wish I belived in hell, again
From: GUEST,number 6
Date: 17 Jun 08 - 06:58 PM

The Sioux and Cheyenne mutilated the bodies of the uniformed soldiers who died in the carnage of the Little Big Horn believing that the soul of a mutilated body would be forced to walk the earth for all eternity and could not ascend to heaven.

I guess that is their version of hell.

biLL

Subject: RE: BS: I wish I believed in hell, again
From: Little Hawk
Date: 18 Jun 08 - 01:03 PM

Yes, that was their version of hell. They had another version of it too...they thought that if a man was hanged then his spirit would not be able to escape the body through his last breath, but would be trapped in the corpse for all eternity.

This gave the Indians a tremendous fear of being executed in that particular fashion...and they regarded it as a truly terrible practice on the part of the Whites.

The Indian chiefs reputedly ordered their people not to mutilate the fallen body of George Custer. This may have been because of their considerable respect for his courage in battle. As it was, some of the women simply pushed their knitting needles into his ears to open them up a bit so that he could "hear better" in the next life, and not make the same mistake of again attacking the Lakota and Cheyenne.