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 Tell me again why you are over in the desert getting shot, kidnapped, shot, beheaded, bombed and did I mention shot? What do you think you will accomplish at the end of the day? C'mon, seriously. I really want to know. | ||||||||||
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Simon de Bruxelles The Times June 5, 2009 A secret weapon intended to blast through the Nazis’ Normandy defences has been re-created to mark the 65th anniversary of the D-Day invasion.  A replica of the Great Panjandrum, a giant drum powered by rockets and carrying a ton of high explosives, will be set off this morning along the beach at Westward Ho! in North Devon, where the original trials took place.The Great Panjandrum was never used in battle because it was judged too unpredictable and too dangerous to its own side. During testing in 1944, the prototype veered wildly off course and careered towards an audience of top brass and VIPs who were forced to flee from their vantage point on a shingle ridge. A cameraman filming the test had an even closer escape as the bomb rolled directly towards him, rockets firing in all directions. The device was revived later for an episode of the BBC comedy Dad’s Army, in which it did just the same thing to great comic effect. Ten workers from the Bristol fireworks company Skyburst have spent two days attaching dozens of rockets to the rims of a 2m (7ft) diameter replica made from a cable drum. The replica is expected to travel up to 500m (550 yards) at a speed of about 15mph. Skyburst’s display director, Leigh Pittaway, ruled out filling it with explosives as the original had been. He said: “We thought about it, as we have the whole beach to ourselves, but decided it would create too many complications. We don’t want to kill any dogs or onlookers.” The original Panjandrum would have been a formidable weapon, had it worked. It was devised by Nevil Shute Norway, later a bestselling novelist using the shortened name of Nevil Shute, but then a naval lieutenant. He trained as an aircraft engineer and had worked with Barnes Wallis, designer of the dam-busting bouncing bomb. Shute had been given the task, by the Admiralty’s Directorate of Miscellaneous Weapons Development, of finding a way of demolishing the German seafront defences before the invasion.  The weapon had to be launched from a landing craft and be able to survive a hail of fire before detonating at a designated spot. According to Shute’s calculations, the Panjandrum would travel at 60mph on its two 10ft diameter steel wheels, smashing its way through any obstacles, before blasting a hole in the 7ft concrete of the Atlantic Wall large enough to drive a tank through.The test ended rather badly! North Devon was chosen for the tests because its shallow sandy beaches resembled those of northern France. The prototype Panjandrum was built in Leytonstone, East London, and transported to Devon under conditions of strict secrecy. But the military had failed to take into account that Westward Ho! and neighbouring Appledore were still popular with holidaymakers. When the time for the test came it was in front of an audience of hundreds of visitors and locals. As the cordite rockets were fired up, the Panjandrum rolled off a landing craft and up the beach, but it veered off to one side and continued to do so during each attempt. After weeks of adjustments Shute and his team felt they had solved the problem. A final demonstration was planned before an audience of senior officers and War Office officials. Things began to go wrong almost as soon as the Great Panjandrum was unleashed. Clamps holding the powerful rockets broke and they went shooting off across the beach. Out of control, it hit a series of bumps and turned towards the pebble ridge. Fortunately, before it could annihilate the assembled generals and admirals, it veered off again and toppled over before exploding. The replica Panjandrum — named after a poem by Samuel Foote that ended with the line “till the gunpowder ran out at the heels of their boots” — was commissioned by the organisers of the Appledore Book Festival to mark the launch of their brochure. A spokesman for the festival, Lyn Callaghan, said: “It does sound like something out of Dad’s Army but perhaps we shouldn’t laugh, as it was designed with a serious purpose in mind.” | ||||||||||
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By Adrian Blomfield in St Petersburg Independent.ie Friday June 05 2009 **If TinyPic takes down this picture of Hitler, it will be the THIRD time in two days. -- EDIT: They DID! The current image is hosted by Imageshack :-p Russia has accused Poland of provoking the outbreak of the Second World War by refusing to accede to the "very modest" demands of Nazi Germany.  The Russian defence ministry posted a potentially inflammatory essay on its website, claiming that Poland resisted Germany's ultimatums in 1939 only because it "wanted to obtain the status of a great power".The lengthy diatribe also lashed out at Britain and France for giving the Poles "delusions of grandeur" by promising to intercede if the Nazis invaded. "Anyone who has been minded to study the history of the Second World War knows it started because of Poland's refusal to meet Germany's requests," the statement written by Colonel Sergei Kovalev, a senior researcher at the ministry, read. "The German demands were very modest." Appearing to take Germany's demands at face value, the defence ministry insisted that the Nazis were interested only in building transport links across the Polish Corridor to East Prussia and assuming control of Gdansk, which had been designated a free city. Western historians largely recognise that Poland would have lost its independence had it acceded to the demands, pointing to Hitler's policies of Lebensbraum and the creation of a "Greater Germany" as evidence. Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, prompting Britain and France to declare war. Poland's foreign ministry said it would summon the Russian ambassador to Warsaw to demand an explanation, as the allegations showed signs of triggering a row between the two countries. Image | ||||||||||
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By Jasper Copping Telegraph.co.uk 04 Apr 2009 They are the bloody fields on which the nation's history was forged. But, over the centuries, many of England's battlefields have faded into obscurity, often lost under concrete.  Now, a major new project is under way to find the country's "lost" battlefields, from the Roman invasion to the Jacobite Rebellion in the eighteenth century, in order to preserve what is left of them.The Battlefields Trust and English Heritage have launched the scheme to try to establish the exact locations and details of around 100 battles and to compile an online register of sites, giving their topography and history. The £105,000 project will also see the creation of a "neighbourhood watch" scheme, to report on threats such as planning applications or illegal metal detecting. Local "custodians" are to be appointed, who will also have responsibilities to raise their battle's profile and, where possible, to boost tourism by organising history walks and erecting plaques and signs. In some cases interpretative centres could be built. No definitive list of English battlefields exists but it is thought there could be as many as 450. The Trust has already drawn up a list of 77 using a shorter register kept by English Heritage, Ordnance Survey maps, and other historical sources. The aim is to have custodians at 100 battle sites within two years. Although some battle sites on the list are known and recorded - including celebrated sites like Hastings (1066) and Bosworth (1485) - many are not. Frank Baldwin, chairman of the Trust, said: "This is to preserve our heritage, whether it is in the form of monuments, the landscape itself, or in archaeological evidence that may not yet even have been found. "We have a complicated and bloody history for a small country and the history is all around us. Our knowledge is only really scratching the surface at the moment. "Some of these sites are all but forgotten. These battles are fascinating parts of our history but most people have never heard of them. "They are lost sites and lost stories which we need to recover. In some cases, we don't even know the exact sites of the battle. "Even the sites we think we know about, we can't be sure they are actually in the right place and we don't know who owns them and who is responsible for them. "The project will help us pin down where many of these battles were, what happened and what we need to do to preserve them." The project will take in battles from 43AD, at Medway, in Kent, where British tribes were defeated by a large invading Roman force, to a clash between government forces and Jacobite rebels at Clifton Moor, Cumbria, in 1745. Among battles likely to be included in the custodian scheme is Sheerness, in Kent, where, in 1667, a Dutch force landed and succeeded in capturing the town, supported by a fleet of battleships offshore. The likely site of the fighting is now a supermarket. The project will also focus on the Civil War battle at Tresco, in the Isles of Scilly, in 1651, and St Albans, site of two battles in the Wars of the Roses, the opening skirmish in 1455 and a second fight in 1461. Mr Baldwin said the project was needed to gather information about sites and to ensure they were sufficiently protected. Advances in archaeological techniques mean new research at the sites could uncover fresh evidence about the battles. "We have to preserve these lost sites because we can really extend our knowledge," Mr Baldwin added. "There has been a real revolution in battlefield archaeology in the last few years. "The evidence is still there but we have got to look after the sites, because as further improvements occur, we are going to be able to learn more and more." A report last year by English Heritage found that eight of the best-known battlefields are currently at "high risk". Russell Walters, from the organisation, said: "The new project is about engaging these new local groups to write guides about their sites, encouraging the authorities to put up interpretive signs and raising them up the agenda for local authorities. "The idea is to make them better known and better loved. That will reduce the risks to them." | ||||||||||
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By Nicholas Kulish International Herald Tribune Friday, February 27, 2009 MALBORK, Poland: The damp mud falls away easily from the long thighbone jutting out of the dirt wall of the trench at the gentle prod of the shovel's tip. Beyond the mass grave filled with the skeletal remains of some 2,000 people, presumed to be Germans who died in the closing months of World War II, stands the red-brick fortress of the Teutonic Knights that was once one of Germany's greatest landmarks until it was forced to cede the territory to Poland after the war.  Until then, Malbork was the German town of Marienburg, and the authorities believe the dead men, women and children buried together here were inhabitants of the city, along with refugees from places farther east, such as Königsberg, now Kaliningrad, fleeing the devastating Soviet counterattack that would eventually capture Berlin. Several dozen of the skulls have bullet holes, which prompted speculation of a massacre when the first bodies were found last October, whereas now the talk centers on cold, hunger and most of all typhus, which was rampant at the time. ( >>Read on ) | ||||||||||
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By MARIA DANILOVA and RANDY HERSCHAFT IN KIEV Scotsman 02 February 2009 FATHER Desbois, a short, soft-spoken man with dark, thinning hair, says the stories give him nightmares. A French Catholic priest who interviewed more than 800 eyewitnesses and pinpointed hundreds of mass graves strewn around dusty fields in the former Soviet Union, he has now told the story of more than two million Jews gunned down in towns and villages across Ukraine, Belarus and Russia. The place these killings occupied in the Nazis' Final Solution has been under-researched – until now. For seven years, Patrick Desbois gathered material for his new book, The Holocaust by Bullets. It tells how 1.4 million of Soviet Ukraine's 2.4 million Jews were executed, starved to death or died of disease during the war. Another 550,000-650,000 Soviet Jews were killed in Belarus and up to 140,000 in Russia. Most of the victims were women, children and the elderly. Begun after Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, the slaughter was the opening phase of what became the Final Solution, with its factories of death operating in Auschwitz and other camps, all in Nazi-occupied Poland. Sometimes bursting into tears, old men and women recount to Father Desbois how women, children and elders were marched or carted in from neighbouring towns to be shot, burned to death or buried alive by German troops, Romanian forces, squads of Ukrainian collaborators and local ethnic German volunteers. Among his key findings is the widespread use of local children to help bury the dead, wait on the German soldiers during meals and remove gold teeth and other valuables from the bodies. The witnesses are mostly Orthodox Christian, and Father Desbois comes to them as a priest, dressed in black and wearing a clerical collar. Many have never before talked about their experiences. In the village of Ternivka, 200 miles south of Kiev where 2,300 Jews were killed, a frail, elderly woman, who identified herself only as Petrivna, revealed the unbearable task the Nazis imposed on her. The young schoolgirl saw her Jewish neighbours thrown into a large pit, many still alive and convulsing in agony. Her task was to trample on them barefoot to make space for more. One of those she had to tread on was a classmate. "You know, we were very poor, we didn't have shoes," Petrivna told Father Desbois. "You see, it is not easy to walk on bodies." Father Desbois' small team includes a translator, a researcher, a mapping expert, a ballistics specialist and a video and photo crew. The priest has deep personal roots in his project, dating to 2002, when he first visited Ukraine to see the place where his grandfather was interned as a French prisoner in the First World War. When he arrived, the locals told him of a stream of blood that had run from the site where the Jews were executed. "I am in a hurry to find all the bones, to establish the truth and justice so that the world can know what happened and that the Germans never left a tiny village in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia without killing Jews there," he said. Anatoly Podolsky, head of the Ukrainian Centre for Holocaust Studies, said: "As a Ukrainian citizen and a Ukrainian historian it pains me that there is no policy of national remembrance. We are not responsible for the past, but we are responsible for remembering." | ||||||||||
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Al Jazeera 17 Jan 2009 Two Palestinian boys have been killed after Israeli tank shells hit a UN-run school in Gaza - hours before Israel's security cabinet is expected to vote on a proposal for a unilateral ceasefire.  The boys, aged five and seven, died and 25 other Gazans were wounded as they sought to shelter in the school run by the UN relief and works agency (Unrwa) in Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza.The school is the third UN shelter to be hit by Israeli fire in its 22-day war on the territory. The UN has called for a war crimes investigation over the shelling of its school [AFP] The attack came as heavy artillery and aerial bombardment of what Israel described as "Hamas targets" continued on Saturday. Christopher Gunness, an Unrwa spokesman, said several rounds hit the UN school at about 6:45am. The third floor of the school took a direct hit after a short pause, killing the pair and injuring another 14 people. Witnesses said four more people were killed when other shells struck nearby as people tried to escape. Investigation demanded About 1,600 civilians had sought refuge from the fighting inside the building, Gunness said. "The Israeli army knew exactly our GPS co-ordinates and they would have known that hundreds of people had taken shelter there," he said. "When you have a direct hit into the third floor of a UN school, there has to be an investigation to see if a war crime has been committed." Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, said: "I condemn in the strongest terms this outrageous attack, which is the third time it's happened. "Top israeli leaders have apologised and assured me two days ago that UN premises would be fully respected. "I strongly demand a thorough investigation and punishment for those responsible," he told reporters in Beirut. John Ging, the director of Unrwa, told Al Jazeera: "People today are alleging war crimes here in Gaza. Let's have it properly accounted for. Let's have the legal process which will establish exactly what has happened here. 'A failure for humanity' "It is another failure for our humanity and it is exposing the impotence of our [the international community's] inability to protect civilians in conflict." In Jabaliya refugee camp, Dr Ezzedine Abu al-Aish, a Palestinian doctor from al-Shifa hospital, lost his three daughters and one niece during an Israeli air attack as he was being interviewed on an Israeli television channel. At least 10 people were also killed late on Friday after a tank shell slammed into their home during a funeral wake in Gaza City. More than 1,200 Palestinians have been killed in Israel's offensive, including more than 400 children, according to UN and Palestinian medical sources. At least 13 Israelis have also died in the same period, three of them civilians. About five rockets were reported to have been fired from Gaza into southern Israel on Saturday. | ||||||||||
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Al Jazeera 15 January 2009 **See also Israel shells hospital, UN compound Children are bearing the brunt of Israel's war on the Gaza Strip, the United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef) has said. More than 300 children have been killed and hundreds more wounded in Israel's aerial and ground assault, Ann Veneman, Unicef's executive director, said in a statement released on Wedneday.  More than 300 children are among the hundreds of Palestinians killed in Israel's offensive [AFP] She said: "Each day more children are being hurt, their small bodies wounded, their young lives shattered. This is tragic. This is unacceptable. "They are bearing the brunt of a conflict which is not theirs. "As fighting reaches the heart of heavily populated urban areas, the impact of lethal weapons will carry an even heavier toll on children." Lost childhood Veneman said the war and bloodshed in Gaza would cause long-term psychological damage to children. "The crisis in Gaza is singular in that children and their families have nowhere to escape, no refuge. The very thought of being trapped in a closed area is disturbing for adults in peace times," she said. "What then goes through the mind of a child who is trapped in such relentless violence?" Israel has said that it is trying to minimise civilian casualties as it targets Hamas fighters and their infrastructure, but Palestinian children are being subjected to harrowing experiences. "I saw the soldier standing next to the shop. I looked for my mum and then he shot me. One bullet him my hand and the other went through my back and out through my stomach," Samar, a young girl, told Al Jazeera while recovering from her wounds at a Gaza hospital. Amal, another young girl, wailed: "We have nothing to do with this, we don't fire rockets, we don't know what this war is about." More than 40,000 pregnant women and their unborn children were also believed to be at risk because Gaza's overwhelmed hospitals were unable to take them in. Traumatised Dr Walid Sarhan, a Jordanian psychiatrist, said that if nothing is done to help traumatised children Gaza would begin to see advanced cases of psychiatric problems. "The main one would be post-traumatic stress disorder, which is expected to rise 60 or 70 per cent among children," he said. "Also they will have behavioural and emotional problems. They will have difficulties returning to school, going on to achieve in school, and this will not be in small numbers." Mark Regev, an Israeli government spokesman, said that thousands of children in southern Israel were also suffering because of Palestinian rocket fire. "Two weeks before this crisis started I went down south with my prime minister, Mr Olmert ... and he was given letters from fourth graders I believe, children who are nine and 10-years-old, who their entire lives have been on the incoming end of these Hamas rockets," he told Al Jazeera. "You have a whole generation of Israeli children who are unfortunately suffering similar trauma." | ||||||||||
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Mood:
 angryIt astounds and angers me greatly that you could possibly think the Palestinians value their children less than other cultures do or that they want to live less humanly than you or I do or that they enjoy going without food, shelter, medical care, employment or any other kind of basic human need. What an ignorant and arrogant attitude. Even during the previous ceasefire, the Palestinians were unable to leave. --Truce barely eases Gaza embargo Israel has also deliberately and shelled with lethal results a UN convoy caring humanitarian aid. --UN curbs Gaza aid after trucks hit by Israeli fire --Israel accused of delaying medical access to injured You want to talk about EVACUATION? Israeli troops told about 110 civilians to take shelter in a house in Zeitoun, south-east of Gaza City. ISRAELI TROOPS THEN SHELLED THE HOUSE. This little girl is just one of many killed by the Israelis:  The body of a girl who was found in the rubble of her destroyed house following an Israeli air strike on a house in Zeitoun [Photograph: Mohammed Abed/AFP] --UN levels war crimes warning at Israel --Gaza's day of carnage - 40 dead as Israelis bomb two UN schools --Israelis admit militants not in UN school This does not even touch any historical or geographical issues but only immediate concerns. The internet is a vast repository of knowledge. There is no excuse for ignorance of the truth and endless reiteration of Western stereotypical prejudice. | ||||||||||
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 Palestinian boy in Gaza - May 2008 [Photo] | ||||||||||
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