Was Dresden Bombing Justified?

Whenever Allied war crimes are mentioned during the second World War, the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki are the first to be mentioned but a close second is the bombing of Dresden in East Germany which happened today in 1945.
A total of 1249 bombers of the British Royal Air Force and United States Army Air Forces dropped more than 4000 tons of high-explosive and incendiary devices on the city, destroying fifteen square miles and killing at least 25,000 and 68 years later
there are still discussions of whether the Dresden attacks were right.
The justification at the time was that the city was was a military and industrial target with major rail transportation and communication centre, housing 110 factories and 50,000 workers supporting the German war effort.
The evidence shows that the extensive industrial areas in the suburbs were not targeted, nor were the major bridges but on the destroyed list were 640 shops, 64 warehouses, 39 schools, 31 hotels, 27 insurance buildings, 26 public houses, 24 banks, 20 hospitals, 19 post offices, 18 cinemas, 11 churches, 6 chapels, 3 theatres, 2 market halls, Dresden zoo and the waterworks.
An enquiry after the event stated the raid was justified to stop the retreating Germans from using Dresden as a base of operations and to to disrupt the industrial use of Dresden for munitions manufacture and secondary justification was to provide air support for the Soviet offensive toward Berlin and therefore the raid had legitimate military ends.
Still the argument goes on whether the bombing of Dresden was justified and necessary or immoral and a war crime.

Sandy Hook Conspiracy Theory

Any conspiracy theory that classes David Icke as a credible source is on shakey ground from the start but nevertheless, the man who thinks that a secret group of reptilian humanoids are controlling humanity is being claimed by the Sandy Hook conspiracy theorists who are questioning whether the Government were behind the December massacre. 
'Sandy Hook was a blatantly staged event with endless inconsistencies and countless contradictions' says Mr Icke which echoes such sites as this one that exclaim that 'No motive whatsoever has been established for Adam Lanza doing this, and there is no record of him doing anything cruel to anyone, ever, and yet they are forcing us to believe that he did it, without providing one speck of actual evidence, and despite lying to us from the beginning.'
The Obama administration perpetrated the hoax, the conspiracy theorists claim, in order to ratchet up support for tougher gun control measures and point to the 'smoking gun' which is a a photo of President Barack Obama, backstage at a Newtown vigil two days after the shooting with a young blonde girl sitting on his lap. The girl, the conspiracy theorists say, is six-year-old Emilie Parker who was one of the 20 child victims of the shooting and conclusive proof that something very fishy is going on. In fact, it's the dead girl's little sister.
Another Newtown conspiracy are that there were four members of the Israeli special forces and that crisis actors were employed by the government to give anguished interviews in order to drive home the need for gun control.
The idea is that the Obama administration was so desperate to bring in gun controls that they arranged for the massacre, picking small children to obtain the highest amount of sympathy. 
All repellent nonsense obviously and if anything it strengthens Obama hand on gun control because if anything, the thought that brain dead idiots like these conspiracy theorists own deadly weapons can only lead to even tougher gun measures.

Wrong Saint

Every year my husband asks me if i want some flowers for Valentines Day and i reply something along the lines of not wanting anything, it all being a commercial adventure to rip off people and we don't need a special day to show how much we love one another.
Of course if i don't get a card and flowers he will be sleeping on the coach until Boxing Day and scouring the internet for a doctor that could re-attach his testicles but the Church are now saying that St Valentine isn't the saint of love at all, that's Saint Raphael.
'Over the years St Valentine has come incorrectly to be associated with finding love' the Catholics Church explained 'He is the patron saint for those who have already found their soulmate, Saint Raphael is the saint for those looking for love'.
Clare Ward, spokeswoman for the Catholic Enquiry Office, the official body providing information on all things Catholic said 'while the distinction between the saints has always been clear within the Church it has, over the years, been blurred outside'.
The Mrs Ward obviously went mad and said 'There is a lot of evidence to suggest that young people who have tapped into prayer groups have found partners. Those who have exhausted traditional routes like online dating should try spiritual networks. Why not come along to a prayer group, it could be your lucky night.'
Yep, obviously been sniffing the incense again but there you have it, don't pray to Saint Valentine, pray to Saint Raphael and if you want a night of passion and a cup of tea with a game of bingo afterwards head down to the local Catholic Church.

Way Down Texas Way

I have never really understood why Texans go on about the Alamo, all 200 plus Texans got slaughtered in that scrap by Mexicans so hardly a highlight in Texan history but the Alamo is being mentioned again by supporters of Texas Independence Movement (TNM).
“We’re liable to fight the Alamo all over again,” one said surrounded by people in an Independence rally carrying placards bearing messages such as 'I want off the sinking ship' and 'Liberty or Death' and 'Remember the Alamo'. See, the Alamo again.
There has been mention of Texan independence for decades but the re-election of Barack Obama seems to have reinvigorated the TNM movement who claim they have over a quarter of a million members, all remembering the Alamo probably.
The movement has also got an international ally in the shape of that hotbed of Democracy, Belarus, who have accused the US Government of a humans right violation for not waving goodbye to Texas.
The TNM leadership are looking towards our shores for inspiration for their campaign, saying  “We look at the SNP in Scotland as a model for modern-day independence” which should sound alarms bells in your average Texan unless you are fed up with being employed and willing to take handouts from your neighbouring countries to keep your economy running.
It's unlikely that Texas will leave the Union, they only has 200 people turn up at the rally and we get a bigger turn out in the UK to watch people roll cheese down a hill, and besides, constantly asking people to remember a fight which they comprehensively lost isn't encouraging. 

Mistaken Identity?

From the pictures that i have seen of him, Chris Dorner is a black male so why the LA police shot two women delivering newspapers and a white male in a case of 'mistaken identity' is a bit worrying.
The former Los Angeles Police Department officer and US Navy reservist, has been charged with the killing of police officer Michael Crain and is wanted in connection with a string of related crimes. Authorities also believe he may be linked to a double-murder in nearby Irvine, but Dorner has managed to elude police in the days since and remains at large and threatening more deaths.
I lost everything,” Dorner wrote, “because the LAPD took my name and knew I was innocent.”
'I never had the opportunity to have a family of my own, I’m terminating yours' Dorner wrote in his manifesto, while explaining that the shooting spree is an act to 'reclaim my name', which be believes he lost when he was fired for making a false statement about his training officer.
Dorner alleged to the news media that she kicked a schizophrenic with severe dementia but an internal investigation cleared the officer and Dorner was kicked out of the police force.
With a well armed nutter running around the place the last thing the people of Los Angeles need are the trigger happy police shooting up the place as well.

Bye Bye Pope

Woo hoo, a new pope or to give him his full title, Vicar of Jesus Christ, Servant of the Servants of God, Successor of the Prince of the Apostles, Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church, and my favourite because it makes him sound like a Roman monkey, Primate of Italy.
It also means i can wheel out my best Papal joke about hoping that someone with the name Sicle get's the gig next but unfortunately it seems that the next Pope will not just be a creepy man in a funny hat, but also the harbinger of the end of time as foretold by St Malachy, a 12th Century Archbishop. 
Malachy prophesied that the end would come with the election of the 112th pope from that day in 1143 and Pope Ratzinger is Pope number 111 from when St Malachy made his utterances.
The Catholic soon to be formerly known as the Pope has said that he is stepping down as Gods representative on Earth saying that at his age he cannot carry out all his tasks adequately and is losing strength in body and mind and not as is widely expected he woke up this morning and thought 'What the hell am i doing? I'm speaking for a magical man in the sky making people from dust?? I'm a sane person, get me out of here!!'
The Church of England, in the shape of the Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, waffled something about God and Churches, i lost interest to be honest, but the favourite in the race to become Gods mouthpiece is Ghanaian Cardinal Peter Kodwo Appiah Turkson whose profile says that he has dedicated himself to performing pastoral work in the local area.
Boring, i prefer the saxophone and piano- playing jazz fan and personal friend of U2's Bono, Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga from Honduras which might make the ceremonies a bit more interesting if he gets to the Vatican organ first and blasts out a bit of 'In The Mood'.
Before i go can i be the first to make the joke that soon he will be known as an ex-Benedict. If that joke turns up anywhere else i got in first.

Mokhtar Belmokhtar: The New Bogeyman

Now that Osama Bin Laden is swimming with the fishes in the Arabian sea,  the World has been on the lookout for a new bogeyman and after a few attempts to paint Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Kim jong un as the big bad, the powers that be seem to have decided that Mokhtar Belmokhtar is the one they will use to justify spending billions on military equipment to keep us safe in our beds.
It's quite easy to see why Mokhtar has been picked out of all the crazies as the Bin Laden replacement, the long grey beard, the fatigues and the fondness of posing in front of a video camera brandishing a copy of the Koran and a Kalashnikov while spouting religious nonsense.
He came to prominence after the Algerian gas plant hostage taking last month as the top banana in the North African Al-Qaeda Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) but he has been knocking around terror circles for some time, starting out in Afghanistan alongside Bin Laden fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan before returning to his native Algeria and trying to overthrow the Government there.
Where Bin Laden had a $25 million bounty on his head, Belmokhtar has only $100,000 on his at present but he has made in on to the infamous Pentagon's list for targeted killing and drones have been dispatched to find the man who blew his own eye out with explosives so his reign as the new face of terrorism, not to mention his own face, may be short lived.
Ladies and Gentlemen, we have our new bogeyman and the War on Terror is back on track as we can only hope that his fellow terrorists don't allow him to handle any explosives because then we would have to start all over again and Ahmadinejad is proving too wise to be manoeuvred into public enemy number one and Kim jong un just looks like a perfectly harmless fat, boy band member.

Gonna Need Some New Slippers

While writing the previous post about the Earth spinning faster and what it would mean for mankind (having to buy new clocks & calendars was my conclusion) i came across something so bone chillingly scary that Climate Change is responsible for that, I had to take a few minutes to compose myself and eat the last few Malteasers that my husband was saving until later, it was that shocking.
The effects of Climate Change are well known, increased freak weather events and desertification and such but what i was not prepared for was bigger spiders.   
A group of Danish scientists have concluded a ten year study of the meat-eating wolf spider and found out that warming temperatures means more hunting time and the animals have been growing larger and are on average 2% bigger than they were at the start of the study.
As if giant, meat eating spiders stomping around the place in a few years isn't enough to worry about, the larger adult females are producing more offspring.
So when you are out buying new clocks and calendars to keep pace with the speeding up of the planets rotation, you might want to pick yourself up some bigger whacking slippers because the invasion of the giant, meat eating spiders is imminent and those puny fluffy things ain't gonna cut it when those massive spider mandibles are chomping on your legs.
I feel faint, where did my daughter put that Terry's Chocolate Orange she got for Christmas and was saving for later.

Gonna Need A New Clock

Sometimes, in those boring moments when i am sat in traffic or in the adverts breaks of , I do wonder what would happen if for some inexplicable reason the Earth began to spin around the other way. Obviously in the bit where it slowed down and stopped before spinning again the other way we would all be flung off into space but what effect would it have on those of us who had held on to something during the transition.
Then, being a girly, i think of shopping and buying new shoes and the Earth spinning thought goes away but as i cannot think of anything that could happen to make the Earth change its spinning pattern, i don't worry about it but then along comes science and tells us that the earth spinning could be speeding up due to the warming seas. 
Felix Landerer of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, Germany have said that as the temperature of the oceans rises, the resulting changes in density and circulation would cause a net transfer of mass to the higher latitudes closer to Earth's axis of rotation.
Nope, i didn't understand it either so he dumbed it down for us a tad, 'Think of an ice skater who is spinning. When you stretch your arms out you slow down, and when you bring your arms closer to your body you spin faster. Earth, it seems, will hug itself a little bit tighter because of global warming'.
So what will a more rapidly spinning Earth mean?
Shorter flights is my first thought, followed by that chic black dress i saw in Debenham's this morning (damn this female brain) and then how the clocks would need to change as the 24 hour day would be out the window, then how it would need to be a silver wall clock to go with the decor in the front room and they had some nice ones in Argos, then we would age quicker because shorter days would mean our birthdays would come around quicker unless we added some more days to the year which would mean new calendars.
We would probably weigh less but we would have to balance that with increased earthquake and volcanic activity due to internal heat generation but most importantly, the one crucial and critical thing that should not be overlooked is if i changed the curtains, i may be able to get one of those retro clocks with the wooden surrounds from Next.

Somethings Amiss For The Amish

An Amish elder, the appropriately named Samuel Mullet, has been jailed for 15 years over a series of beard and hair cutting attacks on fellow Amish in eastern Ohio. His attorney had asked for a sentence of two years or less, while the government had sought a life sentence for him.

15 years and the Government were seeking a life sentence for cutting someones hair??? 

Either there is more to this story than first seems or someone in the Ohio justice system needs to have the word  'Appeal' shouted at him very loud by a long bearded man in dungarees, a straw hat and probably holding a pair of scissors.