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On this date in 1732, the deposed Dutch governor of Ceylon was executed by throat-slashing in Batavia (present-day Jakarta, Indonesia) for abuse of power. Petrus Vuyst (English Wikipedia entry | Dutch) was a Batavia-born son of a Dutch mercantile empire already well upon its decline phase. Following a loop back to the mother country for espousing and legal training, Vuyst returned to the East Indies and soon advanced in the colonial bureaucracy — governing Dutch Bengal before being appointed the Low Countries’ proconsul in Dutch Ceylon. The scant information about Vuyst is mostly in Dutch; this public domain document details...

Just after midnight this date in 1990, Dalton Prejean was electrocuted in Louisiana for murdering state trooper Donald Cleveland. A 17-year-old (at the time of the crime) black youth who tested just this side of mentally disabled, Prejean shot Cleveland during a traffic stop. (He was, at the time, just seven months out of a reform school stint he had served for murdering a taxi driver at the tender age of 14.) It was a three-day trial with an all-white jury, and not much question as to Prejean’s culpability. But as he neared the execution of that sentence, his youth...

While Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg has been pouring his energy into prosecuting Donald Trump for the crime of winning the 2016 presidential election against the heavily favored former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, crime in New York City (NYC) has taken a dismal turn. In 2023, of NYC's 109,000 prosecuted arrests only 7% resulted in imprisonment. Worse, over 70% of NYC's reported crimes remain unsolved. Repeat offenders, some of them violent, are routinely released without bail while awaiting prosecutions that may never occur. Bragg insists that "my priorities are not out-of-whack. All the assaults, robberies, rapes, and murders that...

On this date in 1964, three officers were executed in Bhutan, including former deputy commander in chief Namgyal Bahadur, for assassinating Prime Minister Jigme Dorji. A member of the powerful Dorji family and brother-in-law to the Bhutanese king, Dorji was overseeing a modernization campaign for the insular Himalayan kingdom. On April 5, 1964, while the king was in Europe for medical treatment, Dorji was shot dead while relaxing on his veranda. No wholesale seizure of power was attempted. The entire affair has long been murky, and it seems it was murky to those involved, too. The assassin, one Zambay,* was...

The graphs below from the NOAA April 2024 Climate Report show comparisons of the latest April 2024 Global Land and Ocean average temperature anomaly results compared to all other April months from 1850 to 2024 and all January through April Global Land and Ocean average temperature anomaly results from 1850 to 2024 Unfortunately, NOAA’s latest climate report does not provide comparisons of the April 2024 average temperature anomaly results for all months over time which led to an incomplete and misleading evaluation of the April 2024 outcome. Fortunately, NOAA’s extensive climate temperature data base provides the information and data needed...

Some of President Joe Biden’s 2020 voters named inflation, foreign policy and illegal immigration as their main reasons for considering backing former President Donald Trump, instead, in November, The New York Times reported on Friday. The NYT/Siena College survey released on Monday across Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania found that 14% of those who said they backed Biden in 2020 won’t do so this cycle. The outlet spoke with some of the Biden defectors included in the poll, with some planning to vote for Trump despite qualms with his personality. Frederick Westbrook, a retired hotel worker in Las...

East Germany beheaded Sylvester Murau by fallbeil on this date in 1956. A blue-collar laborer who served a jail sentence for poaching under the Third Reich, he’d joined GDR’s feared security service, the Stasi — until he was dismissed when some fascist dalliances during the war years came to light. He then transitioned from Stasi agent Sylvester Murau to defector Sylvester Murau, fleeing to West Berlin and settled down in West Germany for life as a communist apostate. That was in 1954. Later that same year, his daughter Brigitte “Gitta” Cullmann, popped in for a visit — transit between East...

“NATO allies are inching closer to sending troops into Ukraine to train Ukrainian forces, a move that would be another blurring of a previous red line and could draw the United States and Europe more directly into the war,” the newspaper wrote. Journalists add that Ukraine lacks the resources to train its troops, and the situation on the battlefield has worsened due to the Russian offensives. Consequently, Ukrainian officials have asked their U.S. and NATO counterparts for help in training 150,000 soldiers closer to the front lines for quicker deployment. The United States refused to send even military advisers to...

Alex Winston’s riveting article in the Jerusalem Post, “A Tale of two Leaders: The Paris meetings between Ben-Gurion and Ho Chi Minh” exposes the widespread post-war thirst for freedom by the post-World War II anti-colonial movement. It also brilliantly refutes the contention that Israel was a colonial enterprise.In fact, the Jewish peoples search for repatriation to their ancient homeland was part of a worldwide search by various national liberation movements from the European colonial powers. It was a part of the global effort by countries seeking national self-determination.This movement was fully embraced by the American Left following World War II....

Former federal prosecutor Robert Costello testified Wednesday before Congress that disgraced lawyer Michael Cohen—the star witness in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s case against former President Donald Trump—told him he had “nothing truthful” implicating Trump in a crime. Costello, who advised Cohen when he became the subject of an investigation by federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York, told the House Judiciary Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government that Cohen is now on a “revenge tour” against Trump and lacks credibility. His testimony challenges claims Cohen made on the witness stand during Trump’s Manhattan trial....

With his recent comments on the ongoing Israel-Gaza war baffling many who have long been in the know in Washington, one might wonder where exactly U.S. President Joe Biden is getting his intelligence on the Middle East from. That would be Maher Bitar, who serves as Special Assistant to the President and is White House Coordinator for Intelligence and Defense Policy at the U.S. National Security Council (NSC) What are his qualifications? He was a radical pro-Palestinian activist and a leader within Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), according to a Breitbart.com report. Bitar is the fastest-rising Muslim official in...

A shocking video of multiple people attacking each other in the street with machetes has many pointing out that it shows how out of control mass immigration is in Germany. The footage was captured in the German city of Leipzig and shows foreign groups in a running battle in broad daylight, ironically in a crime ridden part of the city that has the only “weapon ban” zone in the entire state. The video shows one man chopping at another with a huge machete as others crazily run around fighting. Remarkably no one was killed. The area, Eisenbahnstraße, is notorious for...

https://outreach.vhx.tv/videos/s4-episode-1-promises-with-intro-for-churches-by-dallas

On this date in 1917, Romanian Lieutenant Emil Rebreanu was hanged for attempted desertion by the Austro-Hungarian army. Here’s Rebreanu’s entry at the Enciclopedia Romaniei, which says in brief that he was one of 14 (!) brothers born in the part of present-day Romania that was then attached to the Kingdom of Hungary. Upon the outbreak of World War I, Rebreanu was drafted into the Austro-Hungarian forces and fought on several fronts. But his removal to the lines to fight against the independent Romanian state was a front too far: he attempted to cross the lines to the Romanians on...

Former Congressman and Republican vice-presidential candidate in the 2012 election Paul Ryan confirmed that "I will not be voting for Donald Trump no matter what. Character matters. I cannot support a person of low character for the top job in our government." Ryan fended off criticism of President Joe Biden's character, saying "using his position in government to obtain bribes for his family and himself are the normal kind of abuse of power that is common in our politics. Almost everyone does it--Republicans and Democrats alike. Our country has and can continue to survive this type of self-serving misuse of...

As Saigon was falling, Janet Nguyen’s uncle – an officer in the South Vietnamese Army – was taken before his village and executed. After the city fell on April 30, 1975, the communists put Nguyen’s father and mother in jail. Their “crime?” They got caught trying to escape the country. After Saigon fell, Tri Ta’s father spent years in a re-education camp prison. His “crime?” He wrote books critical of communism. Both Nguyen and Ta eventually made it to California with their families. She became a California state senator and he became a member of the Assembly. The Republicans represent...

Below is my column on the completion of the testimony of Stormy Daniels and the start of the testimony of Michael Cohen. With a dubious legal theory, the testimony has only magnified the criticism of the prosecution as parading sensational rather than material evidence before the jury and the public. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is losing even CNN hosts and legal analysts. Fareed Zakaria noted “I doubt the New York indictment would have been brought against a defendant whose name was not Donald Trump” Elie Honig has observed that, if brought in a less Democratic district, “I would say...

In a letter dated April 8, 2024, addressed to Chief Judge Swain of New York, Ashley Biden, daughter of Joe Biden, confirmed the authenticity of her previously ‘stolen’ diary. The diary, which has sparked considerable public and media attention due to Joe Biden’s perverted acts, became a subject of controversy when excerpts were leaked online. Ashley Biden’s letter, obtained by the New York Times, was submitted as part of a judicial proceeding against Aimee Harris, one of the individuals convicted of ‘stealing’ and selling her personal journal. In her correspondence, Ashely Biden expressed profound distress over the theft and subsequent...

Over the course of my lifetime these are some of the film makers I have revered: Charlie Chaplin (more for his silent features than his talkies) and Shirley Temple, (both as a child and adult for the former and as a child only for the latter), Woody Allen (when i was a tertiary student in the 1970's and 1980's but less so now) Steve Bochco, primarily for the reinvention of what television can do through Hill Street Blues and Shawn Ryan and Micheal Ciklis for The Shield which I consider an even better drama than HSB and the best thing...

No assignment in the Third Reich’s war machine, nay not even the fearful eastern front, was as dangerous as service in the Kriegsmarine’s U-boat fleet. Terrors of English shipping in the early war years, these submersible predators became prey once overwhelming U.S. materiel poured into the theater, and Allied intelligence started cracking German signals. By war’s end, fully three-quarters of the wartime U-boat personnel had sunk into watery graves. And on top of all the intrinsic perils of fighting a losing war from the inside of a submerged tin of beans, you’d better do it with enthusiasm or you’ve got...