orderlyrandomness

221021 10:08 – is it interesting, peeps?

… the format, not the content. I know most of you could care less about what I post, and probably rarely read it. But what is the consensus on the new format? Is it not too confusing with so many comments, or do you prefer it? I will be posting again tomorrow (Saturdays and Wednesdays are the goal and if I neglect to get one up, the post will stay until the next time.) Between the Saturday-Wednesday-Saturday posting schedule, I may stack posts within the same post, like I did below.

Thoughts?

221018 09:30 – Benazir Bhutto

Another woman, another assassination.

Benazir Bhutto was a two-time prime minister of the country of Pakistan (1988–90 and 1993–96). She was the first woman leader of a Muslim nation in modern history. She followed in her father’s footsteps after he too was assassinated.

In 1999 Bhutto and her husband—a controversial businessman and senator jailed since 1996 on a variety of charges—were both convicted of corruption by a Lahore court, a decision overturned by the Supreme Court in 2001 because of evidence of governmental interference. Bhutto did not achieve political accommodation with Gen. Pervez Musharraf’s seizure of power in a 1999 coup d’état. Her demands that the charges against her and her husband be dropped were denied, undercutting negotiations with the Musharraf government regarding a return to the country from her self-imposed exile. Facing standing arrest warrants should she return to Pakistan, Bhutto remained in exile in London and Dubai from the late 1990s.

Shortly before Musharraf’s reelection to the presidency, amid unresolved discussions of a power-sharing deal between Bhutto and Musharraf’s military regime, he finally granted Bhutto a long-sought amnesty for the corruption charges brought against her by the Sharif administration. The Supreme Court challenged Musharraf’s right to grant the amnesty, however, criticizing it as unconstitutional.

Nevertheless, in October 2007 Bhutto returned to Karachi from Dubai after eight years of self-imposed exile. Celebrations marking her return were marred by a suicide attack on her motorcade, in which numerous supporters were killed.

Bhutto was assassinated in December of that year in a similar attack while campaigning for upcoming parliamentary elections.

Bhutto’s autobiography, Daughter of the East, was published in 1988 (also published as Daughter of Destiny, 1989); she also wrote Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy, and the West, which was published posthumously in 2008.

motorcade

221015 10:13 – Margaretha Zelle

The little Dutch girl with a storied history. She was also known as Mata Hari.

She was executed on this day in France in the year 1917 by firing squad for espionage. This is alleged to be a photograph taken at that event:

This was taken on the day she was arrested in February of 1917. She was 40 years old. She died at 41.

Scholars say she was mostly likely innocent and was used as a scapegoat by the French for war propaganda.

In 1917, France had been badly shaken by the Great Mutinies of the French Army in the spring of 1917 following the failure of the Nivelle Offensive together with a huge strike wave, and at the time many believed that France might simply collapse as a result of war exhaustion. In July 1917, a new government under Georges Clemenceau had come into power, utterly committed to winning the war. In this context, having one German spy on whom everything that went wrong with the war so far could be blamed was most convenient for the French government, making Mata Hari the perfect scapegoat, which explains why the case against her received maximum publicity in the French press, and led to her importance in the war being greatly exaggerated.^[30] The Canadian historian Wesley Wark stated in a 2014 interview that Mata Hari was never an important spy and just made a scapegoat for French military failures which she had nothing to do with, stating: “They needed a scapegoat and she was a notable target for scapegoating.”^[31] Likewise, the British historian Julie Wheelwright stated: “She really did not pass on anything that you couldn’t find in the local newspapers in Spain.”^[31] Wheelwright went on to describe Zelle as “… an independent woman, a divorcee, a citizen of a neutral country, a courtesan and a dancer, which made her a perfect scapegoat for the French, who were then losing the war. She was kind of held up as an example of what might happen if your morals were too loose.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mata_Hari

A harlot? Yes, but a traitoress, never!
— Phrase attributed to Mata Hari during the trial.