Dead Body Theatre

[Bill Stewart]

At 06:33 PM 07/25/2003 -0700, Steve Schear wrote:
>At 16:33 2003-07-25 -0700, you wrote:
>>On 24 Jul 2003 at 9:16, Eric Cordian wrote:
>> > Now that the new standard for pre-emptive war is to murder
>> > the legitimate leader of another sovereign nation and his
>> > entire family, an "artist's rendering" of Shrub reaping what
>> > he sows would surely be an excellent political statement.
>>
>>You are a moron.
>>
>>If today warfare means wiping out the family of the enemy ruler
>>man woman and child and showing their horribly mangled bodies
>>on TV, this is a big improvement on the old deal where the
>>rulers had a gentlemen's agreement that only the common folk
>>would get hurt, and the defeated ruler would get a luxurious
>>retirment on some faraway island.
>
>Here, here!

Steve, did you mean "Hear, hear!"?
Or were you calling for it to happen "here"?  :-)
Back when we had a First Amendment, that was probably legal,
but since Bush inherited the presidency, it might not be...

>Perhaps we may even become as smart as some Pacific Islanders
>whose wars were fought by surrogates, the logic being that the
>death of one man can serve as well as the death of many in
>determining the outcome of a disagreement between heads of tribes, states, 
>etc.

European feudalism did that also, though Europeans were
less likely to eat the bodies of the losers.
Trial by Combat was tossed out of British law in ~1850,
but hadn't been used for a long time before that,
though dueling was still around in the early 1800s.