Absolution Quotes
Simon Bolivar and other freedom fighters in South America used this quotation to justify numerous acts of retaliation against the Spanish troops controlling their countries.
In his early days as a revolutionary he was tried and jailed for an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the Batista dictatorship of Cuba:
This proverb which actually has the force of de facto law in much of the Arab world, while detested by many sophisticated Westerners and Americans in particular, was actually a custom in America for many years. Under the principle, a rapist is not a rapist if he marries the girl. A seducer is not a seducer. In the Bedouin culture there is no difference between the rapist and the seducer. The reason that the practice is so hateful is that it assumes that when a woman is raped or seduced the damage is to the woman’s male relatives—to their honor. Therefore, the “crime” can be remedied by marrying the girl and satisfying the male relative’s sense of honor. Then no harm has been done, except of course to the woman who often becomes the double victim, first of the rape or seduction and then of a forced marriage. In modern America the honor of the male relatives has no standing in law, yet even today some judges and prosecutors will go easy on a statutory rapist or worse if he marries the girl and the girls family goes along with the arrangement. The term “shotgun wedding” stems from a time when family members would force the alternative on seducers.
leaders of the democratic protests of 1989
The worst war crimes and atrocities of the Civil War took place at Andersonville. 13,000 Union prisoners of war were killed there. Capt, Henry Wirtz, the prison commandant, was tried and executed after the war.
