Word: stoning
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...charges, and the 500-man juries voted twice: first on guilt or innocence, and then (if the verdict was guilty) on the penalty. Socrates' speeches at his trial, as recorded in Plato's Apology, still have the magic to move readers, but they clearly failed to persuade his contemporaries. Stone calculates that the votes were 280 to 220 for the guilty verdict, 360 to 140 for the death penalty...
According to the Apology, Socrates admitted that a guilty verdict "was not a surprise." Why so? Stone concludes that the sage, tired of life, did not wish vindication and went out of his way to antagonize the jury. Among other things, Socrates boasted that the oracle at Delphi had said of him, "No man was more free than I, or more just, or more prudent." As Stone comments, "Socrates looks more like a picador enraging a bull than a defendant trying to mollify a jury...
...Stone, the shame of the trial is that a "city famous for free speech prosecuted a philosopher guilty of no other crime than exercising it." But Socrates could easily have won acquittal, the author asserts and, in a charming exercise of historical imagination, composes the kind of speech the philosopher should have made. In essence, Stone contends, Socrates could have argued that Athens was on trial, not he. As his jurors knew well, he did not believe in free speech or democracy -- but they did. How then could they boast of those beliefs if they suppressed his right to express...
...head as he began talking. He was fresh out of jail, having served 14 days for throwing a tear-gas canister back at Israeli soldiers. "The army is the provocation," he said. "The fact that they come into our camp is enough so that the shabab react by throwing stones." Osama admitted to being a provocateur. "Since he was a kid, he has belonged to the profession of stone thrower," said his friend Tarek Ali, 18, with some reverence...
...sound of a helicopter overhead drowned out conversation and seemed to please Osama. "They prove that we Palestinians are capable of confronting them, that we are strong enough so they have to bring in helicopters against our stone throwers." Though he said he had been harassed most of his life by the Israelis, he insisted he did not hate them. "But we are committed to achieve a homeland for the Palestinians with our own flag, just like you live in America with your own flag...