Drive for England to apologize to Alan Turing

Yes they should apologize, it's only a symbolic gesture but still an important one. They should acknowledge that what was done was wrong.

 

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Possibly because more than half of the Americans are too ignorant to know that Holland is just the most important state within the Netherlands so they intentionally and knowingly make an error to be understood by their ignorant listeners.

 

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I doubt it. I've explicitly asked them what the deal with the two terms was, and they told me the stuff about it being a state and so on, and that nobody observes the distinction outside context where it's important (i.e., referring to specific Dutch states, or drafting laws, etc.). They like to say "Holland" for the same reason we do: it's much shorter than saying "the Netherlands."

 

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SUCCESS:

11Sept09:
After more than 31,000 Brits signed the petition in one month, Gordon Brown issued a strong and sincere apology, not just to Alan Turing, but to the several thousand other homosexuals that the British government chemically castrated against their will when being a homosexual was a crime in Great Britain.

Translating back into English from my Portuguese newspaper, Brown said:

"Turing was a brilliant mathematician, famous for deciphering the German code Enigma. It is not an exaggeration to say that without his notable contribution, the history of the Second World War very probably would have turned out differently.* This debt of gratitude which we all have makes it all the more horrible how he was treated.

Although we cannot go back in time and his treatment was profoundly unjust, I now can profoundly regret, we all can profoundly regret, what happened.
Alan and thousands of others condemned under the homophobic laws of the epic were treated horribly and millions of others lived in fear."

This apology is an important step towards making it clear that:

NO GOVERNMENT HAS THE RIGHT TO CASTRATE HOMOSEXUALS,**

who are guilty of no crime.

----------------
* Without the ability to know where the German submarine "wolf pack” would assemble in the N. Atlantic, Germany would surely have occupied England. This information was so valuable that even when German plans on land were known, the information was not given to allied forces - no hint that the Brits were reading the German High Command's orders in real time could be given. Britain would have starved and been essentially unarmed without convoys resupplying England if the wolf pack had not been neutralized by knowing in advance what they planed and were they would be.

IMHO, Alan Turing saved England from German conquest and probably Russia as well as they too could not be supplied and Hitler would have to fight on only the Eastern front. There would have been no Normandy invasion without and staging area in England. In short, IMHO, Alan saved the western world we know today. The only homosexual crime in his case, and thousands of others, was that of the English government.

** I could not feel more strongly about this if I were one.

 

http://www.number10.gov.uk/Page20571

 

Thanks. My back translation into English was OK, but did not include Brown's closing remarks, which were:

"... Alan deserves recognition for his contribution to humankind. For those of us born after 1945, into a Europe which is united, democratic and at peace, it is hard to imagine that our continent was once the theatre of mankind’s darkest hour. It is difficult to believe that in living memory, people could become so consumed by hate - by anti-Semitism, by homophobia, by xenophobia and other murderous prejudices - that the gas chambers and crematoria became a piece of the European landscape as surely as the galleries and universities and concert halls which had marked out the European civilisation for hundreds of years. It is thanks to men and women who were totally committed to fighting fascism, people like Alan Turing, that the horrors of the Holocaust and of total war are part of Europe’s history and not Europe’s present.

So on behalf of the British government, and all those who live freely thanks to Alan’s work I am very proud to say:
we’re sorry, you deserved so much better. ..." Gordon Brown

 

seriously There were people against it?

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This one seems to be sarcasm, or a parody. The sign carrier is a supporter of gay marriage at the Massachusett's Constitutional Convention (blog post mentioning the sign).


I think it shows how hard it is for a parody to be ridiculous enough to be unbelievable.

 

Better late than never and by the queen!

 

I thought the British Gov. had oenly apologized in the year of 2010 by Gordon Brown... who was then prime minister.

 

That is correct. This action by the queen is a pardon - reversal of his "convection of the crime of being an active homosexual."