our odds against tomorrow

odds against tomorrow grow dim/darker minute by minute given that we are indifferent to our Selves and all those surround us growing more and more and more.

Emigrants in a land we proclaim to own America exports concepts alone that darken the world’s future. Among them torture and the absence of Habeas Corpus. My previous post mentioned Mary Shelly but not in detail. What follows is copied from Wikiquote resulting from hyper links contained within her quote:

"My heart was fashioned to be susceptible of love and sympathy, and when wrenched by misery to vice and hatred, it did not endure the violence of the change without torture such as you cannot even imagine." 


Torture is any act by which severe pain, whether physical or psychological, is intentionally inflicted on a person as a means of intimidation, a deterrent, revenge, a punishment, or as a method for the extraction of information or confessions.

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"Perhaps we cannot prevent this world from being a world in which children are tortured. But we can reduce the number of tortured children. And if you don’t help us, who else in the world can help us do this?"  -Albert Camus, at the Dominican Monastery of Latour-Maubourg (1948); reported in Resistance, Rebellion and Death (translation by Justin O'Brien, 1961), p. 73.

"I want to make sure that if my government ever does this horrible, terrible, extraordinary thing, that somebody takes responsibility for it and that it be out there in the open and subject to accountability. ... Though I understand the danger of legitimating something that should not be legitimated, on balance in a democracy, I prefer accountability." -Alan Dershowitz, Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, debating David D. Cole Pre-emption: Preventive, coercive, or both? (2007).

"I mentioned to one of the gaolers my sense of this hardship, as an obstinate guilty person might deny the truth, whilst an innocent one, less courageous, might very readily, to relieve himself from such a state of misery, make a false confession. His answer was laconic: "Lago confess" ... "They soon confess."" -Irish lawyer William Sampson, writing of his experience under torture, quoting an inquisitor on its futility as a means of obtaining information Memoirs of William Sampson, 2nd Edition (1817), Letter XVII

"Torture is senseless violence, born in fear... torture costs human lives but does not save them. We would almost be too lucky if these crimes were the work of savages: the truth is that torture makes torturers." -Jean-Paul Sartre, "A Victory" (1958)

"The one thing we know about torture is that it was never designed in the first place to get at the actual truth of anything; it was designed in the darkest days of human history to produce false confessions in order to annihilate political and religious dissidents. And that is how it always works: it gets confessions regardless of their accuracy." -Andrew Sullivan, "Imaginationland", The Daily Dish (2007-10-25).

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"The strong will resist and the weak will say anything to end the pain." -Ulpian
"Know that there are five degrees of torture, videlicit, first, the torture of being threatened to be tortured; secondly, the torture of being conveyed to the place of torture; thirdly, the torture of being, and bound for torture; fourthly, the torture of being hoisted on the torturing rack; and fifthly, and lastly, the torture of squassation." -Julius Clarus, quoted by Philip Limborch, a preacher and annotator, in his History of the Inquisition

"[It] has never been a reliable means of extracting information. It is ultimately self-defeating as a means of control. One wonders why it is still practiced." -Captain Jean-Luc Picard, Star Trek: The Next Generation; Episode #137 "Chain of Command, Part II" 1992. Picard has been captured and tortured for information by the Cardassians.

. . to close: 

Greed is an addiction responsible for the export of our economy and employment. Inflicting upon others subhuman income and working conditions. Should we be proud of that? Or elect someone guilty of it? By what right/rite divine or evil does he purport to in vanity lead us and where? . . . more on this in the latter future . . . 

120830 08:05 odds against tomorrow
© 2012 by Jack Spratt All Rights Reserved