#crimes

...Both Elizabeth [Smart] and Ruby [Jessop] were fourteen when they were kidnapped, raped and "kept captive by polygamous fanatics." The main difference in the girls' respective ordeals...is that "Elizabeth was brainwashed for nine months," while Ruby had been brainwashed by polygamist fanatics "since birth." Despite the similarity of their plights, Elizabeth's abusers were jailed and charged with sexual assault, aggravated burglary, and aggravated kidnapping, while Ruby... "was returned to her abusers, no real investigation was done, no charges brought against anyone" involved. ↗

— Jon Krakauer

#mormonism #polygamy #religion #religion-and-children #women-s-rights

Λέγεται ότι εάν κυβερνούν καλοί άνθρωποι για εκατό χρόνια, τα εγκλήματα θα σταματήσουν και θα καταργηθεί η ποινή του θανάτου. Αυτά είναι τα λόγια της αλήθειας! ↗

— Κομφούκιος

#crimes #good-men #govern #philosophy #men

It is often said that mankind needs a faith if the world is to be improved. In fact, unless the faith is vigilantly and regularly checked by a sense of man's fallibility, it is likely to make the world worse. From Torquemada to Robespierre and Hitler the men who have made mankind suffer the most have been inspired to do so have been inspired to do so by a strong faith; so strong that it led them to think their crimes were acts of virtue necessary to help them achieve their aim, which was to build some sort of an ideal kingdom on earth. ↗

— David Cecil

#evil #faith #fanaticism #fundamentalism #good-intentions

Respectable opinion would never consider an assessment of the Reagan Doctrine or earlier exercises in terms of their actual human costs, and could not comprehend that such an assessment—which would yield a monstrous toll if accurately conducted on a global scale—might perhaps be a proper task in the United States. At the same level of integrity, disciplined Soviet intellectuals are horrified over real or alleged American crimes, but perceive their own only as benevolent intent gone awry, or errors of an earlier day, now overcome; the comparison is inexact and unfair, since Soviet intellectuals can plead fear as an excuse for their services to state violence. ↗

— Noam Chomsky

#consensus #fear #hypocrisy #intellectuals #international-law

When women love us, they forgive us everything, even our crimes; when they do not love us, they give us credit for nothing, not even our virtues. ↗

— Honore de Balzac

#credit #crimes #even #everything #forgive

It works both ways: there are victims of tragedy who come to me who have experienced grief of such magnitude that they cannot reconcile. Likewise, I cannot change the mentality of those who committed the crimes or the fools who followed them. ↗

— Paddy Ashdown

#cannot #change #come #committed #crimes

It may be impossible to have a revolution without crimes but that does not make revolution a crime. ↗

— Jose Bergamin

#crimes #does #impossible #make #may

Drug prohibition has caused gang warfare and other violent crimes by raising the prices of drugs so much that vicious criminals enter the market to make astronomical profits, and addicts rob and steal to get money to pay the inflated prices for their drugs. ↗

— Michael Badnarik

#caused #crimes #criminals #enter #gang

Many foster children have had difficulty making the transition to independent living. Several are homeless, become single parents, commit crimes, or live in poverty. They are also frequent targets of crime. ↗

— Charles Foster Bass

#become #children #commit #crime #crimes

No punishment has ever possessed enough power of deterrence to prevent the commission of crimes. On the contrary, whatever the punishment, once a specific crime has appeared for the first time, its reappearance is more likely than its initial emergence could ever have been. ↗

— Hannah Arendt

#been #commission #contrary #could #crime