Torture Quotes - page 21
The United States participated actively and effectively in the negotiation of Convention. It marks a significant step in the development during this century of international measures against torture and other inhuman treatment or punishment. Ratification of the Convention by the United States will clearly express United States opposition to torture, an abhorrent practice unfortunately still prevalent in the world today.
Ronald Reagan
The cry for peace will be a cry in the wilderness, so long as the spirit of nonviolence does not dominate millions of men and women.
An armed conflict between nations horrifies us. But the economic war is no better than an armed conflict. This is like a surgical operation. An economic war is prolonged torture. And its ravages are no less terrible than those depicted in the literature on war properly so called. We think nothing of the other because we are used to its deadly effects. ...
The movement against war is sound. I pray for its success. But I cannot help the gnawing fear that the movement will fail if it does not touch the root of all evil - man's greed.
Mahatma Gandhi
In judging myself I shall try to be as harsh as truth, as I want others also to be. Measuring myself by that standard I must exclaim with Surdas: ' Where is there a wretch So wicked and loathsome as I? I have forsaken my Maker, So faithless have I been.' For it is an unbroken torture to me that I am still so far from him, who, as I fully know, governs every breath of my life, and whose offspring I am. I know that it is the evil passions within that keep me so far from Him, and yet I cannot get away from them.
Mahatma Gandhi
I do not wish to begin by "taking sides”; nor indeed to end by "taking sides.” I am sick of "sides”; which is to say, I am sick of war; of wars hot and cold; and all their approximations and metaphors and deceits and ideological ruses. I am sick of the betrayal of the mind and the failure of compassion and the neglect of the poor. I am sick of foreign ministers and all their works and pomps. I am sick of torture and secret police and the apparatus of fascists and the rhetoric of leftists. Like Lazarus, staggering from his grave, or the ghost of Trotsky I can only groan: "We have had enough of that, we have been through all that.”.
Daniel Berrigan
It is entirely logical for instance, that Russia, which crushed the Czechs, is now in the process of crushing the Ukrainians, and bottling the brains of political dissidents on the shelves of psychiatric morgues. It is entirely logical that the U.S., which determined to crush the Vietnamese, also spent a considerable part of the ‘60's "mopping up” political dissidents at home. Imperialism has no favorites; it freezes all it touches. It is thus not to be wondered at that torture has been applied to Israeli citizens as well as to suspect Palestinian terrorists. It is logical that Israeli workers are exploited, even while the indigenous peasants are rooted out and their villages destroyed. Logical too, that racist ideology which brought the destruction of the Jewish communities at the hands of the Nazis should now be employed by the state of Israeli, fostering the myth of the "barbarian Arab,” and of Israel the "sublime expression of the liberation of the Jewish people.”.
Daniel Berrigan
We call this (Impeachment of Donald Trump) a trial, this isn't a trial by any stretch of the imagination. It's political farce... It shows utter contempt for the rule of law which any democracy must be based... If we're going to have hearings, why don't we have hearings on the politicians and generals who've fed us 18 years of feudal endless war... the greatest strategic blunder in American history... nine illegal wars - wars are supposed to be declared by Congress...the wholesale surveillance begun by the Bush administration, exposed by Edward Snowden, in direct violation of the Fourth Amendment.. the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which makes it a crime for the government to surveil any U.S. citizens; the global programming of extraordinary rendition, kidnapping and torture; [and] the decision by the Obama administration to reinterpret the 2002 Authorization to Use Military Force Act to give it the right to act as judge, jury and executioner and assassinate U.S. citizens.
Chris Hedges
There were severed hands in the Congo, at the time of the Independent State... by the Officers of the Force Publique, to prevent the waste of ammunition to which their soldiers willingly let go, demanded that they provide proof that they had used their cartridges correctly. The proof was the severed hand of the killed enemy ... Severed hands, it will be noted, never constituted a form of punishment. ... By emphasizing, as they did, on the theme of severed hands - a theme which, we realize, easily provoked emotion -, Morel and his friends gave birth to the ambiguity which finally spread and lasted until our days: the idea that Leopold II had his hands cut off in the Congo, that it was a question of torture inflicted on the population, and even of torture most characteristic of the regime.
Leopold II of Belgium
For a disciple of Jesus, in each case the decision hinges upon the answer to the question, Is it Christian? Is it a thing that Jesus could do without sin? Is it in harmony with his teaching and desires? Can it be followed without violating his way of life? Is it such that he can use it, sanction it and bless it? If the devout monk had decided the question solely upon these grounds, he should not have used torture to conquer the heretic, the judge should not have used the stake to silence witches, the politician should not adopt the evil practices of his opponent, and if the Christian citizen uses this same test, he should not, in my opinion, use the sword in resisting the military despot.
Kirby Page
When the religion from Rome was imposed on Northern and Western Europe, it was done by torture, murder, bribery and deceit. So, Adepts or Priests in the old, Aryan Mystery or Pagan religions simply infiltrated the Church. In particular during the Dark Ages as monks or lesser clergy they kept alive the art of reading and writing as well as science and philosophy. The Church began by killing scientists and philosophers, and burning libraries, thus engendering the Dark Ages of disease, superstition, slavery, inquisitions and misery.
David Lane (white nationalist)
These days, much-acclaimed characters like John Dayal, Harsh Mander and Arundhati Roy lie in waiting for communal riots and elatedly jump at them when and where they erupt. They exploit the anti-Hindu propaganda value of riots to the hilt, making up fictional stories as they go along to compensate for any defects in the true account. John Dayal is welcomed to Congressional committees in Washington DC as a crown witness to canards such as how Hindus are raping Catholic nuns in India, an allegation long refuted in a report by the Congress state government of Madhya Pradesh. Arundhati Roy goes lyrical about the torture of a Muslim politician's two daughters by Hindus during the Gujarat riots of 2002, even when the man had only one daughter, who came forward to clarify that she happened to be in the US at the time of the "facts”. Harsh Mander has already been condemned by the Press Council of India for spreading false rumours about alleged Hindu atrocities...
Koenraad Elst
"I ask myself; Why is it that only some people suffer? Why are only some selected from the ranks of normal people and put on the torture rack? Some religions maintain that God is trying us through suffering, or that we expiate evil and unbelief through it. If such an explanation can satisfy the religious man, it is not sufficient for anyone who notices that suffering is arbitrary and unjust, because the innocent often suffer most. There is no valid justification for suffering. Suffering has no hierarchy of values.", in essay: the monopoly of suffering.
Emil Cioran
Indeed, the secrecy of the program indicates an understanding that the regular military culture and mores would not support these activities and neither would the American public or the world community. Another implicit acknowledgement of violations of accepted standards of behavior is the process of farming out prisoners to countries less averse to torture and giving assignments to private contractors.
President Bush set the tone for our attitude for suspects in his State of the Union address. He noted that more than 3,000 "suspected terrorists" had been arrested in many countries and then he added, "and many others have met a different fate. Let's put it this way: they are no longer a problem to the United States and our allies."
George Bush promised to change the tone in Washington. And indeed he did.
Al Gore
Between September 26 and September 30 of 1974 Fr. Antonio Llidó Mengual was placed in our cell. Over the course of two or three days, Fr. Llidó was taken from the cell many times for interrogation. Each time he returned in worse physical condition. After three days he moved with great difficulty due to the pain inflicted in torture. His shirt was stained in blood and he apparently had internal hemorrhages and torn muscles. On one occasion a doctor who worked for the DINA examined his vital signs and recommended immediate hospitalization. In response to the doctor's urgent recommendation, the official whose last name was Morel [Marcelo Moren Brito] responded that this was impossible, as the interrogations had not finished. The doctor insisted in vain, expressing his sense of powerlessness and indignation.
Antonio Llidó
I hate violent images in the movies. Since I think in pictures, it is difficult to get these images out of my memory. I do not want this bad stuff in my memory. Reading about violence does not upset me, it is seeing it. Cartoon violence and car crashes have no effect. The images I want to avoid are realistic depictions of torture and cruelty.
Temple Grandin
Exactly what is your definition of humane? Besides psychological and physical abuse, torture, dismemberment and murder, what else do you think happens to animals inside of a slaughterhouse? Do you think they get belly rubs and tushy slaps? And if you think there is such a thing as humane slaughter. I'm curious, do you also think there is such a thing as humane rape? Humane child molestation? Humane slavery? How about a humane holocaust? In fact, what is your definition of a holocaust? Is it a massacre of human beings, or a massacre of innocent beings?
Gary Yourofsky
Surah iii. 72, 73: "And some truly are there among them who torture the Scriptures with they tongues, in order that ye may suppose it to be from the Scripture, yet it is not from the Scripture. And they say, 'This is from God'; yet it is not from God; and they utter s lie against God, and they know they do so. It beseemeth not a man, that God should give his the Scriptures and the Wisdom, and the gift of prophecy, and that then he should say to his followers, 'Be ye worshipers of me, as well as of God'; but rather, 'Be ye perfect in things pertaining to God, since ye know the Scriptures, and have studied deep.'"
Jesus Christ
In spite of muzzling the press, imprisoning thousands, and engaging in torture, kidnapping and murder, the Gonzalez government was still vulnerable to the accusation of being "soft on Basques." To demonstrate the sincerity of its stance, the new government decided to have the entire twenty-three-person directorate of Herri Batasuna arrested.
Mark Kurlansky
I didn't think it was that big of a fucking deal, there's bigger news stories happening. There's a guy in Milwaukee with heads in his icebox, but our top story is: Sam Kinison missed the Joan Rivers Show. It's like I'm the only guy in show business that's fucked up recently. There's a couple guys that, I think, have like outdone me a little bit. Like Rick fucking James, for starters. I missed a show, I didn't torture a woman with a fucking base pipe, I'm not out on $500,000 bail. I'm not Billy Preston, who's going "ah, donde esta la fiesta?" How about Axl Rose, who has a warrant out for his arrest in the state of Missouri for inciting a riot, $300,000 worth of damage, 60 people injured, and I MISSED A SHOW!
Sam Kinison
If I were not an atheist, I would believe in a God who would choose to save people on the basis of the totality of their lives and not the pattern of their words. I think he would prefer an honest and righteous atheist to a TV preacher whose every word is God, God, God, and whose every deed is foul, foul, foul.
I would also want a God who would not allow a Hell. Infinite torture can only be a punishment for infinite evil, and I don't believe that infinite evil can be said to exist even in the case of Hitler. Besides, if most human governments are civilized enough to try to eliminate torture and outlaw cruel and unusual punishments, can we expect anything less of an all-merciful God?
I feel that if there were an afterlife, punishment for evil would be reasonable and of a fixed term. And I feel that the longest and worst punishment should be reserved for those who slandered God by inventing Hell.
Isaac Asimov
Nowhere does one read.. a condemnation of the five-year torture and pursuit of [alternative media] journalist and Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, who has been holed up in the London embassy of Ecuador... His real crime, and the thing the US wants... him...for, is publishing leaked Pentagon documents and videotapes proving a policy in the Iraq war of massive and deliberate war crimes...Because a press freedom is under serious attack these days, certainly by President Trump, but also by a corporate media itself that supports a censored internet and a two-tiered access to high-speed internet - both of which measures threaten alternative news media - and that fail to firmly support and defend the whistleblowers who often are critically important in bringing urgent stories of government and corporate wrongdoing to light.
Julian Assange
It's not a sacrifice to renounce the unwanted. It is not a sacrifice to give your life for others, if death is your personal desire. To achieve the virtue of sacrifice, you must want to live, you must love it, you must burn with passion for this Earth and for all the splendor it can give you-you must feel the twist of every knife as it slashes your desires away from your reach and drains your love out of your body. It is not mere death that the morality of sacrifice holds out to you as an ideal, but death by slow torture.
John Galt
