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Report: Saudi judge considers paralysis punishment

liblady

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This eye for an eye stuff is BS. I hope no hospital gives him an answer he is looking for.
 
This eye for an eye stuff is BS. I hope no hospital gives him an answer he is looking for.

When it first came up, it was a good policy because eye for an eye was originally instituted to curtail punishment given to a criminal. However, we're now even further from that point now and eye for and eye is a very simplistic and at times barbaric practice. Base everything on the rights and liberties of the indivudal and you'll be much better off for it.
 
It's barbaric, but you cannot argue that the punishment does not fit the crime.
 
It's barbaric, but you cannot argue that the punishment does not fit the crime.

I don't think it does. I don't believe the punishments handed down from the government should mirror the incidents of the crime itself. There is proper action the government can take, and there is action which must be restricted. You can't allow cruel and unusual punishment techniques. especially going so far as to medically paralize someone.
 
I don't think it does. I don't believe the punishments handed down from the government should mirror the incidents of the crime itself. There is proper action the government can take, and there is action which must be restricted. You can't allow cruel and unusual punishment techniques. especially going so far as to medically paralize someone.

Why ever not, after all the US Military regularly doles out cruel and unusual punishment to their prisoners.
 
Report: Saudi judge considers paralysis punishment - World news - Mideast/N. Africa - msnbc.com

this is unbelievable. we need to become oil independent.

CAIRO — A Saudi judge has asked several hospitals in the country whether they could damage a man's spinal cord as punishment after he was convicted of attacking another man with a cleaver and paralyzing him, local newspapers reported on Thursday.

Kind of flies in the face of the Hippocratic oath, doesn't it?
 
When it first came up, it was a good policy because eye for an eye was originally instituted to curtail punishment given to a criminal. However, we're now even further from that point now and eye for and eye is a very simplistic and at times barbaric practice. Base everything on the rights and liberties of the indivudal and you'll be much better off for it.

Yep. As humanity evolved our laws and punishments should have evolved as well. Sadly this type of punishment is still around.
 
this is unbelievable.

Any country that values human rights should condemn any measures taken in that direction.

we need to become oil independent.

Unfortunately, the lessons of the 1973, 1979, and 2008 energy crises (energy price spikes), were quickly forgotten once the price of crude oil fell. Aggressive rhetoric notwithstanding, substantive energy policy (goals, research spending, incentives, etc.) reveals almost no conviction whatsoever to reduce oil dependency, even as that dependency entails significant geopolitical and economic risk. The words advocating and professing political commitment to alternative energy or, in today's parlance, "green energy," don't impress me at all. Concrete and sustained action is the criteria by which the nation's energy policy should properly be judged. Unfortunately, once one looks at the policy front, very little has changed. Moreover, little is likely to change in the near-term. If one examines pre-2008 federal budgets and post-2008 federal budgets as proxies for commitment, there has been no dramatic shift on energy policy. There has been no substantial reorientation of spending to suggest a credible commitment to dramatic change, much less any sense of urgency.

In the end, the only thing that has materially changed is that the gap between today's rhetoric and ongoing policy has widened, as rhetoric has shifted even more strongly toward alternative energy while policy has budged very little. To borrow from academic research on "organizational energy," when one combines positive rhetoric with policy inertia, the result is a stance that can reasonably be described as "comfort" or "complacency." IMO, that very well sums up today's energy policy. Worse, there has been enormous continuity in such policy since the very first energy crisis, even as the world has changed markedly and geopolitical vulnerability has increased given the location of remaining proved oil reserves.

As a result, if or when a new energy crises hits, the political response will almost certainly be little different than it was in 2008, almost 35 years after the first great energy price shock: Political leaders will plead for understanding. They will argue that the crisis was unavoidable and assert that there is little that can be done. The great tragedy will be that such a crisis will likely have been avoidable and many more options would have been available to transform what would be a crisis into a manageable situation had policy makers chosen a course aimed at reducing such dependency.
 
Why ever not, after all the US Military regularly doles out cruel and unusual punishment to their prisoners.

I hope you can see a difference between a judge in civilian court and the US military. And even then, we're under lots of rules for POWs and supposed to control what they can do with those they label as not POW. Not that we're that successful at it.
 
Aa'lah * Peace be upon Him *, this law is just.
 
Any country that values human rights should condemn any measures taken in that direction.



Unfortunately, the lessons of the 1973, 1979, and 2008 energy crises (energy price spikes), were quickly forgotten once the price of crude oil fell. Aggressive rhetoric notwithstanding, substantive energy policy (goals, research spending, incentives, etc.) reveals almost no conviction whatsoever to reduce oil dependency, even as that dependency entails significant geopolitical and economic risk. The words advocating and professing political commitment to alternative energy or, in today's parlance, "green energy," don't impress me at all. Concrete and sustained action is the criteria by which the nation's energy policy should properly be judged. Unfortunately, once one looks at the policy front, very little has changed. Moreover, little is likely to change in the near-term. If one examines pre-2008 federal budgets and post-2008 federal budgets as proxies for commitment, there has been no dramatic shift on energy policy. There has been no substantial reorientation of spending to suggest a credible commitment to dramatic change, much less any sense of urgency.

In the end, the only thing that has materially changed is that the gap between today's rhetoric and ongoing policy has widened, as rhetoric has shifted even more strongly toward alternative energy while policy has budged very little. To borrow from academic research on "organizational energy," when one combines positive rhetoric with policy inertia, the result is a stance that can reasonably be described as "comfort" or "complacency." IMO, that very well sums up today's energy policy. Worse, there has been enormous continuity in such policy since the very first energy crisis, even as the world has changed markedly and geopolitical vulnerability has increased given the location of remaining proved oil reserves.

As a result, if or when a new energy crises hits, the political response will almost certainly be little different than it was in 2008, almost 35 years after the first great energy price shock: Political leaders will plead for understanding. They will argue that the crisis was unavoidable and assert that there is little that can be done. The great tragedy will be that such a crisis will likely have been avoidable and many more options would have been available to transform what would be a crisis into a manageable situation had policy makers chosen a course aimed at reducing such dependency.

why do you think this is the case? oil and gov't DO mix? does the world economy depend on the u.s. oil consumption?
 
why do you think this is the case? oil and gov't DO mix? does the world economy depend on the u.s. oil consumption?

IMO, human nature probably greatly shapes that outcome. Frequently, once a crisis has passed, its lessons are forgotten. Complacency sets in and optimism about the future overwhelms calculations to the extent that the risk of a future crisis is greatly discounted. Of course, those with vested interests in the status quo seek to preserve the status quo and in a democratic society they have and ought to have a voice. That, too, helps tilt the balance toward inertia.

Hence, in terms of planned big changes, the greatest prospect for such change is usually present the combination of prolonged crises when solutions must be developed out of necessity and when there is the strong, visionary, and committed leadership necessary to align support behind a big change. The Manhattan Project (WW II and Franklin Roosevelt) and Apollo Project (Cold War/Sputnik and John Kennedy) were initiated when both elements were present. Both projects were extremely ambitious (scope, timelines, and need to invent/create new technologies). Both were achieved in remarkably short periods of time. In the cases of the 1973, 1979, and 2008 energy crises, both crises passed relatively quickly.

Needless to say, even without the invention of new technologies or development of viable alternatives, much more significant progress than what has occurred is possible and over a relatively short period of time. For example, in 2005 Portugal (much poorer economically and less technologically advanced than the U.S.) made an aggressive commitment to transition away from fossil fuels in powering its electrical grid. Then, 17% of its electricity was produced from renewable energy. Today, that share has risen to 45%.
 
In all fairness, what percent of people in the US do you think would be okay with sentencing a child molester to be put in a cell with someone who would rape him?

60%? 70%?
 
In the US we would be paying 50K a year for a variable amount of years--about a decade, I would think--so that this meat cleaver wielder can have a 'proper' punishment. I can't deny the cheap "well, we will just break your back" alternative has it's perks. Think of how many children you can save from a life of crime with close to--minus the cost of the surgery--half a million dollars.
 
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In all fairness, what percent of people in the US do you think would be okay with sentencing a child molester to be put in a cell with someone who would rape him?

60%? 70%?

Far more than that. How many people do you know that are honestly even a little bit concerned about prison rape?
 
i can argue that it's barbaric though. and sick.

It can also be argued that caring for, and protecting the rights of criminals is barbaric and sick. A man is paralyzed for life, yet the attacker walks.

Not everyone shares your, world view.
 
Far more than that. How many people do you know that are honestly even a little bit concerned about prison rape?

I figured that there would be a few who would get squeamish if it were put to them as "this person is going to be sentenced to being raped by their cellmate," but you're probably right.
 
It's barbaric, but you cannot argue that the punishment does not fit the crime.

Same here.
It's barbaric, it's backwards, it's primitive, it should never be implemented in a moral and civilized society - but the criminal deserves it.
 
It can also be argued that caring for, and protecting the rights of criminals is barbaric and sick.

Only by someone with absolutely no regard for the concept of civilized society. If someone does not deserve society's protection, kill them or exile them; maiming and torturing them is perverse.
 
Same here.
It's barbaric, it's backwards, it's primitive, it should never be implemented in a moral and civilized society - but the criminal deserves it.

Well yeah, it's the Dirty Harry, Leathal Weapon sort of thing, right? Sure those guys bend some laws...break some laws; but they never hurt any good people and they get the bad guy in the end; so it's cool and everyone gets their comeuppance. But it can't work in reality, because in reality the behavior breaks the system. So people say that this dude deserved it. And maybe in this case it's true. But if you adopt this sort of punishment as standard; what happens when you convict the innocent guy? Surely this happens. Convict someone who was innocent of the crime. Then you severe his spine, and he's paralized. Years later, new evidence points to the innocence of that man. Now what? Who gets paralyzed? The jury for wrongful conviction? Judge for the punishment? DA for the prosecution? Or would people say that it is as it is, sucks to be him buy you can't paralyze anyone on the government side for it since they were doing part of their job? Well then you're in the same scenario you were in when you started then, victim (now victims) paralyzed; criminal walking around.

We like the idea of the Dirty Harry getting the criminal, but real world application that Dirty Harry is a dirty cop most likely and even if not will cause significant damage to people and property around him through his actions.
 
Well yeah, it's the Dirty Harry, Leathal Weapon sort of thing, right? Sure those guys bend some laws...break some laws; but they never hurt any good people and they get the bad guy in the end; so it's cool and everyone gets their comeuppance. But it can't work in reality, because in reality the behavior breaks the system. So people say that this dude deserved it. And maybe in this case it's true. But if you adopt this sort of punishment as standard; what happens when you convict the innocent guy? Surely this happens. Convict someone who was innocent of the crime. Then you severe his spine, and he's paralized. Years later, new evidence points to the innocence of that man. Now what? Who gets paralyzed? The jury for wrongful conviction? Judge for the punishment? DA for the prosecution? Or would people say that it is as it is, sucks to be him buy you can't paralyze anyone on the government side for it since they were doing part of their job? Well then you're in the same scenario you were in when you started then, victim (now victims) paralyzed; criminal walking around.

We like the idea of the Dirty Harry getting the criminal, but real world application that Dirty Harry is a dirty cop most likely and even if not will cause significant damage to people and property around him through his actions.

I was speaking hypothetically in the case when the guilty is indeed guilty.

Besides that, it's not like innocent people don't get convicted anyway in our law systems, I understand there are irreversible punishments and even more irreversible punishments.
 
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