(no subject)
Feb. 27th, 2007 12:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dreamer_easyI'm lurking at the local library. The *(&%)*^% nanny software just blocked three completely innocent online word counter sites in a row.
Anyway, I jumped on because I wanted to point to a couple of articles in New Scientist. (The full articles aren't available at the NS Web site unless you're a subscriber.)
One is about the lack of research into torture, especially the medical and psychological aftermath. "It's impossible to get funding," says a Harvard researcher. 104 out of 150 nations surveyed by Amnesty use systematic torture; there are millions of survivors worldwide, including perhaps half a million in the US. As you know, I've been thinking about rape recently. Sexual assault is itself a routine part of torture. But "civilian" rape, if you will, has some similarities with "official" torture: the lifelong consequences, the difficulty in obtaining justice, and - sometimes - there being no point other than to terrorise and humiliate. Stand far enough back and you see they are the same: needless assaults which can affect not just their victims, but whole families and communities, for a lifetime.
A completely unrelated book review made challenging points about the re-arisen conflict between religion - specifically, monotheism - and science. The book, An Illusion of Harmony: Science and religion in Islam by Taner Edis, points out that science is too useful to be junked; instead, in the Islamic world as in the West, religious pseudoscience has flourished. (A couple of weeks ago I read an article in Discover about US Creationists which wise-cracked that they don't just love God, they have a serious crush on science as well.) The reviewer, John Gray, comments: "Any belief system in which human agency is central is bound to be at odds with what Edis describes as the 'radically unanthropomorphic' world view suggested by contemporary science... The true conflict may not be between science and religion, but between science and monotheist faiths in which humans have a privileged place in the world."
Anyway, I jumped on because I wanted to point to a couple of articles in New Scientist. (The full articles aren't available at the NS Web site unless you're a subscriber.)
One is about the lack of research into torture, especially the medical and psychological aftermath. "It's impossible to get funding," says a Harvard researcher. 104 out of 150 nations surveyed by Amnesty use systematic torture; there are millions of survivors worldwide, including perhaps half a million in the US. As you know, I've been thinking about rape recently. Sexual assault is itself a routine part of torture. But "civilian" rape, if you will, has some similarities with "official" torture: the lifelong consequences, the difficulty in obtaining justice, and - sometimes - there being no point other than to terrorise and humiliate. Stand far enough back and you see they are the same: needless assaults which can affect not just their victims, but whole families and communities, for a lifetime.
A completely unrelated book review made challenging points about the re-arisen conflict between religion - specifically, monotheism - and science. The book, An Illusion of Harmony: Science and religion in Islam by Taner Edis, points out that science is too useful to be junked; instead, in the Islamic world as in the West, religious pseudoscience has flourished. (A couple of weeks ago I read an article in Discover about US Creationists which wise-cracked that they don't just love God, they have a serious crush on science as well.) The reviewer, John Gray, comments: "Any belief system in which human agency is central is bound to be at odds with what Edis describes as the 'radically unanthropomorphic' world view suggested by contemporary science... The true conflict may not be between science and religion, but between science and monotheist faiths in which humans have a privileged place in the world."
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no subject
Date: 2007-02-27 04:26 am (UTC)As both state and "civilian" crimes, there are deep similarities in the types of regimes or people that condone the two crimes.