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14th December 2012, 02:54 AM | #1 |
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Alan Turing Pardon Pleaa
A letter has been written by Stephen Hawkings amongst others, to request a pardon fo Alan Turing, it is about time it was done.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/20...tephen-hawking |
14th December 2012, 03:27 AM | #2 |
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While I think this is an excellent idea and the treatment of Turing was terrible, what about the others treated similarly?
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14th December 2012, 03:38 AM | #3 |
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Yes a blanket pardon would be an idea after alla lot of gay men were forced into a life of criminality and leading otherwise blmeless lives but were branded criminals
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14th December 2012, 06:43 AM | #4 |
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I thought they did this 10 years ago.
Well, better (even) later than never. |
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"Great innovations should not be forced [by way of] slender majorities." - Thomas Jefferson The government should nationalize it! Socialized, single-payer video game development and sales now! More, cheaper, better games, right? Right? |
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14th December 2012, 08:35 AM | #5 |
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As human right is always something given, it always in reality reduces to the right which men give, "concede," to each other. If the right to existence is conceded to new-born children, then they have the right; if it is not conceded to them, as was the case among the Spartans and ancient Romans, then they do not have it. For only society can give or concede it to them; they themselves cannot take it, or give it to themselves. |
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14th December 2012, 08:40 AM | #6 |
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Who else needs to apologize?
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14th December 2012, 09:57 AM | #7 |
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14th December 2012, 10:29 AM | #8 |
Sarcastic Conqueror of Notions
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"Great innovations should not be forced [by way of] slender majorities." - Thomas Jefferson The government should nationalize it! Socialized, single-payer video game development and sales now! More, cheaper, better games, right? Right? |
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15th December 2012, 02:53 AM | #9 |
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15th December 2012, 02:58 AM | #10 |
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Good, he was horribly treated.
is it just me or does the phrase "chemical castration" make you wince? |
15th December 2012, 05:06 AM | #11 |
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Yes.
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As human right is always something given, it always in reality reduces to the right which men give, "concede," to each other. If the right to existence is conceded to new-born children, then they have the right; if it is not conceded to them, as was the case among the Spartans and ancient Romans, then they do not have it. For only society can give or concede it to them; they themselves cannot take it, or give it to themselves. |
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15th December 2012, 05:36 AM | #12 |
Lackey
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We've discussed this idea here before and I'm still of the view that I don't think it is a good idea. By the standards of today the standards of previous times in regards to civil rights were appalling, women and men not having the votes, race discrimination and so on. I just don't think we can pick out individuals that we today admire for whatever reasons and issues pardons based on our modern admiration and sensibilities.
Whether we like it or not he was a criminal in his day and what he did was by the standards of the day morally wrong. His was not a case in which he was singled out or had laws used inappropriately to victimise him he was simply treated the same as everyone else. If he had been singled out for victimisation unjustly even by the standards of the times I think you can make a case for a posthumous pardon, but that was not the circumstances behind his arrests and punishments. |
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“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?” Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago |
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15th December 2012, 01:07 PM | #13 |
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Why Turing and not Oscar Wilde?
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We would be a lot safer if the Government would take its money out of science and put it into astrology and the reading of palms. Only in superstition is there hope. - Kurt Vonnegut Jr And no, Cuba is not a brutal and corrupt dictatorship, and it's definitely less so than Sweden. - dann |
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15th December 2012, 01:56 PM | #14 |
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A pardon seems to imply that he is being forgiven for his wrongdoing. But in my opinion, he did nothing wrong.
Yet I'm not sure that an apology is appropriate either, because the actual people responsible for his persecution under British law are long dead. Perhaps the best action, in my mind, is an official acknowledgement that homosexuals were wronged by past policies, accompanied by a statement of intent to learn from the mistakes of the past in order to make a better future. |
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Counterbalance in the little town of Ridgeview, Ohio. Two people permanently enslaved by the tyranny of fear and superstitution, facing the future with a kind of helpless dread. Two others facing the future with confidence - having escaped one of the darker places of the Twilight Zone. |
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15th December 2012, 05:46 PM | #15 |
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He's dead, I don't think he cares.
They should pardon anyone currently alive in prison or suffering due to "chemical castration" laws and apologize to them, and they should make sure no similar laws remain on the books today. |
15th December 2012, 06:53 PM | #16 |
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