Posted on 11/29/2006 7:38:33 AM PST by 3AngelaD
THE HAGUE -- Bolivian President Evo Morales, on a state visit to the Netherlands, said he is searching for a new model of democracy that could include reviving the ancient tradition of whipping petty criminals as an alternative to jail. "When I was a kid I was punished several times, being whipped and lashed," the leftist president said Monday... "Whenever I did something wrong, I received punishment with a chicote [the loose end of a rope], and always believed that the system our ancestors used was better than the system in the northern justice system....," he said. Meanwhile, some 5,000 Indians from across Bolivia converged on La Paz, the capital, yesterday to demand that opposition lawmakers approve a sweeping land reform bill proposed by Mr. Morales... The use of whipping to punish petty crimes in Bolivia dates back to the days of the Incas, when men were known to have walked around carrying colorful ropes in baskets... Mr. Morales, who has irritated the Bush administration by allying himself with Presidents Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Fidel Castro of Cuba, was invited by the Dutch government... Mr. Morales, who has moved to nationalize foreign oil and gas holdings in his country, was to conclude a deal while in the Netherlands with Royal Dutch Shell, the Anglo-Dutch oil company... Bolivian Energy Minister Carlos Villegas, in The Hague with Mr. Morales, declared that foreign investors are more than welcome in his country... "Brazil's Petrobras and Spain's Repsol have both cut their investments after we reversed the rules of the game, leaving plenty of opportunity for the others in the fields of gas and oil, petrochemicals and iron or steel," he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
I'm all for torture as a penalty, but I really want it as punishment for physical crimes such as rape or murder.
Next, you can get whip for thinking the state isn't god.
And that's lenient.
I have a feeling that in the end, Mr. Morales will himself receive a whipping at the hands of his own justice system.
I'm not going to disagree with Morales here.
How many criminals could have been turned from a life of crime by the short-lived humiliation and pain of the lash? The trouble with many modern penal systems are that they are comfortable, and make it easy for criminals to avoid reality. Comfortable criminals do not reform.
I am way past caring about the "barbaric" nature of corporal punishment. Let Morales use the whip: let's watch and see if it works.
The lilly-livered liberal side of me was shocked and horrified when that kid got his ass whipped for vandalizing cars in Singapore. But I know one thing. I won't vandalize cars in Singapore.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/peru/worlds/sacrifice1.html
The Sacrificial Ceremony
by Liesl Clark
The Tanta Carhua Story
"Beautiful beyond exaggeration," is how one Spanish chronicler described Tanta Carhua. Carhua was a ten-year old Inca child whose father offered her to the Inca Emperor as a Capacocha sacrifice. She was taken by priests to Cuzco where she met the Inca Emperor, and on her return journey to the mountain where she would be sacrificed the procession passed through her home village. According to the legends, Tanta Carhua told the village: "You can finish with me now because I could not be more honoured than by the feasts which they celebrated for me in Cuzco."
Tanta Carhua was then taken to a high Andean mountain, placed in a shaft-tomb and walled in alive. Chicha, a maize alcohol, was fed to her both before and after her death. And in death, this beautiful ten-year old child became a goddess, speaking to her people as an oracle from the mountain, which was reconsecrated in her name.
Capacocha
Very little is known about Capacocha, the sacred Inca ceremony of human sacrifice, but with each new archaeological discovery of a sacrificial mummy, more is revealed. The earliest and only known written accounts of the ritual are chronicles written by Spanish conquistador historians. From the chronicles and from each new discovery of a mummy, the pieces of this great puzzle are put together to reveal an intricate and extremely important ritual that involved sacrifice of children, worship of mountains as gods, and elaborate burial procedures.
Sacrifices were often made during or after a portentous event: an earthquake, an epidemic, a drought, or after the death of an Inca Emperor. According to archaeologist Juan Schobinger, "Inca sacrifices often involved the child of a chief. The sacrificed child was thought of as a deity, ensuring a tie between the chief and the Inca emperor, who was considered a descendant of the Sun god. The sacrifice also bestowed an elevated status on the chief's family and descendants." The honour of sacrifice was bestowed not only on the family, but was forever immortalized in the child. It is believed that the sacrificial children had to be perfect, without so much as a blemish or irregularity in their physical beauty.
After a child was chosen or offered to the emperor, a procession would begin from the child's home village to Cuzco, the crown seat of the Inca empire. Priests, family members, and chiefs would accompany the child on this great journey to meet the emperor. Huge ceremonial feasts would take place in Cuzco where the child would meet the emperor and forever bring credit to the family in this important event. Priests would then lead the grand procession to the designated high mountain. Often, a base camp would be established lower on the mountain, at a more comfortable elevation. Here, llamas (which carried up 80-pound loads of soil, grass, and often stones for the camp structures from the villages below) would be coralled, and permanent stone structures would be built to offer shelter to the priests and the child.
...
Continued at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/peru/worlds/sacrifice2.html
Couldn't they just put women's panties on their heads and call it a day?
That is....seriously sick.
I have always felt that a whipping in a public square would be the best punishment for certain crimes - like naming your child "Quaaneesha J'amahl".
I think you're right - it will do more to quickly correct criminals than sitting in a cell watching TV for a year.
BTW, I believe that last whipping performed by a state government was in 1946 in Delaware. Apparently the state law prescribed flogging as a punishment for wife beating. FYI
From the continued second page:
Whether the children died a violent death remains a debate among scientists. Skull fractures have been found on most of the sacrificial mummies. Johan Reinhard, who admits Juanita, too, has a skull fracture on the back of her head, believes this was a quick and painless means of knocking the children out so that they wouldn't have to suffer a long and grueling death of exposure to the elements. He believes the children were knocked out with a blow to a cushioning towel on the backs of their heads.
Ahhh!How thoughtful of them!
Somehow reminds me of the Clintons.
Back to the future.
Watch all the Leftists who go wild over alleged human rights infractions at Abu Graib and Guantanamo suddenly laud physical punishment if practiced by a Leftist dictator wannabe like Morales.
Human sacrifice was the norm in Pre-columbian civilizations, although Latin Americans refuse to talk about it and many are in deep denial that it happened. It went on for centuries, and only ended with the Spanish (not that the Spanish didn't do their fair share of slaughter when they arrived, but it was not ritual slaughter to ensure that the sun came up each day.) Read up on the Aztecs and other meso-American cultures. Check out the Temple of Skulls at Chichen Itza (Maya) or the sacrifical knives at the Templo Mayor in Mexico City (Aztec) or the wall painting of the torture and killing of defeated enemies at Bonampak (Maya again). Or read up on the children who were buried alive by Incas for sacrifical purposes. This is the mindset that Morales brings to government, make no mistake. Whipping would be the least of it.
Burying a child alive for political gain - sound like a democrat.
Whipping? But aren't all Marxists great humanitarians?
Or the stocks!
What I wouldn't give too see a few unnamed politicians there waiting for my rotten tomato.
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