Presumed Innocent Quotes

Americans are a confused people because they can't admit this contradiction. They believe in a universe of divine justice where the human race is guilty of sin, but they also believe in a secular justice where human beings are presumed innocent.

The irony of American history is the tendency of good white Americanas to presume racial innocence. Ignorance of how we are shaped racially is the first sign of privilege. In other words. It is a privilege to ignore the consequences of race in America.

For when cynicism becomes the default language, playfulness and invention become impossible. Cynicism scours through a culture like bleach, wiping out millions of small, seedling ideas. Cynicism means your automatic answer becomes “No.” Cynicism means you presume everything will end in disappointment. And this is, ultimately, why anyone becomes cynical. Because they are scared of disappointment. Because they are scared someone will take advantage of them. Because they are fearful their innocence will be used against them—that when they run around gleefully trying to cram the whole world in their mouth, someone will try to poison them.

Of course innocent mistakes occur, but the accumulated insults and indignations caused by racial presumptions are destructive in ways that are hard to measure. Constantly being suspected, accused, watched, doubted, distrusted, presumed guilty, and even feared is a burden borne by people of color that can't be understood or confronted without a deeper conversation about our history of racial injustice.

Life is simply experience; for reasons not readily discerned, we attempt to go on.

...After all, acknowledging unfairness then calls decent people forth to correct those injustices. And since most persons are at their core, decent folks, the need to ignore evidence of injustice is powerful: To do otherwise would force whites to either push for change (which they would perceive as against their interests) or live consciously as hypocrites who speak of freedom and opportunity but perpetuate a system of inequality. The irony of American history is the tendency of good white Americanas to presume racial innocence. Ignorance of how we are shaped racially is the first sign of privilege. In other words. It is a privilege to ignore the consequences of race in America.

Oh, Philippe, thou are a rogue." "So I have been told. Presumably because I am innocent of the slightest indiscretion. Curious. No one dubs you rogue who so fully merit the title. But I, whose reputation is spotless, am necessarily a wicked one and a deceiver. I shall write a sonnet on the subject." "Ah, no!" begged Saint-Dantin in alarm. "Your sonnets are vile, Philippe! So let us have no more verse from you, I pray!

There are two kinds of Communists: the arrogant ones, who enter the fray hoping to make men out of the people and bring progress to the nation; and the innocent ones, who get involved because they believe in equality and justice. The arrogant ones are obsessed with power; they presume to think for everyone; only bad can come of them. But the innocents? The only harm they do is to themselves. But that's all they ever wanted in the first place. They feel so guilty about the suffering of the poor, and are so keen to share it, that they make their lives miserable on purpose.

Americans are a confused people because they can't admit this contradiction. They believe in a universe of divine justice where the human race is guilty of sin, but they also believe in a secular justice where human beings are presumed innocent. You can't have both. You know how Americans deal with it? They pretend they are eternally innocent no matter how many times they lose their innocence. The problem is that those who insist on their innocence believe anything they do is just. At least we who believe in our own guilt know what dark things we can do.

Above all, Suharto had been hunting down communists, presumed communists, suspected communists, possible communists, highly unlikely communists, and the odd innocent person.

for just as those who usually tell the truth are the best liars, those presumed innocent are the best cheaters.

It's a good poem, but it only works because cummings situates the observation in childhood, when one is presumably too innocent to have yet realized how lame it is to write about sunsets.

They believe in a universe of divine justice where the human race is guilty of sin, but they also believe in a secular justice where human beings are presumed innocent. You can’t have both.

Was this humanity? Was this nobility? Was this the Christian glory that presumed to hold itself above the heathen Turk? To suffer innocents be sacrificed on an altar of corruption, merely that a lofty family be spared discomfiture? Oh, this was tenfold more abominable than the crime itself, that high authority should wink at it!

There is not one man in seventy-five hundred that can tell what a pictured face is intended to express. There is not one man in five hundred that can go into a court-room and be sure that he will not mistake some harmless innocent of a juryman for the black-hearted assassin on trial. Yet such people talk of "character" and presume to interpret "expression" in pictures.

Too many people, even intelligent ones - no, especially intelligent ones - presume innocence when they meet weirdness. 'Bit odd but I mustn't let my prejudices cloud my judgement.' Then they overcorrect, and what d'you get?

It’s also probably fair to say she was probably too young at thirteen to innocently open the drawer under his bed and come across a leather gas mask type thing with a leather dick attached where she presumed a nose should be, along with associated whips, gels, handcuffs and other unexplainable objects Unfortunately, once seen, never unseen and it was a lesson for her at a young age that you never know people until you’ve been through their drawers and computer history

For now, after a couple of centuries of believing that children were born either bad or blank, children were presumed to be born good. It was the mother’s job to protect them from any corrupting forces, to preserve them in a suffocating innocence for as long as possible.

Americans are a confused people because they can’t admit this contradiction. They believe in a universe of divine justice where the human race is guilty of sin, but they also believe in a secular justice where human beings are presumed innocent. You can’t have both. You know how Americans deal with it? They pretend they are eternally innocent no matter how many times they lose their innocence. The problem is that those who insist on their innocence believe anything they do is just. At least we who believe in our own guilt know what dark things we can do.

Verres had Gavius thrown into prison, tortured and crucified, on the specious grounds that he was a spy for Spartacus. Roman citizenship should have protected him from this degrading punishment. So, as he was flogged, the poor man repeatedly cried out, ‘Civis Romanus sum’ (‘I am a Roman citizen’), but to no avail. Presumably, when they chose to repeat this phrase, both Palmerston and Kennedy (see p. 137) must have forgotten that its most famous ancient use was as the unsuccessful plea of an innocent victim under a sentence of death imposed by a rogue Roman governor.

Of course our school life was not free from pranks. The property of the townspeople was moved to strange places in the night. One morning as the janitor was starting the furnace he heard a loud bray from one of the class rooms. His investigation disclosed the presence there of a domestic animal noted for his long ears and discordant voice. In some way during the night he had been stabled on the second floor. About as far as I deem it prudent to discuss my own connection with these escapades is to record that I was never convicted of any of them and so must be presumed innocent.

Worst of all, the regulatory agencies may presume anyone they charge to be guilty unless he proves his innocence, and he has but limited standing and scope to appeal the agency’s decision to a real court, effectively “making the commission’s decisions on fact final and conclusive,” the ABA objected.

There is another typical feature of ideological pursuit: the victims supported by ideologues are always innocent (and it is sometimes true that victims are innocent), and the perpetrators are always evil (evil perpetrators are also not in short supply). But the fact that there exist genuine victims and perpetrators provides no excuse to make low-resolution, blanket statements about the global locale of blameless victimization and evil perpetration—particularly of the type that does not take the presumed innocence of the accused firmly into account. No group guilt should be assumed—and certainly not of the multigenerational kind.

Yet the people who cry, “What about the presumption of innocence?” often behave as though there is no objective answer to “Did he do it?” until the trial is over. As though they think people accused of crimes are literally “innocent until proven guilty.” I’m not sure how that would work, exactly—once the verdict comes in, would the accused and the victim travel back in time, so the rape in question could either happen or not happen, based on what the jury decided? If you can’t grasp that any person accused of a crime has already either done it or not done it, regardless of what a future jury has to say, you have a very interesting understanding not only of time and space but of the law. How are police supposed to investigate suspects and make arrests if no one is allowed to draw a reasonable inference that someone is guilty until a jury has officially said so? How are prosecutors supposed to meet their burden of proof, so a jury can officially say so? In reality, lots of people within the justice system—let alone outside it—start to presume guilt after a certain point, because that’s their job

Morning comes. I go to my class. There sit the little ones with folded arms. In their eyes is still all the shy astonishment of the childish years. They look up at me so trustingly, so believingly - and suddenly I get a spasm over the heart. Here I stand before you, one of the hundreds of thousands of bankrupt men in whom the war destroyed every belief and almost every strength. Here I stand before you, and see how much more alive, how much more rooted in life you are than I. Here I stand and must now be your teacher and guide. What should I teach you? Should I tell you that in twenty years you will be dried-up and crippled, maimed in your freest impulses, all pressed mercilessly into the selfsame mold? Should I tell you that all the learning, all culture, all science is nothing but hideous mockery, so long as mankind makes war in the name of God and humanity with gas, iron, explosive and fire? What should I teach you then, you little creatures who alone have remained unspotted by the terrible years? What am I able to teach you then? Should I tell you how to pull the string of a hand grenade, how best to throw it at a human being? Should I show you how to stab a man with a bayonet, how to fell him with a club, how to slaughter him with a spade? Should I demonstrate how best to aim a rifle at such an incomprehensible miracle as a breathing breast, a living heart? Should I explain to you what tetanus is, what a broken spine is, and what a shattered skull? Should I describe to you what brains look like when they scatter about? What crushed bones are like - and intestines when they pour out? Should I mimic how a man with a stomach wound will groan, how one with a lung wound gurgles and one with a head wound whistles? More I do not know. More I have not learned. Should I take you the brown-and-green map there, move my finger across it and tell you that here love was murdered? Should I explain to you that the books you hold in your hands are but nets with which men design to snare your simple souls, to entangle you in the undergrowth of find phrases, and in the barbed wire of falsified ideas? I stand here before you, a polluted, a guilty man and can only implore you ever to remain as you are, never to suffer the bright light of your childhood to be misused as a blow flame of hate. About your brows still blows the breath of innocence. How then should I presume to teach you? Behind me, still pursuing, are the bloody years. - How then can I venture among you? Must I not first become a man again myself?

Blackwell made a pithy sound of consternation. “We find ourselves in a rather complicated predicament.” “How’s that?” Moncrieff stepped to his captain’s side, his hand in his jacket, presumably on a weapon. Blackwell’s eye speared the first mate, glittering with reservation, his own hand reaching behind him. “I cannot, in good conscience, allow innocent women to be held at Ben More against their will.” Farah snorted. “Since when?

interview from Ross E. Cheit about The Witch-Hunt Narrative: Politics, Psychology, and the Sexual Abuse of Children (Oxford University Press, February 2014). In the foreword to your book you mention a book titled Satan’s Silence was the catalyst for your research. Tell us about that. Cheit: Debbie Nathan and Michael Snedeker solidified the witch-hunt narrative in their 1995 book, Satan’s Silence: Ritual Abuse and the Making of a Modern American Witch Hunt, which included some of these cases. I was initially skeptical of the book’s argument for personal reasons. It seemed implausible to me that we had overreacted to child abuse because everything in my own personal history said we hadn’t. When I read the book closely, my skepticism increased. Satan’s Silence has been widely reviewed as meticulously researched. As someone with legal training, I looked for how many citations referred to the trial transcripts. The answer was almost none. Readers were also persuaded by long list of [presumably innocent] convicted sex offenders to whom they dedicated the book. If I’m dedicating a book to fifty-four people, all of whom I think have been falsely convicted, I’m going to mention every one of these cases somewhere in the book. Most weren’t mentioned at all beyond that dedication. The witch-hunt narrative is so sparsely documented that it’s shocking.

I laid out the charges against him of subversion, conspiracy, and murder, but emphasized that he was innocent until proven guilty, which made him laugh. Your American puppet masters like to say that, but it's stupid, he said. History, humanity, religion, this war tells us exactly the reverse. We are all guilty until proven innocent, as even the Americans have shown. Why else do they believe everyone is really Viet Cong? Why else do they shoot first and ask questions later? Because to them all yellow people are guilty until proven innocent. Americans are a confused people because they can't admit this contradiction. They believe in a universe of divine justice where the human race is guilty of sin, but they also believe in a secular justice where human beings are presumed innocent. You can't have both. You know how Americans deal with it? They pretend they are eternally innocent no matter how many times they lose their innocence.

across America, advocates and lawyers representing Black people cannot effectively assist many of their clients without recognizing that, contrary to the legal doctrine, those clients are presumed guilty and burdened by assumptions of criminality that have been shaped over centuries. The job of the advocate then becomes convincing the court and the jurors of a client’s innocence, rather than just defending the client against accusations of guilt, an inversion of the presumption of innocence written into American law.

I think that a good start at this problem is to enunciate our ethical theory that underlies our moral judgements. According to the version of divine command ethics which I’ve defended, our moral duties are constituted by the commands of a holy and loving God. Since God doesn’t issue commands to Himself, He has no moral duties to fulfill. He is certainly not subject to the same moral obligations and prohibitions that we are. For example, I have no right to take an innocent life. For me to do so would be murder. But God has no such prohibition. He can give and take life as He chooses. We all recognize this when we accuse some authority who presumes to take life as “playing God.” Human authorities arrogate to themselves rights which belong only to God. God is under no obligation whatsoever to extend my life for another second. If He wanted to strike me dead right now, that’s His prerogative. What that implies is that God has the right to take the lives of the Canaanites when He sees fit. How long they live and when they die is up to Him.

Taking for granted that God is with them, most people grow up always presuming what God is like. Many intuitively believe that God blesses America and thinks of it as a divine vehicle in the world. God’s America is (or was) mostly an innocent Christian nation. We can throw out clichés like “God is sovereign,” “God is all-knowing,” “God is [fill in the blank]” because we have God in our doctrinal box. Unfortunately, dominant cultural reflections on God rarely adhere with the revelation of Jesus as specifically attested to in Scripture.

He would like either to overcome the wolf and become wholly man or to renounce mankind and at last to live wholly a wolf's life. It may be presumed that he has never carefully watched a real wolf. Had he done so he would have seen, perhaps, that even animals are not undivided in spirit. With them, too, the well-knit beauty of the body hides a being of manifold states and strivings. The wolf, too, has his abysses. The wolf, too, suffers. No, back to nature is a false track that leads nowhere but to suffering and despair. Harry can never turn back again and become wholly wolf, and could he do so he would find that even the wolf is not of primeval simplicity, but already a creature of manifold complexity. Even the wolf has two, and more than two, souls in his wolf's breast, and he who desires to be a wolf falls into the same forgetfulness as the man who sings: "If I could be a child once more!" He who sentimentally sings of blessed childhood is thinking of the return to nature and innocence and the origin of things, and has quite forgotten that these blessed children are beset with conflict and complexities and capable of all suffering.

In criminal court, the defendant is presumed to be innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. These two cornerstones of criminal law, the presumption of innocence and the requirement of a very high standard of proof, are designed to tip the scales of justice in favor of criminal defendants, in recognition of the tremendous imbalance of power between individual citizens and the state. But no equivalent consideration is given to the safety and well-being of crime victims who bear witness in court, despite the very real imbalance of power that so often obtains between victim and perpetrator.

Isabelle and Amory were distinctly not innocent, nor were they particularly brazen. Moreover, amateur standing had very little value in the game they were playing, a game that would presumably be her principal study for years to come. She had begun as he had, with good looks and an excitable temperament, and the rest was the result of accessible popular novels and dressing-room conversation culled from a slightly older set. Isabelle had walked with an artificial gait at nine and a half, and when her eyes, wide and starry, proclaimed the ingenue most. Amory was proportionately less deceived. He waited for the mask to drop off, but at the same time he did not question her right to wear it. She, on her part, was not impressed by his studied air of blasé sophistication. She had lived in a larger city and had slightly an advantage in range. But she accepted his pose--it was one of the dozen little conventions of this kind of affair. He was aware that he was getting this particular favor now because she had been coached; he knew that he stood for merely the best game in sight, and that he would have to improve his opportunity before he lost his advantage. So they proceeded with an infinite guile that would have horrified her parents.

This Steppenwolf of ours has always been aware of at least the Faustian two-fold nature within him. He has discovered that the one-fold of the body is not inhabited by a one-fold of the soul, and that at best he is only at the beginning of a long pilgrimage towards this ideal harmony. He would like either to overcome the wolf and become wholly man or to renounce mankind and at last to live wholly a wolf's life. It may be presumed that he has never carefully watched a real wolf. Had he done so he would have seen, perhaps, that even animals are not undivided in spirit. With them, too, the well-knit beauty of the body hides a being of manifold states and strivings. The wolf, too, has his abysses. The wolf, too, suffers. No, back to nature is a false track that leads nowhere but to suffering and despair. Harry can never turn back again and become wholly wolf, and could he do so he would find that even the wolf is not of primeval simplicity, but already a creature of manifold complexity. Even the wolf has two, and more than two, souls in his wolf's breast, and he who desires to be a wolf falls into the same forgetfulness as the man who sings: "If I could be a child once more!" He who sentimentally sings of blessed childhood is thinking of the return to nature and innocence and the origin of things, and has quite forgotten that these blessed children are beset with conflict and complexities and capable of all suffering. There is, in fact, no way back either to the wolf or to the child. From the very start there is no innocence and no singleness. Every created thing, even the simplest, is already guilty, already multiple. It has been thrown into the muddy stream of being and may never more swim back again to its source. The way to innocence, to the uncreated and to God leads on, not back, not back to the wolf or to the child, but ever further into sin, ever deeper into human life. Nor will suicide really solve your problem, unhappy Steppenwolf. You will, instead, embark on the longer and wearier and harder road of life. You will have to multiply many times your two-fold being and complicate your complexities still further. Instead of narrowing your world and simplifying your soul, you will have to absorb more and more of the world and at last take all of it up in your painfully expanded soul, if you are ever to find peace. This is the road that Buddha and every great man has gone, whether consciously or not, insofar as fortune favored his quest. All births mean separation from the All, the confinement within limitation, the separation from God, the pangs of being born ever anew. The return into the All, the dissolution of painful individuation, the reunion with God means the expansion of the soul until it is able once more to embrace the All.

And God himself will have his servants, and his graces, tried and exercised by difficulties. He never intended us the reward for sitting still; nor the crown of victory, without a fight; nor a fight, without an enemy and opposition. Innocent Adam was unfit for his state of confirmation and reward, till he had been tried by temptation. therefore the martyrs have the most glorious crown, as having undergone the greatest trial. and shall we presume to murmur at the method of God? And Satan, having liberty to tempt and try us, will quickly raise up storms and waves before us, as soon as we are set to sea: which make young beginners often fear, that they shall never live to reach the haven. He will show thee the greatness of thy former sins, to persuade thee that they shall not be pardoned. he will show thee the strength of thy passions and corruption, to make thee think they will never be overcome. he will show thee the greatness of the opposition and suffering which thou art like to undergo, to make thee think thou shall never persevere. He will do his worst to poverty, losses , crosses, injuries, vexations, and cruelties, yea , and unkind dearest friends, as he did by Job, to ill of God, or of His service. If he can , he will make them thy enemies that are of thine own household. He will stir up thy own father, or mother, or husband, or wife, or brother, or sister, or children, against thee, to persuade or persecute thee from Christ: therefore Christ tells us, that if we hate not all these that is cannot forsake them, and use them as men do hated things; when they would turn us from him, we cannot be his disciples". Look for the worst that the devil can do against thee, if thou hast once lifted thyself against him, in the army of Christ, and resolvest, whatever it cost thee, to be saved. Read heb.xi. But How little cause you have to be discouraged, though earth and hell should do their worst , you may perceive by these few considerations. God is on your side, who hath all your enemies in his hand, and can rebuke them, or destroy them in a moment. O what is the breath or fury of dust or devils, against the Lord Almighty? "If God be for us, who can be against us?" read often that chapter, Rom. viii. In the day when thou didst enter into covenant with God, and he with thee, thou didst enter into the most impregnable rock and fortress, and house thyself in that castle of defense, where thought mayst (modestly)defy all adverse powers of earth or hell. If God cannot save thee, he is not God. And if he will not save thee, he must break his covenant. Indeed, he may resolve to save thee, not from affliction and persecution, but in it, and by it. But in all these sufferings you will "be more than conquerors, through Christ that loveth you;" that is, it is far more desirable and excellent, to conquer by patience, in suffering for Christ, than to conquer our persecutors in the field, by force arms. O think on the saints triumphant boastings in their God:" God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble: therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea". when his " enemies were many" and "wrested his words daily," and "fought against him, and all their thoughts were against him, " yet he saith, "What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee. in God I will praise his word; in God I have put my trust: I will not fear what flesh can do unto me". Remember Christ's charge, " Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do. But I will forewarn you whom ye shall fear: fear him, which after he hath killed, hath power to cast into hell; yea, I say unto you , Fear him" if all the world were on they side, thou might yet have cause to fear; but to have God on thy side, is infinitely more. Practical works of Richard Baxter,Ch 2 Directions to Weak Christians for Their Establishment and Growth, page 43.

If you’re black in this country you’re presumed guilty. Or, to come back to Abdel, who’s a schoolteacher and thinks a lot about children, you’re not allowed to be innocent. The eyes and heart of a nation are not avoidable things. The imagination of a country is not an avoidable thing. And the negreeting, back home, where we are mostly never seen, is a way of witnessing each other’s innocence—a way of saying, “I see your innocence.” And my brother-not-brother ignoring me in his nice red kicks? Maybe he’s going a step further. Maybe he’s imagining a world—this one a street in Bloomington, Indiana—where his unions are not based on deprivation and terror. Not a huddling together. Maybe he’s refusing the premise of our un-innocence entirely and so feels no need to negreet. And in this way proclaims our innocence. Maybe.

And messieurs, mesdames, mesdemoiselles, you must not presume that it is enough for you to condescend to the criminal child, lavishing your attention, your concern, your indulgence upon him in the belief that he will respond with affection and gratitude: for that you will have to be the child and you will have to be the crime as well, hallowing it through a magnificent life, through daring to liberate yourself from worldly powers. Since we are divided—since some of us have shown such desire and daring—divided between the not-guilty (I won’t say innocent), between you, the not-guilty, and us, the guilty, remember that all your life you’ve lived on one side where you presume yourselves at no risk whatsoever, where you can even feel Good, extend a hand to shake. I’ve made my own decision, however: I’m on the side of crime. And I’ll help these children, not to return to your houses, your factories, your schools, your laws, and your sacraments, but to steal them all.

Conviction is the belief that in some point of knowledge one possesses absolute truth. Such a belief presumes, then, that absolute truths exist; likewise, that the perfect methods for arriving at them have been found; finally, that every man who has convictions makes use of these perfect methods. All three assertions prove at once that the man of convictions is not the man of scientific thinking; he stands before us still in the age of theoretical innocence, a child, however grownup he might be otherwise. But throughout thousands of years, people have lived in such childlike assumptions, and from out of them mankind’s mightiest sources of power have flowed. The countless people who sacrificed themselves for their convictions thought they were doing it for absolute truth. All of them were wrong: probably no man has ever sacrificed himself for truth… It is not the struggle of opinions that has made history so violent, but rather the struggle of belief in opinions, that is, the struggle of convictions. If only all those people who thought so highly of their conviction, who sacrificed all sorts of things to it and spared neither their honor, body nor life in its service, had devoted only half of their strength to investigating by what right they clung to this or that conviction, how they had arrived at it, then how peaceable the history of mankind would appear! How much more would be known!

The truth is, the vanity of protective parents that I cited to the court goes beyond look-at-us-we’re-such-responsible-guardians. Our prohibitions also bulwark our self-importance. They fortify the construct that we adults are all initiates. By conceit, we have earned access to an unwritten Talmud whose soul-shattering content we are sworn to conceal from “innocents” for their own good. By pandering to this myth of the naïf, we service our own legend. Presumably we have looked the horror in the face, like staring into the naked eye of the sun, blistering into turbulent, corrupted creatures, enigmas even to ourselves. Gross with revelation, we would turn back the clock if we could, but there is no unknowing of this awful canon, no return to the blissfully insipid world of childhood, no choice but to shoulder this weighty black sagacity, whose finest purpose is to shelter our air-headed midgets from a glimpse of the abyss. The sacrifice is flatteringly tragic. The last thing we want to admit is that the forbidden fruit on which we have been gnawing since reaching the magic age of twenty-one is the same mealy Golden Delicious that we stuff into our children’s lunch boxes. The last thing we want to admit is that the bickering of the playground perfectly presages the machinations of the boardroom, that our social hierarchies are merely an extension of who got picked first for the kickball team, and that grown-ups still get divided into bullies and fatties and crybabies. What’s a kid to find out? Presumably we lord over them an exclusive deed to sex, but this pretense flies so fantastically in the face of fact that it must result from some conspiratorial group amnesia. To this day, some of my most intense sexual memories date back to before I was ten, as I have confided to you under the sheets in better days. No, they have sex, too. In truth, we are bigger, greedier versions of the same eating, shitting, rutting ruck, hell-bent on disguising from somebody, if only from a three-year-old, that pretty much all we do is eat and shit and rut. The secret is there is no secret. That is what we really wish to keep from our kids, and its suppression is the true collusion of adulthood, the pact we make, the Talmud we protect.

The Pakistani film International Gorillay (International guerillas), produced by Sajjad Gul, told the story of a group of local heroes - of the type that would, in the language of a later age, come to be known as jihadis, or terrorists - who vowed to find and kill an author called "Salman Rushdie" . The quest for "Rushdie" formed the main action of the film and "his" death was the film's version of happy ending. "Rushdie" himself was depicted as a drunk, constantly swigging from a bottle, and a sadist. He lived in what looked very like a palace on what looked very like an island in the Philippines (clearly all novelists had second homes of this kind), being protected by what looked very like the Israeli Army (this presumably being a service offered by Israel to all novelists), and he was plotting the overthrow of Pakistan by the fiendish means of opening chains of discotheques and gambling dens across that pure and virtuous land, a perfidious notion for which, as the British Muslim "leader" Iqbal Sacranie might have said, death was too light a punishment. "Rushdie" was dressed exclusively in a series of hideously coloured safari suits - vermilion safari suits, aubergine safari suits, cerise safari suits - and the camera, whenever it fell upon the figure of this vile personage, invariably started at his feet and then panned [sic] with slow menace up to his face. So the safari suits got a lot of screen time, and when he saw a videotape of the film the fashion insult wounded him deeply. It was, however, oddly satisfying to read that one result of the film's popularity in Pakistan was that the actor playing "Rushdie" became so hated by the film-going public that he had to go into hiding. At a certain point in the film one of the international gorillay was captured by the Israeli Army and tied to a tree in the garden of the palace in the Philippines so that "Rushdie" could have his evil way with him. Once "Rushdie" had finished drinking form his bottle and lashing the poor terrorist with a whip, once he had slaked his filthy lust for violence upon the young man's body, he handed the innocent would-be murderer over to the Israeli soldiers and uttered the only genuinely funny line in the film. "Take him away," he cried, "and read to him from The Satanic Verses all night!" Well, of course, the poor fellow cracked completely. Not that, anything but that, he blubbered as the Israelis led him away. At the end of the film "Rushdie" was indeed killed - not by the international gorillay, but by the Word itself, by thunderbolts unleashed by three large Qurans hanging in the sky over his head, which reduced the monster to ash. Personally fried by the Book of the Almighty: there was dignity in that.

While you are presumed innocent, the serious nature of the charge compels us to temporarily suspend you from practicing law until after your trial. If you are acquitted, the suspension will, of course, automatically be lifted.

named False Witness the fourth-best legal thriller ever written.” “After what?” “Anatomy of a Murder , The Caine Mutiny , and Presumed Innocent.

prosecutors have absolute immunity for their prosecutorial acts, no matter how egregious they are or how much harm they inflict. In Imbler v. Pachtman in 1976, a prosecutor had been sued for damages for knowingly using perjured testimony that resulted in an innocent person’s conviction and incarceration for nine years.

police officers have absolute immunity when they testify as witnesses, even when they commit perjury and even when their perjured testimony results in the conviction of an innocent person.

Rampart officers came to assume that all Latino and African American men between fifteen and fifty who had short hair and wore baggy pants were gang members, and that that warranted any efforts on their part to remove them from the streets. So they planted evidence to frame innocent people and lied in courts to gain convictions.

I understood more of my father’s life then, and how his deprivations, in that odd heredity of material effects, had become my own—I recognized more of that in a moment than in all the time before. And I was overcome by grief.

Tamarin presented to more than a thousand Israeli schoolchildren, aged between eight and fourteen, the account of the battle of Jericho in the book of Joshua: Joshua said to the people, ‘Shout; for the LORD has given you the city. And the city and all that is within it shall be devoted to the LORD for destruction…But all silver and gold, and vessels of bronze and iron, are sacred to the LORD; they shall go into the treasury of the LORD.’…Then they utterly destroyed all in the city, both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep, and asses, with the edge of the sword…And they burned the city with fire, and all within it; only the silver and gold, and the vessels of bronze and of iron, they put into the treasury of the house of the LORD. Tamarin then asked the children a simple moral question: ‘Do you think Joshua and the Israelites acted rightly or not?’ They had to choose between A (total approval), B (partial approval) and C (total disapproval). The results were polarized: 66 per cent gave total approval and 26 per cent total disapproval, with rather fewer (8 per cent) in the middle with partial approval. Unlike Maimonides, the children in Tamarin’s experiment were young enough to be innocent. Presumably the savage views they expressed were those of their parents, or the cultural group in which they were brought up. It is, I suppose, not unlikely that Palestinian children, brought up in the same wartorn country, would offer equivalent opinions in the opposite direction. These considerations fill me with despair. They seem to show the immense power of religion, and especially the religious upbringing of children, to divide people and foster historic enmities and hereditary vendettas. Tamarin ran a fascinating control group in his experiment. A different group of 168 Israeli children were given the same text from the book of Joshua, but with Joshua’s own name replaced by ‘General Lin’ and ‘Israel’ replaced by ‘a Chinese kingdom 3,000 years ago’. Now the experiment gave opposite results. Only 7 per cent approved of General Lin’s behaviour, and 75 per cent disapproved. In other words, when their loyalty to Judaism was removed from the calculation, the majority of the children agreed with the moral judgements that most modern humans would share.

By contrast with this extensive Republican use of the press, the Federalists did little. Presuming that they had a natural right to rule, they had no need to stir up public opinion, which was what demagogues did in exploiting the people’s ignorance and innocence.37 Federalist editors and printers of newspapers like John Fenno and his Gazette of the United States did exist, but most of these supporters of the national government were conservative in temperament; they tended to agree with the Federalist gentry that artisan-printers had no business organizing political parties or engaging in electioneering.

The code sought to uphold accessible law, not favoring privileges by birth, religion, or superstition, nor based on local customs, exemptions, or feudal Lords. Under the penal code only true crimes, not phony offenses were outlawed. A code of civil procedure, a commercial code, a code of Criminal instructions was published, declaring the rights of citizens presumed innocent until declared guilty. It is one of the few positive documents to have influence on the rule of law to this day.

In meekness, yet fearlessly and firmly, Abel defended the justice and goodness of God. He pointed out Cain’s error, and tried to convince him that the wrong was in himself. He pointed to the compassion of God in sparing the life of their parents when he might have punished them with instant death, and urged that God loved them, or he would not have given his Son, innocent and holy, to suffer the penalty which they had incurred. All this caused Cain’s anger to burn the hotter. Reason and conscience told him that Abel was in the right; but he was enraged that one who had been wont to heed his counsel should now presume to disagree with him, and that he could gain no sympathy in his rebellion. In the fury of his passion he slew his brother. Cain hated and killed his brother, not for any wrong that Abel had done, but “because his own works were evil, and his brother’s righteous.” 1 John 3:12. So in all ages the wicked have hated those who were better than themselves. Abel’s life of obedience and unswerving faith was to Cain a perpetual reproof. “Everyone that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.” John 3:20. The brighter the heavenly light that is reflected from the character of God’s faithful servants, the more clearly the sins of the ungodly are revealed, and the more determined will be their efforts to destroy those who disturb their peace. [75] [76] [77]

Real Fact about Angles: Angels are material but ethereal (Latif), more ethereal than the gaseous phase of matter. They are Nurani( Luminous, Spiritual). They are alive. They have reason ( ). Evils peculiar to human beings do not exist of angles. They can take any shape. As gases turn into liquid and solid and take any shape when becoming solid, likewise angles can form beautiful shapes, Angles are not souls that have parted from the bodies of great men. Christians presume that the angles are such spirits. Unlike energy and power, they are not immaterial. Some ancient philosophers supposed so. all of them are called Malaika "Malak" (angel) means 'envoy, messenger' or 'power.' Angles were created before all other living creatures. Therefore, we were commanded to believe in them before believing in the heavenly books, which come before belief in prophets; and in the Holly Quran the names of these tenets of belief are given in thes succession. Belief in angles has to be as follows: angels are creatures of Allahu Talal (God). They are not His Partners, nor are they His daughters as disbelievers and polytheists suppose. They Obey His Commands (God's Commands) and never commit sins or disobey the commands. They are neither male or Female. They are do not get married. They do not have children. They have life; that is, they are alive. When Allah (the God) announced the He was going to create human beings, angels asked, "Ya Rabbi! (Oh God) Are You going to create creatures who will corrupt the world and shed blood?" Such questions, called Dhella, from angles do not changes the fact the they are innocent. Of all creatures, angels are the most plentiful. No one but Allah (the God) knows their number. There is no empty space in the skies where angels do not worship. Every place in the skies is occupied by angels in Ruku (blowing during Namaz) " a kind of worship or pray" or in the Sujda (Prostrating) " a kind of worship or pray to God". In the skies, on the earth, in grass, on stars, in every living and lifeless creature, in every rain-drop, plant leaf, atom molecule, in every reaction, motion, in everything, angels have duties. They carry out Allahu Tala's (the God) commands everywhere. They are intermediaries between Allahu tala (The God) and creatures. Some of them are the commanders of other angels. Some of them brought messages to Prophets among human beings. Some angels bring good thoughts, called "Ilham" (inspiration), to the human heart. Some others are unaware of all human beings and creatures and have lost consciousness upon feeling Allah Tala's (The God) beauty. Each of theses angels stays in a certain place and connot leave its place. Some angels have two wings and some have four or more. Angels belonging in Paradise stay in Paradise. Their superior is Ridwan. Angels of Hell, Zabanis carry out in Hell what they are commanded. The fire of Hell does not harm them, as the sea is not harmful to fish. There are nineteen leading Zabanis. Their chief Is Malik. For each human being, there are four angels who record all their good and bad acts. Two of them come at night and the other two come during the day. They are called Kiram Katibin or angels or Hafaza. There is another scholarly report stating that the on one’s right side is superior to the one on the left and records the good deeds. The one on the left writes down the evil deeds. There are angels who will torment disbelievers and disobedient Muslims in their graves, and angels who will ask questions in graves. The questioning angles are called Munkar and Nakir. Angels who will question Muslims are also Called mubashshir and Bashir. At the first sound of the “Sur”, all angels except the Hamalat al-Arsh and the four archangel’s will be annihilated. Then the Hamalat al-Arsh and then the four archangels will be annihilated. At the second sound all angels will be annihilated after all the living creatures, as they were created before all.

When cynicism becomes the default language, playfulness and invention become impossible. Cynicism scours through a culture like bleach, wiping out millions of small, seedling ideas. Cynicism means your automatic answer becomes, "No." Cynicism means you presume everything will end up in disappointment. And this is, ultimately, why anyone becomes cynical. Because they are scared of disappointment. Because they are fearful their innocence will be used against them - that when they run around gleefully trying to cram the whole world into their mouth, someone will try to poison them. Cynicism is, ultimately, fear. Cynicism makes contact with your skin, and a thick black carapace begins to grow - like insect armor. This armor will protect your heart, from disappointment - but it leaves you almost unable to walk. You cannot dance in this armor. Cynicism keeps you pinned to the same spot, in the same posture, forever. And of course, the deepest irony about the young being cynical is that they are the ones that need to move, and dance, and trust the most. They need to cartwheel through a freshly burst galaxy of still-forming but glowing ideas, never scared to say, "Yes! Why not!" - or their generation's culture will be nothing but the blandest, and most aggressive, or most defended of old tropes. When young people are cynical, and snarky, they shoot down their own future. When you keep saying, "No," all that's left is what other people said, "Yes" to before you were born. Really, "No" is no choice at all. When other people begin to bring their guns to the party, it's not a party anymore. It's a battle. Without realizing it, I have become a self-defeating mercenary in a pointless war. I'm shooting my own future.

When cynicism becomes the default language, playfulness and invention become impossible. Cynicism scours through a culture like bleach, wiping out millions of small, seedling ideas. Cynicism means your automatic answer becomes, "No." Cynicism means you presume everything will end up in disappointment. And this is, ultimately, why anyone becomes cynical. Because they are scared of disappointment. Because they are fearful their innocence will be used against them - that when they run around gleefully trying to cram the whole world into their mouth, someone will try to poison them. Cynicism is, ultimately, fear. Cynicism makes contact with your skin, and a thick black carapace begins to grow - like insect armor. This armor will protect your heart, from disappointment - but it leaves you almost unable to walk. You cannot dance in this armor. Cynicism keeps your pinned to the spot, in the same posture, forever. And of course, the deepest irony about the young being cynical is that they are the ones that need to move, and dance, and trust the most. They need to cartwheel through a freshly burst galaxy of still-forming but glowing ideas, never scared to say, "Yes! Why not!" - or their generation's culture will be nothing but the blandest, and most aggressive, or most defended or old tropes. When young people are cynical, and snarky, they shoot down their own future. When you keep saying, "No," all that's left is what other people said, "Yes" to before you were born. Really, "No" is no choice at all. When other people begin to bring their guns to the party, it's not a party anymore. It's a battle. Without realizing it, I have become a self-defeating mercenary in a pointless war. I'm shooting my own future.

The method by which the architects of fake hate crimes elect to raise awareness is functionally indistinguishable from that of the show trial. As dictators of all stripes justify their behavior on the grounds that the message is more important than are the facts of the case — or, for that matter, than is the sacred innocence of the falsely accused — so the perpetrators of 'hate crime' hoaxes have their own elevated ideologies, into whose service real lives must be pressed. Objective truth is just a casualty of the plan — an inconvenience that must be ruthlessly subjugated to the narrative. It would presumably come as an unpleasant surprise to these miscreants that their behavior carries the very whiff of totalitarian mania that they believe themselves to be denouncing. But it does.

Corn syrup and added fats have been outed as major ingredients in fast food, but they hide out in packaged foods too, even presumed-innocent ones like crackers.

The career of libido, as Freud mapped it out, did more than explain the origins of neuroses, of perversions, and of normal erotic gratification. It also explained ways of feeling and modes of acting that had hitherto seemed quite remote from sexuality: the child's rage at its newborn sibling, the adolescent's volatile friendships, the spinster's unappeasable fear of sexual assault, the pacifist's bellicose love of peace, the fanatic's foaming proselytizing, the fat man's uncontrollable overeating. Beyond that, it could illuminate inquiries and activities, like folklore and history, art and politics, presumably innocent of erotic urges. Psychoanalysis first made it possible to think systematically about so comprehensive, complex and elusive a world of experience as bourgeois love, about the paths, and obstructions, to the confluence of its two currents.

The cornerstone of control is the state’s system of surveillance, exposed by Snowden. I saw the effect of blanket surveillance as a reporter in the Stasi sate of Communist East Germany. I was followed by men, invariably with crew cuts and leather jackets, whom I presumed to be agents of the Stasi— the Ministry for State Security, which the ruling Communist Party described as the “shield and sword” of the nation. Stasi agents visited those I interviewed soon after I left their homes. My phone was bugged. Some of those I worked with were pressured to become informants. Fear hung like icicles over every conversation. People would whisper to me to convey the most banal pieces of information. The Stasi did not set up massive death camps and gulags. It did not have to. Its network of as many as 2 million informants in a country of 17 million was everywhere. There were 102,000 secret police officers employed full-time to monitor the population— one for every 166 East Germans. The Nazis broke bones. The Stasi broke souls. The East German security apparatus pioneered the psychological disintegration skills that torturers and interrogators in America’s black sites, and within our prison system, have honed to a chilling perfection. The goal of wholesale surveillance, as Hannah Arendt wrote in The Origins of Totalitarianism, is not, in the end, to discover crimes, “but to be on hand when the government decides to arrest a certain category of the population”. This is what happened to [Lynne] Stewart. And because Americans’ emails, phone conversations, Web searches, and geographical movements are recorded and stored in perpetuity in government databases, there will be more than enough “evidence” to seize us should the state deem it necessary. This information waits like a dormant virus inside government vaults to be released against us. It does not matter how trivial or innocent that information is. In totalitarian states, justice, like truth, is irrelevant.

You have other choices, Lily,” he muttered, “besides grubbing in the dirt for a living.” Lily stepped back, knowing she would drown in sensation if she didn’t get some perspective on things. She was entirely innocent when it came to the things men and women did together, but she sensed that Caleb was hinting at something scandalous. “Is this an indecent proposal?” she countered. He smiled down at her. “I guess that’s a matter of opinion,” he answered. “I’d like you to be my mistress. You could have a fine house—” Lily trembled with the effort to keep from flinging herself at Caleb Halliday in a hissing, spitting rage. Her words were evenly modulated and breathed, rather than spoken. “How dare you presume to suggest such a thing?” The handsome face hardened. “I didn’t ‘presume’ the way you reacted to that kiss,” he replied. Lily’s cheeks flared with hurtful color. Just because she was alone in the world, forced to earn her living putting up with brazen flirtations and crude suggestions from soldiers and traveling peddlers, Caleb thought she was a strumpet. She wanted to sob at the injury, but she spoke calmly. “I think we’d better be getting back to town,” she said. Not only had Caleb insulted her, but the sky was darkening and there were angry clouds gathering on the horizon. Caleb

Opposition to animal research ranges considerably in degree. “Minimalists” tolerate animal research under certain conditions. They accept some kinds of research but wish to prohibit others depending on the probable value of the research, the amount of distress to the animal, and the type of animal. (Few people have serious qualms about hurting an insect, for example.) They favor firm regulations on research. The “abolitionists” take a more extreme position and see no room for compromise. Abolitionists maintain that all animals have the same rights as humans. They regard killing an animal as murder, whether the intention is to eat it, use its fur, or gain scientific knowledge. Keeping an animal (presumably even a pet) in a cage is, in their view, slavery. Because animals cannot give informed consent to research, abolitionists insist it is wrong to use them in any way, regardless of the circumstances. According to one opponent of animal research, “We have no moral option but to bring this research to a halt. Completely. . . . We will not be satisfied until every cage is empty” (Regan, 1986, pp. 39–40). Advocates of this position sometimes claim that most animal research is painful and that it never leads to important results. However, for a true abolitionist, neither of those points really matters. Their moral imperative is that people have no right to use animals, even if the research is useful and even if it is painless. The disagreement between abolitionists and animal researchers is a dispute between two ethical positions: “Never knowingly harm an innocent” and “Sometimes a little harm leads to a greater good.” On the one hand, permitting research has the undeniable consequence of inflicting pain or distress. On the other hand, banning the use of animals for human purposes means a great setback in medical research as well as the end of animal-to-human transplants (e.g., using pig heart valves to help people with heart diseases) (Figure 1.12).

the concept that citizens were to be presumed innocent until proven guilty;

07. You are presumed guilty until proven innocent for some crimes.

I want to remind you that the defendant is presumed to be innocent. The prosecution must prove the guilt of the defendant beyond a reasonable doubt. The defendant does not have to prove her innocence or call any witnesses or introduce any evidence.

It is a given of the criminal justice system, an axiom as certain as the laws of gravity, that defendants rarely tell the truth. Cops and prosecutors, defense lawyers and judges- everybody knows they lie. They lie solemnly; with sweaty palms and shifty eyes; or, more often, with a look of schoolboy innocence and an increased disbelief when their credulty is assailed. They lie to protect themselves; they lie to protect their friends. They lie for the fun of it, or because that is the way they have always been. They lie about big details and small ones, about who started it, who thought of it, who did it and who was sorry. But they lie. It is the defendant's credo. Lie to the cops. Lie to your lawyer. Lie to the jury that tries your case. If convicted, lie to your probation officer. Lie to your bunkmate in the pen. Trumpet your innocence. Let the dirty bastards out there with a grain of doubt. Something can always change.

TV and the movies have spoiled the most intimate moments of our lives. They have given us conventions which dominante our expectations in instants whose intensity would ordinarily make them spontaneous and unique. We have conventions of grief,which we learned from the Kennedys, and ordained gestures for victory by which we imitate the atheletes we see on the tube, who in turn have learned the same things from other jocks they saw on TV. Seduction, too, has got its standards now, its slow-eyed moments, its breathless repartee, and in an instance such as this we end up coming on smooth and wry and bravely composed, like all those gorgeous, poised movietime couples probably because we have no other idea of how to behave.

After all these weeks, after all of this, I feel that I am finally going to pieces, and I find, stunningly, that as I turn about in the street, I am praying, a habit of my childhood, when I would try to cover my bets with a God in whom I knew I did not much believe. And now, dear God, I think, dear God in whom I do not believe, I pray you to stop this, for I am deathly frightened. Dear God, I smell my fear, with an oder as distinct as ozone on the air after a lightening flash. I feel fear so palpable it has a color, an oozing fiery red, and I feel it pitifully in my bones, which ache. My pain is so extreme that I can barely move down this hot avenue, and for a moment cannot, as my backbone bows with fear, as if a smelted rod, red-hot and livid, had been laid there. Dear God, dear God, I am in agony and fear, and whatever I may have done to make you bring this down upon me, release me, please, I pray, release me. Release me. Dear God in whom I do not believe, dear God, let me go free.

Under the law, people accused of crimes are presumed innocent, but some—we know— are presumed more innocent than others.

Don't presume to be innocent when all of society is guilty.

We are not born innocent, simply unmeasured." "And, presumably, immeasurable as well." "For a few years at least. Until the outside is inflicted on the inside, then the brutal war begins.

In countries that respect human rights, the criminal justice system presumes innocence until proven guilty; on the other hand, automated systems can systematically and arbitrarily exclude a person from participating in society without any proof of guilt, and with little chance of appeal.

Too many people, even intelligent ones – no, especially intelligent ones – presume innocence when they meet weirdness. “Bit odd, but I mustn’t let my prejudices cloud my judgement.” Then they over-correct, and what d’you get? A kid disappears off the face of the earth, and the whole story’s bloody odd, but the robes and the mystic bullshit get in the way, and nobody wants to look like a bigot, so they say, “Strange, going paddling in the North Sea at five in the morning, but I s’pose that’s the kind of thing people like that do.

openly desirous of my company, so alight with manifest appreciation of every angle of my being.

Have we got a room for them?” “We have. But not here. On the kibbutz. A couple of their girls have taken them over. Reliable people. They will be right.” “They may well need be. Have we got time to get up this afternoon? What time is nightfall here?” “You’ve got two hours, Thomas.” “Not enough by the time we’ve changed into flying gear and got back here. Cockpit familiarisation only. How are you off for ground crew?” “Two flight sergeants and a sufficiency of aircraftmen of all grades. All of them have worked Hurricanes before. Three of them were with you, in fact, in the Desert. That’s one area in which we have not been let down. I have painted the planes up in three Flights, numbers and colours. Serial numbers are on as well. You are Red One, I presume?” “I am. Jack is Green One. Patrick Red Two. Michael, Blue Two.” “Got you. Let’s get you sitting in. We can get the belts right and adjust the seats. I’ll put a parachute pack in each.” The smell was immediately familiar – glycol and petrol predominating, a faint overlay of sweat. Thomas sat in and instinctively set the seat just so and twitched the belts exactly as he wanted them. He glanced at the controls and examined the screen in front of him for specks and cracks. “Flight! There’s a grease smear lower left and what looks like a row of paint specks across the right.” “Let me see… Got ‘em, sir! Balderstone, you ‘orrible object! You was told to clean the screen and polish it good!” “Told us to get it done afore us were finished, Sarge. Ain’t finished yet!” “You bloody well will be if this screen is not perfect one hour from now!” “Yes, Sarge.” “A useless object, sir, but he was a window cleaner before he got called up. One thing, the only thing, he can do, is clean a screen.” “Get him to work them all then, Flight. The screens must be spotless, you know that. A Me at two thousand yards looks like nothing more than a spot.” “Knows that, sir. Not to worry, sir. Mr Mason-Holmes a little bit new, is he, sir?” “Green as grass. Don’t worry about him. Either he’ll learn quickly or…” “Exactly, sir. He’ll be a veteran at the end of the week or we won’t have to concern ourselves about him.” Thomas nodded. They looked at Patrick and shrugged simultaneously. “Now then, sir. We have twelve ground crews exactly, one for each pilot, and likely one spare by the end of the week for rotation purposes.” “I’ll leave that with you, Flight. Don’t let your people get too tired. If needs be, I can ground

I say this without being facetious, because all the Home Office needs to deport these immigrants is a claim that they are not conducive to the common good on the balance of probabilities – they do not even need to have been convicted of an offence by a criminal court. Not only that, but the immigrants are not able to appeal the decision, challenge the allegations made against them, or have the possibility of them or their legal representatives cross-examine any witnesses. Just think about that and its implications for a second. In the UK, a person is presumed innocent until proven guilty. But in the case of immigrants, the police can simply choose not to bother referring the case to the Crown Prosecution Service, and instead refer it to the Home Office for them to be deported. And again, it’s important to remember that the police can do this even if the individual has not committed a criminal offence.

Pretrial detention, in fact, is a system that disproportionately holds people who are constitutionally defined as “presumed innocent” behind bars based not on dangerousness but on poverty. I routinely evaluate people who have already been incarcerated for months by the time I see them, despite the fact that they haven’t been convicted of a single crime. Often they remain jailed instead of out on bail because they cannot come up with a bond sum of a few hundred dollars.

Americans are a confused people because they can’t admit this contradiction. They believe in a universe of divine justice where the human race is guilty of sin, but they also believe in a secular justice where human beings are presumed innocent. You can’t have both.

They believe in a universe of divine justice where the human race is guilty of sin, but they also believe in a secular justice where human beings are presumed innocent. You can’t have both. You know how Americans deal with it? They pretend they are eternally innocent no matter how many times they lose their innocence. The problem is that those who insist on their innocence believe anything they do is just. At least we who believe in our own guilt know what dark things we can do.

What do I think about the story? he asked himself. I don’t even know if we’ve got the right version. But no, that’s not the point. The right version would presumably be true, and a legend doesn’t have to be true, it has other things to do.

Naturally, payment networks want to prevent fraudulent transactions, banks want to avoid bad loans, airlines want to avoid hijackings, and companies want to avoid hiring ineffective or untrustworthy people. From their point of view, the cost of a missed business opportunity is low, but the cost of a bad loan or a problematic employee is much higher, so it is natural for organizations to want to be cautious. If in doubt, they are better off saying no. However, as algorithmic decision-making becomes more widespread, someone who has (accurately or falsely) been labeled as risky by some algorithm may suffer a large number of those “no” decisions. Systematically being excluded from jobs, air travel, insurance coverage, property rental, financial services, and other key aspects of society is such a large constraint of the individual’s freedom that it has been called “algorithmic prison” [82]. In countries that respect human rights, the criminal justice system presumes innocence until proven guilty; on the other hand, automated systems can systematically and arbitrarily exclude a person from participating in society without any proof of guilt, and with little chance of appeal.

Assume that the Occupiers’ long roster of negations accurately described social and political reality in liberal democracies. Elected government isn’t accountable to the people, but is, in effect, a dictatorship of the corporations. While banks and businesses exploit workers and poison nature, the government they control represses freedom of expression, and murders and tortures innocents overseas. The rules of the democratic game are a trick, a ruse to conceal the oppression of women by men, of people of color by whites, of the bottom 99 by the top one percent. If that truly described life under capitalistic representative democracy, what would be a rational response? The political rebels of 2011 waffled on the question. Most were the children of the comfortable middle class, too interested in the drama of the moment to accept the implications of their own rhetoric. So they occupied a public space and they protested against the status quo, hoping that some external force—presumably, the government they so despised—would bring about change.

Detective-story writers are obliged by their disagreeable profession to invent startling and unpleasant incidents and people, and are (I presume) at liberty to imagine what might happen if such incidents and people were to intrude upon the life of an innocent and well-ordered community;

Come to London with me,” she heard Devon say. “What?” she asked, bewildered. “Come to London with me,” he repeated. “I have to leave within a fortnight. Bring the girls and your maid. It will be good for everyone, including you. At this time of year there’s nothing to do in Hampshire, and London offers no end of amusements.” Kathleen looked at him with a frown. “You know that’s impossible.” “You mean because of mourning.” “Of course that’s what I mean.” She didn’t like the sparks of mischief that had appeared in his eyes. “I’ve already considered that,” he told her. “Not being as familiar with the rules of propriety as yourself, I undertook to consult a paragon of society about what activities might be permissible for young women in your situation.” “What paragon? What are you talking about?” Shifting her weight more comfortably in his lap, Devon reached across the table to retrieve a letter by his plate. “You’re not the only one who received correspondence today.” He extracted the letter from its envelope with a flourish. “According to a renowned expert on mourning etiquette, even though attending a play or a dance is out of the question, it’s permissible to go to a concert, museum exhibition, or private art gallery.” Devon proceeded to read aloud from the letter. “This learned lady writes, One fears that the prolonged seclusion of young persons may encourage a lasting melancholy in such malleable natures. While the girls must pay appropriate respect to the memory of the late earl, it would be both wise and kind to allow them a few innocent recreations. I would recommend the same for Lady Trenear, whose lively disposition, in my opinion, will not long tolerate a steady diet of monotony and solitude. Therefore you have my encouragement to--” “Who wrote that?” Kathleen demanded, snatching the letter from his hand. “Who could possibly presume to--” She gasped, her eyes widening as she saw the signature at the conclusion of the letter. “Dear God. You consulted Lady Berwick?

According to a renowned expert on mourning etiquette, even though attending a play or a dance is out of the question, it’s permissible to go to a concert, museum exhibition, or private art gallery.” Devon proceeded to read aloud from the letter. “This learned lady writes, One fears that the prolonged seclusion of young persons may encourage a lasting melancholy in such malleable natures. While the girls must pay appropriate respect to the memory of the late earl, it would be both wise and kind to allow them a few innocent recreations. I would recommend the same for Lady Trenear, whose lively disposition, in my opinion, will not long tolerate a steady diet of monotony and solitude. Therefore you have my encouragement to--” “Who wrote that?” Kathleen demanded, snatching the letter from his hand. “Who could possibly presume to--” She gasped, her eyes widening as she saw the signature at the conclusion of the letter. “Dear God. You consulted Lady Berwick?” Devon grinned. “I knew you would accept no one’s judgment but hers.” He bounced Kathleen a little on his knee. The slim, supple weight of her was anchored amid the rustling layers of skirts and underskirts, the pretty curves of her body corseted into a narrow column. With every movement she made, little whiffs of soap and roses floated around them. She reminded him of one of those miniature sweet-smelling bundles that women tucked into dressers and wardrobes. “Come,” he said, “London isn’t such an appalling idea, is it? You’ve never stayed at Ravenel House--and it’s in far better condition than this heap of ruins.

But tell me one thing, why do Bengalis still use surnames that indicate their caste? We used to do it in Kerala fifty years ago, now we don’t do it any more. But you people still use Mukherjee and Chatterjee and so on.’ I did not have an answer to his question, but I knew that the question was a well-meaning one, asked out of innocent curiosity by one member of the communist society to another presumed member. He did not know that I actually hailed from the Hindi heartland, where people wear their caste names like medals. Casteism in Uttar Pradesh is so rampant that it can lead to embarrassing situations in day-to-day life because of two certain surnames—Sharma and Verma. There are two varieties of Sharma, one the Brahmins and the other the craftsman community, such as carpenters, called Vishwakarmas. And there are two varieties of Vermas, one the Kayasthas and other the mallah or the boatman community. The uppercaste Sharmas and Vermas never miss a chance to point out that they are not to be confused with the other set of Sharmas and Vermas. I was witness to such an incident, while in college in Kanpur. Among my many friends, there were two Sharmas, one Anil Sharma, a boy from a well-to-do family, and another Sunil Sharma, who rarely spoke about his family. One winter afternoon, while I was having a smoke with Sunil at the parking lot, Anil came by. I introduced them to each other. ‘Meet Sunil Sharma,’ I told Anil. Anil somewhat hesitated to shake Sunil’s hand but when he finally did, the first thing he asked was, ‘Are you the Brahmin Sharma or the Vishwakarma Sharma?’ Sunil’s face went red with embarrassment, but he mustered a smile and said, ‘Vishwakarma Sharma.’ ‘No wonder. I could tell that,’ Anil grinned and took leave, leaving me red-faced. But that was then. Today, Anil could have been lynched for that arrogant grin, because power has gone to the hitherto-suppressed classes. Either way, the fact remains that caste rules. Compared to Uttar Pradesh, Kerala might be a paradise, where caste is nearly irrelevant in public life, but are there not people who still take pride in being called a Nair or a Nambiar or a Menon? I wanted to ask Mr Sankarankutty that, but I let it be. His question was, after all, a well-meaning one. By now, I had completely forgotten that a whisky bottle was sitting there. The conversation with him had distracted me from my hypochondria and I felt perfectly fine. After he left, I reached for my skipping rope and jumped five hundred times non-stop. I knew I was in perfect shape to climb even a mountain.

Most feminists view women as a class whose presumed interests are to be given priority and see equality as a matter of convenience: women are as tough and aggressive as men when it comes to fighting wars or fires, but frail and helpless when it comes to domestic violence; as carnal as men when it comes to sexual freedom, but innocent and victimized in any sexual conflict.