Quote of the week
[T]he moral point of the matter is never reached by calling what happened by the name of ‘genocide’ or by counting the many millions of victims: extermination of whole peoples had happened before in antiquity, as well as in modern colonization. It is reached only when we realize this happened within the frame of a legal order and that the cornerstone of this ‘new law’ consisted of the command ‘Thou shall kill,’ not thy enemy but innocent people who were not even potentially dangerous, and not for any reason of necessity but, on the contrary, even against all military and other utilitarian calculations. … And these deeds were not committed by outlaws, monsters, or raving sadists, but by the most respected members of respectable society.
Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on The Banality of Evil
Bang ’em up! Hanging’s too good for them! MPs turned on the three Murdoch employees who are believed to have lied to the Commons culture committee. And pretty comprehensive fibs they seem to have been. Porkies, whoppers, fabrications, terminological inexactitudes – people with noses so long you could have hung your duvet covers on them to dry. If they do decide to lock up the Wapping Three, and they have a perfect – if ancient – legal right to do exactly that, the trio will be the first malfeasants to be jugged by parliament for 132 years. MPs were debating a short motion to refer the culture committee’s report to the committee on standards and privileges, which is stuck with the job of deciding whether the three were lying, and if so, what should be done. Presumably they will get something on the gamut between being forced to apologise and chemical castration. – Simon Hoggart in The Guardian
