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
On delaying a trial: Porritt
The delay in this matter is totally unacceptable. This case strangely has the hallmarks of the Zuma Principle – to drag the case through even when there are manifestly no prospects. These particular tactics have since become common place in our courts. The delay of some 16 years cannot on any platform be justified. Approximately 17 judges have in one way or another dealt with this matter not on trial but on peripheral issues. The Applicant is using the old well-known tricks to cause a delay. The Applicant is now representing himself. He has dismissed the attorneys from the case and hopefully they will never reappear in this matter at any future convenient time.
