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
Dignity, children and dagga
The High Court remarked: “It follows then that criminalising children for cannabis-related offences, even under the guise of prevention and/or deterrence, will have a profound disproportionate negative effect on them. The criminalisation, moreover, is a form of stigmatisation which is both degrading and invasive. Children accused of such offences risk being labelled and excluded by their peers in circumstances where as a society we have accepted this type of behaviour”. I agree with the High Court that a child is vulnerable to being stigmatised by her peers and loved ones. This has a direct impact on her sense of self-worth as well as her worth in a social context. Imposing a criminal sanction for the use and/or possession of cannabis on a child, therefore, infringes on her right to dignity.
