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
Con Court on Walus parole
The Minister said, among other things, that “in the light of the nature of the crime [the applicant] committed and in the light of the sentence remarks by the trial court and the Supreme Court of Appeal, [to release the applicant on parole] will negate their remarks that the offender’s atrocious crime demands the severest punishment which the law permits”. (Emphasis added). The severest punishment that a prisoner may serve in South Africa is a life imprisonment where he or she is not granted parole. This could happen in a case, for example, where a prisoner is such that he or she does not meet the requirements for parole. In this regard one could think of a prisoner who commits offences while in prison itself or who is always causing trouble in prison and does not show signs of rehabilitation.
