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
In the last year and especially the last few weeks, following the speeches of President Jacob Zuma and Minister of Health Aaron Motsoaledi, state-supported AIDS denialism has been destroyed. If [Rian] Malan had any shame, he would have stayed out of the public light after supporting an ideology responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. But he is shameless and his denialist scribblings have continued. – Nathan Geffen from the Treatment Action Campaign
