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
This morning it was agreed that Nyami Booi, Chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Defence and Military Veterans, will forward a letter to Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe, Leader of Government Business, advising him that the portfolio committee:
• has received guidance from the Max Sisulu, Speaker of the National Assembly, that parliament has the power to require any person or institution to produce reports;
• is now formally requesting that the interim reports be produced within a reasonable period of thirty days;
• that until the interim reports are received the portfolio committee has taken a decision to suspend deliberations on the Defence Amendment Bill; and;
• that in the event the interim reports are not produced the portfolio committee reserves the right, as a measure of last resort, to compel cabinet to produce the interim reports. – Statement of DA MP David Maynier
