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
The naked president, oddly enough, was rewarded with glowing press coverage. In part, this was the product of corny theatrics: youth league president Julius Malema was supposedly disciplined by the father of the nation and then comforted by its mother. The leader’s purported “success” was also built on ill- informed speculation before the council that a challenge to Zuma’s authority might occur at a congress located in KwaZulu-Natal. More pertinently, the council provided an opportunity to assess the effectiveness of Zuma’s campaign to intimidate the press. The positive reporting of his self-serving speeches — and the praise heaped upon him for properly rehearsing a speech before trying to deliver it — indicate that this campaign may be having its intended effect. – ANthony Butler in Business Day
