A totalitarian tale...

George Bush, who once looked into the eyes of Vladimir Putin and said

"I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straight forward and trustworthy and we had a very good dialogue.

"I was able to get a sense of his soul. "

Thats nice. Idiot.

Of course Bush has also sagely declared "We do not torture"

If that were true I would have nothing to blog about today. But Sadly, No! The US does in fact torture.

Unless of course falsely accusing a citizen and imprisoning the said citizen without charging him of a crime for more than three years, and then when charges are brought before the court, those charges have no connection with the what the government accused him of doing.

Meet José Padilla

First he was "a material witness"
Then he was a "enemy combatant"
And now is being charged with "conspired to murder, kidnap and maim people overseas."

A far cry from being a man who was building a "dirty bomb" and was planning to explode it a US city.

He has been kept in solitary confinement for over three years. He has become so paranoid as a result of the mind-fucking that he has been given that he does not even trust his own defense lawyers.

How is this okay?

As South Africans, we have been at a place where detention without charges was a common thing. It is not a good place.

But on that note I actually want to raise a point when a government asks for more power to "combat" something or another, and wishes to extend its powers to deal with whatever is defined as the issue. That government is actually making an admission of incompetence.

For example Charles Nqakula wanted to extend the period of detention before trial past 48 hours. Why? Because he feels that 2 days are not enough to investigate a crime after an arrest. What this actually means is that their are not enough detectives, not enough forensic specialists and not enough police officers in general. Which comes back to his desk. New York City has 37,000 thousand police officers. South Africa has 125,000. New York City has a population of 8 Million. South Africa has a population of 45 million.

In short we have to we police, and our managing "talent" does not seem to know what it is doing and the training our officers receive is not sufficient. In short, the crime situation in SA is not surprising at all.

So the next time you hear a government call for more power, realise that they are incompetent.

Daily Tall
Weight = 100kg
M = 3