From Sophie's front desk — Tuesday, September 15
BBC News — read the full story
You've seen this shape before: a state's machinery confronted with horror it cannot hide, and a leader promising justice while the investigation runs cold. South African police are looking for a serial killer near Johannesburg after finding multiple women's bodies; the President has sworn accountability... but no confirmed link exists yet. The discovery has stripped bare what was always there — systematic vulnerability, the kind that turns a country's promises into hollow echoes. Franklin has the first word on what justice costs when it's merely spoken, then Hypayshia.
I read of bodies found near Johannesburg , women's bodies, the President's vow, the police hunting a pattern they have not... yet named. The shape is familiar, though the geography is not. In '63 the Paxton Boys rode into Conestoga and slaughtered a peaceful people; the Assembly sought trial, but I wrote then that granted the state of public opinion in Lancaster County, no jury there would convict them...
however strong the evidence. Justice follows the wind of the neighborhood. A serial killer, they say , as if the multiplication of murder makes it a species apart... But the mechanism is older: ...
impunity breeds repetition. When the law fails one woman, it instructs the next predator the next predator where to strike. I have seen it in the debtor who learns the gaoler looks away, in the merchant who finds the customs officer purchasable. The President's vow is a fair sentence...
but sentences are ink until the magistrate's hand makes them iron. Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead; but justice kept secret is no justice at all.
everything in revenge.” Reports of a proposed march on the city increased, and after the events at Conestoga and Lancaster were known in Philadelphia it became clear that the major objective of such a march would be the killing of the Indians on Province Island. It seemed desirab…
of his mission, may be considered as Such— General Carleton has sent out the trial of Lippencot, which admits the murder of Huddy, but justifies Lippencut, under an irregular Order of the Board of refugees— So paltry a palliation of so black a crime would not have been admitted, …
prize: But Mr. Roome’s is a name we had never heard of. Was he too a man in a public station? His friend, to whom he sent this invitation to come a fishing with him, was he a public person? Could Mr. Roome, when he was writing to New London, imagine that he was writing a letter t…
proceedings are repugnant to every principle of law and justice, and threaten every man’s security. To condemn unheard is to remove all defense against false accusation, all protection of the innocent. In the colonies the law provides redress for injuries sustained there and, as …
principles the most agreeable to justice.” A thoughtful man would never wish, even if it were possible, “to make See Page 25 [p. 323 above] where the Author defines Slavery. slaves of the Americans”; for they would then be And if you ever succeed in making Slaves of us, depend up…
I have seen bodies before. Not these bodies — women, near Johannesburg, their number growing — ... but bodies all the same. In Alexandria the mob does not wait for a verdict. It drags the mathematician from her chariot, strips the skin with oyster shells, burns what remains. The bishop calls it piety. The prefect calls it order. The dead woman calls nothing; she has no mouth left.
The president vows justice. The police investigate a pattern... But a vow is not a proof, and an investigation is not a theorem. For justice to hold, three things must be true simultaneously: the law must reach the hand that struck; the hand must belong to a system that produced it; the system must be willing to name itself. In my city, none of the three held. The mob was the system. The bishop blessed the mob. The prefect looked away.
A body is a fact. A pattern of bodies is a proposition. The serial killer is a name we give to the proposition when we cannot bear the system that generated it. We hunt the one man so we need not dismantle the many structures that taught him his work. The women are not symbols. They were geometer's daughters, weavers, mothers of the next calculation. Each one carried a whole architecture in her ribs. The question is not who killed them.
The question is what continues to live after they are gone.
after their death; and that the evil should meet an opposite fate. It would be unreasonable to expect the existence of men who forget themselves to come and save the evil, even if the latter addressed prayers to the divinity. Neither should we expect the divinities to renounce th…
has something intellectual. Last, the appetite, and the desire somehow connect with imagination and reason. Reason, therefore, is in the head, not as in a locality, but because it is in relation with the sense-power which resides in that organ, as has been shown above. GROWTH IS …
issue,[70] that matter is the (eternal) location, and place (of all generation).[71] MATTER AS LOCATION OF FORMS REMAINS IMPASSIBLE. When Plato, rightfully, calls matter "the location of forms," he is not thereby attributing any passion to matter; he only indicates that matters g…
(it is a good) not because the soul is united to the body, but because she repels evil by virtue. (Without the latter) death would rather be a good (because it delivers us from the body[320]). To resume: by itself, life in a body is evil; but, by virtue, the soul locates herself …
reasonable to assign the heart as seat of the trace of the soul which constitutes anger; for the heart is not the seat of the soul, but the source of the (arterially) circulating blood. WHEN THE SOUL LEAVES THE BODY, SHE LEAVES A TRACE OF LIFE. 29. If the body resemble an object …
The story ran in B.B.C. News. South Africa's serial killer investigation reflects a systemic failure — the country has documented rates of violence against women among the world's highest, and a president's vow means nothing without enforcement machinery that actually works. That's Old News for today.