Oscar Pistorius has got out on bail and must report to the coppers twice a week and not leave South Africa.
Already the prosecution case is tottering and spluttering like Daffy Duck and it is to be wondered if he will serve time at all. False evidence was publicised world-wide and there is no possible jury member who is not a tree-dwelling Hottentot who has not read it or seen it discussed on television. And, unable to get a fair trial anywhere, he may be simply let go.
And it is hard, old friend, to imagine a cinema feature (‘Chariots Of Fire Meets In Cold Blood!’) is not already in the works.
I and Ramsey are available, of course, to write it.
It’s an ill manslaughter that blows nobody good.
Name:
Yes Bob, receiving bail certainly suggests that he’s innocent. Or could it be a South African legal thing?
I don’t know. Does anyone have an idea if this is a common move?
Regardless of the outcome of the trial, his receiving bail is no indicator of guilt or innocence. Far stronger cases for murder than this still grant bail unless there is imminent danger to witnesses or a flight risk, neither of which is plausible in this case. It will be very difficult for the prosecution to undo the damage done to their case by the bumbling police. Beyond reasonable doubt seems unlikely.
Indeed! The judge ruled him not to be a “flight risk”; one would have thought him rather difficult to disguise, given his prostheses.
(Warning : Devil’s Advocate content follows )
I suppose they could impound the blades - his description says he is 1.81m tall, though without the prostheses he is about 1.4m or so!
A requirement that he hand them in them would certainly reduce the flight risk.
.
As for his guilt or innocence, that remains to be seen. South African convictions for murder stand at around 10% according to one American professor of law.
So long as justice is done, the truth is irrelevant. Such a terrible loss to a man’s multi-million dollar career. All we can hope is that he finds the strength to begin piecing together the shattered remnants of his life and resume training on Monday. The sponsorships are lost but with determination and focus, I’m sure there is still cash in it.
She is dead and can’t be helped any longer. We need to focus on the living.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/oscar-pistorius/9344453/Oscar-Pistorius-case-The-Blonde-is-the-victim-here-Blade.html
Alison Pearson, I should have guessed before reading it.
same paper in another piece by some feminazi ‘it should have been a female judge’.
Never mind the law and this individual case; all males should be neutered.
Reeva was a feminazi. You’re still not allowed to kill us.
‘Reeva was a feminazi.’
Really?
I don’t think so.
By all appearances she seemed to be rational.
By rational, you mean good looking and temporarily useful to men in some symbolic way.
Reeva’s Uncle Mike, another feminazi -
- After her funeral, Steenkamp’s Uncle Mike told reporters that his niece wanted to be an activist for ending abuse against women. “Unfortunately, it has swung right around, but I think that the Lord knows that her statement is more powerful now,” he said.
Unless one has tunnel vision, being active on the abuse issue any where in the world doesn’t make one into a screaming revenge seeker.
I get it, I’m sub-human, I’m a feminazi, I’m a screaming revenge seeker, I have no place, worth or value. I’ll kill myself and save your worthiness the bother. It’s what I deserve. I’m getting too sad for this shit anyway.
Those are your words.
Writing crap like that is rational?
Please do not threaten to kill yourself in these pages, or you will be (again) banned from them.
It is not civil, and it is not funny.
There’s a version of events and a good chance it may be true that support manslaughter. But I wouldn’t, without careful explanation and a understanding of why Pistorius was so bloody careless as to shoot his own girlfriend, be so quick to reduce the charges. It seems to me that if in that case you manage to get it right then there’s precedent for somebody to despatch a spouse almost at will.
Granted that you’d probably have to be a psychopath to lie your way through that situation and get away with it. But I’m reminded by recent reflections about Lance Armstrong, who only murdered his sport, that being an elite athlete often encompasses being the kind of driven personality that some would say is borderline psychopathic.
There are times like these when people’s reactions to crimes are more interesting than the intrigues and mysteries of the crimes themselves. What the police will know of the evidence and investigation that they don’t share is not in the public domain and will in due course have its outing in court. But the trial by media proceeds unabated as long as some are willing to forgive and others too quickly to condemn, or condemn even the presumption of innocence.
Look for example at the article Reader1 has linked above, according to which it is an insult to women that this man is granted bail. Clearly some people are bordering upon convicting him ex cathedra on what appears to be the evidence of his gender alone. And its a disgrace, mostly because if he is guilty then he’s granted leave to play martyr to justice distorted by feminist outrage or some similarly evasive bullshit!
I don’t mind when people rally for justice, but when I smell agitation for revenge I think it needs to be pointed out that the two simply don’t intersect.
It seems in the end the basis of the defense case will be:
Black South Africans are guilty of the death of Pistorius’ girlfriend.
Pistorius wouldn’t have had the gun if he did not fear for his life or property.
He wouldn’t fear for his life or property if White South Africa still existed.
If White South Africa existed, Reeva would still be alive.
Therefore Pistorius’ accidental shooting is blameless.
Is my logic a little too tenuous. With a few fancy words I think this dog could hunt?
But do you think that dog should hunt?
If not please take it for a nice walk.
Sounds good to me.
Reeva would be alive, and Mandela long dead.
The logic is inescapable.
I think the logic is escapable if in abandoning racism we’re compelled to do so unilaterally.
Without a net:
Black Man / White Woman
It is almost merciful, what Oscar did, imagine if …..
Oscar a hero to the white women of Sth. Africa, a hero to all women, if….
I know it’s based on an almost childish truism, “what you say is what you are”, but I don’t know that you can embark upon even factoring in other people’s racism without opening a proverbial Pandora’s can of worms.
No of course it shouldn’t, but it will, it is a neat substitute for motive. That is why it was strategically included in his statement, right at the top. His motivation for action on that night is certain mixed with the protection of Reeva, almost pure in intent. His doubt and confusion enter only after Reeva is dead.
His prior “experiences” had mentally prepared him, the noise in his house, confirmed him, his shots absolved him, Reeva’s body stymied him.
OJ Simpson’s not guilty acquittal (is that the same as being declared innocent?) split the USA on racial grounds.
It was a good example of what I call ‘the Othello syndrome’. Polanski’s wife was hacked to death in the same town but he, Polanski, was not suspected, because he was white and his wife was too. Nicole Simpson was beautiful and white, her husband big and black.
And all the paranoia of slave times, of black men with big schlongs tupping our women, came steaming back from the Old Plantation plucking banjos and singing Mammy.
And he had to be guilty, of course he did.
Seriously, and I’m saying the same to allthumbs, the minute you play the race card rationality seems to go right out of the window. I realise that it is difficult to ignore, but I sincerely believe what credence we give it empowers it as a source of divisiveness and discord from which no good can or has ever come.
Yes I think you’re right and commendably tie in some of the other ideas we’ve already discussed about motive in this case.
What I’m struggling with in your posts is whether you intend to project what disingenuous defence counsel may mount on his behalf or a view that you think should be taken.
I am careful to separate the two contexts because I think his defence will do as they see fit, motivated in the main by their profession. Whereas pundits arguing in the court of public opinion should I think have their motives questions far more thoroughly than they often are.
I would submit for example that the OJ acquittal split the US along racial lines, but that the grounds protagonists of such strife had for rioting were anything but soundly based upon matters concerning itself with the facts of the trial.
I keep thinking I have a sort of history on this blog that would make these questions seem redundant HG. But I can see why you must ask.
From a legal drama point of view garnered from television over the years, I would as his lawyer plant the seed of that interpretation. I’m not sure how corrupt the legal system is in Sth. Africa, or whether there is a plethora of black judges, or racially impartial white judges, or female white and black judges, I assume counsel will know whether to play that hand or not,as you say when they see the lay of the land.
But I suppose you pay counsel big bucks to get results, you pay the PR firm to get justice.
2700 women every year, one every eight minutes in South Africa.
I’m a cynical nihilist.
Please don’t think I’m asking. I wouldn’t. I do know better of you than that. However you’re right to say that the danger is in grabbing a bull by the horns that turns out to be too large for any of us to wrangle.
I try to defy categorisation. It amuses me
I could categorise you, HG, but I will not - it amuses us both.
But I will say this, to me you personify the saying : “the best way to deal with with hate speech is more speech.”
Ouch!
He meant verbose people. You heard him
No HG, nothing so crass. But you love to deluge those in error with a lovely weight of words.
No one gave a shit about Nicole Simpson and they still don’t. There’s a lot of really ugly stuff about her on the net still, on websites dedicated to outlining OJ’s guilt.
Pistorius has a network, you bet he does. The assault charges were dropped, of course they were. He shoots a gun in a restaurant a couple of weeks ago, it goes unmentioned, of course it does. Bungled prosecution, oh, whoops. The people in earshot weren’t 600m away, it was only 300m. Mistrial. He must be innocent.
I put all my faith in the South African justice system. What could possibly go wrong? The irrational motivations of The Good Life loving “feminists” are the only thing standing in the way of a solid outcome. The only thing. Reeva was one of them but probably too young to be a Good Life fan.
Race relations have been really bad for black people in South Africa and America. This is true. Nothing to do with Reeva or Nicole personally but still.
I don’t remember black people in general getting all that up in arms about OJ. Rodney King, sure, but not OJ. I dare say it was Flying High fans spitting into Kato’s coffee.
It was the acquittal that split the country, whites thought him guilty, blacks thought him innocent.
I think I could reduce the equation a further step or two to show that Reeva actually committed suicide.
Top of the line on two second google search -
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/oj/themes/blacksoj.html
Why is there such a double standard when feminazi’s get a bit suss about judicial processes? It doesn’t make any sense.
And answer me this. Who is there to give a shit about Nicole.
I could quote Yoko and say “woman is the nigger of the world”.
I think I read recently that the guys that beat Rodney King have all gone on to make a career in the LAPD, promotion and all.
Just an additional thought, is it racism?
Systematic Apartheid is the history. A country founded on it, governed by it, schooled in it, by force of arms defended it, its economic success sustained by it and a remnant of it that would like to resurrect it.
You have to be suss about women being suss about the justice system. Because you know, because you know the recipe, and because justice and revenge in the majority of cases would happily walk the same line like siamese twins joined at the hip.
Susannah couldn’t rescue herself from the Elders, she still needed Daniel to intervene.
Nothing much has changed.
I hadn’t seen this before and it was drawn to my attention this morning by a scam email to the Nobel Prize thing.
“I wonder what allthumbs is getting up to, probably sipping coffee on the Lieberstrohmhoffenwaftstrauss, pondering how everything he ever believed in is a lie. That’d be funny.”
I always take my Verlangeter on the
Iwarramoigeirrtaberjetznichtmehrstrasse. It is on the ecke of
Vielleichthastdurechtgasse.
So he got bail. That is hardly surprising, given that the reason for holding him would be to ensure he does not abscond. That seems unlikely, to say the least, given his physical appearance and peripherally, his net worth.
Bob, how did he not notice Reeva’s absence from the bed when he reached for his gun? How did he not notice her silence when he screamed out at the ‘intruders’? How did he not notice her silence when he screamed out to her to call the police?
I also read yesterday that her bladder was empty. That only proves she had gone to the loo in the previous few hours and not at that exact time.
The more I read over his statement the more suspicious I become.
Exactly, AoT, I thought the same, if she was not in bed, where was she…she did not look like a midnight snacker; neighbours had heard them arguing in the past…she would have heard him.
He wasn’t in bed when he heard the noise according to his statement. He was at the balcony bringing in the fan, that was why he didn’t notice she wasn’t in the bed.
From there it all happened in a few moments.
I hope the South African tribunal of fact pays closer attention, Helvi! I don’t think South Africa has a jury in our sense.
No-one I think will ever know for sure what happened.
I would certainly be offended if my partner did not notice my absence from the shared bed…and for crying out loud, Reeva was young and beautiful so even a blind man would have noticed her missing…
Oh well, we are all speculating here, aren’t we.
IF he didn’t notice that she wasn’t in the bed, he certainly didn’t know that she WAS - because she wasn’t. So it’s safe to say, by his own account, he couldn’t be sure of his beloved bed partner’s whereabouts.
In which case, surely the most natural ‘scriptwriting’ would have him call out to her when he heard a noise in the bathroom, rather than immediately rain bullets on the door. IF, by his own admission, he’d ASSUMED - but didn’t know for sure - that his intimate was still in bed when he heard the noise in the bathroom, allegedly on his return from the balcony, wouldn’t his first thought be, ‘Reeva must’ve gone to the bathroom’, and his next line of ‘dialogue’, ‘Reeva?! Is that you in there, babe? [Or a burglar who needs to wash his hands??] Reeva! Where are you?’ *rushes back to bed to check for Reeva [and get gun if he's that scared BEFORE even having established his true love's whereabouts]*.
Imagine her last moments of sheer terror. Not in doubt. Nor that he killed her. His ‘mortification’ (??) pales into nothingness next to her brutal ending.
It is possible to feel compassion for a murderer. But it is not justice to find a murderer, if a murderer it is, not guilty.
I not know if guilty or non……..
FROM THE SMH TODAY:
IF YOU have just accidentally shot dead the woman you love, what do you do? Is it:
a) Dial 000 and summon an ambulance.
b) Call your girlfriend’s parents and beg forgiveness.
c) Go to a church and pray hard.
d) Hire a leading PR firm to manage your reputation.
Call me a foolish romantic, but I would rule out ”d” right away.
If you were innocent and grief-stricken, why would your thoughts turn to ”crisis communications”?
Yet this is exactly what Oscar Pistorius did within hours of the violent death of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp at his home in Pretoria.
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/as-blade-weeps-in-court-we-forget-the-blonde-is-the-victim-20130222-2ex07.html
And who can forget the great Keefer Braselle?