The following article was seen on page one of the RhyDin Post, May the twenty-eighth.
http://i738.photobucket.com/albums/xx21/dfenner_photo/6264346944a710cfe80dc5.jpg Senior Columnist and Investigative Journalist: Darien Fenner
Justice, Judge, and Jury: A Look at RhyDin's Law Enforcement May 28, 2010
When I graduated from college with a master's degree in journalism and blinding stars in my eyes, I thought I was going to change the world. Sensing I needed a bit of direction and perhaps a reality-check, one of my favorite professors recommended that I spend the twenty-fourth year of my life in South Africa, a country that for all its infamously high violent crime rates and doddering corporate and institutional bedlam still rarely, if ever, makes the news on the other side of the planet. Confident and foolhardy as any young journalist is wont to be, I held my breath and got on a plane to Johannesburg, the largest city in South Africa. At the time, the city was afflicted with a kind of urban blight stemming from an artificial policy by an apartheid regime in South Africa, a supposedly sanctioned system of ethnic segregation that drove millions of poor, mostly black human beings from their homes within the city center and into its outskirts. More often than not, citizens unwilling to settle in established townships took up lodging in temporary shacks composed of cardboard and plastic outside Johannesburg. Collections of those kinds of shacks often exploded into entire cities called slums, where crime lived and breathed like its own entity, siphoning health and power away from people of a weaker, lower class and lending it to the ones holding guns to the back of their heads.
It was there I spent my twenty-fourth year.
In a place so overwhelmed with anarchy, I met one of the wisest and bravest men I have ever known in my life. His name was Dingane Mbeki, and he was a member of the local Metro Police stationed just outside Johannesburg. While many of his squad members spent their shifts lingering outside the slums, either gambling or drinking undoubtedly on the dime of some generous local gang, Dingane ventured into the burg every day and tried to do the only thing he knew how - enforce the law. Almost every day, he failed. The opposition was often far too strong.
For six months, I followed Dingane, encountering with him injustice the likes of which would make any RhyDinian blanch with displeasure. As we chatted one day after another failed arrest, I couldn't help but be seized with an empathetic despair for him. I had to wonder what the point was, trying to lift an entire mountain of adversity solely on his two shoulders. When I asked, he smiled at me, and quoted a well-known philosopher in broken English:
"Justice and power must be brought together, so that whatever is just may be powerful, and whatever is powerful may be just. Without justice, courage is weak."
The next day, we parted ways, and it wasn't until I returned to Melbourne that I really began to grasp what he meant.
Without justice, man has no reason to be virtuous. That authority lies with those who are imbued with power - those who have a responsibility to uphold the rights of the weak.
Sadly, that same month after I left South Africa I learned that Dingane had been gunned down in the line of duty. Still, to this day, even lightyears away from that slum in Johannesburg, his words stay with me. Justice and power must be brought together, if anything else to ensure the safety of the innocent.
But who gets to decide what is just"
In RhyDin City, Governor Driscol's experimental security policies and Ministry of Defense are already under acute speculation. His "good neighbor" policy has brought out the good and bad of RhyDin, it seems, prompting some of RhyDin's more virtuous to take up arms with the Town Watch and fight injustice, and some of its malcontents to assert their rights to - for lack of a better word - villainy.
Take Judah Bishop, for instance. In 2009, Bishop allegedly collected a bounty in Lofton County on a RhyDin citizen, who, for security's purposes, we will only call M. In July of last year, that kidnapping was the result of an explosive, detrimental gunfight taking place in none other than the Red Dragon Inn, and involving no fewer than twenty people and wounding no fewer than five. According to sources, Bishop was also responsible for several counts of perfidity, and infamously connected to the maltreatment of some of RhyDin's more famous names you will no doubt have heard of, if not met one day lingering in Panther's establishment. Here is a man that thrives on injustice, and takes what power he has to commit whatever acts will bring him closer to his own ends, whatever they may be. What is justice, against Judah Bishop" Who decides what his punishment should be?
Is it Salvador Delahada, now incarcerated by the RhyDin Watch under charges of alleged manslaughter of Bishop" Is it just for Delahada to take revenge on a known miscreant in the middle of a public establishment, to paint the walls red with retribution' Is it just of him take a life that has already exhausted any possible forgiveness he has earned by discrediting, wounding, and grieving others"
Or is it Neo Eternity, a callow member of the RhyDin Watch and supposed initiator for some crime-fighting subgroup called the Seraphim Knights" Is it just of Eternity to put handcuffs on Delahada for righting a wrong in his life" Is it Eternity's own right to exercise justice as he sees fit under the guise of working for the government"
When I say guise, I refer only to some pseudo-professional mask that Eternity can don and remove as he sees fit.
"You know that if someone came into this inn and struck down someone like Veighn or Anubis right in front of my eyes, I could give that person a standing ovation," told Eternity to Delahada, following the latter's grisly act of misconduct. "If you're not going to talk to me, you're not going to leave me any choice."
Begging you sincerest pardon, but when did the RhyDin Watch, let alone Neo Eternity, become the voice of the entire judicial system"
Already we see the signs of abuse, ladies and gentlemen. Not physical abuse, not mental abuse, but abuse of power. According to this so-called Seraphim Knight, it is perfectly fine to murder some, but not others. Most importantly, he gets to decide who; to remove and don that mask only when it suits him, and when it suits his own, personal judgment. How does that make him any better than Bishop" How does that make him an unbiased servant of the law" Does it"
If justice and power are to be brought together, then perhaps we need to reexamine exactly what justice is, and in whose hands it needs to be entrusted. Driscol obviously created his Ministries for a reason, and not just to serve as another title to put at the bottom of a resum". If this - this arrest, this incident - is what justice is, then I would say Driscol's supercabinet needs to take a field trip to the RhyDin Public Library and check out a few books on ethics and universal standards of behavior.
And if courage is weak without this kind of justice, then I am confident that the majority of RhyDin's citizens would rather be cowards.
"The Caper" with special thanks to the players of Judah Bishop, ZoltarsFortune, Delahada, and Neo Eternity. This article concerns the incident in the Red Dragon Inn the night of May 27. Thank you!]]
http://i738.photobucket.com/albums/xx21/dfenner_photo/6264346944a710cfe80dc5.jpg Senior Columnist and Investigative Journalist: Darien Fenner
Justice, Judge, and Jury: A Look at RhyDin's Law Enforcement May 28, 2010
When I graduated from college with a master's degree in journalism and blinding stars in my eyes, I thought I was going to change the world. Sensing I needed a bit of direction and perhaps a reality-check, one of my favorite professors recommended that I spend the twenty-fourth year of my life in South Africa, a country that for all its infamously high violent crime rates and doddering corporate and institutional bedlam still rarely, if ever, makes the news on the other side of the planet. Confident and foolhardy as any young journalist is wont to be, I held my breath and got on a plane to Johannesburg, the largest city in South Africa. At the time, the city was afflicted with a kind of urban blight stemming from an artificial policy by an apartheid regime in South Africa, a supposedly sanctioned system of ethnic segregation that drove millions of poor, mostly black human beings from their homes within the city center and into its outskirts. More often than not, citizens unwilling to settle in established townships took up lodging in temporary shacks composed of cardboard and plastic outside Johannesburg. Collections of those kinds of shacks often exploded into entire cities called slums, where crime lived and breathed like its own entity, siphoning health and power away from people of a weaker, lower class and lending it to the ones holding guns to the back of their heads.
It was there I spent my twenty-fourth year.
In a place so overwhelmed with anarchy, I met one of the wisest and bravest men I have ever known in my life. His name was Dingane Mbeki, and he was a member of the local Metro Police stationed just outside Johannesburg. While many of his squad members spent their shifts lingering outside the slums, either gambling or drinking undoubtedly on the dime of some generous local gang, Dingane ventured into the burg every day and tried to do the only thing he knew how - enforce the law. Almost every day, he failed. The opposition was often far too strong.
For six months, I followed Dingane, encountering with him injustice the likes of which would make any RhyDinian blanch with displeasure. As we chatted one day after another failed arrest, I couldn't help but be seized with an empathetic despair for him. I had to wonder what the point was, trying to lift an entire mountain of adversity solely on his two shoulders. When I asked, he smiled at me, and quoted a well-known philosopher in broken English:
"Justice and power must be brought together, so that whatever is just may be powerful, and whatever is powerful may be just. Without justice, courage is weak."
The next day, we parted ways, and it wasn't until I returned to Melbourne that I really began to grasp what he meant.
Without justice, man has no reason to be virtuous. That authority lies with those who are imbued with power - those who have a responsibility to uphold the rights of the weak.
Sadly, that same month after I left South Africa I learned that Dingane had been gunned down in the line of duty. Still, to this day, even lightyears away from that slum in Johannesburg, his words stay with me. Justice and power must be brought together, if anything else to ensure the safety of the innocent.
But who gets to decide what is just"
In RhyDin City, Governor Driscol's experimental security policies and Ministry of Defense are already under acute speculation. His "good neighbor" policy has brought out the good and bad of RhyDin, it seems, prompting some of RhyDin's more virtuous to take up arms with the Town Watch and fight injustice, and some of its malcontents to assert their rights to - for lack of a better word - villainy.
Take Judah Bishop, for instance. In 2009, Bishop allegedly collected a bounty in Lofton County on a RhyDin citizen, who, for security's purposes, we will only call M. In July of last year, that kidnapping was the result of an explosive, detrimental gunfight taking place in none other than the Red Dragon Inn, and involving no fewer than twenty people and wounding no fewer than five. According to sources, Bishop was also responsible for several counts of perfidity, and infamously connected to the maltreatment of some of RhyDin's more famous names you will no doubt have heard of, if not met one day lingering in Panther's establishment. Here is a man that thrives on injustice, and takes what power he has to commit whatever acts will bring him closer to his own ends, whatever they may be. What is justice, against Judah Bishop" Who decides what his punishment should be?
Is it Salvador Delahada, now incarcerated by the RhyDin Watch under charges of alleged manslaughter of Bishop" Is it just for Delahada to take revenge on a known miscreant in the middle of a public establishment, to paint the walls red with retribution' Is it just of him take a life that has already exhausted any possible forgiveness he has earned by discrediting, wounding, and grieving others"
Or is it Neo Eternity, a callow member of the RhyDin Watch and supposed initiator for some crime-fighting subgroup called the Seraphim Knights" Is it just of Eternity to put handcuffs on Delahada for righting a wrong in his life" Is it Eternity's own right to exercise justice as he sees fit under the guise of working for the government"
When I say guise, I refer only to some pseudo-professional mask that Eternity can don and remove as he sees fit.
"You know that if someone came into this inn and struck down someone like Veighn or Anubis right in front of my eyes, I could give that person a standing ovation," told Eternity to Delahada, following the latter's grisly act of misconduct. "If you're not going to talk to me, you're not going to leave me any choice."
Begging you sincerest pardon, but when did the RhyDin Watch, let alone Neo Eternity, become the voice of the entire judicial system"
Already we see the signs of abuse, ladies and gentlemen. Not physical abuse, not mental abuse, but abuse of power. According to this so-called Seraphim Knight, it is perfectly fine to murder some, but not others. Most importantly, he gets to decide who; to remove and don that mask only when it suits him, and when it suits his own, personal judgment. How does that make him any better than Bishop" How does that make him an unbiased servant of the law" Does it"
If justice and power are to be brought together, then perhaps we need to reexamine exactly what justice is, and in whose hands it needs to be entrusted. Driscol obviously created his Ministries for a reason, and not just to serve as another title to put at the bottom of a resum". If this - this arrest, this incident - is what justice is, then I would say Driscol's supercabinet needs to take a field trip to the RhyDin Public Library and check out a few books on ethics and universal standards of behavior.
And if courage is weak without this kind of justice, then I am confident that the majority of RhyDin's citizens would rather be cowards.
"The Caper" with special thanks to the players of Judah Bishop, ZoltarsFortune, Delahada, and Neo Eternity. This article concerns the incident in the Red Dragon Inn the night of May 27. Thank you!]]