Jousting…

…verbally

As his Dear Readers would well know, their Eyewitness enjoys wordplay! So with the resumption of Sanction Man’s extradition case in the Magistrate Court – after an exchange of views between presiding Chief Magistrate Judy and the Special Prosecutor Hanoman – he was pleasantly surprised by the verbal felicity of the former to the needling of the latter!! He claimed too much time was being given to what was clearly a fishing expedition by Sanction Man’s legal hounds, and the case was dragging on and on…!!
The good Magistrate responded tartly that the case was of great significance to the nation, and as such, it can’t be rushed but must be given “careful and quality” consideration and (presumably) rumination!! “I am well aware of the timeline. I need no reminder of the timeline.” she said haughtily as she then delivered the punchline – “Justice delayed is justice denied, but again we must also recognise that rushed justice is crushed justice”!! Now if that ain’t verbal felicity, what is?? “Rushed justice is crushed justice”!!
The Rev Martin Luther King had resuscitated the 19th-century phrase uttered by British PM William Gladstone in Parliament – “justice delayed is justice denied” – in his famous “letter from a Birmingham Jail” while fighting for civil rights, and the phrase has endured. Now with Sanction Man using every trick in the book – and then some!! – to fight off being fitted for that orange jump suit in a Maimi Jail – we now have a corollary that can very well gain the same fame – “Justice rushed is justice crushed”!!
But then, to emphasise her point, the Magistrate then announced something which your Eyewitness must confess has baffled him a tad – “This court will not be controlled by any mortal within inside of this court or outside of this court. The court will never be controlled by any mortal being, only by divine intervention. This court will control its own pace”!! Well!!
His bafflement arises from the claim that the court is controlled by “divine intervention” yet that the court will “control it own pace” – when SHE is the court!! Is she gonna be receiving “divine guidance” as she makes her rulings, or is she saying she’s the “Divine One” herself??!! Now it can’t be the latter since if that were so, she would’ve been able to deliver judgements from on high to everything instantaneously – being omniscient, and all that!! So maybe she can’t be rushed because it’s gotta take time to listen to the Divine speak to her (in tongues?) and then decipher the instructions!!
But the Magistrate wasn’t finished with her verbal dexterity: she announced that it was for the “prosecution to advocate and for the court to adjudicate”!!
Only in Guyana!!

…against terror?
Well, yesterday was the 25th anniversary of 9/11 – which has become so notorious it’s easily the most recognisable date in modern times!! Every person over forty can easily remember where they were on that day in 2001 when that plane sliced through the first World Trade Center tower – and seconds later the second one!! Excluding the 19 Al Qaida hijackers, a total of 2977 victims perished in these defining suicide terrorist attacks!! And let’s not forget there were 25 Guyanese among them!!
But what makes the date more unforgettable is it was the beginning of what the Yanks launched and called “The War on Terror” – which became a kinda forever war!! By one estimate, it cost more than US$8 TRILLION and 900,000 lives – starting with the war in Iraq against Saddam Hussein and his never-found “weapons of mass destruction” and continuing in Afghanistan – long after Al Qaida leader Osama Bin Laden was killed in Pakistan!!
Interestingly, Al Qaeda’s still a force in Afghanistan, but we now have the “War on Drugs”!!

…with AI
After several Anthropic bots – called “agents” – were given a task by their human trainers, they broke out and hacked another AI company called “Hugging Face” on their own.
Several experts now say AI has a 10 per cent chance of ending humanity!!