#Clemency

[blanket-burrito-protocol]

The 50th anniversary of AIMs (American Indian Movement's) occupation at Wounded Knee is coming up, so the Lakota People's Law Project is leading another push to free an AIM activist who was wrongly convicted of killing two federal agents in 1975- Leonard Peltier. He was convicted on false evidence and false testimony and sentenced to two life sentences. He is now 78.

LPL has a formatted email up on their website now which you can personalize and send to Biden to ask for clemency. (Please personalize emails like this so it doesn't get filtered as spam. Just move some words around, add some, take some, you don't have to write a whole email.) Please pass this around.

[fuckyeahmarxismleninism]

An open letter to President Joe Biden: Free Leonard Peltier

By Stephen Millies

Mr. President, If you can pardon your son, why can’t you free the Indigenous political prisoner Leonard Peltier?

The 80-year-old man, a leader of the American Indian Movement, has been imprisoned for 48 years. He suffers from diabetes, high blood pressure, and a heart condition.

The FBI framed Leonard Peltier in retaliation for the historic 1973 occupation of Wounded Knee. Three years of violence followed this courageous stand for Indigenous rights, with over 60 AIM members and supporters murdered. Despite a large FBI presence, nothing was done to stop these murders and even more numerous assaults. 

[odinsblog]

🗣️ These were disproportionately Black and Brown kids!

Former Luzerne County Judge Michael T. Conahan, who gained notoriety for wrongfully imprisoning juveniles in the Kids-for-Cash scandal, is one of nearly 1,500 inmates whose sentences President Joe Biden commuted Thursday as his term in office comes to a close.

Conahan, 72, was convicted along with former judge Mark A. Ciavarella Jr., 74, of funneling juvenile defendants to two private, for-profit detention centers in exchange for $2.1 million in kickbacks.

Conahan pleaded guilty to racketeering conspiracy charges and was sentenced in 2011 to 17½ years in prison. However, he petitioned the courts for a “compassionate release” during the COVID-19 pandemic, writing that he was “in grave danger of not only contracting the virus, but of dying from the virus.”

In 2011, Conahan and another judge were convicted for wrongly sending juveniles to for-profit detention centers in exchange for millions of dollars in illegal kickbacks. (4,000 juvenile convictions were later thrown out after the “Kids for Cash” scheme was exposed.) Conahan’s 17-year prison sentence was due to end in 2026, and he had been serving that sentence under home confinement since 2020. Sandy Fonzo, whose son died by suicide after being sent to a juvenile detention center, called Biden’s commutation “deeply painful” in a statement. Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro publicly criticized Biden, as well. “I do feel strongly that President Biden got it absolutely wrong and created a lot of pain here in northeastern Pennsylvania,” Shapiro said. “Conahan deserves to be behind bars, not walking as a free man.”

Sandy Fonzo, who famously confronted Ciavarella outside federal court over the suicide of her son after he was placed in juvenile detention, called the development “deeply painful.”

“I am shocked and I am hurt,” Fonzo said in a statement. “Conahan’s actions destroyed families, including mine, and my son‘s death is a tragic reminder of the consequences of his abuse of power. This pardon feels like an injustice for all of us who still suffer. Right now I am processing and doing the best I can to cope with the pain that this has brought back.”

(source) (source) (source) (source)

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Ed Pilkington at The Guardian:

Joe Biden has carried out the largest act of presidential clemency on a single day in modern US history, commuting the sentences of almost 1,500 people and pardoning 39 Americans convicted of non-violent crimes. In a statement issued on Thursday, the White House said that Biden’s sweeping act of clemency was designed to “help reunite families, strengthen communities, and reintegrate individuals back into society”. The almost 1,500 commutations ordered by the president all relate to people who were released from prisons and placed in home confinement during the Covid pandemic. Thousands of prisoners were released to their homes as an emergency measure under the Cares Act to prevent the rapid spread of coronavirus through federal prisons. Each individual included in the new commutations had been serving their sentences at home for at least a year and had shown they were reunited with their families and were committed to rehabilitation, the White House said. “These commutation recipients have successfully reintegrated into their families and communities and have shown that they deserve a second chance,” they continued. The commutations come at a time when Republicans in Congress have been pressing to send thousands of federal prisoners on home release back behind bars. Criminal justice reformers have protested that the home release program has been highly successful, with a rate of new offending at a mere fraction of the overall recidivism rate in federal prisons. Under the commutations, the almost 1,500 Americans will retain their convictions but have their sentences reduced. The 39 people pardoned by Biden have had their guilty verdicts wholly erased.

The White House said the 39 were all individuals convicted of non-violent crimes, including drug offenses. Among them were a woman who led emergency response teams during natural disasters; a church deacon who had worked as an addiction and youth counsellor; a doctoral student in molecular biosciences; and a decorated military veteran.

President Joe Biden (D) issues around 1,500 sentence commutations and 39 pardons of non-violent crimes in the largest single-acts of clemency.

[thepopoptic]

Biden commutes 1,500 jail sentences, grants pardons for 39 others: 'Largest single-day grant of clemency' | Fox News

[destielmemenews]

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[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Ohman

* * * * *

Time Magazine’s “Person of the Year.”

Time Magazine has chosen Donald Trump as its Person of the Year. Although Time claims that its “person of the year” is not necessarily a designation of honor, it can be seen in no other light when the owner of Time issued this statement on Twitter:

Congratulations to President Trump on being named TIME Person of the Year 2024. This marks a time of great promise for our nation. We look forward to working together to advance American success and prosperity for everyone. May G-d bless the United States of America.

Reader Katharine H. shared a letter she sent Time Magazine about its choice of Trump as Person of the Year. I have included excerpts below:

Color me unsurprised that yet another formerly respectable publication has bent the knee to try and make us all accept the unacceptable and explain the inexplicable.

Your “Person of the Year” is a liar, a felon, an unapologetic white supremacist, a misogynist, a xenophobe, an adjudicated [sexual abuser], a bully, and a con artist.

Your “Person of the Year” embodies every single character trait I’ve tried to teach my three children NOT to have.

Your “Person of the Year” has broken countless norms of our democracy, including his refusal to accept the results of the free and fair 2020 election, and his incitement of an insurrection at the United States Capitol - the seat of our democracy.

[Y]ou are so fundamentally and inherently wrong to normalize the most abhorrent human imaginable, who has done immeasurable damage to our country, has corrupted its institutions, and is on a path to destroy its fragile and vaunted democracy all in service of his own disgusting and insatiable ego.

Your “Person of the Year” is an insult to millions of Americans like me who care about basic decency, democracy, and the rule of law.

Trump's statements in his Time Magazine interview

In his interview with Time Magazine, Trump admitted that he will not be able to reduce the price of groceries—as he repeatedly promised during the campaign. What a surprise! See HuffPo, Trump Backtracks On Campaign Pledge To Bring Down Grocery Prices

Trump also said he would

allow Israel to annex the West Bank.

begin pardoning January 6 insurrectionists “in the first hours” of his administration.

use the military to deport immigrants

impose tariffs on countries that refuse to accept immigrants deported by the US.

President Biden announces 1,500 clemency grants

On Thursday, President Biden announced the largest grant of clemency in US history. The White House announcement is here: President Biden Announces Clemency for Nearly 1,500 Americans | The White House

Per the White House announcement,

The President is commuting the sentences of close to 1,500 individuals who were placed on home confinement during the COVID-19 pandemic and who have successfully reintegrated into their families and communities. He is also pardoning 39 individuals who were convicted of non-violent crimes. These actions represent the largest single-day grant of clemency in modern history.

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo published a thoughtful article on Biden’s mass grant of clemency. See Talking Points Memo, Pardons and Unmerited Grace.

Marshall argues that clemency should be more broadly available and should be the norm rather than the exception, given the harsh reality of prisons and the over-sentencing that frequently occurs because of mandatory minimum sentences and federal sentencing guidelines.

Marshall writes,

In fact, much of what passes for pardons or clemency today aren’t really pardons at all. They’re basically fake clemency. . . . [I]n almost every one of these cases the recipients have already done their time! They took responsibility; did their time; expressed remorse and then went on to live an exemplary life. What they get is an almost entirely symbolic record wiped clean.

I recommend Marshall’s article to anyone concerned that Biden’s mass grant of clemency is unwarranted or unusual.

[Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter] :: "The billionaire boys club surrenders in advance"

[worldbuildingwanderlust]

Remember The brown feather Prophecy

That premonition of peace

Remember That Fate promised Clemency

Ensuring all storms will cease

[illustratus]

The Continence of Scipio by Pompeo Batoni

[jeannereames]

Do you think alexander considered hephaistion his alter-ego?

"He, too, is Alexander"

Did Alexander think of Hephaistion as his alter-ego? Quite possibly—but not by that term. For one thing, “alter-ego” is Latin, and we find it first used in writing by Cicero, although it may have been (quite possibly was) in common parlance prior.

The concept did appear to exist in Greek, but the tendency to apply it to Alexander and Hephaistion owes chiefly to two attestations. The first is the recorded meeting between Alexander, Hephaistion, and Sisygambus, wherein he supposedly said, of Hephaistion, "He, too, is Alexander." The other concerns a quip attributed to Aristotle, mentioned in Diogenes Laertus that friendship is one soul in two bodies—but this not found Aristotle's surviving works, despite a longish passage on friendship in his Nikomachian Ethics.

Without being unduly cynical, we must always take exact phrasing with a grain of salt. I think there's very little we can be certain Alexander said. Same problem with Aristotle, unless you're reading his actual writings, and even some of those are dubious, such as the infamous Ath Pol, or Constitution of the Athenians. We typically distinguish these as “pseudo-Aristotle.” (So if you see “pseudo-”some-name, that means the work is attributed to that person but almost certainly not actually written by him/her.)

So, as part of my usual ‘Let me ‘splain you why you can’t trust that story/saying…,’ let’s play some dating games here.

First, Cicero is our initial attested use of “alter ego,” in a letter to his friend Atticus, that dates the phrase to somewhere between 68-44, or middle of the first century BCE. Maybe we can push it back a little earlier to the early first century, but I’d be uncomfortable pushing it further without solid evidence. Popular terms change. Anybody call a fashionable (male) person, “That cool cat…” these days—except as a bit of a joke? I didn’t think so. ��� But “cool” itself is otherwise still in common use. So we have to be careful about when terms are popular.

Now, the story of Alexander before Sysigamgus is best known from Curtius (3.12.16-17), but Diodoros also relates it (17.37.5-6), and so does Arrian (2.12.3-8)—although with a caveat. He says it doesn’t appear in his trusted sources (Aristoboulos or Ptolemy) but he tells it anyway, apparently because he approves of the actions in it.

We don’t know where it comes from. Maybe Kleitarchos? Possibly Kallisthenes? It does not appear in either Plutarch’s bio of Alexander or his Moralia, although normally he loved these sorts of anecdotes. There’s a good reason, however, that Plutarch doesn’t tell it (see below). Justin is just too short. (It also appears in abbreviated form in a couple of later Roman sources, Valerius Maximus and Dio Chrysostom. So it was clearly popular in the rhetorician crowd.)

So, what are the words attributed to Alexander? Diodoros’ Greek is kai gar kai outos Alexandros estin: “and for also this [man] Alexander is” (6). Arrian renders it kai gar ekeinon einai Alexandron: “and for that man is Alexander” (7). Curtius puts it, albeit in Latin, nam et hic Alexander est: “for he also Alexander is” (17). Yes, I rendered those into English pretty exactly, even if it sounds a bit funny. First, it helps show how every translation is an interpretation, but also allows us to watch the parsing itself.

None of them is exactly the same, even if the meaning is the same. That’s a good reminder we don’t have his exact phrasing!

Assuming the event even happened.

Why should we doubt it? Aside from Arrian’s skepticism?

This story feels a LOT like a classic lesson in proper clemency. I’ve talked about the importance of clemency before. The bulk of this tale is meant to show a chivalrous Alexander early in his career, before he fell victim to divine aspirations and the lure of that nasty Oriental Luxury <tm>. See what a good guy he was?! Plutarch, in his take, insists not only did Alexander not rape the royal women, he wouldn’t even look at the women. That’s probably why he doesn’t tell this story, because going to their tent absolutely IS looking at them, donchaknow. It’s even funnier because it’s Plutarch who tells us Statiera died in childbirth well, well after that baby could have been Darius’s. (Consistency? What consistency? Pfff.)

My point here is that the story may very well have been fabricated to make a MORAL point of how to be an honorable victor—whether in the era of the Successors (which grew increasingly bloody and vicious), or in the later Roman period. It would also provide a perfect example for Curtius to contrast with Alexander’s later Asian debauchery.

You may be wondering, But why would they make up an entire story like that? Wouldn’t people know?

Um, to prove my point I give you…Twitter, QAnon, and whatever quote is being attributed (wrongly) to Samuel L. Jackson this week. The more often people hear something, even a lie, the more likely they are to believe it’s true. Arrian’s other stories of after-Issos events has Leonnatos going to talk to the women, not Alexander (and Hephaistion). Of course, it’s entirely possible Leonnatos went the first evening, while Alexander and Hephaistion went the next morning. It even makes a certain amount of sense that he’d visit the royal women. So, the bare-bones of the encounter may be true, but mistaken identities and all those speeches were likely put in people’s mouths later.

Incidentally, there’s a pun in the line, as alex-andros translates to “protector of men.” So Hephaistion is also a protector of men. Romans and Greeks ate up that sort of word-play.

As for the Aristotle titbit…Diogenes Laertus reports a list of “sayings” (aphorisms) attributed to various philosophers. For Aristotle, one is: “To the query, ‘What is a friend?’ his reply was, ‘A single soul dwelling in two bodies’” (5.20). I’ve seen people claim he was referencing Alexander and Hephaistion. There’s absolutely no reason to assume that except romanticism and an Alexander-centric view. In our surviving writings by Aristotle, he barely mentions Alexander.* Shock, I know. 😂 But Alexander wasn’t at the forefront of his mind.

Additionally, as I said above, we have a longish bit on friendship in the Nikomachian Ethics, where that definition doesn’t appear, although nothing he says about true friendship in it contradicts the quote, either. But “Sayings of…” were a popular form of literature in antiquity, and sometimes a clever quip got attributed to more than one person! Maybe Aristotle did say that, but it’s not in actual writings about friendship by Aristotle. Aristotle’s writings on friendship are rather more complex; he lists three types of friendship in Book VIII.

Anyway, this little in-depth study is meant to help folks see how complicated it can be, to get back to what ALEXANDER himself said, thought, or even did.

Yet one thing ALL the sources agree upon: Hephaistion was Alexander’s favorite, not just (or even primarily) as a commander, but as a person. I’ve never read any claim to the contrary, and I have (quite literally) read everything in the ancient sources that concerns Hephaistion (and most everything that concerns Alexander too).

So, while it’s impossible to say that Alexander considered Hephaistion an “alter-ego,” or ever called him “Alexander too,” you can rest assured that every ancient source agrees that Hephaistion was dearer to Alexander than anybody else, maybe even including his own mother.

—————-

* 391a2: his “On the Universe” treatise opens with a reference to “Alexander,” who I think it’s safe to assume is the king. And 1420a5, is “Rhetoric to Alexander”--except that treatise is widely understood (even in the medieval world) to be bogus: e.g., a "pseudo-Aristotle" text. Plus Alexander is mentioned in a couple fragments.

[pomfizz]

my game from my fucked up and twisted mind (pink noise)

[personal-blog243]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/12/12/biden-pardons-clemency/?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR10EHfF884vBXHKLeEEm4Ub-Nwyu-NhzQEv0lCZDVWo1b3I_AnxEWFT4aI_aem_8N5whbAEMpowVmHjFjloPg

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/12/12/biden-pardons-clemency/?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR10EHfF884vBXHKLeEEm4Ub-Nwyu-NhzQEv0lCZDVWo1b3I_AnxEWFT4aI_aem_8N5whbAEMpowVmHjFjloPg

This makes me feel better now that I know it’s not JUST about his son!

[odinsblog]

Joe Biden suddenly pardoning so many people and giving them commutations at the very last minute kinda makes you wonder: if he didn’t pardon his son Hunter, would he have even bothered with these other recent pardons? Please don’t get me wrong, I’m ecstatic for the people who are getting second chances from mass incarceration (let’s not talk about who had a big hand in making mass incarceration a thing), but when and where you plant your flag matters. Why so many people now? Why not earlier, or throughout his presidency? Yes, I know that it is normal for presidents to issue pardons at the tail end of their terms, but this number just screams of a convenient distraction for pardoning Hunter (yeah, yeah, I know that Trump is exponentially worse and will pardon J6 traitors, but he was gonna do that anyway, no matter what Biden did).

Sorry if you’re a liberal sycophant, but EYE am not here to blow sunshine up Biden’s ass. We must hold truth to power. Biden was as disastrous for social justice and democracy as Bill Clinton was, and in fact, history will show that Biden governed as a somewhat “moderate” conservative Republican, similar to Bill Clinton.

And that’s without even getting into how Biden, who valued following norms above achieving justice, ignored all norms and international human rights laws to support Israel’s genocide of Palestinians. That’s without even getting into how Biden changed immigration laws for the worse, and required asylum seekers to wait in Mexico until our immigration system gets around to them—sometimes years or decades later. That’s without getting into Covid and how Biden blocking the Wellstone Act and siding with Gilead Sciences helped make life-saving medicines unaffordable. That’s without even getting into how Biden sued to continue using Trump’s immigration laws that were harder on Haitian refugees (see Title 42).

“Better than being in a car accident” is a shit metric for nominating our political leaders.

This is not rocket science. Democrats competing with Republicans for white conservative votes, while both parties shit on leftists and progressives, is stupid. Republican voters are n-e-v-e-r going to pick a Republican-lite candidate over an actual Republican!

If you disagree, then think about how, under his leadership, Democrats lost all three branches of government to openly racist politicians, many of whom are sexual predators and abusers. Why does the Democratic Party even want the votes of people who lionize racists and rapists?? The very best thing that the DNC could do would be to exorcize all traces of Clintonism and Bidenism, and stop trying to “triangulate” with conservatives.

Biden’s presidency was disastrous—better than Trump, but still disastrous—and where he really decided to use his power the most was even more disastrous.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

David Smith at The Guardian:

Joe Biden has commuted the sentences of 37 out of 40 federal death row inmates, changing their punishment to life imprisonment without parole. The decision follows mounting pressure from campaigners who warned that the president-elect, Donald Trump, backs the death penalty and restarted federal executions during his first term after a 17-year hiatus. “Make no mistake: I condemn these murderers, grieve for the victims of their despicable acts, and ache for all the families who have suffered unimaginable and irreparable loss,” Biden said in a statement released on Monday. “But guided by my conscience and my experience as a public defender, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, vice-president, and now President, I am more convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level. In good conscience, I cannot stand back and let a new administration resume executions that I halted.” It is the highest number of death sentences commuted by any president in the modern era. Among those spared is Len Davis, a former New Orleans police officer who masterminded a drug protection ring involving several other officers and arranged the murder of a woman, Kim Groves, who filed a brutality complaint against him. Davis also helped send three men to prison for more than 28 years before they were found to have been wrongfully convicted of murder and freed in 2022. During a brief interview Monday, Groves’s son Corey hailed Biden’s commutation of Davis’s death sentence, saying he always wanted the former officer to live as long as possible in prison. “I would like Len to wake up on his his 95th birthday and still be looking at concrete and barbed wire,” said Groves, who received a $1.5m settlement from the New Orleans city government in 2018 along with other family members over his mother’s murder. “I think that’s worse than any death sentence, so I don’t have any problem with what the president did.” There is also a commutation for Norris Holder, who was sentenced to death for a two-man bank robbery during which a security guard died. Prosecutors said Holder may not have fired the fatal shot. Another beneficiary is Daryl Lawrence, sentenced to death in the killing of Columbus, Ohio, police officer Bryan Hurst. Hurst’s former police partner Donnie Oliverio said in a statement: “Putting to death the person who killed my police partner and best friend would have brought me no peace. The president has done what is right here, and what is consistent with the faith he and I share.” The clemency action applies to all federal death row inmates except three convicted of terrorism or hate-motivated mass murder: Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, convicted of carrying out the 2013 Boston marathon bombing attack; Dylann Roof, who shot dead nine Black church members in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015; and Robert Bowers, who stormed a synagogue in the heart of Pittsburgh’s Jewish community and killed 11 worshippers in 2018.

President Biden issues commutations to 37 of the 40 federal death row inmates, changing their sentences from the death penalty to life in prison without parole.

[fuckyeahmarxismleninism]

Leonard Peltier’s 80th birthday statement released

On this Wrongful Conviction Day, Leonard Peltier, the longest-serving Indigenous political prisoner, is incarcerated in lockdown-modified operations conditions at USP Coleman I, operated by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP).

Yet, in this moment of silence, Leonard speaks. To honor his birthday and all those who are unjustly convicted and incarcerated, the Leonard Peltier Official Ad Hoc Committee has released a video of Leonard Peltier that is going viral. Narrated by renowned scholar Ward Churchill and set to a video created by award-winning filmmaker Suzie Baer, the film most importantly centers Leonard’s personal reflection on his 80th year.

To view the film, please visit https://tinyurl.com/Peltier80thPresentation. We hope to have additional updates on Leonard soon. In the meantime, please engage our calls to action or donate to his defense efforts. Miigwech.