#criminal justice reform activist

[higherentity]

[jesseleelazyblog]

August Executions

The US's criminal "justice" death machine just keeps on trucking

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

“STUBBS HELD UP AS REBEL AND MARTYR,” Owen Sound Sun-Times. March 1, 1933. Page 5. ---- Did Duty at All Costs, His Counsel Asserts ---- Long Probe Into Conduct of Judge Comes to An End ---- WINNIPEG, March 1 - His eyes closed, head resting in his hand and manifesting little interest in proceedings, Judge Lewis St. George Stubbs sat quietly in court yesterday while counsel submitted their final arguments before a commission investigating his judicial conduct. 

The mild looking little grey-haired figure was described by his counsel, E. J. McMurray, K.C., as a fearless man who would fearlessly do his duty at any cost. He was charged with being extra-judicial for his conduct in the MacDonald will case, declared Mr. McMurray, but "no nobler or braver thing was ever done by the judiciary not only in this province but throughout the Dominion." 

The whole question of the enquiry, said Mr. McMurray, centred on the right of a judge to "give talks." 

Judge Stubbs had not gone into politics as suggested by commission counsel, Mr. McMurray continued. 

"Is the judge to be a legal monk." he asked, "and live a life of seclusion? Must he remain quiet when he sees a wrong being done or witnesses brutality?" 

Analyzing minutely each charge as he reviewed them from the evidence. Mr. Sullivan described the judge as a man "seeking popularity by his rebellious' attitude," which reflected "growing antagonism against all constituted authority."

[mostlysignssomeportents]

How the kleptocrats and oligarchs hunt civil society groups to the ends of the Earth

It's a great time to be an oligarch! If you have accumulated a great fortune and wish to put whatever great crime lies behind it behind you, there is an army of fixers, lickspittles, thugs, reputation-launderers, procurers, henchmen, and other enablers who have turnkey solutions for laundering your reputation and keeping the unwashed from building a guillotine outside the gates of your compound.

The field of International Relations has studied the enemies of the Klept in detail: the Transnational Activist Network is a well-documented phenomenon. But far more poorly understood is the Transnational Uncivil Society Network, who will polish any turd of sufficient wealth to a high, professional gloss.

These TUSNs are the subject of a new, timely scholarly paper by Alexander Cooley, John Heathershaw and Ricard Soares de Oliveira: "Transnational Uncivil Society Networks: kleptocracy’s global fightback against liberal activism," published in last month's European Journal of International Relations:

https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:5e5a3052-c693-4991-a7cc-bc2b47134467/download_file?file_format=application%2Fpdf&safe_filename=Cooley_et_al_2023_transnational_uncivil_society.pdf&type_of_work=Journal+article

The authors document how a collection of institutions – some coercive, others organized around good works – allow kleptocrats to take power, keep power, and use power. This includes "wealth managers, company providers, accounting firms, and international bankers" who create the complex financial structures that obscure the klept's wealth. It also includes "second citizenship managers and lawyers" that facilitate the klept's transnational nature, both to provide access to un-looted, prosperous places to visit, and boltholes to escape to in the face of coup or reform. It includes the real-estate brokers and other asset facilitators, who turn whole precincts of the world's greatest cities into empty safe-deposit boxes in the sky, while ensuring that footlose criminal elites always have a penthouse to perch in when they take a break from the desiccated husks they've drained dry back home.

Of course, it also includes the PR managers and philanthropic ventures that allow the klept to launder their reputation, to make themselves synonymous with good deeds rather than mass murder. Think here of how the Sacklers used charity to turn their family name into a synonym for culture and fine art, rather than death by opioid overdose:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/11/justice-delayed/#justice-redeemed

Beyond providing comfort to "Politically Exposed Persons" and "High Net-Worth Individuals," TUSNs are concerned with neutralizing TANs. Activists in these transnational networks play an inside-outside game: in-country activists will recruit peers abroad to bring attention to the crimes of their local kleptocrats. These overseas partners target the klept in the places they go to play and spend, spoiling their fun – and if they succeed in getting corrupt leaders censured abroad, then in-country activists can leverage that bad press to fight the klept at home.

To fight this "Boomerang Effect," TUSNs seek to burnish corrupt officials' reputations abroad, getting their names on humanitarian prizes, beloved sports teams, cultural institutions and great universities. They seek to capture international governance institutions that might wrong-foot kleptocrats, co-opting them to enable and even celebrate looters.

When it comes to elite philanthropy, TUSNs are necessarily selective. Kleptocrats' foundations don't fund anti-kleptocratic groups – they stick to "education, public health, the environment and the arts." These domains steer clear of human rights questions that might implicate their benefactors. Russian oligarchs love children's charities and disability rights – provided they don't target the Russian state.

If charitable giving is reputation laundering's carrot, then "reputation management" is the laundry's stick. Think of organized copyfraudsters who clone websites that have criticized their clients, then backdate the articles, then accuse the originals of infringing copyright in order to get them de-listed from Google or taken offline altogether:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/23/reputation-laundry/#dark-ops

Reputation managers also spend a lot of time in court. In the UK – the world's leader in libel tourism, thanks to a legal system designed to let posh monsters sue muckraking journalists into silence – Russian oligarchs have perfected the art of forcing their critics to shut up and go away:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/04/londongrad/#enablers

Indeed, London is a one-stop shop for the global klept, a place were forelock-tugging Renfields will buy you a Mayfair mansion under cover of a numbered company, sue your critics into silence, funnel your money into an anonymous Channel Islands account:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/01/07/the-klept/#pep

They'll sell you whole galleriesworth of "fine art" that you can have relocated to a climate-controlled container in a Swiss or Irish freeport:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/14/poesy-the-monster-slayer/#moneylab

They'll give your thick-as-pigshit progeny a PhD and never check to see whether he wrote his thesis himself:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LSE%E2%80%93Gaddafi_affair

Then they'll hook you up with a cyber-arms dealer to hunt your enemies by capturing their devices:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/27/gas-on-the-fire/#a-safe-place-for-dangerous-ideas

But don't let Brexit stop you from shopping for bargains on the continent. The Golden Passports of the EU – available in a variety of flavors, from Maltese to Cypriot to Portuguese – offer the discerning failson access to the luxury good shops and fleshpots of 27 advanced economies, making it a favorite of the Khmer Riche – the junior klept of Cambodia's ruling faction:

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/cambodia-hunsen-wealth/

But golden passports are for amateurs. Skilled klepts travel on diplomatic passports, which offer the twin benefits of free movement and consequence-free criminality, thanks to diplomatic immunity. The former Kazakh dictator's son-in-law enjoyed a freewheeling diplomatic life in Vienna; one daughters of the dictator of Tajikistan had a jolly time as an envoy to DC; another, to London (where else?).

All this globetrotting serves a second purpose: when rival elites seize power back home and force the old guard into exile, those ex-monsters can show up in the lands they called their second homes and apply for asylum. It turns out that even bomb-the-boats UK will welcome any asylum seeker who enters via the private jet terminal at City Airport (to be fair, these "refugees" have extensive properties in Zone 1 and country places in the Home Counties, so they won't need housing).

This stuff works. After Kazakh state goons murdered at least 14 protesters at a Zhanaozen oil facility in 2011, human rights groups around the world took up the cause. But they were effectively neutralized by TUSNs, with former UK PM Tony Blair writing on behalf of the Kazakh government to the EU condemning any kind of international investigation into the mass killings (add "former Prime Ministers" to the list of commodities for sale in the UK to sufficiently well-resourced murderer).

The authors close their paper with two case-studies. The first is of the daughters of Uzbek dictator Islam Karimov, Gulnara and Lola. And President Karimov was indeed a dictator: he trapped his population within his borders, forced them to use unconvertible scrip in place of money, and ordered the murder of hundreds of peaceful protesters, plunging the country into international isolation.

But while Uzbeks were sealed within their borders, Gulnara Karimov became an international player, running a complex network of businesses that mixed the products of the nation's oilfields with her family's fortune. She solicited – and received – bribes from Teliasonera, MTS and Vimpelcom, who were all vying for the contract to provide service in Uzbekistan. All told, she extracted more than $1b in bribes, laundering them through Latvia, Hong Kong and New York. She acquired real-estate in France and Switzerland, and her spree continued until her father collaborated with Uzbek security to seize her assets and place her under house-arrest.

Lola Karimova-Tillyaeva was Gulnara's estranged younger sister. She and her husband Timur Tillyaev ran the Dubai-based SecureTrade, which did extensive business with "opaque Scottish Limited Partnerships," laundering more than $127m in a single year to offshore accounts in the UAE and Switzerland. They acquired many luxe assets – a jet, a Californian villa, and an LA perfumier.

Lola styled herself as the face of the Karimovas abroad, a "philanthropist and cultural ambassador." She was a UNESCO ambassador and commissioned works of monumental art – and also sued the shit out of news outlets that reported factual matters about her family repressive activity at home. She organized AIDS charities in the name of Uzbekistan – even as her father was imprisoning a writer for publishing a book explaining how to have safer sex.

The second case-study is on Isabel dos Santos, "Africa's richest woman," daughter of Angolan dictator Jose Eduardo dos Santos. Isabel's vast fortune stemmed from her personal capture of vast swathes of the third-largest economy in Africa: "telecommunications, banking, diamonds, real estate and cement, among many others." Isabel enjoyed seemingly limitless access to state credit and co-investment, and was given first crack at newly deregulated industries. Foreign firms that invested in Angola were required to "partner" with Isabel's businesses.

Isabel claimed to be a "self-made woman" – a claim credulously parroted by the western press, including the FT. She used her homegrown fortune to become a major player abroad, especially in Portugal, where she was represented by the leading Portuguese law-firm PLMJ. Her enablers are who's who of corruption-loving lickspittles: McKinsey, Ernst and Young, Boston Consulting Group, and the Spanish BigLaw firm Uri Menendez.

Isabel cultivated a public facade of philanthropic giving and public spirited activism, serving as head of the Angolan Red Cross. She attended Davos and spoke at the LSE (she was also invited to Oxford, but her invitation was subsequently rescinded). On social media, she dismissed critics of her wealth and corruption as "colonialists," decrying their "racism" and "prejudice."

Isabel dos Santos's corrupt sources of wealth were finally, irrefutably exposed through the Luanda Leaks, in which the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists mapped the network of "top banks, management consultants and legal firms that were central to dos Santos’s operations."

Both case studies shed light on the network of brilliant, driven enablers and procurers without whom the world's greatest monsters would falter. It's a rare window on a secretive world, one that is poorly understood even by its inhabitants. As Michael Mechanic wrote in Jackpot, his 2021 book on vast, intergenerational fortunes, the winners of the lucky orifice lottery often lack any real understanding of how The Money is structured, grown and protected:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/13/public-interest-pharma/#affluenza

This point was reiterated by Abigail Disney, in a brave piece on what it's like to grow up subject to the oversight of these millionaires who babysit the children of billionaires:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/19/dynastic-wealth/#caste

This is an important contribution to the literature. We naturally focus on the ultrawealthy individuals whose reputations and fortunes are the subject of so much attention, but without the TUSNs, they would be largely helpless.

Going to Burning Man? Catch me on Tuesday at 2:40pm on the Center Camp Stage for a talk about enshittification and how to reverse it; on Wednesday at noon, I'm hosting Dr Patrick Ball at Liminal Labs (6:15/F) for a talk on using statistics to prove high-level culpability in the recruitment of child soldiers.

On September 6 at 7pm, I'll be hosting Naomi Klein at the LA Public Library for the launch of Doppelganger.

On September 12 at 7pm, I'll be at Toronto's Another Story Bookshop with my new book The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/24/launderers-enforcers-bagmen/#procurers

Image: Sam Valadi (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/132084522@N05/17086570218/

CC BY 2.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

--

Colin (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Palace_of_Westminster_from_the_dome_on_Methodist_Central_Hall_(cropped).jpg

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Andrew Prokop at Vox:

The left’s hopes for sweeping change from the 2010s have crashed into the reality of the 2020s. The energy of the Bernie Sanders presidential campaigns and the George Floyd protests is a distant memory. Some members of the Squad have moved toward the Democratic mainstream, while others lost primaries. Several of the progressive prosecutors elected in recent years have been ousted from office (by voters or due to scandals) or appear headed that way. In Democrat-dominated spaces — like cities and mainstream media outlets — there’s been growing pushback against the left. Ambitious progressive rallying cries of just a few years ago, such as defunding the police and Medicare-for-all, are now absent from the discourse. Politicians who assiduously cultivated left activists are now increasingly tacking to the center — most notably Vice President Kamala Harris, who has abandoned many of the positions she took while running in the Democrats’ 2020 presidential primary. Altogether, it’s seemed that progressives have moved from being on the offensive to being on the defensive — in both politics and the nation’s culture.

Of course, it’s not as if progressives’ gains over the past 20 years or so have been entirely wiped away. The Democratic Party remains significantly further to the left than it was a decade ago and certainly two decades ago (see, for instance, my recent article about the rise of the New Progressive Economics). Yet, as bloggers Noah Smith and Tyler Cowen have argued, there are growing indications that the leftward drift of the party and of the country’s culture broadly has stopped. On some fronts, there has indeed been a reversal. “No matter who wins, the US is moving to the right,” Semafor’s David Weigel argued last week, citing “immigrant rights, LGBTQ rights, climate change policies, and criminal justice reform” as issues where progressives are on the defensive. Being on the defensive is not new for the left — it’s the historical norm. Bursts of activist energy and successful reform are typically followed by long stretches where either the new status quo persists or a backlash reverses at least some recent change.

[...]

The era of rising progressive ambitions lasted from about 2005 to 2020

Historical periodization is a tricky thing, but here’s a rough attempt at it. From about 1980 to 2005, the left was mostly irrelevant to national politics. The Cold War was over, and capitalism reigned ascendant. The Republican Party moved right, while the Democratic Party moved to the center. The country cracked down on criminals, unauthorized immigrants, and non-working welfare recipients. 9/11 made patriotism mandatory. Same-sex marriage was viewed as politically toxic. But 2005 to 2020 was, broadly, a period where progressives and the left became increasingly influential inside the Democratic Party, in Democrat-dominated spaces, and in the larger culture. Call it the era of rising progressive ambitions. The disasters of George W. Bush’s second term kicked off the shift, discrediting Republican governance. This enabled the election of the nation’s first Black president, Barack Obama, whose agenda was strikingly ambitious and progressive when compared to the Clinton years. Democrats’ leftward shift accelerated in the 2010s, which saw:

The increased cultural influence of the social justice left, which transformed how much of the country thought and spoke about racial and gender issues (“the Great Awokening”)

The launch of viral protest movements like Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, and Me Too

The nationwide spread and Supreme Court’s protection of same-sex marriage rights, followed by increased advocacy for trans rights

The rise of more economically progressive and even democratic socialist politicians, as seen in the support for Sanders’s campaigns, the Squad’s arrival in Congress, and party leaders’ embrace of some of Elizabeth Warren’s ideas

A leftward move of mainstream Democrats on issues like immigration and criminal justice, where activists had made the case that status quo policies were cruel and harmful

Increased public discussion about causes like Medicare-for-All, the Green New Deal, and student loan forgiveness

Basically, on a host of issues, the “Overton window” — the boundaries of which political and policy ideas are deemed fit for mainstream discussion, rather than fringe or self-evidently absurd — opened far further left. Trump’s election didn’t stop the left’s rising influence. Indeed, it intensified it, raising the stakes of politics and heightening passions. (Trump’s rise simultaneously opened the Overton window further right on some issues, as leading Republicans increasingly embraced bigotry and flouted democratic norms.) The assumption spread among Democrats that the establishment’s approach had failed and that bold new progressive ideas were necessary. During the party’s 2020 presidential primary, most candidates — including Harris — scrambled to the left, wooing activist groups. Joe Biden, the most old-school major contender, won, but rather than a full-on pivot to the center for the general election, he embraced much of the progressive agenda. It was a political necessity for helming the Democratic Party of 2020.

[...]

The backlash and disillusionment of the 2020s

Things feel different in the Biden years. In part that’s due to the constraints and disappointments that always exist when a party tries to turn a bold campaign agenda into governing reality. Narrow congressional majorities limited Democrats’ legislative possibilities (and then they lost the House). The conservative Supreme Court, meanwhile, blocked some Biden actions like student loan forgiveness and rolled back abortion rights protections. But the trend was broader. Democrats in cities disavowed police cuts as they struggled with rising crime and complained they couldn’t handle a migrant influx. Corporations have laid off DEI workers. Mainstream media companies, increasingly influenced by progressive causes (and sensitive to left criticism) in the 2010s, are now more forthrightly asserting their journalistic independence and challenging progressive ideas. Activism in protest of Israel was met with fierce pushback at universities. Commentators started declaring that “wokeness” had peaked as social justice controversies grew less intense and frequent.

[...]

All of this has happened before

Meanwhile, there’s also been a conspicuous decline of energy and intensity among progressive activists. While many certainly remain committed to their longtime causes, others have disengaged or shifted their focus to opposing Israel’s war in Gaza (an issue that bitterly divides the Democratic Party and where Democratic leaders are disinclined to embrace the left). Perhaps if Trump wins, progressive energy would surge again in opposing him — but perhaps too many people are now burned out and apathetic, and the mobilization won’t match the bygone days of Trump’s first term. And a backlash against Trump’s governance would not necessarily spur the Democrats to resume their leftward march. Activists naturally get disappointed and disengaged when major change proves elusive. “Every major social movement of the past 20 years has undergone a significant collapse,” the activist Bill Moyer wrote in 1987, “in which activists believed that their movements had failed, the power institutions were too powerful, and their own efforts were futile.” Fatigue, burnout, and organizational crisis then ensue; some move on to new causes.

This Vox article explains how the progressive left has been in defense and retreat mode since 2020 after being in the ascendency since 2005 or so.

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by Wallace White

A top Democrat fundraising platform hosts donations for an activist group linked to a Palestinian terrorist-tied non-profit, the Washington Examiner reported on Thursday.

ActBlue, a Democrat fundraising platform, hosts a portal for donors to give money to the Colorado Freedom Fund (CFF), a bail reform non-profit that is fiscally sponsored and managed by the Alliance For Global Justice (AFGJ), the Examiner reported. The Examiner revealed the AFGJ was aiding fundraising efforts for French non-profit Collectif Palestine Vaincra (CPV), a partner of the U.S.-designated terrorist organization Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

In response, Zachor Legal Institute pressed the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in January 2023 to investigate the AFGJ’s seeming support for terrorist organizations, the Examiner reported. Zachor attorney Marc Greendorfer said to the Examiner the AFGJ’s lack of due diligence was “surprising.”

“Alliance for Global Justice has a track record of funding terror,” Greendorfer told the Examiner. He noted that AFGJ has a duty to donors to “do a better job of vetting those who use its platforms, especially when the user has a long, documented history of supporting terror.” 

AFGJ has a history of fiscally sponsoring pro-Palestinian organizations, with credit card company Discover shutting down donations to the AFGJ in 2021 over ties to Samidoun, a non-profit with links to the PFLP, according to NGO Monitor.

Thousands of pro-Palestinian protesters are gathering outside of the White House in Washington, D.C., USA, on June 8, 2024, to express distaste over how President Biden is handling the Israel-Hamas war. (Photo by AASHISH KIPHAYET/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images)

The CFF is a left-leaning criminal justice advocacy organization that posts bail for incarcerated people before trial and immigrant detention, according to Influence Watch. AFGJ gave the CFF $1.44 million in 2021 for “racial justice”, according to their 2021 tax filings.

“AFGJ fiscally sponsors and repeatedly defends Samidoun, a terror front that acts on behalf of Hamas and other terror organizations,”Greendorfer told the Examiner. “As a fiscal sponsor, AFGJ benefits from any funds it raises for its terror clients.”

ActBlue did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

[mariacallous]

Over the past month, the public in Kazakhstan has been closely following the jury trial of Kuandyk Bishimbayev, who was accused of brutally beating and killing his wife, Saltanat Nukenova. While formally the trial was about domestic violence, it captivated the public and mobilized many sectors of society due to its political significance.

The trial found Bishimbayev, a former Kazakh finance minister, who was previously convicted of bribery and embezzlement, guilty of torturing and murdering Nukenova. Bishimbayev was sentenced to 24 years in prison, while his accomplice and family member Bakhytzhan Baizhanov received four years behind bars.

Broadcast live, the trial sparked intense public discussions across generations, regardless of social class or political allegiances. Since the early 2010s, Kazakhstan’s activists have increasingly relied on social media to bridge vast distances across the country. Dozens of influencer accounts meticulously analyzed witness testimonies and the accused’s responses to prosecutor questioning.

Kazakh diaspora activists and international feminist groups held protests in London, Berlin, Warsaw, New York, and Riga. The guilty verdict is being celebrated internationally as well. “The kids in my neighborhood run around screaming ‘24!’, ‘24!’ First, I didn’t understand and then I got it,” one political activist in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, wrote.

The trial is a pivotal moment in transforming the public view of violence against women across Kazakhstan. More women, including spouses of government officials, came out publicly with stories of domestic violence. At least in one such case, which concerned Saken Mamash, a Kazakh diplomat in the United Arab Emirates, a criminal investigation was launched into allegations of torture that could lead to years of imprisonment.

The public is closely watching the unfolding of this case and focusing attention on reports of police refusing to intervene when called for help; artists are incorporating images of women suffering from domestic violence in public exhibitions; and feminist civil society groups are now increasingly joined by their male allies in publicly calling for protection from violence for women and children in Kazakhstan.

Perhaps most importantly, the trial is a symbol of how former government officials can be held accountable.

High-level corruption was a key grievance during the nationwide unrest in January 2022 that lasted for days and only stopped after the government killed more than 200 people and injured thousands more. Since then, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has promised to build a “new Kazakhstan” along with political and economic reform, but distrust in the government remains. Bishimbayev, who was previously pardoned by former President Nursultan Nazarbayev, embodies such lack of accountability that allows elites to amass resources and power. Many had feared that Bishimbayev’s connection to the government would result in a shorter sentence.

Although Bishimbayev was not a government official and was forbidden to hold high official posts, he begged for forgiveness from Tokayev, signaling loyalty to the president. But Tokayev publicly stated that the interest of the nation was more important for him than personal relations or loyalty of officials.

Tokayev was marking himself off from Nazarbayev’s personalized regime, which was highly unpopular. The trial was a test of Tokayev’s promise to elevate national interests over personal connections. The outcome was a surprise even for feminist activists in Kazakhstan, some of whom rallied for life imprisonment for Bishimbayev. The public reaction on social media was largely positive.

Just as Tokayev used the unsubstantiated claim of “20,000 foreign-trained terrorists” instigating the January 2022 chaos as a reason for his harsh response, Bishimbayev fiercely maintained his innocence in court, at times blaming Nukenova for being “hysterical” and “frivolous,” accusing her of adultery. Bishimbayev admitted that his actions caused her death but insisted that he was facing “emotional turmoil” after the couple had a long argument. He tried to implicate Nukenova for causing his mental health struggles and provoking his aggression. Just as many in Kazakhstan refused to believe Tokayev’s interpretation of the 2022 violence, Bishimbayev’s victim-blaming tactics also fell flat.

The trial is the first of its kind to litigate the legitimacy of violence in Kazakhstan. Many victims of the January 2022 violence never saw law enforcement officials held accountable. Among those killed were children and young people whose families were denied the right to channel their grief publicly. Given the unexpected public interest in the case, the government faced the risk of renewed protests. Last month, in response to an online petition garnering more than 150,000 signatures in support of increasing penalties for domestic violence, Kazakhstan adopted “Saltanat’s Law.”

The public pressure on Tokayev was formidable: It targeted his own notion of “New Kazakhstan”; being seen as protecting people like Bishimbayev risked resembling the “old Kazakhstan” under Nazarbayev. Many in Kazakhstan, especially women, said they were ready to protest in the event of an acquittal.

It is a major reversal just seven years after Kazakhstan effectively decriminalized domestic violence, joining countries such as Belarus and Russia in having little to no protections in place. In neighboring Kyrgyzstan, families of girls and women kidnapped into marriage still often refuse to take them back, fearing public shaming.

The trial also tested the efficiency of the judicial reform in Kazakhstan. The jury, comprising 10 people with two alternates, decided the verdict, but the judge seemed to lean toward the accused. An unlikely hero emerged: Aizhai Aimaganova, a female prosecutor, who firmly pressed the accused with pointed questions. In her final address to the jury, she linked the magnitude of Nukenova’s case with the national consciousness and powerfully cited “Words of Edification” by Abai Kunanbaev, a 19th-century enlightenment intellectual who united liberals and conservatives in Kazakhstan. After the end of the trial, Aimaganova said she would continue her job as a prosecutor, calling on more women to report cases of domestic abuse.

Finally, the trial drew the attention of millions of Russian-speaking audiences in neighboring countries, including Azerbaijan, Mongolia, and Russia. Russian socialite Ksenia Sobchak and Russian opposition TV channel Dozhd reported on the case to their audiences. Kazakhstan’s adoption of Saltanat’s Law takes the country in the opposite direction of Russia, which decriminalized most forms of domestic violence in 2017 for the supposed protection of so-called traditional family values. Increasingly, Russia—which once presented itself as a model of development for Central Asian states to aspire to—is perceived as backward compared with Kazakhstan.

Nukenova’s death highlighted the power imbalance between powerful men and those whose freedoms can be taken away in an instant. She left a trail of Instagram images of her happier days as a young woman living a lavish life. The involvement of the victim’s family is symbolic for Kazakh society, and their decision to mobilize society around the case has broken the stigma for victims of violence. Only two out of every 10 victims of domestic violence file a case against their offenders in Kazakhstan, while the United Nations estimates that more than 400 women die in the country every year from spousal abuse.

Although the trial’s ending offered closure for the public, the hard work in enforcing laws against domestic violence continues. As with other cases of similar mobilization against violence against women in India, Mexico, and Turkey, legal proceedings can bring temporary relief. But beyond condemnations of this one incident, courts and public officials are likely to continue to blame victims and accuse some women of inviting male violence. Less privileged women abused by their family members won’t gain the same level of public attention.

The lasting legacy of Nukenova’s case is likely to be the expansion of civic consciousness among Kazakhs. Since the government denied justice to the victims of the January 2022 protests, many citizens had been mired in political nihilism and fear that the protests were in vain. The trial snapped them out of their despair and has become a symbol of hope that the law can lead to justice—not just be used by the government to repress dissent.

[just-horrible-things]

On The Amnestic Issue

The issue of strong amnestic drugs is not a highly publicized one. It is not a polarizing topic of debate like immigration, reproductive rights, or the human pet industry. Most people do not even have a strong opinion on amnestics. They are not front and center in the public view. The pharmaceutical industry and its supporters have done an excellent job of suppressing debate.

This is not an issue to take up lightly as a bit of collegiate activism to soothe the soul. Even to write about the topic is to invite lawsuit, defamation, and harassment. You probably haven’t heard much about anti-amnestic activists, not because we don’t exist but because that is how effectively we are silenced. I have friends who have been jailed for speaking out, and many more who have been publicly targeted, harassed, accused, and made into laughing stocks.

This is not an issue to take up unless you truly feel passionately about it.

But I am passionate, and I think you should be too. I think we all should be. 

Detractors will attempt to paint anti-amnestic discourse as radical left wing pet-lib propaganda. They will attempt to paint us as far right anti-vaxxer paranoids lashing out against the medical industry. But the amnestic issue ought to concern you regardless of your political alignment.#

Whatever your stance on the human pet industry, whatever your stance on pharmacological reform, the amnestic issue goes far further than either of those. This is not about criminals or contractees, although they form part of the picture. This is primarily about the effects of strong amnestic drugs in the general population, the failure of our government and regulators to protect us from unregulated use, and the complete lack of unbiased, verifiable information about amnestic safety even in a medical context.

Use of prescription amnestics has more than doubled in just the last three years, despite the complete lack of any independent studies demonstrating benefits in the vast majority of use cases. Un-monitored, un-reported “home use” is estimated at anywhere between half as many people again, and three times as many, and in many cases these unprescribed drugs are being used to “medicate” entirely non-medical issues such as domestic quarrels.

Crime involving the forced administration of strong amnestics to unconsenting victims is estimated to have increased twenty-fold since these substances were first approved for prescription. The volume of illegal amnestics circulating in the black market is completely unknown, and the lack of separation between the markets for aggressive criminal use and for unregulated “self-medication” is bringing naive would-be patients into contact with hardened drug dealers and organized crime.

In the context of our progressively failing criminal justice system, some victims are even administering the “cover up pills” to themselves rather than face the traumatic experience of trying to push a report through to court. In a recent survey, 20% of university students said that if they were victims of “date rape” they would rather take a pill and forget, than take the issue to the police. Cited reasons included shame, fear of stigmatization, fear that the police would do nothing, and, conversely, fear that the police would respond with excessive force.

Perhaps most troubling of all, the second most popular reason given was simply that taking an amnestic would be “less effort”. The same attitude is reflected in a growing media trend towards portraying drug-induced forgetting as the “easy option” : a quick, effortless, and effective solution to any and all of life’s problems. 

Needless to say there is no evidence to support the idea that amnestic abuse actually improves happiness, health, or any other measure of wellbeing. And it should be beyond obvious that choosing to forget certain problems such as unpaid bills, unsettled debts, or an angry spouse will not actually cause these problems to go away.

Even industry giants such as Santex Pharma and WRU have recently put out statements advising against unregulated, unsupervised home use. These statements describe the medical applications and the use in the pet industry (respectively) as highly controlled, carefully monitored use cases and not comparable to the growing trend of unlicensed use. Santex state, both in their recent statement and elsewhere, that every approved use of their strong amnestics has been rigorously safety tested and found both safe and effective. They cite a number of published studies, in addition to an undisclosed quantity of private, internal investigation.

Every single published study involving strong amnestics was either conducted or funded by a manufacturer of strong amnestics, a business that uses strong amnestics as a core part of their business model (i.e. the human pet industry), or a subsidiary of one of these businesses.

There are no published independent studies. All attempts at independent studies have been heavily suppressed by the above industries, or else taken over by these business interests long before completion. It has long been well known – if rarely successfully prosecuted – that pharmaceutical companies regularly misuse statistics, massage data, and even outright fabricate results to produce conclusions that are favorable to their bottom line.

Even those few independent investigators who have resisted the pressure exerted by the industry have found that no reputable publication – scientific or otherwise – will take on the risk of publishing their results if they fail to corroborate the claims of safety. When such studies are made publically available on the internet they are invariably taken down within weeks or even days, and the authors – if remotely identifiable – can expect a slew of life-ruining lawsuits. In many cases even criminal charges have been leveled against such investigators.

Consequently it is extremely difficult to form an accurate picture of the extent and form of the risks posed by the use of strong amnestics. However, certain themes come up over and over in these vanished studies. The use of strong amnestics, especially but not exclusively long term or at high doses, has been associated with any or all of the following:

cognitive decline or impairment

anterograde amnesia (loss of the ability to reliably form new long term memories)

anxiety and depression

emotional instability and dysregulation

intrusive thoughts

increased rates of suicide

increased mortality (all causes)

false recall (remembering fictive events as if they were real, or events that happened to other people as if they happened to oneself)

nightmares, night terrors, insomnia and other sleep disturbances

migraines, cluster headaches, and other forms of headache

increased impulsivity

increases vulnerability to addiction

impaired executive function (difficulty making and adhering to plans, reduced decision-making ability)

While none of the above symptoms have been conclusively linked to amnestics on account of the industry stranglehold on data, it is worth noting that the incidence of all of the above problems in the general population has increased sharply over the last few years, with no other obvious explanation for the increase.

Some of the most striking evidence has come from the study of parents who made the choice to forget a child when that child entered into the human pet industry. The fact that WRU discontinued this as an official service after only a year and a half speaks volumes. But small numbers of parents (and an unknown number of other friends and relatives of new human pets) continue to seek out this option either under the supervision of a medical professional or independently “at home” with illicitly procured amnestics.

While the desire to forget is perhaps an understandable response to the loss of a child or loved one, the outcomes of such a choice are rarely happy. Suicide rates in this group are extremely high, as are rates of anxiety, depression, and other mental illnesses. 

Testimonials can be found on parenting boards across the web urging other parents not to make the same decision. They describe intense feelings of guilt, crushing anxiety, dread and/or a sense of “impending doom”, and a constant, gnawing awareness of the period of “lost time”. Feelings of hopelessness, futility and lack of purpose or fulfillment are extremely common.

One mother described the feeling as not only having lost her now-unremembered child, but also having lost herself.

The wider societal impact of amnestic abuse is also making itself felt as the prevalence rises year on year. Courts have already agreed that forgetting a crime or other offense does not absolve the perpetrator of any guilt or responsibility, but how exactly to handle such cases is far from settled. 

Detractors of pharmacological reform are quick to point out the double standard here. Amnesia can be enforced by the state in the name of correcting entrenched behavioral patterns and preventing reoffense, but those who have already self-administered this treatment are still considered just as guilty and just as likely to reoffend as if they had not forgotten.

Neither is it clear how to help or compensate victims of amnestic-related crimes. The use of amnestics to cover up crimes – most commonly date rape – is nothing new. Even prior to the invention of the modern drug class, weak amnestics such as alcohol and benzodiazepines have long been used for this purpose. However, the rise of the strong amnestic has both expanded the criminal’s toolkit for cover-ups and opened entire new spheres of crime.

Every month it seems that allegations of a new kind of crime hit the courts, from corporate espionage cases in which corporate agents are accused of using amnestics to wipe ideas, trade secrets, or experience in the field from their competitors, to domestic abuse allegations involving the long term use of amnestics to keep the victim ignorant of their own abuse. While some of these cases are clearly less plausible than others, there can be no doubt that criminal elements are hard at work finding new ways to abuse these substances.

If you follow the mainstream news cycle, you are also doubtless already aware of the rise of “perpetual amnesiacs” – a small but highly visible minority of amnestic “addicts” who take the drugs repeatedly in high doses to forget practically everything. 

(While strong amnestics are not physiologically addictive drugs like heroin or cocaine, phenomena such as gambling addiction and pornography addiction have long taught us that people can become addicted to all manner of things that are not physiologically addictive drugs.)

These “perpetual amnesiacs” usually have substantial problems before the amnestic abuse. They may be homeless, in debt, stuck in abusive relationships, or addicted to other substances. They begin taking the amnestics to forget their very real troubles. What separates the addict from other “home users” is the very high doses involved, and the taking of additional doses as soon as further difficulties arise. 

These afflicted individuals become increasingly disengaged from life, drifting from one short term pleasure (often other substances of abuse) to another, and taking additional amnestics whenever consequences threaten to disrupt their existence in the moment.

Most become homeless if they were not already, and over time almost all develop severe symptoms from the list above. Reporting has focused particularly on impulsivity, cognitive decline, and anterograde amnesia. We hear of the violent deaths of addicts killed attempting the wildly ill-conceived crimes that their impulsivity leads them into.

Eventually the “perpetual amnesiac” needs no further doses of the amnestics, because their ability to form new memories has been completely destroyed. 

Despite industry insistence that these sobering results are only a result of the extremely high doses taken by the addicts, the recent news coverage has awoken public fears regarding the safety of strong amnestics. 

However, reporting of these concerns has been notably muted and seems to have almost ceased as I write these words. All major news agencies seem to now prefer to parrot the company line that it is the quantity and the frequency that is the problem, not the drugs themselves. One can only imagine that money or favors have changed hands to facilitate this shift in focus.

One can only hope that the public will remember nonetheless, and that the plight of these most severely affected “perpetual amnesiacs” will prompt at least a few to look into the effect that amnestic drugs are having on us as individuals and as a society, and that we might start to look beyond the horizon of the company line.

-- A. Correspondent

[beardedmrbean]

The publisher of Vice President Kamala Harris’ 2009 book on criminal justice reform is redirecting “very sensitive” inquiries about apparently plagiarized passages to the highest levels, according to the conservative activist who revealed the copying.

Manhattan Institute senior fellow Christopher Rufo — who first unveiled the plagiarism allegations on Monday — posted screenshots of leaked internal emails ordering publicity reps at Chronicle Books not to immediately respond to press inquiries about “Smart on Crime.”

Chronicle executive director of marketing and publicity Lauren Hoffman asked for all inquiries to be forwarded to her, with one employee on the email chain emphasizing that the accusations touched on “a very sensitive topic.”

“Kamala Harris’s publisher, Chronicle Books, is in damage control mode,” Rufo crowed on X. “They know Kamala lied. They know that we know Kamala lied. In America, plagiarism has become a moral pillar of the regime—and they will slander anyone who notices.”

Rufo posted five examples from the book in which passages nearly matched or were identical to wording used in press reports, academic studies and even a Wikipedia entry — all of which preceded the book’s publication.

The allegedly plagiarized sections came from a Bureau of Justice Assistance report in 2000, an Urban Institute report in 2004, a John Jay College of Criminal Justice press release describing a 2007 award, an Associated Press article in 2008, and a Wikipedia article‘s wording in a 2008 iteration.

In a statement to Semafor, Harris’ campaign dismissed the allegations of plagiarism as efforts by “rightwing operatives” who “are getting desperate” as the election approaches.

Harris campaign spokesman James Singer told Semafor in a Monday statement: “This is a book that’s been out for 15 years, and the Vice President clearly cited sources and statistics in footnotes and endnotes throughout.”

Two of the five examples cited the source material in footnotes — but none put the lifted wording in quotation marks. The Urban Institute report was not cited at all.

Rufo boasted that his team’s investigation got a boost from Austrian “plagiarism hunter” Stefan Weber, who helped compile a full report that included more than dozen “vicious plagiarism fragments” by the Democratic nominee.

The accusation of copying the sources word for word seemingly took Harris’ ghostwriter by surprise as well.

“Oh gosh,” Joan O’C. Hamilton told The Post on a brief phone call Monday. “I haven’t seen anything. … I’m afraid I can’t talk to you right now, though, I’m in the middle of something. Let me go try to figure that out.”

It’s unclear whether the plagiarism allegations will influence voters before heading to the polls Nov. 5.

President Biden bowed out of his 1987 presidential run after stealing phrases directly from British Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock — but the scandal wasn’t enough to keep him out of the White House decades later.

Neither Hoffman nor the Harris campaign immediately responded to a request for comment.

[darkmaga-returns]

By Rajan Laad

There is an old joke that goes as follows: What do you call a place full of immoral, sleazy, selfish opportunists, hypocrites, flatterers, chameleons, backstabbers, and cowards? The answer: Washington D.C.

The jokes, alas, reflect the truth about the swamp dwellers. These individuals lavish blandishments to the face and slam brickbats when the back is turned. They prostrate themselves before power and feed off the powerful like parasites. When the heat is felt around the corner, their colors change, and the benefactor is attacked and abandoned.

Here are examples of these undesirables. The first is CNN analyst and 'activist' Van Jones. President Trump revealed that Jones and some black leaders approached him about the passage of criminal justice legislation. Their plea moved Trump, causing him to persuade GOP leaders in Congress, who were opposed to the idea, to pass the First Step Act. This meant leniency in federal criminal and sentencing laws, and reforming federal prisons. This was historic for African Americans, yet Trump and the GOP received little credit for it. Ideally, the black leaders and Jones should have endorsed Trump and campaigned for him. Instead, Jones continued calling Trump a dictator and a bigot. Jones and others probably didn't want to be ostracized by the liberal ecosystem for citing facts about Trump. Yet they don't hesitate to seek favors from Trump in time of need. Jones branded Trump's recent victory as a nightmare.

The lesson to learn is: haters can never be won over. Also, Trump must not implement what is beyond the MAGA agenda, especially when those benefitting spend their waking hours demonizing the movement. Next -- the swamp dwellers.

[jesseleelazyblog]

UNETHICAL EXECUTION IN GEORGIA: MARCH 20TH

Willie James Pie is set to be executed in Georgia on March 20th despite that fact that he is intellectually disabled, making this execution unconstitutional.

Links to Take Action:

links specifically for Georgia residents:

[ausetkmt]

America the Violent [First Edition]

Review: America the Violent, by Ovid Demaris; The History of Violence in America: Historical and Comparative Perspectives: A Report Submitted to the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence, by Hugh Davis Graham and Ted Robert Gurr;

"America The Violent" is a documentary that explores the complex issues surrounding violence in the United States. It delves into various forms of violence, including gun violence, domestic abuse, and systemic violence, while examining the cultural, social, and political factors that contribute to these issues.

The film/book features interviews with experts, survivors, and activists, providing a multifaceted perspective on the impact of violence on individuals and communities. It also addresses the role of media in shaping public perception and the ongoing debates about gun control and criminal justice reform.

Critics have praised the documentary for its thought-provoking content and its ability to spark important conversations about violence in America. However, some viewers may find the subject matter heavy and challenging, as it confronts uncomfortable truths about society.

Overall, "America The Violent" serves as a powerful call to action, urging viewers to engage with the issues of violence and work towards meaningful change. It is a significant contribution to the ongoing dialogue about safety, justice, and the future of American society.

[reasonsforhope]

"California used to need lots and lots of prisons. Big prisons, little prisons, prisons with special cells for gang leaders and prisons for those convicted of nonviolent financial chicanery. There were so many prisoners packed into so many prisons that federal courts intervened, mandating that the state find a way to alleviate the overcrowding.

At the inmate population’s peak in 2006, California incarcerated 165,000 people in state prisons.

Today — after a decade of sentencing reforms and a surge of releases tied to COVID-19 — California prisons house a little more than 95,000 people. 

So how many prisons does California actually need? 

“Difficult decisions have to be made, but if we don’t make those decisions, the alternative is paying hundreds of millions for prison beds we don’t need to be paying for,” said Caitlin O’Neil, an analyst at the Legislative Analyst’s Office. 

O’Neil is the co-author of a new report that lays out how the state can close up to nine of its 33 prisons and eight yards within operating prisons while still complying with a federal court order that caps the system’s capacity.

The potential closures signal a seachange in California criminal justice, representing the wind-down of the tough-on-crime policies that packed prisons in the 1990s and offering one of the few ways the state can cut costs in its $18 billion prison system.

California prisons held about 120,000 inmates as recently as 2019. That year, newly elected Gov. Gavin Newsom announced a goal to close a single prison during his tenure.

“I would like to see, in my lifetime and hopefully my tenure, that we shut down a state prison,” he said that year in an interview with The Fresno Bee editorial board.

Since then, he has already effectively closed two and his administration has plans underway to shut at least two more.

In September 2021, the state closed Deuel Vocational Institution in Tracy. The California Correctional Center in Susanville is scheduled to close in June, along with yards at six other prisons. 

Two other prisons, in Blythe and in California City, are scheduled to close by March 2025.

Even after those shutdowns, according to the LAO analysis, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has the space to close five more entire prisons by 2027. Today, the corrections department operates 15,000 empty beds, according to the LAO. That number is expected to reach 20,000 empty beds by 2027.

“The state pays for empty beds, and that number hasn’t been justified at this point, “O’Neil said. “It’s really just math, simple arithmetic.”" ...

For prison abolitionists like Woods Ervin, co-director of the anti-prison activist group Critical Resistance, the LAO report’s conclusions were “super exciting” and come close to their group’s goals of closing ten prisons, and announcing the closures by 2025. 

“This is big,” Ervin said. 

-via Cal Matters, 2/23/23

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Marin Cogan at Vox:

Listen to the way Democrats talk about guns, violent crime, and the criminal justice system these days, and you’ll notice that things sound different from the way they did in 2020. That year, following a national protest movement centered around the high-profile police killings of unarmed Black Americans, including Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, Democrats focused their message on protecting citizens from police abuses and overhauling the criminal justice system, rather than reducing violent crime. But four years later, after a historic spike in gun homicide and an election cycle where Republicans attacked them over the issue, Democrats have found a new message. Leaders are still talking about ending gun violence — an important issue for their base, given that it’s the core reason that the United States has a homicide rate that is much higher than other comparable countries. They’re also still supportive of police reform, though it has been less prominent as a campaign issue this year.

But now, with Republicans opposing nearly all of their gun control legislation, they’re highlighting their other efforts in crime prevention and public safety, too. “We made the largest investment, Kamala and I, in public safety, ever,” President Joe Biden said at the Democratic National Convention in August, referring to the $10 billion in funding committed through the American Rescue Plan to public safety efforts for cities and states. Vice presidential nominee Tim Walz touted his administration’s investment in fighting crime as Minnesota governor at the DNC, and Chris Swanson, a sheriff from Genesee County, Michigan, took to the stage to declare that “crime is down and police funding is up,” in a speech that would have been almost unthinkable at the 2020 Democratic convention, when activists and other prominent voices on the left were calling to “defund the police.” Mayors leading major cities are now highlighting increases in funding and support for programs built around more recent innovations in violence reduction, including community violence intervention and hyperlocal crime reduction programs.

“Community safety is a year-round, collaborative effort,” Boston Mayor Michelle Wu said earlier this year, unveiling a new summer safety program for the city, which has seen a major drop in gun homicides in 2024 compared to the previous year. “Our comprehensive approach to reducing gun violence is working,” Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott said, crediting the work of the city’s group violence reduction strategy in contributing to the city’s largest year-over-year reduction in murders last year. It’s not just that Democrats are responding to the rise in gun homicides in 2020 and 2021 and the political backlash that came with it. The change reflects a broader shift in thinking among Democrats and their nonpartisan allies who work in violence reduction, criminal justice, and police reform. It’s one that acknowledges the seriousness of preventing and reducing violent crime — the core concern of the “tough on crime” crowd — without accepting the idea that the solution is mass incarceration. There is a growing sense that increasing public safety, ending gun violence, and reducing mass incarceration, rather than being separate or even in tension, are pieces of the same pie, and that efforts to improve one should help improve the others.

[...]

As researchers deepened the body of existing research on racial bias in the criminal justice system, and activists organized to press lawmakers for change, a series of police killings of Black Americans brought the issue into the public’s view. By 2020, the movement for police and criminal justice reform had already made important progress, thanks to a network of organizers and activists, and funding from foundations and bipartisan coalitions. That support had helped build momentum for drug sentencing reform during President Barack Obama’s administration as well as his administration’s creation of a task force aimed at police reform. Those efforts helped pave the way for the most significant sentencing reform bill in years, the First Step Act, signed by President Donald Trump. The bill gave judges more flexibility to avoid lengthy sentences dictated by federal mandatory minimums, allowed incarcerated people to earn time credits that could move up their release date if they participated in rehabilitative programs, and made retroactive the earlier reform passed under the Obama administration, eliminating the sentencing disparity between those convicted of possessing crack versus powdered cocaine. By the last election cycle, the Democrats’ platform included the most progressive police reform agenda in modern American history. The bill focused on greater accountability for police, but also included proposals to invest more in community-based violence reduction.

But as reformers were making strides, violent crime began to rise again in cities, due to a number of factors related to the pandemic, policing after the George Floyd protests, and the ubiquity of guns. By the end of 2020, the country had seen the largest increase in its homicide rate in nearly a century, and the problem got more difficult to ignore. The following year, homicides remained high. Former President Donald Trump and other Republicans increasingly pointed their fingers at Democrats running big cities, arguing that their policies were responsible for rising violent crime and attempting to connect them with the left’s “defund the police” movement. By 2022, six in 10 registered voters listed crime as a “very important” issue for them in the midterm election cycle that November. Then, a new crop of Democrats, responding to voters’ concerns, launched campaigns for mayor across the United States. Many made violent crime reduction their primary campaign issue.

Some, like New York’s Eric Adams, who won in 2021, and Philadelphia’s Cherelle Parker, who won in 2023, campaigned on more funding and support for police. (Federal prosecutors announced Thursday that they had indicted Adams on federal corruption charges, and the NYPD has been under heavy scrutiny for illegal stops on citizens, a recent subway shooting, and a separate investigation that resulted in the police commissioner’s resignation in September.) Others, like Wu and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, have focused their efforts on outreach and intervention programs, and focused on investing in community partnerships. The details of each city’s violence prevention program are different, but the broad elements are largely the same: They include more funding for both the police and for community organizations aimed at addressing the people and places most likely to suffer from high rates of violent crime, especially gun homicide.

There has been a major difference in how the Democratic Party is approaching the crime issue this cycle than the 2020 cycle.

[quicktimeeventfull]

No tell everyone what's wrong with him. It's ok to vague the general look populace that's called a PSA

ok i actually want to say this carefully because there are a lot of people whose analyses i disagree with but highly respect and personally enjoy. i don't actually think my personal analysis is the best or the most correct -- the joy of fiction is we can have multiple contradictory but correct opinions.

however: i do not feel light has particularly bad political views, even if they are incredibly underdeveloped (albeit age-appropriate for a seventeen year old, especially in 2003 where access to political analysis was relatively limited.) he is disgusted by the use of power to accumulate wealth or status. he prioritizes protecting vulnerable people. the massive elephant in the room is his relationship with the criminal justice system, and i will loop back to this in a second; until then, please keep in mind that light is the world's foremost cop-killer and explicitly dislikes the current justice system.

his issue is that his ONLY tool is a murder weapon. the only way he ever considers changing the world is via killing.

there are other methods of enacting meaningful change! people use them all the time! he could join an activist group. he could engage in volunteer work. he could push for justice reform and community support. there are so many options. the work of improving society is rarely glamorous but it's very possible.

i don't feel this is an indictment of light specifically -- i feel it is reflective of the fact that this is the tool he has been given and it simply never occurs to him that it does not need to be used. which makes sense! he's been given a weapon of incredible, inconceivable power. shouldn't he use it? isn't this a solution to the very real problems he sees? but it isn't. there's no workaround to this. it's a tool of violence and it can never be anything but.

soichiro is absolutely correct.

anyway, here's where my very hot take begins. imo, light does NOT agree with the police or the criminal justice system as it is. (he likes his personal father, which is different from liking the police as a whole.) he kills the police en mass; he actively seeks to remove punitive power from the government.

the problem is he wants to replace all of this with violent vigilante justice. this makes the results of his actions functionally indistinguishable from the methods of control he wants to replace. this is not the only way to do justice reform! it is not the only way to reorganize a society! but it's the only way he sees. it's the only thing the death note allows for.

i do not feel this is a particularly unique problem, and in fact 'kill those who harm and kill those in power' is an extremely common refrain in left-wing circles. sometimes this is useful rhetoric and sometimes violent protest is necessary, but if it is the first and ONLY tool you ever reach for you will inevitably end up with a system that is enforced exclusively by violence. (this is kind of obvious -- if your method of enforcement is violence, your enforcement will be violent.) & in fact history is littered with examples of people whose hunger for violence and bloodshed has resulted in advocacy that is functionally indistinguishable from the systems they are attempting to circumvent.

here is a quote from the excellent and relevant essay 'against the logic of the guillotine':

It is possible to be committed to revolutionary struggle by all means necessary without holding life cheap. It is possible to eschew the sanctimonious moralism of pacifism without thereby developing a cynical lust for blood. We need to develop the ability to wield force without ever mistaking power over others for our true objective, which is to collectively create the conditions for the freedom of all.

you can also see within death note that the system light creates is unsustainable without said violence. the safety he creates for certain people is arguably real but it entirely falls apart without the motivation of terror. i do not think its accurate to say that he accomplished nothing but it is canonically true that what he accomplished was brutal, superficial, and unsustainable.

so that's the issue with light, imo.

[dhaaruni]

Criminal justice reform might go further if activists were open about the fact that people who are victims of state violence usually aren't innocent angels because right now, when something terrible happens, after the initial shock and horror, anybody that looks into stories realizes that for instance, Jacob Blake for instance got shot when he was breaking his restraining order and threatening his ex-girlfriend with a gun and she called the police out of fear for her own safety and that of her children who were in the car.

The point is, when activists go full blown "Say His Name" about men with long rap sheets of domestic violence and sexual assault, it doesn't land with the majority of people, regardless of the moral righteousness of always opposing state-sanctioned violence!