#international legal order

[visionpostsdaily-blog]

The ICC's Historic Move to Prosecute a Powerful Leader May Mark a New Era in International Law

Introduction: The International Criminal Court (ICC) has made an unprecedented move by issuing an arrest warrant against Russian President Vladimir Putin and Commissioner for Children’s Rights Maria Lvova-Belova for alleged war crimes committed during the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. This move signals a shift in the ICC’s approach to prosecuting powerful leaders and sets a precedent that it will…

[dykedvonte]

I think it’s so ironic that the Pony Express escapes a lot if not all blame in discussion. I can’t even say I am excused from it but it’s just how hard people circle back to the characters alone without considering the environment they were made to be in.

Why would they design a ship where only two of the rooms lock? Not the bathroom? Not the sleeping quarters? We assume that all the companies in the universe are this shallow and careless to their workers but we explicitly know the Pony Express in extra vile. They are fed processed slop pack they can’t even really cook and the ration of those pack is meager at best. They hired and made people with a plethora of conflicting demeanors and beliefs work together on a mission where cohesion is important if not an outright necessity and punish them for not being happy about it. There’s no social protocols, not chain of command other than Captain’s word/choice and the only way to enforce that is with a literal firearm. They don’t allow them to celebrate freely and even took away leisure activities that would make them less stir crazy. They are only allowed a few hours of sleep despite their being no other real responsibilities or work on the ship, no matter the position or its importance. With any crew, with any level of synergy, this was a powder keg waiting for a spark.

I’m not saying characters that made mistakes didn’t make huge ones, but I think part of the horror is that at least for some (this is targeting Jimathan) those mistakes are partly made by a force of the hand. There’s a running theme of lack of choice and being forced into something and the very nature of how The Pony Express expected them to function plays a big part.

[shopwitchvamp]

might as well start warning ya'll now...

[bogusfilth]

(shifting into lib mode) it's plausible to me that we could see a sufficiently strong ICJ statement that would have impacts on EU trade in particular to have serious negative impacts on Israel's economy & capacity for war. (normal again) this is like trying to stop the Holocaust by banning IBM from leasing punch card machines to Nazi Germany.

[tardis--dreams]

Got my employment contract and it sounds so annoying already

[venacoeurva]

Wait, I don't.. really get.. Vavani's.. gender? sex? I apologize if it sounds offensive, that's not my intention, I am just a bit confused. sorry my english's not so well

He’s a transgender man (born with a vagina, socialized as female as a child), who is non-op (for the most part) and occasionally gender nonconforming, meaning he doesn’t physically pass as what’s considered fully masculine with a flat chest, deep voice, etc. and hasn’t done much to medically transition out side of magically reversible top surgery and minor masculinization (done through magic) because he simply doesn’t feel the need to. He isn’t “fully” transitioned in a lower area surgical sense either, and hasn’t gotten a hysterectomy or phalloplasty (where surgeons create a penis for you and lengthen your urethra, as well as remove your vagina and ovaries), even though he could if he wanted to. He’s not someone made dysphoric by having a uterus/period/getting pregnant, either, and has had kids ~the natural way~(some of their kids were adopted, though), and likes having breasts except when they’re too inconvenient lol

Tl;dr he does what he wants and looks like a woman, but he’s a man

[hagueapostilleservicesblog]

Get Your Court Orders Apostille Online

1. What is a Divorce Decree Apostille? A Divorce Decree Apostille is an official certification that verifies the authenticity of a divorce decree for use in countries that are members of the Hague Apostille Convention. This ensures the legal recognition of the document abroad, often required for purposes such as remarriage, immigration, or legal processes in another country. Hague Apostille…

[ceilidhtransing]

The discussions around whether or not to vote for Kamala keep being dominated by very loud voices shouting that anyone who advocates for her “just doesn't care about Palestine!” and “is willing to overlook genocide!” and “has no moral backbone at all!” And while some of these voices will be bots, trolls, psyops - we know that this happens; we know that trying to persuade progressives to split the vote or not vote at all is a strategy employed by hostile actors - of course many of them won't be. But what this rhetoric does is continually force the “you should vote for her” crowd onto the back foot of having to go to great lengths writing entire essays justifying their choice, while the “don't vote/vote third party” crowd is basically never asked to justify their choice. It frames voting for Kamala as a deeply morally compromised position that requires extensive justification while framing not voting or voting third party as the neutral and morally clean stance.

So here's another way of looking at it. How much are you willing to accept in order to feel like you're not compromising your morals on one issue?

Are you willing to accept the 24% rise in maternal deaths - and 39% increase for Black women - that is expected under a federal abortion ban, according to the Centre for American Progress? Those percentages represent real people who are alive now who would die if the folks behind Project 2025 get their way with reproductive healthcare.

Are you willing to accept the massive acceleration of climate change that would result from the scrapping of all climate legislation? We don't have time to fuck around with the environment. A gutting of climate policy and a prioritisation of fossil fuel profits, which is explicitly promised by Trump, would set the entire world back years - years that we don't have.

Are you willing to accept the classification of transgender visibility as inherently “pornographic” and thus the removal of trans people from public life? Are you willing to accept the total elimination of legal routes for gender-affirming care? The people behind the Trump campaign want to drive queer and trans people back underground, back into the closet, back into “criminality”. This will kill people. And it's maddening that caring about this gets called “prioritising white gays over brown people abroad” as if it's not BIPOC queer and trans Americans who will suffer the most from legislative queer- and transphobia, as they always do.

Are you willing to accept the domestic deployment of the military to crack down on protests and enforce racist immigration policy? I'm sure it's going to be very easy to convince huge numbers of normal people to turn up to protests and get involved in political organising when doing so may well involve facing down an army deployed by a hardcore authoritarian operating under the precedent that nothing he does as president can ever be illegal.

Are you willing to accept a president who openly talks about wanting to be a dictator, plans on massively expanding presidential powers, dehumanises his political enemies and wants the DOJ to “go after them”, and assures his supporters they won't have to vote again? If you can't see the danger of this staring you right in the face, I don't know what to tell you. Allowing a wannabe dictator to take control of the most powerful country on earth would be absolutely disastrous for the entire world.

Are you willing to accept an enormous uptick in fascism and far-right authoritarianism worldwide? The far right in America has huge influence over an entire international network of “anti-globalists”, hardcore anti-immigrant xenophobes, transphobic extremists, and straight-up fascists. Success in America aids and emboldens these people everywhere.

Are you willing to accept an enormous number of preventable deaths if America faces a crisis in the next four years: a public health emergency, a natural disaster, an ecological catastrophe? We all saw how Trump handled Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. We all saw how Trump handled Covid-19. He fanned the flames of disaster with a constant flow of medical misinformation and an unspeakably dangerous undermining of public health experts. It's estimated that 40% of US pandemic deaths could have been avoided if the death rates had corresponded to those in other high-income countries. That amounts to nearly half a million people. One study from January 2021 estimated between around 4,200 and 12,200 preventable deaths attributable purely to Trump's statements about masks. We're highly unlikely to face another global pandemic in the next few years but who knows what crises are coming down the pipeline?

Are you willing to accept the attempted deportation of millions - millions - of undocumented people? This is “rounding people up and throwing them into camps where no one ever hears from them again” territory. That's a blueprint for genocide right there and it's a core tenet of both Trump's personal policy and Project 2025. And of course they wouldn't be going after white people. They most likely wouldn't even restrict their tyranny to people who are actually undocumented. Anyone racially othered as an “immigrant” would be at risk from this.

Are you willing to accept not just the continuation of the current situation in Palestine, but the absolute annihilation of Gaza and the obliteration of any hope for imminent peace? There is no way that Trump and the people behind him would not be catastrophically worse for Gaza than Kamala or even Biden. Only recently he was telling donors behind closed doors that he wanted to “set the [Palestinian] movement back 25 or 30 years” and that “any student that protests, I throw them out of the country”. This is not a man who can be pushed in a direction more conducive to peace and justice. This is a man who listens to his wealthy donors, his Christian nationalist Republican allies, and himself.

Are you willing to accept a much heightened risk of nuclear war? Obviously this is hardly a Trump policy promise. But I can't think of a single president since the Cold War who is more likely to deploy nuclear weapons, given how casually he talks about wanting to use them and how erratic and unstable he can be in his dealings with foreign leaders. To quote Foreign Policy only this year, “Trump told a crowd in January that one of the reasons he needed immunity was so that he couldn’t be indicted for using nuclear weapons on a city.” That's reassuring. I'm not even in the US and I remember four years of constant background low-level terror that Trump would take offence at something some foreign leader said or think that he needs to personally intervene in some military situation to “sort it out” and decide to launch the entire world into nuclear war. No one sane on earth wants the most powerful person on the planet to be as trigger-happy and careless with human life as he is, especially if he's running the White House like a dictator with no one ever telling him no. But depending on what Americans do in November, he may well be inflicted again on all of us, and I guess we'll all just have to hope that he doesn't do the worst thing imaginable.

“But I don't want those things! Stop accusing me of supporting things I don't support!” Yes, of course you don't want those things. None of us does. No one's saying that you actively support them. No one's accusing you of wanting Black women to die from ectopic pregnancies or of wanting to throw Hispanic people in immigrant detention centres or of wanting trans people to be outlawed (unlike, I must point out, the extremely emotive and personal accusations that get thrown around about “wanting Palestinian children to die” if you encourage people to vote for Kamala).

But if you're advocating against voting for Kamala, you are clearly willing to accept them as possible consequences of your actions. That is the deal you're making. If a terrible thing happening is the clear and easily foreseeable outcome of your action (or in the case of not voting, inaction), in a way that could have been prevented by taking a different and just as easy action, you are partly responsible for that consequence. (And no, it's not “a fear campaign” to warn people about things he's said, things he wants to do, and plans drawn up by his close allies. This is not “oooh the Democrats are trying to bully you into voting for them by making him out to be really bad so you'll feel scared and vote for Kamala!” He is really bad, in obvious and documented and irrefutable ways.)

And if you believe that “both parties are the same on Gaza” (which, you know, they really aren't, but let's just pretend that they are) then presumably you accept that the horrors being committed there will continue, in the immediate term anyway, regardless of who wins the presidency. Because there really isn't some third option that will appear and do everything we want. It's going to be one of those two. And we can talk all day about wanting a better system or how unfair it is that every presidential election only ever has two viable candidates and how small the Overton window is and all that but hell, we are less than eighty days out from the election; none of that is going to get fixed between now and November. Electoral reform is a long-term (but important!) goal, not something that can be effected in the span of a couple of months by telling people online to vote third party. There is no “instant ceasefire and peace negotiation” button that we're callously overlooking by encouraging people to vote for Kamala. (My god, if there was, we would all be pressing it.)

If we're suggesting people vote for her, it's not that we “are willing to overlook genocide” or “don't care about sacrificing brown people abroad” or whatever. Nothing is being “overlooked” here. It's that we're simply not willing to accept everything else in this post and more on top of continued atrocities in Gaza. We're not willing to take Trump and his godawful far-right authoritarian agenda as an acceptable consequence of feeling like we have the moral high ground on Palestine. I cannot stress enough that if Kamala doesn't win, we - we all, in the whole world - get Trump. Are you willing to accept that?

And one more point to address: I've seen too many people act frighteningly flippant and naïve about terrible things Trump or his campaign want to do, with the idea that people will simply be able to prevent all these bad things by “organising” and “protesting” and “collective action”. “I'm not willing to accept these things; that's why I'll fight them tooth and nail every day of their administration” - OK but if you're not even willing to cast a vote then I have doubts about your ability to form “the Resistance”, which by the way would have to involve cooperation with people of lots of progressive political stripes in order to have the manpower to be effective, and if you're so committed to political purity that you view temporarily lending your support to Kamala at the ballot box as an untenable betrayal of everything you stand for then forgive me for also doubting your ability to productively cooperate with allies on the ground with whom you don't 100% agree. Plus, if the Trump campaign gets its way, American progressives would be kept so busy trying to put out about twenty different fires at once that you'd be able to accomplish very little. Maybe you get them to soften their stance on trans healthcare but oh shit, the climate policies are still in place. But more importantly, how many people do you think will protest for abortion rights if doing so means staring down a gun? Or organise to protect their neighbours from deportation if doing so means being thrown in prison yourself? And OK, maybe you're sure that you will, but history has shown us time and time again that most people won't. Most people aren't willing to face that kind of personal risk. And a tiny number of lefties willing to risk incarceration or death to protect undocumented people or trans people or whatever other groups are targeted is sadly not enough to prevent the horrors from happening. That is small fry compared to the full might of a determined state. Of course if the worst happens and Trump wins then you should do what you can to mitigate the harm; I'm not saying you shouldn't. But really the time to act is now. You have an opportunity right here to mitigate the harm and it's called “not letting him get elected”. Act now to prevent that kind of horrific authoritarian situation from developing in the first place; don't sit this one out under the naïve belief that “we'll be able to stop it if it happens”. You won't.

[kittyprincessofcats]

ICJ Ruling

Okay, let's get into this.

First of all, I get the frustration at the court not ordering a ceasefire. I was disappointed and frustrated at first too, since a ceasefire was the biggest and most important preliminary measure South Africa was requesting - and of course we just all want this horror to finally end for the people in Gaza. So I get the frustration and disappointment, I really do.

However, I do think this ruling is still a major win for South Africa, Palestine, and international law as a whole and here's why:

The court acknowledged that it has jurisdiction over this case and completely dismissed Israel's request to throw out the case as a whole. It will now determine at the merits stage (that will probably take years) whether Israel is actually commiting genocide.

The court acknowledged that Palestinians are a "distinct national or ethnic group and therefore deserving of protection under the genocide convention". Pull this out next time someone tells you "there's no such thing as Palestinians, they're all just Arabs".

The court acknowledged very unambiguously that "at least some" of Israel's actions being genocidal in nature is "plausible". South Africa has a case, officially. Israel is accused of genocide, in a way the ICJ deems "plausible", officially. This is huge. (And seriously, how freaking satisfying was it to hear all of those genocidal statements by Israeli politicians read out loud and used as justification for this rulling?)

The court might not have ordered a "ceasefire" in those words, but they did order Israel to "immediately end all genocidal acts" (which includes killing and injuring Palestinians) and submit proof that they actually did. How are they going to comply with this ruling without at least severly reducing or changing what they're doing in Gaza?

In fact, this wording might actually be more appropriate for a genocide (vs a war), as author and journalist Ali Abunimah notes on Twitter:

He's completely right. Israel lost today, by overwhelming majority (I mean, 15 to 2? I heard people predict the rulings would be very close, like 9 judges vs 8, but instead we got 15 to 2 (and even 16 to 1 on the humanitarian aid). Holy shit.) The court disimissed almost everything Israel's side of lawyers said, while acknowledging that South Africa's accusations are "plausible".

And this is important especially because of Mr Abunimah's second tweet there^. Because the question is, where do we go from here?

This ruling means that Israel is officially /possibly/ commiting genocide and that should have huge international consequences. The rest of the world now HAS to take these accusations seriously and stop arming and supporting Israel - and if they won't do it on their own, we, the people, have to make them. This is THE moment to rise up all around the world, especially in the countries most supportive of Israel (the US, the UK, Germany): Protest, call your representatives and demand a ceasefire and an end of arms deliveries to Israel.

We now have a legal case to back our demands: If Israel is, according to the ICJ, "plausibly" commiting genocide, then all of our governments are, according to the ICJ, "plausibly" guiltly of aiding in genocide. And we need to hold that over their heads and demand better. We need to do that right now and in huge numbers. Most politicians only care about themselves and saving their skin. We have to make them realize that they could be accused of aiding in genocide.

(As a German, I'm thinking of Germany here in particular: After South Africa's hearing, our government dismissed their case as having "no basis" - how are they going to keep saying that now that the ICJ officially thinks otherwise? Over the last months, people here have been arrested at protests for calling what's happening in Gaza a genocide. How are the police supposed to legally keep doing that now that the ICJ has officially deemed this accusation "plausible"? I used to be scared to use the word "genocide" at protests or write it on my protest signs - not anymore, have fun trying to arrest me for that when the ICJ literally has my back on this one 🖕🏻.)

So yeah - don't be defeatist about this, don't let Israel's narrative that they "won" (they didn't) take over. This might not be everything we wanted, but it's still a good result. Don't let what the court didn't say ("ceasefire"), distract you from the very important things that they did say. Let this be your motivation to get loud and active, especially if you live in any country that supports Israel. Put pressure on your governments to not be complicit in genocide, you now officially have the highest international court on your side.

[heritageposts]

Germany's leading Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the opposition Christian Democratic Party (CDU) have ordered high schools in Berlin's borough of Neukolln to distribute brochures titled The Myth of Israel #1948. [...] Neukolln is one of Berlin's most diverse and international boroughs with a large Palestinian community. [...] The brochure states there are five "myths" around the creation of the state of Israel, which are subsequently refuted in short essays by various authors. In the first section, debunking myth #1, that Jews and Arabs lived together in peace before Israel was founded, Israel's pre-state militia, the Haganah, responsible for the destruction of 531 Palestinian villages and the expulsion of 700,000 Palestinians between December 1947 and the summer of 1948, is promoted as a merely "defensive" Jewish resistance movement. Under 'Myth #2: Israel was established on stolen Palestinian land', Masiyot states that the acquisition of land by Jewish immigrants to Palestine took the form of a legal exchange of capital for an official title deed. At no point in history was land illegally conquered by Jewish immigrants, the author of the text, Michael Spaney, claims. Even land conquered following the wars of 1948 and 1967 and the subsequent construction of settlements, which are internationally recognised as a violation of international law, did not occur unlawfully, it says. "Anyone who uses the accusation of land theft as an argument demonises Israel and denies its legitimacy, i.e. acts out of antisemitic motives," Spaney wrote. "Myth #5: Israel is to blame for the Nakba", includes a text by researcher Shany Mor titled "the UN is distorting the meaning of the Nakba: its view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is extremely one-sided". In the text, Mor states that "displacement during war - then and now - was nothing unusual". He also labels the UN's attention to the Palestinian cause "obsessive" and the Arab defeat of 1948 a myth.

. . . full article on MME (23 Feb 2024)

[theworldgate]

I have to explain what is going on in the UK, because it is absurd.

So, this is Gary Lineker:

He's known for a fair few things over here. He was a very good (association) footballer, playing for England in the 1986 and 1990 World Cups, winning the Golden Boot in 1986, and managing to never get a single yellow card in his playing career. He played for Leicester City, Everton, Barcelona, and Tottenham, before finishing his career in Japan. But if you aren't in your mid 30s, you probably know actually know him him for a couple of other things. The first is the role of spokesman for another Leicester icon, Walkers Crisps (which are sort of equivalent to Lays, but hit different), as pictured above. Despite being a notably clean player, he used to play a cheeky serial crisp thief. I don't think he's done that for well over a decade, but his ads were on the telly a lot when I was a kid and it's a bit like learning that the hamburglar was an incredibly clean (American) football player or something.

The second thing Gary is widely known for is having presented Match of the Day, the big football program on the BBC, the sort-of state broadcaster, since 1999. He is, incidentally, very well paid for this (though with a consensus that he could get even more if he went to one of the non-free-to-view broadcasters because he is very good at the job). He also has a twitter account. And political opinions. So, the UK government has got itself dead set upon doing heinous stuff that will totally somehow work to prevent people who want to come to the UK making the perilous crossing of the Channel (between England and France). By heinous, I mean "openly advertise that they won't attempt to protect victims of modern slavery" stuff. It's very obviously using a legal hammer to victimise a marginalised group of people in order to win votes. And, uh, I should clarify that by "legal" I mean "using the passage of laws" - the policy is, in addition to all the other ways it's awful, probably incompatible with the Human Rights Act and the UK's international law obligations. Gary, top lad that he is, objected to this. On Tuesday 7th March, he made a quote Tweet of a video of the Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, bigging up the policy, he wrote "Good heavens, this is beyond awful.". This got a bunch of backlash from extremely right-wingers, and then he made the tweet that really got him in trouble (with right-wingers): "There is no huge influx. We take far fewer refugees than other major European countries. This is just an immeasurably cruel policy directed at the most vulnerable people in language that is not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 30s, and I’m out of order?".

Now, I am not actually subjecting myself to watching a video of Suella Braverman bigging up a cruel policy to say whether the specific comparison of the language to 1930s Germany is accurate. But needless to say, Ms Braverman was amongst the many figures on the right of UK politics objecting to Gary's rhetoric. And here's the part where a fact about the BBC comes in: it is nominally neutral and impartial (and so, of course, is routinely accused of bias from all sides but particularly the right-wing), and has something of a code for its contributors to this effect. Now, that code has previously been applied to Gary Lineker, over a comment about whether governing Conservative Party would hand back donations from figures linked to the Russian regime. But it generally hasn't been applied too strongly to people like Gary, whose roles have nothing to do with politics (such as presenting a "here's what happened on the footie today" show), on the basis that, well, their roles have nothing to do with politics. However, when directly asked about whether the BBC should punish Gary Lineker for his tweets, government figures basically went "well, that's a them problem". But a couple of days passed, and it seemed like Gary's approach of "standing his ground because he did nothing wrong" was working and everything would die down. He was set to get 'a talking to' but not much more than that. The Conservative right, after all their fire and fury earlier, had gotten bored and moved onto something else. And then, on Friday 10th March, the BBC announced that he would be suspended from hosting Match of the Day this weekend. But it could still go ahead, because there are, like, other hosts! Except, well, funnily enough, when you take a beloved figure off air, for making a fairly anodyne tweet, no one wants to be the scab who actually takes up the role of replacing him. Gary's two co-hosts, Alan Shearer and Ian Wright, said that they would not appear without him. People who (co-)host Match of the Day on other days followed suit. The net result is that Match of the Day is currently set to air without hosts, BBC commentary, or global feed commentary. And the solidarity shown to Gary Lineker, over what is very flagrantly actual cancel culture and an attack on freedom of speech (the logic implied is that institutional impartiality requires that no one say anything too critical of the government ever), has continued to grow. The BBC has pretty much been unable to run pretty much any live sports content today, and has resorted to raiding the BBC Sounds archive to fill the sports radio channel. And, as of 17:30 on Saturday 11th March, the situation shows no signs of improvement, though some are calling for the Chairman Richard Sharp, who is separately facing corruption allegations, to resign (yes I linked to the BBC itself there, there is nothing, nothing, the BBC loves more than going into great detail about how much the BBC sucks).

[opencommunion]

"Israel expects support from western capitals because they have nearly as much to fear from a verdict against Israel as Israel itself. They have staunchly backed the killing spree, with the US and UK, in particular, sending weapons that are being used against the people of Gaza, making both potentially complicit.

According to a cable from the Israeli foreign ministry, leaked to the Axios website, Israel hopes that, given the difficulties of making a legal case in defence of its actions, diplomatic and political pressure on the court’s justices will win the day instead. ... Israel’s 'strategic goal' at the court, according to the leaked cable, is to dissuade the judges from making a determination that it is committing genocide. But more pressing is Israel’s need to prevent the Hague court from ordering an interim halt to the attack. ... The purpose of South Africa’s case is not to arbitrate what happens once Israel has annihilated the Palestinians of Gaza, as far too many observers appear to imagine. It is to stop Israel from annihilating the people of Gaza before it is too late. Based on strange logic, Israel’s supporters imply that the genocide charge is unwarranted because the real aim is not to exterminate the Palestinians of Gaza but to induce them to flee. ... The International Court of Justice must not adopt a wait-and-see approach, pondering whether Israel’s bombing campaign and siege lead to extermination or 'only' ethnic cleansing. That would strip international humanitarian law of all relevance.

If Israel and its western allies fail to bludgeon the court into submission, and South Africa’s case is accepted, it will not only be Israel in legal difficulties. 

A genocide ruling from the court will impose obligations on other states: both to refuse to assist in Israel’s genocide, such as by providing arms and diplomatic cover, and to sanction Israel should it fail to comply.

An interim order halting Israel’s attack will serve as a line in the sand. Once made, any state that fails to act on the injunction risks becoming complicit in genocide. 

That will put the West in a serious legal bind. After all, it has not just been turning a blind eye to the genocide in Gaza; it has been actively cheering it on and colluding in it. ... The truth is that a genocide ruling by the court will open up a can of worms for the West, and its readiness to accept that the provisions of international law apply to it too."

[mariluphoto]

Israeli settlers are attacking the Christian community in Jerusalem including bishops and priests! The Christian community is literally fighting for their lives right now in the Armenian Quarter. Christians: more of you need to stand up with us against this violence! This has never been a Muslim issue. (28.12.2023)

Chancellery Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem

28 December, 2023

A MASSIVE AND COORDINATED PHYSICAL ATTACK WAS LAUNCED ON BISHOPS, PRIESTS, DEACONS, SEMINARIANS, AND OTHER ARMENIAN COMMUNITY MEMBERS IN JERUSALEM WITHINONE HOUR OF THIS ANNOUNCEMENT. SEVERAL PRIESTS, STUDENTS OF THE ARMENIAN THEOLOGICAL ACADEMY, AND INDIGENOUS ARMENIANS ARE SERIOUSLY INJURED.

Over 30 armed provocateurs in ski-masks with lethal and less-than-lethal weaponry including powerful nerve-agents that have incapacitated dozens of our clergy broke into the grounds of the Cow's Garden and began their vicious assault. We stress again, several priest, deacons and students of the Armenian Theological Academy along with indigenous Armenians are seriously injured. ARMENIAN CLERICS IN JERUSALEM ARE FIGHTING FOR THEIR LIVES AGAINST IMPUNE PROVOCATEURS.

This is the criminal response we have received for the submission of a lawsuit to the District Court of Jerusalem for the Cow's Garden, which was officially received by the Court less than 24 hours ago. This is how the Australian-Israeli businessman Danny Rothman (Rubinstein) and George Warwar (Hadad) react to legal procedures.

The Armenian Patriarchate's existential threat is now a physical reality. Bishops, Priests, Deacons, Seminarians, and indigenous Armenians are fighting for their very lives on the ground. We are calling on authorities around the world and the International Media to help us save the Armenian Quarter from a violent demise that is being locally supported by unnamed entities. We call upon the Israeli Government and Police to start an investigation against Danny Rothman (Rubinstein) and George Warwar (Hadad) for organizing their continuous criminal attacks on the Armenian Patriarchate and Community, attacks which seem to have no end in sight.

Israel is a State of law and order and such criminal behavior cannot be tolerated and go unpunished.

(via. IG: rosypirani)

[mountainsandmayhem]

BDSMaid - Chapter 1

Masterlist || AO3

Pairing: Millionaire Joel Miller x Female Reader Rating: 18+ Chapter Summary: To save money for law school, you accept a job at Maid Discretely; a high end, anonymous cleaning service. You aren’t supposed to know whose home you’re cleaning, but your curiosity is peaked by your first client, and when the two of you have a shocking and surprising run in, more than just your curiosity peaks.  CW: Author chooses not to use warnings in this chapter in order to avoid spoilers. While I never want to trigger anyone, you are solely responsible for the content you consume. AN: Oh boy, here we go! I'm in a straight PANIC getting ready to post this. I hope it meets all your expectations, I was not at all expecting that reaction to the teaser post. Love you all and thank you for all your support. Please share or comment, I have a praise kink LOL. Follow @mountainsandmayhem-updates and turn on notifications for future chapters. Dividers and support banners by @saradika-graphics. Thank you @mermaidgirl30, @littlevenicebitch69, @joelmillerisapunk and @burntheedges for being my little cheerleaders over this, ily!! Chapter Word Count: 4.4k

You stare down at the very intimidating legal document you have clasped in your clammy hands. There are so many big legal sounding words that seem to be mocking you with their importance. Somehow there are clauses that have sub clauses that are then further broken down into sub-subclauses. It feels heavy to be handed this on a Monday morning. Truthfully, this doesn’t seem like something a soon-to-be twenty-one year old woman who literally just graduated college, albeit a semester early, should be allowed to sign without parents and a lawyer present. 

This is just supposed to be a simple job working part time as a maid for your best friend's family’s cleaning company. A job where she promised easy money and part time hours that you set for yourself. The perfect opportunity for you to be able to save money AND set aside lots of study time for your upcoming LSAT rewrite. You passed it a few months ago and applied to a bunch of law schools, but you aren’t going to waste these next few months waiting around. You know how competitive law schools can be, so you’re preparing to be better just in case you don’t get in.

Your eyes scan words that your brain can’t seem to comprehend. The internal panic starts to bubble in your chest, someone who has law aspirations should know what these words mean.

This is just supposed to be easy. Cleaning. Vacuuming. Washing floors. Simple things. 

But now, as you sit in this shiny, fancy downtown office building looking at your full legal name typed beside a bunch of ‘initial here’ and ‘sign here’ lines on a nondisclosure agreement you’re starting to feel like this is anything but simple. 

“Our clientele is VERY exclusive,” your childhood best friend Jamie says. She looks very professional and grown up sitting behind her glass desk. Her long, toned legs are crossed, the slit along the side of her crisp, white pencil skirt showing off her tanned upper thigh. She’s paired her white skirt with a baby pink silky blouse that's perfectly tucked into the high waist of the skirt. Her long, dark silky hair is twisted into a jeweled claw clip. Even though you’re the same age she has an air of sophistication and grace, even with winged eyeliner, a matte pink lip, and a slender rose gold septum ring that sits tight to her little button nose. She almost screams old Hollywood in the middle of Austin, Texas. 

She continues, “You won’t know the names of the clients and they will never be home. If they do come home, leave immediately, and try your best not to be seen or heard. Then you can fill out in the company app what you did and didn’t manage to get done.” 

You put the paper down on her perfect desk so she can’t see your hands shaking. How can you work at that desk all day and not get a single fingerprint or smudge on it? There’s a very good chance that I am not cut out for this. This is fancy. And expensive. I’m neither of those things. 

“What am I gonna be walking in on at these houses, Jamie?” You ask, swallowing the fiberglass that’s suddenly prickling at your throat. 

Jamie shakes her head and laughs, saying your name through her melodic giggles. “Most likely nothing. We’ve never had an encounter or run in with a client. They pick times for cleaners to come when they aren’t home.” She leans back in her high backed chair and continues, “But the clients are big deals. Politicians. Judges. Athletes. The odd celebrity. They don’t want anyone in their home that will snoop or snap pictures. Hence the NDA.” 

“Well, why didn’t you start with that!” You laugh. “Jesus, I thought I’d be walking into like a virginal sacrifice or some shit!” 

“Well, there was that one time…” Your face drops and she immediately starts laughing again. “I’m kidding. Relax. Look, you’ll probably get three homes a week, each house will take six to eight hours. The hourly pay is twenty dollars plus whatever tip they’ll leave you in these black envelopes.” 

She puts a perfectly polished finger on a stack of black envelopes with a red ‘Maid Discretely’ logo on it and continues, “In my experience, the tips are around five hundred, completely tax free. This is a good gig! You’ll be in law school becoming smarter than all of us in no time. Fuck, you’ll be writing insane contracts like those before we know it.” 

She stands, one hand resting on the desk while the other slides the paper towards you with a closed pen. She drops the writing apparatus on top of it, the metal casing of the pen clanging loudly on her glass desk. You let out an exasperated sigh, dramatically clicking the pen before signing the NDA. Jamie claps her hands excitedly then snatches the contract away before you can rip it up and says, “Let’s get your uniform and supplies!”

She hands you a few fitted white polo style t-shirts, black dress pants, white Keds (that she scolds are for inside the houses only), a caddy full of high end cleaning supplies, a top of the line Dyson vacuum and everything else you’ll need.

She ends your meeting with instructions on how the company's scheduling and tracking app works. "Essentially, you set the days and times you’re available and it will populate for you. You’ll have addresses, dates and times, as well as tasks to be done, all nicely laid out for you. If a client likes you, they can request you for additional shifts, but for continuity purposes you should get the same couple houses that you’ll rotate through throughout the month."

You nod along, mostly surprised to hear the girl who did a keg stand just a few days ago sound so professional, using words like 'continuity purposes'.

The next day you have your first official shift. Tuesday from nine to three and you’re scheduled at a mansion in a neighborhood you’ve never heard of and you most definitely wouldn’t fit in to. Jamie is already waiting there for you when you pull up. She explained yesterday that she’d help you with the first one and then you are on your own after that. Well, not completely alone. Your iPhone is loaded full of smutty audio books, murder podcasts, and law books to listen to as you clean. 

Jamie was right, you think to yourself as you scroll to the latest romance novel you’ve downloaded and grab your AirPods, this is a good gig.

The house is absolutely massive, and you highly doubt you’ll be done in six hours. You gather all your stuff and head up to the house. Jamie shows you where the company supplied key box is and how to open it from the app. As you grab the key Jamie excitedly says, “This used to be my client. He always leaves a huge tip!”

You unlock the large front glass door and enter into a white marble foyer. The windows on the first floor are easily ten feet tall and allow in so much natural light. Gold and obsidian swirls in the marble reflect along the walls, dancing in the sunlight. To the left of the front door is a large open kitchen that might be bigger than your entire apartment. The marble of the expansive countertop is the same colour as the foyer. All the cabinetry is matte black with brushed gold handles. The kitchen opens into a lavish living room, a massive fireplace and TV sits on the far back left wall, encompassed by a very cozy looking white sectional. 

To the right of the front door, starting furthest away from where you stand in awe, is a door to a huge half bathroom, followed by a long table with a bowl for keys and mail, and then the door that leads to the garage. About fifty feet in front of you is a grand staircase that branches out to the left and right. Beyond the staircase you can see into the backyard. This is by far the nicest house you’ve ever been in.

As both you and Jamie slip into your keds she says, “Upstairs to the left are a few bedrooms and the office. I usually started there and then went to the right side where he has a huge entertainment area. Then I would clean down here since he doesn’t cook very often and it’s usually just a quick wipe down.”

Just as you start to panic over how you’re supposed to remember all this she nudges you and adds, “But that’s all in the app for you, most of the clients are very particular so they’ll lay out exactly what order you should be cleaning in, as well as any other extra things they need done.” 

She helps you carry all your stuff upstairs and then watches you work. Sure enough, the app says to start in the office so you do just that. Careful not to disturb the few piles of paperwork you dust the desk and shelves and then wipe down the windows and computer screen. You vacuum the hardwood and plush rug last and after Jamie gives you an approving nod, you move onto the next room.

You continue like that, going from room to room, your friend, and now boss, occasionally giving feedback or leaving to answer a phone call or respond to an email. The job is easy enough; repeating the same steps in each room over and over again. It’s the exact type of work you exceed at. You enjoy having clear sets of instructions and expectations, and a prioritized list where you can start at the top and work down. You’ve always excelled at following meticulous directions in school. Your life maybe not so much. When it comes to dating or your parents you aren’t one to do what you’re told.

When one o’clock rolls around you just have one bathroom upstairs and the already pristine downstairs to tend to, but Jamie coaxes you into taking your break, which is another thing you’re bad at. You were raised not to take breaks, taking a break or doing nothing means you're lazy. You should be working all the time, and pushing yourself to accomplish things. As a child you’d push and push yourself to be the best, honor roll ceremonies were the only time your dad would show up. He’d smile and brag about you to whoever was around.

“It’s important that you take all your supplies to your car with you when you eat your lunch. Never eat in their homes and never park on their driveways.” You nod and hoist all your stuff to the front step. “Make sure you lock up like you’re leaving too.” 

“How am I doing so far?” You ask as you lock the door, your stomach growling loudly as if it needs to prove to her how hard you’re working. You hadn’t realized how much of an appetite you’d gain just from cleaning. The few stale crackers and small can of tuna you managed to find in your cupboard this morning doesn’t seem like it’s going to be enough. 

“Really well! I actually think I might leave you to finish up. Don’t forget to take whatever he left for you out of the black envelope on the kitchen counter.” She doesn’t look up at you, her fingers tapping out an email on her shiny iphone screen. She doesn’t have her phone in a case and you can only imagine the level of self confidence you have to have to carry around an expensive item unprotected like that.

“Is it weird that there’s no pictures or anything of the family that lives here?” You say curiously as you both walk towards your parked vehicles. 

“No,” she says flatly. “I think it’s just one person here and that’s pretty normal for the houses you’ll be cleaning. Lots of them are rarely home or only home to sleep.” 

You gawk at the massive house from across the street as you throw all your supplies in the back of your used and rusted SUV. One person lives here. Alone. How is this possible? He’s clearly doing well for himself. Either he’s really lonely or a complete asshole. 

After you eat, you head back inside to finish up cleaning. The entire house looks like a show home. Not a single thing out of place. The kitchen seems staged, void of life aside from a tiny droplet of coffee on the countertop beside the Italian coffee maker, and a tiny brown stegosaurus toy that sits on top of it. Two minutes before the end of your shift you do a final sweep to make sure you haven’t left anything behind and then slip open the black envelope. Inside you find seven one hundred dollars and a note that just says ‘TY - JM’.

As you log your day in the company app you can’t believe you just made seven hundred freaking dollars to clean up after a man who makes no messes. You excitedly check your upcoming schedule and it looks like you’ll be back here in two more weeks. You could potentially be getting fourteen hundred dollars a month from this elusive “JM”. A man with no pictures or personal touches in his shiny white, black and gold mansion.

It’s been almost two weeks since your first clean at JM’s house. Your other clients were good tippers, usually between four to five hundred, but you’ve been looking forward to going back. You know you’re not supposed to know who the clients are, but you couldn’t help but google JM to try to figure out who he is and how he has so much money. In hindsight, you guess all your clients have money, but something about him has alerted your curiosity. He seems like smoke, or a ghost, in his own home. Your other clients had some sort of semblance of life in their houses. A dent in the pillow. An open newspaper on the kitchen table. A coffee cup dropped in the sink before they headed off to whatever fancy job they have to afford such a massive house. A toilet seat left up or a smudge of toothpaste on the mirror. 

But not JM. 

No, the only thing JM left was a tiny droplet of coffee. Coffee that was probably imported straight from Italy. You’re almost ashamed of the amount of times you’ve wondered about that stegosaurus toy. It seems so out of place in his house of clean lines and sterility. 

You’re just settling in to enjoy a Sunday night of sushi, rosé and Bridgerton with your roommate when your phone bings, a little red notification bubble popping up on the Maid Discretely app. You have an added shift request for JM tomorrow. Instead of one six hour shift on Tuesday you now have two six hour shifts. You accept the request and scroll through the tasks. He’s requested you to wipe the baseboards and lightswitches on the main floor, a deep scrub of every bathroom, as well as doing the inside of the fridge, stove and microwave. There are also instructions for washing the sheets in the main bedroom, and spraying down the patio furniture around the pool.

Only a millionaire in Texas would ask for his pool furniture to be cleaned in February. 

Shortly after you accept the shift you get a text from Jamie:

Saw you accepted the shift. The client asked for the normal clean on the first day, please. Extras the next day. Thanks.

The following morning you head to the large, bright mansion. Parking across the street and hauling all your stuff in. It feels a bit weird to be here on a Monday and you have a feeling you’ll be reminding yourself all day that it is indeed Monday and not Tuesday.

You get all your stuff together, change into your indoor company issued keds and head up the stairs. The pink and orange hues of the sunrise glitters off the white marble tiles, glints of gold and sparkling black reflecting off of it. You take a second to look down from the landing as you pop in your airpods. It really is a beautiful home, and it’s too bad that whoever lives here is either lonely or an asshole, but for a split second you let yourself pretend that you and JM just finished making love and he’s now in the kitchen making you an espresso or a latte with that insanely fancy coffee machine in the kitchen. You shake your head at yourself. You didn’t find anything when googling, which isn’t surprising since two letters aren’t much to go on, but this house seems to draw you in, like it’s calling to you. It’s strange, it’s almost like you have a crush on this house and you couldn’t help but make a whole persona for whoever lives here. Even with its clean lines and lack of life, something about it settles in your gut, it feels like home. 

You scroll your podcast app trying to pick what episode you want to listen to and head down the hall, you can’t seem to decide so you pocket your phone without starting anything and reach for the matte black handle of the office door. You’re expecting to see JM’s tidy office with a few stacks of paperwork in one corner, but the sight you find before you has all the blood rush from your head and your stomach dropping right out of your body. Your jaw drops and you freeze in utter shock and fear.  

Instead of the usual stacks of paper, there’s an icy blond haired woman tied to the desk. She’s completely naked and on her back with her legs spread wide. Her ankles are tied to the legs of the desk with a scratchy looking rope, her wrists wrapped in matching rope and resting above her head. Her nipples are almost purple underneath the clothespin attached to them. You freeze, just the lewd wet noises of her pussy being worked furiously by the mysterious, fully clothed JM. His deep, commanding, gravel filled voice reverberates through the office. “Little fuckin' slut. Gonna split you in two.”

The woman lets out an unashamed cry of pleasure. Your entire body seems to go numb as your caddy falls from your hand, crashing loudly against the hardwood flooring. His head whips to the side, the icy blonde woman letting out a scream and trying to cover herself up. Your hands cover your mouth and even though you can’t feel your legs you spin and run for the stairs.

“Fuck. Fuck. Wait,” JM calls after you.

One of your AirPods falls from your ear as you run, you’re tempted to stop and grab it but you need to get out of here. Jamie’s voice echoes through your skull, ‘try your hardest not to be seen or heard’. 

He catches up to you as you reach the front entryway, his strong hand pushing the door closed. You can feel the heat of his body against your back. You’re shaking - both from being terrified and embarrassed. You have so many thoughts running through your mind. This will get you fired, or worse, you could have just possibly lost the company a client. Fuck. You aren’t supposed to know who lives here and you certainly aren’t supposed to see them doing that. 

“Please wait,” he says softly behind you and the heat of his broad body sends a chill down your spine.

The blood is rushing through your ears as your heart pounds in your throat. You don’t like confrontation and even with the softness in his voice, you’re sure he’s about to scream at you. You feel sick, and when you replay the words he said to the woman upstairs, and the sound of her moan that made you drop your caddy you start to feel dizzy and nervous.

Your hand falls from the handle of the front door and the brick wall of a man behind you steps back. You spin slowly to face him but keep your eyes on the floor. 

“I’m sorry,” you murmur, linking your fingers in front of you and focusing all your attention on the cuticle of your right thumb.

“No, please. This is my fault.” You trail your eyes from the floor to him. He's in perfectly pressed black dress pants paired with a white dress shirt. The sleeves are rolled to his forearms and he’s holding his hands up in front of himself as if to show you he isn’t armed or as a way to say 'you’re safe here'. 

You flick your eyes up to his face and he’s looking at you softly, the morning sunrise lighting up his tanned face and salt and pepper hair. JM is probably twice your age, but he is incredibly handsome. 

“I am so sorry. I must’a got my days mixed up when I booked you.” He says, a soft southern accent sneaking out. 

“I’m going to get fired,” you respond shakily.

“No,” he says stepping forward, you subsequently take a step back, pressing your body against the glass front door. Something about this man makes you nervous, but not in the same way women are trained to be nervous of strange men that are almost twice their size. “No. This is my fault. Please, let me explain. I jus’ gotta - well, can I go deal with…” his head cocks towards the stairs, “And then let me explain. Please?” 

You look at him, his handsome face all soft and apologetic. His dark brown and amber eyes dance around your face and without realizing you're even doing it, you nod your head. 

“Thank you,” he drops his hands at his side, visibly relaxing at your decision not to run. “Sit at the island for me. I’ll be back.” 

He watches you as you pad over to the island. The tall bar chair squeaks on the tile floor as you pull it out. He peels his eyes from you and heads upstairs. When you sit you have to stop from moaning out, the pressure of your body weight there sends a wave of rolling pleasure through you.

What the fuck? 

It’s a dull, throbbing ache followed by a small gush of thick wetness. Did you mistake a feeling of arousal for dizziness and nervousness upstairs? Were you turned on by what you just witnessed? 

Certainly not. There’s no way! He was, well, he wasn’t being nice to that woman. 

Soon you hear footsteps coming down the stairs and towards the foyer, his body blocks her from your view as they talk at the front door. They speak in hushed voices, all you’re able to make out is her saying thank you followed by the sound of a soft kiss and then she’s gone. 

She thanked him? It seems like he should be thanking her. 

He wanders into the kitchen and your throat goes impossibly dry. As if he can read your every need, he grabs a glass from the cabinet, puts it under the water dispenser on his fridge door and then slides the glass across the large island to you. You have to lift off the chair to reach it, whispering a thank you before taking a sip. 

JM leans against the countertop beside the fridge and watches you take a long drink. You put the glass down with a quiet clink and then fold your hands in your lap. His eye contact is intense, not in a creepy way, it’s almost like he’s assessing you. You find it hard to look at him so you avert your gaze to the glass. 

He clears his throat gently before he starts. “I jus’ want to say how sorry I am. You didn’t consent to seein’ any of that and I can’t imagine how awful that was for you.” His voice is so calm and soft. 

You flick your eyes up to him, “No, this is my fault. I am not suppose-“

JM shakes his head and holds up one hand, signaling you to stop. “No. This was me. I got my days mixed up. Meant to book ya for next week. This ain’t on you. This was my mistake. If it’s ok for me to ask, what’s your name?” 

You mumble your name into your glass and down the rest of your water. You figure you’re probably fired either way so who cares if he knows who you are. His face ticks up slightly, almost like he’s proud of you for drinking, and says your name back to you. 

“I ain’t gonna say anythin’ to your boss and I understand if you want to leave for the day. I’ll pay ya either way. I also understand if you say somethin’ to them and I can’t be a client anymore. It was unacceptable for me to be doin’ that when you’re supposed to be here. There ain’t any other way to word it. I was inappropriate and wrong.” He steps forward and holds his hand out so you slide the glass across to him. 

He refills it and puts it back for you to grab. “No,” you say, your voice cracking. After clearing your throat you continue, “No, I appreciate your apology but I’m not going to say anything.” 

He watches you again as you drain the glass, the same look of pride flashes across his eyes, “I’ll - umm - I’ll be in my office. You can uh,” he runs a hand through his scruff, “You just do whatever you need. I’ll stay outta your way.” 

He disappears before you can say anything else. You head up the stairs after a few minutes to find your cleaning caddy sitting in the hall with everything placed neatly where it belongs. His office door is closed and you can hear the deep rumble of his voice while he’s on a call. You grab your things, head into the master bedroom and begin cleaning. 

A few hours later while you’re sitting in your car eating lunch, the garage door opens and JM goes whipping past you in the sexiest blacked out sports car you’ve ever seen. He doesn’t even look over you as he speeds by. Your heart sinks, it's unexplainable but being in that house with him there, even after what you witnessed, felt more comfortable than being alone. JM must have some sort of magic touch, how you went from nervous and embarrassed to calm and comforted with just the look on his face and few words is beyond you.

After wiping down the kitchen you are all done for the day. You grab the black and red envelope off the kitchen counter and open it, peering in nervously. There’s a piece of matte black paper on top. You slide it out gently, the paper feels expensive between your fingers. As you unfold it you reveal a shiny black JMK logo at the top. In neat gold lettering is his writing.

‘Please know how sorry I am. Your consent is more important than anything. I broke that. Just hope I didn't break your trust. -Joel Miller.’

At the bottom of the envelope are ten crisp one hundred dollar bills. 

Next Chapter

[zvaigzdelasas]

A court in Germany has overturned a Europe-wide travel ban imposed by German authorities on Dr. Ghassan Abu Sitta, the British Palestinian surgeon who spent weeks saving lives in Gaza at the beginning of Israel’s ongoing genocide.

In recent weeks, Abu Sitta has been barred from entering France and the Netherlands in order to speak about the Israeli war crimes he witnessed during his 43 days working as a doctor under Israel’s savage and indiscriminate bombardment.[...]

The draconian German ban constituted “a serious breach of freedom of movement and expression in Europe and now a judge has ruled that the travel ban should be overturned,” said the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP) and European Legal Support Centre (ELSC), which assisted in the case.

“This is a significant victory for freedom of speech and a significant turning point in challenging the chilling environment that many Palestinian human rights advocates have to operate in,” the two civil rights groups added.

The ban on Abu Sitta had also drawn criticism from Human Rights Watch, which asserted that the “attempts to prevent him from sharing his experience treating patients in Gaza risks undermining Germany’s commitment to protect and facilitate freedom of expression and assembly and to nondiscrimination.”

15 May 24

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Holy CRAP the UN Cybercrime Treaty is a nightmare

Support me this summer on the Clarion Write-A-Thon and help raise money for the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop!

If there's one thing I learned from all my years as an NGO delegate to UN specialized agencies, it's that UN treaties are dangerous, liable to capture by unholy alliances of authoritarian states and rapacious global capitalists.

Most of my UN work was on copyright and "paracopyright," and my track record was 2:0; I helped kill a terrible treaty (the WIPO Broadcast Treaty) and helped pass a great one (the Marrakesh Treaty on the rights of people with disabilities to access copyrighted works):

https://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/ip/marrakesh/

It's been many years since I had to shave and stuff myself into a suit and tie and go to Geneva, and I don't miss it – and thankfully, I have colleagues who do that work, better than I ever did. Yesterday, I heard from one such EFF colleague, Katitza Rodriguez, about the Cybercrime Treaty, which is about to pass, and which is, to put it mildly, terrifying:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/07/un-cybercrime-draft-convention-dangerously-expands-state-surveillance-powers

Look, cybercrime is a real thing, from pig butchering to ransomware, and there's real, global harms that can be attributed to it. Cybercrime is transnational, making it hard for cops in any one jurisdiction to handle it. So there's a reason to think about formal international standards for fighting cybercrime.

But that's not what's in the Cybercrime Treaty.

Here's a quick sketch of the significant defects in the Cybercrime Treaty.

The treaty has an extremely loose definition of cybercrime, and that looseness is deliberate. In authoritarian states like China and Russia (whose delegations are the driving force behind this treaty), "cybercrime" has come to mean "anything the government disfavors, if you do it with a computer." "Cybercrime" can mean online criticism of the government, or professions of religious belief, or material supporting LGBTQ rights.

Nations that sign up to the Cybercrime Treaty will be obliged to help other nations fight "cybercrime" – however those nations define it. They'll be required to provide surveillance data – for example, by forcing online services within their borders to cough up their users' private data, or even to pressure employees to install back-doors in their systems for ongoing monitoring.

These obligations to aid in surveillance are mandatory, but much of the Cybercrime Treaty is optional. What's optional? The human rights safeguards. Member states "should" or "may" create standards for legality, necessity, proportionality, non-discrimination, and legitimate purpose. But even if they do, the treaty can oblige them to assist in surveillance orders that originate with other states that decided not to create these standards.

When that happens, the citizens of the affected states may never find out about it. There are eight articles in the treaty that establish obligations for indefinite secrecy regarding surveillance undertaken on behalf of other signatories. That means that your government may be asked to spy on you and the people you love, they may order employees of tech companies to backdoor your account and devices, and that fact will remain secret forever. Forget challenging these sneak-and-peek orders in court – you won't even know about them:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/06/un-cybercrime-draft-convention-blank-check-unchecked-surveillance-abuses

Now here's the kicker: while this treaty creates broad powers to fight things governments dislike, simply by branding them "cybercrime," it actually undermines the fight against cybercrime itself. Most cybercrime involves exploiting security defects in devices and services – think of ransomware attacks – and the Cybercrime Treaty endangers the security researchers who point out these defects, creating grave criminal liability for the people we rely on to warn us when the tech vendors we rely upon have put us at risk.

This is the granddaddy of tech free speech fights. Since the paper tape days, researchers who discovered defects in critical systems have been intimidated, threatened, sued and even imprisoned for blowing the whistle. Tech giants insist that they should have a veto over who can publish true facts about the defects in their products, and dress up this demand as concern over security. "If you tell bad guys about the mistakes we made, they will exploit those bugs and harm our users. You should tell us about those bugs, sure, but only we can decide when it's the right time for our users and customers to find out about them."

When it comes to warnings about the defects in their own products, corporations have an irreconcilable conflict of interest. Time and again, we've seen corporations rationalize their way into suppressing or ignoring bug reports. Sometimes, they simply delay the warning until they've concluded a merger or secured a board vote on executive compensation.

Sometimes, they decide that a bug is really a feature – like when Facebook decided not to do anything about the fact that anyone could enumerate the full membership of any Facebook group (including, for example, members of a support group for people with cancer). This group enumeration bug was actually a part of the company's advertising targeting system, so they decided to let it stand, rather than re-engineer their surveillance advertising business.

The idea that users are safer when bugs are kept secret is called "security through obscurity" and no one believes in it – except corporate executives. As Bruce Schneier says, "Anyone can design a system that is so secure that they themselves can't break it. That doesn't mean it's secure – it just means that it's secure against people stupider than the system's designer":

The history of massive, brutal cybersecurity breaches is an unbroken string of heartbreakingly naive confidence in security through obscurity:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/05/battery-vampire/#drained

But despite this, the idea that some bugs should be kept secret and allowed to fester has powerful champions: a public-private partnership of corporate execs, government spy agencies and cyber-arms dealers. Agencies like the NSA and CIA have huge teams toiling away to discover defects in widely used products. These defects put the populations of their home countries in grave danger, but rather than reporting them, the spy agencies hoard these defects.

The spy agencies have an official doctrine defending this reckless practice: they call it "NOBUS," which stands for "No One But Us." As in: "No one but us is smart enough to find these bugs, so we can keep them secret and use them attack our adversaries, without worrying about those adversaries using them to attack the people we are sworn to protect."

NOBUS is empirically wrong. In the 2010s, we saw a string of leaked NSA and CIA cyberweapons. One of these, "Eternalblue" was incorporated into off-the-shelf ransomware, leading to the ransomware epidemic that rages even today. You can thank the NSA's decision to hoard – rather than disclose and patch – the Eternalblue exploit for the ransoming of cities like Baltimore, hospitals up and down the country, and an oil pipeline:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EternalBlue

The leak of these cyberweapons didn't just provide raw material for the world's cybercriminals, it also provided data for researchers. A study of CIA and NSA NOBUS defects found that there was a one-in-five chance of a bug that had been hoarded by a spy agency being independently discovered by a criminal, weaponized, and released into the wild.

Not every government has the wherewithal to staff its own defect-mining operation, but that's where the private sector steps in. Cyber-arms dealers like the NSO Group find or buy security defects in widely used products and services and turn them into products – military-grade cyberweapons that are used to attack human rights groups, opposition figures, and journalists:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/24/breaking-the-news/#kingdom

A good Cybercrime Treaty would recognize the perverse incentives that create the coalition to keep us from knowing which products we can trust and which ones we should avoid. It would shut down companies like the NSO Group, ban spy agencies from hoarding defects, and establish an absolute defense for security researchers who reveal true facts about defects.

Instead, the Cybercrime Treaty creates new obligations on signatories to help other countries' cops and courts silence and punish security researchers who make these true disclosures, ensuring that spies and criminals will know which products aren't safe to use, but we won't (until it's too late):

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/06/if-not-amended-states-must-reject-flawed-draft-un-cybercrime-convention

A Cybercrime Treaty is a good idea, and even this Cybercrime Treaty could be salvaged. The member-states have it in their power to accept proposed revisions that would protect human rights and security researchers, narrow the definition of "cybercrime," and mandate transparency. They could establish member states' powers to refuse illegitimate requests from other countries:

https://www.eff.org/press/releases/media-briefing-eff-partners-warn-un-member-states-are-poised-approve-dangerou

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/2024/07/23/expanded-spying-powers/#in-russia-crime-cybers-you

Image: EFF https://www.eff.org/files/banner_library/cybercrime-2024-2b.jpg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us/