#state sanctioned abuse

[vague-humanoid]

A few months after arriving, she said, she was raped by the man who wrote the letter of invitation that had gotten her out of the war zone.

“She was sleeping and he woke her up and roughly dragged her into his room,” says Olga Udovichenko, whom Svetlana later approached for help at the Volunteer Help Center for Refugees from Ukraine in Haifa. “She suffered deeply from both the war and the rape — but here she could barely get any assistance from the authorities. Instead of help she encountered a maze of bureaucracy and lost any motivation she had to hold the man to account and seek justice.”

The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 is estimated to have killed more than 40,000 civilians and displaced up to 30 million more. As the war surpasses 300 days, 17.7 million Ukrainians around the world need humanitarian help and protection, according to the United Nations.

Svetlana is one of over 47,000 Ukrainians — the vast majority of them women — who traveled to Israel since the start of the invasion but who are not eligible for citizenship under Israel’s Law of Return, according to Israel’s Welfare Ministry. Of these, only approximately 15,000 currently remain in Israel, with the rest having chosen to leave. Not a single Ukrainian fleeing the war has been accorded refugee status by Israel.

A Times of Israel investigation has documented cases of rape, sexual harassment, workplace exploitation and other abuses faced in Israel by these women, many of whom have had their homes destroyed and lost their livelihoods. At least one of the women’s lives ended in death by suicide.

Many of these abuses remain at best under the radar of the authorities or at worst willfully ignored, leaving the victims in a cycle of violence and poverty that only deepens the trauma they have endured to date. The perpetrators remain free to commit further crimes.

[benbamboozled]

You know how I know Jason Todd isn’t a cop?

Because he kills rapists and abusers.

Everybody knows cops protect their own.

[swiftsnowmane]

In what the Baha'i International Community is calling an "escalating pattern of persecution against the Baha’is in Iran," 39 more incidents targeting the community have been reported in recent days, affecting mostly women.

Ten women Baha’is, mostly young, were arrested while 26 additional individuals, 16 of whom were also women, have been sentenced to a total of 126 years in prison.

The 10 Baha’i women were arrested in Isfahan, in central Iran, earlier this week. Three other Baha’is were arrested in Yazd and three more have had court hearings and await sentencing.

The arrests took place after homes were raided and the personal property of several individuals was confiscated, including electronics, books, cash and gold. More than 10 agents were reported to have raided the home of one of the women during her arrest.

“Every one of the Baha’i individuals arrested, and whose homes were raided by the Iranian government, indeed every Baha’i in Iran, has a lifelong story of persecution which has affected every facet of their lives. These stories are a chilling testament to decades of heartless persecution against an entire community, only for their beliefs,” said Simin Fahandej, Representative of the Baha’i International Community to the United Nations in Geneva. “And as we see women in Iran targeted in general, Baha’i women face even greater persecution, not only as women but also as Baha’is, further demonstrating how, today, all Iranians face persecution and discrimination only for daring to stand up for justice and equality.”

“The international community must hold the Iranian government accountable for its human rights violations,” Fahandej said. The 10 women arrested this week have committed no crimes. The dozens sentenced to years in prison are also innocent. All they want is to serve their society. But instead of their contributions being welcomed, they are put behind bars, and the Iranian government deprives its entire society of some of the most capable individuals in its society.”

The latest arrests and prison sentences follow more than a year of intensified attacks on Iran’s Baha’i community. Dozens of other Baha’is have been either arrested, tried, summoned to begin prison sentences, barred from higher education or earning a livelihood over recent months. And in August the Baha’i International Community reported that 180 Baha’is had been targeted—including one 90-year-old man, Jamaloddin Khanjani, who was detained and interrogated for two weeks.

Two other Baha’i women, Mahvash Sabet and Fariba Kamalabadi—who along with Khanjani and four other Baha’is spent a decade in prison from 2008 to 2018—were re-arrested in July 2022 and are now each serving a second 10-year jail term.

See also: https://www.bic.org/news/twenty-six-bahais-iran-sentenced-126-years-prison-10-bahai-women-arrested-isfahan-and-3-bahais-yazd

[anotherpapercut]

this person I know has decided shes autistic after having clearly done absolutely 0 research outside of tik tok and just got her fucking certification to work in an ABA center. so she decided to erroneously claim she's autistic and then immediately go into practice abusing autistic children. fucking great

[marxism-leninism-meowism]

tired of the “every human is equal and deserves the most basic amount of respect EXCEPT—” people. like no, i don’t care what your excuses about this group of people are, i don’t care if they’ve committed the most vile crimes imaginable, i don’t care if they’ve traumatized you, i don’t care if they do things you think are disgusting or deplorable. every human deserves life, free will, self-identity, and all their basic needs met. the death penalty shouldn’t exist for ANYONE and incarcerated individuals should not be slaves.

[first-only]

Tell me if this sounds fucked up to you

So I live in a country, UK for reference, where hitting your children is legal, if it's a 'reasonable punishment'. But, any kink that can or could leave a mark, such as impact play or knife play is illegal, and is classed as assault. (Note that this could technically applying to things that are as vanilla as hickeys)

So literal child abuse is fine, but consensual kink is not

extremely fucked up

good old The state has a monopoly on violence shit

you dont get to consent to stuff they dont approve of, but if they've deemed you unable to consent in general, they do it for you. Under extremely arbitrary rules of course, because who can properly legislate what a 'reasonable punishment' is or what warrants it.

Presumably this is to protect victims from being coerced into saying abuse was consensual, but if you dont have the option to say yes, the no is also questionable. Not to mention then they go and coerce the actual victim out of having an option to say no.

Extremely fucked up. Also extremely poorly legislated.

[ex-foster]

An interesting discussion on the WPATH files. Mia is such an eloquent speaker. I really appreciate her perspective on this topic. The WPATH files are absolutely horrific. I truly hope that these people are able to organize a class action lawsuit.

[vague-humanoid]

[intersectionalpraxis]

"End the genocide. End the occupation." [@/theslowfactory on X. May 16, 2024.]

Slow Factory created an infograph attached above in this X post with pictures/icons above the following information: zionism is: genocide, starvation as a weapon, 3 million displaced since 1948, ethnic cleansing, state sanctioned terrorism, ecocide, supremacy, rupture of International Law, domicide, scholasticide, settler colonialism, 40,000 plus murdered since October 7th, crimes against humanity, 9,000 Palestinian hostages held with no charges, illegal land annexation, battle-testing murder tech on sieged and concentrated population, facism, torture and abuse of Palestinian hostages, segregation, 300 Palestinian children in cages/year.

[getpaulhoward]

It feels like a good time to once again share this Facebook group I created over 6 years ago... April is #ChildAbusePreventionMonth so the timing couldn't be better but more importantly, another victim of Sharon Jonas has come forward!!  I’m happy that he’s willing and brave enough to share his truth, but I’m also glad that he doesn't have to feel like he’s alone any longer.

The most important goal at the beginning was shutting down the state sanctioned Sacramento daycare, and stopping Sharon from being around susceptible populations (which we achieved).  A public record was created, the truth made known for anyone to see, and we stopped her from hurting anyone else.

Quickly after achieving these goals though, it became super important to me to find other victims from the three decades plus Sharon’s at home “child care” was running, because I know there are many, many more out there.  Alternatively, I wanted to drop “bread crumbs” if anyone should go searching, hopefully helping them to quickly find that they are not alone.  My post on reddit almost seven years ago shows that it works! 

 The journey is personal to every victim of abuse but I want them to know they are not alone and if they are willing, the world needs to hear their truths.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1346222035498623

[nyancrimew]

This is a very difficult discussion to have and a lot of people are going to wrongfully accuse you of defending pedos and rapists, because people think that saying "state sanctioned murder is bad, even against bad people, and should instead be replaced with thorough rehabilitation" is the same as saying "all victims of pedos and rapists should coexist with their abusers and totally forgive them" -- forgiveness is not conditional for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation isn't redemption. Nobody should have to forgive their abusers but that doesn't mean that the correct alternative is state sanctioned murder

yup exactly!

[traumacodedtransbitch]

desperately want to commit some fucking violence because of how much society and the general public are just devolving and are willing to see our basic human fucking rights be sacrificed and demolished like fuck all of you for helping to accelerate this shit not like you ever LISTENED

[aronarchy]

Why we don’t like it when children hit us back

To all the children who have ever been told to “respect” someone that hated them.

March 21, 2023

Even those of us that are disturbed by the thought of how widespread corporal punishment still is in all ranks of society are uncomfortable at the idea of a child defending themself using violence against their oppressors and abusers. A child who hits back proves that the adults “were right all along,” that their violence was justified. Even as they would cheer an adult victim for defending themself fiercely.

Even those “child rights advocates” imagine the right child victim as one who takes it without ever stopping to love “its” owners. Tear-stained and afraid, the child is too innocent to be hit in a guilt-free manner. No one likes to imagine the Brat as Victim—the child who does, according to adultist logic, deserve being hit, because they follow their desires, because they walk the world with their head high, because they talk back, because they are loud, because they are unapologetically here, and resistant to being cast in the role of guest of a world that is just not made for them.

If we are against corporal punishment, the brat is our gotcha, the proof that it is actually not that much of an injustice. The brat unsettles us, so much that the “bad seed” is a stock character in horror, a genre that is much permeated by the adult gaze (defined as “the way children are viewed, represented and portrayed by adults; and finally society’s conception of children and the way this is perpetuated within institutions, and inherent in all interactions with children”), where the adult fear for the subversion of the structures that keep children under control is very much represented.

It might be very well true that the Brat has something unnatural and sinister about them in this world, as they are at constant war with everything that has ever been created, since everything that has been created has been built with the purpose of subjugating them. This is why it feels unnatural to watch a child hitting back instead of cowering. We feel like it’s not right. We feel like history is staring back at us, and all the horror we felt at any rebel and wayward child who has ever lived, we are feeling right now for that reject of the construct of “childhood innocence.” The child who hits back is at such clash with our construction of childhood because we defined violence in all of its forms as the province of the adult, especially the adult in authority.

The adult has an explicit sanction by the state to do violence to the child, while the child has both a social and legal prohibition to even think of defending themself with their fists. Legislation such as “parent-child tort immunity” makes this clear. The adult’s designed place is as the one who hits, and has a right and even an encouragement to do so, the one who acts, as the person. The child’s designed place is as the one who gets hit, and has an obligation to accept that, as the one who suffers acts, as the object. When a child forcibly breaks out of their place, they are reversing the supposed “natural order” in a radical way.

This is why, for the youth liberationist, there should be nothing more beautiful to witness that the child who snaps. We have an unique horror for parricide, and a terrible indifference at the 450 children murdered every year by their parents in just the USA, without even mentioning all the indirect suicides caused by parental abuse. As a Psychology Today article about so-called “parricide” puts it:

Unlike adults who kill their parents, teenagers become parricide offenders when conditions in the home are intolerable but their alternatives are limited. Unlike adults, kids cannot simply leave. The law has made it a crime for young people to run away. Juveniles who commit parricide usually do consider running away, but many do not know any place where they can seek refuge. Those who do run are generally picked up and returned home, or go back on their own: Surviving on the streets is hardly a realistic alternative for youths with meager financial resources, limited education, and few skills.

By far, the severely abused child is the most frequently encountered type of offender. According to Paul Mones, a Los Angeles attorney who specializes in defending adolescent parricide offenders, more than 90 percent have been abused by their parents. In-depth portraits of such youths have frequently shown that they killed because they could no longer tolerate conditions at home. These children were psychologically abused by one or both parents and often suffered physical, sexual, and verbal abuse as well—and witnessed it given to others in the household. They did not typically have histories of severe mental illness or of serious and extensive delinquent behavior. They were not criminally sophisticated. For them, the killings represented an act of desperation—the only way out of a family situation they could no longer endure.

- Heide, Why Kids Kill Parents, 1992.

Despite these being the most frequent conditions of “parricide,” it still brings unique disgust to think about it for most people. The sympathy extended to murdering parents is never extended even to the most desperate child, who chose to kill to not be killed. They chose to stop enduring silently, and that was their greatest crime; that is the crime of the child who hits back. Hell, children aren’t even supposed to talk back. They are not supposed to be anything but grateful for the miserable pieces of space that adults carve out in a world hostile to children for them to live following adult rules. It isn’t rare for children to notice the adult monopoly on violence and force when they interact with figures like teachers, and the way they use words like “respect.” In fact, this social dynamic has been noticed quite often:

Sometimes people use “respect” to mean “treating someone like a person” and sometimes they use “respect” to mean “treating someone like an authority” and sometimes people who are used to being treated like an authority say “if you won’t respect me I won’t respect you” and they mean “if you won’t treat me like an authority I won’t treat you like a person” and they think they’re being fair but they aren’t, and it’s not okay.

(https://soycrates.tumblr.com/post/115633137923/stimmyabby-sometimes-people-use-respect-to-mean)

But it has received almost no condemnation in the public eye. No voices have raised to contrast the adult monopoly on violence towards child bodies and child minds. No voices have raised to praise the child who hits back. Because they do deserve praise. Because the child who sets their foot down and says this belongs to me, even when it’s something like their own body that they are claiming, is committing one of the most serious crimes against adult society, who wants them dispossessed.

Sources:

“The Adult Gaze: a tool of control and oppression,” https://livingwithoutschool.com/2021/07/29/the-adult-gaze-a-tool-of-control-and-oppression

“Filicide,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filicide

[thecruellestmonth]

Does the mass-murdering criminal Jason "Red Hood" Todd canonically support the death penalty?

No, I can't find evidence that Red Hood supports the death penalty.

There is a difference between murder (illegal) and state-sanctioned killing (legal). Red Hood commits unlawful homicide. The death penalty is lawful homicide. Jason is a murderer. The death penalty is not legally considered murder. Commissioner Jim Gordon is a decorated military veteran, not a murderer.

Committing violence ≠ wanting the government to have the right to commit that violence. Batman and his allies brutalize criminals; they don't necessarily support the state brutalizing criminals. Red Hood kills some criminals; Red Hood doesn't necessarily support the state killing criminals. Catwoman doesn't necessarily support the state committing burglary. Et cetera.

The death penalty is administered by the criminal legal system. Jason does not like the criminal legal system (see some of his run-ins with the police). He grew up as an impoverished child who didn't believe in the system, he was raised by Batman to believe that vigilantes can make a difference that the system can't, and he became an adult criminal who still doesn't believe in the system. He's not interested in using the criminal legal system. He isn't interested in giving more powers and privileges to an abusive system that has wronged him and the people he cares about.

When Jason started up his villain business, the death penalty was legal in Gotham City. (See Detective Comics #644, The Joker: Devil's Advocate, Batgirl 2000 #19, Punchline #1.) The death penalty was also in place during his Robin run. Jason didn't argue in favor of the state having the right to kill prisoners, and the death penalty never addressed his complaints about the status quo.

Jason has rescued people from wrongful* imprisonment and the death penalty. Again, based on his own firsthand experiences, he has many reasons to believe that the system is broken. *Some of us would argue that locking any people in prisons tends to be wrongful and inhumane by default, but we could choose to accept the standard premises of crime fiction as without endorsing it as moral instruction.

Jason Todd is a criminal: a mass murderer, a terrorist, a villain. He does evil. He doesn't represent or support the legal system. He probably has the least political capital out of all the Batfamily-associated characters. He doesn't promote the death penalty. He commits murder—illegally, as a criminal, state-unapproved.

Some recent comics related to the topic:

Gotham Nights (2020) #11 "One Minute After Midnight", written by Marc Guggenheim

Red Hood and Nightwing team up to investigate the case of a man wrongly convicted of murder and sentenced to be executed. Both of them disapprove of how the broken criminal legal system botched this case.

Joker: The Man Who Stopped Laughing #8 (2023), written by Matthew Rosenberg

"You familiar with Hannah Arendt's concept of Schreibtischtäter? Desk murderers? It's people who use the state to kill for them, so they don't have to get their hands dirty."

[sayruq]

A special State Department panel recommended months ago that Secretary of State Antony Blinken disqualify multiple Israeli military and police units from receiving U.S. aid after reviewing allegations that they committed serious human rights abuses. But Blinken has failed to act on the proposal in the face of growing international criticism of the Israeli military’s conduct in Gaza, according to current and former State Department officials. The incidents under review mostly took place in the West Bank and occurred before Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel. They include reports of extrajudicial killings by the Israeli Border Police; an incident in which a battalion gagged, handcuffed and left an elderly Palestinian American man for dead; and an allegation that interrogators tortured and raped a teenager who had been accused of throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails. Recommendations for action against Israeli units were sent to Blinken in December, according to one person familiar with the memo. “They’ve been sitting in his briefcase since then,” another official said.

[fanfictionbard]

Something I greatly appreciate in Hazbin Hotel is how western facist and imperialist coded the angels are.

You have Heaven, a place only for “good” people and are conventionally seen as “the good guys”. These “good guys” regularly launch attacks with significantly stronger weaponry on Hell, a place conventionally seen as “the bad guys”. But there are countless parts in the show where we see the angels and demons not being all that different. There are probably several posts of how Hazbin characters in Hell (and some Helluva Boss characters) mirror those in Heaven, so I won’t get too much into it here. But when you boil down to it, the biggest differences between Heaven and Hell are each place’s living conditions, and how they are typically viewed.

Next you have the Exorcists, a reflection of the military. Adam, patriarchal misogynist who leads the Extermination, and feels comfortable enough to say that he finds the carnage fun. Then we have Lute’s zealous faith in Heaven always being right and her unfettered disgust towards anyone in Hell. We find all of these traits in imperialism and facism: the dehumanization of an entire country’s worth of people to the point where killing them off is seen not just necessary, but entertaining, and the delusional righteousness in the impeccability of the facist state.

Not to mention the hypocrisy of killing a thousand of “the enemy” is something to laugh about and celebrate, but the minute one of your own gets killed? By the so-called “enemy”? Even if it’s in self-defense? Suddenly it’s a serious problem that has to be met with swift action.

And when you have the audacity to not want to commit these acts of violence anymore, like Vaggie? You’re discarded as a traitor to your country and your people, and lumped in with “the enemy”.

And Sera, like politicians feigning compassion, claim “I made this decision with a heavy heart”, and “there was no other option”. But that doesn’t change that she’s the one who gave the green light to all of this. As a friend of mine and fellow hazbin fan said, the Extermination is state-sanctioned abuse.

And finally, we have Emily, who never knew any world other than Heaven, and who’s only knowledge of Hell came from sources from Heaven. She was the only one who genuinely wanted to hear Charlie and Vaggie out, who actually questioned why Angel Dust couldn’t be redeemed if he fit all of Adam’s criteria for getting into Heaven. And when she learned of the Extermination’s existence, she joined Charlie in calling out the Angels on their bullshit. Emily’s actions in episode 6 reiterate that this is not a “complex” issue, but one of basic compassion and decency.

Also I wanna note the look on Adam and Lute’s faces when Charlie and Emily sing “if angels can do whatever and remain in the sky.” They’re fucking angry. Because is there anything more infuriating to a facist than getting called out on their hypocrisy and double standard?