#constitutional misconduct | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

decolonize-the-left · 2 months

Text

GENERAL STRIKE TIME BABEY. READ THE WHOLE POST.

While we're all mad at government sending money to Israel that police budgets are so inflated because of how often they pay settlements.

And also that it's a verified fact that our police train with Israeli soldiers. Remember when they were black bagging people in PDX? It reminded me of this ex-Israeli soldier talking about how they'd do the same thing to innocent Palestinians just to terrorize them and their neighbors. It was intentional terrorism when they did it.

Police budgets pay for all that.

Correction, we pay.

To put it more bluntly,

We pay for them to kill and terrorize people.

Just as our taxes pay for the deaths of Black and Brown people all over the world from Turtle Island to Sudan and Palestine.

In Dec. 2022, Louisville Metro Government agreed to pay Walker $2 million to settle lawsuits against the city. Metro government previously paid a $12 million settlement to Taylor’s family in Sept. 2020

We paid for Breonna Taylor's death.

And her murderers were never arrested btw. Not that there aren't still people trying to arrest them of course. But our money paid for their lawyers and wouldn't you know it, no charges have stuck.

Four years to the day after Breonna Taylor’s death, federal prosecutors are moving forward with a re-trial of one of the officers involved in the botched raid that ended her life. At a status conference Wednesday, U.S. District Court Judge Rebecca Grady Jennings scheduled Brett Hankison’s final pre-trial hearing for September 13th. His re-trial is scheduled to begin on Oct. 15. In November of last year, Hankinson was tried for violating the Constitutional rights of Breonna Taylor, her boyfriend, and three neighbors when he fired through two covered windows during the raid. Prosecutors argued he used excessive force when he shot into the apartment complex blindly. Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, had fired at officers executing the search, claiming he thought they were intruders.

And Myles Cosgrove?

Yeah we're paying him to terrorize more people. He got a job as a fucking sheriff's deputy.

Myles Cosgrove, the former Louisville police officer, who was fired for fatally shooting Breonna Taylor in a botched 2020 police raid and hired earlier this year as a sheriff’s deputy in Carroll County, rammed a resident’s truck with his cruiser Monday and then pointed a gun at the owner and several bystanders, witnesses said.

Witnesses told The Courier Journal that Cosgrove barreled into Happy Hollow Private Resort Park trailer park at a high rate of speed without his emergency lights on, then struck William Joshua Short’s pickup truck with such force that it sent the vehicle flying into a building, breaking off two cinder blocks.

And Johnathan Mattingly wrote a fucking book about it to make money off of his role in her murder. $15 on Amazon.

He also wanted to sue Kenneth Walker, Breonna's boyfriend. You know why? For damages and injuries he sustained while killing Breonna Taylor.

WE PAID FOR ALL THAT. ALL OF IT.

Our power is in our dollar.

American politics and officials don't care for our lives. It's why they're content to watch us protest for months. Because we're still going to work. We are the worker ants simply fulfilling our duty, receiving the bare minimum to survive for our labor.

We're still building their bombs. Paying our taxes, so much that hardly any of us could afford more than rent.

We are just drones fulfilling our purpose to the upper class who doesn't give a shit about us beyond what we do for them and how little we will do it for.

If we want change we're gonna have to stop working. We're going to have to deprive them of products they sell, of our taxes, of our low cost labor.

And the strike that UAW is planning in May 2028 has inspired a lot of others to start looking at the opportunity to join in.

If you haven't heard of it yet, a strike is when workers organize and stop showing up for work. And a general strike is a mass strike across various industries around similar demands or bargaining positions.

There have been multiple calls for a general strike since then, predominantly from individuals and groups on social media, which has often resulted in confusion about what a general strike would actually look like. To be clear, a general strike is not a protest or a rally, a single picket line, or a boycott. It is, as I’ve previously defined, “a labor action in which a significant number of workers from a number of different industries who comprise a majority of the total labor force within a particular city, region, or country come together to take collective action.”

Throughout history, workers have used this tactic as a nuclear option to shut down entire cities when needed, including Philadelphia in 1835, Seattle in 1919, and beyond.[...]

If even four or five of the unions representing the workers mentioned above banded together in a nationwide general strike, the entire country would grind to a halt. When Shawn Fain asks his fellow unions to set the timer for May 2028, what he’s really saying is, get ready to shut sh*t down and level the playing field between bosses and workers once and for all.

JOIN A UNION. AND TALK ABOUT THIS.

And make one of the demands out to be an end of American support to countries participating in apartheid and genocide.

End the taxes for police budgets and settlements. If they want police departments so bad then they should FIND funding for themselves like the government makes USPS do.

One of the biggest pushbacks we hear is that there is never any official backing for calls to a general strike. Well here it is! Make sure you tell EVERYONE

This could be a global strike if other countries choose to participate on the same date

No, I don't think Palestine has 3 years so in the mean time join a union, keep protesting, start rioting, answer Every call to action coming from a Palestine and Sudan and the DRC and sign this strike card

130 notes · View notes

robertreich · 10 months

Video

youtube

How to Fix a Broken Supreme Court

The Supreme Court is off the rails — and it’s only going to get worse unless we fight to reform it.

Trust levels and job approval ratings for the Court have hit historic lows due in large part to a growing number of ethics scandals.

Here are THREE key reforms Congress should enact to restore legitimacy to our nation’s highest court:

1) Establish a code of ethics

Every other federal judge has to sign on to a code of ethics — except for Supreme Court justices.

This makes no sense. Judges on the highest Court should be held to the highest ethical standards.

Congress should impose a code of ethics on Supreme Court justices. At the very least, any ethical code should ban justices from receiving personal gifts from political donors and anyone with business before the Court, clarify when justices with conflicts of interest should remove themselves from cases, prohibit justices from trading individual stocks, and establish a formal process for investigating misconduct.

2) Enact term limits

Article III of the Constitution says judges may “hold their office during good behavior,” but it does not explicitly give Supreme Court Justices lifetime tenure on the highest court — even though that’s become the norm.

Term limits would prevent unelected justices from accumulating too much power over the course of their tenure — and would help defuse what has become an increasingly divisive confirmation process.

Congress should limit Supreme Court terms to 18-years, after which justices move to lower courts.

3) Expand the Court

The Constitution does not limit the Supreme Court to nine justices. In fact, Congress has changed the size of the Court seven times. It should do so again in order to remedy the extreme imbalance of today’s Supreme Court.

Now some may decry this as “radical court packing.” That’s pure rubbish. The real court-packing occurred when Senate Republicans refused to even consider a Democratic nominee to the Supreme Court on the fake pretext that it was too close to the 2016 election, but then confirmed a Republican nominee just days before the 2020 election.

Rather than allow Republicans to continue exploiting the system, expanding the Supreme Court would actually UN-pack the court. This isn’t radical. It’s essential.

Now, I won’t sugar-coat this. Making these reforms happen won’t be easy. We’re up against big monied interests who will fight to keep their control of our nation’s most important Court.

But these key reforms have significant support from the American people, who have lost trust in the court.

The Supreme Court derives its strength not from the use of force or political power, but from the trust of the people. With neither the sword nor the purse, trust is all it has.

#youtube #politics #video #videos #Supreme Court #Donald Trump #SCOTUS #corruption

578 notes · View notes

frevandrest · 1 year

Note

What would you say it’s the biggest misconception about French revolution?

If I have to choose ONE thing, I’d say it would be that what is known as the Terror was not a specific government policy and that it was retroactively constructed as such for political gain of a specific group of people.

Expanding from that: what happened in 1793-1794 should be viewed as a state of emergency as a response to war – while not everything that happened is directly related to the war, this is a key component that is often missed when discussing the Terror. Many people don’t even know that France was at war and that the state of emergency due to this is a common thing that happens at the state of war. Things like martial law introduced, more powers to the government, stricter laws (particularly for military misconduct and treason), suppression of the constitution and civil rights and freedoms – all of this is a pretty standard set of measures that happen during wartime. (True for frev, World War II, current war in Ukraine, etc.) And this is also true for suppression of any inside rebellions that go against the war effort and the government. Nobody says that people have to like and support what happened during what we know as the Terror, but it is important to contextualize it correctly. (And nobody says that what happens during emergencies is nice necessarily - it's just that state of emergency is kind of a standard response to the war situation and has to be viewed as such, vs as some sort of a special case that happened during Terror because of evil revolutionaries/Robespierre/etc).

And also related to this, it’s important to say that while they did manage to win the war (at that point), the way that these measures were implemented was faulty. It was faulty not because the government had so much control over France, but quite the opposite – the biggest problem was that they had very little control. The infrastructure was not there, the institutions were not there; they were basically inventing/perfecting the modern government system on a large territory that just was not ready for it yet (both in institutional AND cultural sense). It was not possible to control properly what was going on. They tried (and some of those attempts were better than the others, some were bad, some were horrible, etc.) but they had no proper control. The situation during Terror was more akin to anarchy than a powerful authoritarian state (led by Robespierre) that is often imagined. Everyone implemented emergency measures in their local community how they saw fit, which led to some of the worst crimes committed during this period. And part of the problem were vague instructions from Paris (so it’s not like they don’t have their own share of responsibility). So, it was more of a chaotic mess + war with half of Europe + counter revolutionary conspiracies inside and outside (another misconception was that revolutionaries were paranoid about this – nah, this shit was real. The problem was that they didn’t always go after the right people who were to blame for conspiracies, but conspiracies def existed).

#ask #anonymous #frev #french revolution

572 notes · View notes

tomorrowusa · 11 months

Text

Don't think that patiently explaining the legalities and details of the Trump indictment will change the minds of the MAGA crowd about it. Those folks, like Trump, simply don't believe in the rule of law.

There may be some Republicans who secretly believe the charges have merit but are scared shitless of what may happen if they say so in public.

A reasonably healthy party might give its indicted leader some benefit of the doubt, while calling for judgment to be withheld before he has his day in court. But Republicans correctly understand that their party will consider Trump an innocent martyr regardless. The sickness of the Republican Party as it is presently constituted is that there is no conceivable set of facts that would permit it to acknowledge Trump’s guilt. What has brought the party to this point is the convergence of its decades-long descent into paranoia with its idiosyncratic embrace of a career criminal.

Yep, the GOP has been drifting in this direction for a long time. Trump's emergence finally nudged them into being a full-blown paranoid cult.

The Republican Party’s internal culture has been shaped by what Richard Hofstadter famously described as “the paranoid style” in American politics. Hofstadter specifically attributed this description to the conservative movement, which, at the time, was a marginalized faction on the far right but has since completely taken control of the party and imposed its warped mentality on half of America. To its adherents, every incremental expansion of the welfare state is incipient communism, each new expansion of social liberalism the final death blow to family and church. Lurking behind these endless defeats, they discern a vast plot by shadowy elites. In recent years, the Republican Party’s long rightward march on policy has ground to a halt, and it has instead radicalized on a different dimension: ruthlessness. Attributing their political travails to weakness, Republicans converged on the belief that their only chance to pull back from the precipice of final defeat is to discard their scruples. A willingness to do or say anything to win was the essence of Trump’s appeal, an amorality some Republicans embraced gleefully and others reluctantly. Trump, by dint of his obsessive consumption of right-wing media, grasped where the party was going more quickly than its leaders did. This aspect of Trump’s rise was historically necessary. All Trump did was to hasten it along.

This is Trump's legal philosophy (if you want to call it that) in a nutshell...

Trump was not raised in a traditional conservative milieu. He came into a seedy, corrupt world in which politicians could be bought off and laws were suggestions. He worked with mobsters and absorbed their view of law enforcement: People who follow the law are suckers, and the worst thing in the world is a rat.

Trump is basically a petty mobster. That explains why he hates the FBI.

It is the interplay of the two forces, the paranoia of the right and the seamy criminality of the right’s current champion, that has brought the party to this point. Trump’s endlessly repeated “witch hunt” meme blends together the mobster’s hatred of the FBI with the conservative’s fear of the bureaucrat. His loyalists have been trained to either deny any evidence of misconduct by their side or rationalize it as a necessary countermeasure against their enemies. The concept of “crime” has been redefined in the conservative mind to mean activities by Democrats. They insist upon Trump’s innocence because they believe a Republican, axiomatically, cannot be a criminal.

That Manichean view fits in well with the radical Christian fundamentalist tendency in the GOP. Though instead of Jesus Christ, the credo of Republicans is to accept Donald Trump as their personal Lord and Savior. By that reasoning, Donald Trump is incapable of wrongdoing.

#donald trump #trump's indictment #trump's guilt #republicans #the gop #maga zombies #the far right #the paranoid style in american politics #conservatives #election 2024 #jonathan chait

346 notes · View notes

radicallicious · 9 months

Text

A female inmate at Mexico’s Chalco Penitentiary and Social Reintegration Center has reported that she was sexually assaulted by a trans-identified male who had been placed in her cell.

The male inmate had a history of sexual violence, and threatened to harm the victim’s children if she spoke out about what happened to her.

The assault occurred in July of 2022 after the trans-identified male inmate was transferred into the victim’s quarters. Despite having a history of violent sexual crimes and misconduct, the perpetrator was allowed to move into the women’s area where there was minimal security, with some sections being separated only by fabric curtains.

While the victim had initially been threatened into silence as the trans-identified male had promised to harm her family using contacts he had on the outside, she eventually reported the assault to prison authorities.

CODHEM, the Human Rights Commission of the State of Mexico, launched an investigation and determined that “one of the [incarcerated women] was sexually assaulted by her roommate, who was a trans woman with previous complaints of misconduct and probable sexual harassment.”

CODHEM further revealed that “the aggression was not prevented by the prison authorities,” with the facility administrators having conducted an insufficient assessment of the inmate without follow-up and with no consideration for the possible risks the trans-identified male inmate posed to the women.

But disturbingly, despite affirming that the sexual assault had taken place and that the transgender inmate had been a risk to the women, CODHEM ordered prison staff to attend a “gender perspective” course.

As reported by El Gráfico, members of the Interdisciplinary University Seminar on Citizen Security at the National Autonomous University of Mexico were in charge of giving the course on human rights and “gender perspective” to eighty prison officials.

The same University was recently embroiled in scandal after trans activists staged a “coup” and took control over one of the largest women’s washrooms on the campus in protest of a lesbian mural being painted nearby. Trans activists vandalized the washroom, painting graffiti that threatened women critical of gender ideology with “rape and death.”

Despite Mexico’s political constitution outlining that prisons must be sex-segregated, the National Human Rights Commission of Mexico has declared that there is no “strict difference between men and women.”

Since news of the assault broke, Mexican media have almost uniformly referred to the assailant as a “woman,” or “trans woman,” using feminine pronouns to refer to the rapist.

Speaking to Reduxx on the disturbing case, Laura Lecuona, the head of WDI Mexico and author of Gender Identity: Lies and Dangers, slammed CODHEM for perpetuating gender self-identification policy in light of the obvious risks it posed.

“A man with a history of sexual violence is serving his sentence in a women’s prison, where he raped and threatened a cellmate, and the state human rights commission thinks that the solution is to give prison employees a little course on ‘gender,'” Lecuona says, questioning: “What will they teach them in this course? Likely that ‘trans women are women.’ The only solution is to recognize that self-declaration of sex involves several dangers for women.”

Lecuona also says gender self-identification policies must be “abandoned” completely in order to protect women.

“Feminists have been warning about this for years. There is still time [for authorities] to rectify and fulfill their obligation to guarantee women a life free of violence.”

The employment of “gender” counselors in cases where women have been involuntarily housed in close quarters with men who declare a transgender identity is an international phenomenon. In July, Reduxx revealed that a man who identifies as transgender presented a speech for a Women’s Empowerment event held at New Jersey’s only correctional facility for women, where he lectured female inmates on the importance of “inclusivity.”

La’Nae Grant reportedly told the women that he believed “cisgender women” may hesitate to accept trans-identifying men as female due to jealousy or “competition” between the groups for male sexual partners. The Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women has been plagued by violent male convicts being transferred into the prison, including a sadistic trans-identified male inmate who was handed a 50-year sentence in 2003 for the brutal rape and murder of a sex-trafficked woman from Ecuador.

Placing males' feelings and delusions before women and compromising their security in the process... Absolutely terrible. I took my time to read about Perry Cerf (the man mentioned at the end of the article) and I was this close to vomiting. The description of his crime and what he did to the woman (who was referred as a 'hooker' by other media outlet... Nice) is gut-wrenching so be careful.

And the immediate solution to a sexual assault committed by a trans-identified male in a women's prison is taking courses on gender perspective, suggested by the National Human Rights Commission out of all people... Noted.

#radical feminism #radfem #personal

95 notes · View notes

herrlindemann · 9 months

Text

Interview with Till's lawyer, Simon Bergmann, for Cicero.

Mr. Bergmann, what are the criminal charges against Till Lindemann, which prompted the Berlin public prosecutor to start investigations?

The authorities in Vilnius have already stopped their investigations due to a lack of sufficient suspicion. The investigations by the Berlin public prosecutor's office were not triggered by criminal charges from victims, but by two people and an association who refer to media reports or a YouTube video.

So the Berlin public prosecutor's office did not officially open proceedings, although the information was publicly available, but only reacted to the criminal charges?

As we can see from the investigation file, this is the case. I cannot say whether the authorities reacted to public pressure. On the other hand, we have nothing against it. An investigation has the advantage that the allegations are clarified by professionals and not by investigative journalists. We'd rather have the public prosecutor's office check that than leave it hanging in the air. I also know of cases like this, where suspicions are reported, but at the same time there are no investigations at all. This is a new phenomenon.

In the case of Julian Reichelt / Axel Springer, the old publisher Dirk Ippen intervened in Munich and at the last moment prevented any publication about alleged misconduct by the Bild editor-in-chief in the Ippen group. As a result, his investigative team resigned and went to Spiegel together . Der Spiegel must and wants to use these people and make full use of them.

The most spectacular result so far is the cover story from June 9, 2023: "Rammstein: Sex, power, alcohol - what the young women from 'Row Zero' report", produced by 13 authors. Do you see a pattern in the recent suspicious reporting? Is this a new development with results that were not seen five or ten years ago?

One gets the impression that the topic has gained a whole new spin in the media with the MeToo movement and Harvey Weinstein. You noticed that this topic triggers people. It attracts a lot of attention, just the catchphrase "MeToo" alone, and it guarantees high sales figures, especially in the digital sector.

That's why you will hardly find any MeToo reports without a payment barrier. They appear in the print edition - which you have to buy - and often in the paid subscription area, so they are not freely accessible. The reason for this is that they also want to make money with it. This has led to a significant increase in impermissible reporting of suspicions and to a dangerous shift in the guidelines.

Where do you draw the line between permissible and impermissible reporting of suspicions?

This is very complex, actually a case for legal seminars. There is no such thing as black and white. It must be assessed on a case-by-case basis. In order to be able to report identifyingly, a celebrity must usually be affected. If it is not about a celebrity, the story is usually dead, because then there is no public interest in naming or depicting the person. The reporting interest of the public must not only be given, but also relatively high, because the risk of stigmatization is enormous. You are reporting something that has not yet been clarified.

The authors and one of the publisher's legal advisors recently said in a video discussion with selected readers – “ Spiegel – Backstage” from June 29th – themselves: “We don't know whether what we're writing is true.”

That's how it is. There are accusations, there are clues or witnesses or there aren't. The person concerned denies it or does not comment. One does not know whether the person did what someone claims. That has to be clarified by the investigative process or by a court, or it will clear itself up. Only: As long as that is not clarified, the accused has to be considered innocent. That is why there are these strict requirements from the Federal Court of Justice to the Federal Constitutional Court and the European Court of Human Rights.

As far as the public interest in Rammstein is concerned, you don't have to worry too much: Yes, of course such allegations are also possible in principle. In any case, the lack of prominence is not the KO criterion. Only: The article would not really work for Lieschen Müller or the average consumer anyway. It takes celebrity to make it sell.

The second hurdle is then the main one: Depending on the severity of the allegations, the press may only report when sufficient evidence is available or has been determined. The press now has to see for itself: Is there enough evidence that the person did it? It must have a minimum number of connecting facts and, if requested, produce them that support its presentation. Only then is she allowed to publish her suspicions. This is where most mistakes are made.

Do you assume that such legal disputes and even defeats as now before the Hamburg Higher Regional Court, which also cause considerable costs, are factored in by the magazines in their sales expectations from the outset?

I do believe that publishers see the risks and consciously take them. The Spiegel legal counsel and also the investigative editors have recently commented on the alleged thoroughness of their research, even before a legal dispute arises. I am very surprised that the press obviously feels compelled to justify its research in such a proactive manner, given that it is a matter of course in journalism.

Or she turns the tables and uses the opportunity to celebrate her own professionalism, impartiality, her ethos and thus to do additional advertising. On the one hand you want to arm yourself against criticism, on the other hand it is a marketing tool: "How did our research in the Rammstein/MeToo case go?" New people are attracted to listen to it: Take a look and you can consider getting a subscription. This is really new.

Is that voyeurism that is being exploited and exploited in terms of sales? Especially since you know next to nothing about the private life of the band Rammstein. They isolate themselves and allow no insights, let alone home stories; which makes you really curious.

Definitely. That's also my point of criticism. The alleged perpetrators do not peddle their private lives. In the case of Luke Mockridge, the preliminary investigation had been discontinued when the reports began, in the case of Rammstein suspicious reports were used as the basis for a preliminary investigation, and in the case of the gallery owner Johann König, there was no preliminary investigation at all until today, which did not prevent Die Zeit from getting started against him .

What is the evidence in the Rammstein case ?

I ask for your understanding that I do not want to comment on the status of the criminal investigation. On the other hand, I can judge what was put forward by the publishers in the press law disputes. And the means of making the allegations credible - rape, administration of knockout drops to enable sexual acts - do not convince me in any way.

There is surprisingly little, considering what has been announced in the articles and headlines. Der Spiegel is an example of an approach that I have observed in numerous recent MeToo reports: When the article says: We spoke to around two dozen women and this resulted in a certain pattern, a system. A man who pushes boundaries. A man who does not respect the will of women. You read the article and you think: Well, two dozen women – that sounds pretty bad. There must be something to it. And the higher the number of witnesses, the more one believes that this is true.

As a person affected, you then have to sue, so in this case apply for an injunction against Der Spiegel . Only then do you have a chance to find out what's actually true about it. Most of the time you don't even know who is accusing whom of what. These are often alleged or actual events that happened years ago. So you have to force the press in court to disclose the results of your research.

As part of a process, the court then has to check whether the stated principles of reporting on suspicions have been complied with. Other criteria are whether the reporting was balanced and objective, and whether the opportunity to comment was given. And it shouldn't be prejudiced. Incidentally, all points that I believe were disregarded in the article. Anyway. Then you go to court and then Der Spiegel presents its research results and then you check: where are the two dozen women actually?

The text is about the "casting system", but also about the accusation that Lindemann used knockout drops or had them used to make women compliant. And we only attack this latter, this really serious accusation, because the "casting system" is more a question of moral evaluation. You may ask: Do you still have to go to bed with groupies these days, do you have to make a “selection” based on visual criteria? You can evaluate everything critically and raise the moral index finger. I find this feigned indignation completely exaggerated. For me it's a puritanical hypermorality that's being shown.

But: If there were criminal offenses, then I don't want to defend it. I just can't see it at all right now, at least not in terms of a "casting system". And as far as the knockout drops are concerned, I didn't find anything relevant in the documents and evidence provided by Spiegel . The district court of Hamburg has meanwhile also assessed this in the same way.

So what follows from this?

The media must find out: Is a statement credible? Are there additional indications, facts? The thesis that in testimony-against-testimony offenses the man always wins because of the principle "in case of doubt for the accused", i.e. it should never be reported on, is wrong. It's not like that. Criminal proceedings on sexual offenses are checked very carefully because the public prosecutor's office does not want to be accused of stopping such proceedings too quickly.

That's how it should be. It's different from a few years ago. There are other options; you have very well-trained civil servants, above all. There are indications such as Whatsapp messages, signs of injury, cell phone data on whereabouts. This is often the subject of an indictment. Whether or not there will be a conviction is another question, but prosecutors are trying their best.

But abuse of power is also accused of Lindemann.

Because of serious sexual offences, which, given the current state of affairs, is not even remotely possible and, by the way, is not even covered by the allegations made by Der Spiegel : I did not find any evidence in the file about the knockout drops. At this point, Der Spiegel is already rowing back and says that it did not raise this suspicion at all, but that it primarily came to speak of this "casting system" and of abuse of power.

What is the abuse of power in the Lindemann case?

If you compare this with the Weinstein case, you realize that the abuse of power does not exist. What kind of power is that supposed to be? Rock star prominence is said to be power. He uses it. Only: You could level this accusation against any celebrity who has sex with a woman who may not be his own.

Have you found any indications that your client has given or promised anything to women? Does he put together a backing choir? A dance group? vocals? Or did he conversely threaten them with the end of their careers if they are not compliant?

Nothing like that. The women whom Der Spiegel is now using as witnesses do not claim that either . The affidavits I've seen make no mention of that. On the contrary, the majority of women say they knew there would be sex at the after-show party, and they went anyway. Only two of these affidavits come from women who report from their own experience. Others only report atmospheric. And that they left when they became uncomfortable.

Were women prevented from walking when they wanted to?

I did n't find anything about this in the documents provided by Spiegel . But I was never there myself. So I can only reproduce the statements I have seen so far. Result: None of the women say they were prevented from leaving the room. And none of the women talk about abuse of power. On the contrary: Most of them, at least that's how I understand the statements, were interested in sex.

I also see the problem that, as a person affected, you first have to put a lot of money on your table before you can even attack an issue of Spiegel or anyone else.

That's added. I have clients who honestly say: Unfortunately, we have to lay down our arms, as sorry as we are. It's no longer financial.

If it goes all the way to the Higher Regional Court and then to Karlsruhe, that will be really expensive - and woe betide you lose in the end. Do you have an example?

I'll give you a case. The client, himself active in the media, was accused. We took action against the mirror , applied for a restraining order. That took a long time. It was issued in essential parts, so initially a success, but the mirror raised a hearing complaint and the BVerfG suspended the enforcement of the temporary injunction.

Consequence: What we had achieved, the deletion of passages from the article, is reversed and the text can be put online again. Negotiations were then to continue in August, which lost another two months. And Der Spiegel had already announced that it would go through all the instances and also force my client into the main action. Against this background, the continuation of the proceedings no longer made any sense.

So if things go as Spiegel has threatened, that means: In the injunction proceedings you have two instances with two oral hearings and you then have main proceedings with at least two, but probably three instances, because then it goes from the regional court to the higher regional court to the Federal Court of Justice.

How much money does that add up to?

This depends on the amount in dispute and the course of the proceedings - the more serious the damage to reputation, the higher the costs. If the client loses in the end, which thank God rarely happens, he has to bear all the costs, including those of the other party. That can add up to a six-figure sum. Of course there are people who can and must afford it, but there are also clients who are prominent but not millionaires.

And they are brought to their knees.

And the media, the opponents of the trial, know that. They take into account the financial situation of the person concerned. They say to themselves: We'll report on the suspicion despite all our reservations, but the scoop is so big that it definitely pays off and we'll include the lawyer's fees. My impression is that the mirror has now reached the level of an image newspaper. In the specific case even clearly worse than the picture . Methods are used that are actually attributed to tabloid journalism. This is a bad development.

#rammstein #till lindemann #great insight into the case #*#it's all about money really

76 notes · View notes

eretzyisrael · 4 months

Text

by Dion J. Pierre

The groups noted that in Nov., Alexandra Orbuch, a writer for The Princeton Tory, a conservative student publication, was assaulted by a male member of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) while filming a protest the group held on campus. The man allegedly followed Orbuch to obstruct her efforts, eventually stepping on her foot and pushing her. When Orbuch complained to a nearby public safety officer, the officer told her that she had “incited something.”

Despite the gendered nature of the assault —an issue Princeton has dedicated an entire office to dealing with — the university granted the male student a no-contact oder against Orbuch, explaining that any reporting she published which alluded to him would be considered a violation of the order and result in disciplinary charges. A similar incident occurred in 2022, when Tory reporter Danielle Shapiro attempted to report on the Princeton Committee on Palestine. After being notified of the order, Shapiro was told refer to a “Sexual Misconduct & Title IX” webpage, according to a guest column she wrote in the Wall Street Journal.

“This is at least the second time in the last two years that a Tory student journalist has been silence by a no-contact order at the behest of community members offended by his or her pro-Israel journalism,” Thursday’s letter continued. “This systematic weaponization of no-contact orders to silence pro-Israel journalism — or any journalism — cannot stand.”

The incidents involving Orbuch and Shapiro are two of numerous examples of universities subjecting conservative and pro-Israel campus community members to reputational smearing and denying them the same rights and protections as progressives and pro-Palestinian advocates. The issue has drawn attention from Congress, whose House of Representatives Committee on Education and the Workforce is investigating whether universities such as Harvard University, University of Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) employed a self-serving interpretation of the US Constitution to avoid punishing students who committed antisemitic discrimination and harassment.

#the princeton tory #princeton university #danielle shapiro #alexandra orbuch #students for justice in palestine

40 notes · View notes

aribaran · 1 year

Photo

it's crazy to know that game misconduct’s out in the wild today. this book (and series) has been a labor of love over the last few years, although the actual publishing piece of it seems to have happened very fast. this is a story about loving hockey even when it doesn’t necessarily love you back. about the way that hockey culture makes and shapes you. about the way that violence can permeate everything in your life, even when you haven’t intended it to. about the damage that does, physically and psychologically. and most of all, about two broken men who just might hold the keys to fixing each other. thank you so much to everyone who made this day possible. i couldn’t have done it without you. (and as always...please read the content warnings.)

you can buy it on amazon, a few other retailers, or directly from carina.

additionally, the philadelphia constitutions’ lines, in the style of amanda c. stein (full names under the cut).

nathaniel singer - zachary reed - beatrice morin tyler reid - matthew wilson - jakub černý william andersson - antti salonen - andrey kuznetsov sean elliott - taylor adams - austin murphy carey jones - tomáš novotný oskar lindberg - ryan graham liam kelly - dylan parsons/mike sato sakari mäkelä ruslan sokolov (photo background credit: klim musalimov via unsplash)

#game misconduct tag #ahhhh it's finally out :)))

94 notes · View notes

violetfaust · 2 years

Text

In the last two weeks alone, Trump's Supreme Court has:

Overturned Roe v. Wade.

Severely limited Miranda protections by ruling that citizens can't sue the cops who don't read them their Constitutional rights.

Expanded gun rights less than two months after schoolchildren were slaughtered and weeks after a racist shooting in a community supermarket, by striking down sensible New York gun control laws.

And now eviscerated the power of the EPA to do its job and try to protect against climate change by ruling it can't regulate emissions from power plants.

These "justices" are not only legislating from the bench and making decisions that are stripping human rights and WILL CAUSE DEATHS in opposition to decades of precedent (50 years for Roe, 60 for Miranda, 110 for the NY gun laws):

Many of them are unfit to serve.

Clarence Thomas's wife is an insurrectionist and election denier who is refusing to cooperate with the January 6 committee. Thomas has also not recused himself from decisions regarding the January 6 committee. He is married to a literal traitor to this country and has blatant conflict of interest. He MUST resign or be impeached and removed.

Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation to the bench was rammed through the Senate despite credible accusations that he is a rapist (as well as possibly guilty of financial misconduct or crimes). Investigators refused to consider evidence. This investigation must be reopened, and if more evidence is presented (as I suspect it will be), he should be impeached, removed, and prosecuted.

Neil Gorsuch perjured himself in his Senate confirmation hearings about Roe. He said he recognized and respected it as the law of the land, yet last week he cosigned Alito's reactionary brief that claimed not only that Roe was not law, but that it never had been. Thus Gorsuch should be impeached, removed, and if possible prosecuted for lying under oath.

While I don't know of evidence that Amy Coney Barrett is legally unfit to serve (despite being a far-right-wing reactionary), her appointment was illegitimate under the Republicans' own arbitrary rules: they refused to even consider Obama's candidate for the Court after Scalia's death because it was "in an election year" although that was MARCH, then forced through Barrett's a WEEK before the election (and less than a month after RBG's death). Senate Republicans need to acknowledge that either her appointment or Gorsuch's was illegitimate (and McConnell should be censured for it).

#scotus #us politics #roe v wade #gun sanity now #clarence thomas #brett kavanaugh #neil gorsuch #continuing trumpocalypse #stack the court #i'm so fucking angry #also alito should be investigated for ties to the far right because he's a nutjob and i'm sure they're there but that's another post #sorry for going off #i wanna post fandom stuff but this is INSANE #op

464 notes · View notes

trialsinthelateromanrepublic · 10 months

Text

trial of Lucius Sergius Catilina

date: second half of 65 BCE charge: lex Cornelia de repetundis (misconduct as gov. Africa 67-66) defendant: L. Sergius Catilina pr. 68 advocate: uncertain, but not M. Tullius Cicero cos. 63 prosecutor: P. Clodius Pulcher aed. cur. 56 character witness: L. Manlius Torquatus cos. 65 (ORF 109.I) witnesses: Africans laudatores [character witnesses]: consulares other: praevaricatio [collusion?]

Cic. Att. 1.1.1, 1.2.1; Catil. 1.18; Sul. 81; Cael. 10, 14; Har. 42; Pis. 23; Q. Cic.? Com. Pet. 10; Asc. 9, 85, 89, 92

A jury was constituted shortly before July 17. It is possible that the prosecution of Catiline had already begun in 66; however, a separate trial in that year seems unlikely.

Cicero’s statement (Att. 1.2.1), written when he was considering defending Clodius in this trial, that the prosecutor was cooperative (summa accusatoris voluntate) has been taken to suggest that the prosecutor was working with the defense to secure an acquittal. Gruen (Athenaeum 1971) 59-62, however, argues that Clodius did not commit praevaricatio.

#tagamemnon

47 notes · View notes

dontmeantobepoliticalbut · 7 months

Text

Republican state legislators In North Carolina are establishing a new investigative body that Democratic critics have aptly compared to a “secret police force.”

This new entity, formally known as the Joint Legislative Committee on Government Operations, or “Gov Ops” for short, will be chaired by Senate Leader Phil Berger (R) and House Speaker Tim Moore (R). It grants the state the authority to investigate various matters, including “possible instances of misfeasance, malfeasance, nonfeasance, mismanagement, waste, abuse, or illegal conduct.”

Gov Ops, a product of North Carolina’s most recent state budget, was established via a comprehensive bill passed in late September. Despite Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s refusal to sign the legislation, the Republican majority in the state legislature pushed it through just 10 days later, thanks to their veto-proof majority and the state’s laws restricting the governor’s ability to make line-item vetoes. Gov Ops is slated to take effect next week.

Any way you slice it, Gov Ops seems like a recipe for government overreach and abuse. If you find yourself under investigation by Gov Ops, you won’t be allowed to publicly discuss any alleged constitutional violations or misconduct by the investigators. All communications with committee personnel would be treated as “confidential.” Shockingly, you’d also be denied the right to seek legal counsel regarding your rights if Gov Ops were to search your property without a warrant, irrespective of whether it’s in a public or private space.

Nora Benavidez, a senior counsel with the nonprofit advocacy group Free Press, told The Daily Beast, “This is a question for the courts ultimately. But the powers granted to the Gov Ops appear to give them overreaching investigative authority, which invokes constitutionality questions.”

A critical aspect of Gov Ops development lies in the language within the statute itself. The key phrase, as highlighted by Republican state legislators, is the investigation of “possible instances of misfeasance.”

It’s unsettling that North Carolina’s Republican state legislators are poised to wield unchecked partisan authority, devoid of any form of accountability, to determine what qualifies as “possible instances of misfeasance.” This newfound investigative power threatens to have far-reaching repercussions on fundamental civil liberties, particularly those closely intertwined with the state legislature—such as voting rights and abortion.

Consider the 2020 election aftermath. Following the election’s conclusion, several North Carolina Republican lawmakers—mirroring Trump and other far-right figures nationwide—demanded access to voting machines, relying on dubious sources and unfounded claims of voter fraud.

Initially, North Carolina Republicans asserted that they would work with police to obtain warrants for such inspections. However, with the advent of Gov Ops, committee leaders could now allege “possible instances of misfeasance,” eliminating the need for a warrant and keeping the public in the dark.

With the 2024 election looming, Republicans in the state legislature will redraw voting maps after the new conservative majority on the state’s Supreme Court legalized partisan gerrymandering. (The Princeton Gerrymandering Project called North Carolina one of the most gerrymandered states in the country.)

The redistricting process in the state has been grueling; since 2011, six different versions of maps have been drawn. The process has been conducted mainly behind closed doors, and North Carolinians continue to express frustration over how they’ve been locked out of the process.

A provision of Gov Ops will likely permit lawmakers drawing the maps to bypass public records requests: “lawmakers responding to public records requests will have no obligation to share any drafts or materials that guided their redistricting decisions.”

Now, let’s look at abortion. During a legislative hearing, state Sen. Graig Meyer (D) asked lawmakers, in a hypothetical scenario, if Gov Ops could access personal health records (like ultrasounds) that are required by the state to receive abortion pills. Sen. Meyer found that Gov Ops, with its widespread ability to investigate with zero oversight, could release information like this “to the public in a hearing” if it wanted to.

youtube

Benavidez explained, “At the end of the day, Gov Ops actions and requests for information are all protected as confidential, adding a layer of opacity which means people in North Carolina will have largely no idea what the Gov Ops entity is really doing.”

The consolidation of power by Republicans in North Carolina through Gov Ops is not just a cause for concern; it is a stark warning sign. The ability of state legislators to wield unchecked authority—shielded from the scrutiny of the voters they are obliged to serve—strikes at the heart of democratic principles.

Transparency and accountability are not optional in a democracy; they are its lifeblood.

When the process of drawing voting maps becomes cloaked in secrecy, when mechanisms to hold our elected officials accountable are dismantled, we risk losing our most cherished rights to our legislators, who should be our staunchest defenders.

Government powers like Gov Ops can potentially erode the very foundations of our democracy—which can’t work if politicians refuse to work for the people and have any accountability.

32 notes · View notes

ukrfeminism · 7 months

Text

Victims of sexual harassment in film and TV experience the “worst of both worlds” because they are encouraged to speak out but face a backlash for doing so, a study has found.

Some women said the industry was more dangerous since the #MeToo movement because victims felt under pressure to disclose their abuse but were then punished or victimised, according to the research.

The report, Safe to Speak Up? Sexual harassment in the UK film and television industry since #MeToo, found formal measures to hold perpetrators to account were still not in place and there was a lack of proper support for victims.

The study’s author, Dr Anna Bull, a senior lecturer at York University, said the backlash that victims face ranged from inappropriate jokes about #MeToo to being blacklisted.

In some cases, men became aggressive because they were angry they could no longer enjoy the sexualised working environment to which they felt entitled, she added. “That is turning into misogynistic resentment or gendered bullying and humiliation.”

Bull, who has previously researched sexual misconduct in universities and in classical music, said sexism and sexual misconduct was far more blatant in the film and TV industry, with high-profile actors and presenters among the worst offenders.

“It does seem that there’s a culture where indecent exposure is something that’s done for attention-seeking purposes, to shock people, and to have power over people,” she said.

Although Bull found that some, particularly younger, men in the industry were more aware of what constitutes sexually inappropriate behaviour, misogynistic attitudes remained widespread among male leaders.

The report draws on interviews with 18 people in the industry, working across prestige drama, documentary, reality TV and journalism, who have experienced or spoken out about sexual violence and harassment since December 2017. The 17 women and one man include producers, researchers, runners, journalists and an actor.

Five interviewees were subjected to sexual violence, including indecent exposure, sexual assault and rape. Interviewees described being groped, forcibly kissed, and touched in sexualised ways while at work or work-related events. One interviewee was raped after a work event by someone she had met there. Particularly risky environments were work social events, filming on location and industry events.

Several interviewees raised concerns about the blurred boundaries between work and social life, especially given that networking is regarded as essential to success. Some reported incidents where their production company had provided free alcohol and then sexual harassment or an assault took place.

“Alcohol and class A drugs were normalised and sexualised jokes were very common,” Bull added.

One woman in the report, referred to as Sienna, who was raped by a man at an industry festival abroad last year, said: “There’s thousands of people in this space with a lot of booze and pent-up desire to network, but also very little rules or accountability. Every event I’m at, do I have to be really careful to not get raped or spiked or assaulted?”

The woman, who is in her mid-20s, said: “It has got better and it has got worse. I don’t think there has been a watershed like #MeToo and post #MeToo. Loads of really problematic behaviours are still dormant and being protected from years ago.”

Several interviewees said they had not come across any mechanisms or initiatives to tackle sexual misconduct in the companies they had worked for in the past six years.

One of them, Vanessa, quit her career as a broadcast journalist after sexual harassment from a senior male colleague. She felt that the company’s handling of the harassment was inadequate.

She only felt able to make an informal complaint after leaving, having earlier found out that another woman in the company had also been subjected to inappropriate behaviour from the same man.

“For a long time I definitely felt that I was filling a vacuum of responsibility that should have been filled by people a lot more senior than me,” Vanessa said. “That translated to people putting pressure on to speak out. I think general attitudes have changed towards sexual misconduct and the nuances of it, massively. I don’t think it’s reflected in the beliefs of senior management, though.”

Dawn Elrick, the founder of the Instagram account Shit Men in TV Have Said to Me, which has received hundreds of anonymous submissions detailing sexual harassment of women in the industry, agreed that little progress had been made in tackling the problem.

“Men who have had several serious complaints raised against them, whether anecdotally, officially or [as] open secrets, are still employed by our major broadcasters at the top level,” she said. “They have perpetrated against, for the most part, young female researchers who have just entered the industry.”

Elrick, a TV director and producer, said there was a pressure on women to name and report perpetrators but it was still unclear where to turn to get action taken.

“I’ve raised complaints with [the trade union] Bectu, to the BBC. But I’ve been told: ‘Well, if it’s anonymous, we can’t do anything about it.’ So the onus is on me, and the people who’ve been at the receiving end of sexism [to deal with it].”

#Articles #me too

16 notes · View notes

skydalorian · 3 months

Text

I was tagged by the ever-great @post-futurism, and am thrilled to jump back into one of these!

Last Song: Go On - The Tights. I'm listening to their discography after moving on from the near-entirety of XTC. Jury is still out, but I appreciate that they brought late-90s and Y2K moody nostalgia even before the gurnge-goth of that era was even close to being dated.

Favourite colour: Burgundy! All shades! No exceptions! I'm also fond of deep emerald greens, olive greens, navy blue, and dusty rose pinks. Historically I adored purple, but I'm less into it now, and am not into it when it veers into blue territory (though I'm definitely into indigo).

Last movie/TV show: The last film I completed was The Holdovers and I was a predictably easy target. It nigh instantaneously became a favourite. Technically, my last watched film was The Moon by Takashi Ito, but I wouldn't call that a movie, per se, as much as it's an impressionistic short and abstraction of thoughts, images, and memory.

I usually watch multiple films simultaneously, but my go-to streaming sites all lost the option for subtitles within the last 24 hours. I have never experienced anything more miserable. How else am I supposed to be able to watch these at 4x speed?!?!

Telveision-wise, I've been watching Fargo season one, Twin Peaks (1989), and keeping up with the new season of Abbott Elementary.

Sweet/spicy/savoury: Spicy and Savoury. Separate and combined, they are both dear lovers.

Relationship status: non pertinet

Last thing that I googled: Tofu marinade recipe for airfryer. Also Hal Ashby. Both in the same google session. Weird day.

Current obsession: I've returned to Garth Nix's work and am indulging my dive back into The Old Kingdom series. I'm also refreshing my grasp of criminal law, Contitutional Law, and police misconduct. I finished a read-through of the Constitution and am trying to solidify my mnemonics for the Bill of Rights! Also, most recently, hating Larian and grieving for my prior high opinion of them and my naivete.

Last book: Last completed was Lirael (Garth Nix) and I'm currently reading Piranesi (Susanna Clarke) and Orientalism (Edward Said)

Looking forward to: Getting my financial assistance for medical bills situated (again), and an upcoming chili/soup cook-off at my place of work (which I intend to sweep, with the promised assistance of my team).

I'm so glad you tagged me! Your blog has been a constant inspiration and your taste is both fire and the terrifying depths of the ocean to me, it's fantastic, your posts never fail to have a dreamlike quality!

Tagging @honeybite @phasesixer @regenerating @wizardpink @notwiselybuttoowell @lordgroose @iwilleatyourenglish @baddiez @bubble-bobble @purplefairies@wine-dark-sea@cursedamulet@scarletswalking@antidoteforreality

and any other mutual I neglected (I am so, so sorry, I have been sleepless and my memory has been fuzzier than usual)

also feel free to do this even if you're not tagged, I am not trying to be exclusive necessarily!

#personal #ask game #about me #about

8 notes · View notes