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cleolinda · 9 months

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Are the Trump indictments election interference? asked someone whose question I will take in good faith against my better judgment.

The American presidential election (November 5, 2024) is more than a year away. There is more than a whole year for these four (4) trials to occur. If candidates want to start campaigning (and have already been campaigning) year(s) in advance, that is not the American judicial system's problem. Do not let anyone tell you that "I DECLARE CAMPAIGN SO YOU CAN'T TOUCH ME" is how this works.

I welcome criminal charges of actual substance for any candidate of any party. If you have dozens of pages of carefully documented charges against any/all Democrats, please have a DA call a grand jury whenever you would like. Political parties are not sports teams to me. Justice can do what it gotta do, whether it's convenient or not.

If someone doesn't want to get pulled up on racketeering charges (RICO), they maybe shouldn’t have racketeered. Or falsified business records, or mishandled documents to the tune of 31 charges under the Espionage Act, or incited an insurrection, the latter of which, I don't know about you, but which I personally watched on TV, live, for several hours, including coverage of the Trump rally that sent crowds marching over to the Capitol. We have heard the Georgia phone call that is part of the fourth indictment. We have seen pictures of classified documents piled in a random Mar-a-Lago bathroom. I am confident that these are not frivolous accusations.

District Attorney Fani Willis was careful to state that there should be a presumption of innocence (a standard American judicial doctrine). That said, I consider (as one example), this fourth indictment to be “charges of actual substance” because she delivered a 96-page document describing the racketeering (which, ironically, WAS ITSELF ELECTION INTERFERENCE):

u/code_archaeologist: The math on this is easy. For a jury to find a person guilty on a RICO charge in Georgia the prosecutor has to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that they engaged in two incidents that predicated the overarching conspiracy. The RICO charge lists 161 predicating incidents. So Fani Willis has 161 shots at each defendant, and only has to hit twice.

(I like to read r/politics.)

Fani Willis has 161 predicating incidents of conspiracy to work with. I am pretty confident that, while a defendant is innocent until proven guilty in the American justice system, these charges have some weight and deserve to be heard in court.

tl;dr if you don't want to campaign under a legal cloud, don't do crimes.

Also try not to publicly intimidate witnesses. And prosecutors. And judges.

If anyone reading this truly wondered if the substance or timing of these proceedings are warranted, sincerely, I hope laying it out like this helped.

#politics #us politics #long post #RICO suave

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fullnachodonut · 1 year

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Lỗi xác thực

#https://azontee.com/product/north-haven-state-2022-class-mm-champs-shirt/small regional team that plays in Division II or III or Division I #North Haven State 2022 Class Mm Champs Shirt #Hoodie #Sweater #Vneck #Unisex and T-shirt #Best North Haven State 2022 Class Mm Champs Shirt #Nothing like falling on your sword for the Emperor with No Clothes. Trump has been relentlessly attacking Kemp for not stealing the North H #cult members go where Dear Leader is. Whether it’s Washington DC #Waco #or Guyana. You just go. These past #grueling 4 years have obviously shown us not to expect to find an ounce of integrity #honor or courage in a Republican politician. They all suffer from Trumpholm Syndrome… However #Elite Legal Ninja Strike Force With Laser Eyes #Jenna Ellis #who reportedly contacted Dr. Oz asking if it was possible that Rudy Giuliani could have transmitted his covid to her when he farted in her #was not amused. Is this an event that employees #and not the company #are organizing and funding? If yes #distribute a general email message or flyer #inviting people to attend and contribute. State that the event isn’t employer-sponsored. Also try to word the invitation so that it’s about #not about hitting-up for contributions (even though the “user fee” does need to be clearly stated). If the employer is hosting the party #the company should pay for everything. It’s very bad etiquette to sponsor any kind of event and expect guests to foot the bill; this is tru #small regional team that plays in Division II or III or Division I FCS.

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beatrice-otter · 2 days

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I’ll be honest, when one party’s aiding and abetting the genocide and the other’s outright gonna kill all my friends, I don’t really care if the fascists “win”. They’ve won already.

You know who would be delighted to hear that? Trump and Putin. The US far right and the Russian government have poured lots of time, effort, and money over the last decade+ into convincing US leftists and liberals that things are hopeless, there's no point in even trying to make things better, and the Democrats and Republicans are functionally interchangeable. They do this because one of the easiest ways for them to win is if the left gives up and stops trying. Every person on the left they can convince to give up in despair brings them closer to complete control. Defeatism on the left actively supports victory on the right.

I think your statement is wrong on a number of levels, both factual and emotional. It comes from not understanding what the actual options are for the US government and the President specifically, either at home or abroad. And it will allow actual fascism to flourish and make the world far worse than it is now.

On an emotional level, the way to address this is to stop doomscrolling. Stop focusing on the worst things happening in the world. Don't ignore them! but don't let them consume you. Start looking for the things that are going well. Find places in your community that you can get involved in making things better. Even if it's only on a small scale like volunteering in a soup kitchen or homeless shelter, it will help you realize that you aren't helpless, that there are things that can be done to make the world a better place. Stay informed about things on a local, national, and international level, but limit how much time and attention you give to things that depress you that you can't affect. Instead of sitting there thinking about all the ways the world sucks and how awful things are, look for things you can do that are productive, and then do them. You'll feel better and you will have made your corner of the world a little better. And you will be a lot less likely to unintentionally fall into the despair, nihilism, and passivity that the fascists want you to be consumed by.

Always remember that the worlds problems are not resting solely on your shoulders, or solely on America's shoulders, and neither is the hope of fixing them. Everyone has things that we can do to make the world a better place, but there are also things that are beyond our control. We can control what we do; we cannot control what others do. We can and should try to make the world a better place, but focusing on the things we can't change has no positive benefits. Focusing on things we can't change accomplishes two things: it makes you feel bad, and it stops you from doing the things you actually can do to make things better. Neither of these things is good for you or anyone else. Look for things you can do and do them. Keep informed on the things you can't change, but don't focus on them.

On a factual level, let's look at "aiding and abetting genocide," shall we?

First, it's important to remember that the US President is not the God-Emperor Of The World. The US government has limits to what it can and can't do in other countries, and both legally and practically. If the US wants to intervene in a problem in another country, there are a variety of things we can do that boil down to basically four categories. It's a lot more complex than this in practice, of course, but in general here are the categories of things we can do:

Send in the troops. Invade, either by ourselves or as part of a NATO or UN operation. (Or maybe just send in a CIA wetworks team to assassinate the head of state.) I hope you can see the moral problems with this option, and also, we've done this a shitton of times over the course of the 20th Century and pretty much every time we've done it, we've made an already awful situation worse. On a moral level, it's pretty bad, and on a practical level, it's worse. Sure, we could stop the immediate problem, but what then? Consider Afghanistan and Iraq. We got rid of Saddam Hussein and the Taliban, and everything went to shit, we spent twenty years occupying Afghanistan with pretty much nothing to show for it. (The Taliban is back in control of Afghanistan.) Things were worse when we left than when we arrived. So this option is pretty much off the table (or should be).

Diplomatic pressure. Now, the thing is, they're a sovereign nation, they don't have to listen to us if they don't want to. We have a lot of things we can leverage--including financial aid--but the only way to force them to do what we want is to invade and conquer, and that only works temporarily. Since we can't force, we have to persuade. This requires us to maintain our existing relationship with the country in question, and possibly strengthen it, because that relationship is what we're leveraging to try and influence them to do what we want them to do. If we do not maintain our relationship, they have no reason to listen to us.

Cut ties and go home. Break off any existing relationship and support, loudly proclaim that they're awful and doing awful things and we wash our hands of the whole situation. This keeps our own hands lily-white and pure, but it also means we have zero leverage to work on any kind of a diplomatic solution. They have no reason to listen to us or care about what we think. We can pat ourselves on the back for doing the right thing, but we destroy our own ability to influence anything. Not just now, but also in the future. Let's say the current crisis ends, and then ten years later there's another crisis. If we want to have any effect then, we would have to start from square one to start building a relationship. Cutting ties would be great for making Americans feel better about ourselves, and there are times when it's the only option, but it should be a last resort. If there is any hope of being able to influence things for the better this will destroy it at least temporarily.

Cut ties and impose sanctions. Break off any existing relationship and support, loudly proclaim that they're awful and doing awful things, but also use the might of the American economy to isolate and punish them. We've done this a lot over the 20th Century, too, and it has never actually resulted in the country in question buckling down and toeing the line we want them to. What happens is the sanctioned country has an economic shock (how long it lasts and how bad it gets depends on a lot of factors) and then pulls themselves back together economically, except this time they're more self-sufficient and less reliant on international trade and financial networks. They tell themselves that America is evil and the cause of all their problems, and so not only do they not listen to us, they actively hate us. And they have fewer international relationships, so fewer reasons to care about what the international community thinks about them. So they're most likely to double down on whatever it is they're doing that we don't like. This one is completely counterproductive and utterly stupid. It's great for making Americans feel better about ourselves, but if we actually care about being able to use our influence for good (or, at least, to mitigate evil) this option shoots us in the foot. It encourages other nations to do the very thing we're trying to stop them from doing.

So, with those four options in mind, both option one (invasion/assassination) and option four (sanctions) are off the table for being immoral and counterproductive. That leaves "breaking our relationship and going home" and "using diplomatic pressure" as our only two viable options.

Biden has chosen option two, diplomatic pressure. Yes, he and our government have continued financial support for Israel ... but with strings attached. They have put limits on it that have never been put on any US foreign aid before. They have taken legal steps to lay the groundwork to target Israeli settlers (i.e. Israeli citizens who confiscate Palestinian homes and businesses). We've been hearing reports for months that Benjamin Netanyahu (Israeli Prime Minister, and a far-right-wing demagogue) hates Biden's guts, because Biden is pressuring him to stop the genocide and work towards peace. Biden is maintaining the relationship, and he's using that relationship to try and influence things to curb the violence and pave the way for a just peace settlement of some sort. Biden has also mentioned the possibility of a two state solution where Palestine becomes its own completely separate country. That's huge, because up until this point the US position has always been that Israel is the only possible legitimate nation in that territory. If Biden stopped US support for Israel, it wouldn't force Israel to stop what it's doing ... but it would let them ignore us. It would remove any leverage or influence we might have.

Biden's hands aren't clean. But the only way for them to be clean would be to also give up any chance of influencing the situation or working to protect Palestinians now or in the future. Only time will tell if it works, but I personally would rather have someone who tried and failed than someone who didn't even try. You might disagree about whether this is the right course of action, and there's a lot of room for honest disagreement about the issue (there's a lot of nuances that I'm glossing over or ignoring). But please do acknowledge that Biden isn't supporting Israel because he supports genocide; he's doing it so that he can continue to maintain diplomatic pressure on Israel to stop the violence.

Which brings us back to "aiding and abetting genocide." Trump is not like Biden. Trump is good friends with Netanyahu and backs Israel to the hilt. Trump thinks that all Arabs are terrorists (and all Muslims are terrorists) and genuinely believes the world would be a better place with them dead. Biden is continuing to support Israel, but using that support as influence to get them to stop or slow down. Trump would be using that influence to encourage them.

And those are the two choices. Someone who is trying to curb the genocide, and someone who actively supports it.

I really hope you can see the significant and substantial difference between those two positions.

But let's say that you're right and Biden's policy towards Israel and Palestine is every bit as bad as Trump's would be. If there was nothing to choose between them on foreign policy grounds, there would still be a shitton to choose between them on domestic policy grounds. You admit that the right wants to kill your friends, and yet you don't seem to think that stopping them from killing your friends might be a good thing to do.

"We can't save Palestinians, so we might as well let Republicans destroy the rights, lives, and futures of LGBTQ+ people, women, people of color, people with disabilities, poor people, non-Christians, and anyone else they don't like." "We can't save Palestinians, so why bother to try to save the people we might actually be able to save." "We can't save Palestinians right now, so there's no point in trying to build up a longer-term political bloc that might drag US politics to the left over the long run."

Do you get why there's a problem with that line of thought?

#us politics

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longtammw · 1 year

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Minnesota Sports Teams Signatures Shirt, Minnesota Vikings Minnesota Timberwolves Minnesota Wild Twins Puckett Shirt

#DESCRIPTION #SHIPPING & MANUFACTURING INFO #TEEJEEP #Minnesota Sports Teams Signatures Shirt #Minnesota Vikings Minnesota Timberwolves Minnesota Wild Twins Puckett Shirt #Nothing like falling on your sword for the Emperor with No Clothes. Trump has been relentlessly attacking Kemp for not stealing the Minneso #Minnesota Vikings Minnesota Timberwolves Minnesota Wild Twins Puckett Shirt. Then again #cult members go where Dear Leader is. Whether it’s Washington DC #Waco #or Guyana. You just go. These past #grueling 4 years have obviously shown us not to expect to find an ounce of integrity #honor or courage in a Republican politician. They all suffer from Trumpholm Syndrome… However #Elite Legal Ninja Strike Force With Laser Eyes #Jenna Ellis #who reportedly contacted Dr. Oz asking if it was possible that Rudy Giuliani could have transmitted his covid to her when he farted in her #was not amused. Is this an event that employees #and not the company #are organizing and funding? If yes #distribute a general email message or flyer #inviting people to attend and contribute. State that the event isn’t employer-sponsored. Also try to word the invitation so that it’s about #not about hitting-up for contributions (even though the “user fee” does need to be clearly stated). If th #Buy It NOw: .Minnesota Sports Teams Signatures Shirt #Christmas In The Camper 3D Sweater #Appalachian State Mountaineers Distressed Retro Logo Shirt #ELF So Effing Tired Sped Teacher Christmas Sweater #Christmas Aloha Hawaii Mele Kalikimaka Ugly Christmas Sweater #Homepage: limotees jeeppremium telotee #Gearbloom is your one-stop online shop for printed t-shirts #hoodies #phone cases

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qqueenofhades · 9 months

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Donald Is Entering the FO stage of FAFO And Oh Boy He Don’t Like It, Part Number A Lot:

The Very Stable Genius, less than 24 hours after agreeing to comply with the order not to post sensitive material, threaten witnesses, or otherwise commit more crimes while out on bail, posts a threatening message on Truth Social ("IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I'M COMING AFTER YOU!")

A few short hours later, Jack Smith and Co. file a request for a protective order, aka preventing Trump from blabbing about anything he might receive from the government in the discovery phase, by citing said threatening post as Example A that he cannot keep his fucking mouth shut;

Judge Chutkan agrees, gives Trump until 5pm on August 7 (Monday) to respond;

Trump tries his usual bullshit delay tactic by asking for 3 more days + oral arguments, which would push it back even further;

Jack Smith immediately files a counter-request for NO delay, including this absolute gem of legal snark:

Trump, flailing, insists the threatening Truth Social post was actually directed against something something the Koch brothers and other people he thinks are RINOs (this was, of course, nowhere stated and is as usual total bullshit);

Does he know one of the Koch brothers is dead? Unlikely

Judge Chutkan cursorily denies Trump's request for said delay; his legal team still has to respond by 5pm on Monday;

Trump has a Sad;

Did he learn anything, though? Of course not; he's now attacking Mike Pence;

If he keeps this up, he WILL be in violation of his bail conditions and at this point, it's pretty certain that if necessary, Smith would request the court to order him held in custody until trial;

If that happens a) I demand a live feed and b) all of a sudden, Trump would be begging for a speedy trial;

Please proceed, motherfucker.

#hilary for ts #politics for ts #man it is just really fun to watch him suffer #he is not gonna get ANY kid gloves in this and it is great #this does not in any way decrease my willingness for jack smith to call me #ahem #the giant orange monster

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mostlysignssomeportents · 7 months

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Microsoft put their tax-evasion in writing and now they owe $29 billion

I'm coming to Minneapolis! Oct 15: Presenting The Internet Con at Moon Palace Books. Oct 16: Keynoting the 26th ACM Conference On Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing.

If there's one thing I took away from Propublica's explosive IRS Files, it's that "tax avoidance" (which is legal) isn't a separate phenomenon from "tax evasion" (which is not), but rather a thinly veiled euphemism for it:

https://www.propublica.org/series/the-secret-irs-files

That realization sits behind my series of noir novels about the two-fisted forensic accountant Martin Hench, which started with last April's Red Team Blues and continues with The Bezzle, this coming February:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865847/red-team-blues

A typical noir hero is an unlicensed cop, who goes places the cops can't go and asks questions the cops can't ask. The noir part comes in at the end, when the hero is forced to admit that he's being going places the cops didn't want to go and asking questions the cops didn't want to ask. Marty Hench is a noir hero, but he's not an unlicensed cop, he's an unlicensed IRS inspector, and like other noir heroes, his capers are forever resulting in his realization that the questions and places the IRS won't investigate are down to their choice not to investigate, not an inability to investigate.

The IRS Files are a testimony to this proposition: that Leona Hemsley wasn't wrong when she said, "Taxes are for the little people." Helmsley's crime wasn't believing that proposition – it was stating it aloud, repeatedly, to the press. The tax-avoidance strategies revealed in the IRS Files are obviously tax evasion, and the IRS simply let it slide, focusing their auditing firepower on working people who couldn't afford to defend themselves, looking for things like minor compliance errors committed by people receiving public benefits.

Or at least, that's how it used to be. But the Biden administration poured billions into the IRS, greenlighting 30,000 new employees whose mission would be to investigate the kinds of 0.1%ers and giant multinational corporations who'd Helmsleyed their way into tax-free fortunes. The fact that these elite monsters paid no tax was hardly a secret, and the impunity with which they functioned was a constant, corrosive force that delegitimized American society as a place where the rules only applied to everyday people and not the rich and powerful who preyed on them.

The poster-child for the IRS's new anti-impunity campaign is Microsoft, who, decades ago, "sold its IP to to an 85-person factory it owned in a small Puerto Rican city," brokered a deal with the corporate friendly Puerto Rican government to pay almost no taxes, and channeled all its profits through the tiny facility:

https://www.propublica.org/article/the-irs-decided-to-get-tough-against-microsoft-microsoft-got-tougher

That was in 2005. Now, the IRS has come after Microsoft for all the taxes it evaded through the gambit, demanding that the company pay it $29 billion. What's more, the courts are taking the IRS's side in this case, consistently ruling against Microsoft as it seeks to keep its ill-gotten billions:

https://www.propublica.org/article/irs-microsoft-audit-back-taxes-puerto-rico-billions

Now, no one expects that Microsoft is going to write a check to the IRS tomorrow. The company's made it clear that they intend to tie this up in the courts for a decade if they can, claiming, for example, that Trump's amnesty for corporate tax-cheats means the company doesn't have to give up a dime.

This gambit has worked for Microsoft before. After seven years in antitrust hell in the 1990s, the company was eventually convicted of violating the Sherman Act, America's bedrock competition law. But they kept the case in court until 2001, running out the clock until GW Bush was elected and let them go free. Bush had a very selective version of being "tough on crime."

But for all that Microsoft escaped being broken up, the seven years of depositions, investigations, subpoenas and negative publicity took a toll on the company. Bill Gates was personally humiliated when he became the star of the first viral video, as grainy VHS tapes of his disastrous and belligerent deposition spread far and wide:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/12/whats-a-murder/#miros-tilde-1

If you really want to know who Bill Gates is beneath that sweater-vested savior persona, check out the antitrust deposition – it's still a banger, 25 years on:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/09/revisiting-the-spectacular-failure-that-was-the-bill-gates-deposition/

In cases like these, the process is the punishment: Microsoft's dirty laundry was aired far and wide, its swaggering founder was brought low, and the company's conduct changed for years afterwards. Gates once told Kara Swisher that Microsoft missed its chance to buy Android because they were "distracted by the antitrust trial." But the Android acquisition came four years after the antitrust case ended. What Gates meant was that four years after he wriggled off the DoJ's hook, he was still so wounded and gunshy that he lacked the nerve to risk the regulatory scrutiny that such an anticompetitive merger would entail.

What's more, other companies got the message too. Large companies watched what happened to Microsoft and traded their reckless disregard for antitrust law for a timid respect. The effect eventually wore off, but the Microsoft antitrust case created a brief window where real competition was possible without the constant threat of being crushed by lawless monopolists. Sometimes you have to execute an admiral to encourage the others.

A decade in IRS hell will be even more painful for Microsoft than the antitrust years were. For one thing, the Puerto Rico scam was mainly a product of ex-CEO Steve Ballmer, a man possessed of so little executive function that it's a supreme irony that he was ever a corporate executive. Ballmer is a refreshingly plain-spoken corporate criminal who is so florid in his blatant admissions of guilt and shouted torrents of self-incriminating abuse that the exhibits in the Microsoft-IRS cases to come are sure to be viral sensations beyond even the Gates deposition's high-water mark.

It's not just Ballmer, either. In theory, corporate crime should be hard to prosecute because it's so hard to prove criminal intent. But tech executives can't help telling on themselves, and are very prone indeed to putting all their nefarious plans in writing (think of the FTC conspirators who hung out in a group-chat called "Wirefraud"):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/03/big-tech-cant-stop-telling-on-itself/

Ballmer's colleagues at Microsoft were far from circumspect on the illegitimacy of the Puerto Rico gambit. One Microsoft executive gloated – in writing – that it was a "pure tax play." That is, it was untainted by any legitimate corporate purpose other than to create a nonsensical gambit that effectively relocated Microsoft's corporate headquarters to a tiny CD-pressing plant in the Caribbean.

But if other Microsoft execs were calling this a "pure tax play," one can only imagine what Ballmer called it. Ballmer, after all, is a serial tax-cheat, the star of multiple editions of the IRS Files. For example, there's the wheeze whereby he has turned his NBA team into a bottomless sinkhole for the taxes on his vast fortune:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/08/tuyul-apps/#economic-substance-doctrine

Or his "tax-loss harvesting" – a ploy whereby rich people do a "wash trade," buying and selling the same asset at the same time, not so much circumventing the IRS rules against this as violating those rules while expecting the IRS to turn a blind eye:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/24/tax-loss-harvesting/#mego

Ballmer needs all those scams. After all, he was one of the pandemic's most successful profiteers. He was one of eight billionaires who added at least a billion more to his net worth during lockdown:

https://inequality.org/great-divide/billionaire-bonanza-2020/

Like all forms of rot, corruption spreads. Microsoft turned Washington State into a corporate tax-haven and starved the state of funds, paving the way for other tax-cheats like Amazon to establish themselves in the area. But the same anti-corruption movement that revitalized the IRS has also taken root in Washington, where reformers instituted a new capital gains tax aimed at the ultra-wealthy that has funded a renaissance in infrastructure and social spending:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/03/when-the-tide-goes-out/#passive-income

If the IRS does manage to drag Microsoft through the courts for the next decade, it's going to do more than air the company's dirty laundry. It'll expose more of Ballmer's habitual sleaze, and the ways that Microsoft dragged a whole state into a pit of austerity. And even more importantly, it'll expose the Puertopia conspiracy, a neocolonial project that transformed Puerto Rico into an onshore-offshore tax-haven that saw the island strip-mined and then placed under corporate management:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/07/27/boricua/#que-viva-albizu

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

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/13/pour-encoragez-les-autres/#micros-tilde-one

My next novel is The Lost Cause, a hopeful novel of the climate emergency. Amazon won't sell the audiobook, so I made my own and I'm pre-selling it on Kickstarter!

#pluralistic #irs #puerto rico #puertopia #microsoft #micros~1 #tax avoidance #tax evasion #pure tax play #big tech can't stop telling on itself #corporate crime #rough ride #the procedure is the punishment #steve ballmer #pour encouragez les autres

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decolonize-the-left · 2 months

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Full article under the cut

"The United Nations’ top court on Monday heard a final day of arguments on the legality of Israel’s decades-long occupation of Palestinian territories, proceedings that have added pressure to Israel at a time when attention focuses on the war in Gaza. The hearings, which began last Monday, were the first time that the court, the International Court of Justice, had been asked to detail the legal consequences of Israel’s “prolonged occupation, settlement and annexation” of the territories, including the West Bank and East Jerusalem, since 1967 — issues that have been the subject of years of debate and resolutions at the United Nations. The U.N. General Assembly asked the court to give an advisory opinion. Judge Nawab Salam, the president of the court, ended the hearings saying that the judges’ conclusions would be announced at a public hearing. The conclusions were expected to take at least six months, lawyers at the court said." The sessions, held at the Peace Palace in The Hague, heard from representatives of more than 50 countries, an unusually high number for the court. Most sided with the Palestinian representatives, who argued that Israel had long abused Palestinian rights with impunity and denied their right to self-determination.

“Israel has arrogated to itself the right to decide who owns land, who may live on it, how it is used,” Philippe Sands, a member of the Palestinian delegation’s legal team, argued last week. “It has confined Palestinians to enclaves,” he added, and broken up its territory with hundreds of settlements “regarded as a permanent part of Israel.” Israel did not appear at the hearings, but, in a written submission, it rejected the questions raised by the proceedings as biased.

The proceedings have been given urgency by Israel’s war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Health authorities in Gaza say that Israel’s military campaign has killed more than 29,000 people, the majority civilians, and provoked what the United Nations says is a humanitarian disaster. Since the war began, Israeli forces have also detained hundreds of Palestinians in West Bank raids. Deadly violence against Palestinians by Israeli settlers has increased and Palestinian attacks on Israelis have also risen.

A few speakers at the court, including those from the United States, Britain and Hungary, have sided with Israel. On Wednesday, a State Department official argued before the court that Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians were determined by its “very real security needs.” But Israel’s campaign in Gaza has presented a dilemma to President Biden’s administration, which has continued to supply Israel with military aid while expressing growing concern over the treatment of Palestinians. Mr. Biden has said that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has been “over the top” in its conduct of the war in Gaza. And on Friday, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said that the American government was reversing a Trump administration policy and would now consider new Israeli settlements in Palestinian territories to be “inconsistent with international law.”

#icj hearing #palestine #6 months is bs wtf #....so theyre complicit and every institution we have is worthless and needs to be overthrown. cool.

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odinsblog · 7 months

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Trump’s own legal team elected to have a trial without a jury. (source)

#politics #republicans #donald trump #trump indictment #lies and the lying liars who tell them

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wilwheaton · 10 months

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Trump is now facing 37 felony charges in the classified documents case, including multiple violations of the Espionage Act, conspiracy to obstruct justice, and scheming to conceal documents from a federal investigation. In addition, he’s facing an additional 34 felony charges in New York for falsifying business records in an attempt to cover up his payments to two women with whom he allegedly had adulterous sexual encounters. However, there’s a growing sense that all this could be the tip of a very large legal iceberg that still lies ahead. Because while Smith’s investigation into the classified documents case has revealed Trump and assistant Walt Nauta moving boxes of top secret documents into bathrooms at Mar-a-Lago, the election fraud investigation looks as if it could ensnare Trump, his advisers, his legal team, and Republicans at both the state and federal level who all conspired to overturn the government of the United States.

Jack Smith particularly interested in Dec. 2020 Trump meeting

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republicansaredomesticterrorists · 17 days

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Never forget and never forgive what the Republikkkans are doing.

#republican assholes #traitor trump #crooked donald #traitor #republican hypocrisy #maga morons #resist #republican values #republican family values #never trump

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donald-trump-official · 1 year

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In the past 48 hours:

- the trump org was convicted on 17 counts of fraud and tax evasion

- Special counsel Jack smith subpoenaed multiple state officials for their communications with Donald trump

- Trump’s lawsuit requesting a special master has been rejected. He will not appeal, meaning the DOJ now has access to all of the material it seized from Mar A Lago as of Dec. 9th

- the January 6th committe is preparing to release it’s final report on Dec. 21st. It is expected to include a referral for criminal charges against Donald trump, and they will also turn over all of their evidence to the DOJ

- the DOJ has asked a judge to hold the trump legal team be in contempt for refusing to affirm to the court that all classified material has been returned

- a company hired by Donald Trump’s lawyers did a sweep of all of his properties, finding additional classified material in a storage unit

- a congressional investigation has been opened into Jared Kushner for alleged tax violations in regards to his property in New York

#trump speaks again #satire #donald trump #parody

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tanadrin · 1 month

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Guy on Chris Hayes' podcast is an evangelical anti-Trump dude who makes a couple interesting points, including that 1) a lot of evangelicals are more pro-immigration than other conservatives, but (in his experience) will point-blank refuse to believe that Trump has said many of the things he's on record as saying about immigrants; and 2) they are convinced that there is or must be some mythical path to legal immigration that illegal immigrants aren't availing themselves of because ???. The second in particular reminds me of those formerly middle-class people who fall on hard times and are baffled there isn't a generous welfare state for the "Deserving poor" like them, despite for years voting against welfare provisions because they fall for rhetoric about welfare queens and the undeserving poor. Like... politicians generally make a good faith effort to enact the policies they say they are going to enact! If you vote for anti-immigrant, or anti-welfare politicians, you're going get a society where immigration is harder and welfare is less generous. There is no just-world escape hatch to policy.

And on the one hand you want to be sympathetic to the people who are so caught up in their identity as conservatives and evangelicals that they would rather delude themselves than vote differently, because at least they're not going "yes, I do support hunting immigrants for sport" like some people on the right. And a lot of people--on all parts of the political spectrum--treat voting as an aspect of identity rather than as a pragmatic exercise. On the other hand, I find myself feeling very impatient and annoyed at people who would stick their heads in the sand then vote directly against many of the things they claim to support, because they have a binding narrative around politics that reduces political parties to the status of sports teams, with no consideration for actual policy proposals.

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destielmemenews · 6 months

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"He filed a legal brief in support of a lawsuit that sought to block the certification of Biden’s victories in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. Johnson then supported objections in Congress to the certification Arizona’s and Pennsylvania’s 2020 presidential results.

Johnson also served on Trump’s legal team during the former president’s first impeachment.

He previously did legal work for the Alliance Defense Freedom, an ultraconservative advocacy group that litigates to restrict abortion access and prohibit same-sex marriage."

source 1

source 2

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qqueenofhades · 9 months

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All jokes aside, Americans do owe a seismic debt of gratitude to Jack Smith, especially if it is true (as has been reported) that the DOJ initially slow-walked or stonewalled the investigation into Trump himself (at least until the J6 Committee). He was only appointed to the job last year, and he's already secured indictments for two separate sets of federal crimes, in two different (and wildly politically different) jurisdictions, with felony charges numbering in the dozens. These charges include espionage, conspiracy, obstruction, etc -- aka all the things we saw Trump do in real time, but have been relentlessly brainwashed ever since to try to make us forget that he did.

So it's just... Nice that our collective trauma of 2016-2020 has been legally validated, yknow? That grand juries of private citizens in both DC and Florida, when they actually have to look at the (overwhelming) evidence, do really, empirically agree that the son of a bitch is in fact really fucking guilty. These indictments were not easy to get, we should and must thank Jack Smith for working at speed to get them, and now especially with the trial in DC being assigned to an Obama appointee who won't favor Trump endlessly like Cannon in Florida, there is actually a real chance he goes on trial before November 2024. And while we don't know what will happen, there's no reason to think that Smith and his team will stumble at the last hurdle and somehow fail to secure a conviction. That, especially considering the magnitude of the threats and MAGA rage he has been faced with, takes considerable courage.

And that, all reflexive Dooming and Glooming and endless (and at this point, profoundly inaccurate) moaning that Trump will never see an actual systemic repercussion quite aside, means something. We will still have to deal with his crazed fascist followers, but it's been a string of three high-profile indictments now and nary a peep, far less the promised rioting in the streets. It's almost like bullies are cowards and fold when you challenge them, and that we might actually get through this terrible, terrible time by the skin of our teeth and still have a democracy, however flawed, in the future. And I don't know about you, but I think that is, and remains, incredibly fucking important.

#hilary for ts #politics for ts #the giant orange monster

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