Fiona

Woz is the true Tech Jesus

No that would be Stallman. In so many ways, but most importantly by establishing the concept of free software and pushing hard for progressive values. Also by being unpopular with the masses.

Please name reasonably recent examples, preferably ones where it is not the US doing it.

“NATO powers such as the United Kingdom and the United States support the Saudi Arabian–led intervention in Yemen primarily through arms sales and technical assistance.[396] France had also made recent military sales to Saudi Arabia”

“The tribunal requested a thorough investigation as some of the evidence indicated “possible acts of genocide”.[28] Its panel found Sri Lanka guilty of genocide at its 7–10 December 2013 hearings in Berman, Germany. It also found that the US and UK were guilty of complicity.”

" 2008 report by the Rwandan government-sponsored Mucyo Commission accused the French government of knowing of preparations for the genocide and helping to train Hutu militia members."

“Since the war began, both regional and international powers have been actively involved in the conflict. A number of reports have been made alleging that China, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates were all providing military support for the Ethiopian government via the sale of weaponized drones.”

“October 2023, political analyst Lena Obermaier argued that Germany is complicit in Israel’s war crimes against Gaza.”

"On 12 December 2023, Human Rights Watch said that selling weapons to Israel could make the UK complicit in war crimes. "

"In March, OXFAM released a statement detailing its intention, alongside several other NGOs,[p] to sue Denmark to prevent arms sales to Israel, warning that by selling arms Denmark is “complicit in violations of international humanitarian law … and a plausible genocide”.

Selling weapons to parties engaged in a conflict, to an extent even if they are used for warcrimes is not among the list of crimes that the ICC has jurisdiction for. You can argue that it should be on the list and I’d be inclined to agree with you, but the entire point of a court like this is that it REALLY has to do things by the book to maintain its acceptance.

And the ICC is kinda doing the opposite. Really not comparable, as I said.

Lol, the ICC isn’t run by economically advanced states? They haven’t primarily prosecuted people in poor states?

Not really, it’s actually quite diverse!

People in those rich states never participated in war crimes?

That’s an unfair standard, considering that the ICC has so far sentenced 8 (EIGHT!) people from 2 (TWO) case-groups to prison, both of which concerned civil wars in Africa.

And how many POC were prosecuted vs white people?

Define white… They are prosecuting 6 Russians, 3 Israelis, 3 Georgians, 3 Palestinians and 1 person from Myanmar of 65 people total, the remainder being from a variety of African countries.

three case groups (Georgia, Russia, Israel) is something that you would have justify.

Sure, western Europeans historically haven’t viewed serbs as “white”. We already talked about Israel.

Okay, you can of course say that no one prosecuted is white, by setting the standards for being white arbitrarily high. If you demand someone whose ancestors for the last 10 generations have lived in a Norwegian Fjord, then yes, none of them are white. Let me guess, you are from the US? Because this really isn’t a European perspective, the entire distinction between white and non-white matters a lot less here. And not even because there is necessarily less racism, but because the racism that is around isn’t really about whiteness.

The thing is: Since the Iraq-war most European countries neither had large civil wars, nor did they really participate in other wars that were not UN-sanctioned.

Ahh yes, the UN is immune from unethical wars…

Not necessarily, but it has done reasonably well with regards to what it sanctioned and is the relevant body who decides on the legality of wars. Which is what matters here, not whether or not you or me agree with every individual decision.

The fact of the matter is that they are doing more in Africa simply because Africa has a lot of civil wars

And why exactly does Africa have a lot of civil wars…? Hmmm…maybe the hundreds of years of western colonialism and interventionist actions on the continent might have something to do with it?

Yes, but most of those colonialists are no longer available to be judged and since the events predate the Rome statute wouldn’t be accessible to it anyways. History can explain things, but it doesn’t justify or excuse things. At the end of the day, there are more warcrimes in Africa than in Europe, East-Asia and the Americas today.

I guess that is why it went against most of those countries and prosecuted Netanjahu?

Only to have it’s own member states ignore the court they belong to?

So far they haven’t and there have also definitely be some that made it clear that they will comply with the rules, as well as some that tried to avoid giving clear statements.

The ICC is independent, that’s the whole point!

So long as they don’t prosecute anyone from the G7… Sure.

They don’t have jurisdiction for the US and for the other 6 there is no clear precedent. I would expect most of them to comply, though it is unlikely to come up because most of them would likely prosecute their criminals themselves if it reached the point where the ICC would look.

Who should then prosecute those crimes that are otherwise not accessible to prosecution? The ICC only gets active if there is no serious attempt at prosecution in the country itself!

Lol, I’ve said this several times. I don’t inherently think the ICC itself is evil or anything, I just don’t think they’re really effective at doing anything unless it fits within the geopolitical will of its wealthiest member states.

But that is no longer an argument about whether it would deserve the right to execute people.

The problem is systemic in nature, and no matter what anyone in the ICC believes no international body is truly independent.

It has definitely started to show some attitude with Israel. that’s more than most other institutions can say of themselves.

Frances foreign minister has already claimed that he’s immune from prosecution…

Which is disgusting, but we will see what happens when it actually happens and in any case the fault of France, not of the ICC.

Also, weren’t you the one claiming that the “desk” perpetrators should be the ones executed. I guess that sentiment ends conveniently with the warlord and not the people who enable them?

What makes you think that? If you want to hear me say that Kissinger should have been sentenced to be burned at the stakes, I have zero reservations to give you that.

In a lot of cases these warlords are sponsored by Western nations trying to destabilize governments that politically align against them.

Please name reasonably recent examples, preferably ones where it is not the US doing it. You can talk about a lot of meddling, but it is really not a common thing of the current west supporting warlords against even remotely legit governments. And the goal is usually very much not destabilization, even if that may be the effect. When we are talking about criminal law, intention matters.

I beg to differ. It’s a very similar asymmetrical hierarchical structure that allows people in power to enforce rules on people who don’t have power, for engaging in the same crimes as the people in power.

And the ICC is kinda doing the opposite. Really not comparable, as I said.

Sure…not a big problem.

Fair, but again: I’m not super interested in the US, because we already know that it is a shithole country.

I never made that claim, I just said that it’s not really a justice system if one race is allowed to do crimes and other races are not.

But that’s the thing:

Lol, sure. I’m sure the foreign minister of France is sticking their necks out for a genocider from Kenya…

Please, name one white person who the ICC has put in jail.

That’s an unfair standard, considering that the ICC has so far sentenced 8 (EIGHT!) people from 2 (TWO) case-groups to prison, both of which concerned civil wars in Africa.

Hell, name 1 white person who the ICC has prosecuted before 2020.

First of all excluding all the white people that they charged since then in three case groups (Georgia, Russia, Israel) is something that you would have justify.

And who should they have prosecuted? Blair obviously (and they did infect investigate it!), but other than that I don’t see many obvious candidates that are very clearly missing over whom the court has jursidiction. The thing is: Since the Iraq-war most European countries neither had large civil wars, nor did they really participate in other wars that were not UN-sanctioned.

The fact of the matter is that they are doing more in Africa simply because Africa has a lot of civil wars that involve a significant amount of particularly illegal forms of warfare such as child-soldiers. So yes, there are more war-crimes in unstable regions.

At the end of the day the ICC is a political body of countries whom have geopolitical agenda, and are willing to turn a blind eye when it suits them.

I guess that is why it went against most of those countries and prosecuted Netanjahu?

Like: It’s actually pretty clear at this point that they are acting increasingly as an independent and neutral instance.

My friend, I’m not saying that warlords shouldn’t be prosecuted. I’m just pointing out that the ICC is not a non biased judicial system, at least not to the point where id trust them with the ability to prescribe capital punishment.

But you can’t argue that based on what other countries are saying whom they are going to extradite. The ICC is independent, that’s the whole point!

Pointing out hypocrisy is not a whataboutism. I never once validated crimes of anyone’s crimes because other crimes occurred that were not policed. My original rebuttal still stands true, the ICC isn’t non biased enough to prescribe death warrants.

Who should then prosecute those crimes that are otherwise not accessible to prosecution? The ICC only gets active if there is no serious attempt at prosecution in the country itself!

Obviously I believe that the rome statute needs to be signifiantly extended and the ICC should for starters receive flat out universal jurisdiction: A big reason for why so few western people have been charged at it (though: Netanjahu and Puttler are now on the list!) is that a lot of the stuff that could be charged at it happened between nations that were not members of the ICC, meaning that it lacked jurisdiction.

Right, but even when people like netanjahu are charged by the ICC, the wealthy European members states fail to enforce their convictions.

That has not happened yet. It may happen, but let’s not accuse them of things they haven’t done yet.

Even today you can also turn it around and say that it first and foremost gives justice to victims of color. Which is arguably much more important than the skin-color distribution of the genocidal trash that the convict!

I think that’s kinda europe patting themselves on the back for “solving” an issue they often caused in the first place. I don’t think putting retired African war criminals on trial is very meaningful when that war criminal was empowered by European colonialism in the first place.

It was still them committing the war crimes. Let’s not pretend that Africans are somehow infantile children who are not responsible for their own actions. And the European involvement in those cases is usually also far more removed than that accussation makes it seem.

On that note, it bears mentioning that there is no right to get away with crimes just because others do!

Eh… I think that’s highly reductive. If I made the same claims about about the systemic racism in American policing would you be defending the American justice system?

The sorry excuse for a justice system that the US has is for many reasons a whole different can of worms. To make it short: The issues with white people getting away with shit more often than black people (and I’m not convinced that that is as much a problem if we are talking about homicides, a handful of very high profile cases not withstanding the general trend) doesn’t mean that the solution is to let black people get away with first degree murder. The issue is that white people can get away with shit, not that black people can’t!

Would you interpret that the American justice system is giving justice to POC when they arrest POC because they are the most victimized segment of our society? That ignores the systemic nature of how the victimization occurred in the first place.

That is a completely different situation. A better analog would be if the federal police investigated murders happening in predominantly black communities more often than murders in predominantly white communities, pointing out that they are more common and that the local police forces seem to put more efforts into it in the later cases, making outside intervention less necessary. And yeah, if that was what was happening, it would indeed not be racist but completely justified.

The problem is that that is not what is happening in the US, but it is kinda what is happening within the countries that ratified the Rome statute.

At the end of the day, it’s not really a justice system if certain segments of society are immune from penalties being applied to only the disadvantaged participants. At some point it’s just a tool utilized to negate the competition from practicing the same crimes that others have utilized to achieve their position on the global scale.

They are not immune though: The justice system is fully prepared to treat them like everyone else, the problem is that sometimes it doesn’t have jurisdiction (when something happens between non-member countries) or where you have to be concerned about whether corrupt cops are willing to let the criminal go despite an arrest warrant.

Yes, a lot of the west can be very hypocritical and the US is often absolutely awful, but it is really important to still look at who is on the other side and not to get blinded by accusations of hypocrisy, which is really just another form of whataboutism that in this case is even more inappropriate than in most others.

Obviously I believe that the rome statute needs to be signifiantly extended and the ICC should for starters receive flat out universal jurisdiction: A big reason for why so few western people have been charged at it (though: Netanjahu and Puttler are now on the list!) is that a lot of the stuff that could be charged at it happened between nations that were not members of the ICC, meaning that it lacked jurisdiction. Now obviously all the responsible government-members of the “coalition of the willing” should be charged for the crime of aggression, and it is extremely disappointing that they aren’t, but since then the fact of the matter is that most of the rich states that are members have reasonably functional criminal justice systems and largely refrained from severe enough crimes that they would fall under ICC-jurisdiction.

Also: Even today you can also turn it around and say that it first and foremost gives justice to victims of color. Which is arguably much more important than the skin-color distribution of the genocidal trash that the convict! On that note, it bears mentioning that there is no right to get away with crimes just because others do!

My personal take on the death penalty is a bit more nuanced than most people’s, in that I support it for desk-perpetrators who commit crimes against international humanitarian law (crimes against humanity, starting a war of aggression, …) or dismantle/overthrow democracies. Desk perpetrator here means that the person cannot just participate in physical action but has to be a decision maker using institutional power. This should ideally be handed out by the ICC and no other court.

If I use this model, it tells me that the death penalty here is not justified: I’m not convinced that the bank she led had enough power to qualify as giving her sufficient institutional power to qualify and even if it did, theft and bribery are not crimes against humanity.

But yeah, I’m not going to cry if they go through with it anyways.

There’s a lot of trans-medicalism in your post comrade.

Not really, no. I’m talking about biological sex, not gender.

A trans woman is a woman, full stop.

For non-medical and non-biological cases: Yes, and no one say disputes that.

The thing is that there are some people who don’t believe that for the other cases. I’m pointing out that while it is indeed a bit more complicated and takes some work to fully get there, trans women can even medically/biologically be women.

HRT and bottom surgery doesn’t define a person’s gender. Only affirm it.

Indeed. They change the biological sex, which helps affirming gender.

That said, I do like pointing out to transphobes that I have less testosterone and more estrogen than my afab girlfriend thanks to gender affirming care.

Which makes you biologically a woman. I really think we should hammer that point home and not let people get away with it by limiting our criticism to the choice of words, when we are scientifically in the right.

Amab and afab are equivalent to biological male or female, just less explicit I suppose.

That’s the point: They are not! Any sensible interpretation of a biological sex has to look at the whole system and we have comprehensively proven that biological sex can be changed. It’s a spectrum to begin with. Refusing that is like refusing that irrational numbers exist and claiming that every number can be written as a fraction: Understandable if you subject-matter education ends in 7th grade, but not if you actually looked into somewhat deeper at all.

Would you still argue that you are more biologically female than male if you considered that your DNA in every bit of your body still has the male set of chromosome?

For starters, define male set of chromosomes. If you say XY, then you will be interested to learn about De-la-Chapelle-Syndrom and Complete androgen insensitivity syndrome.

But even if we put that aside, the thing is: Chromosomes really don’t matter all that much. The relevant differences primarily lie with organs and hormone-levels. Now, there are things you can do with gene-therapy (there was for example that trans girl who used CRISPR on herself to get her testicles to produce E instead of T). So it’s not that they don’t play any role at all anymore when you are an adult, but what matters much more is the overall metabolism and HRT is absolutely capable of switching that around.

Like: Name the difference between a post-op transwoman and a cis woman who received a radical hysterectomy. Their metabolisms are functionally identical and both will have to substitute the same amount of Estradiol, because both lack ovaries. Chromosomes really don’t affect anything here, so insisting that they create a biological distinction, when they clearly don’t have any effect anymore is completely arbitrary.

I’m not arguing against you, more so arguing that the distinction doesnt much matter and could be argued either way. I’d rather just take someone’s word for it when they say who they are. Thats the whole point isnt it, acceptance?

The thing is: That is about accepting someone’s gender, which is usually indeed the more important thing.

But biological sex of course also exists and the important thing for many of us is that it can in fact be changed and the claim that it can’t is deeply problematic and harmful.

I haven’t even had bottom surgery yet, but thanks to HRT my metabolism is much more in line with that of a typical woman than that of a man. Meaning that it is much more accurate to refer to me as a biological woman than as a biological man. So saying I’m the later isn’t just insulting, it is even scientifically incorrect. A trans woman who has received bottom surgery is in fact for pretty much all intents and purposes the same as a cis woman who has received a radical hysterectomy. Unless you call that kind of cis woman a biological man, doing the same to the trans woman is just as nonsensical.

And yes, this really affects pretty much everything: The treatment of things like brain tumors depends on biological sex and if you treat a trans woman like a man you are going to see the same bad outcomes that treating a cis woman like a man would have. Because again: Trans woman are (from a certain point in their transition onwards) biological women. Yes, it changes, get over it.

The reason to talk about amab/afab is specifically because they are the only terms that are reasonably consistent in all edge cases, except clerical errors.

The crazy thing about minority report is that nobody, least of all the people who made it, seem to have understood the problem that the movie depicted:

Having the ability to predict attempted killings and interfere with them would be a genuinely good thing! The problem was the notion that everybody who is predicted to commit such a crime gets an extreme punishment without even a trial, consideration of the circumstances, or any of the other things we would normally attempt to do if we learned about someone attempting to commit a crime. Equating premediated murder out of greed with an over-reacting in a highly surprising situation, with self-defense, with pretty much just accidents and punishing them all in the most cruel way you can imagine is what was so idiotic about the movie that it was hard to take seriously. Trials are there for a reason, and that reason isn’t just to figure out what happened physically!

If you don’t want people to point out that you are spreading Nazi-ideology, than maybe don’t spread Nazi-Ideology…

Locking you (and everyone making similar comments here) up would also help all the people that you won’t have the opportunity to hurt or kill. Because how can I know that you won’t ever commit a crime like that?

The idea that you can get security by simply locking everyone up who commits a crime is delusional and for the outcomes you only need to check the US.

Higher education is truly a scam.

It really depends. From what I hear about the US a lot of it is there. But in some ways that is also the exception.

Compare Germany: By most rankings KIT is one of, if not the top university for computer science in the country. The requirements to get a spot there are literally just that you are qualified to study (aka: have the right high school diploma) and haven’t lost your right to study computer science at a public university by conclusively failing to do so at a different German university. When I was there until 2019 we payed a bit over 100€ per semester in administrative fees and got a limited train ticket in exchange.

The only selection criteria were “did you pass your exams?” that during the bachelors were almost all written exams that were the same for everyone. What you learned was to an extend up to you, it was a university, not an apprenticeship, so there certainly was a significant focus on theory, but especially during the masters a lot just fully depended on what you wanted.

The main cost at the time was just general housing and living costs, which in my case was payed for by my mom, but for those for whom this is not an option, provided that they were either German citizens or legal residents for reasons other than the education, there was BAföG, which comes down to an interest-free loan from which you only have to pay back 50%.

And yes, I definitely learned a lot of useful stuff there.

you definitely don’t have the authority to say he’s definitely beyond ANY help. That’s the part I find ridiculous, not the part where you think there’s something wrong with him

It’s an approach known as perpetrator type theory (or “Tätertypenlehre” in German) that was notably deployed by the Nazis to be able to punish people they didn’t like much harder than others, by allowing them to say for example that someone was inherently and unchangeably a murderer and should thus be executed. The crime was essentially just proof of that, what you got punished for, was what some judge deemed to be the innate criminal personality you had. In particular this allowed to hand out lighter sentences to “Arians” and to decide that Jews for example were inherently bad and could thus be punished much harsher for the same crime.

It’s very obvious from your posts that you neither know what the purpose of a punishment in a legal state is, nor what the effects of them are.

The idea that a multi year sentence is “getting of easy” is insane. And from what you are writing I get very strong vibes that you are one of those people who still subscribe to debunked ideas of perpetrator types, which are unironically Nazi-ideology.

The world that you want to create is not a safer one, quite the opposite in fact. Rehabilitation is the by far most important aspect of a punishment and the idea that crimes like the one in question are committed by people who carefully weigh how many years they are willing to spend in prison and could thus be deterred is beyond ridiculous.

Trace the execs

Importantly you need to trace the execs who copied it, not the ones who decided to try it the first time. Giving things a try and not immediately throwing it away when it isn’t perfect is a good thing and behavior that needs to be encouraged. The problem is when others start copying it blindly because it is new before it could demonstrate benefits. It’s the people jumping on hype that are the problem, not the people giving new things a try, even if they may fail.

It should not be legal to hand out life sentences to minors, period.

In Germany the maximum sentence for minors is 10 years and depending on your developmental state you can count as a minor until you are 21 (You are always treated as one if you are under 18). And that is how it should be. Locking people up for life helps nobody.

This is a completely artificial US problem that has been completely solved in Germany and many other countries by requiring a 1€ deposit to unlock the cart and returning it when you relock it. So, complain to the store for failing to use basic countermeasures.

I’m not saying it’s an easy line to draw because you obviously don’t want to create incentives for bad journalism, but don’t want to make it too high of a bar to get into in the first place. I think you’d need to take things like the number of readers, the factuality of headings and content, the originality and the investigative value into account and be able to at least temporarily cut of bad outlets that spread fake/hate/… while at the same time ensuring that inconvenient truths make it out.

It’s not an easy task, but I feel there is more room to get somewhere useful than with the current model of billionaire-owned media that outdo each other with rage-bait and inaccurate/misleading/falsly balanced/biased reporting…

The honest answer are general fees like they are used for public broadcasters. It’s not a perfect system either and it requires significant effort to keep things neutral, but overall it seems to have the best results if you compare the quality of the outcome.