Ultimately, this “generous offer” amounted to turning the West Bank into non-contiguous cantons, crisscrossed by a network of settlements, roads and Israeli areas. Even the supposed “capital” of the Palestinian state would mostly be under Israeli control, with stipulations and conditions that stripped any real sovereignty from any area of the supposed Palestinian “state”. Not even the sky above Palestinian heads would be under their control, nor the water under their feet, as Israel still demanded access to water resources under the West Bank.

Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin (December 9, 1842 – February 8, 1921) was a Russian anarchist and geographer known as a proponent of anarchist communism.

Archived Version

police-jobs-suck.com:

Would you wear a uniform that evokes fear & distrust in your neighbors?

Would you risk your mental well-being, affecting you & your loved ones?

Would you be comfortable with helping send someone to prison for years because of a petty parole violation or non-violent offence?

Would you participate in actions that split apart families?

Are there other ways you can build safety, beyond policing, in your community?

Crossposted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/13937769

Across the United States, hundreds of jails have eliminated in-person family visits over the last decade. Why has this happened? The answer highlights a profound flaw in how decisions too often get made in our legal system: for-profit jail telecom companies realized that they could earn more profit from phone and video calls if jails eliminated free in-person visits for families. So the companies offered sheriffs and county jails across the country a deal: if you eliminate family visits, we'll give you a cut of the increased profits from the larger number of calls. This led to a wave across the country, as local jails sought to supplement their budgets with hundreds of millions of dollars in cash from some of the poorest families in our society.

I feared he would be martyred, when he returned to Russia after getting poisoned by the FSB and helping Bellingcat track down the agents who poisoned him (nobody in power did anything about them). Back then, his life was saved by a pilot deciding to make an emergency landing and a doctor suspecting a neurotoxin.

What finally took his life will be difficult to ascertain due to lack of transparency - a remote location, an extremely authoritarian system, war, politically controlled law enforcement and courts. Still, a day before death, Navalny appeared in court for another potential addition to his already 19-year sentence - in good spirits.

During Navalny's imprisonment, the regime made a sustained effort to break that spirit, issuing a constant stream of disciplinary punishments (a total of 27 times): for not placing his hands behind his back, for incorrectly introducing himself, for uttering a profanity, for failing to clear leaves in the yard, for citing the European Court of Human Rights’ demand for his release, for addressing the guard without using a patronym, and for declining to wash the fence.

They also transfered him to the far north and previously used sleep deprivement against him. I tend to assume that they also killed him, either directly or indirectly.

He was definitely not the perfect politician, but did things which a common politician never dares to do, which suggests having some principles. When they came for anarchists, he didn't forget them, but also spoke for anarchists.

If the use of human shields was so wide as to cause hundreds upon hundreds of dead Palestinian civilians, then surely there would be a reporter or an observer on the ground that could have caught a whiff of it. But reporters on the ground could find no trace of such a supposedly widespread action, Jeremy Bowen of the BBC wrote that he found no evidence of the use of human shields while he was covering the assault on Gaza. Similarly, Kim Sengupta writing for the Belfast Telegraph interviewed Palestinians in Gaza and unsurprisingly came to a similar conclusion: Hamas was not forcing anybody to be a human shield, counter to Netanyahu’s claims.

But perhaps these reporters were missing something, let us consult an organization which specializes in these matters. Fortunately for us, Amnesty international released a detailed report of its investigation into the matter. In their report they indicate that:

“The Israeli authorities have claimed that in a few incidents, the Hamas authorities or Palestinian fighters directed or physically coerced individual civilians in specific locations to shield combatants or military objectives. Amnesty International has not been able to corroborate the facts in any of these cases.”

So, it seems that the Israeli claims have no basis in reality, and are just a way to demonize Palestinians and legitimize their indiscriminate bombardment of civilians. This is hardly the first time Israel has used this accusation to delegitimize their enemies. For example, in the 2006 war against Lebanon Israel accused Hizballah of using human shields. Unsurprisingly, investigations by both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch similarly found no evidence.

While most lockdowns are intermittent (lasting from a few days to several weeks), an increasing number of state and federal prisons keep prisoners locked down for most or even all of the year. In addition, many prisons make people suffer through constant lockdown “cycles,” where prisoners get a very brief return to normal “gen pop” status before they are once again subject to several days or weeks of lockdown.

For those unfamiliar with the distinction between solitary confinement and lockdown, the latter is considered far more severe, as prisoners have no routines or any real rights whatsoever under lockdown. Solitary confinement is already rightly considered a form of torture under international law, but persons in solitary have a set routine, as stark as it is. Under lockdown, there is no such routine: There is no guarantee of exercise, showers are irregular at best, and access to phone, email or visitation are nonexistent. Education, religious activities, rehabilitative programs, psychiatric intervention to crises, access to commissary (“the store,” where somewhat healthier food and vitamins as well as soap can be bought) are typically denied or are nearly impossible to get. Meetings with attorneys come to a halt or are hard to obtain. People under lockdown are often not even given basic hygiene materials such as soap or toothpaste.

Throughout modern American carceral history, lockdowns have been reserved for major disruptive events that ostensibly threatened the lives of staff, prisoners or the surrounding community. Justifications for full lockdowns would typically only include prisoner escapes, murders of staff or prisoners, and large-scale violent prison riots, and they typically ended within days or a few weeks at most. Even then, they would almost always be contained to one unit or prison, not across an entire state or the whole nation.

Those days are gone. Lockdowns are now issued for almost any reason, according to interviews with a wide array of prisoners, attorneys, advocates and loved ones on the outside of prison walls. Barbee describes a sense of hopelessness and bewilderment on the part of those who have no way of knowing what is happening inside or if their family members in prison are even alive. Lockdowns happen so fast that prisoners rarely have the opportunity to inform anyone who cares about them.

Prison lockdowns have intensified in both duration and levels of abuse and deprivation over the years.

In addition, many other prison facilities are mimicking key facets of lockdown status even if prisoners technically remain in “gen pop.” Such examples include severe limits on access to confidential legal counsel, denial of family visitation without explanation, returned email or postal communication without justification, and many other restrictions that violate both constitutional rights and prison regulations.

The move toward lockdowns is functioning as a strategic manner of eroding an already paltry level of civil/human rights protections for prisoners within the U.S. carceral system.

Winning proposal:

Once Derek Chauvin has been found guilty in a court of law, he is sentenced to a term of community service of a length and type appropriate to the severity of his crime. (So in this case, a lot. Life?) That community service is overseen by agents of the court; I’m thinking more like lawyers or clerks, less like armed bailiffs. Those agents are not charged with forcing him to stick to the community service, but rather just observing whether he does so.

If he forfeits on his community service, as determined by the courts, then he will be considered an “outlaw” - meaning, specifically, someone not protected by the law. Anything done to him that would ordinarily constitute a crime no longer does. No police are necessary; if he refuses to serve his time helping his fellow man, then anybody with a chip on their shoulder can punish him for it. As long as he sticks to his sentence, he’s safe, with his life dedicated to helping others. And if anyone were to commit a crime against him while he was in that situation they would face the same fate he currently faces—an appropriate community service sentence enforced by the threat of being put outside of the protection of the law should he violate that sentence.

Obviously, it’s crucial that the courts are seen as impartial and unimpeachable, since they don’t have a bunch of men with guns to enforce their will. But it’s the best I’ve got. Derek broke the social contract; either he makes amends or we’ll put him outside of the protection of that social contract. Simple as that.

How do we imagine a world without prisons and policing? Transforming our punishment mindsets is a daily discipline. Punishment is so deeply ingrained that we fail to even notice how we enact it in our lives. It takes practice to uproot it and to focus on being more restorative in our interactions.