Es begann wahrscheinlich schon vor einer Weile, als sich nach dem Wahlsieg sofort die Medien in voreilendem Gehorsam gefügig machten. Seit dem ersten Tag im Amt entrechtet er eine Gruppe nach der anderen. Angefangen bei Trans-Personen (Existenz über Verordnung aufgelöst), über Immigranten und gebürtige, nichtweisse Amerikaner (Habeas Corpus de facto ausgesetzt und damit sind alle betroffen) und körperlich Behinderten (DEI-A) und nun gehts jedweden politischen Gegnern aus “Links” an den Kragen…

Faschisten hören nie bei einer Gruppe auf. Und sie nehmen sich irgendeinen Vorwand, um das zu tun, was sie sowieso tun wollten. Objektive Wahrheit weicht der einen Wahrheit. Genau darum ist Solidarität und Organisation so wichtig, um dagegen halten zu können und dem keinen Nährboden zu bieten. Wir sollten schleunigst aus dem Geschehen lernen, denn auch hier in Europa sehen wir ähnliche Frühbewegungen in diese Richtung ohne wirkliche Opposition.

I don’t think countries that are not joined ICC will be covered by ICJ.

The ICC and the ICJ are completely separate entities. While the ICJ stems from the UN charter, so every UN member has ratified it, the ICC can issue arrest warrants for any person on the planet, but only the signatories to the Rome Statutes are obliged to act upon them.

22 years after Iraq invasion, not a single person was held accountable

There is an argument to be made, that the rise of Trump was only possible, because nobody has ever been held to account. The whole Bush administration should have been brought to justice for their wars or detention and torture programs and other crimes, but Obama wanted “to look forward, not backwards” - and didn’t close Gitmo, while we’re at it. And he bailed out those, who made fraud their business model and crashed the economy for good measure, no accountability. The same goes for Tony Blair, who as you said, has been given yet another opportunity to get away with heinous crimes.

Well… yes? The Rome Statutes establish the ICC (International Criminal Court). It prosecutes criminal individuals. Their chief prosecutor Karim Khan has issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu, Gallant and Deif last November.

I was talking though about the ICJ (International Court of Justice) which was established through the UN Charter itself. Their jurisdiction therefore includes all UN member states. The aforementioned court order was a preliminary decision taken in the case brought forth by the state of South Africa against the state of Israel.

@Farhad

the big difference between ICJ ruling and UN report is that ICJ ruling was against individuals and not many countries are part of ICJ

You might be mistaking it for the ICC (International Criminal Court). The ICJ (International Court of Justice) is the highest court ruling on international law and therefore the genocide convention of 1948. Only states can appeal to it. The order obliges Israel as a nation, not as individuals, to suspend military operations, etc. and not to commit the four out of five actions defining genocide in the convention. The wording is “The State of Israel shall (…)”.

The biggest points out of that ruling to me are:

• The Palestinians are a group protected under the convention.
• The difficult to prove point of intention is met.
• Four out of five genocidal actions are relevant.
• They order Israel and all nations to prevent genocide.

They basically all but called it a genocide, because usually that takes time and legal mubmo-jumbo and is ruled after the fact. I’m sure that political thinking played a role too, since the ICJ has no executive power to enact its orders. They rely on compliance of the states. The big difference with the new report is that they unequivocally see all the conditions (intent and at least one action under Article 2) met to call it a genocide (even if not by a court).

This has been the case ever since the ICJ order from 26 January 2024. Instead, just a few days after the ruling, many signatories froze payments to UNRWA or scrapped them completely, as a reaction to mere allegations of Israel, that UNWRA workers have been part of the attack on October 7th. Thereby they have clearly violated the court order and are punishable under the same Genocide convention.

The court order points that out explicitly:

The Court recalls that, in accordance with Article I of the Convention, all States parties thereto have undertaken “to prevent and to punish” the crime of genocide, that is to say any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group (Article II, para. (a)); causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group (Article II, para. (b)); deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part (Article II, para. ©); imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group (Article II, para. (d)); forcibly transferring children of the group to another group (Article II, para. (e)). Pursuant to Article III of the Genocide Convention, the following acts are also prohibited by the Convention: conspiracy to commit genocide (Article III, para. (b)), direct and public incitement to commit genocide (Article III, para. ©), attempt to commit genocide (Article III, para. (d)) and complicity in genocide (Article III, para. (e)).

Too bad we live in an age of blatant lawlessness.

US-Präsident Donald Trump hat angekündigt, die Antifa-Bewegung in den USA als “bedeutende terroristische Organisation” einzustufen. Wie er das konkret umsetzen will, erklärte er in seinem Post auf Truth Social nicht.

Die Umsetzung ist egal und nicht der Punkt. Genauso wie der Vorwand (Kirk-Mord) sachlich nichts damit zu tun hat, werden Personen/Gruppen in Zukunft ohne Bezug zur Realität als Antifa bezeichnet und damit im Namen der Terrorismusbekämpfung der Willkür seines Staatsapparats ausgesetzt. Das ist die eigentliche Idee hinter der Aktion. Das sieht man z.B. auch am Satz danach:

“Ich werde außerdem nachdrücklich empfehlen, dass diejenigen, die die Antifa finanzieren, gemäß den höchsten rechtlichen Standards und Praktiken gründlich untersucht werden”, schrieb Trump.

following complaints about host’s comments on the killing of rightwing activist Kirk

is definitely misleading when

Before ABC pulled Kimmel, the Federal Communications Commission chair, Brendan Carr, had urged local broadcasters to stop airing the show, saying they were “running the possibility of fines or licensed revocation from the FCC” during an appearance on the rightwing commentator Benny Johnson’s podcast.

Or how Senator Markey put it:

"FCC chair threatens ABC and Disney over Kimmel’s comments. Hours later, he’s off air. It’s dangerous and unconstitutional. The message to every media company is clear: Adopt the MAGA line or the Federal Censorship Commission will come after you.”

Zionists are their own kind of evil. They deserve their own label.

Reminder, that the Ultra-Orthodox parties in Netanyahu’s coalition, didn’t break from him because they oppose anything that is being done in Gaza or the West Bank, but because he plans to end the exemption from conscription for Ultra-Orthodox Jews. In fact they still back the coalition in the legislature, but pulled their ministers.

“I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to pay for genocide in a foreign country against a foreign people for a foreign war that I had nothing to do with,”

It’s consistent from the viewpoint of not wanting to pay for what happens to those children abroad or at home, no matter the nature or morality of the action. Also: Look at the use of the word ‘foreign’ and think about, who she means with each use. Not with the ‘right’ intentions, she ends up at the correct policy.

I’m certain, they’ll draw similarities to the Warsaw Ghetto to attack Hamas, but will conveniently forget to mention that they are the ones causing this for the whole of Gaza. So that the Western Pro-Genocide Journalists can have more talking points.

Edit: It seems it was the hostages’ families who are drawing comparisons to the holocaust. But to actually call for an ending of the fighting.

Not too long in the future:

The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became the truth.

Also from 1984 by George Orwell

Is that from the March Of Return from 2018/19?

If Data and witnesses or in other words verifiable reality “disagree”, there’s a word for that. It’s called “lying”. A word that should have been used a lot more often, because they’ve been doing so from the beginning. From 40 beheaded babies in ovens to now claiming there is no starving, they’ve been lying and lying and lying, without being called out by so-called journalists or leaders, so they lie again.

All the while the world can see what’s happening in this best documented in history, televised in 4K genocide. We should not forget, who kept denying this atrocity for so long. The western world seemingly forgave the media for lying the West into a war with Iraq 22 years ago and forgot. Now the so-called free press are proving to be as disgraceful today. No one should take any word they say seriously, if they blatantly go with the lies. Remember them. We have to hold them accountable.

P.S. There’s a broader point about not holding people accountable (e.g. Obama not wanting to prosecute the Bush administration) leading to today’s situation in the first place, but that’s a story in and of itself.

There do exist things resembling that a bit. Usually done on the local level and mostly concerning some street/development design, where people are invited to actively participate in a workshop style event with experts and vote on the results. But yes, these are not mandates. And as soon as you go onto the state or federal level, such structures become virtually non-existent.

The others are parliamentary commissions which can be instated by parliament and are formed of mainly external experts around a certain issue. These are often used on state and federal levels of government.

I would love if representation was spread wider over the population and that involvement was higher. I also am baffled at how bad general civics education is here in school, especially at the obligatory level. I would welcome a far more detailed and engaging civics education where they could already get some experience right at the school. Or go and participate at some local event. This way they also see the importance of a truly democratic process. Alas, as long as they can’t vote, nobody seems to want their opinions.

Another part that needs addressing is finances. There’s a lot of intransparency yes, but the way it works now, it is also very hard to get your message across without being big in a main political party or having some big private sponsor. Which limits your actual freedom before and after you’re elected. If we’re thinking radical we might severely limit campaign budgets or think about public funds allowing the same restrictive scope for everyone, no matter their background and finances. This would also limit the imbalance in outreach between capital-backed candidates and others.

A third huge problem lies within the judiciary, where judges on many levels effectively also have to be party-associated to get elected. If that sounds completely compromising their necessary impartiality, yeah, it’s because it does. (Although I don’t have data on how that influences their work)

And lastly: The structures of accountability for politicians. I know that some steadiness or stability is necessary, but without the fear of accountability, far too many misuse their positions without repercussions. As we see from around the world, this invites more and more brazen figures to do more and more brazen violations. Just a brain-fart: 100k signatures to force a vote on relieving someone of their immunity so they can be tried in court. And to not just wait it out. Right now, it’s parliament that has this exclusive possibility.

This is not law yet. The Federal Council (the executive) has started a consultation process at the beginning of the year which ended in May. They are now looking at all the feedback that came in, that was - unsurprisingly - exclusively negative from all sides. If the responsible minister wants to go ahead with it, it goes to the Federal Council for a vote. If they approve it, this would be a decree to change an existing decree and that would come into effect next year or the year after.

And this is where direct democracy comes in: If this is the case anyone can start getting signatures for a public initiative which would change the constitution to prohibit such practices. In fact anyone can start doing that now. If it succeeds, then it’ll come to a popular vote. Threema (a secure chat provider) has already announced that they would do that and I’m sure that they wouldn’t be the only ones to band together in this.

The process might take long, but this is in no way “not good enough to counter a campaign for legal change with a goal” and in fact has happened multiple times in the past. Hence why Switzerland has a direct vote on issues every few months because of something called “Referendum”, whereby a popular vote can be forced on an issue passing through parliament. I might have my criticisms of the political system, but this ain’t it.

its system encourages it to have politicians as a thing

Well yes, there is some level of representation, so over 8 million people don’t have to decide every little detail on 1000s of changes of law. The system is built upon a “milita” system. I.e. politicians usually have a job. So people have the possibility to vote in experts or their vicinity and know that they won’t solely be career politicians. Unfortunately the laws around financing and propaganda are rather lax, giving an advantage to the rich, which leads to an over-representation of the capitalist class with occupations such as lawyers and business-owners and a clear under-representation of classical working-class jobs such as craftspeople or office workers. This is amendable though to correct the mismatch, if people realize their class interest and don’t fall for the same right-wing propaganda of a party whose playbook has been inspired by the US GOP for decades and who is inspiring Germany’s AfD now.

The main downside of the system imo has to do with people with no knowledge on an issue having to weigh in on them and therefore how powerful propaganda campaigns can be, which means that money buys power, as in every other existing so-called democracy - direct or not. Especially with how money shifts power away from the populace, this is inherent to capitalistic systems and it would be on the populace to protect itself from it. With enough propaganda though, people keep voting for more power of capital unbeknownst to them or not, just as they might vote against their interests on other things. The fact that you have to convince so many people, who hopefully do have some degree of education, makes it a lot harder though, for big capitalists to reach their goals, compared to less direct systems. And I know of several examples, how such a vote did not go in favor of big capital. What usually makes the difference is whether they succeed in portraying their advantage as the advantage of all.

It might have to do with, that once you continue your gaze downwards after reading the question, you might find the answer.

Add to that ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan who has already been sanctioned by the US back in February for the crime of issuing an arrest warrant for a war criminal.

I’m sorry you feel that way and I find myself having the same thoughts from time to time. I have to concede though, that the US is in fact the center of modern Neoliberalism and legal bribery.

Yet… You know who the lobbyists and donors don’t bother talking to? Bernie Sanders (and Ron Paul when he was still in office). Why? Because they know that they have core principles. Then the question becomes: How do we organize (meaning financial resources, outreach, strategy, know-how, recruitment, analysis, policy creation, media and many more) to get more of these people into office? And how can we put pressure on elected officials to enact “our” policies?

Agenda 2025, or the decades long judicial take-over did not come from Trump, but from such organizations like the Heritage Foundation. Which of course are funded by billionaires like Peter Thiel. These people and organizations have huge advantages over the rest, that is clear. But they need more than just money to be able to put public pressure on elected officials, to the point where 25% of voters are ride-or-die with that program and a further 25% are at least ok with it or were duped.

And yes, I am well aware it is an uphill fight. But please: Don’t let bad experiences doom you to inaction. Especially when this very moment, with the daily over-reach of the republican regime, there is real potential to galvanize an effective resistance.

Although I understand your point and would want to add that something like the Citizens United decision further diminishes power of the people without immense funds, I would like to point out, that participating in a democratic process doesn’t merely mean drawing a cross onto a piece of paper every 2 or 4 years. Much more is possible and in fact necessary.

As an example and can be witnessed right now, there is a severe lack of organizing of pro democratic forces. Which is also the result of a decades-long campaign by the capital-interest-serving political establishment to delegitimize or outright destroy such movements and organizations, from worker’s unions to independant media to the “Bernie Bros”.

Make no mistake though. They did this, because they know, that this type of collective political actions bare real power. It is upon each one of us wanting to defend democracy, basic rights and the rule of law to do our part to take back that power. Voting is but a small part of that, if you don’t have the people you need actually running, because they can’t afford to and you cannot seriously pressure those elected like the donor-class does.