Injustice Systems

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Exactly. Along with pharmaceutical advertising. And car dealers. And lobbyists And so much more!

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Tesla is trying to make that happen, but they’ve had some pushback from the entrenched interests.

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The investigation soon uncovered an extensive history of violence in the family. Khachaturyan had regularly beaten his daughters over three years, torturing them, keeping them as prisoners and sexually abusing them.

The sisters’ mother, who had also suffered beatings and abuse from Khachaturyan in the past, had approached the police years before. So did the family’s neighbours, who were highly afraid of him. But there is no evidence that the police acted on any of these appeals for help.

The case quickly became a cause celebre in Russia. Human rights activists argued that the sisters were not criminals but victims, as they had no means of getting help and protection from their abusive father.

However, there are no laws protecting victims of domestic violence in Russia.

There has been something of a backlash against the Khachaturyan sisters among more conservative parts of Russian society. An association called Men’s State, which cites “patriarchy” and “nationalism” as its two main values, and boasts almost 150,000 members on social media, organised a campaign called “Murderers behind Bars”, insisting that the sisters should not be released.

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However, the sisters’ lawyers say the killing was in fact an act of self-defence. Indeed, the Russian criminal code allows self-defence not only in cases of immediate aggression, but also in cases of “continuous crime”, such as a hostage situation where the victim is being tortured.

At least that’s specifically a defense that they’re allowed to use. A lot of definitions of “self-defense” require imminent danger. Let’s hope that defense works for them.

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I don’t know what’s going on with this OneBox: the title of the article is “Texas Executes Man for Murder Conviction Whose Alibi Was That He Was Already Incarcerated”

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Kind of off-topic, but it appears to be using the meta tag for the Facebook title; maybe they target things a little differently for that audience, but I don’t know why the Onebox would pick that instead of the real title.

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As in Stephen Jay Gould? He’s not in a good position to do much, having died back in 2002. I saw some criticism for an earlier version of the cited NYT article, which had said that Epstein attracted those scientists even after his 2008 conviction, as plainly not true in that case.

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Jurors took six hours to settle on the verdict. During deliberations, the jurors sent the judge a note saying they were confused by the self-defense law, according to the AP. The judge said he could only read them the law again.

Yeah, I’d think I’d be confused by the existence of a law that encourages people to shoot each other.

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Good. Let’s hope that they can keep him behind bars this time, and these are the last exploits we hear of Florida Man for a good long while.

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Florida Man is the cockroach of crime. Cut off one head, two more snakes from the strip mall drop ceiling take its place.

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To be fair, Florida Man’s usual antics are of a more jocular nature.

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It came about because people had been wrongly incarcerated for defending themselves and their families. It was intended to avoid injustice. Good intentions and all that, but it’s not encouraging murder. It’s saying you’re not a criminal just because someone else attacks you.

it also says the shooter could not have instigated the altercation

They found that since the shooter was the belligerent, that defense didn’t apply.

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Casual violence by police, contempt for brown skin, contempt for both official procedure and the Constitution, policing for the benefit of the police.

I’m expecting to hear the term ‘exigent circumstances’.

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“This is a Republic, not a Democracy,” Welch said in conclusion, “Let’s keep it that way!”
These origins are important. If there’s substance behind “We’re a republic, not a democracy,” it’s not as a description of American government. There’s really no difference, in the present, between a “republic” and a “democracy”: Both connote systems of representation in which sovereignty and authority derive from the public at large.

The point of the slogan isn’t to describe who we are, but to claim and co-opt the founding for right-wing politics — to naturalize political inequality and make it the proper order of things. What lies behind that quip, in other words, is an impulse against democratic representation. It is part and parcel of the drive to make American government a closed domain for a select, privileged few.

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It’s a start. It shouldn’t have to be extraordinary.

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