'Innocent until deemed inconvenient.'

Many states in the U.S. have 'proof of surgery' requirements before they will legally recognize people's trans people's gender identity: https://www.lgbtmap.org/...

English translation (from Google Translate):

Last generation: 27 climate demonstrators in Bavaria were preventively imprisoned

In the run-up to the IAA motor show, the police in Bavaria took activists from the last generation into so-called preventative detention. The procedure is very controversial.

By Kai Biermann

September 2, 2023, 4:14 pm

According to Last Generation, Bavarian authorities have currently put a total of 27 supporters of the group in prison without trial or verdict. This means that the number of activists in preventive detention has almost doubled, the group writes in a statement. They are therefore being held in the Stadelheim and Memmingen correctional facilities.

A large number of them were apparently taken into custody in connection with the IAA International Motor Show, which is scheduled to take place in Munich from September 5th to 10th. The last generation had announced protests against the fair. According to Last Generation, at least 16 of those affected are in custody until September 10th.

Eleven more are expected to serve longer sentences. According to Munich police, ten of them were taken into custody during a blockade on Friday. The Munich district court then ordered that they remain in prison until September 30th.

Nowhere as long as in Bavaria

Legally, this police approach is called preventive detention because it is not detention for a crime that has been committed. The police laws of the different states allow this for different lengths of time. In Bavaria, up to one month in prison is permitted, which may be extended by a judge for a maximum of another month. In other federal states, however, it is usually only a few days.

The so-called preventive or preventive detention is very controversial. The relevant laws were originally created to prevent terrorists from carrying out attacks. However, this form of detention is now also permitted in the case of the “imminent commission or continuation of an administrative offense of considerable importance for the general public,” as the Bavarian police law states. Lawsuits against this have so far been rejected in Bavaria. However, a final clarification about the legality of this approach is still pending.

This form of deprivation of liberty is all the more problematic because the protesters will not face imprisonment if they are convicted for a blockade. The corresponding procedures regularly only end with fines.

Carla Rochel, the spokesperson for the Last Generation, writes in the statement: "The question we as a society have to ask ourselves at this moment is: Do we think it's okay that protest for all of our basic right to life means prison instead of climate protection is answered?"

A surprisingly large number of countries: https://www.economist.com/... (paywall jumping archive link: https://archive.is/K336g)

Switzerland, Greece and 18 other, mostly eastern European, countries have a final hurdle: sterilisation.

Surgery is not the end goal for all trans people, and even if it were, requiring that it be completed before they can have their gender identity legally recognised is unnecessary and unhelpful.

Downvotes for a comment pointing out that forcing people to fight and die is fucked up? Okay, people...

And it would still be fucked up in every single one of those countries.

At the same time I’d like to remind folks that not all Jewish people subscribe to Zionism.

Further to this, the majority of zionists are christians.

Fuck that industry and everyone that fuels it.

There's nothing up there worth dying for, or worth letting someone else die.

You probably just want to get on the email lists of local organisations (activist groups, minor political parties, union councils, etc.).

They will often cross-promote each other so you'll be made aware of other organisations through them.

I’m pretty sure that the United States was founded on the principle of self determination

Self determination for who? For rich, land-owning, white males.

The US was founded on the same genocidal settler-colonialism as Israel.

Boycott HP: https://bdsmovement.net/boycott-hp

HP-branded corporations play key roles in Israel’s oppression of Palestinians. They are complicit in Israel’s occupation, settler-colonialism and apartheid regime. They provide computer hardware to the Israeli army and maintain data centers through their servers for the Israeli police. They provide the Itanium servers to operate the Aviv System, the computerized database of Israel’s Population and Immigration Authority. This forms the backbone of Israel’s racial segregation and apartheid.

A right thing. And not a very substantial one. But don't sell the UK short. The government might be despicable, but the massive marches in London by the people have been inspiring. The power of that crowd needs to be channelled into direct action.

It's a rather flamboyant, but famous, translation of a quote of Antonio Gramsci:

The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.

Italian original:

La crisi consiste appunto nel fatto che il vecchio muore e il nuovo non può nascere: in questo interregno si verificano i fenomeni morbosi piú svariati.

A more literaral English translation:

The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.

I feel compelled to point the author is hardly unbiased.

No author is unbiased. If you think they're unbiased it's just their biases are the same as yours or those of the status quo (whatever you might consider that to be).

I just don’t have it in me to accept anything at face value because someone says so.

Thankfully, you don't have to! You have a brain in your head, so you can read the arguments being made, think about them, and critically evaluate them. You can try to come up with counter-arguments, or failing that, look around for counter-arguments other people have made and critically evaluate those too.

The commenter above gave you sources for the quotes, so you can find copies of them and read the complete argument being made in those works.

Seconding this.

AFAQ gives overviews on topics with a lot of quoting from books and essays. It often notes that a book is 'essential reading' for a certain topic.

So it's not only an informative read in itself, it's a great source for people looking for reading recommendations.

Sign me up!

It doesn't says by who until the 4th paragraph, information that should be in the headline

To help the individual to fit into a society which is ever at war with itself – is this what psychologists and analysts are supposed to do? Is the individual to be healed only in order to kill or be killed? If one is not killed, or driven insane, then must one only fit into the structure of hate, envy, ambition and superstition which can be very scientific?

- Jiddu Krishnamurti

It's not both sides doing the same thing. Israel has been displacing, brutalising and killing Palestinians for 70 years. Israel has a modern army, a modern air force, nuclear weapons and a functional economy.

Since 1948, Israel has taken the vast majority of the land and continues to chip away at what little remains to Palestinians through illegal settlements in the West Bank.

Gaza is an open air prison that Israel constantly surveils and bombs, controls who and what gets in and out and even regulates how many calories per day Gazans are allowed.

It's not both sides doing the same thing. It's a settler colonial apartheid state brutalising an indigenous people who are holding on for dear life.