Category Archives: Justice

UPDATED (10/21/023): Gaza And The Meaning Of Mens Rea, Malice Aforethought, Or Intent

Bush, Ethics, Foreign Policy, GAZA, Iraq, Israel, Just War, Justice, Middle East, Morality, Russia, War

3 Replies

If you know in advance that you will be killing thousands of civilians; you have, attached to your actions, malice aforethought, or mens rea, aka intent ~ilana

From the Ukraine-Russia conflict’s inception; your columnist wrote many an essay  (https://www.ilanamercer.com/2022/03/uncle-sam-still-king-invaders-ukraine-realpolitik-wests-failure/) motivating against the Neocons, Neolibs and NATO Inching Us Closer To Nuclear War With Russia, via the Ukraine proxy war.

The rejection by Joe and his Uniparty accomplices of diplomacy, framed by myself as realpolitik, was my focus. “It’s Biblical, Zelensky,” I urged. “A Leader Who Fails To Haggle For The Lives Of His People” is a failed leader.

https://www.ilanamercer.com/2022/03/biblical-zelensky-leader-fails-haggle-lives-people-failed/

I vehemently now protest the greenlighting of the razing of Gaza by Joe Biden and his Uniparty accomplices.

About “intent,” a bedrock of Western judicial philosophy and Jurisprudence, I said the following on the Hard Truth podcast last Tues (Oct. 10)  (https://rumble.com/v3oicx4-hamas-israel-and-the-anatomy-of-state-treason.html):

If you know in advance that you will be killing thousands of civilians; you have, attached to your actions, malice aforethought, or mens rea, aka intent.

Moreover, just pretend for the sake of argument that there is no way to kill the Hamas culprits other than via a ground invasion; why-oh-why would Israel throttle the supply of water, food and power to millions of Gazans, when Israel knows this will also kill thousands of civilians indirectly?

Israel has, sadly, squandered much of the goodwill generated by the heinous, diabolical, October 7 pogrom, executed by spawns of Satan.

BACKGROUND: “Hamas, Israel And The Anatomy Of State Treason”

* Screen capture credit here:
https://www.strategiccriminaldefence.com/faq/mens-rea-vs-actus-rea/

UPDATE (10/21/023): Yes, this is refreshing via Josh Paul (even though I don’t share his support for other incursions and foreign-policy “moral compromises”)—I didn’t know there were people in our bureaucracy who could speak English, much less write it and reason in it.

Paul, who worked for the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, has resigned from this Biden-staffed bureau, because of its policy of transferring lethal weapons to be used, invariably, against civilians in Gaza. Paul recounted in interviews how he had been instrumental in drafting a cessation to arms transfers under Biden’s new Conventional Arms Transfer policy, which allegedly reconsidered “weapons sales to countries like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates over the civilian toll of the war in Yemen.”

It was the policy of Donald Trump, as this columnist’s warned, in 2018, through weapons supplies to the Saudis, to enable “our bosom buddies the Saudi’s” in their “barricading of Yemeni ports. No aid gets through her hermetically sealed ports. Yemenis are dying. Some Twitter followers twittered with joy at the sight of starving Yemeni babies, like this one. Oh well, Yemeni babies can be sinister.”

Whatever one’s political sympathies, as I wrote here above, “If you know in advance that you will be killing thousands of civilians; you have, attached to your actions, malice aforethought, or mens rea, aka intent.”

The same obtains if you are a third party, aiding and abetting the carnage that is collective punishment. These are natural, immutable laws. They attached to George Bush’s actions in Iraq. (https://www.ilanamercer.com/2002/09/why-so-many-americans-don-t-support-attacking-iraq/ The Hague ought to have long since nabbed him. They apply to the razing of Gaza following Hamas’ monstrous mass murder on October 7.

Israel’s ANTIFA (Still Saner Than America’s) Marches Against Parliamentary Representation And For Judicial Supremacy

Democracy, Israel, Justice, Law, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, The Courts

Leave a reply

That power may tilt toward the people’s elected officials, rather than remain in the hands of unelected judges, terrifies the illiberal Israeli Left ~ilana

When there is a hint of “danger” that the balance of power will tilt toward “the people’s elected officials, rather than remain in the hands of unelected judges“—the Wokerati has a collective grand mal. That is “a form of epilepsy characterized by loss of consciousness for up to five minutes and violent convulsions.” (Free Dictionary)

This is what’s underway on Israel’s streets.

All with the same hysteria America’s Wokerati reserves for anti-MAGA America.

To its credit, Israel’s ANTIFA is civilized and intelligent, but similar in its aims. They lost. So the dummies are aflutter.

Yet, unlike America’s ANTIFA, Israel’s Wokerati is not howling, stripping, discussing its reproductive orifices, inventing pronouns, and burning the country down. Credit for this we shall accord them. Instead, the Israeli Wokerati is showing its consternation with weak, one-sided, baleful argument and cries of despair (joy!)

The Knesset has reclaimed some power of representation. Parliament has democratically reduced the powers of a woke, hyperactive Judiciary. Over this, the usual Israeli and US culprits are foaming at the mouth.  The Left, stateside, wants Israel to continue to be a US clone—a mere American satellite state. Israel’s Supreme Court better serves these ultra-progressive forces than its parliament.

That power may tilt toward the people’s elected officials, rather than remain in the hands of unelected judges, terrifies the illiberal Israeli Left.

The Vox reporting linked in my brief blog post is hyperbolic, apoplectic and as close to Fake News as it gets.

* Woke is always flabby. Screen pic via Mother Jones

UPDATE II (4/15): The Beef Vs. Bugs Phony Dichotomy

Conservatism, Criminal Injustice, Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Ethics, Gender, Israel, Justice, Literature, Logic, Reason

3 Replies

Animal husbandry—Intensive animal farming or industrial livestock production, in this case—is humanity’s Mark of Cain …~ilana

To be Right and reactionary (check) you don’t have to be gang-ho about and indifferent to the horrors of industrial livestock production ~ilana

The idea that humanity has only the bug vs. meat-guzzler eating options sets up a false dichotomy and gets a fail on logic and ethics ~ilana

On or around the time of this travesty—the evil, the indifference—of letting 18 thousand cows go up in flames—author Meir Shalev died, aged 74.

For the richness of his descriptions and the depth of the depictions and characters, down to his achingly exquisite unusual sensitivity and sensibility about animals—Shalev is up there with the greatest writers. (Nobel Prize winner Shai Agnon was a vegan.)

Nabokov of the Israelis? Maybe, but Shalev was unburdened by Nabokov’s prurient preoccupation with decadence, mired as he was in it.

Meir Shalev was a soulful innocent.

About the cow, Shalev said that she is the longest suffering, most abused of livestock—made to lactate unnaturally and painfully for a lifespan (which is why milk is puss-filled, by the way; to “regulated” levels, of course), her young removed, and then she, at life’s end, led to the slaughterhouse.

Shalev has described the cries of a heifer when her calf is removed. They go on for a very very long time.

Animal husbandry—Intensive animal farming or industrial livestock production, in this case—is humanity’s Mark of Cain …

*Screen pic image credit

*Shalev as screen pic

UPDATED: Animal Ethics @TuckerCarlson. NONE.

This update is from a January 18, 2023 tweet. It concerns the tenor on the Tucker Carlson Tonight show when it comes to animal ethics. Many of my readers have long-since abandoned the Republican line of rape-and-pillage-the-earth-it’s-yours. (That’s not in or from the Hebrew Testament!)

One person, whose comment I posted to Twitter and Gttr, appreciated my disgust with the flippancy on conservative shows as to animal ethics and husbandry. Other than dogs and cats, the traditional pets that comply with humanity’s slobbering needs—cons have no animal ethics bar utilitarianism: squeeze all you can from em to sate your ugly big gut.

On masking a cow:

Nobody on Tucker Carlson made an ethical argument against CRUELTY to one of the longest-suffering animals in the barnyard: the cow.

But great strides in thinking were made thanks to a cute, blond, fashionable farmer girl in serious war-paint (make-up).

AND, blond and cute is more important than ethics anytime.

Today, April 14, 2023, came a repeat performance, in the form of an idiotic segment on bug eating. Run for cover. They’ll force feed you bugs.

The Beef Vs. Bugs Phony Dichotomy

Every country in the West emulates America’s Fox News in producing their own standard issue Tomi Lahren quality thinker and lookers to compete for segments on Tucker. And so it is that the US, Fox News, creates a global marketplace for blond bimbos.

My mother, a Dutch citizen for over four decades, tells me that the Dutch, a serious and glum people, despise such Americanism. Among the Hard Right, the Dutch still carry the torch for that brilliant orator, Geert Wilders, who comes close to Assange in leading a life of martyrdom for truth.

For another, a good journalist would question the so-called veracity of the global plan to force-humanity to eat bugs en masse (don’t believe every conspiracy Tucker feeds ya). Bugs serve important ecological functions. Eat them all and you really won’t have food.

The creation of these false dichotomies and straw arguments when it comes to ethics in animal husbandry is loathsome—certainly irrational and illogical.

One can eat animals if one must and do so ethically. Of course, you cannot mass-produce animals ethically. But the idea that humanity has only the bug vs. meat-guzzler eating options sets up a false dichotomy and gets a fail on logic and ethics.

Moreover, the rah-rah of badmouthing of vegans is also worse than pathetic. Many young conservatives, or sensitive conservatives, are likely not on board. It’s of a piece with the phoniness of the old Republican, red-blooded girl and guy shtick. Not all vegans are activists with pink hair. Most are simply concerned with the ethics around eating animals.

In sum, to be Right and reactionary (check) you don’t have to be gang-ho about and indifferent to the horrors of industrial livestock production.

 

Ghislaine Maxwell: Not Evidence-Based Law, But MeToo, Sexual Moral Panic

Argument, Criminal Injustice, Justice, Law, libertarianism, Sex, The Therapuetic State

6 Replies

Prosecutions now rest on he-said, she-said hearsay evidence, on facts that can’t possibly meet the rules of evidence (the ones the United States once abided), or be corroborated for the purposes of a just prosecution ~ilana

The reviled and revolting progressives of MSNBC and the hollow performers on Fox News are all agreed:

Ghislaine Maxwell was [rightly] convicted on Wednesday evening of grooming underage girls for Jeffrey Epstein to abuse… [and should face] decades behind bars for sex-trafficking.

The “incontrovertible” evidence upon which there ought to have been a sunset clause: The massage table. The gowns in the closet, too. Well, pretty much. My position with respect to prosecutions driven by sexual moral panic and revenge was expressed in “Mad, #MeToo Matriarchy Ensnared Bill Cosby.”

Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine were and are degenerates, scum of the earth. But the evidence against Maxwell is hearsay evidence.

Moreover, when one hears phrases like “years of sexual abuse,” one envisages dark, dank quarters, chains, an inability to leave the scene of the abuse, and drugs to addle the victim’s awareness.

In reality—not that it matters any longer to US prosecutors—the case of Ghislaine Maxwell is one of, admittedly, under-age girls. But these women were coming and going as they pleased, eager and greedy for more of whatever Epstein was using to lure them. The sainted MeToo victims were greedy for this ghastly man’s gifts. If charges are to be leveled—the adults in the room bear responsibility, but the charges should never yield the kind of sentence Maxwell is facing.

“Sex-trafficking,” as a charge in the Maxwell case, looks to me much like getting Al Capone on charges of tax evasion: You can’t prove anything substantive, so you conjure any category of charges that will stick. Also known as corruption of the law and its purpose.

Yes, the loathsome two, Jeffrey and Ghislaine, traveled with their greedy “victims.” So, voila, “sex-trafficking,” a legal charge that sticks.

Corruption, degeneracy and more: Absolutely.
But law is about evidence. Contrary to what the legal “experts,” left and right, assert, a just system of law is not about, “turning the tables on the powerful, to give the vulnerable a voice,” a whine that could be heard on the cable universe, left and right.

RELATED: “Mad, #MeToo Matriarchy Ensnared Bill Cosby“:

Prosecutions now rest on he-said, she-said hearsay evidence, on facts that can’t possibly meet the rules of evidence (the ones the United States once abided), or be corroborated for the purposes of a just prosecution, in accordance with the legal standards of Western law (of blessed memory). Evidence is tainted, solicited decades too late, with utter disregard for the statute of limitations.

* Image is of the “evidence,” via New York Post