“
No amount of me trying to explain myself was doing any good. I didn't even know what was going on inside of me, so how could I have explained it to them?
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”
Sierra D. Waters (Debbie.)
“
You can’t prosecute criminals in a system that’s run by the same criminals.
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Jasun Ether (The Beasts of Success)
“
A president cannot defend a nation if he is not held accountable to its laws.
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”
DaShanne Stokes
“
You have to stand guard over the development and maintenance of Islamic democracy, Islamic social justice and the equality of manhood in your own native soil.
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Muhammad Ali Jinnah
“
A system is corrupt when it is strictly profit-driven, not driven to serve the best interests of its people.
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Suzy Kassem (Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem)
“
Our freedoms are vanishing. If you do not get active to take a stand now against all that is wrong while we still can, then maybe one of your children may elect to do so in the future, when it will be far more riskier — and much, much harder.
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Suzy Kassem (Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem)
“
Today I wore a pair of faded old jeans and a plain grey baggy shirt. I hadn't even taken a shower, and I did not put on an ounce of makeup. I grabbed a worn out black oversized jacket to cover myself with even though it is warm outside. I have made conscious decisions lately to look like less of what I felt a male would want to see. I want to disappear.
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Sierra D. Waters (Debbie.)
“
Intimidated, old traumas triggered, and fearing for my safety, I did what I felt I needed to do.
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”
Sierra D. Waters (Debbie.)
“
Failing to indict a criminal sitting president sends the message that those in power are above the law.
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DaShanne Stokes
“
We have allowed the system to be so corrupted that many want justice to be "empathetic," not blind.
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Glenn Beck
“
Pick a leader who will make their citizens proud. One who will stir the hearts of the people, so that the sons and daughters of a given nation strive to emulate their leader's greatness. Only then will a nation be truly great, when a leader inspires and produces citizens worthy of becoming future leaders, honorable decision makers and peacemakers. And in these times, a great leader must be extremely brave. Their leadership must be steered only by their conscience, not a bribe.
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Suzy Kassem (Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem)
“
Pick a leader who will keep jobs in your country by offering companies incentives to hire only within their borders, not one who allows corporations to outsource jobs for cheaper labor when there is a national employment crisis. Choose a leader who will invest in building bridges, not walls. Books, not weapons. Morality, not corruption. Intellectualism and wisdom, not ignorance. Stability, not fear and terror. Peace, not chaos. Love, not hate. Convergence, not segregation. Tolerance, not discrimination. Fairness, not hypocrisy. Substance, not superficiality. Character, not immaturity. Transparency, not secrecy. Justice, not lawlessness. Environmental improvement and preservation, not destruction. Truth, not lies.
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Suzy Kassem (Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem)
“
Just like freedom, Truth is not cheap. Yet both are worth more than all the gold in the world. But what is freedom, if there is no truth? And what is truth, if there is no freedom? Both are worth fighting for — because one without the other would be hell.
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Suzy Kassem (Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem)
“
When people can get away with crimes just because they are wealthy or have the right connections, the scales are tipped against fairness and equality. The weight of corruption then becomes so heavy that it creates a dent that forces the world to become slanted, so much so — that justice just slips off.
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Suzy Kassem (Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem)
“
It is not a single crime when a child is photographed while sexually assaulted (raped.) It is a life time crime that should have life time punishments attached to it. If the surviving child is, more often than not, going to suffer for life for the crime(s) committed against them, shouldn't the pedophiles suffer just as long? If it often takes decades for survivors to come to terms with exactly how much damage was caused to them, why are there time limits for prosecution?
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Sierra D. Waters (Debbie.)
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If we want truth and justice to rule our global village, there must be no hypocrisy. If there is no truth, then there will be no equality. No equality, no justice. No justice, no peace. No peace, no love. No love, only darkness.
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Suzy Kassem (Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem)
“
Why does a government agency that has no connection with my community have the right to dictate what is appropriate for it?
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Simon S. Tam
“
The story of my birth that my mother told me went like this: "When you were coming out I wasn't ready yet and neither was the nurse. The nurse tried to push you back in, but I shit on the table and when you came out, you landed in my shit."
If there ever was a way to sum things up, the story of my birth was it.
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”
Sierra D. Waters (Debbie.)
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John was still making comments regarding violent things that he shouldn't, but I hoped he was just being a big mouth. Nobody was going to listen to me anyway.
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”
Sierra D. Waters (Debbie.)
“
No truth, no equality. No equality, no justice. No justice, no peace. No peace, no love. No love, only darkness.
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”
Suzy Kassem (Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem)
“
How do you survive for years in prison? You don’t think about years, or months, or weeks. You think about today—how to get through it, how to survive it. When you wake up tomorrow, another day is behind you. The days add up; the weeks run together; the months become years. You realize how tough you are, how you can function and survive because you have no choice.
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”
John Grisham (The Racketeer)
“
He told me that if I hung up, he'd do it. He would commit suicide. He told me that if I called the cops he would kill every single one of them and I knew that he had the potential and the means to do it
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Sierra D. Waters (Debbie.)
“
The Russian system of justice and police is so haphazard, so inhuman, so arbitrary and corrupt, that a poor malefactor has more reason to fear his trial than his sentence. He is impatient for the time when he will be sent to Siberia; for his martyrdom comes to an end when his punishment begins.
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Alexander Herzen (Childhood, Youth and Exile)
“
Here one comes upon an all-important English trait: the respect for constituitionalism and legality, the belief in 'the law' as something above the state and above the individual, something which is cruel and stupid, of course, but at any rate incorruptible.
It is not that anyone imagines the law to be just. Everyone knows that there is one law for the rich and another for the poor. But no one accepts the implications of this, everyone takes for granted that the law, such as it is, will be respected, and feels a sense of outrage when it is not. Remarks like 'They can't run me in; I haven't done anything wrong', or 'They can't do that; it's against the law', are part of the atmosphere of England. The professed enemies of society have this feeling as strongly as anyone else. One sees it in prison-books like Wilfred Macartney's Walls Have Mouths or Jim Phelan's Jail Journey, in the solemn idiocies that take places at the trials of conscientious objectors, in letters to the papers from eminent Marxist professors, pointing out that this or that is a 'miscarriage of British justice'. Everyone believes in his heart that the law can be, ought to be, and, on the whole, will be impartially administered. The totalitarian idea that there is no such thing as law, there is only power, has never taken root. Even the intelligentsia have only accepted it in theory.
An illusion can become a half-truth, a mask can alter the expression of a face. The familiar arguments to the effect that democracy is 'just the same as' or 'just as bad as' totalitarianism never take account of this fact. All such arguments boil down to saying that half a loaf is the same as no bread. In England such concepts as justice, liberty and objective truth are still believed in. They may be illusions, but they are powerful illusions. The belief in them influences conduct,national life is different because of them. In proof of which, look about you. Where are the rubber truncheons, where is the caster oil?
The sword is still in the scabbard, and while it stays corruption cannot go beyond a certain point. The English electoral system, for instance, is an all but open fraud. In a dozen obvious ways it is gerrymandered in the interest of the moneyed class. But until some deep change has occurred in the public mind, it cannot become completely corrupt. You do not arrive at the polling booth to find men with revolvers telling you which way to vote, nor are the votes miscounted, nor is there any direct bribery. Even hypocrisy is powerful safeguard. The hanging judge, that evil old man in scarlet robe and horse-hair wig,whom nothing short of dynamite will ever teach what century he is living in, but who will at any rate interpret the law according to the books and will in no circumstances take a money bribe,is one of the symbolic figures of England. He is a symbol of the strange mixture of reality and illusion, democracy and privilege, humbug and decency, the subtle network of compromises, by which the nation keeps itself in its familiar shape.
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”
George Orwell (Why I Write)
“
We are all implicated when we allow other people to be mistreated. An absence of compassion can corrupt the decency of a community, a state, a nation.
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”
Bryan Stevenson (Just Mercy)
“
What else do we have to expose and investigate corruption and maintain informed citizenry? When all levels of government and justice system are abusing power, where can people go with claims of that abuse? Only the press.
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JoeAnn Hart (Stamford '76: A True Story of Murder, Corruption, Race, and Feminism in the 1970s)
“
Challenging boundaries is not simply social rebellion. It is the catalyst of social evolution. When systems go unchallenged, they grow complacent and corrupt. Raising generation after generation of rule followers and conformists may be more convenient for society, but it inevitably leads to tyranny and, ultimately, revolution. Raising independent thinkers, conscious objectors, and peaceful activists creates a social balance that can endure. Peaceful parenting, then, by its very nature, is socially responsible because it creates the catalysts of social evolution that protect our society from the complacency and corruption that lead to tyranny and revolution.
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L.R. Knost
“
Police Commit The Worst Criminal Activities Than The Very People They've Locked Up. Biggest Corrupt & Racist Institution.
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”
Witness
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A judicial system is corrupt if truth is denied the right to be a witness.
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Suzy Kassem
“
Most people who wonder why our politics are so corrupt can’t draw the line from racist theories of limited democracy to today’s system, but the small group of white men who are funding the effort to turn back the clock on political equality can lay claim to a long ideological pedigree: from the original property requirement to people like John C. Calhoun, who advocated states’ rights and limited government in defense of slavery, to the Supreme Court justices who decided Shelby County and Citizens United. Over the past few decades, a series of money-in-politics lawsuits, including Citizens United, have overturned anticorruption protections, making it possible for a wealthy individual to give more than $3.5 million to a party and its candidates in an election cycle, for corporations and unions to spend unlimited sums to get candidates elected or defeated, and for secret money to sway elections. The result is a racially skewed system of influence and electoral gatekeeping that invalidates the voices of most Americans.
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Heather McGhee (The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together)
“
People love to say, nobody is above the law, which is one of the most dangerous delusions of the social psyche. It is a lie fed to the meek citizens of a nation to keep them obedient to the state, even in the face of corruption. Every human is above the law, until the law that governs the society is made incorruptible. So long as we have a law that is exploitable by individuals in power, it is imperative that every thinking human stands up to such law, even if it means going against the state, because like the law of today, state itself is not incorruptible.
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Abhijit Naskar (Operation Justice: To Make A Society That Needs No Law)
“
Crime is an attitude learnt overtime and can be as a result of condition of place one has found himself. Crime can be graded, so it's possible environment can affect high class rich and low class poor. Therefore criminal justice system is supposed to be graded as to achieve equity in result.
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Chidiebere Prosper Agbugba
“
I believe in one God, creator of the universe. That he governs it by his Providence. That he ought to be worshiped. That the most acceptable service we can render to him is doing good to his other children. That the soul of man is immortal, and will be treated with justice in another life respecting its conduct in this. These I take to be the fundamental principles of all sound religion, and I regard them as you do, in whatever sect I meet with them. As to Jesus of Nazareth…I think the system of morals and his religion as he left them to us, the best the world ever saw, or is likely to see; but I apprehend it has received various corrupting changes, and I have…some doubts as to his divinity; though it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an opportunity of knowing the truth with less trouble.
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Jon Meacham (American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation)
“
Derived from the Greek word anarchos, "without authority," anarchism denies law and considers property to be tyranny. Anarchists believe that human corruption results when differences are enforced through the maintenance of property and authority. Anarchists do not oppose or deny governance as long as it exists without coercion and the threat of violence. They oppose and deny the authority of the centralized state and propose governance through collaboration, deliberation, consensus, and common coordination. Justice can emerge from a sense of common purpose and practices of mutual aid, not the monopoly on violence that the state demands. While anarchism is commonly associated with bloody violence and rage, anarchists believe deeply in an ideology of love.
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Siva Vaidhyanathan (The Anarchist in the Library: How the Clash Between Freedom and Control Is Hacking the Real World and Crashing the System)
“
do we have a compulsion to devise elaborate ideas about our place in the universe? Why do we experience beauty as transcendent yet somehow impermanent and corrupted, and suffering as somehow wrong, rather than simply a part of the natural order? Why do the advocates of each new system of justice believe they can devise legal codes that will achieve a fully just social order, even though every previous system of justice has failed?
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David Skeel (True Paradox: How Christianity Makes Sense of Our Complex World (Veritas Books))
“
I am against the planned political assassinations by our intelligence and defense agents.The CIA-FBI-DIA and DISC (Defense Industry Security Command) were set up originally to protect citizens of the USA. They became their own judges and juries, private servants of corporations with investments at home and abroad. I am against the constant destruction of evidence in criminal matters and political assassinations. Prime witnesses are murdered before or after testifying. Diaries are forged and planted in obvious places. Doubles are created to confuse. The Police Departments manipulate facts in cooperation with conspirators. I am outraged that our judicial system since 1947 has been patterned after Nazi Germany. Patsies are dead or locked away. The assassins walk the streets or leave the country - "home free". I am against using the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Earl Warren, to cover up the assassination of President Kennedy. When the highest court is corrupt, there is no hope at local levels.
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Mae Brussell
“
Citizen participation will reach an all-time high as anyone with a mobile handset and access to the Internet will be able to play a part in promoting accountability and transparency. A shopkeeper in Addis Ababa and a precocious teenager in San Salvador will be able to disseminate information about bribes and corruption, report election irregularities and generally hold their governments to account. Video cameras installed in police cars will help keep the police honest, if the camera phones carried by citizens don’t already. In fact, technology will empower people to police the police in a plethora of creative ways never before possible, including through real-time monitoring systems allowing citizens to publicly rate every police officer in their hometown. Commerce, education, health care and the justice system will all become more efficient, transparent and inclusive as major institutions opt in to the digital age. People who try to perpetuate myths about religion, culture, ethnicity or anything else will
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Eric Schmidt (The New Digital Age: Reshaping the Future of People, Nations and Business)
“
We are learning that through striving for justice, tears and laughter, seem more dynamic and shared as each step is taken with communal courage together. Record a legacy, they truly lived, not once stepped back on the path that beckoned. I am proud of my partner, of my family, of our friends. We have learned to value the quiet patience of gentle support both, unspoken and felt, heard and embraced. And if we seem cryptic in message at times, we wish to lift to the world the cause as artists, using the language of our nature and craft, to address the twisted currents of current laws and corruption, where ears are dulled from light by agendas, that the beauty of Art may be expressed in the reclaiming of itself, from the wreckage of the court system mired with soiled attorney and tainted judge. Colors to where there is grey, to lift the hues cast in cast iron graves, stamped Summary Judgement, with no judgement applied. So together we formulate, and forge what is possible, while tear stains cheek, falling upon lighted smile, in thought of our loved ones, that keeps our current path clear.
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Tom Althouse (The Frowny Face Cow)
“
So the question arose now, as it had in the wake of the Mongol holocaust: if the triumphant expansion of the Muslim project proved the truth of the revelation, what did the impotence of Muslims in the face of these new foreigners signify about the faith?
With this question looming over the Muslim world, movements to revive Islam could not be extricated from the need to resurrect Muslim power. Reformers could not merely offer proposals for achieving more authentic religions experiences. They had to expound on how the authenticity they proposed would get history back on course, how their proposals would restore the dignity and splendor of the Umma, how they would get Muslims moving again toward the proper endpoint of history: perfecting the community of justice and compassion that flourished in Medina in the original golden moment and enlarging it until it included all the world.
Many reformers emerged and many movements bubbled up, but all of them can sorted into three general sorts of responses to the troubling question.
One response was to say that what needed changing was not Islam, but Muslims. Innovation, alterations, and accretions had corrupted the faith, so that no one was practicing the true Islam anymore. What Muslims needed to do was to shut out Western influence and restore Islam to its pristine, original form.
Another response was to say that the West was right. Muslims had gotten mired in obsolete religious ideas; they had ceded control of Islam to ignorant clerics who were out of touch with changing times; they needed to modernize their faith along Western lines by clearing out superstition, renouncing magical thinking, and rethinking Islam as an ethical system compatible with science and secular activities.
A third response was to declare Islam the true religion but concede that Muslims had certain things to learn from the West. In this view, Muslims needed to rediscover and strengthen the essence of their own faith, history and traditions, but absorb Western learning in the fields of science and technology. According to this river of reform, Muslims needed to modernize but could do so in a distinctively Muslim way: science was compatible with the Muslim faith and modernization did not have to mean Westernization.
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Tamim Ansary (Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World through Islamic Eyes)
“
If we analyze white supremacy from the philosophical lens of Star Wars, then it is all the Sith Lords, the Empire, and the First Order commanded by the Dark Side of the Force. It wants to dominate and impose its will on all galaxies, even those far, far away. Let’s just call this insidious force THE WHITENESS.
The Whiteness’s ability to inspire fear and anger is so strong that it corrupted many well-intentioned people, including people of color, to vote for an incompetent vulgarian in 2016 and 2020. It deludes many liberal and “moderate” whites into believing that they are the “good” ones who are committed to social justice as they talk about white privilege but never actually give up any of it. Still, they’ll have these discussions about racial equality with their white friends in establishments with white patrons from white neighborhoods—without including the rest of us.
The Whiteness has always played for all the marbles. It’s not interested in diplomacy, a representative government, free and fair elections, equitable pay, and a delicious buffet of meals from a multitude of countries. It needs a border wall, a Muslim Ban, and affirmative action for wealthy white students at Yale University. It’s a system, a structure, a paradigm, an ideology whose ultimate goal is domination and submission by any means necessary.
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Wajahat Ali (Go Back to Where You Came From: And Other Helpful Recommendations on How to Become American)
“
The RNC was easy for Trump to corrupt to his will, because it had already been corrupted with voter suppression, Frank Luntz messaging, the Hastert Rule, the selling of Sarah Palin, telling different lies to different voters just to gain their support, Mitch McConnell's theft of the supreme court (assisted by those justices prevaricating at their senate hearings), to name just a few.
And how about the New York Times, and all those journalists country-wide who cared more about appearing "fair and balanced" than exposing lies and corruption? We watched them not know how to handle the vilification of facts, but that, too, started before Trump (think Joe Walsh calling out "You lie!" during Obama's State of the Union, when Obama was stating facts. They reported the lack of decorum, but not the lack of veracity.)
Now we watch the legal system--and its avenues for motions and appeals before, during, and after conviction--be abused and corrupted by Trump's legal team, with an assist from judges who don't even try too hard to hide their partiality.
We need those who participated whose eyes have now cleared to be as forthcoming as Michael Cohen has been in exposing how and why the deeds were done, and owning their culpability. They need to come clean, to help us find ways to strengthen the frayed and fraying institutions that are barely holding together.
It may be the only way through.
”
”
Shellen Lubin
“
While I am free to speak my mind, Kelly, now 14, is not so fortunate. Kelly has yet to receive rehabilitation for her shattered personality and programmed young mind. The high tech sophistication of the Project Monarch trauma based mind-control procedures she endured, literally since birth, reportedly requires highly specialized, qualified care to aid her in eventually gaining control of her mind and life. Due to the political affluence of our abusers, all efforts to obtain her inalienable right to rehabilitation and seek justice have been blocked under the guise of so-called "National Security." As a result, Kelly remains warehoused in a mental institution in the custody of the state of Tennessee--a victim of the system—a system controlled and manipulated by our abusive government "leaders" a system where State Forms make no allowances to report military TOP SECRET abuses--a system that exists on federal funding directed by our perverse, corrupt abusers in Washington, D.C. She remains a political prisoner in a mental institution to this moment, waiting and hurting! Violations of laws and rights, Psychological Warfare intimidation tactics, threats to our lives, and various other forms of CIA Damage Containment practices thus far have remained unhindered and unchecked due to the National Security Act of 1947 AND the 1986 Reagan Amendment to same which allows those in control of our government to censor and/or cover up anything they choose.
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Cathy O'Brien (TRANCE Formation of America: True life story of a mind control slave)
“
Why is our Justice so tough on guys that try to change the system for the benefit of many, and so gentle with the guys that play the system to their own interest?
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Crichton Lei (Aaron: A brief story on ideals and corruption)
“
This justice system is too corrupt to be effective. Sometimes justice has to come from the shadows.
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Karpov Kinrade (House of Ravens (The Nightfall Chronicles, #2))
“
Wells was incensed. “This is what opened my eyes to what lynching really was,” she wrote. She noted “that the Southerner had never gotten over this resentment that the Negro was no longer his plaything, his servant, and his source of income” and said that whites were using charges of rape against black business owners to mask this resentment. The lynching of Moss, she wrote, was “an excuse to get rid of Negroes who were acquiring wealth and property and thus keep the race terrorized and ‘keep the nigger down.’”59 White mobs destroyed Wells’s newspaper, Free Speech, which railed against white vigilante violence, the inadequate black schools, segregation, discrimination, and a corrupt legal system that denied justice to blacks. Wells was forced to flee the city, becoming, as she wrote, “an exile from home for hinting at the truth.
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Chris Hedges (Wages of Rebellion)
“
When justice becomes a commodity in the marketplace of the court system, the citizens must take it upon themselves to conduct a complete overhaul of the very democracy they are living in.
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Abhijit Naskar (Boldly Comes Justice: Sentient Not Silent)
“
The great crisis that we face as a nation is not just the objective problems that we face–a rigged economy, a corrupt campaign finance system, a broken criminal justice system, and the extraordinary threat of climate change. The more serious crisis is the limitation of our imaginations. It is falling victim to an incredibly powerful establishment–economic, political, and media–that tells us every day, in a million different ways, that real change is unthinkable and impossible. That we have got to think small, not big. That we must be satisfied with the status quo. That there are no alternatives.
The future of our country and, perhaps, the world requires us to break through those limitations.
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Bernie Sanders (Our Revolution: A Future to Believe In)
“
The justice system is corrupted and not reliable. It is exploited for hate, revenge with lies, deceit. It is method, pattern from the knowledgeable guilty against the unprotected innocents. Do not consider any claim or conviction as valid.
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Maria Karvouni (You Are Always Innocent)
“
In Kuchma’s Ukraine, the institutional corruption that had pervaded all aspects of life in the Soviet era continued unabated. Kuchma kept the Soviet system of “telephone justice,” where politicians picked up the phone and told prosecutors and judges what to do. Tax audits, civil suits, and criminal investigations were weaponized against political adversaries and even businessmen, embroiling them in costly and time-consuming legal battles and often causing them significant public embarrassment.
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Marie Yovanovitch (Lessons from the Edge: A Memoir)
“
Every time the cradle of justice becomes criminal, it falls upon us civilians to be justice incorruptible.
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Abhijit Naskar (Find A Cause Outside Yourself: Sermon of Sustainability)
“
Social Reform 101 (The Sonnet)
Brute force isn't always the answer,
Sometimes you gotta be clever.
Naivety has its place, it keeps you humble,
Dealing with hyenas you gotta be a dinosaur.
I am not talking about size and appearance,
Appearance never brings any lasting change.
Here I am talking about the faculties within,
For corruption is defeated only by a hearty brain.
The best way to control the manipulator is,
To give them the illusion of control 'n dominance.
To con the con-artist for the greater good,
Is not an act of con but an act of conscience.
Sentiment is good, but without wisdom it is plain stupid.
An activist fights the system, a reformer manipulates it.
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Abhijit Naskar (Ingan Impossible: Handbook of Hatebusting)
“
We are a country that could not keep the Jinnah’s vision for equal rights, privileges, and obligations; could not stop voilence towards minorities; could not win a war against vast racial disparities, retrograde enemy; cannot conquer a disease of corruption and bad governance; and cannot bring itself to trust the government.
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”
Qamar Rafiq
“
The name and memory of Viola Liuzzo is a constant reminder to me that systems of power, even those with supposedly good intentions, will often sell out the innocent for it's own survival.
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”
Jamie Arpin-Ricci
“
It could be a place where we learn to respect consent and pronouns, where we learn about intersectionality, where we learn the truth about our corrupt systems and begin to demand change, where we learn to respect and appreciate people who are different from us, where we start demanding justice for the oppressed, where we investigate our histories of bias and bigotry. Higher education could be all of that, and the world would be better for it.
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”
Ijeoma Oluo (Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America)
“
In China under the power market economic system, the ability to succeed in anything depends on relationships with key power-holders. The process of selling official positions and titles has formed a shadow network of personal bondage and gangs as power wielders at various levels serve one another's needs and utilize one another in a hotbed of corruption and protection removed from social justice. The ordinary people covered by this huge shadow network are powerless to defend justice or appeal against unjust treatment.
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Yang Jisheng (The World Turned Upside Down: A History of the Chinese Cultural Revolution)
“
The former, the system, is deemed by fiat to be unjust. The successful are deemed exploitative and corrupt, as they can be logically read as undeserving beneficiaries, as well as the voluntary, conscious, self-serving, and immoral supporters, if the system is unjust. Once this causal chain of thought has been accepted, all attacks on the successful can be construed as morally justified attempts at establishing justice—rather than, say, manifestations of envy and covetousness that might have traditionally been defined as shameful.
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Jordan B. Peterson (Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life)
“
Scruton summarizes Horkheimer’s burden: we must “pass beyond philosophy into ‘critical theory’ and discover the true possibility of emancipation, which begins with the emancipation of thought itself.”36 In simpler terms, to understand humanity, the Critical Theorists argued that one must recognize the corrupted nature of society, but not only of society—of ordinary reason itself. It is for this reason that Voddie Baucham Jr. has argued that such thinking—including Critical Race Theory, derived from this system—is gnosticism.37 He means that according to this ideology, there is a higher knowledge that only some possess; ordinary perception alone will not do. The structures of reality, whether economic or cultural or “racial” (in our time), may look sound, but they are not. They must be exposed, for they actually contain surging injustice within them. Only some can see this—the woke.
”
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Owen Strachan (Christianity and Wokeness: How the Social Justice Movement Is Hijacking the Gospel - and the Way to Stop It)
“
In actuality, many are—but on a personal level only. There is, in general, a double-mindedness about the free market among woke leaders. On the one hand, it is seen as wicked and inherently corrupt. On the other hand, woke scholars and activists do well by it—in some cases, obscenely well. Robin DiAngelo charges fifteen thousand dollars per speaking event and has earned over two million dollars from her book White Fragility, even while castigating capitalism as a racist economic system.64 Ibram Kendi and Ta-Nehisi Coates have even higher price tags: Kendi’s speaking fee is twenty-five thousand dollars, while Coates’s fee is between thirty thousand and forty thousand dollars per event.65 Even as these leaders decry “capitalism,” they make more in a day than many Americans make in a year.
”
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Owen Strachan (Christianity and Wokeness: How the Social Justice Movement Is Hijacking the Gospel - and the Way to Stop It)
“
In the face of reformer civilians, even the politicians themselves will forget which party they belong to, so will their next of kin.
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Abhijit Naskar (Mucize Misafir Merhaba: The Peace Testament)
“
First, reframe the purpose of taxes to help build social consensus for the kind of higher-tax, higher-returns public sector that has been a proven success in many Scandinavian countries. And remember, the verbal framing expert George Lakoff advises to choose your words wisely: don’t oppose tax relief—talk about tax justice. Likewise, the notion of public spending is often used by those who oppose it to evoke a never-ending outlay. Public investment, on the other hand, focuses on the public goods—such as high-quality schools and effective public transport—that underpin collective well-being.57 Second, end the extraordinary injustice of tax loopholes, offshore havens, profit shifting and special exemptions that allow many of the world’s richest people and largest corporations—from Amazon to Zara—to pay negligible tax in the countries in which they live and do business. At least $18.5 trillion is hidden by wealthy individuals in tax havens worldwide, representing an annual loss of more than $156 billion in tax revenue, a sum that could end extreme income poverty twice over.58 At the same time, transnational corporations shift around $660 billion of their profits each year to near-zero tax jurisdictions such as the Netherlands, Ireland, Bermuda and Luxembourg.59 The Global Alliance for Tax Justice is among those focused on tackling this, campaigning worldwide for greater corporate transparency and accountability, fair international tax rules, and progressive national tax systems.60 Third, shifting both personal and corporate taxation away from taxing income streams and towards taxing accumulated wealth—such as real estate and financial assets—will diminish the role played by a growing GDP in ensuring sufficient tax revenue. Of course progressive tax reforms such as these can quickly encounter pushback from the corporate lobby, along with claims of state incompetence and corruption. This only reinforces the importance of strong civic engagement in promoting and defending political democracies that can hold the state to account.
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Kate Raworth (Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist)
“
The greater, darker, unforeseen consequences of privatisation are its corrupting effect on social fairness and opportunity more broadly. Corporations that acquire state assets depend on the election of governments with policies that will feed their business, rather than diminish it. It is in the interest of corporations that are paid to supply sub-contracted services to government projects, for example, to lobby hard against political parties mooting a return to better-paid, more secure, direct employment models. ... A powerful incentive to corruption, hard and soft, exists in the dynamics of these economic and political relationships. Big corporations have a direct interest in politics and the political system; their political donations reward those who promise them favourable conditions, and neither the community benefit nor the national interest comes into it.
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Sally McManus (On Fairness)
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Today in our hemisphere, Mexican traffickers’ role in creating and spreading these drugs is just as undeniable and corrosive. Mexico’s response has more than just failed. On the contrary, a new book by historian Benjamin Smith, The Dope: The Real History of the Mexican Drug Trade, shows that elements of the Mexican government have often controlled, guided, exploited, and aided those traffickers since the 1950s as they morphed from illiterate rancheros to criminal capitalists, even as these government officials went through the motions of battling the drug trade. The relentless quantities of meth flowing into American towns are a measurement of Mexico’s inept criminal justice system. Mexico must stand up and deal with the corruption that cripples well-meaning people and the rule of law.
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Sam Quinones (The Least of Us: True Tales of America and Hope in the Time of Fentanyl and Meth)
“
He has now completed two books, the first on how investment dealers “fee-farm” over half of the life savings of many clients, and this second book about conditions which allow quiet professional corruption to remain hidden from the public, and ignored by authorities. What drives me? (in the authors words) I hope to have an impact upon the #1 cause of disability, disease, and stress in society today. I believe I have some unique perspectives on this from my experience. For example, the #1 cause of disability, disease, and stress is fear of economic uncertainty. In my experience, the #1 cause of fear of economic uncertainty, is unfairness between those who are protected and enriched within the “lifeboats” of certain professions, corporations or institutions, and those who are not so protected. There are different levels of protection by the law, and immunity from having to adhere to the law, depending upon the wealth, power or status of those involved. Justice systems simply do not often “look upwards” to investigate and prosecute those of great wealth, power and status. These rigged systems of governance, finance, justice etc, cause unfairness, injustice, and repeal the laws of poverty for a few very lucky people, and repeals the chances of prosperity for billions of others. A small few win by corruption, while the rest of society must lose by default. This is a broken system. The unfairness of rigged and/or broken systems, causes imbalances sufficient to destroy entire societies. Societies can literally shake themselves apart with the human vibration of living in an unjust, unfair world. At time of writing this, I am the chairperson of the volunteer Canadian Justice Review Board of Canada, working to better understand one of societies most valuable social systems,
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Larry Elford (Farming Humans: Easy Money (Non Fiction Financial Murder Book 1))
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On January 6, months of fearmongering and lies about voter fraud and a stolen election exploded into a deadly insurrection. Jones Day wasn't to blame, but it wasn't not to blame either. The firm had contributed to misapprehensions about the vulnerability of the electoral system. More important, it had nurtured, protected, and enabled Donald Trump since long before anyone took his candidacy seriously and for long after his demagogy was impossible to miss. Now the costs were clear. (303)
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David Enrich (Servants of the Damned: Giant Law Firms, Donald Trump, and the Corruption of Justice)
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It is true. They have your brains. If this is not the ultimate injustice against you what is? All justice falls apart when those that "do" justice are unjust themselves. And they have developed machines that corrupt this system too.
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Maria Karvouni (You Are Always Innocent)
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If someone will go as low as Donald Trump for his own personal gain, then how do we police that? How can we be vigilant in a world where facts are malleable, our president is corrupt, and the branch of government designed to ensure justice for every citizen cannot do its job because the attorney general is too busy acting as the president’s personal lawyer? That’s the problem we face with Trump. Sure, this country’s had bad scandals before. It seems as if we cannot avoid them. What makes this scandal truly worse than any that have come before is in the way it threatens democracy itself. What Trump has done is provide a dangerous road map for the next—probably smarter—fascist. We need to root them out. We need to extricate them from our system. Otherwise, we’re headed for madness…and democracy will be dead.
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Michael Cohen (Revenge: How Donald Trump Weaponized the US Department of Justice Against His Critics)
“
The justice is blind; however, not the Chief Justice.
“Between a liar and a lawyer, the differential is only the spelling, whereas the characteristic is the same for both.”
The Pakistani judiciary has awakened and taken the initials against the intelligence agencies for interference, illegitimate force, and blackmailing the judges to achieve their will and goals, but after more than seven decades of breathless justice. Factually, the Pakistani judiciary system is utterly corrupt from top to bottom, including law protectors in black coats; mostly, they encourage injustice through immoral connections with intelligence agencies, political parties, feudal personas, and even criminals.
I wrote this passage in one of my articles: “One cannot speak a word against the wrongdoing of a handful of army generals or ISI officials. In Pakistan, veteran journalists, top judges, and other key figures draw breath under the spying eyes of the ISI; even higher and minister-level personalities are the victims of such conduct. One has to live in such surroundings.” It faces and bears not only the Muslim state of Pakistan; it also faces and bears the entire Subcontinent, Asia, Arab and Third World, even in some ways the civilized societies for security reasons.
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Ehsan Sehgal
“
Those who live under the rules of tyranny are thus faced with a range of possibilities as bystanders. They can choose to become accomplices and followers of the tyrant and gain the benefits of active collusion in a corrupt system; they can become silent witnesses who are aware of abuses of power but keep quiet out of fear or indifference; or they can simply retreat into a stance of unknowing, feeling that they are powerless to make a difference in any event. All these levels of collusion can be rationalized as just “going along to get along,” simply accepting that this is the way the world is. One can sympathize with the dilemma of bystanders, for few will have the courage to seek out the truth, to speak up, or to intervene on behalf of victims, knowing the kinds of punishments they may risk themselves. It is only too easy to say, “It’s none of my business, and anyway, there’s nothing I can do about it.
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Judith Lewis Herman MD (Truth and Repair: How Trauma Survivors Envision Justice)
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Future society thrives on compassionate AI, which shapes a legal system free of corruption and inequality, delivering justice without fear, bias, or delay but with the utmost care and respect for humanity.
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Amit Ray (Compassionate Artificial Superintelligence AI 5.0)
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Compassionate AI aims at a holistic legal system untainted by corruption and inequality, delivering justice without fear, bias, or delay.
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Amit Ray (Compassionate Artificial Superintelligence AI 5.0)
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Do not understand only the words; also understand their contexts since they illuminate you precisely.
If you vote wisely, you won’t have to fight for your rights and peace everywhere.
The political mafia is the mother of all mafias and often causes wars and uses vetoes to disrupt global peace.
My every minute of life is for the entire humanity and human rights; it is a core prayer of all my prayers.
What is a mafia, how do you understand it, and when do you overcome it? It is neither easy nor difficult; just be brave for your rights and never ignore them. No one can stand in front of your rights if you truly believe that.
I have described the context of the mafia in the form of quotations that may guide and enlighten your life journey honourably.
When a nation faces the Mafia Judiciary, which employs and applies an unfair way that fractures justice, the criminal mafia groups become licensed, and freehand is a juristic disaster.
Wherever the medical, trade, business, media, and political interests of the mafia prevail, there is certainly neither a cure nor freedom possible nor justice nor peace.
A vote holds not only significant power; it also carries a key to a system, essence to the welfare, surety to the career of a future generation, and a magnet to the stability of the state. The wrong choice or emotional pledge and favor of the vote-casting can indeed victimize a voter himself as a consequence. Realize this power and use it wisely, disregarding all external influences and tricks.
Such a political party remains the proprietorship of a particular family, a rich circle, a corrupt mafia, or an establishment that accomplishes neither transparent democratic legitimacy nor fair democracy. Undoubtedly, such a party enforces majority dictatorship when it comes to power. It is mendacious dishonesty and severe corruption in a precise democratic voting context.
I have been critical of the undemocratic rule, but now I think it may be the option of neutral law, but not martial law, which is essential for the stability and unity of Pakistan’s state, constitution, economy, and institutions to eliminate the democratic mafia and terror.
International intelligence agencies and their hired ones avoid the weapons now; however, they utilize deadly chemicals to kill their rivals, whether high-level or low-level, whereas doctors diagnose that as a natural death. Virtually becoming infected and a victim of deathly diseases through chemicals is neither known publicly nor common. As a fact, the intelligence mafia can achieve and gain every task for their interests.
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Ehsan Sehgal
“
The relentless quantities of meth flowing into American towns are a measurement of Mexico’s inept criminal justice system. Mexico must stand up and deal with the corruption that cripples well-meaning people and the rule of law. We have aided these traffickers in their work. They sell to our drug demand. What’s more, they have armed themselves for decades with guns purchased easily in the United States and smuggled south.
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Sam Quinones (The Least of Us: True Tales of America and Hope in the Time of Fentanyl and Meth)
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Democracy, the beating heart of a just society, stands as a testament to the power of collective voice and the relentless pursuit of equality. It is a beacon of hope that illuminates the path towards a world where every voice matters. At its core, democracy embodies the fundamental belief that every individual possesses inherent worth and has the right to participate in shaping the course of their own destiny. It is a recognition that diverse perspectives enrich our understanding, and that decisions made collectively are more likely to uphold the principles of justice and fairness. Democracy is not a static entity; it is a constant work in progress, demanding our active engagement and vigilance. It requires the nurturing of informed citizens, critical thinking, and open dialogue. It necessitates the protection of civil liberties and the relentless pursuit of truth and transparency. Democracy thrives in an environment where empathy reigns and the marginalized are uplifted. It is a system that strives to dismantle the barriers that separate us, fostering an inclusive society where every individual, regardless of their race, gender, or socioeconomic status, has an equal opportunity to be heard and represented. Yet, democracy is not without its challenges. It is vulnerable to the forces of corruption, apathy, and division. It requires our unwavering commitment to resist complacency, to stand up for justice, and to protect the rights of all citizens. It demands that we confront our biases, bridge our differences, and work towards the common good. In a world where power can be concentrated in the hands of a few, and the voices of the marginalized can be silenced, democracy stands as a reminder that power ultimately resides in the people. It is a call to action, a call to nurture the seeds of democracy within our hearts, our communities, and our institutions. For democracy is not just a political system; it is a profound philosophy that recognizes the inherent worth and agency of every individual. It is a reminder that our collective destiny is shaped by the choices we make, the values we uphold, and the unwavering belief that democracy matters, now and for generations to come.
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D.L. Lewis
“
To fight the patriarchal environment that prevails in the Indian courtrooms, there are
women who are making their mark and are utilizing the law and the legal system to make a dent in patriarchy. These courageous women are standing up against the powerful institutionalized structural imbalance and asserting their rights while showing that the Constitution, the law, and the courtrooms do not belong to a handful of judges and lawyers but belong to the people, the litigants, the poor, the marginalized, the women – to the people of the country. The system may be
powerful or corrupt but people are more powerful than the system and have the power to smash the loopholes within it.
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Shalu Nigam
“
The Treasury of Spain informed me that the companies (the criminals) had 365 days to pay me my missing salary of 60,000 Euros, according to an official court decision made in Madrid. However, I was well aware that this would only escalate the danger for both Martina and me. I knew they would not fulfill their payment obligations. They would seek cheaper methods to evade payment and would also attempt to eliminate me without facing any consequences.
I was unsure whom to turn to for help. Should I ask the King of Spain, or the leaders of Israel, Brussels, Hungary, Interpol, or the Policia Nacional? How could I protect Martina from these criminals? How could I dismantle Adam's mafia?
These thoughts were weighing heavily on my mind as my anticipated final departure from Spain drew near.
I received a letter, from Zaragoza. The letter informed me that I owed Zaragoza approximately 1800 euros for fines accrued by Adam. It also mentioned that it had been around 1.5 years since the incident on the highway, where I received fines while I was driving the gypsy caravan. Late fees were added without question. Make it 2000. Additionally, it warned that if I failed to make payment within 15 days of receiving the letter in my mailbox, the authorities would visit me with a court order to seize belongings of mine worth at least 1800 euros.
Someone disclosed my „new” address to the Zaragoza Authorities. It is possible that the Correo/Post Office/Postal Service were unable to deliver their correspondence to my previous address on Carrer Cantabria due to my absence after the same expo where the fines were incurred on the highway and the unwanted flooding of the apartment. But now. Delivered.
It is possible that the biased Catalan Court, which was known by my side at this point for its corruption and/or incompetence, shared my Barcelona address with the Correo/Postal Service to ensure that the fines reached me. The corrupt and/or incompetent Ciutat de la Justicia, the so called „City of Justice”, the Catalan judicial system did not solely reserve the sharing of my home address for the mafia/s.
Everything was not a direct result of the criminals’ conspiracy. But.
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Tomas Adam Nyapi (BARCELONA MARIJUANA MAFIA)
“
In conclusion, the death of Christ was not about God the Father needing to vent His rage and fury upon a sacrificial victim in order to appease Himself. It was not about the Father needing to crush someone in the place of humanity so that, on the other side of the crushing He could be pleased with, and relational towards us. It was not about a sacrificial system which God originally instituted, but later decided was incapable of satisfying His needs. It was about the entire Trinity destroying and putting to death the alien entity of sin, the “devil’s work”(1 John 3: 18), in order to save us from its corrupting influence. It was done so that on the other side of the Cross, we would see and understand what man had lost sight of after partaking of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. It was to reveal to us that our God is not a cosmic Santa Claus who is making a list, checking it twice, and who will ultimately repay both the naughty and the nice. Our God is Love, and has only ever been seeking to reveal that love to us. He was never out to “get us”, but to rescue us from the consequences of our own decisions. Sin did not change God, and the Cross was not the means by which He reset Himself back to His factory settings. Sin changed us, and it therefore needed to be destroyed so that we could behold the unchangeable nature of our God of love. The Cross was the ultimate, climactic demonstration of the Godhead’s love for the human race, not the crude display of a deified version of human justice. It was Eternal Love Himself, stepping into our problem, absorbing it into Himself and dying in order to put it to death. It was heroic, self-giving, sacrificial justice.
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Jeff Turner (Saints in the Arms of a Happy God)
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In general, the Fascist and Nazi regimes had no serious difficulty establishing control over public services. They largely protected civil servants’ turf from party intrusion and left their professional identity intact. Civil servants were frequently in broad sympathy with fascist regimes’ biases for authority and order against parliament and the Left, and they appreciated enhanced freedom from legal restraint. Eliminating Jews sometimes opened up career advancement.
The police were the key agency, of course. The German police were very quickly removed from the normative state and brought under Nazi Party control via the SS. Himmler, supported by Hitler against rivals and the Ministry of the Interior, which traditionally controlled the police, ascended in April 1933 from political police commander of Bavaria (where he set up the first concentration camp at Dachau) to chief of the whole German police system in June 1936.
This process was facilitated by the disgruntlement many German police had felt for the Weimar Republic and its “coddling of criminals,” and by the regime’s efforts to enhance police prestige in the eyes of the public. By 1937, the annual congratulatory “Police Day” had expanded from one day to seven. Initially the SA were deputized as auxiliary Exercising Power police in Prussia, but this practice was ended on August 2, 1933, and the police faced no further threat of dilution from party militants. They enjoyed a privileged role above the law as the final arbiters of their own form of unlimited “police justice.”
While the German police were run more directly by Nazi Party chiefs than any other traditional state agency, the Italian police remained headed by a civil servant, and their behavior was little more unprofessional or partisan than under previous governments. This is one of the most profound differences between the Nazi and Fascist regimes. The head of the Italian police for most of the Fascist period was the professional civil servant Arturo Bocchini. There was a political police, the OVRA, but the regime executed relatively few political enemies.
Another crucial instrument of rule was the judiciary. Although very few judges were Nazi Party members in 1933, the German magistracy was already overwhelmingly conservative. It had established a solid track record of harsher penalties against communists than against Nazis during the 1920s. In exchange for a relatively limited invasion of their professional sphere by the party’s Special Courts and People’s Court, the judges willingly submerged their associations in a Nazi organization and happily accepted the powerful role the new regime gave them.71 The Italian judiciary was little changed, since political interference had already been the norm under the liberal monarchy. Italian judges felt general sympathy for the Fascist regime’s commitment to public order and national grandeur.
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Robert O. Paxton (The Anatomy of Fascism)
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Those who benefit from apartheid , will defend apartheid.
Those who benefit from corruption, will defend people who commit corruption.
Those who benefit from racism, will defend people who are racist,
and those who benefit from crime, will defend criminals.
People will defend anything and anyone, when they are benefiting from that person or system. Regardless of whether the person is morally or by law right or wrong. Whether the person is doing right or wrong things. To them , because they are benefitting. The person will always be right.
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D.J. Kyos
“
The future of our democracy may depend on other racial and ethnic groups learning to see that our fates are, in fact, inseparably intertwined. If we, as a nation, are ever to free ourselves from the logic and politics of white supremacy, we must not allow ourselves to imagine that progress is made if the system causes greater harm to 'them' than 'us.' Nor can we be seduced into believing that ending racially hostile rhetoric is the same thing as ending systems of racial and social control, or that simply electing a different president or a different political party will necessarily free us from the history and cycle of creating caste-like systems in America. More is required of us in these times. We must learn to care for one another across all boundaries and borders and build a movement of movements rooted in a love so fierce that when a Mexican child is ripped from the arms of his mother at the border, and when a black child is ripped from the arms of her mother as she's arrested on the streets of New York, and when a white child is ripped from the arms of her mother in a courtroom in Oklahoma, we feel the same pain, the same agony, as though it were our own children. For many of us, it is our own children whose lives are at stake.
More than a century after W.E.B. Du Bois declared that 'the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line,' our political landscape remains riven by race and corrupted by greed. Yet there is reason for hope. New movements, led by new generations and those most impacted by injustice, are rising to face the challenges this moment in our history presents. The struggle to birth a truly inclusive, egalitarian democracy-a nation in which every voice and every life truly matters-did not begin with us and will not end with us. This struggle is as old as the nation itself and the birth process has been painful, to say the least. My greatest hope and prayer is that we will serve as faithful midwives and do what we can in our lifetimes to make America, finally, what it must become.
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Michelle Alexander (The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness)
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Call ME a Nigga: I utter these words as a political battle cry for the Black, damned, and forsaken— that is, for the staggeringly high percentage of poor black boys and men languishing in Gail cells, for those selling drugs, gangbanging, or otherwise scrambling for survival and self-respect. I say it because we have a fundamental divide that needs bridging. This divide is cultural fact as well as a social fact. It is an economic divide crossed by moral judgement. It is the divide between the haves and the have-nots, but it is also, for many, seen as a divide between the morally upstanding and the morally corrupt.
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Jody Armour (N*gga Theory: Race, Language, Unequal Justice, and the Law)
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In sum, contrary to the position taken by the President’s counsel, we concluded that, in light of the Supreme Court precedent governing separation-of-powers issues, we had a valid basis for investigating the conduct at issue in this report. In our view, the application of the obstruction statutes would not impermissibly burden the President’s performance of his Article II function to supervise prosecutorial conduct or to remove inferior law-enforcement officers. And the protection of the criminal justice system from corrupt acts by any person—including the President—accords with the fundamental principle of our government that “[n]o [person] in this country is so high that he is above the law.” United States v. Lee, 106 U.S. 196, 220 (1882); see also Clinton v. Jones, 520 U.S. at 697; United States v. Nixon, supra.
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The Washington Post (The Mueller Report: Presented with Related Materials by The Washington Post)
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How can you be relaxed, my friend - when mystics, spiritualists, fundamentalists and transhumanists keep conning people - when the politicians (not all) keep conning people - when the bureaucrats (not all) keep conning people - when the very system of democracy keeps conning people, by depriving them of the faculty of reason, inclusion and thought? Is this modern - is this civilized - is this human? Think.
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Abhijit Naskar (Operation Justice: To Make A Society That Needs No Law)
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She didn’t cry for the fate of her husband, son, and daughter, or for the great web of corruption she was now forced to navigate, or for a system in which the most wretched tried to punish the slightly less wretched by turning to a justice system so malign it sank them all.
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Katherine Boo (Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity)
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His efforts can be seen by now to have rested on a profound understanding or, at least, a remarkable intuitive grasp of the limitations of “Persia,” that is, of classical aristocracy. He knew, for example, that the loyalty it demanded, like that for any particular, nonuniversal society, rested on an arbitrary division of mankind into fellow citizens (friends) and strangers (enemies actual or potential). (Compare Plato’s analysis in the Republic of the defects of justice understood as helping friends and harming enemies.) He knew likewise that the class hierarchy without which, in the premodern condition of material scarcity, the unique Persian system of public education could not have been supported, rested not on merit or natural capacity but on the indefensible criterion of inherited wealth. (In the Republic, Plato was able to remove this stain from classical aristocracy only by the extreme expedient of abolishing the family.) These defects of the old order were to be removed in the new by the creation of a universal (and therefore all-inclusive) empire and by making positions of wealth, honor, and responsibility within it depend upon merit alone.
Above all, Cyrus knew or sensed the weakness of that attachment to virtue and virtuous deeds as ends in themselves which the old Persian education prided itself on producing, an attachment on which the preference for old Persia and its way of life depended. To speak now only of the attachment itself and not of the virtue that was its object, it was not truly the result of education in the strict sense of the word. Rather, it had been beaten into the Persian peers both literally and figuratively (through praise and blame). And an attachment so produced is vulnerable to temptation. (Compare what Plato suggests, in the myth of Er which concludes the Republic, by his tale of the choice of lives.) Still, in providing that temptation, in suggesting to the peers that they no longer pursue what they take to be virtue for its own sake but rather for its rewards, Cyrus would appear to be more of a corrupter than a reformer.
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Leo Strauss (History of Political Philosophy)