Sir Keith has delivered a whopping 1.7% higher vote share for Labour than they got in 2019, when Sir Keith intentionally sabotaged Corbyn with his “People’s Vote” maneuver, and 6% less than Corbyn in 2017.
Contrary to Liberal interpretations, this ruling doesn't change much. If the President was capable of openly assassinating politicians, or launching a military coup to overthrow democracy, they would not be deterred by 9 people in black robes telling them they may be liable to criminal charges in the future for doing so.
Until the Chief Justice gets their own division to command, the Court only has as much power over the Federal Government as they are allowed to, which is invariably determined by their usefulness to politically dominant factions of Capital. See what happened after the Marshall Court made a decision impeding the interests early-American Capital had in forcefully dispossessing Indigenous peoples from their land.
I still believe the most incisive commentary on the Law's function in society was given by Marx. He succinctly attacks the Liberal idea that all social structures (economics, politics, etc.) arise from the letter of the law. Rather:
Society is not founded upon the law; this is a legal fiction. On the contrary, the law must be founded upon society, it must express the common interests and needs of society — as distinct from the caprice of the individuals — which arise from the material mode of production prevailing at the given time. This Code Napoleon, which I am holding in my hand, has not created modern bourgeois society. On the contrary, bourgeois society, which emerged in the eighteenth century and developed further in the nineteenth, merely finds its legal expression in this Code. As soon as it ceases to fit the social conditions, it becomes simply a bundle of paper.
The process of legally converting a business to an employee-owned cooperative can vary significantly depending on what jurisdiction you're in. There's different criteria for creating one (some places might require more than 3 directors to create a Coop) and all sorts of statutory considerations unique to wherever you are.
If you're serious about doing this, I would sincerely recommend reaching out for legal advice first. This is your livelihood, and you do not want to make a mistake that creates difficulty down the line. Depending on where you live, there may be a public interest organization, or business law clinic, that can provide some legal information for free. You could look up "(where you live) non profit legal assistance" and see if anything shows up.
The ruling is hilarious. An Indiana mayor awarded a $1.1 million dollar contract to a truck dealership, then went to the dealership afterwards and said "I need money." He asked for $15k in cash, and was given $13k.
According to the SCOTUS this is not bribery because a bribe is an award for pre-agreed actions that is quid pro quo, and maybe the dealer just happened to feel generous to the person responsible for awarding them a lucrative contract after the fact. Only money in burlap sacks with dollar bills on them, with a person handing it over with a contract saying "this is a bribe" count as a bribe. Anything else is just a sparkling gratuity.
A suspended sentence doesn't mean you get to walk free. It means you're released into the community but subject to a probation order which if broken will have you sent to prison. The conditions always have a "peace and good behaviour" obligation but can also include onerous restrictions. Anyone who works with offenders knows that the conditions imposed by a suspended sentence can be deeply intrusive and severely curtail people's privacy and freedom of movement, to the point where they may sometimes be harsher than fines or even imprisonment
Providing for suspended sentences for first offences is consistent with the criminal justice system's commitment to rehabilitation, even if it arguably is of a lesser deterrent value and doesn't satisfy the desire for vengeance among much of the public.
I'm unfamiliar with Ireland's criminal law, and the judge may have been more lenient than they had to be, but its not impossible that there's enough mitigating factors that the sentence will not get appealed. If Crotty breaks the terms of his suspended sentence, and commits a similar act in the future, his sentence will almost certainly be considerably harsher.
The issue with Putin's red lines is what threats does he actually have to follow through with if NATO crosses then.
Russian missiles have targeted Ukrainian infrastructure for years, and by this point it's pretty clear that for all the previous talk of "the gloves will come off this time," they do not have some massive stockpile of munitions waiting for the signal. Rather by now the quantity of Russian strikes are strictly limited by their rate of production. There is also not much more room for Russia to expand their scope of acceptable targets.
Russia could formally declare war, and multiply their forces in Ukraine through conscription. But Putin has always been a cautious and conservative leader. He is seemingly happy with how the SMO is going, and has only resorted to unpopular measures when a real risk of catastrophe exists, such as immediately after the Kharkiv counter-offensive. Until now the Kremlin's judgment seems to be that the negative consequences of tolerating regular Ukrainian strikes inside the Russian federation do not outweigh those of declaring war.
As for the unthinkable option of escalating through nuclear strikes, will I'm personally very appreciative that Russia has refrained from doing so and pray that continues to be an empty threat.
nothing is sacred and everyone is expendable
Except for Israeli genociders, who we must arm and maintain the most steadfast support for. Also if you ever say otherwise I'll turn into the most racist person in the world
It speaks to a deeper fault in liberalism, made obvious by the existence of homelessness.
A person is free only to the extent in which they have access to a physical space in which they can exercise that freedom. It would be absurd to say that I have freedom of speech, if they were banned from speaking freely at home, in public, or anywhere but inside my head. Without a place in which a person can go to and enjoy the protections of a right, they do not actually have that right.
A core tenet of classical Liberalism is that the only place in which our government recognizes the sanctity of a person's ability to exercise their rights, is upon their own land. On public spaces, or the property of others, the exercise of rights may be readily curtailed, and always have been. This fits in nicely with the traditional Liberal notion that only people with property are citizens, whose rights deserve to be safeguarded.
However, for the homeless their 'freedoms' are illusory because they have no personal space to physically go to and enjoy it. Instead, the liberty of a homeless person to do anything (ie: sleep and eat) is strictly curtailed to the very limited range of activities permitted on public lands. And their right to protection from certain things (ie: invasions of privacy and involuntary search/seizure) similarly has virtually no guarantees.
This is also something I always emphasize when discussions of banning certain activities from any public spaces comes up. To ban encampments on all public property is to deprive our society's most vulnerable of any right to shelter themselves from the elements, or sleep undisturbed, as they will no longer have legal access to places in which they can shelter or sleep.
To rebuke the argument that Georgia's Foreign Agents Registration bill is necessary to prevent State Department NGOs from undermining Georgian sovereignty, the Foreign Ministers of Iceland and the Baltics have arrived in Tbilisi to participate in and encourage Georgia's ~~color-revolution~~ protests against the "Russia law"
One of the biggest frontline updates this past month, which UA and RU commentators have discussed at length, was the capture of a single restaurant in Avdiivka.
Its like a parody of ww1 battle reports
this is @ anyone who uses raw GDP as a measure of wartime industrial capacity
One of the greatest strengths of neoliberal reformists in Iran is that they are the side less associated with decades of violently enforced moralism, especially the mandatory hijab. For millions of Iranians striking back against the Guidance Patrol at home is a more prescient issue than their country’s policy abroad.
Ideally there’d be a Socialist voice supporting multipolarism, the working class, and freedom from moralistic dictates, but the very forces aligned with Jalili have plenty of responsibility for such a voice not existing.