Jury nullification exists precisely because there is often a gap between legality and justice. It's a way for the commoners to ensure justice when the nobility (CEOs and rich politicians, nowadays) make the laws in ways that exploit the commoners. It's not so much about law vs. feelings as much as it is about offsetting the power of the powerful.
sailingbythelee
joined 1 year ago
I don't think you know what the word "literal" means. But anyway, we disagree about how to categorize what is happening in Israel, and possibly what the solution might be, but I don't think you are a bad person because of it. I don't even know you. But I hope you have a good day.
Israel is not committing a genocide. There are >2,000,000 people in Gaza and 43,000 have been killed, half of which were Hamas fighters. And yet, Israel has been fighting in Gaza for over a year. If they wanted to kill all or most Gazans, the death toll would be much, much higher. It's a war, so of course there are war crimes happening. People are people. But genocide and commission of war crimes is not the policy of the Israeli government. On the other hand, Hamas deliberately commits war crimes as a matter of policy.
If you want to go all the way back to 1948 and say that Israel should not have been created in the first place, I don't have a good argument against that. But fast-forward to today and Israel is now spear-won territory. Israel fought off the combined Arab armies of the region five times and those Arab countries no longer wish to fight. Israel is a fact on the ground and isn't going anywhere. The only rational outcome at this point is a two-state solution. There are two reasons it hasn't happened yet: 1) the religious element (on both sides), and 2) Iran, which funds and foments radical Islamist groups for its own reasons.
Israel will do whatever they have to do in order to prevent another massacre like October 7, and they can only do that by destroying Hamas's ability to wage war. I think Israel is doing a great job ensuring that Hamas can't attack them again. Palestinians may have cheered Hamas on October 8, but I guarantee that average Palestinians now want Hamas gone and to never return. So, I think Hamas is also politically finished.
Palestinians will not truly be free until the theocratic regime in Iran is gone and the Palestinians decide to stop attacking Israel, and then Israel will agree to a two-state solution. That's the only realistic hope for peace and full statehood for the Palestinians.
If you look at the first couple of seconds, it looks like the young fellow was fighting with an older guy in a light blue uniform who staggers off and that's when the IDF guys started beating on the young fellow. Obviously, there is some preceding conflict that the videographer either didn't record, or which didn't suit his propaganda narrative.
Recency bias. Also anti-semitism. I don't mean that in the sense that any criticism of Israel is necessarily or logically anti-semitic. I mean it in the historical sense. Any time Western societies starts hating on Jews, we really, really need to reflect hard on why.
I know, we all think we are objective enough to separate the Jewish identity from the Israeli identity, but I'm not so sure. Jews are definitely not so sure. It would be interesting to see a study on the correlation between having general anti-semitic views and having negative opinions about Israel.
The part I find strange is that it doesn't seem to have anything to do with municipal affairs. I, for one, want my elected municipal officials to do municipal things, like fix roads and ensure the water treatment plant is working. I don't particularly want them spending their time fighting an abstract battle about our Constitutional framework. Do the majority of Canadians want to revisit our Constitution and eliminate the Crown so that we are no longer a constitutional monarchy? I'm not saying that is a bad idea in principle, but I lived through the constitutional crises of 1980s and the Quebec separatism of the 1990s and it is rife with unnecessary conflict. It could literally break up the country, and almost did. I do not think that we would be better off as a republic, purely from a practical perspective. The Westminster form of government, for all of its anachronistic monarchical symbols, works well in practice.
Obviously monarchy is an outdated concept, but this is a strange hill to die on. The King, or The Crown, is the merely the symbol of Canada's sovereignty. That's it. It's no different than Americans pledging allegiance to the flag. They are not literally pledging allegiance to a piece of cloth anymore than we are literally pledging allegiance to Charles the man. It is just symbology. Neither Charles nor the GG has any real power in Canada and if they ever tried to use their symbolic powers independently of our elected government, it would create an instant Constitutional crisis.
Haha, yes, I was being cheeky. :)
DCS. Easy peasy.
I enjoy listening to Katty Kay and the Mooch. However, I think we hit peak Mooch just before election day.
I am still favour of using the Mooch system for measuring the length of appointments, just for the sake of nostalgia. We need to standardize it, though. Is it 11 days or 10?
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True, but we aren't talking about whether jury nullification should exist. It already does exist and has for a 1000 years. The question is just when to use it. Like any right or privilege, it can be used unjustly. It is up to citizens to make sure it is used for good.