I've always wondered what happens psychologically and physically when you hit that state where you can pretty much go forever. It's like I begin daydreaming and I forget that I feel like I'm about to die from the running. One thing I noticed was that it never happened before the 1st mile, it was always after mile 2 that I would mentally drift off.
From what I've seen, it has to have been "clearly established" before meaning that unless there is an incident already labeling the act unconstitutional, no dice for the poor lady. It's how you make it so that as society evolves, officers can't be held accountable for new acts.
> Jessop v. City of Fresno: The Ninth Circuit granted immunity to the officers. The court noted that while “the theft” of “personal property by police officers sworn to uphold the law” may be “morally wrong,” the officers could not be sued for the theft because the Ninth Circuit had never issued a decision specifically involving the question of “whether the theft of property covered by the terms of a search warrant, and seized pursuant to that warrant, violates the Fourth Amendment.”
> Corbitt v. Vickers: ... the court went on to say that “[n]o case capable of clearly establishing the law for this case holds that a temporarily seized person—as was [the child] in this case—suffers a violation of his Fourth Amendment rights when an officer shoots at a dog—or any other object—and accidentally hits the person.”
> Kelsay v. Ernst: The majority noted that there were no prior cases involving the “particular circumstances” of this case; that is, no prior cases specifically held that “a deputy was forbidden to use a takedown maneuver to arrest a suspect who ignored the deputy’s instruction to ‘get back here’ and continued to walk away from the officer.”
> Allah v. Milling: The appellate court agreed that the prison guards violated Allah’s rights, specifically holding that this treatment was unlawful punishment because Allah’s treatment “cannot be said to be reasonably related to institutional security, and Defendants have identified no other legitimate governmental purpose justifying the placement.” Nevertheless, the court said the guards were entitled to immunity because there was no prior case concerning the particular disciplinary practice employed by the prison.
It's basically judicial Calvinball. "Oh, established case law says you can't kill an innocent person at 6:35pm, but it's not clearly established you can't kill an innocent person at 6:36pm!"
Nope, because the standard is not "Everybody knows it's wrong to do that", the standard is "A previous case exists where an officer did EXACTLY THE SAME THINGS in EXACTLY THE SAME SCENARIO that established that officer CLEARLY VIOLATED THEIR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS"
For us mere mortals to be punished, we don't even have to know the law. For a cop to be punished, there has to be precedent. The funny part is that this situation basically means the first cop to do any illegal act will always get away with it.
This is the trick that courts use in qualified immunity cases. You can't just say "well obviously this is a violation of 4th amendment rights by any person's plain reading." You need a prior case where a judge found this specifically. And that prior case needs to match the facts of the current case basically exactly. Any minor difference can be leveraged to argue that this case is a new set of facts and that there is no prior case that would inform a cop that what they are doing is in fact a violation of rights and so they are immune from civil action.
The outcome of each one of these cases is that the cop gets off scot free and the court says "the next time this specific thing happens under our jurisdiction you can sue" but that specific thing never happens again for the rest of time because the boundaries of that specific thing are so tight.
That's insane. I was vaguely aware that the American system that has grown over the 250-year old foundation was getting rusty, but I never knew it has taken such a dark turn.
How far can you take the "precise case" thing then? Does it just apply to the specific action that was done? How far can they legally stretch what's considered to be "novel"?
But it wasn't, I remember seeing people on Facebook talking about J6 before it happened. It's kind of weird to see the minimization of J6 in real time.
Any time you hear an assumed Westerner talking about China's rising presence in Africa, it reminds me of an abuser whose love has left him for good. The speech is riddled with "he won't love you like I do", "He doesn't really love you", "He's actually worse than me".
More that the west has a better understanding of exploitation (from experience) and is generally against it now.
China still has to learn these lessons, and it will in time. It will need to shake its authoritarian ways first, because lessons can never learned this way. Authoritarianism repeats the same mistakes over and over by reenforcement of dogma.
It’s not jealousy, it’s a warning of lessons learned.
> More that the west has a better understanding of exploitation (from experience) and is generally against it now.
You must no be aware of the CFA francs that is used in some parts of Africa and de facto controlled by France. Control that in turn has been proven to actually channel money out of Africa towards France. I guess the end of exploitation memo must not have reached Paris.
The West doesn't like that China is going to Africa because it creates competition for them. Before France et al could just call the shots and the African continent was simply supposed to shut up and take it.
Now China is there and is trying to offer something better potentially. The West doesn't want to up it's offers so the complaining starts and with it comes the moralizing.
As if the West has any lessons to give to someone else regarding anything moral.
> It’s not jealousy, it’s a warning of lessons learned.
Maybe the West should just let these people live and choose for themselves instead of whining about unfair the competition is.
It's long been known that certain animals are far more charismatic than others. Dogs and cats should never suffer, while thing like rats, mosquitos and wild boars are to be terminated on sight. Things such as hippos, squirrels and food sources are somewhere in between.
How much of that is us imposing our impression on their internal being? Are you certain that if we know enough about bees, mosquitoes and wild boars life we wouldn't empathize with them more?
In which case I would assume that domination over them by us would be illegal. I would absolutely support this. Future generations will look back on pet ownership with clarity. It’s right there in the word - ownership.
I agree that keeping pets is probably immoral. But even if we accept that, there are multiple problems.
- There may not be much of a "wild" left to release animals into.
- Some animals have been bred for hundreds of generations and are now dependent on humans.
- Who has the right to speak for these animals? How do they divine what their client wants? It's not reasonable that any person on the street can bring a motion of habeas corpus on behalf of your dog.
Watching the foxes and squirrels that live near humans has suggested to me that domestication is two-way. The animals want what we have: spare food, shelter. Some of them are brave and willing enough to interact with us, some aren’t. Over time, more of them become brave and willing enough to interact.
Anyone that considers a cat their pet will observe that cats are mainly in it for themselves. They (try to) go out when they want, they’ll make it clear when they’re not in the mood for attention. They spend hours each day ignoring us whilst making use of the shelter we provide. They’ve been known to leave their humans and return to their familiar territories when their humans move house.
I don’t think pet “ownership” is inherently immoral, but some people’s implementations of it, and the terminology, probably are.
> I would assume that domination over them by us would be illegal.
I don't think being given personhood would necessarily make it illegal. There is the precedent of dependent persons (mentally handicapped, babies) that have personhood but are also under the control of someone else that take decisions for them.
