Wesley Crusher committed a crime when he crashed those flowerpots on the Edo planet. Does that mean that the Edo law enforcement mechanism was moral or just?
Spoilers Star Trek: Picard 2x04 - "Watcher"
- Thread starter Commander Richard
- Start date
Wesley Crusher committed a crime when he crashed those flowerpots on the Edo planet. Does that mean that the Edo law enforcement mechanism was moral or just?
Some laws are overreactions or just plain immoral.
Exactly. And from the very beginning, laws restricting entry into the United States have been based on trying to preserve white people's numerical majority. And Europeans who entered the U.S. illegally before the 1960s only rarely faced the possibility of deportation or being barred from employment, so we can literally see how historically immigration enforcement has become harsher and more violent as the percentage of non-white immigrants has increased.
Someone can ramble on all they want about how "illegal entry" is a "crime," but the unavoidable fact is that most of the laws and the enforcement mechanisms for those laws are morally illegitimate and exist only to keep America white.
At the risk of hijacking this discussion for my own personal grievances, but I kinda think it's an illustrative example...
Today is the second anniversary of my national government making it flat-out unconstitutional to legally change your gender in your ID. On the International Transgender Day of Visibility to boot, and they even tried to make it apply retroactively, but at least that bit didn't pass muster by the Constitutional Court. Try to find an ethical, philosophical or any other justification for that law.
You're in Austria, aren't you? Or Poland?
This speaks to the moral illegitimacy and racism of our immigration system. If such prisoners can be safely released to return to their country of origin, then there was never a compelling public safety interest in imprisoning them in the first place. Because they sure as hell don't just let you out as long as you leave the country if you've committed a real crime -- you don't get to commit murder and then go free by agreeing to be deported to England.
Which means that if there's a "crime" for which you can be locked up but then released at your choice -- then that's not a real crime. That's a paper crime the government is using to serve some political agenda. Such as, say, an agenda to take away the rights and liberty of people who aren't white unless they leave.
If they can be released into their country of origin, then they never should have been locked up in the first place.
Hungary, actually.
And now it all makes sense.
Orban.
Orban.
I’m so sorry that’s happening there. I’ve spent a little time in your country, and was lucky to meet people who were warm and kind.
It’s a tragedy that kind of anti-Trans, hateful poison keeps growing power in more and more places, at legislative levels. That kind of vile, institutional discrimination makes such beautiful places ugly.
I am so sorry to hear this. Viktor Orbán is a fascist pig who wants to drag his country into totalitarianism. No wonder he's best buddies with Vladimir Putin.
It's also the only former Warsaw Pact country other than the former USSR that's backslid from "Free" to "Partly Free" status at Freedom House. With all their other problems the other countries are still labeled as "Free" societies and colored green on their map. Hungary is yellow, akin to neighboring Serbia.
Of course speaking of Orbán, he's one of the worst examples of using immigration for nothing but cynical political gains; we've had a "State of National Emergency Caused by Mass Immigration" in effect since 2015 as a response to the immigration crisis, even though the crisis had already ended that year, and it's been extended to the whole country in 2016 despite there being periods where literally no one attempted to cross the border illegally for weeks. The government has the option to extend it for six further months if certain requirements are met (either a certain number of attempted border crossings or a certain number of people held at the border camps over a specific period), but for the last two years, there was no legal standing for the state of emergency at all and they have kept extending it regardless without issuing any explanation.
The border camps, cynically named transit zones, are the only place in Hungary where one can legally apply for refugee status, and they only exist along our border with Serbia and Croatia. These applications are always summarily rejected, because the zones can only be entered from the Serbian and Croatian side, and they are classified as safe third countries of origin. However, detainees are free to leave towards these countries at any time. No diplomatic agreement is made with the neighboring governments on this; the zones are erected on the no man's land part of the border strip, and the gates towards the southern side are simply left unlocked; however, this voids any hypothetical legal standing to apply for refugee status, and most of them are unaware that no applications are ever granted unless the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg specifically orders the government to grant them (and Strasbourg rulings are actually non-binding; Hungary has failed to implement 72% of all rulings made by the court in the last 10 years. Only Russia and Turkey have worse track records). Oh, and by the way, the border region between Serbia and Croatia is still strewn with unexploded mines from the Yugoslav wars, leading to several deaths over the years, and there have been numerous reports of Serbian authorities intentionally busing refugees to the minefields, including those already expelled from Hungary.
Detainees are incentivized to leave by the authorities neglecting their dietary (one of the Strasbourg cases involved an Afghan man not being given any food for months) or hygienic needs, denying them medical attention (pregnant women in labor are handcuffed and taken by prisoner transport to civilian hospitals), placing them in tents without air conditioning or heating regardless of the weather, and not having any staff there other than the police who in most cases don't even speak English let alone the detainees' language. They often don't even have access to translators during the legal proceedings including their court appearances, and sometimes children who speak some English are forced to translate for their parents, causing a lot of problems when neither they, nor the police are fluent. And despite the law itself making it clear that the decision to grant refugee status or expel the detainees has to be made in four weeks (and Strasbourg issuing a legal interpretation that this also means that in lieu of any decision, refugee status should be awarded automatically and the detainees should be released into Hungary), most people have been detained in the camps waiting for their court dates for periods in excess of 6 months, again, with the knowledge that their court date is voided if they decide leave towards Serbia and they won't be allowed to reapply.
This even caused a major problem with the people fleeing from the war in Ukraine because they entered through a border where no camps were erected, thus they had no place to legally submit their applications, and the government had to issue an emergency decree allowing anyone entering the country from Ukraine to be able to apply for refugee status at the border or through NGOs.
The border camps, cynically named transit zones, are the only place in Hungary where one can legally apply for refugee status, and they only exist along our border with Serbia and Croatia. These applications are always summarily rejected, because the zones can only be entered from the Serbian and Croatian side, and they are classified as safe third countries of origin. However, detainees are free to leave towards these countries at any time. No diplomatic agreement is made with the neighboring governments on this; the zones are erected on the no man's land part of the border strip, and the gates towards the southern side are simply left unlocked; however, this voids any hypothetical legal standing to apply for refugee status, and most of them are unaware that no applications are ever granted unless the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg specifically orders the government to grant them (and Strasbourg rulings are actually non-binding; Hungary has failed to implement 72% of all rulings made by the court in the last 10 years. Only Russia and Turkey have worse track records). Oh, and by the way, the border region between Serbia and Croatia is still strewn with unexploded mines from the Yugoslav wars, leading to several deaths over the years, and there have been numerous reports of Serbian authorities intentionally busing refugees to the minefields, including those already expelled from Hungary.
Detainees are incentivized to leave by the authorities neglecting their dietary (one of the Strasbourg cases involved an Afghan man not being given any food for months) or hygienic needs, denying them medical attention (pregnant women in labor are handcuffed and taken by prisoner transport to civilian hospitals), placing them in tents without air conditioning or heating regardless of the weather, and not having any staff there other than the police who in most cases don't even speak English let alone the detainees' language. They often don't even have access to translators during the legal proceedings including their court appearances, and sometimes children who speak some English are forced to translate for their parents, causing a lot of problems when neither they, nor the police are fluent. And despite the law itself making it clear that the decision to grant refugee status or expel the detainees has to be made in four weeks (and Strasbourg issuing a legal interpretation that this also means that in lieu of any decision, refugee status should be awarded automatically and the detainees should be released into Hungary), most people have been detained in the camps waiting for their court dates for periods in excess of 6 months, again, with the knowledge that their court date is voided if they decide leave towards Serbia and they won't be allowed to reapply.
This even caused a major problem with the people fleeing from the war in Ukraine because they entered through a border where no camps were erected, thus they had no place to legally submit their applications, and the government had to issue an emergency decree allowing anyone entering the country from Ukraine to be able to apply for refugee status at the border or through NGOs.
Freedom House is being nicer to Poland than I would.
Sounds like Orbán's been pulling from the American bag of tricks on criminalizing and dehumanizing immigrants and refugees.
I am shocked -- shocked -- to hear that Hungary treats white refugees from Ukraine better than it does non-white refugees. Shocked, I tell you.
Gosh, I wonder why so many countries have immigration policy choices that involve treating white foreigners better than non-white foreigners?
Not an equal comparison. The people with warrants and the ones trying to come BACK in after being sent home KNOW what the laws are. Wesley et al did not. And the Edo should not have expected him to know where he was not supposed to go with no warning or signs.
Hahahahaha. You think America is white? And you think the US trying to stop ILLEGAL aliens from coming in will do that?
Minority population is sufficiently large and they do know how to reproduce, so unless they're going to (CURRENTLY) try to sterilize non-whites, your statement is ridiculous. Oh, we welcome aliens that come in LEGALLY, you know, fill out paper work, wait for approval,... stuff like that.
As of 2020, the US is over 60% white (not Hispanic or Latino) [https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045219]. The US has always been majority white. So, yeah, actually.
So ignorance of the law is an acceptable defense?
Wesley was literally an immigrant who broke Edo law!
According to the 2020 Census, 61.6% of Americans identify as white only. In the 2010 Census, white Americans made up 72% of the population.
The United States is a majority-white country whose white population has a rapidly-decreasing percentage of the population.
The racist immigration policies of the United States have their origins in attempts to slow the rate at which non-white percentages of the population increase, and today function primarily to attempt to slow the rate at which the white percentage of the population is decreasing and thereby attempt to preserve white domination of society.
In 2020, whistleblower Dawn Wooten revealed that immigrant women detainees were forced to have hysterectomies against their will at the Irwin County Detention Center, a private prison run by LaSalle Corrections on behalf of ICE.
Also, you don't just get to throw in the word "currently" and pretend that the United States's very long history of forced sterilization of racial minorities is not a policy whose consequences are still felt today.
The "legal" process is arbitrary and is literally designed to favor white immigrants. Those laws are illegitimate.
There is a stark contrast between how the characters reacted to social issues when DS9 visited this time period vs in Picard.
In Past Tense Bashir says it seems like people in 2024 don't care about each other. Sisko says it seems that way from a future where the problems have been solved, but before they were solved the social problems seemed enormous; people couldn't solve them immediately, but they paved the way for the better future that people of the 23rd century take for granted.
In Watcher, young Guinan says people of that time are destroying the planet, are racist, and a handful of people could very easily solve the social problems but they don't want to badly enough. I suppose the Star Trek audience are people who do want to solve the world's problems, but they're not in that handful who can actually do something, which sort of puts us in the role of sanctimonious victims. Picard says it will get better but doesn't spell it out as Sisko did.
I really disagreed with this treatment of the world's social problems. For one thing, many things have gotten better in recent decades: Poverty, hunger, and war decreased. Discrimination based on sexual orientation decreased radically. Travel increased. Racism is so beyond the pale for most people that many people are uncomfortable even discussing implicit bias because they don't want to be even remotely associated with racism. Climate change is a huge threat, but we made progress on the O3 layer, acid rain, and toxic chemicals; so maybe we'll make progress on climate too.
My other problem is the notion there are simple solutions to the world's problems, but they cannot be implemented becaues of bad people.
I'm going to think of it as showing Guinan is jaded and having personal problems. In my mind, Picard sees this but doesn't see any advantage to arguing the issues with Guinan. Maybe Picard sees this as the bumpy 500-year road from the Age of Enlightenment to the problems being solved. He may think of Hitler and Colonel Green as existing in roughly the same time in history, so he may sympathize with what Guinan is saying, even if it's during a period of comparative peace and prosperity.
Picard is talking to someone (Guinan) from 2024. He can't give away the whys and hows and whens. Sisko was talking to (his contemporary) Bashir
This timeline an appendix.
As soon as they fix the present, someone from the new future goes into the past, and makes a new present.
IE Guinan meets Picard in 1893.
Maybe, maybe not.
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