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Digital Fascism is Still Just Fascism

The Death of the Internet and Karim Khan’s Inbox

International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan

Karim Khan, arguing in court, probably against some bad stuff.

The International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor Karim Khan is not having a good year, and neither is the ICC in general. It was never an easy job, going after people who commit Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity. The ICC tries to prosecute crimes in opposition to regimes like Russia, who do things like murder whole cities and steal children so routinely it’s like doing the laundry for them.

The ICC often have to do that work with few resources, and a ever-growing list of true bastards who need to be stopped. This is complicated by countries who leave the ICC’s legal regime like Russia and America. They (and we) signed up, but left later in order to wage insane and illegal wars against peoples who posed no danger to them (or us).

But right now, it’s even worse than normal, because Khan’s work on Israel has angered the US president.

Khan is under both a cloud of personal scandal and the international political pressure the comes with catching the eye of Donald Trump. His staff have been warned that they could be detained or arrested if they try to enter the United States (including American staffers). His bank accounts have been frozen, he’s been put on leave pending investigation of sexual misconduct in his work place.

All The Tech, None of the Democracy

But the most frightening part of this for the rest of the world is that his email account has been shut down by Microsoft, according to ICC staffers. This may seem like a small thing, especially in the list of other problems he’s facing. In fact, he opened an account with Switzerland-based Proton mail, and presumably got back to emailing people, at least the ones whose email addresses he could remember.

What makes his account suspension so chilling, is what it implies, how it threatens much of the world. His suspension from a Microsoft email account wasn’t court ordered, nor did it legally need to be. Big Tech companies use click-though contracts on everything we use. What they give they can take away at any time, for the benefit of anyone they like, even if who they like is a big angry Cheeto president with tiny, tiny hands.

Imperial Microsoft

You don’t have any rights beyond the ones Microsoft gives you in your click-through contracts. And they can, and sometimes do, revoke those too.

Big tech companies were always a flaw in democracy, but it’s never been so apparent. It’s subtle, but what Khan’s troubles with email tell us is that our ability to function in the modern world, especially in the west, is contingent on the good will of American Tech companies. And they don’t have any.

From the moment you sign up, or are signed up by your work, you have almost no rights Big Tech are obliged to respect. Most of the time, this doesn’t matter or isn’t even visible to you. They have the world’s best PR, they have customer support, they even have departments dedicated to making their products easy to use and ubiquitous. But they have no obligation to serve anything or anyone beyond their shareholders, and the government of the United States of America. In 2025 life without access to Big Tech is hardly functional, like not having access to roads or plumbing.

Today it is just one man’s email, and it may seem far away and irrelevant to most people. But any US-based digital service could be next, at the whims of the Donald and his crew of sycophantic weirdos, the same sycophantic weirdos who all came to bend the knee and sit behind him during his inauguration. They are the same ones who effectively rule the internet you’re reading this on.

Revenge of the Nerds

Plenty of annoying nerds have been ringing alarm bells since the 90s, going on about code and privacy and open source software and FREEDOM, mostly in annoying ways. And it is genuinely annoying, even to me, to say this, but they were right all along. When the internet became real life, internet freedoms became real freedoms. And right now, not many of us have much freedom on the internet.

The Trump Administration may have told Microsoft to shut off the ICC’s head prosecutor’s email, or Microsoft may have done it themselves to comply in advance. Either way there was no open and clear legal process for his digital exile, no review, no appeal, and none of the rights we enjoy offline. Our internet lives are subject to the imperial whims of Mad King Donald, and our rights end at the beginning of our internet connection.

The Dead Internet

The internet being a corporate space diminishes it for everyone who isn’t in a tech company C suite. It kills our internet inch by inch. There’s a theory, started on Reddit, that the internet died years ago. By dead, the Redditors meant that most of the traffic on the net is bots talking to other bots, spam, automated grifting, and the like. There is some truth to this, and we all feel it when we go to a social media site or look at unfiltered email.

It’s become much worse with the rise of AI and more sophisticated bots, suggesting that not only is the internet largely dead, it’s kind of undead. The tech companies have found more ways to influence and monetize us, and the terms of service have stayed just as exploitative as ever.

Zombie bots march across the wires, algorithmically fighting and fucking and deceiving each other uselessly while the world’s energy and water are slowly eaten up by data centers. We humans are outnumbered. That’s bad enough without it also becoming the dominion of MAGA, but the sycophancy of tech companies is doing just that.

We are stuck in the fiefs our governments and employers have staked out for us. Whether it’s Google or Microsoft or Apple, your digital life belongs to a few companies, not you. And now, these companies answer to Donald of Orange. Don’t annoy him, and if you do, pray you have good back-ups in some kind of open format. Our digital lives have become contingent on not coming to the attention of the current US administration. Our enterprises everywhere are contingent on obedience to the American oligarchy.

It’s bad, but there are ways to fix this. Alternatives have been around since before Big Tech, but they aren’t always as easy to use. The internet started free and open, and the free and open internet is still out there. None of the Big Tech tools we use are unique and irreplaceable. There are open and free versions of all of them… and those versions often came first. (Big Tech had to steal their ideas from somewhere.)

Reclaiming Our Online lives

The Standard LogoNextcloud LogoThe open and free versions of software are often not as polished or usable as Big Tech products are. The communities behind alternative software can be annoying, but they are getting better, given the urgency of the problems.

Tools like NextCloud cover many tech company offerings. Mail hosting from places like Proton are privacy-preserving, and almost every kind of consumer software has a free and open alternative for anything you might want to do. Krita for Photoshop, Jitsi for video conferencing, Audacity for audio recordings. (Personally, I find Audacity easier and quicker than the commercial offerings.)

Anyone can leave the toxic ecosystems of Big Tech, but it’s a lot of work and not worth it for most of usProton Mail Logo PNG Vector (SVG) Free Download. It’s unlikely, to the point of impossibility, that the public will revolt and leave the current tech ecosystem to become millions of independent small lights on the net. But there’s better ways to approach the problem than everyone having to become a nerd.

Can Democracy Fix the Internet?

I think it can, and whether it does is, as always, up to us. What is possible is this: nations, communities, and blocs, structures democratically answerable to their people, will create public resources. Your government gives you water and waste disposal, electricity and roads. Why can’t they give you online alternatives as well, guided by the rule of law that all the other infrastructure has to obey?

Communities, from national to neighborhood, can also become nodes on the net. We just haven’t known, culturally, to ask for that. We can set ourselves free from the corporate interests of a few billionaire enclaves on the West Coast of the United States.

Freeing our societies from Big Tech is not just something we should do, it’s something we will have to do if we wish to thrive in a free and open society that respects our human rights. The last decade have seen not only the internet dying, but human freedom and flourishing slowly covered in a gray goo of algorithmic lies crafted to serve the powerful and the venal at the expense of our health and hope. Our children are paying for this, our planet is being plundered for this.

It will be hard work, and it will take a while, but freedom is always like that. I hope Karim Khan, and the rest of us, can one day rely on an internet ruled by democratically chosen laws, rather than a few rich and powerful men.

 

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Why US Wants BSA With Criminal Immunity: Amnesty Reports US War Crimes in Afghanistan Not Prosecuted

Barack Obama faces a huge amount of pressure during the current meltdown of Iraq because he withdrew all US military forces from the country. As I have pointed out in countless posts, the single controlling factor for that withdrawal was that Iraq refused to provide criminal immunity to US troops who remained in Iraq past December 31, 2011.

A very similar scenario is playing out now in Afghanistan. Hamid Karzai has refused to sign the Bilateral Security Agreement that will provide criminal immunity to US troops remaining beyond the end of this year. Both Abdullah Abdullah and Ashraf Ghani have stated that they will sign the BSA immediately upon taking office, but the recount of their runoff election remains mired in dysfunction over how to eliminate fraudulent votes. John Kerry has visited twice to get the candidates to cease sparring, but dysfunction has quickly ensued after both visits. Meanwhile, the clock ticks ever closer to expiration of the current agreement providing immunity.

All along, the US framing for insisting on criminal immunity for troops is based on avoiding the chaos of soldiers facing false charges that might be brought through a court system that lacks the safeguards of the US court system or even the US military courts. But a report (pdf) released Friday by Amnesty International provides solid evidence that the US has failed, on multiple verified occasions, to take any action to pursue those responsible for clear war crimes in Afghanistan. That stands out to me as the real reason the US insists on criminal immunity.

Amnesty sums up their findings in the press release accompanying the report:

Focusing primarily on air strikes and night raids carried out by US forces, including Special Operations Forces, Left in the Dark finds that even apparent war crimes have gone uninvestigated and unpunished.

“Thousands of Afghans have been killed or injured by US forces since the invasion, but the victims and their families have little chance of redress. The US military justice system almost always fails to hold its soldiers accountable for unlawful killings and other abuses,” said Richard Bennett, Amnesty International’s Asia Pacific Director.

“None of the cases that we looked into – involving more than 140 civilian deaths – were prosecuted by the US military. Evidence of possible war crimes and unlawful killings has seemingly been ignored.”

The description continues:

Two of the case studies — involving a Special Operations Forces raid on a house in Paktia province in 2010, and enforced disappearances, torture, and killings in Nerkh and Maidan Shahr districts, Wardak province, in November 2012 to February 2013 — involve abundant and compelling evidence of war crimes. No one has been criminally prosecuted for either of the incidents.

Qandi Agha, a former detainee held by US Special Forces in Nerkh in late 2012, spoke of the daily torture sessions he endured. “Four people beat me with cables. They tied my legs together and beat the soles of my feet with a wooden stick. They punched me in the face and kicked me. They hit my head on the floor.” He also said he was dunked in a barrel of water and given electrical shocks.

Agha said that both US and Afghan forces participated in the torture sessions. He also said that four of the eight prisoners held with him were killed while he was in US custody, including one person, Sayed Muhammed, whose killing he witnessed.

Of course, the US claims that while it wants troops immune from prosecution in Afghanistan under trumped up charges, crimes will be investigated by US authorities. The Amnesty report puts that lie to rest. Again, from the press release:

Of the scores of witnesses, victims and family members Amnesty International spoke to when researching this report, only two people said that they had been interviewed by US military investigators. In many of the cases covered in the report, US military or NATO spokespeople would announce that an investigation was being carried out, but would not release any further information about the progress of the investigation or its findings – leaving victims and family members in the dark.

“We urge the US military to immediately investigate all the cases documented in our report, and all other cases where civilians have been killed. The victims and their family members deserve justice,” said Richard Bennett.

Yeah, I’m sure the military will get right on that. Sometime in the next century or two.

The report provides three recommendations to the government of Afghanistan:

 Create a credible, independent mechanism to monitor, investigate and report  publicly on civilian deaths and injuries caused by the ANSF, and to ensure timely and effective remedies. This mechanism should include detailed procedures for recording casualties, receiving claims, conducting investigations, carrying out disciplinary measures including prosecutions where warranted, and ensuring reparation, including restitution, compensation, and rehabilitation.

 Ensure that accountability for civilian casualties is guaranteed in any future bilateral security agreements signed with NATO and the United States, including by requiring that international forces provide a regular accounting of any incidents of civilian casualties, the results of investigations into such incidents, and the progress of any related prosecutions. Such agreements should exclude any provision that might infringe upon Afghanistan’s obligations under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

 Continue to press the US and NATO authorities to take meaningful steps to enhance civilian protection, investigate reports of civilian casualties, and prosecute violations of international humanitarian law that result in civilian casualties.

Those recommendations are terrific, but they are completely meaningless when applied to what is really happening in Afghanistan. None of the good things in that list have any chance of even making it into the language of the already negotiated BSA, and even if they did, no enforcement of it would ever be allowed. After all, the US is the country that even has passed a law allowing use of military force to “rescue” any citizen facing charges in the ICC. It doesn’t matter whether George W. Bush or Barack Obama is the Commander in Chief, the US military will go wherever it wants, kill whoever it wants, and allow the vast majority of its crimes to go without consequence.

That is the particular freedom they hate us for.

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