The co-founder of failed cryptocurrency exchange FTX pleaded not guilty to a seven count indictment charging him with wire fraud, securities fraud and money laundering.
An attorney for FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried said in federal court Tuesday his client has to subsist on bread, water and peanut butter because the jail he’s in isn’t accommodating his vegan diet.
Some of the replies here are absolutely vile: if you’re going to endorse locking people in cages for years if not decades and pretend that’s a justified response to anything short of their being an immediate physical danger to the people around them, then the least you can do is accommodate their most basic needs and ethical positions.
Prisons are pitched to us as places of rehabilitation - somewhere to pay penance and right wrongs before returning to the community, better for having served the time. I think it’s a deeply disingenuous characterisation which serves mainly to let people avoid facing up to the reality which is prison’s purposeless and ultimately harmful cruelty, but it is the dominant characterisation nonetheless.
But, if we blindly accept the rehabilitation narrative, then how exactly do we expect to rehabilitate people by fracturing them psychologically? By forcing them to violate ethical commitments which are sacrosanct to them, by alienating them from their communities and forcing them to abide by a clockwork dictatorial regime without any semblance of comfort or dignity, by leaving them to rot miserably for years?
No, and no wonder prisons are factories for broken people and recidivism if this is how people think about them. Get a hold of yourselves.
Also, before anybody retreats to the flimsy position of “but prisoners shouldn’t eat better than schoolchildren” or “but what about the poor” - yes, those people are also underserved, and we have resources available to improve conditions for all of them too. All that’s lacking is will.
Last but not least, if you concede that you care about neither the incarcerated nor the society they come from and will return to in time - then there’s also the question of why animals should suffer? If people aren’t even worthy of being afforded their basic preferences, then why should the default be the option which necessitates the lifelong suffering of sentient beings on an industrial scale?
Seriously, develop a sense of empathy.
Glad to know veganism is more important than justice.
He doesn’t have the right to be a vegan in prison. He’s in PRISON. Being justly punished. When you’re in prison, you don’t get to live the way you want barring basic human rights, and being vegan isn’t a human right, it’s a lifestyle choice.
Get over that fact and take your cultists out of the thread
I don’t especially care whether there’s a formally enshrined right for incarcerated people to be vegan - I’m saying that if we continue to insist upon locking people in cages with an ostensible objective of rehabilitating them and not simply performing retributive cruelty for its own sake, then we must treat the incarcerated people with diligence and respect as baseline. You can’t expect for well-adjusted people to emerge from a system of institutionalised dehumanisation, cruelty, and uncaring indifference.
I don’t think it’s unreasonable to respect an incarcerated person’s ethical commitment to not exploiting animals, and to be diligent in providing food of a reasonable nutritional standard which doesn’t violate those commitments to consume. Peanut butter sandwiches do not fulfil that criteria by themselves.
I’m not sure what you mean by “my cultists” - I didn’t bring anybody here, and I found this thread independently through my own feed.
In order to preemptively address some of your assertions in reply to another person in this comment thread:
It’s not about vegans, no.
It’s about respect for a person’s ethical commitments in a scenario where you’ve deprived them of the ability to satisfy those commitments themselves. My argument would not have to substantively change in order to comment on a person whose religious dietary restrictions aren’t being respected by the available options, to give an alternative example.
It’s true that the final paragraph of my original response speaks specifically to animal liberation, but that’s because I’m passionate about that issue independently of this one. That said, I think my original reply would remain perfectly sound with that paragraph removed if you’d prefer to take it that way.
I don’t think the crime or characteristics of the incarcerated are especially relevant here. My argument would remain unaltered if the incarcerated person was poor, from a marginalised background, and in prison for much less exceptional reasons.
I don’t think that whatever justice there is to be found in the prison system is nullified by respecting incarcerated people’s ethical commitments, and I think that applies to all incarcerated people.
I’m a prison abolitionist first and foremost, and I thought that’d be clear from the overall thrust of my original post - but apparently not. Respect for the incarcerated, their humanity, and their ethical commitments is very much the compromise position.
Well, good news: prison absolutely is for punishing people, not rehabilitation. And it never should be. Prison should never go away, specifically to spite disgusting monsters like you who want to do away with justice, ensuring that no one who does evil things will ever see meaningful life-rendering consequences for their actions.
You’re the kind of person who ruins the lives of abuse victims. Who tells rape victims that they need to put aside their emotions for your idea of a greater good while nothing is ever expected of their rapists or of you. People like you destroy millions of lives peddling this shit – there’s even a CSA survivor in the comments calling out another one of your ilk.
No, what you are is an apologist. The idea of doing away with punishment, even prison, is nothing more than cheap apologia, anti-survivor, anti-justice, completely immoral and anti-human. Though given veganism is being used as the main driver for you to peddle your evil political agenda in this thread, it wouldn’t surprise me one bit if you truly did not give a fuck about any of that.
I nor anyone else with decency, goodness and common sense are going to give you or your evil ideas any quarter nor should they. The very idea of doing away with punishment or even prison given the horrific reasoning you hold for it is morally repugnant and can be dismissed on its face.
You are disgusting. Get away from me. I hope you never get what you want.
I don’t care about sharp words from a brutish authoritarian.
You’re free to continue endorsing an institution and approach which generates further undesirable behaviour as recidivism whilst preventing little wherever it’s implemented. You can continue to pretend that criminality is a phenomenon completely local to the actor and not a reflection of broader social and structural issues which we need to address. You can proceed with turning out more victims by proxy of the traumatised ex-incarcerated continuing to deal harm if it’ll satisfy the sadistic streak inside of you demanding that infractions incur the infliction of suffering and trauma in turn.
Regions which engage with mass incarceration and operate more sadistic prison regimes overlap with those regions with the highest rates of repeat offending. That’s not a coincidence, but a product of thinking like yours.
Prisons which exist with actual commitments to rehabilitation, and which respect the dignity of the incarcerated, while imperfect, turn out far fewer repeat offenders than those who don’t.
If you care about victims of abuse, as I do, then you’ll turn instead to approaches which result in fewer of them to be counted: alternatives to incarceration, and the pursuit of relative normalcy within the institution for the incarcerated where it still exists.
I hope for a future without coercion, abuse, violence, or pain. I would hope that we all do.
But you do care about writing a half-page’s worth of the most obscene, arrogant, self-satisfied, apologist garbage you can muster because ultimately, this is about the lack of respect you have for other people, especially abuse victims who you step all over to get what you want. Like here:
Who, in the world, would reasonably listen to someone like you? Someone who thinks like that? You know there are actual CSA survivors in this thread, right? Possibly even rape survivors? And you’re here talking that kind of shit thinking you know them better than the rest of humanity and have the right to speak for them?
Did you know I am an abuse survivor? That most of my friends are? Did you ever even think to emphasize with me, or ask me who I am or why I feel the way I do?
No. You absolutely did not. It didn’t even cross your mind to, because you’re a disgusting abuse apologist who doesn’t give a shit about anyone other than yourself. You likely only support getting rid of punishment specifically because you know it will hurt everyone else.
You’re sick.
Don’t listen to him, pretty sure he’s a troll. Also looks like he has alts, as every one of his comments immediately gets upvoted two or three times, while comments like yours get downvoted. It’s pathetic.
he’s in jail, not prison. he hasn’t been convicted of anything. i think it’s silly, but if he wants to be vegan, he should be able to be vegan.
Semantics.
And the whole debate is asinine anyway because
he already has PBJs and PBJs are given specifically as a vegan option.
he doesn’t have the right to be vegan when he’s locked up
you don’t have the right to exploit crime threads to push your shitty political agenda.
This thread is not about you, not about vegans, and you coming in here brigading and unethically deciding the fact that a dude who stole billions is claiming to be vegan (whether that claim is true or false) is more important than justice and literally everyone else is unacceptable, get the fuck out of the thread
so then all the meat eaters are going to be forced to be vegan? becuase they don’t have a right to be meat eaters like they would on the outside.
what political agenda do you think i’m pushing?
it’s not semantics. he hasn’t been convicted
who is brigading?
You. Unless you think we haven’t noticed you’re hiding behind a debate about the importance of punishment, the viability and legitimacy of the prison system and abuses of the U.S. prison system in a situation that has nothing to do with them because you’re trying to promote veganism.
Do you think we are stupid?
i’ve never been accused of that. i’m usually accused of being antivegan.
you might be stupid if you think i’m promoting veganism.
Fr it’s not even subtle
this is more hand waving and innuendo.
It’s weird though. It’s literally just the guy you were talking to, and another who’s account is only a couple hours old and solely has comments on this post.
Seems a little suspicious is all.
fediverse is still new, and this was on Hot. How is it surprising that someone wants to comment on an actually active topic?
i can literally say anything i want. what are you going to do about it?
i don’t believe in rights, but there is no reason he can’t be vegan
In America? many states don’t even pretend with that pitch. They want to be “hard on crime” and “give justice to victims”. And voters vote for that.
funnily enough, if everyone went vegan, we’d have enough food for the poor and underfed people.
we have enough food now.