#Democratic Rights | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

useless-catalanfacts · 2 years

Text

Jordi Vilanova speaks on behalf of the Catalan grassroots organization ANC in the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE)'s Human Dimension Conference to denounce Spain's lawfare strategy aimed at repressing the democratic Catalan pro-independence movement.

Spain’s repressive practices have been denounced by international organizations such as the Council of Europe, Amnesty International and the World Organization Against Torture, and endanger democracy. The OSCE should send the High Commissioner on National Minorities to visit Catalonia and report on the situation here.

Video posted by ANC International on their Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

43 notes · View notes

nezreblogz · 2 months

Text

#palestine #gaza #free palestine #free gaza #save gaza #jerusalem #rafah #lebanon #yemen #middle east #human rights #united nations #icj #politics #us politics #genocide joe #biden #democrats #colonialism

39K notes · View notes

mysharona1987 · 7 months

Text

#palestine #israel #journalism #news #gaza strip #gaza #palestinians #democrats #republicans #woc #muslims #islam #human rights #conservatives #us politics

61K notes · View notes

crazycatsiren · 9 months

Text

My one basic opinion is that nobody should ever have to live in poverty and boy oh boy does this make some motherfuckers real mad!

#aporophobia #eat the rich #feed the poor #steal from the rich #give to the poor #social justice #human rights #democratic socialism #support the working class

43K notes · View notes

xtruss · 13 days

Text

Biden Administration Issues “Weasel Words” Assurances To Secure Assange’s Extradition

— Thomas Scripps | Wednesday April 17, 2024 | World Socialist Web Site | WSWS.ORG

The United States has provided “assurances” to the UK government to further its pursuit of WikiLeaks founder and journalist Julian Assange, held in London’s maximum security Belmarsh prison.

The US is seeking to prosecute Assange on charges under the Espionage Act which carry a de facto life sentence for publishing documents exposing war crimes and human rights abuses carried out by Washington and its imperialist allies.

Julian Assange. Photo by David G. Silvers, Cancillería del Ecuador/CC BY-SA 2.0

When, at the end of last month, the UK’s High Court offered the US the opportunity to provide such commitments to prevent Assange from appealing against his extradition to America, the World Socialist Web Site wrote, “The court’s proposals are a fig leaf. US prosecutors will furnish ‘assurances’ as worthless as those already provided in connection with his conditions of imprisonment.”

This has been confirmed. The commitments required by the court were that Assange would not be subject to the death penalty, and two connected points that he would not be prejudiced at trial by virtue of his Australian nationality and would be granted free speech rights under the First Amendment of the US Constitution.

A facsimile of the letter sent by the US Embassy to UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron Tuesday, published by Consortium News, reads:

“Assange will not be prejudiced by reason of his nationality with respect to which defenses he may seek to raise at trial and sentencing. Specifically, if extradited, Assange will have the ability to raise and seek to rely upon at trial… the rights and protections given under the First Amendment.” It then stresses, “A decision as to the applicability of the First Amendment is exclusively within the purview of the U.S. Courts.”

It continues: “A sentence of death will neither be sought nor imposed on Assange… These assurances are binding on any and all present or subsequent individuals to whom authority has been delegated to decide these matters.”

Assange’s wife Stella was quick to point out the “blatant weasel words” of the first assurance, which only states that Assange can “seek to raise” First Amendment rights—it does not guarantee that he will receive them.

Legally, this should bar extradition outright.

Section 87 of the UK’s Extradition Act (2003) requires the courts to “decide whether the person’s extradition would be compatible with the Convention rights [European Convention on Human Rights] within the meaning of the Human Rights Act 1998… If the judge decides the question… in the negative he must order the person’s discharge.”

Article 10 of the Convention is the right to freedom of expression, or free speech. The same protection is enshrined in the US legal system in the form of the First Amendment. But the US Embassy’s letter leaves the door open to this right being denied to Assange at the say so of the US courts.

As Stella Assange noted, the letter pointedly “makes no undertaking to withdraw the prosecution’s previous assertion that Julian has no first amendment rights because he is not a US citizen.”

Both the lead prosecutor Gordon Kromberg and the former CIA Director Mike Pompeo have made this claim.

Stella Assange added that her husband’s “life is at risk” every day he is in prison: 'The diplomatic note does nothing to relieve our family's extreme distress about his future—his grim expectation of spending the rest of his life in isolation in US prison for publishing award-winning journalism.”

Her statement underscores the cynicism of the death penalty assurance offered by the US. Substantial medical evidence has been provided in Assange’s case confirming the significant likelihood of suicide in the event of extradition to and imprisonment in the US. His mental and physical health have already declined sharply in the five years he has spent in Belmarsh.

Nor is it beyond the US government—whose intelligence agencies surveilled Assange and plotted his assassination—to renege on its promise or see to it that Assange is killed “unofficially”.

Underscoring the case’s lawless character, on the same day the US sent its “assurances” to the UK, CIA Director William Burns submitted a statement to the Spanish courts. Burns asserted that “the CIA’s statutory privileges… to protect intelligence sources, methods, and activities at issue” in a case examining the Agency’s spying against Assange, refusing to either confirm or deny its involvement or to provide “factual bases for my privilege assertions”.

None of this was acknowledged by the Democratic Party-aligned New York Times, which sunk to new lows in its reporting of the case by citing some of Stella Assange’s comments while excising her reference to the Biden administration’s “weasel words”, allowing it to run a totally uncritical article headlined, “U.S. Lays Out Protections for Assange if He Is Extradited”.

The UK courts will likely take the same wilfully credulous view.

Geoffrey Robertson KC, founder and joint head of Doughty Street Chambers which is representing Assange, and who previously represented him directly, claimed, “Unless you can guarantee it [free speech rights], I think the British courts will be dubious about extraditing Mr Assange to a situation or to a trial where he doesn’t have the equal protection of the laws.”

This will doubtless be the legally impeccable argument advanced by Assange’s lawyers at the next hearing scheduled for May 20. But the High Court has already accepted equally worthless assurances at an earlier stage in the case to override warnings about Assange’s significant risk of suicide—barring extradition under Section 91 of the Extradition Act.

These “guaranteed” that Assange would not be placed in America’s supermax prison, the ADX Florence, or be subjected to Special Administrative Measures (SAMS), implicitly acknowledged to constitute cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment prohibited under Article 3 of the Convention. But in each case, the undertaking was given “subject to the condition that the United States retains the power to impose SAMs [or an ADX designation] on Mr Assange in the event that, after entry of this assurance, he was to commit any future act that met the test for the imposition of a SAM [or ADX designation].”

The UK’s High Court responded favourably in their December 2021 judgment that it could “see no merit in the criticisms made of the individual assurances… There is no basis for assuming that the USA has not given the assurances in good faith.”

Screenshots of the US Letter of Assurances From X, Formerly Twitter. Megan Specia @meganspecia! US has filed assurances in Assange extradition case, which were requested by a British court before it makes a final decision on his ability to appeal. Next step is a hearing on May 20.

In its latest ruling, dismissing Assange’s right to appeal provided the new assurances were given, the High Court was again at pains to stress the trustworthiness of the US state, even to the point of denying that there was “anything to show” a connection between CIA plots to kidnap or poison Assange and the prosecutor’s attempt to have him extradited.

If the assurances are accepted by the High Court on May 20, Assange’s request for an appeal will be dismissed, leaving him at imminent risk of extradition. His legal team have submitted a preliminary appeal to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, but it is unclear whether the UK would abide by orders from that court to keep Assange in its custody until it has reached a decision even if Strasbourg agrees to hear the case.

Amid the vital and ongoing legal defence being mounted, workers must understand that Assange’s fate depends on stepping up the global campaign demanding his release.

#Britain 🇬🇧#United States 🇺🇸#Australia 🇦🇺#Europe 🇪🇺#Democratic Rights #Media Issues #Julian Assange #Free Julian Assange #Hands Off Julian Assange #War Criminal | Genocidal | Joe Biden Administration #Weasel Words | Assurances #Julian Assange Extradition #World Socialist Web Site | WSWS.ORG

0 notes

equiteesorg · 11 days

Text

Please take the time to read and share this🙏

Together we will make a difference

For every ‘Free Congo’ item purchased, we donate directly to a globalgiving.org project dedicated to rescuing and rehabilitating these children, offering them a path towards a brighter, hope-filled future.

#free congo #help congo #congo genocide #congo crisis #democratic republic of the congo #dr congo #save congo #congolese #congolaise #congo #humanity #human rights

14K notes · View notes

intersectionalpraxis · 4 months

Text

Children as young as 6, working 12 hour days digging by hand, receiving $1 a day…think about it before you purchase your next laptop/electric vehicle

Free Congo🇨🇩 & end consumerism and wasteful consumption.

Apple Hub (not affiliated with Apple Official, but their account is influencial/popular among Apple users-adding this for context [01/07/24.]. They posted this a few days ago -it's about 2 different phone models (for fucking display changes).

Apple has been hyper-exploiting people in the Global South to mine for resources to make their products for YEARS, and I need more people to stop buying (unless necessity requires it -I waited 7-8 years before I had to change my phone, and next time I do it'll be a refurbished one) -until these entire systems are dismantled and made to be be ethical in every aspect of their businesses and not just on paper, boycott them.

I also know that Apple will change one spec and advertise like it's the greatest thing since sliced bread, so to speak -and this cult-following just eats this up time and again. If you're not already informed about this inherently violent and corrupt industry -then get to know. And stop supporting these companies.

#feminist #feminism #social justice #free congo #congoisbleeding #congo is bleeding #congo genocide #dr congo #congo #democratic republic of the congo #boycotting #boycott apple #boycott big tech #western imperialism #us imperialism #child labor #violence against children #human rights violations

6K notes · View notes

soberscientistlife · 3 months

Text

This is so fucking wrong.

#disability rights #government #vote blue #fuck trump #vote democrat #vote biden

4K notes · View notes

kitheheh · 2 months

Text

‼️Call/Write your Senators to STOP BILL S.1409 (KOSA)‼️

This is not my normal content but the word needs to spread

‼️KOSA IS A MASSIVE ONLINE CENSORSHIP BILL‼️

This bill is proposed by, Richard Blumenthal and Marsha Blackburn, who is very vocal about being against LGBT ppl!

It will force everyone online who wants to use a website to UPLOAD THEIR GOVERNMENT ID AND AGE TO THE PUBLIC!

Yes they did change the language of the bill but the sentiment is still the same. It will be used for censorship no matter what they say.

THIS BILL COULD PASS THE SENATE AS SOON AS NEXT WEEK AND THEN THE HOUSE THE SAME DAY

Omarsbigsister on TikTok is going into more detail.

This is so serious and will change the internet as we know it. People need to spread the word and call/write their senators.

Omarsbigsister on TikTok has videos and recourses on their page to help.

#lgbt #fuck kosa #stop kosa #kosa bill #politics #democrats #trans rights #lgbtq community #lgbt rights #online #transgender #fandom #kit talks #art #digital art

2K notes · View notes

decolonize-the-left · 1 year

Text

This is not a drill

This is IMPORTANT especially if you live in the USA or use the internet REGULATED by the USA!!!!

Do not scroll. Signal boost. Reblog.

Reblog WITHOUT reading if you really can't right now, I promise all the links and proof are here. People NEED to know this.

( I tried to make this accessible but you can't cater to EVERYONE so please just try your best to get through this or do your own research 🙏)

TLDR: Homeland Security has been tying our social media to our IPs, licenses, posts, emails, selfies, cloud, apps, location, etc through our phones without a warrant using Babel X and will hold that information gathered for 75 years. Certain aspects of it were hushed because law enforcement will/does/has used it and it would give away confidential information about ongoing operations.

This gets renewed in September.

Between this, Agincourt (a VR simulator for cops Directly related to this project), cop city, and widespread demonization of abortions, sex workers, & queer people mixed with qanon/Trumpism, and fascism in Florida, and the return of child labor, & removed abortion rights fresh on our tails it's time for alarms to be raised and it's time for everyone to stop calling us paranoid and start showing up to protest and mutual aid groups.

🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨

These are the same feds who want to build cop city and recreate civilian houses en masse and use facial recognition. The same feds that want cop city to also be a training ground for police across the country. Cop city where they will build civilian neighborhoods to train in.

Widespread mass surveillance against us.

Now let's cut to some parts of the article. May 17th from Vice:

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is using an invasive, AI-powered monitoring tool to screen travelers, including U.S. citizens, refugees, and people seeking asylum, which can in some cases link their social media posts to their Social Security number and location data, according to an internal CBP document obtained by Motherboard.

Called Babel X, the system lets a user input a piece of information about a target—their name, email address, or telephone number—and receive a bevy of data in return, according to the document. Results can include their social media posts, linked IP address, employment history, and unique advertising identifiers associated with their mobile phone. The monitoring can apply to U.S. persons, including citizens and permanent residents, as well as refugees and asylum seekers, according to the document.

“Babel data will be used/captured/stored in support of CBP targeting, vetting, operations and analysis,” the document reads. Babel X will be used to “identify potential derogatory and confirmatory information” associated with travelers, persons of interest, and “persons seeking benefits.” The document then says results from Babel X will be stored in other CBP operated systems for 75 years.

"The U.S. government’s ever-expanding social media dragnet is certain to chill people from engaging in protected speech and association online. And CBP’s use of this social media surveillance technology is especially concerning in connection with existing rules requiring millions of visa applicants each year to register their social media handles with the government. As we’ve argued in a related lawsuit, the government simply has no legitimate interest in collecting and retaining such sensitive information on this immense scale,” Carrie DeCell, senior staff attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute, told Motherboard in an email.

The full list of information that Babel X may provide to CBP analysts is a target’s name, date of birth, address, usernames, email address, phone number, social media content, images, IP address, Social Security number, driver’s license number, employment history, and location data based on geolocation tags in public posts.

Bennett Cyphers, a special advisor to activist

organization the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told Motherboard in an online chat “the data isn’t limited to public posts made under someone’s real name on Facebook or Twitter.”

The document says CBP also has access to AdID information through an add-on called Locate X, which includes smartphone location data. AdID information is data such as a device’s unique advertising ID, which can act as an useful identifier for tracking a phone and, by extension, a person’s movements. Babel Street obtains location information from a long supply chain of data. Ordinary apps installed on peoples’ smartphones provide data to a company called Gravy Analytics, which repackages that location data and sells it to law enforcement agencies via its related company Venntel. But Babel Street also repackages Venntel’s data for its own Locate X product."

The PTA obtained by Motherboard says that Locate X is covered by a separate “commercial telemetry” PTA. CBP denied Motherboard’s FOIA request for a copy of this document, claiming it “would disclose techniques and/or procedures for law enforcement investigations or prosecutions”.

A former Babel Street employee previously told Motherboard how users of Locate X can draw a shape on a map known as a geofence, see all devices Babel Street has data on for that location, and then follow a specific device to see where else it has been.

Cyphers from the EFF added “most of the people whose location data is collected in this way likely have no idea it’s happening.”

CBP has been purchasing access to location data without a warrant, a practice that critics say violates the Fourth Amendment. Under a ruling from the Supreme Court, law enforcement agencies need court approval before accessing location data generated by a cell phone tower; those critics believe this applies to location data generated by smartphone apps too.

“Homeland Security needs to come clean to the American people about how it believes it can legally purchase and use U.S. location data without any kind of court order. Americans' privacy shouldn't depend on whether the government uses a court order or credit card,” Senator Ron Wyden told Motherboard in a statement. “DHS should stop violating Americans' rights, and Congress should pass my bipartisan legislation to prohibit the government's purchase of Americans' data." CBP has refused to tell Congress what legal authority it is following when using commercially bought smartphone location data to track Americans without a warrant.

Neither CBP or Babel Street responded to a request for comment. Motherboard visited the Babel X section of Babel Street’s website on Tuesday. On Wednesday before publication, that product page was replaced with a message that said “page not found.”

Do you know anything else about how Babel X is being used by government or private clients? Do you work for Babel Street? We'd love to hear from you. Using a non-work phone or computer, you can contact Joseph Cox securely on Signal on +44 20 8133 5190, Wickr on josephcox, or email [email protected].

Wow that sounds bad right.

Be a shame if it got worse.

.

It does.

The software (previously Agincourt Solutions) is sold by AI data company Babel Street, was led by Jeffrey Chapman, a former Treasury Department official,, Navy retiree & Earlier in his career a White House aide and intelligence officer at the Department of Defense, according to LinkedIn.

🙃

So what's Agincourt Solutions then right now?

SO FUCKING SUS IN RELATION TO THIS, THATS WHAT

In essence, synthetic BATTLEVR training is a mixture of all three realities – virtual, augmented and physical. It is flexible enough to allow for mission rehearsals of most types and be intuitive enough to make training effective.

Anyway the new CEO of Babel Street (Babel X) as of April is a guy named Michael Southworth and I couldn't find much more on him than that tbh, it's all very vague and missing. That's the most detail I've seen on him.

And the detail says he has a history of tech startups that scanned paperwork and sent it elsewhere, good with numbers, and has a lot of knowledge about cell networks probably.

Every inch more of this I learn as I continue to Google the names and companies popping up... It gets worse.

Monitor phone use. Quit photobombing and filming strangers and for the love of fucking God quit sending apps photos of your actual legal ID to prove your age. Just don't use that site, you'll be fine I swear. And quit posting your private info online. For activists/leftists NO personally identifiable info at least AND DEFINITELY leave your phone at home to Work™!!!

7K notes · View notes

whosurisold · 7 months

Text

If you believe the gQp repigliKlan cult attack on women just began - then YOU have NOT been paying attention

3K notes · View notes

nezreblogz · 24 days

Text

36K notes · View notes

mysharona1987 · 4 months

Text

#Palestine #south africa #genocide #democrats #republicans #politics #israel #woc #poc #human rights #icj #donald trump

37K notes · View notes

reasonsforhope · 1 month

Text

"For the first time in almost 60 years, a state has formally overturned a so-called “right to work” law, clearing the way for workers to organize new union locals, collectively bargain, and make their voices heard at election time.

This week, Michigan finalized the process of eliminating a decade-old “right to work” law, which began with the shift in control of the state legislature from anti-union Republicans to pro-union Democrats following the 2022 election. “This moment has been decades in the making,” declared Michigan AFL-CIO President Ron Bieber. “By standing up and taking their power back, at the ballot box and in the workplace, workers have made it clear Michigan is and always will be the beating heart of the modern American labor movement.”

[Note: The article doesn't actually explain it, so anyway, "right to work" laws are powerful and deceptively named pieces of anti-union legislation. What right to work laws do is ban "union shops," or companies where every worker that benefits from a union is required to pay dues to the union. Right-to-work laws really undermine the leverage and especially the funding of unions, by letting non-union members receive most of the benefits of a union without helping sustain them. Sources: x, x, x, x]

In addition to formally scrapping the anti-labor law on Tuesday [February 13, 2024], Michigan also restored prevailing-wage protections for construction workers, expanded collective bargaining rights for public school employees, and restored organizing rights for graduate student research assistants at the state’s public colleges and universities. But even amid all of these wins for labor, it was the overturning of the “right to work” law that caught the attention of unions nationwide...

Now, the tide has begun to turn—beginning in a state with a rich labor history. And that’s got the attention of union activists and working-class people nationwide...

At a time when the labor movement is showing renewed vigor—and notching a string of high-profile victories, including last year’s successful strike by the United Auto Workers union against the Big Three carmakers, the historic UPS contract victory by the Teamsters, the SAG-AFTRA strike win in a struggle over abuses of AI technology in particular and the future of work in general, and the explosion of grassroots union organizing at workplaces across the country—the overturning of Michigan’s “right to work” law and the implementation of a sweeping pro-union agenda provides tangible evidence of how much has changed in recent years for workers and their unions...

By the mid-2010s, 27 states had “right to work” laws on the books.

But then, as a new generation of workers embraced “Fight for 15” organizing to raise wages, and campaigns to sign up workers at Starbucks and Amazon began to take off, the corporate-sponsored crusade to enact “right to work” measures stalled. New Hampshire’s legislature blocked a proposed “right to work” law in 2017 (and again in 2021), despite the fact that the measure was promoted by Republican Governor Chris Sununu. And in 2018, Missouri voters rejected a “right to work” referendum by a 67-33 margin.

Preventing anti-union legislation from being enacted and implemented is one thing, however. Actually overturning an existing law is something else altogether.

But that’s what happened in Michigan after 2022 voting saw the reelection of Governor Gretchen Whitmer, a labor ally, and—thanks to the overturning of gerrymandered legislative district maps that had favored the GOP—the election of Democratic majorities in the state House and state Senate. For the first time in four decades, the Democrats controlled all the major levers of power in Michigan, and they used them to implement a sweeping pro-labor agenda. That was a significant shift for Michigan, to be sure. But it was also an indication of what could be done in other states across the Great Lakes region, and nationwide.

“Michigan Democrats took full control of the state government for the first time in 40 years. They used that power to repeal the state’s ‘right to work’ law,” explained a delighted former US secretary of labor Robert Reich, who added, “This is why we have to show up for our state and local elections.”"

-via The Nation, February 16, 2024

#michigan #united states #us politics #labor #labor rights #labor unions #capitalism #unions #unionize #gretchen whitmer #democrats #voting matters #right to work #pro union #workers #workers rights #good news #hope

1K notes · View notes

anarcho-yorpism · 2 months

Text

To all the communist transvestites, VOTE👏VON👏HINDENBURG👏

I'm just as radical as you; I'm a proud member of the great Social Democratic Party of Germany! I don't know what the crazy communists are telling you, but Paul von Hindenburg is our only hope to defeat the Nazis. After we elect him, then we can discuss other politics, but this is the BARE MINIMUM, and if you don't vote for him, you clearly have this crazy purity test that'll bring us all to fascism.

I know you might be worried about his "senility" and "failing health", and I know you may not like him because of his push to the right, and I know you may be worried about the brownshirts, and the recent persecution of Dr. Hirschfeld and his work, and maybe you STILL haven't gotten over the whole Rosa Luxemburg stuff,

but none of that really matters! We need to keep the SPD in power, or else Hitler will get in charge! This is the most important and most basic thing you could do to help Germany stay a democracy. In 6 years, then maybe we can find a better candidate, but no matter what you think about von Hindenburg, he's the best shot we have at keeping the fascists out of power. We can totally push him left!

Any vote against von Hindenburg is a vote for Hitler. #Hindenburg1932

1K notes · View notes

contemplatingoutlander · 9 months

Text

Trump's trial "is a fulfillment of his rights"

"That Trump will be tried for his coup attempt is not a violation of his rights. It is a fulfillment of his rights. It is the grace of the American republic. In other systems, when your coup attempt fails, what follows is not a trial."

--Timothy Snyder, PhD, Levin Professor of History, Yale University

#trump #indictments #coup attempt #fulfillment of rights #us democratic republic #timothy snyder #x-twitter

4K notes · View notes