What happened to Brittany Watts never should have happened in the first place. Now we need to make sure it never happens again -- nobody should be criminalized for how their pregnancy ends. We have multiple ways for you to take action right now. https://indivisible.org/resource/demand-justice-brittany-watts
#NewJersey Gov. Phil Murphy has signed into law legislation allowing 17-year-olds to vote in state primaries if they'll be 18 by the next general election.
“When the Supreme Court overturned Roe…, it claimed to be removing the judiciary from the abortion debate. In reality, it simply gave the courts a macabre new task: deciding how far states can push a patient toward death before allowing her to undergo an emergency abortion.” From a good column on the law at issue in a case the Supreme Court today decided to hear, to decide whether state total abortion bans conflict with federal law requiring emergency care. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/01/supreme-court-abortion-case-texas-dobbs.html#LawFedi
Just weeks after Kate Cox was denied abortion care in Texas, the 5th Circuit Court ruling now allows emergency rooms to deny women abortion care, even when their lives are at stake.
My Democratic Women's Caucus colleagues and I are fighting back against this cruelty.
S.B. 4 "will have a devastating impact on people seeking safety at our borders and Texans throughout the state," said one advocate.
Vowing to stop Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott from enforcing an anti-immigration law that "overrides bedrock constitutional principles" and that has already prompted travel advisories for people planning to visit the Lone Star State, the ACLU led #civil#rights groups
"The #Palestinians who live (or lived) in this hilltop hamlet had decamped in terror a few weeks earlier. A gang of #Israeli settlers... had been tormenting them for weeks... beating them up & threatening #murder if they didn’t leave.
Similar scenes are playing out across the #WestBank these days as Israeli settlers, backed & sometimes aided by #soldiers, force Arabs out of villages, farmlands & herding pastures."
"coordinated campaign to bring vast swaths of land under the control of #Jewish settlements (all of which are illegal under international law, and some of which are also illegal under #Israeli law)...
#Texas Supreme Court has put on hold a judge’s ruling that approved an #abortion for a pregnant woman whose fetus has a #fatal#diagnosis.
Texas Supreme Court on Friday night put on hold a judge's ruling that approved an abortion for a #pregnant#woman whose fetus has a fatal diagnosis, throwing into limbo an unprecedented challenge to one of the most restrictive bans in the #U.S.
"Another Old White Man deciding what a Woman Can and Can't do with her own body"
National chief-hopefuls say feds must back down from controlling First Nations membership
The 6(2) controversy hit a leadership forum when a question about the second-generation cut-off for transmitting Indian #status was asked of candidates running for #election of national chief of the Assembly of First Nations.
The consensus is that it’s the right of #FirstNations to determine membership, not the federal government.
This is an excellent film. For an American production, they weren't afraid to depict the "evilness" or extremism of the Western world. It's a nod to the sins of the West during the Colonial era, which unfortunately continues to this very day.
No one country, no one regional power, should be given this much might and sway for it will eventually make them dictators and tyrants disguised as democracy, freedom, and human rights. Exactly what is happening in our world today.
The ones who pay are not the 1% or the politicians or the high ranking military officials. It is the 99% who suffer. They justify their actions as "peace" and "for the future of humanity" when in reality, they only created more reasons for hatred and wars.
Sure, this was about AI. Yes, it is fiction. However, we cannot deny the underlying message of the film. Anyone who denies it is lying to themselves or living in their own fantasy.
Again, a superb film. It is rare to see productions from the West with such a profound message behind it. Western productions are often about entertainment these days, and making tons of money. Not this one. It's all about the message.
In this week's Truth About newsletter, Max Burns digs into the all-out assault on #voting#rights
"In red states, the situation has grown dire. #Republican#lawmakers last year crafted a record number of laws designed to strip away the #vote from millions of Americans ahead of the 2024 general #election"
One thing in this piece on the origins of the Electronic Frontiers Foundation that I think deserves a bit more discussion is this assertion:
"...One result of this is a neo-Luddite resentment of digital technology from which little good can come..."
I have been reading an excellent book by @brianmerchant called Blood in the Machine - The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech which provides a much more robust perspective and analysis on the Luddites as a movement.
Luddites were not afraid of new technology they were fighting exploitation and subjugation and trying to preserve craftsmanship and autonomy.
Not all technology is automatically adopted by society, in fact much of the technology developed does not get the funding required to scale. Technologies are not developed in a void outside of existing power dynamics and those at the top often use these new tools to further their own ends as opposed to supporting public goods for their own sake.
New frontiers are generally the tip of the sword of colonization and exploitation. The internet has helped create surveillance capitalism and what @Snowden Snowden described as "turn-key totalitarianism".
Everyone building at the cutting edge of innovation has a responsibility to consider how their tools will be used and by whom. Credible neutrality is important in some contexts but also in a sense "neutrality" is by default support for the status quo of inequity and injustice.
True disruption must fundamentally wrestle with democratization and decentralization of power. Easier said then done given we all need funding for our projects to survive and nobody likes to lose control of their inventions. How we fund new technologies and the embodiment of the values on open source technologies that are interoperable and composable are not simple philosophical decisions, they are critical decisions that will shape the world we live in in significant ways.
The internet is indeed a new frontier but it is also just a new layer on top of the real world that can either liberate us or further subjugate us. Currently it is doing both in varying degrees and the choices we make today have profound implications.
The state of #abortion#rights across the U.S. remains bleak more than a year without #Roe. Come 2024, the threat of a national abortion ban looms if Republicans take #Congress and the #whitehouse Running on abortion—and exposing #Republicans’ lies—could be a deciding factor in preventing such an outcome. Kylie Cheung on what the anti-abortion candidates are planning:
The #ICC isn’t just for Putin: War crimes and crimes against humanity since 2007 by Israel; including the inability to claim a right of self defense against an occupied and controlled territory that was already denied basic survival needs, like #rights to food, water and mobility, itself crimes against humanity.
Nepal registers first same-sex marriage hailed as win for LGBT rights (www.bbc.com)
Activists have hailed the legal recognition as a victory for LGBT rights. Taiwan is the only other place in Asia that has legalised same-sex marriage