"In March, five #women... sued #Texas after enduring medical nightmares when they were refused abortions for pregnancies that had gone awry. Since then, the Center for Reproductive #Rights says it has heard from dozens of women in Texas with similar accounts. And this week, eight more women, each with her own harrowing story, joined the suit, which asks a state district court to clarify the scope of emergency medical exceptions to Texas’ #abortion ban." https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/22/opinion/abortion-law-texas-lawsuit.html
Anti Strikes Bill in Parliament tonight. I've never heard of the Henry V111 clause. If Bill passed, clause allows power to move to the 'executive' to add any future amendments. Authoritarian and a full attack on Workers' rights and their Unions. Emergency TUC protest tonight Parliament Square from 6pm.
Invoking the child's right to freedom of religion to justify genital cutting is illogical. In reality it is an argument for the parents to enforce the parent's religion on an unconsenting, uninformed child, violating the child's freedom of religion and right to bodily integrity.
The activism we do is to fight patriarchal traditions in which children are treated as objects owned, shaped, and controlled by their parents. Ending this oppression is important for seeing children as humans with needs, wants, interests, rights, and opinions of their own which should be given proper respect.
I love helping others, I have a laptop now (THANK YOUUU SO MUCH MASTODON!!) so I’m looking for courses to be a social worker. I want to meet and cultivate a community on #BlackFedi & #blackmastodon. Please reblog if you see this 💛
Worrisome press freedoms issues in Canada. #oil and #gas industry, the Alberta government. Below is from today's newsletter from @thenarwhal
May 3, 2023. United Conservative Party Leader Danielle Smith recently told #CTV News she believes everyone’s rights under the Canadian Constitution need to be protected.
“They are dearly important to me and all Albertans,” Smith told the news outlet in a statement. “I am impressed with any political leader that stood up for the core Charter rights of freedom of speech, expression, religion, assembly and association these last several years. That shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone.”
But my recent experience dealing with the #Alberta#government tells a different story — an experience that points to glaring shortfalls in free speech in Canada as we mark World Press Freedom Day on May 3.
In March, I started filing a series of requests for records from four different Alberta ministries. Thanks to reporting by my colleagues Carl Meyer and Drew Anderson in December, I knew officials had been meeting in secretive committees with oil and gas lobbyists to cook up new government policies and decisions.
These are decisions affecting public health, public safety, the environment and the economy. They have larger national and international implications, but are immediately important in Alberta, where voters are about to head to the polls for a general election, with only a few pieces of the full picture.
I used a provincial transparency law — the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act — to request the records. I’ve been using laws such as this one for nearly two decades as an important tool for my reporting.
But I wasn’t prepared for what happened next.
In recent weeks, the four ministries systematically refused to accept 26 separate requests for meeting records with lobbyists over the past two years.
As my requests came in, internal correspondence shows how officials from a central Alberta office sprung into action. But instead of figuring out how to release information, they actually organized a meeting to discuss how to refuse my requests for records.
This effort to stifle my reporting is just the latest example of how journalists in Canada are increasingly facing obstacles to doing their jobs.
As some of you know, The Narwhal has asked the courts to review whether the RCMP and the federal government infringed on press freedom in November 2021, when officers arrested photojournalist Amber Bracken and kept her in jail for several days.
The Narwhal’s award-winning staff are also among those struggling to cope with rising hostility and online harassment, particularly of women journalists. Our Ontario bureau chief, Denise Balkissoon, has also documented how a troubling lack of transparency in her province about changes to protected areas and the Greenbelt region is “a violation of democracy that will affect Ontarians for generations to come.”
The first part of Canada’s Constitution — the Charter of Rights and Freedoms — guarantees “#freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication.”
To me, this means we must all be empowered with the information that allows us to exercise those #rights and #freedoms.
In healthy #democracies, this would mean elected representatives introduce and support laws that ensure information about their government is also free. And so freedom of information laws become an extension of free speech — one that applies to all members of the public, regardless of their identity.
At The Narwhal, we take these rights seriously. We consider it part of our responsibility as journalists to ensure you are empowered and informed about matters that could affect your health and safety, as well as the environment and economy.
We aren’t intimidated by those who are opposed to free speech and a free #press — and we haven’t played our last card in this battle to shine a light on secrecy.
Thanks for reading and supporting The #Narwhal as we fight for press freedom.
@AskPippa@thenarwhal How about the freedom for a sole proprietor to be paid to do work that the government couldn't do, #DanielleSmith? The #UCP owes me money.
“While we understand the importance of addressing crimes, misinformation, and scams, the Mozilla Philippines Community firmly believes that the policy neglects the critical role of online anonymity in safeguarding whistleblowers and promoting public discourse. Additionally, the deployment of digital identity systems may create security risks that could have catastrophic effects in the event of a data breach.”
While it is known to everyone that Russia has jailed people who are against the Russia/Ukraine war, it is less known that the U.S. has accused people of being foreign agents who are also against the war on the other side. We may see anti-war people in the US jailed soon. It's all fun and games until it happens here too. See the Uhuru movement.
@EyalL@dascwo It's not about intelligence, it's about education. Deciding source credibility is a highly learnable skill. If you see my other links from Stanford, one approach is to teach how to decide if a source is credible directly.
Many universities have such courses as requirements for library science and scientists. These course go by the names "Information Literacy" or "Research Methods". We need to have the same courses in high-school universally. Some high-schools already do!
@mempko@dascwo the problem isn't only that people believe unreliable sources. That is largely addressable with education (though not completely, propaganda works on the educated too, if less so)
The problem is "I don't know what to believe anymore". Even educated people give up when presented with many contradicting sources and little time to investigate
The purpose of disinfo is not to make you believe something, but to make you give up and believe nothing. This works on the educated too.
@syntaxseed That's ironic, since pretending not to understand what the other side is saying seems to be the go-to strategy of queer activism at the moment.
@syntaxseed Sport fan is not a good comparison. Maybe "flat earthers".
Would you say someone who does believe the earth is flat is wrong?
Do you just not understand how someone could even believe that?
Would you go along with it because it's "their truth"?
And, as a tangent, how would you feel if they flooded media and entertainment with this idea, to normalize it?
If someone wants me to believe something counter to what I currently believe, yes I would need to understand it first
The GOP Is Trying to Steal Democracy in Ohio. That Has National Implications.
#Ohio is already one of the most #gerrymandered states in the country. Its maps are so unfair that its own state Supreme Court voted multiple times to send the maps back to the drawing board, only to have its rulings repeatedly undermined, the clock run out, and the #illegally#skewed#maps still used in the midterms.
Now, a new threat looms in the Buckeye State. Facing the prospect of a #citizen#initiative to #restore statewide #abortion#rights this November, the GOP-dominated Ohio legislature is moving in advance to block it.
They have proposed a measure to increase the vote requirement for a constitutional amendment from a simple majority to 60 percent, along with making it far harder to qualify a citizen initiative.
In short, the Ohio GOP wants to write in a supermajority requirement, just as the will of the majority, which favors reproductive choice and the protections of Roe v. Wade, is about to make itself heard.
Wait, can they even do that? Just blatantly #move#the#goalposts, right as progressives are getting ready to score?
Unfortunately, there is no legal barrier preventing this. Instead, the people of Ohio need to make it clear that they will not put up with this #power#grab.
I like nerding with notes, languages, philosophy, reading non-fic, #solarpunk, #Dimension20, exploring non-d&d #rpg systems, waterfalls, poems, playlists, #cats. I have an admin job that inspires me to pay attention to intersections of #tech, #climate, #gender, & #rights in the #globalSouth.
One of the reasons I campaign for autonomy and consent and not for legal bans on genital cutting is that enforcement of such bans is unrealistic and involves obvious violations of the rights (of the parent and, separately, of the child) to privacy.
"Potentially under-recognized late-stage physical and psychosexual complications of non-therapeutic neonatal penile circumcision: a qualitative and quantitative analysis of self-reports from an online community forum"