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Category: Human rights/civil liberties

Life in Gaza may go from utter hell to mere nightmare. What happens now?

Life in Gaza may go from utter hell to mere nightmare. What happens now?

Hussein Agha and Robert Malley write: Donald Trump’s peace plan for Gaza demands atonement from Palestinians for the horrific acts of 7 October, not from Israel for the barbarity that followed. It calls for Gaza’s deradicalization but not an end to Israel’s messianism. It micromanages the future of Palestinian governance while saying nothing about the future of Israel’s occupation. It is riddled with ambiguities, devoid of timetables, arbiters or consequences for inevitable eventual violations. If all goes according to plan…

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Nationwide ‘No Kings’ rally has Republicans in disarray

Nationwide ‘No Kings’ rally has Republicans in disarray

The Bulwark reports: The upcoming anti-authoritarian “No Kings” rally, which is scheduled to take place across the country on Saturday, including on the west lawn of the U.S. Capitol, has set off klaxons for Republican lawmakers, who are scrambling to mount a preemptive defense. While many GOP lawmakers are describing No Kings as an astroturfed political operation meant to benefit Democrats in the continuing government funding fight, some in party leadership are going further by branding it a pro-terrorism demonstration—an…

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Facebook collaborates with Trump regime by taking down ICE-sightings group in Chicago

Facebook collaborates with Trump regime by taking down ICE-sightings group in Chicago

Chicago Sun-Times reports: At the request of the U.S. Department of Justice, a Facebook group used by nearly 80,000 people to report sightings of federal immigration agents in the Chicago area has been taken down by the social media giant Meta, Facebook’s parent company. The group, called ICE Sighting-Chicagoland, has been increasingly used over the last five weeks of “Operation Midway Blitz,” President Donald Trump’s intense deportation campaign, to warn neighbors that federal agents are near schools, grocery stores and…

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Chicago pushes back against Trump

Chicago pushes back against Trump

Danny Postel writes: Our far North Side neighborhood is one of the most diverse and multilingual, not only in Chicago, but in the U.S. More than 80 languages are spoken here. One of the neighborhood’s high schools, Sullivan, has a long history as a home to immigrant and refugee students, and was the subject of the 2021 book “Refugee High: Coming of Age in America” by the journalist Elly Fishman. My father, a child of immigrants, attended Sullivan in the…

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‘Peace deal’ or not, Gaza remains the holocaust of our time

‘Peace deal’ or not, Gaza remains the holocaust of our time

Niamh Ni Bhriain writes: Abdullah Ahmed Jihad al-Hasani, a baby boy, not yet one year old. Masah Mohammad Hamza al-Rifi, a baby girl, not yet one year old. Celine Ahmed Mufid al-Yaziji, a baby girl, not yet one year old… a baby… not yet one year old. Somebody’s whole world, gone in an instant. In Amsterdam, as the first winds of autumn swept through the city, the names of 69,000 people killed in Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza were read…

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Timothy Snyder: ‘Loving your country means showing up’

Timothy Snyder: ‘Loving your country means showing up’

Protestors believe that action has meaning. Protestors are exercising the rights enshrined in the Constitution. For me, protest is about love of country. I will be there on October 18th, and I hope you will be too. #NoKings snyder.substack.com/p/no-kings-f… [image or embed] — Timothy Snyder (@timothysnyder.bsky.social) Oct 12, 2025 at 9:08 AM The American Prospect reports: Millions of people will take to the streets again this Saturday to protest the autocratic regime of President Donald Trump, his government shutdown, and…

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ICE’s use of straitjackets during deportations endangers lives and may amount to torture

ICE’s use of straitjackets during deportations endangers lives and may amount to torture

The Associated Press reports: The Nigerian man described being roused with other detainees in September in the middle of the night. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers clasped shackles on their hands and feet, he said, and told them they were being sent to Ghana, even though none of them was from there. When they asked to speak to their attorney, he said, the officers refused and straitjacketed the already-shackled men in full-body restraint suits called the WRAP, then loaded…

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After 250 years, the beacon of democracy goes dark

After 250 years, the beacon of democracy goes dark

Anne Applebaum writes: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” Within weeks of their publication in July 1776, those words spread around the world. In August, a London newspaper reprinted the Declaration of Independence in full. Edinburgh followed. Soon after that, it appeared in Madrid, Leiden, Vienna, and Copenhagen. Before long, others drew on the text in more substantial ways. Thomas Jefferson himself helped draft the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of…

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As the perpetrators of Gaza’s genocide pose as its saviours, survivors return home – to a wasteland

As the perpetrators of Gaza’s genocide pose as its saviours, survivors return home – to a wasteland

Nesrine Malik writes: Today, Sharm el-Sheikh will host the most high-profile gathering of global leaders in the Middle East of recent years. Donald Trump, Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron, Pedro Sánchez and others are meeting “to end the war in the Gaza Strip, enhance efforts to achieve peace and stability in the Middle East, and usher in a new era of regional security and stability”. If the ceasefire holds, this language is an augur of the future. One where there is…

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Chicago chooses justice over fear, as it has in the past

Chicago chooses justice over fear, as it has in the past

Claudia M. Fegan and Linda Rae Murray write: When federal agents storm a South Shore apartment complex by helicopter, deploy chemical agents near a school in Logan Square and handcuff a Chicago City Council member inside a Humboldt Park hospital, something fundamental has gone wrong. What we are witnessing in Chicago today — the increasingly militarized immigration raids — is not simply a matter of law enforcement. It is a test of conscience. This is not the first time Chicago…

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Growing number of veterans face arrest while protesting ICE raids

Growing number of veterans face arrest while protesting ICE raids

The Guardian reports: US military veterans increasingly face arrest and injury amid protests over Donald Trump’s deportation campaign and his push to deploy national guard members to an ever-widening number of American cities. The Guardian has identified eight instances where military veterans have been prosecuted or sought damages after being detained by federal agents. The latest incident occurred in Broadview, outside Chicago, where 70-year old air force veteran Dana Briggs was charged with felony assault on a federal officer on…

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Immigrant advocates face escalating consequences and threats from Trump

Immigrant advocates face escalating consequences and threats from Trump

Caitlin Dickerson writes: Since immigration-enforcement agents began their descent on Chicago, acting with seemingly unprecedented speed and ferocity, Evelyn Vargas and her colleagues at Organized Communities Against Deportation have been in a frenzy. They help run an emergency hotline that refers people who have been detained to immigration lawyers and directs their families to support services such as food pantries, emergency housing, and mental-health care. (On a single day last week, it took 800 calls.) And they oversee a team…

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BDS: Boycotting Israel has gone mainstream

BDS: Boycotting Israel has gone mainstream

The Guardian reports: For more than a decade Shouk offered an Israeli-inspired, plant-based and kosher menu in and around Washington. Last week the chain was forced to close the last of five locations and lay off the last of 30 staff. It said the war in Gaza had made it impossible to do business; activists claimed the restaurant appropriated Palestinian food and imported Israeli products. “It didn’t let up: boycotts, harassment, you name it,” recalled Dennis Friedman, 46, a Jewish…

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The social aftershocks from weaponized mass starvation in Gaza will reverberate for generations

The social aftershocks from weaponized mass starvation in Gaza will reverberate for generations

Alex de Waal writes: On August 22nd, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification mechanism, affiliated with the United Nations (UN), reported that the humanitarian crisis in Gaza had officially passed the “famine” threshold. The same day, the United States government’s own Famine Early Warning Systems Network quietly confirmed this finding, noting that there was good evidence to believe that in Gaza, “mortality from the interaction of hunger and disease” was at famine levels. For months, Gaza’s descent into famine had…

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Retaliation: State violence is targeting journalists

Retaliation: State violence is targeting journalists

David Wallace-Wells writes: Last Friday, the 48-year-old Emmy-winning reporter Mario Guevara was deported to El Salvador from an ICE detention facility in Folkston, Ga. He was held in detention there for over 100 days. The state’s filings concerning his detention seem to largely focus on the crime of committing journalism. Guevara was arrested in June at a No Kings rally outside Atlanta, where, while filming the protest for his livestreaming platform MG News, he (clearly wearing a press vest and…

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