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Category: Human rights/civil liberties

Microsoft blocks Israel’s use of some of its AI and data services in mass surveillance of Palestinians

Microsoft blocks Israel’s use of some of its AI and data services in mass surveillance of Palestinians

The Guardian reports: Microsoft has terminated the Israeli military’s access to technology it used to operate a powerful surveillance system that collected millions of Palestinian civilian phone calls made each day in Gaza and the West Bank, the Guardian can reveal. Microsoft told Israeli officials late last week that Unit 8200, the military’s elite spy agency, had violated the company’s terms of service by storing the vast trove of surveillance data in its Azure cloud platform, sources familiar with the…

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Trump’s most lethal policy: ‘People are dying every day and night’

Trump’s most lethal policy: ‘People are dying every day and night’

Nicholas Kristof writes: The Trump administration has claimed that no one has died because of its cuts to humanitarian aid, and it is now trying to cancel an additional $4.9 billion in aid that Congress already approved. Yet what I find here in desperate villages in southwestern Uganda is that not only are aid cuts killing children every day, but that the death toll is accelerating. Stockpiles of food and medicine are running out here. Village health workers who used…

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The cost for dumping Kimmel turned out to be more than ABC/Disney could afford

The cost for dumping Kimmel turned out to be more than ABC/Disney could afford

  Make no mistake about it, Disney/ABC’s decision to fold under intense public pressure lead by Hollywood Agents, Actors, Writers and producers, to “replatform” Jimmy Kimmel has nothing to do with protecting the First Amendment or flipping off Trump. Popok explains that Disney was effectively told that they would be blacklisted and made a pariah in Hollywood and no top flight talent would ever work for them again if they didn’t support Jimmy. In one sense, the “concept” of what…

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Israel is waging a holocaust in Gaza. Denazification is our only remedy

Israel is waging a holocaust in Gaza. Denazification is our only remedy

Orly Noy writes: Gaza City is engulfed in flames, as the Israeli army embarks on its long-threatened ground offensive after weeks of relentless bombardment. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, already facing an international arrest warrant on suspicion of crimes against humanity, described this latest assault as an “intensified operation.” I urge you to watch the footage streaming out of Gaza, and see what this euphemism really means. Look into the eyes of people gripped by a terror unmatched even in the…

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Israel massacred 31 journalists as it destroyed newspaper offices in Yemen

Israel massacred 31 journalists as it destroyed newspaper offices in Yemen

Committee to Protect Journalists: Israel’s targeted strikes on two newspaper offices in Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, which killed 31 journalists and media support workers on September 10, signal that its deadly pattern of attacking reporters and newsrooms on the grounds that they publish “terrorist” propaganda has spread firmly across the Middle East. Yemen’s September 26 newspaper was the first to name the 31 killed by multiple strikes on its office and that of the Yemen newspaper, both in the government’s Moral…

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Immigration judge orders Mahmoud Khalil deported to Syria or Algeria

Immigration judge orders Mahmoud Khalil deported to Syria or Algeria

Politico reports: An immigration judge in Louisiana has ordered pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, a legal permanent resident of the U.S., deported to Syria or Algeria for failing to disclose certain information on his green card application, according to documents filed in federal court Wednesday by his lawyers. Khalil’s lawyers suggested in a filing that they intend to appeal the deportation order, but expressed concern that the appeal process will likely be swift and unfavorable. The order from the immigration judge,…

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Bernie Sanders becomes first senator to acknowledge that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza

Bernie Sanders becomes first senator to acknowledge that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza

The Guardian reports: Senator Bernie Sanders said on Wednesday that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, calling the conclusion “inescapable” and becoming the first US senator to use the term. “Over the last two years, Israel has not simply defended itself against Hamas,” Sanders wrote. “Instead, it has waged an all-out war against the entire Palestinian people.” Sanders had long received flak from supporters and protesters alike for avoiding the term, which he previously said made him “queasy” when protesters…

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Detained Korean workers report ‘human rights violations’ by ICE after being treated like dogs

Detained Korean workers report ‘human rights violations’ by ICE after being treated like dogs

Hankyoreh reports (translated from Korean to English by Google): Their waists and hands were tied together, forcing them to bend down and lick water to drink. The unscreened bathrooms contained only a single sheet to cover their lower bodies. Sunlight barely penetrated through a fist-sized hole, and they were only allowed access to the small yard for two hours. Detained by US immigration authorities for eight days, the workers and their families expressed shock, describing human rights violations and absurdities…

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As the world recognizes a Palestinian state, Israel’s E1 plan moves to bury it

As the world recognizes a Palestinian state, Israel’s E1 plan moves to bury it

+972 reports: On the scorched hills to the east of Jerusalem, the Israeli settlement of Ma’ale Adumim spreads outward, casting a long shadow over the bustling Palestinian town of Ezariyah. These are the hills where Israel is set to break ground on its E1 settlement bloc, carving the West Bank in two in a bid to erase the possibility of a Palestinian state once and for all. If realized, the Israeli plan to build 3,400 new settlement homes — which…

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‘Louisiana is where people go to be disappeared’

‘Louisiana is where people go to be disappeared’

The Guardian reports: He arrived in Alexandria exhausted and sick. It was early April, and Amilcar Lisser-Posadas – shackled at his hands and feet – had been transferred from a nearby immigration detention center to this remote US immigration facility in Louisiana. He feared it would be his last stop before deportation. He remembered the stench of the place. The packed jail rooms where hundreds of men were warehoused together with little access to showers, which sometimes spouted brown, rusty…

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The Gaza family torn apart by IDF snipers from Chicago and Munich

The Gaza family torn apart by IDF snipers from Chicago and Munich

The Guardian reports: Daniel Raab shows no hesitation as he watches footage of 19-year-old Salem Doghmosh crumpling to the ground beside his brother in a street in northern Gaza. “That was my first elimination,” he says. The video, shot by a drone, lasts just a few seconds. The Palestinian teenager appears to be unarmed when he is shot in the head. Raab, a former varsity basketball player from a Chicago suburb who became an Israeli sniper, concedes he knew that….

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Anti-Islamic American biker gang members run security at deadly Gaza aid sites

Anti-Islamic American biker gang members run security at deadly Gaza aid sites

BBC News reports: The firm guarding sites where aid is distributed in Gaza has been using members of a US biker gang with a history of hostility to Islam to run its armed security, a BBC investigation has found. BBC News has confirmed the identities of 10 members of the Infidels Motorcycle Club working in Gaza for UG Solutions – a private contractor providing security at Gaza Humanitarian Foundation sites, where hundreds of civilians seeking food have been killed in…

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ICE is destroying the soul of America

ICE is destroying the soul of America

Garrett Graff writes: If you’re brown, speak Spanish, and work in a blue-collar job, you officially belong to a different class of citizen and according to Chief Justice John Roberts, it’s okay to racially profile you. We have never in US history seen a federal law enforcement agency operate the way ICE has operated this summer — it marks the arrival of a new style of domestic policing, more in line with the infamous “brown shirts” of authoritarian regimes the world…

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Department of Homeland Security claims videotaping ICE raids is ‘violence’

Department of Homeland Security claims videotaping ICE raids is ‘violence’

The American Prospect reports: President Trump’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) claims that making and posting videos of ICE agents as they disappear tens of thousands of immigrants from America’s streets, workplaces, and courtrooms without due process is an act of “violence” to be dealt with accordingly. DHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin told the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) that “videotaping ICE law enforcement and posting photos and videos of them online is doxing our agents,”…

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How UK bureaucracy enables Israel’s genocide

How UK bureaucracy enables Israel’s genocide

Katie Fallon writes: For the last four years, my job has been to comb through government statements, along with policy and legal documents, and then brief members of parliament on exactly what linguistic and legal gymnastics the government of the day is using to justify exports of military equipment – despite evidence that these exports are likely to be used in war crimes. At a certain point, I recognised these documents and legal arguments for what they really are: the…

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The Epstein cover-up is an affront to American democracy

The Epstein cover-up is an affront to American democracy

Rebecca Solnit writes: Rape is a crime against democracy in the most immediate sense of equality between individuals and the premise that we’re all endowed with certain inalienable rights. Most rapists operate on the premise that they can not only overpower the victim physically, but can do so socially and legally. They count on a system that discounts the voices of victims and only too often cooperates in silencing them, through shame, intimidation, threats, discrediting, the obscene legal instrument known…

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