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Category: Human rights/civil liberties

‘There is no hate like Christian love’

‘There is no hate like Christian love’

CNN reports: Greg Jr. says he didn’t tell his parents about his sexuality earlier because he’d heard stories of evangelical parents who refused to pay for their gay kid’s college or kicked them out of the house. Once on the streets, these forsaken youths are more likely to experience sexual assault, HIV infection, hate crimes, depression and suicide, according to True Colors United, a nonprofit group formed to address youth homelessness in the US. The current share of homeless youth…

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The conservative strategy to ban abortion nationwide

The conservative strategy to ban abortion nationwide

  The Lincoln Project: Project 2025 and its evil architects envision an America where women will be monitored, prosecuted, and jailed for exercising their own bodily autonomy. We are not going back! Rachel Monroe writes: In mid-October, at a bank in downtown Amarillo, the local chapter of the League of Women Voters hosted an educational forum about proposed ordinances that would be on the ballot in November. Most were procedural—adding members to the city council, changing the process for a…

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‘Our job is to flatten Gaza. No one will stop us’

‘Our job is to flatten Gaza. No one will stop us’

Ryan Grim writes: Journalists Younis Tirawi and Sami Vanderlip have managed to find and archive all the Instagram stories and daily posts shared by the soldiers of one key unit, Israel’s 749 Combat Engineering Battalion. They’ve mapped out the structure of the unit and identified the individual soldiers and officers involved, along with their various roles in operations. They have tracked the activities of each company in the battalion, including what they were doing, when, and where, as the force…

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Exterminate, expel, resettle: Israel’s endgame in northern Gaza

Exterminate, expel, resettle: Israel’s endgame in northern Gaza

+972 Magazine reports: The “Generals’ Plan,” published in early September, has a very simple goal: to empty the northern Gaza Strip of its Palestinian population. The plan itself estimated that about 300,000 people were still living north of the Netzarim Corridor — the Israeli-occupied zone that bisects Gaza — although the UN put the number closer to 400,000. During the first phase of the plan, the Israeli army would inform all of those people that they have a week to evacuate to the south…

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Black people recognize what is happening to Palestinians

Black people recognize what is happening to Palestinians

Vann R. Newkirk II writes: In April 1952, W. E. B. Du Bois stepped onto the stage of the ballroom of the Hotel Diplomat in Midtown Manhattan. His beard was grizzled and he was still working out how to lecture through new dentures. In a word, he was old. During his long life, he’d witnessed the dawn of Jim Crow and the glow of the first atom bombs; the slaughter of the Comanche and the rivalry between the Soviet Union…

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The doctor who saw children shot in the head in Gaza—and tried to tell the world

The doctor who saw children shot in the head in Gaza—and tried to tell the world

Sophie Hurwitz writes: Dr. Feroze Sidhwa has volunteered as a trauma surgeon in Ukraine, Haiti, Burkina Faso, and Ghana. But when he went to Gaza in March and April of this year, it changed him. Sidhwa had never seen so much horror in his life. “There’s nothing like Gaza right now,” he said. “Almost 100 percent of Gaza’s population is homeless and displaced…does that sound like a place where people are going to survive?” With international journalists banned from Gaza…

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Israeli parliament votes to ban UNRWA from Israel within 90 days

Israeli parliament votes to ban UNRWA from Israel within 90 days

The Guardian reports: Israel’s parliament has voted to ban the UN relief and works agency (Unrwa) from the country within 90 days, in defiance of US and other international pressure to maintain the largest provider of humanitarian assistance to the country’s Palestinian population. In a 92-10 vote late on Monday, the Knesset banned the agency, which operates in Israel according to a 1967 treaty, from conducting “any activity” or providing any service inside Israel, including the areas of annexed East…

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Microsoft fires employees who organized vigil for Palestinians killed in Gaza

Microsoft fires employees who organized vigil for Palestinians killed in Gaza

The Associated Press reports: Microsoft has fired two employees who organized an unauthorized vigil at the company’s headquarters for Palestinians killed in Gaza during Israel’s war with Hamas. The two employees told The Associated Press they were fired by phone call late Thursday, several hours after a lunchtime event they organized at Microsoft’s campus in Redmond, Washington. Both workers were members of a coalition of employees called “No Azure for Apartheid” that has opposed Microsoft’s sale of its cloud-computing technology…

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Harris earns an eleventh-hour show of support from Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim community leaders

Harris earns an eleventh-hour show of support from Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim community leaders

The New Republic reports: More than 100 Arizona Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, and progressive Democrats and community leaders have signed a letter making the case for those reluctant to support Kamala Harris against Donald Trump. “We know that many in our communities are resistant to vote for Kamala Harris because of the Biden administration’s complicity in the genocide,” the letter, published Thursday night, reads. “Some of us have lost many family members in Gaza and Lebanon. We respect those who feel…

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Inside the siege of northern Gaza, where ‘death waits around every corner’

Inside the siege of northern Gaza, where ‘death waits around every corner’

+972 Magazine reports: For over two weeks, the Israeli military has been waging one the most brutal and destructive campaigns of the war in northern Gaza. Residents of Jabalia, Beit Lahiya, and Beit Hanoun are living through an unrelenting siege that has stripped them of food, water, and any illusion of safety. Survivors describe a nightmare beyond comprehension: airstrikes and shelling so incessant that their bodies haven’t stopped trembling. The Israeli military operation, which began during the early hours of…

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There are no ‘safe zones’ in Syria for refugees forced to return home

There are no ‘safe zones’ in Syria for refugees forced to return home

Rena Netjes and Sophie Fullerton report: Israel’s escalating war in Lebanon has displaced more than 1.2 million people across the country in recent weeks. Those displaced are not only Lebanese civilians but also an estimated 250,000 Syrian refugees who have fled back into neighboring Syria since Israel’s bombing campaign began last month. Some 1.5 million Syrian refugees living precariously in Lebanon for more than a decade, after fleeing civil war in their own country, have faced the threat of detention…

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‘Stop profiting off genocide’: 200 arrested at Jewish Voice for Peace protest at NY Stock Exchange

‘Stop profiting off genocide’: 200 arrested at Jewish Voice for Peace protest at NY Stock Exchange

  “There is nothing antisemitic about fighting for people’s right to live,” says Jewish Voice for Peace organizer Elena Stein, who on Monday joined hundreds of protesters arrested to block entrances to the New York Stock Exchange. We discuss the historic mass protest, which called for an Israeli arms embargo and an end to war profiteering by companies like Raytheon and Lockheed Martin. “We are filled with horror beyond words and are attempting to embody just an ounce of that…

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U.S. suggests military aid to Israel is at risk in letter demanding more aid for Gaza

U.S. suggests military aid to Israel is at risk in letter demanding more aid for Gaza

CNN reports: The Biden administration sent a letter to the Israeli government demanding it act to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza within the next 30 days or risk violating US laws governing foreign military assistance, suggesting US military aid could be in jeopardy. The Sunday letter, jointly written by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, is addressed to Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant and Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer. It marks…

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UN says no food has entered northern Gaza since start of October, putting 1 million people at risk of starvation

UN says no food has entered northern Gaza since start of October, putting 1 million people at risk of starvation

CNN reports: No food has entered northern Gaza since the start of October, putting 1 million people at risk of going hungry, the World Food Programme told CNN on Friday. In August, approximately 700 hundred aid trucks entered northern Gaza. In September, only 400 aid trucks entered, after commercial operations ceased at the Allenby Crossing on the border between the occupied West Bank and Jordan, the WFP added. No food trucks have entered northern Gaza in October, the WFP told…

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UK urged to take action against Israel as ‘Generals’ Plan’ takes shape in north Gaza

UK urged to take action against Israel as ‘Generals’ Plan’ takes shape in north Gaza

Middle East Eye reports: Several MPs have urged the UK government to take firm action against Israel after it launched a major military offensive in northern parts of Gaza and ordered the forced mass displacement of nearly 400,000 Palestinians living there. For six consecutive days, Israeli forces have pummelled the Jabalia refugee camp with air strikes and artillery shelling, despite ordering residents to leave their homes and head south to the Mawasi “humanitarian zone”. At least 120 Palestinians are known…

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Israel orders Gazans to leave the north, but most are staying put

Israel orders Gazans to leave the north, but most are staying put

The New York Times reports: For more than a year, as Israeli bombs pounded northern Gaza around Mariam Awwad’s home, she and her family of 11 have refused to leave. Their resolve did not change even after the Israeli military dropped leaflets over the town of Jabaliya on Sunday, ordering Palestinians in northern Gaza to evacuate to the south. The military was renewing an offensive on the north, saying it was going after Hamas fighters. “We refuse to flee only…

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