"Despite recent improvements, content moderation technologies still fail to understand context, thereby posing risks to users’ free speech, access to information and equality. Consequently, it is concluded, these technologies should not be the sole basis for reaching decisions that directly affect user expression."
Human Rights Law Review, Volume 20, Issue 4, December 2020
Today in Labor History June 4, 1939: The U.S. blocked the MS St. Louis from landing in Florida. The ship carried 963 Jewish refugees who were fleeing the Nazis. Canada also refused. As a result, the ship was forced back to Europe. Over 200 of its passengers ultimately died in Nazi concentration camps. The ordeal is also known as the Voyage of the Damned. This event has been depicted in numerous books, including Julian Barnes’s novel, A History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters (1989); Bodie and Brock Thoene's novel Munich Signature (1991); and Leonardo Padura's novel Herejes (2013). Cordell Hull, who was Secretary of State at the time, and who led the fight to turn the refugees away, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1944. It was one of the worst Nobel prizes ever awarded (along with Henry Kissinger (1973), who facilitated bloody dictatorships in Chile and Argentina, genocides in Bangladesh and East Timor, and carpet bombing of Cambodia. Or Elihu Root (1912), the U.S. Secretary of War who oversaw the brutal repression of the Filipino independence movement. And let’s not forget Shimon Peres, Yitzak Rabin and Yasser Arafat (1994), who jointly won the Nobel Peace Prize despite their histories of human rights abuses. Or Aung San Suu Kyi (1991). Or Mikhail Gorbachev (1990), who sent tanks into the Baltic republics less than a year after winning his “peace” prize, killing numerous civilians. Or Barack Obama (2009), who began assassinating civilians with his drones and arresting more immigrants than his predecessor, George W. Bush, not long after winning his Nobel. Or Woodrow Wilson (1919), an outright racist and apologist for slavery, who sent troops to occupy Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic, and to “intervene” in Cuba, Honduras and Panama, and who oversaw the Palmer raids that led to over 10,000 arrests and over 500 deportations of union leaders, peace activists, socialists and anarchists. Or Menachem Begin (1978), who four years after receiving his “peace” prize launched the bloody invasion of Lebanon, and who refused to fire Ariel Sharon, even after the Kahan Commission found Sharon culpable for the Sabra and Shatila massacre.
When the slaughter finally stops in Gaza, perhaps they’ll give Biden a Nobel Peace Prize “for bringing peace” to Palestine. They might even include Netanyahu, for “going against the right wing of his government” and signing onto the peace plan.
I've only read a few Palestinian prisoners stories and I have to stop each time. I'm usually one who can sit and read for hours. It's devastating but necessary reading - we MUST get these stories to as many eyes as possible.
After 10 days of detention by Israeli occupation forces, the traces of #torture on the body of Palestinian #prisoner Amir Shuja'iyeh from #Ramallah are evident.
Sina Yousefi, a lawyer, announced the assassination attempt of a lawyer by publishing pictures on social media and wrote:
Afshin Ghasemi, who is a prominent human rights lawyer and a member of the Central Bar Association, was attacked today at around five in the evening by armed and unknown people.
He had previously been threatened by unknown agents related to the case party for taking charge of a case in which there were accusations of #rape against women.
It is said that the assailants were three people armed with firearms and cold weapons, who rode in a "Persia" car (without license plate) in an almost busy area and assaulted this lawyer.
At the same time as the international day of lawyers at risk (2024) is dedicated to Iranian lawyers, the government of Iran does not take any security and legal measures to prevent the murder and assassination of lawyers, but puts their lives under threat with propaganda measures against lawyers. #Hamava #woman life of freedom #HumanRights#Terrorism#IRI #Politics
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سوقصد به جان افشین قاسمی، وکیل دادگستری
سینا یوسفی، وکیل دادگستری با انتشار تصاویری در شبکه اجتماعی از سوءقصد به جان یک وکیل خبر داد و نوشت:
افشین قاسمی وکیل دادگستری و عضو کانون وکلای مرکز امروز در حدود ساعت پنج عصر مورد سوقصد افراد مسلح و ناشناس قرار گرفت.
ایشان قبلاً بخاطر بر عهده گرفتن پروندهای که در آن اتهامات #تجاوز به زنان وجود داشت، مورد تهدید از سوی عوامل ناشناس و مرتبط با طرف پرونده قرار گرفته بود.
گفته میشود ضاربین سه نفر فرد مسلح به سلاح گرم و سرد بودند که سوار بر خودروی پرشیا (بدون پلاک) در یک منطقه تقریبا پر رفت و آمد اقدام به ضرب و جرح این وکیل دادگستری نمودهاند.
همزمان با اختصاص روز جهانی وکلای در معرض خطر (۲۰۲۴) به وکلای ایران، حکومت ایران هیچ اقدام تامینی و قانونی در راستای جلوگیری از قتل و سوقصد به وکلا انجام نمیدهد بلکه با اقدامات تبلیغی علیه وکلا، جان آنها را در معرض تهدید قرار میدهد. #همآوا #زنزندگیآزادی
"...[Sara] says after her bag was searched she was... banned from all stores using the #Technology.
"I was just crying and crying the entire journey home… 'Oh, will my life be the same? I'm going to be looked at as a shoplifter when I've never stolen'.
"#Facewatch later wrote to Sara and acknowledged it had made an error..."
“The Louisiana House on Tuesday passed a bill that classifies the two drugs used to induce an abortion as ‘controlled dangerous substances,'” the Washington Post reports.
“Abortion opponents hope the measure, now on its way to Gov. Jeff Landry, will be a template for conservative states trying to end the procedure.”
Hostages of Israeli revenge in the Gaza Strip: Testimonies of 100 released Palestinian detainees reveal crimes of torture, cruel treatment
Palestinian Territory - In a new report released Tuesday, Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor documents the testimonies of about 100 released Palestinian detainees. These testimonies confirm that the Israeli authorities and army committed horrific crimes of arbitrary detention, enforced disappearance, torture, and inhuman and cruel treatment against thousands of Palestinian civilians who were arrested as part of Israel’s genocide in the Gaza Strip, ongoing since 7 October 2023.
#SouthCarolina’s Republican governor, Henry McMaster, signed a bill on Tuesday that bars health professionals from performing gender-transition surgeries, prescribing puberty blocking drugs and overseeing hormone treatments for patients under 18. The state now joins about two dozen others that have passed laws restricting or banning what doctors call gender-affirming care for minors. (1/2)
@GottaLaff The #GOP is intolerant of human rights, period. They use their extreme positions to curry favor, and votes, from their rabid base. They long since abandoned their concept of "small government" in favor of government control of every aspect of people's lives. America doesn't need to become even more of a fascist country than is already present in many "Red States". #VoteBlue for #HumanRights and for #WomensRights along with #LGBTQIA rights.
"Israeli soldiers and police tipping off groups that attack Gaza aid trucks" ...
"Individual members of Israel’s security forces are tipping off far-right activists and settlers to the location of #aid trucks delivering vital supplies to #Gaza, enabling the groups to block and vandalise the convoys, according to multiple sources.
#Settlers intercepting the vital #humanitarian supplies to the strip are receiving information about the location of the aid trucks from members of the Israeli police and military, a spokesperson from the main Israeli activist group behind the blockades told the #Guardian.
The claim of collusion by members of the security forces is supported by messages from internal internet chat groups reviewed by the Guardian as well as accounts from a number of witnesses and human rights activists."
"After more than seven months of the Israeli genocide in #Gaza – a word Physicians for Human Rights-Israel still refuses to use – the group acknowledges that “the Israeli government and other entities have been exploiting reports of sexual violence in a manipulative and cynical manner.”
Too little, too late!"
Actualizing Human Rights: Global Inequality, Future People, and Motivation by Jos Philips, 2020
Taking a perspective from moral and political philosophy, the book focuses on two challenges to human rights that have until now received little attention, but that need to be addressed if human rights are to remain plausible as a global ideal.
“Forced displacement is a grave crime that is negatively impacting the lives of over a million civilians, most of whom are women and children. As it is being carried out methodically and extensively, it is considered a crime against humanity and a war crime, and is included in the crime of genocide that Israel is committing in the Gaza Strip.”
Matthew McManus writes that those who imagine that there was a pre-Trump iteration of the US right in which the right was moderate are indulging in fantasy.
The right has long been driven by the radical determination to turn back the tide of equal rights for minority groups and legislate the notion that some people are superior to others.