#Violation-Free Campaign

[hargo-news]

Monitor Participants' Campaigns, Amran: Ensuring Implementation within Rule Corridors

#MonitorElectionCampaigns #ImplementationCompliance Monitor Participants' Campaigns, Amran: Ensuring Implementation within Rule Corridors

Hargo.co.id, GORONTALO – The Election Supervisory Board (Bawaslu) of Pohuwato Regency once again monitored election campaigns by participants in Taluduyunu Utara Village, Buntulia Subdistrict, on Thursday (14/12/2023). Amran Hulubangga, Coordinator of the Legal Division, Prevention, Community Participation, and Public Relations at Bawaslu Pohuwato, stated that the monitoring was carried out by a…

[knackfandomarchive]

I'm real sick of a certain fast food franchise in light of current events, so are there any other minimum wage places that have a red/yellow scheme and play structures?

[thenewzpeg]

Alleging tax terrorism, Congress questions motive, timing behind Rs 1823 cr IT demand 

NEW DELHI, March 29: Alleging tax terrorism and apprehending that no free and fair elections were possible in the country under current circumstances, the Congress today lashed out at the Income Tax department for its blatant and partisan misuse of power by selectively targeting the Congress party in the midst of General Elections.  The party leaders revealed that the IT had only yesterday…

[reasonsforhope]

An illegal toxic dump site in Croatia, the theft of water from a major aquifer in southern Spain, illegal trading of ozone-depleting refrigerants in France: This is just a sampling of the environmental crimes that European countries are struggling to stop. The lack of accountability for these acts stems in part from the European Union’s legal code, which experts say is riddled with vague definitions and gaps in enforcement. That’s about to change. 

Last week, EU lawmakers voted in a new directive that criminalizes cases of environmental damage “comparable to ecocide,” a term broadly defined as the severe, widespread, and long-term destruction of the natural world. Advocates called the move “revolutionary,” both because it sets strict penalties for violators, including up to a decade in jail, and because it marks the first time that an international body has created a legal pathway for the prosecution of ecocide.

“This decision marks the end of impunity for environmental criminals and could usher in a new age of environmental litigation in Europe,” wrote Marie Toussaint, a French lawyer and EU parliamentarian for the Greens/European Free Alliance group, on X...

The new directive uses the term “ecocide” in its preamble, but does not criminalize the act by laying out a legal definition (the most widely accepted definition of ecocide was developed by an international panel of experts in 2021). Instead, it works by providing a list of “qualified offenses,” or crimes that fall within its purview. These include pollution from ships, the introduction of invasive species, and ozone depletion...

The new law holds people liable for environmental destruction if they acted with knowledge of the damage their actions would cause. This aspect of the law is important, experts said, because it means that a permit is no longer enough for a company to avoid culpability.  

“If new information shows that behavior is causing irreversible damage to health and nature – you will have to stop,” a member of the European Parliament from the Netherlands, Antonius Manders, told Euronews. 

Advocates like Mehta hope that the EU’s move will have influence beyond Europe’s borders. The principal goal of the Stop Ecocide campaign is for the International Criminal Court to designate ecocide as the fifth international crime that it prosecutes, after crimes against humanity, war crimes, crimes of aggression, and genocide. At the moment, environmental destruction can only be prosecuted as a war crime at the ICC, and limitations in the law make this extremely difficult to do...

Kate Mackintosh, the executive director of the Netherlands-based UCLA Law Promise Institute Europe, told Grist that the ICC is unlikely to adopt an ecocide law if other countries do not do so first. 

“It’s not something you can just pull out of thin air,” she said, adding that any international legal doctrine has to have a precedent on the national level. “That’s the way states are going to accept it.”

The EU’s 27 member states will have two years to adapt the new legislation into their penal codes. Afterwards, their implementation must be reviewed and updated at least once every five years using a “risk-analysis based approach,” to account for advancements in experts’ understanding of what might constitute an environmental crime. Mehta said that despite its omission of some important offenses, the law sets an important example for other countries. Several days before the EU vote, Belgium adapted its criminal code to include the directive, making it the first country in Europe to recognize ecocide as a crime.

The ruling “shows leadership and compassion,” Mehta said. “It will establish a clear moral as well as legal ‘red line’, creating an essential steer for European industry leaders and policy-makers going forward.”

-via Grist, March 6, 2024

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The unexpected upside of global monopoly capitalism

I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me TODAY (Apr 10) at UCLA, then Chicago (Apr 17), Torino (Apr 21) Marin County (Apr 27), Winnipeg (May 2), Calgary (May 3), Vancouver (May 4), and beyond!

Here's a silver lining to global monopoly capitalism: it means we're all fighting the same enemy, who is using the same tactics everywhere. The same coordination tools that allow corporations to extend their tendrils to every corner of the Earth allows regulators and labor organizers to coordinate their resistance.

That's a lesson Mercedes is learning. In 2023, Germany's Supply Chain Act went into effect, which bans large corporations with a German presence from using child labor, violating health and safety standards, and (critically) interfering with union organizers:

https://www.bafa.de/EN/Supply_Chain_Act/Overview/overview_node.html

Across the ocean, in the USA, Mercedes has a preference for building its cars in the American South, the so-called "right to work" states where US labor law is routinely flouted and unions are thin on the ground. As The American Prospect's Harold Meyerson writes, the only non-union Mercedes factories in the world are in the US:

https://prospect.org/labor/2024-04-08-american-workers-german-law-uaw-unions/

But American workers – especially southern workers – are on an organizing tear, unionizing their workplaces at a rate not seen in generations. Their unprecedented success is down to their commitment, solidarity and shrewd tactics – all buoyed by a refreshingly pro-worker NLRB, who have workers' backs in ways also not seen since the Carter administration:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/14/prop-22-never-again/#norms-code-laws-markets

Workers at Mercedes' factory in Vance, Alabama are trying to join the UAW, and Mercedes is playing dirty, using the tried-and-true union-busting tactics that have held workplace democracy at bay for decades. The UAW has lodged a complaint with the NLRB, naturally:

https://www.commondreams.org/news/alabama-mercedes-benz

But the UAW has also filed a complaint with BAFA, the German regulator in charge of the Supply Chain Act, seeking penalties against Mercedes-Benz Group AG:

https://uaw.org/uaw-files-charges-in-germany-against-mercedes-benz-companys-anti-union-campaign-against-u-s-autoworkers-violates-new-german-law-on-global-supply-chain-practices/

That's a huge deal, because the German Supply Chain Act goes hard. If Mercedes is convicted of union-busting in Alabama, its German parent-company faces a fine of 2% of its global total revenue, and will no longer be eligible to sell products to the German government. Chomp.

Now, the German Supply Chain Act is new, and this is the first petition filed by a non-German union with BAFA, so it's not a slam dunk. But supermajorities of Mercedes workers at the Alabama factory have signed UAW cards, and the election is going to happen in May or June. And the UAW – under new leadership, thanks to a revolution that overthrew the corrupt old guard – has its sights set on all the auto-makers in the American south.

As Meyerson writes, the south is America's onshore offshore, a regulatory haven where corporations pay minimal or no tax and are free to abuse their workers, pollute, and corrupt local governments with a free hand (no wonder American industry is flocking to these states). Meyerson: "The economic impact of unionizing the South, in other words, could almost be placed in the same category as reshoring work that had gone to China."

The German Supply Chain Act was passed with the help of Germany's powerful labor unions, in an act of solidarity with workers employed by German companies all over the world. This is that unexpected benefit to globalism: the fact that Mercedes has extrusions into both the American and German political spheres means that both American and German workers can collaborate to bring it to heel.

The same is true for antitrust regulators. The multinational corporations that are in regulators' crosshairs in the US, the EU, the UK, Australia, Japan, South Korea and beyond use the same playbook in every country. That's doubly true of Big Tech companies, who literally run the same code – embodying the same illegal practices – on servers in every country.

The UK's Competition and Markets Authority has led the pack on convening summits where antitrust enforcers from all over the world gather to compare notes and collaborate on enforcement strategies:

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/cma-data-technology-and-analytics-conference-2022-registration-308678625077

And the CMA's Digital Markets Unit – which boasts the the largest tech staff of any competition regulator in the world – produces detailed market studies that turn out to be roadmaps for other territories' enforces to follow – like this mobile market study:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/63f61bc0d3bf7f62e8c34a02/Mobile_Ecosystems_Final_Report_amended_2.pdf

Which was extensively referenced in the EU during the planning of the Digital Markets Act, and in the US Congress for similar legislation:

https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/2710

It also helped enforcers in Japan:

https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Technology/Japan-to-crack-down-on-Apple-and-Google-app-store-monopolies

And South Korea:

https://www.reuters.com/technology/skorea-considers-505-mln-fine-against-google-apple-over-app-market-practices-2023-10-06/

Just as Mercedes workers in Germany and the USA share a common enemy, allowing for coordinated action that takes advantage of vulnerable flanks wherever they are found, anti-monopoly enforcers are sharing notes, evidence, and tactics to strike at multinationals that are bigger than most countries – but not when those countries combine.

This is an unexpected upside to global monopolies: when we all share a common enemy, we've got endless opportunities for coordinated offenses and devastating pincer maneuvers.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/10/an-injury-to-one/#is-an-injury-to-all

[warningsine]

The Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has died in jail, the country’s prison service has said, in what is likely to be seen as a political assassination attributable to Vladimir Putin.

Navalny, 47, one of Putin’s most visible and persistent critics, was being held in a jail about 40 miles north of the Arctic Circle where he had been sentenced to 19 years under a “special regime”. In a video from the prison in January, he had appeared gaunt with his head shaved.

The Kremlin said it had no information on the cause of death.

In early December he had disappeared from a prison in the Vladimir region, where he was serving a 30-year sentence on extremism and fraud charges that he had called political retribution for leading the anti-Kremlin opposition of the 2010s. He did not expect to be released during Putin’s lifetime.

A former nationalist politician, Navalny helped foment the 2011-12 protests in Russia by campaigning against election fraud and government corruption, investigating Putin’s inner circle and sharing the findings in slick videos that garnered hundreds of millions of views.

The high-water mark in his political career came in 2013, when he won 27% of the vote in a Moscow mayoral contest that few believed was free or fair. He remained a thorn in the side of the Kremlin for years, identifying a palace built on the Black Sea for Putin’s personal use, mansions and yachts used by the ex-president Dmitry Medvedev, and a sex worker who linked a top foreign policy official with a well-known oligarch.

In 2020, Navalny fell into a coma after a suspected poisoning using novichok by Russia’s FSB security service and was evacuated to Germany for treatment. He recovered and returned to Russia in January 2021, where he was arrested on a parole violation charge and sentenced to his first of several jail terms that would total more than 30 years behind bars.

Putin has recently launched a presidential campaign for his fifth term in office. He is already the longest-serving Russian leader since Joseph Stalin and could surpass him if he runs again for office in 2030, a possibility since he had the constitutional rules on term limits rewritten in 2020.

[anobjectshowguy]

I hope people in the OSC (and other fandoms in general) who are ok with or neutral about Kosa realize that not only will we lose a bunch of platforms that allow us to interact with each other (Tumblr, discord, Ao3, Wattpad, Twitter, YouTube, etc) but will also get rid of at least 80-95% of our fandom.

The OSC consists mostly of people between 13-17 who (if Kosa goes through the Senate and Houses of Representatives and gets passed as a law) will most likely no longer have access to YouTube and other social platforms which actively kills almost all the people who read and watch Object Shows!

By visiting and sharing animated shows like II or BFDI those creators make money which gives them the means to keep making their shows and paying their animators, voice actors, writers and so much more. This bill will actively get rid of most of the people who watch these shows which will cause a large loss in support and revenue for these creators and will most likely mean the end for any smaller object show.

Object show comics rely on people sharing them around in fandom spaces since they’re not animated and put on YouTube like animated object shows are. By losing these spaces and the people who support their content these creators will no longer be able to reach a large audience and get the support they need to continue their comics. This means that we will lose a lot of the comics that the OSC has!

Most of the content you see in the OSC is made by minors, which this bill will actively destroy and thus kill this fandom and many others!

So I am begging of you OSC and other communities, Please please please sign petitions, tell your senators and representatives that you don’t want this bill to pass, and tell anyone that you can reach about how this Bill is a violation of privacy and minors' rights! Re-blog anything you see with helpful information about what Kosa is and keep talking about it! We need to tell people about it so that this doesn’t go through the Senate. Remember, the final day is February 26, we don’t have that long!!!

Here’s some helpful resources:

 https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/07/you-can-help-stop-these-bad-internet-bills

[healingheartdogs]

Actually incredibly concerning and scary how much I am NOT seeing people talk about the RESTRICT outside of TikTok because they're being successfully distracted by our politicians framing this as just a TikTok ban. If you have not read this bill yet I am begging you to do so and then contact your representatives about it. This is a gross overreach by our government and clearly violates the first amendment in this country. If this bill passes it will give our government free reign to censor or ban any internet service with over a million users -- including things like video games, not just apps like TikTok -- with NO OVERSIGHT AT ALL. Punishments for trying to get around these bans and censors can be up to a million dollars or UP TO 20 YEARS IN PRISON.

Seriously, read this bill, spread information to your circles, and HARASS YOUR REPS ABOUT THIS. Call them up and tell them if they support this bill you will actively campaign for their competition in the next election. If you don't like phone calls, email them. If you don't like typing emails then get ChatGPT to make one up for you and all you have to do is send it. This is TIME SENSITIVE. We need to make as much noise about this as possible ASAP. This bill is a direct attack on the first amendment and on FOIA, the Freedom of Information Act. This is SCARY.

This is a bipartisan issue that will affect all of us. It doesn't matter what political party you stand for, both Dems and Repubs are supporting this violation of our rights and censorship of the internet. Meta is hardcore lobbying for this bill and politicians on both sides are happily taking their bribes to fuck us over. Make noise about it, please.

[ms-demeanor]

Not to be rude or derailing your answer to the ask about the scorched earth post, but I do think quite genuinely that the site is becoming more openly hostile to its userbase, or at the very least its disabled userbase. While I’m not a fan of mobbing people’s personal blogs in targeted harassment campaigns, I think some people are also ignoring that staff blatantly said in a recent post that epileptic users would need to pay for ad-free to have their safety assured

I kind of don’t think that’s being ethical or user friendly, to me that sounds like they’re refusing to meet basic accessibility requests and answering with ‘pay us money to be safe’. Strobing and flashing ads aren’t just eyestraining, they can legitimately lead to serious injuries for epileptic folk, and telling people with epilepsy to just pay up or get lost is kinda… I dunno… disgusting?

So it looks like in a livestream (not on a post so far as I've been able to see) either photomatt or zingring made a glib and inappropriate response to an epileptic user asking about flashing ads and suggested that maybe they needed to pay for ad-free.

That's bad, I don't like it, and if it was supposed to be a joke it was a shitty one.

Zingring, tumblr's COO addressed that comment in a post where she said:

Buying ad-free (or gifting ad-free to someone else) is always an option, but that is not the solution (and of course, some folks simply can’t afford it). Sorry that it sounded dismissive in the session! That was not my intent.

I still think that's inappropriate (it's not that ad free isn't *the* solution, ad free shouldn't be *a* solution to accessibility), but it looks like Zingring has addressed this issue multiple times.

She got tagged in this post listing ways that tumblr could improve accessibility for photosensitive users and seems to have pretty consistently followed up; she has explained that there are rules against flashing ads that are sometimes violated by the advertisers and asks people to please report ads that break those rules so those advertisers can be blocked, has noted that there is apparently a "stop all autoplay" option in the works behind the scenes. She does also seem to take it seriously when users reach out with complaints about accessibility issues and seems to be willing to explore options.

Looking through that blog, this does not seem to be a site that is hostile to users with accessibility issues so much as, like everything else that's wrong around here, it is ridiculously understaffed so every project that someone wants to have as a priority is a project that someone else needs put on the backburner.

However, to very gently push back: how much of what you're experiencing as hostility from tumblr is actual hostility and how much of it is seeing posts like this, which suggests that tumblr is removing accessibility features because the lightbox didn't have double-tap-to-zoom on mobile for some users for a short while, claims that the blocking/flagging issue is a false flag against trans women, shared the inaccurate fearmongering post about tumblr live's ToS, and also claimed that tumblr "allowed" flashing ads that violated the in-place rules that tumblr has for advertising?

(this kind of goes with the 'nobody understands the ToS' but also nobody understands ads; tumblr does not have enough staff to look over the ads that go on their site every day, no social media company does, they rely on advertiser agreements as a sort of enhanced honor system and reports from users if the advertisers don't hold up their end of the bargain; the only way around this for any site that uses ads is to not have ads and that post is explicitly saying don't pay for tumblr because they are doing ads wrong - either they have to run ads and some bad ones are going to slip through and users will have to report them or tumblr will have to be 100% paid by the users or tumblr will go away. If you see ads that are unsafe for photosensitive users on *any* website you should report them to the site because the site almost certainly doesn't know that there's an advertiser violating the ad ToS unless someone tells them)

Generally speaking, I am actually *not* seeing worsening accessibility features, I'm seeing improvements compared to where we were five years ago - alt text on images is now built-in and devs are working hard on making tumblr more compatible with screen readers (as noted in the changes blog regularly); tumblr itself started offering different dashboard themes for users after years of complaints about contrast levels and readability; the "tiktok/twitterified" desktop dash view that everyone hates is supposed to be more readable on wider screens.

Compare this post in October of 2022 when Changes celebrated adding animations for posting (and told users those could only be disabled at an OS or browser level) with this post from July 2023 when they rolled back a feature because of an unexpected use case that could cause problems for photosensitive users.

These aren't things that I'd expect to see from a company that didn't care about accessibility, or that was openly hostile to questions around making the site more accessible.

I don't disagree with you that the comment from the stream about buying ad free was inappropriate; it absolutely was and it must have made photosensitive users feel like shit. But in the three months since that comment tumblr has been very responsive about getting flashing ads removed as soon as possible and seems to be working on more permanent fixes. I think this may be an instance of able-bodied people not realizing how shitty and dehumanizing their joke was (and it was) and taking the steps to do better.

If you don't think they're doing better, I probably can't convince you. I certainly don't think that tumblr is perfect about accessibility and I think that users need to continue pushing for improved user control of how the site displays and interacts with various devices. But compared to the kind of responses users complaints got from staff in 2018? I feel like things have improved a lot.

[fuckyeahmarxismleninism]

Statement issued by the Palestinian factions regarding the zionist aggression and the genocide war against our Palestinian people

O our steadfast Palestinian people, O masses of our Islamic and Arab nation, O free people of the world everywhere,

Amid the escalating genocide war and starvation waged by the Nazi enemy against our Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip, and its threats to expand the aggression and war on Rafah, which shelters about a million and a half citizens, posing a threat to Egypt's sovereignty and national security, the ongoing violations in the West Bank and occupied Al-Quds, and the extremist Nazi government's insistence on executing annexation, expansion, and forced displacement plans, and liquidating the refugee issue through the systematic targeting of "UNRWA," the Palestinian factions call on our people, the masses of our Arab and Islamic nation, and all the free people and supporters of justice and rights in the world to launch the widest popular campaign to reject aggression and demand an end to the war and thwart genocide and starvation plans.

We urge Arab and Islamic governments to take urgent action and apply the necessary political pressure at the international level to stop the aggression and confront the enemy's plans.

We also call on Arab, Islamic, and international parties and forces that support the Palestinian people to take their role and fulfill their duties to protect the Palestinian cause and not leave the Palestinian people alone to face all this zionist terrorism and racism filled with hatred and instruments of killing and destruction.

We make a call from the heart of Palestine, amidst the siege and destruction, to consider Friday, 16-2-2024, as a global national day to support the Palestinian right in all Arab and Islamic countries, and Saturday and Sunday, 17/18-2-2024, as global days to support the Palestinian people in all European, Western, Latin American, and East Asian countries.

The movement of masses, parties, and currents in various countries around the world is capable of creating pressure and impact, capable of changing the positions of governments and countries to contain this zionist Nazi terrorism.

Therefore, we appeal to all forces, parties, trade and parliamentary unions everywhere to take their role, fulfill their responsibility, and affirm their alignment with the Palestinian cause and stand by the Palestinian people who are subjected to the most horrific massacres, crimes, and destructive wars.

We call on our people to unite and stand together against the projects of displacement and the liquidation of the Palestinian cause, to hold onto our land, preserve it, and head to the areas we were expelled from on the path of return to Palestine.

We praise the legendary patience and steadfastness of our people, their support, and embrace of the resistance and its heroic performance. We also call on our people in the West Bank, Al-Quds, and the occupied Palestinian lands to mobilize and confront the occupation in all arenas.

We praise the valiant performance of the resistance on multiple fronts, especially in Lebanon, Yemen, and Iraq, and call for its continuation until the aggression is repelled from our people.

Mercy for the martyrs, healing for the wounded, freedom for the prisoners, victory for our steadfast people and their valiant resistance.

The Palestinian Factions

Thursday: 05 Sha'ban 1445H

Corresponding to: 15 February 2024

Source: https://t.me/PalestineResist/29420

[barbiegirldream]

the ‘believe victims’ crowd is about to be real quiet when Dream himself is a victim of revenge porn dear god im going to cry

The thing of it is Dream has been a victim for a long time. But a survivor too. Of domestic violence. We discuss kiwi farms neo nazi campaign to get rid of him. But avoid mentioning his abuser contributed all his personal info to them. I don't know if it's even appropriate to bring up now. But abusers don't stop if they can get access to you they will continue abusing you. Dream's ex has shown this again and again and again. Because abuse is pathological abusers are birds of a feather. Their behaviors are not hard to predict. And I'm sure this comes as no shock to Dream but it is no less violating and abusive. And I just hope to god things can settle down for him one day. This is all I'll say on the matter. It's just so disgusting he has to keep laying this down for everyone to see instead of being able to heal in private and actual be free of her

[jasmineiros]

"Trial scheduled for September 20th at the Supreme Federal Court may determine the future of Indigenous Lands in Brazilian territory and be crucial for the global climate. The indigenous movement is mobilizing across Brazil, and an indigenous delegation from Apib is in New York during Climate Week to strengthen the international mobilization campaign in defense of Indigenous Lands rights."

"We are on the land, and the land is within us. If the land dies, we as indigenous peoples die."

The Articulação dos Povos Indígenas do Brasil (Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil — APIB) is calling for nationwide mobilizations this week and participating in the New York Climate Week to alert the world to the risks of the Supreme Federal Court (STF) judgment scheduled for September 20th. The court will vote on the legitimacy of the legal concept known as the "Temporal Framework," advocated by the Brazilian agribusiness, which could reevaluate Indigenous Land demarcations and impact global climate crisis mitigation efforts.

The Temporal Framework suggests that only indigenous people who can prove they were living on the land in 1988, the same year the Federal Constitution was created, should have rights to the land. This disregards the forced displacements of hundreds of indigenous groups who could only reclaim their traditional lands after Brazil's redemocratization in the late 1980s.

This week, the 15th edition of Climate Week is taking place in New York from September 17th to 24th, alongside the 78th Session of the United Nations General Assembly from September 19th to 23rd, which will feature a speech by President Lula during its opening. A delegation of 10 indigenous leaders is in New York to participate in Climate Week's activities. The international mobilization's goal is to emphasize to the world that the Temporal Framework is a threat to the lives of Brazil's indigenous peoples and could exacerbate the climate crisis, as Indigenous Lands serve as a reservoir of life on the planet.

Apib and its regional organizations are reinforcing mobilizations in territories, cities, and Brasília against the Temporal Framework on September 20th. The goal is to monitor the trial and strengthen the next steps of the indigenous movement's fight. The organizations within Apib mobilized over 220 protests in 21 states, including the Federal District, between May and June.

Five Supreme Federal Court (STF) justices are yet to vote in the trial. The current tally stands at four votes against the Temporal Framework thesis and two in favor. Justices Edson Fachin, Alexandre de Moraes, Cristiano Zanin, and Luís Roberto Barroso have expressed opposition to the agribusiness-backed thesis, while the only favorable votes came from justices appointed by former President Jair Bolsonaro, André Mendonça, and Nunes Marques.

On the same day as the STF vote, the Brazilian Senate attempts to put the Temporal Framework into law. The ruralist caucus in Congress seeks to create tension with the Brazilian judiciary since there is a possibility that the STF may invalidate the Temporal Framework thesis.

In addition to the Temporal Framework, Bill 2903 proposes other setbacks to the rights of indigenous peoples, such as the construction of highways and hydroelectric plants in indigenous territories without free, prior, and informed consent from affected communities. The proposal also aims to allow farmers to enter production contracts with indigenous people, violating the rights of indigenous peoples to the exclusive use of demarcated territories.

While some falsely claim that "there is too much land for too few indigenous people in Brazil," Apib counters that there is too much land for too few farmers and that agribusiness promotes the illegal invasion of indigenous lands. The entity asserts,

"There is no solution to the climate crisis without guaranteeing the rights of indigenous peoples and the demarcation of their territories."

Currently, nearly half of Brazil's land is in the hands of rural producers. Of the total land in the country, 41% corresponds to rural properties, 13.7% to indigenous lands, and 45.2% to other purposes, according to data published in the Official Gazette of the Union. Indigenous Lands are a guarantee of life for indigenous peoples and for all of humanity, which depends on the climate's future.

"As worsening climate crisis unfolds, many will be marked in history as accomplices to the new colonialism threatening the survival of us, indigenous peoples who inhabit the vast territory known as Brazil, and the future of all humanity because there is no solution to the climate crisis without the involvement of indigenous peoples," emphasizes Dinamam Tuxá.

Key activities of Apib during the 15th edition of Climate Week from September 17th to 24th:

On September 17th, Apib participated in the Climate Week march through the streets of New York in support of the Fight Fossil Fuel Strike. The indigenous delegation from Apib denounced the threat posed by the Temporal Framework thesis, highlighted the indigenous emergency situation concerning extractive industries and agribusiness that lead to multiple instances of violence in our territories. Additionally, as part of the Climate Week agenda, it's worth noting that Apib's executive coordinators Kleber Karipuna, Dinamam Tuxá, and other members of the indigenous delegation will participate in a talk on September 19th titled "FCLP: Rights, Participation, and Benefits for Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities in Forest Climate Financing," organized by the Forest and Climate Leaders Partnership. On September 22nd, a portion of the delegation will be present at a dialogue co-organized with H.E Razan Al Mubarak, the current president of the International Union for Conservation of Nature, to assess progress in the COP28 agenda with the aim of collectively identifying meaningful and respectful ways for Indigenous Peoples to engage in the COP.

About APIB

The Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (Apib) is a nationally recognized entity within the indigenous movement in Brazil, created from the grassroots up. It brings together seven regional indigenous organizations (Apoinme, ArpinSudeste, ArpinSul, Aty Guasu, Conselho Terena, Coaib, and Comissão Guarani Yvyrupa) and was founded with the purpose of strengthening the unity of our peoples, fostering coordination among different regions and indigenous organizations across the country, as well as mobilizing indigenous peoples and organizations against threats and infringements on indigenous rights.

Support/donate to APIB

APIB Instagram page

APIB Website

[picturingchappell]

Not they tryna reenact KOSA… anyway yall, here’s why KOSA is bad!!

If you don’t already know, KOSA, or Kids Online Safety Act is a bill that was proposed to keep children safe on the internet. You might ask ‘why is this bill bad if it’s in favor of supporting the safety of children online’? Well, according to stopkosa.com, it puts pressure on platforms to add even MORE filters on anything they think is inappropriate for children. This is especially harmful for LBGTQIA+ youth because the knowledge about this topic would be censored, as well as knowledge on suicide prevention and LGBTQIA+ support groups. Do you see how this an issue? For those children who are wanting to learn more about these topics they’d be turned away because of this bill. It would also be likely that it’ll allow the shutdown of websites that allow them to learn about race, sexuality and gender.

This bill would also add more internet surveillance for all users across all social media platforms. It would expand the use of age verification and parental monitoring controls. These things in itself are already very invasive, but doesn’t take into consideration the children who live in unsafe environments where they are domestically abused and/or are trying to escape these situations. To add my two cents onto this, I strongly believe that the KOSA bill is an unnecessary violation of our first amendment rights (if you’re American), and doesn’t really make the internet any more safer. It actually makes it more unusable for youth. Hypothetically, if this bill were to be passed, then this would make social media unusable for literally anybody. To censor content from the youth about wanting to learn about their identity is extremely harmful. Blocking them from accessing resources that may prove as helpful in their scenarios is outlandish and unneeded. We try to shelter our youth so much to the point where we try to boil them down to only being with their parents want them to be and also not being able to let them learn and explore about other things that they may want to identify themselves with. This is very harmful.

This is a list of companies who are saying no to KOSA ..

• Access Now

• ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union)

• Black and Pink National

• Center for Democracy & Technology

• COLAGE

• Defending Rights & Dissent

• Don’t Delete Art

• EducateUS: SIECUS In Action

• Electronic Frontier Foundation

• Equality Arizona

• Equality California

• Equality Michigan

• Equality New Mexico

• Equality Texas

• Fair Wisconsin

• Fairness Campaign

• Fight for the Future

• Free Speech Coalition

• Freedom Network USA

• Indivisible Eastside

• Indivisible Plus Washington

• Internet Society

• Kairos

• Lexington Pride Center

• LGBT Technology Partnership

• Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition

• Media Justice

• National Coalition Against Censorship

• Open Technology Institute

• OutNebraska

• PDX Privacy

• Presente.org

• Reframe Health and Justice

• Restore The Fourth

• SIECUS: Sex Ed for Social Change

• SWOP Behind Bars 

• TAKE

• TechFreedom

• The 6:52 Project Foundation, Inc.

• The Sex Workers Project of the Urban Justice Center

• Transgender Education Network of Texas

• TransOhio

• University of Michigan Dearborn – Muslim Student Association 

• URGE

• WA People’s Privacy

• Woodhull Freedom Foundation

There is something you can do to stop the KOSA bill from being passed! On the website I linked, there is a petition. All you have to do is fill out the information and it’ll send off an email for you. The email reads as follows:

I’m writing to urge you to reject the Kids Online Safety Act, a misguided bill that would put vulnerable young people at risk. KOSA would fail to address the root issues related to kid’s safety online. Instead, it would endanger some of the most vulnerable people in our society while undermining human rights and children’s privacy. The bill would result in widespread internet censorship by pressuring platforms to use incredibly broad “content filters” and giving state Attorneys General the power to decide what content kids should and shouldn’t have access to online. This power could be abused in a number of ways and be politicized to censor information and resources. KOSA would also likely lead to the greater surveillance of children online by requiring platforms to gather data to verify user identity. There is a way to protect kids and all people online from egregious data abuse and harmful content targeting: passing a strong Federal data privacy law that prevents tech companies from collecting so much sensitive data about all of us in the first place, and gives individuals the ability to sue companies that misuse their data. KOSA, although well-meaning, must not move forward. Please protect privacy and stop the spread of censorship online by opposing KOSA.

The website also gives you like a format of what you can say if you chose to call your representatives. If after reading this post, you feel inclined to do something then I would say just go ahead and do it. My first time learning about KOSA was today immediately after seeing the post I felt inclined to send my lawmakers an email. Please try to help when you can and this will only take a few minutes so I think this is something that you can consider. This post is getting a little long now, so I’ll stop here. There are more resources online if you would like to learn more about the cons of this KOSA bill, thank you for reading.

[thatsonemorbidcorvid]

“By simply existing as women in public life, we have all become targets, stripped of our accomplishments, our intellect, and our activism and reduced to sex objects for the pleasure of millions of anonymous eyes.

Men, of course, are subject to this abuse far less frequently. In reporting this article, I searched the name Donald Trump on one prominent deepfake-porn website and turned up one video of the former president—and three entire pages of videos depicting his wife, Melania, and daughter Ivanka. A 2019 study from Sensity, a company that monitors synthetic media, estimated that more than 96 percent of deepfakes then in existence were nonconsensual pornography of women.”

Recently, a Google Alert informed me that I am the subject of deepfake pornography. I wasn’t shocked. For more than a year, I have been the target of a widespread online harassment campaign, and deepfake porn—whose creators, using artificial intelligence, generate explicit video clips that seem to show real people in sexual situations that never actually occurred—has become a prized weapon in the arsenal misogynists use to try to drive women out of public life. The only emotion I felt as I informed my lawyers about the latest violation of my privacy was a profound disappointment in the technology—and in the lawmakers and regulators who have offered no justice to people who appear in porn clips without their consent. Many commentators have been tying themselves in knots over the potential threats posed by artificial intelligence—deepfake videos that tip elections or start wars, job-destroying deployments of ChatGPT and other generative technologies. Yet policy makers have all but ignored an urgent AI problem that is already affecting many lives, including mine.

Last year, I resigned as head of the Department of Homeland Security’s Disinformation Governance Board, a policy-coordination body that the Biden administration let founder amid criticism mostly from the right. In subsequent months, at least three artificially generated videos that appear to show me engaging in sex acts were uploaded to websites specializing in deepfake porn. The images don’t look much like me; the generative-AI models that spat them out seem to have been trained on my official U.S. government portrait, taken when I was six months pregnant. Whoever created the videos likely used a free “face swap” tool, essentially pasting my photo onto an existing porn video. In some moments, the original performer’s mouth is visible while the deepfake Frankenstein moves and my face flickers. But these videos aren’t meant to be convincing—all of the websites and the individual videos they host are clearly labeled as fakes. Although they may provide cheap thrills for the viewer, their deeper purpose is to humiliate, shame, and objectify women, especially women who have the temerity to speak out. I am somewhat inured to this abuse, after researching and writing about it for years. But for other women, especially those in more conservative or patriarchal environments, appearing in a deepfake-porn video could be profoundly stigmatizing, even career- or life-threatening.

As if to underscore video makers’ compulsion to punish women who speak out, one of the videos to which Google alerted me depicts me with Hillary Clinton and Greta Thunberg. Because of their global celebrity, deepfakes of the former presidential candidate and the climate-change activist are far more numerous and more graphic than those of me. Users can also easily find deepfake-porn videos of the singer Taylor Swift, the actress Emma Watson, and the former Fox News host Megyn Kelly; Democratic officials such as Kamala Harris, Nancy Pelosi, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez; the Republicans Nikki Haley and Elise Stefanik; and countless other prominent women. By simply existing as women in public life, we have all become targets, stripped of our accomplishments, our intellect, and our activism and reduced to sex objects for the pleasure of millions of anonymous eyes.

Men, of course, are subject to this abuse far less frequently. In reporting this article, I searched the name Donald Trump on one prominent deepfake-porn website and turned up one video of the former president—and three entire pages of videos depicting his wife, Melania, and daughter Ivanka. A 2019 study from Sensity, a company that monitors synthetic media, estimated that more than 96 percent of deepfakes then in existence were nonconsensual pornography of women. The reasons for this disproportion are interconnected, and are both technical and motivational: The people making these videos are presumably heterosexual men who value their own gratification more than they value women’s personhood. And because AI systems are trained on an internet that abounds with images of women’s bodies, much of the nonconsensual porn that those systems generate is more believable than, say, computer-generated clips of cute animals playing would be.

As I looked into the provenance of the videos in which I appear—I’m a disinformation researcher, after all—I stumbled upon deepfake-porn forums where users are remarkably nonchalant about the invasion of privacy they are perpetrating. Some seem to believe that they have a right to distribute these images—that because they fed a publicly available photo of a woman into an application engineered to make pornography, they have created art or a legitimate work of parody. Others apparently think that simply by labeling their videos and images as fake, they can avoid any legal consequences for their actions. These purveyors assert that their videos are for entertainment and educational purposes only. But by using that description for videos of well-known women being “humiliated” or “pounded”—as the titles of some clips put it—these men reveal a lot about what they find pleasurable and informative.

Ironically, some creators who post in deepfake forums show great concern for their own safety and privacy—in one forum thread that I found, a man is ridiculed for having signed up with a face-swapping app that does not protect user data—but insist that the women they depict do not have those same rights, because they have chosen public career paths. The most chilling page I found lists women who are turning 18 this year; they are removed on their birthdays from “blacklists” that deepfake-forum hosts maintain so they don’t run afoul of laws against child pornography.

Effective laws are exactly what the victims of deepfake porn need. Several states—including Virginia and California—have outlawed the distribution of deepfake porn. But for victims living outside these jurisdictions or seeking justice against perpetrators based elsewhere, these laws have little effect. In my own case, finding out who created these videos is probably not worth the time and money. I could attempt to subpoena platforms for information about the users who uploaded the videos, but even if the sites had those details and shared them with me, if my abusers live out of state—or in a different country—there is little I could do to bring them to justice.

Representative Joseph Morelle of New York is attempting to reduce this jurisdictional loophole by reintroducing the Preventing Deepfakes of Intimate Images Act, a proposed amendment to the 2022 reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act. Morelle’s bill would impose a nationwide ban on the distribution of deepfakes without the explicit consent of the people depicted in the image or video. The measure would also provide victims with somewhat easier recourse when they find themselves unwittingly starring in nonconsensual porn.

In the absence of strong federal legislation, the avenues available to me to mitigate the harm caused by the deepfakes of me are not all that encouraging. I can request that Google delist the web addresses of the videos in its search results and—though the legal basis for any demand would be shaky—have my attorneys ask online platforms to take down the videos altogether. But even if those websites comply, the likelihood that the videos will crop up somewhere else is extremely high. Women targeted by deepfake porn are caught in an exhausting, expensive, endless game of whack-a-troll.

The Preventing Deepfakes of Intimate Images Act won’t solve the deepfake problem; the internet is forever, and deepfake technology is only becoming more ubiquitous and its output more convincing. Yet especially because AI grows more powerful by the month, adapting the law to an emergent category of misogynistic abuse is all the more essential to protect women’s privacy and safety. As policy makers worry whether AI will destroy the world, I beg them: Let’s first stop the men who are using it to discredit and humiliate women.

Nina Jankowicz is a disinformation expert and the author of How to Be a Woman Online and How to Lose the Information War.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Microsoft put their tax-evasion in writing and now they owe $29 billion

I'm coming to Minneapolis! Oct 15: Presenting The Internet Con at Moon Palace Books. Oct 16: Keynoting the 26th ACM Conference On Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing.

If there's one thing I took away from Propublica's explosive IRS Files, it's that "tax avoidance" (which is legal) isn't a separate phenomenon from "tax evasion" (which is not), but rather a thinly veiled euphemism for it:

https://www.propublica.org/series/the-secret-irs-files

That realization sits behind my series of noir novels about the two-fisted forensic accountant Martin Hench, which started with last April's Red Team Blues and continues with The Bezzle, this coming February:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865847/red-team-blues

A typical noir hero is an unlicensed cop, who goes places the cops can't go and asks questions the cops can't ask. The noir part comes in at the end, when the hero is forced to admit that he's being going places the cops didn't want to go and asking questions the cops didn't want to ask. Marty Hench is a noir hero, but he's not an unlicensed cop, he's an unlicensed IRS inspector, and like other noir heroes, his capers are forever resulting in his realization that the questions and places the IRS won't investigate are down to their choice not to investigate, not an inability to investigate.

The IRS Files are a testimony to this proposition: that Leona Hemsley wasn't wrong when she said, "Taxes are for the little people." Helmsley's crime wasn't believing that proposition – it was stating it aloud, repeatedly, to the press. The tax-avoidance strategies revealed in the IRS Files are obviously tax evasion, and the IRS simply let it slide, focusing their auditing firepower on working people who couldn't afford to defend themselves, looking for things like minor compliance errors committed by people receiving public benefits.

Or at least, that's how it used to be. But the Biden administration poured billions into the IRS, greenlighting 30,000 new employees whose mission would be to investigate the kinds of 0.1%ers and giant multinational corporations who'd Helmsleyed their way into tax-free fortunes. The fact that these elite monsters paid no tax was hardly a secret, and the impunity with which they functioned was a constant, corrosive force that delegitimized American society as a place where the rules only applied to everyday people and not the rich and powerful who preyed on them.

The poster-child for the IRS's new anti-impunity campaign is Microsoft, who, decades ago, "sold its IP to to an 85-person factory it owned in a small Puerto Rican city," brokered a deal with the corporate friendly Puerto Rican government to pay almost no taxes, and channeled all its profits through the tiny facility:

https://www.propublica.org/article/the-irs-decided-to-get-tough-against-microsoft-microsoft-got-tougher

That was in 2005. Now, the IRS has come after Microsoft for all the taxes it evaded through the gambit, demanding that the company pay it $29 billion. What's more, the courts are taking the IRS's side in this case, consistently ruling against Microsoft as it seeks to keep its ill-gotten billions:

https://www.propublica.org/article/irs-microsoft-audit-back-taxes-puerto-rico-billions

Now, no one expects that Microsoft is going to write a check to the IRS tomorrow. The company's made it clear that they intend to tie this up in the courts for a decade if they can, claiming, for example, that Trump's amnesty for corporate tax-cheats means the company doesn't have to give up a dime.

This gambit has worked for Microsoft before. After seven years in antitrust hell in the 1990s, the company was eventually convicted of violating the Sherman Act, America's bedrock competition law. But they kept the case in court until 2001, running out the clock until GW Bush was elected and let them go free. Bush had a very selective version of being "tough on crime."

But for all that Microsoft escaped being broken up, the seven years of depositions, investigations, subpoenas and negative publicity took a toll on the company. Bill Gates was personally humiliated when he became the star of the first viral video, as grainy VHS tapes of his disastrous and belligerent deposition spread far and wide:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/12/whats-a-murder/#miros-tilde-1

If you really want to know who Bill Gates is beneath that sweater-vested savior persona, check out the antitrust deposition – it's still a banger, 25 years on:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/09/revisiting-the-spectacular-failure-that-was-the-bill-gates-deposition/

In cases like these, the process is the punishment: Microsoft's dirty laundry was aired far and wide, its swaggering founder was brought low, and the company's conduct changed for years afterwards. Gates once told Kara Swisher that Microsoft missed its chance to buy Android because they were "distracted by the antitrust trial." But the Android acquisition came four years after the antitrust case ended. What Gates meant was that four years after he wriggled off the DoJ's hook, he was still so wounded and gunshy that he lacked the nerve to risk the regulatory scrutiny that such an anticompetitive merger would entail.

What's more, other companies got the message too. Large companies watched what happened to Microsoft and traded their reckless disregard for antitrust law for a timid respect. The effect eventually wore off, but the Microsoft antitrust case created a brief window where real competition was possible without the constant threat of being crushed by lawless monopolists. Sometimes you have to execute an admiral to encourage the others.

A decade in IRS hell will be even more painful for Microsoft than the antitrust years were. For one thing, the Puerto Rico scam was mainly a product of ex-CEO Steve Ballmer, a man possessed of so little executive function that it's a supreme irony that he was ever a corporate executive. Ballmer is a refreshingly plain-spoken corporate criminal who is so florid in his blatant admissions of guilt and shouted torrents of self-incriminating abuse that the exhibits in the Microsoft-IRS cases to come are sure to be viral sensations beyond even the Gates deposition's high-water mark.

It's not just Ballmer, either. In theory, corporate crime should be hard to prosecute because it's so hard to prove criminal intent. But tech executives can't help telling on themselves, and are very prone indeed to putting all their nefarious plans in writing (think of the FTC conspirators who hung out in a group-chat called "Wirefraud"):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/03/big-tech-cant-stop-telling-on-itself/

Ballmer's colleagues at Microsoft were far from circumspect on the illegitimacy of the Puerto Rico gambit. One Microsoft executive gloated – in writing – that it was a "pure tax play." That is, it was untainted by any legitimate corporate purpose other than to create a nonsensical gambit that effectively relocated Microsoft's corporate headquarters to a tiny CD-pressing plant in the Caribbean.

But if other Microsoft execs were calling this a "pure tax play," one can only imagine what Ballmer called it. Ballmer, after all, is a serial tax-cheat, the star of multiple editions of the IRS Files. For example, there's the wheeze whereby he has turned his NBA team into a bottomless sinkhole for the taxes on his vast fortune:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/08/tuyul-apps/#economic-substance-doctrine

Or his "tax-loss harvesting" – a ploy whereby rich people do a "wash trade," buying and selling the same asset at the same time, not so much circumventing the IRS rules against this as violating those rules while expecting the IRS to turn a blind eye:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/24/tax-loss-harvesting/#mego

Ballmer needs all those scams. After all, he was one of the pandemic's most successful profiteers. He was one of eight billionaires who added at least a billion more to his net worth during lockdown:

https://inequality.org/great-divide/billionaire-bonanza-2020/

Like all forms of rot, corruption spreads. Microsoft turned Washington State into a corporate tax-haven and starved the state of funds, paving the way for other tax-cheats like Amazon to establish themselves in the area. But the same anti-corruption movement that revitalized the IRS has also taken root in Washington, where reformers instituted a new capital gains tax aimed at the ultra-wealthy that has funded a renaissance in infrastructure and social spending:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/03/when-the-tide-goes-out/#passive-income

If the IRS does manage to drag Microsoft through the courts for the next decade, it's going to do more than air the company's dirty laundry. It'll expose more of Ballmer's habitual sleaze, and the ways that Microsoft dragged a whole state into a pit of austerity. And even more importantly, it'll expose the Puertopia conspiracy, a neocolonial project that transformed Puerto Rico into an onshore-offshore tax-haven that saw the island strip-mined and then placed under corporate management:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/07/27/boricua/#que-viva-albizu

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/13/pour-encoragez-les-autres/#micros-tilde-one

My next novel is The Lost Cause, a hopeful novel of the climate emergency. Amazon won't sell the audiobook, so I made my own and I'm pre-selling it on Kickstarter!

[queenie-says-free-palestine]

helpful links to support palestine - this could save lives.

decolonize palestine - extremely helpful website which helps debunk myths, answers faqs, and provides other helpful resources

middle east eye - provides news about palestine, especially concerning the conflict

human rights watch - provides reports about the human rights situation in palestine/israel

palestine remembered - preserves the memory of what palestine was like before the nakba

bbc the key questions - link to an article addressing key questions abt the conflict

palestine is - website w a resource library and learning modules to correct misrepresentation of the conflict

history.com - link to an article detailing the nakba

al-shabaka - somewhat of a think tank dedicated to palestine

electronic intifada - online chicago-based news publication providing a palestinian perspective on the conflict

adalah justice project - an israeli organization trying to protect the human rights of palestinians living under occupation

imeu fundraiser - shares stories of the palestinian struggle for freedom

medical aid for palestinians - british charity that advocates for palestinians' rights to health and dignity (donate here)

palestine children’s relief fund - an organization that locates free medical care in the united states and europe for children in the middle east (esp palestinians) who dont have access to good healthcare

addameer - non government organization that helps support palestinians who are imprisoned in israel, provides free legal aid to political prisoners, advocates their rights, and works to "end torture and other violations of prisoners' rights through monitoring, legal procedures and solidarity campaigns"

muslim aid - uk based islamic non government organisation that works to support people suffering through poverty, war, or natural disasters using emergency relief and sustainable programmes. prominently offer their help in the palestinian territories

palestine red crescent - humanitarian organization that provide hospitals, emergency medicine and ambulance services, and primary health care centers in the west bank and gaza strip

gaza mutual aid collective - fundraising group for gaza (their patreon to donate is here)

united nations relief and works agency for palestine refugees in the near east - un agency that supports the relief and human development of palestinian refugees (the only un agency that helps a specific nationality of refugees)

palestine solidarity campaign - activist organization in england and wales that arranges protests and boycotts israeli goods

help with a click - all you have to do is go to the link and click. its completely free, but every click helps deliver support to palestinian families