"Big corporations, golf courses and hotels have been taking water from locals for years. Now the fire may result in even more devastating water theft."
"All over Maui, golf courses glisten emerald green, hotels manage to fill their pools and corporations stockpile water to sell to luxury estates. And yet, when it came time to fight the fires, some hoses ran dry. Why?"
"This is a classic case of the most craven disaster capitalism: a small elite group using a profound human tragedy as their window to roll back a hard-won grassroots victory for water rights, while removing civil servants who pose a political inconvenience to the administration’s pro-developer agenda."...
by Naomi Klein and Kapuaʻala Sproat
Hundreds of tenants, struggling to afford skyrocketing rents, are refusing to pay their landlords at all. They call it a rent strike. The landlords say it’s illegal. An inside look at the frontier of a growing class war
As lawmakers around the U.S. ban books, states enact legislation limiting how sexual orientation and gender identity are taught in schools, and companies reduce their DEI efforts, some are going the other way. Washington state's Gov. Jay Inslee, a Democrat, has recently signed a law including a mandate for public schools to teach LGBTQ+ history, joining California, New Jersey, Colorado, Oregon, Nevada and Illinois, which have similar legislation. Here's more from NBC.
The Open Rights Group is looking for new board members.
It is, “especially important to us to have ethnic minority representation, given the impacts of digital technologies exacerbating unfair discriminatory practices in law enforcement, migration, employment.”
Interested? Please send your CV and a statement to: recruitment@openrightsgroup.org by Friday 16 June 2022
Free Software activists give people control over technology, and help defend their digital #rights. We have created means that have allowed us to become organized and connected, bypassing utilities controlled by unethical corporations.
KDE presents "For Activists": you too can leverage the tools to effectively organize rallies, privately communicate with fellow #community members, and safely manage your own grassroots #movement .
I like nerding with notes, languages, philosophy, reading non-fic, #solarpunk, #Dimension20, exploring non-d&d #rpg systems, waterfalls, playlists, cats. I have an admin job that inspires me to pay attention to intersections of #tech, #climate, #gender, and #rights in the #globalSouth.
unprecedented concentrations of wealth and power, and devastated the lives of millions—the American political system, indeed, American democratic life is in jeopardy. The time has come to do what our parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents did. The time has come to make America progressive, indeed, radical again. The time has come to renew the fight for an Economic Bill of Rights for All Americans.
The entry into force of the Data Governance Act paves the way for a new European way of data governance in line with our values and fundamental #rights.
It will allow society and the economy to benefit from data sharing and will support the creation of common European #data spaces, from manufacturing to cultural heritage.
We are increasing trust in data sharing and creating a data #economy that is innovative and open to our conditions.
This @ProPublica interactive guide on SCOTUS is phenomenal. It’s a comprehensive guide on where each judge stands on our rights. And it’s well-designed overall.
Spoiler: the ones you think are biased, are. And, of course, Thomas is the worst.
Conservatives are still obsessed with calling LGBTQ+ people “groomers,” and Meta is still helping them do it.
Despite confirming in July that using anti-LGBTQ+ “groomer” rhetoric constituted a violation of the company’s policies against hate speech, Meta continues to allow advertisements using the slur to proliferate on its platform and is making money in the process, according to a new report from nonprofit watchdog group Media Matters for America.
I love helping others, I have a laptop now (THANK YOUUU SO MUCH MASTODON!!) so I’m looking for courses to be a social worker. I want to meet and cultivate a community on #BlackFedi & #blackmastodon. Please reblog if you see this 💛
"Top NYT Editor Offers Stunning Defense of Coverage of Trump."
"The failure to clearly describe Trump's plan to cancel prosecutions of himself & other elements of his legal strategy as threats to the system itself, that is, as efforts to put himself above the law."
Alarm as German climate activists charged with ‘forming a criminal organisation’
“This is the first time in German history that a climate protest group that uses measures of peaceful civil disobedience is charged as a criminal organisation."
“Paragraph 129 of the German criminal code is to combat organised crime. Its application to non-violent protest criminalises civic engagement and thus restricts democratic freedoms."
A helicopter carrying President #EbrahimRaisi of #Iran & his foreign minister crashed on Sunday in the country’s mountainous northwest, acc/to state media, deepening the turmoil that has gripped the nation on both the international & domestic fronts in recent months.
#Raisi, 63, was traveling from Iran’s border w/ Azerbaijan to inaugurate a joint dam project.
…#Raisi oversaw a sweeping & deadly crackdown on domestic #protesters, many of them #women & young people, who took to the streets against the country’s ruling clerics. #Rights groups said hundreds of protesters were killed by Iran’s security forces.
Raisi has been viewed as one of the front-runners to succeed #Khamenei as supreme leader. One of his main rivals for that role is #Khamene’s son.
Despite the crash, some analysts said they did not expect a major change in #Iran’s agenda abroad.
#ScarlettJohansson is threatening #legal action against #OpenAI for copying her #voice for its latest #AI model, GPT-4o, which will be accessible through #ChatGPT.
In a statement provided to The Washington Post by Johansson’s publicist, she claimed that she received an offer from OpenAI CEO #SamAltman in Sept to be the voice of its AI system. Johansson… declined….
Court rules that the "Kansas Two Step" tactic is illegal (fox4kc.com)
A federal judge has ruled against the Kansas Highway Patrol, telling the agency to stop detaining drivers without reasonable suspicion.
Russia fails to win back seat on human rights council after UN vote (www.theguardian.com)
Country was suspended from body last year after Ukraine invasion but scale of support for readmittance will worry Kyiv and allies