#nongovernmental organization

[fenrislorsrai]

Today we rest, tomorrow, we VOLUNTEER

Everything sucks but America is also full of many, many, many non governmental organizations that can help counter the incoming shit storm.

Look up who's in your area. If you have never interacted with any of them and this is your first time volunteering for anything: START WITH THE LIBRARY.

Volunteer with the Friends of the Library and indicate you're interested in other groups. Absolutely guaranteed majority of members also volunteer for some other groups and they will be ecstatic to tell you about the other ones.

If you're already a seasoned pro at this, yeah, go look up nationals who have branches all over.

But those little ones you get to do real, tangible things you can see improving your community NOW. Does joining the garden club solve all The Everything? No, but seeing a corner full of neglected bushes now full of flowers you helped plant and hearing people say how nice it is, helps YOUR mental health and strangers you live next to.

also you will make local friends! You will need them! and they need you just as much!

[tomorrowusa]

To the Putin dictatorship, any group which tells the truth about Russia these days is "undesirable".

Russia can't hide its ecocide in Ukraine which was put into spectacular focus by its destruction of the Kakhovka dam. Though Russia is also busy creating environmental problems within its internationally recognized borders.

Moscow has labelled the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) "an undesirable organization," saying the independent nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving the environment and protecting endangered species was "being used as a facade to carry out projects that create threats to the country's security in the economic sphere." The move, which follows a decision by Russia in March 2022 to label the organization a "foreign agent," forces the nonprofit to cease all activities in Russia. According to a statement from the Russian Prosecutor-General’s Office on June 21, the WWF posed a threat to economic development, specifically citing activities it said were meant to hinder Russia's extraction of natural resources from the Arctic.

The Kremlin doesn't appreciate the WWF bringing to light Russia's environmentally unsound practices in its fossil fuel industries.

WWF campaigns against oil and natural gas industries were aimed at “shackling” Russia’s economic development, the statement added. The Prosecutor-General's Office also said it believes that the fund is developing restrictions that may become the basis for "transferring the Northern Sea Route in the direction of the U.S. exclusive economic zone” though the WWF’s website makes no mention of such a project.

In other words, just more paranoid bullshit from the Kremlin.

The fund, which works closely with the United Nations, operates large environmental advocacy programs for many causes, including deforestation, freshwater preservation, and endangered species protection. The "undesirable organization" law, adopted in 2012, was part of a series of regulations pushed by the Kremlin that have forced scores of nonprofit and nongovernmental organizations to halt operations as the government stifles civil society. The Prosecutor-General's Office statement also notes that WWF, formerly known as the World Wildlife Fund, provided support to Russian nonprofit organizations, such as Friends of the Baltic and Sakhalin Environmental Watch. The two organizations are included in Russia's register of so-called foreign agents and were found liable for uncoordinated, unauthorized climate protests. The move against the WWF comes after Russia shut down Greenpeace, another major environmental NGO, in May. Also labeled as “undesirable,” Greenpeace was similarly accused of intervening in internal affairs.

Somebody needs to declare Putin "undesirable" for the planet and shut him down for good.

[sayruq]

Dear President Biden and Vice President Harris, We are 99 American physicians, surgeons, nurse practitioners, nurses, and midwives who have volunteered in the Gaza Strip since October 7, 2023. Combined, we spent 254 weeks volunteering in Gaza’s hospitals and clinics. We worked with various nongovernmental organizations and the World Health Organization in hospitals and clinics throughout the Strip. In addition to our medical and surgical expertise, many of us have a public health background, as well as experience working in humanitarian and conflict zones, including Ukraine during the brutal Russian invasion. Some of us are veterans and reservists. We are a multifaith and multiethnic group. None of us support the horrors committed on October 7 by Palestinian armed groups and individuals in Israel.

We are among the only neutral observers who have been permitted to enter the Gaza Strip since October 7. Given our broad expertise and direct experience of working throughout Gaza we are uniquely positioned to comment on several matters of importance to our government as it decides whether to continue supporting Israel’s attack on, and siege of, the Gaza Strip. Specifically, we believe we are well positioned to comment on the massive human toll from Israel’s attack on Gaza, especially the toll it has taken on women and children.

This letter and the appendix show probative evidence that the human toll in Gaza since October is far higher than is understood in the United States. It is likely that the death toll from this conflict is already greater than 118,908, an astonishing 5.4% of Gaza’s population. Our government must act immediately to prevent an even worse catastrophe than what has already befallen the people of Gaza and Israel. A ceasefire must be imposed on the warring parties by withholding military support for Israel and supporting an international arms embargo on Israel and all Palestinian armed groups. We believe our government is obligated to do this, both under American law and International Humanitarian Law. We also believe it is the right thing to do.

With only marginal exceptions, everyone in Gaza is sick, injured, or both. This includes every national aid worker, every international volunteer, and probably every Israeli hostage: every man, woman, and child. While working in Gaza we saw widespread malnutrition in our patients and our Palestinian healthcare colleagues. Every one of us lost weight rapidly in Gaza despite having privileged access to food and having taken our own supplementary nutrient-dense food with us. We have photographic evidence of life-threatening malnutrition in our patients, especially children, that we are eager to share with you. Virtually every child under the age of five whom we encountered, both inside and outside of the hospital, had both a cough and watery diarrhea. We found cases of jaundice (indicating hepatitis A infection under such conditions) in nearly every room of the hospitals in which we served, and in many of our healthcare colleagues in Gaza. An astonishingly high percentage of our surgical incisions became infected from the combination of malnutrition, impossible operating conditions, lack of basic sanitation supplies such as soap, and lack of surgical supplies and medications, including antibiotics. Malnutrition led to widespread spontaneous abortions, underweight newborns, and an inability of new mothers to breastfeed. This left their newborns at high risk of death given the lack of access to potable water anywhere in Gaza. Many of those infants died. In Gaza we watched malnourished mothers feed their underweight newborns infant formula made with poisonous water. We can never forget that the world abandoned these innocent women and babies. We urge you to realize that epidemics are raging in Gaza. Israel’s continued, repeated displacement of the malnourished and sick population of Gaza, half of whom are children, to areas without running water or even toilets available is absolutely shocking. It was and remains guaranteed to result in widespread death from viral and bacterial diarrheal diseases and pneumonias, particularly in children under the age of five. Indeed, even the dreaded polio virus has reemerged in Gaza due to a combination of systematic destruction of the sanitation infrastructure, widespread malnutrition weakening immune systems, and young children having missed routine vaccinations for nearly an entire year. We worry that unknown thousands have already died from the lethal combination of malnutrition and disease, and that tens of thousands more will die in the coming months, especially with the onset of the winter rains in Gaza. Most of them will be young children. Children are universally considered innocents in armed conflict. However, every single signatory to this letter saw children in Gaza who suffered violence that must have been deliberately directed at them. Specifically, every one of us who worked in an emergency, intensive care, or surgical setting treated pre-teen children who were shot in the head or chest on a regular or even a daily basis. It is impossible that such widespread shooting of young children throughout Gaza, sustained over the course of an entire year is accidental or unknown to the highest Israeli civilian and military authorities.

[dostoyevsky-official]

Letter to President Biden and Vice President Harris

We are 99 American physicians, surgeons, nurse practitioners, nurses, and midwives who have volunteered in the Gaza Strip since October 7, 2023. Combined, we spent 254 weeks volunteering in Gaza’s hospitals and clinics. We worked with various nongovernmental organizations and the World Health Organization in hospitals and clinics throughout the Strip. In addition to our medical and surgical expertise, many of us have a public health background, as well as experience working in humanitarian and conflict zones, including Ukraine during the brutal Russian invasion. Some of us are veterans and reservists. We are a multifaith and multiethnic group. None of us support the horrors committed on October 7 by Palestinian armed groups and individuals in Israel. [...] This letter collects and summarizes our own experiences and direct observations in Gaza. The letter is accompanied by a detailed appendix summarizing the publicly available information from media, humanitarian, and academic sources on key aspects of Israel’s invasion of Gaza. This letter and the appendix show probative evidence that the human toll in Gaza since October is far higher than is understood in the United States. It is likely that the death toll from this conflict is already greater than 118,908, an astonishing 5.4% of Gaza’s population. With only marginal exceptions, everyone in Gaza is sick, injured, or both. This includes every national aid worker, every international volunteer, and probably every Israeli hostage: every man, woman, and child. While working in Gaza we saw widespread malnutrition in our patients and our Palestinian healthcare colleagues. Every one of us lost weight rapidly in Gaza despite having privileged access to food and having taken our own supplementary nutrient-dense food with us. [...] Children are universally considered innocents in armed conflict. However, every single signatory to this letter saw children in Gaza who suffered violence that must have been deliberately directed at them. Specifically, every one of us who worked in an emergency, intensive care, or surgical setting treated pre-teen children who were shot in the head or chest on a regular or even a daily basis. It is impossible that such widespread shooting of young children throughout Gaza, sustained over the course of an entire year is accidental or unknown to the highest Israeli civilian and military authorities.

[allthegeopolitics]

The Taliban say they will close all national and foreign nongovernmental groups in Afghanistan employing women. It comes two years after they told NGOs to suspend the employment of Afghan women, allegedly because they didn’t wear the Islamic headscarf correctly. In a letter published on X Sunday night, the Economy Ministry warned that failure to comply with the latest order would lead to NGOs losing their license to operate in Afghanistan. The ministry said it was responsible for the registration, coordination, leadership and supervision of all activities carried out by national and foreign organizations. The government was once again ordering the stoppage of all female work in institutions not controlled by the Taliban, according to the letter.

Continue Reading

[vague-humanoid]

@chrisdornerfanclub

The FBI and Department of Homeland Security failed to believe intelligence that painted a clear warning that the Jan. 6 Capitol riot was being planned, a new Senate committee report released Tuesday reveals.

“Planned in Plain Sight,” a report by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, highlights red flags missed in the days and hours before the 2021 insurrection.

It says the FBI and DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis “failed to fully and accurately assess the severity of the threat identified by that intelligence, and formally disseminate guidance to their law enforcement partners with sufficient urgency and alarm to enable those partners to prepare for the violence that ultimately occurred on January 6th,” the Washington Post reported.

The warnings came from sources including nongovernmental organizations tracking online extremism, from members of the public and from the FBI’s own field offices.

[probablyasocialecologist]

Universal categories and representations about pristine, people-free nature have emerged and powerfully informed the conservation of tropical habitats, from rainforests to deserts. These dominant narratives carry little, if any, regard for Indigenous and local ways of knowing, using, and living in these landscapes (i.e., Indigenous territories). The notion of wilderness is one such category that has arisen from the Enlightenment and imperial processes, and continues to cast high value, biodiverse spaces as pristine and people-free environments that are in need of preservation: supposedly, the very antidote to the Anthropocene. Despite decades of critique and resistance during and after the colonial era, a resurgence of the wilderness myth around the world has once again found traction among large international nongovernmental organizations, private philanthropists, major foundations, and corporations, and certain nation-states who seek to reimpose aspects of “fortress conservation,” whereby Indigenous and local peoples are excluded from land and the life it gives.

Wilderness: Origin. Old English wildēornes ‘land inhabited only by wild animals,’ from wild dēor ‘wild deer’ + -ness.

Rather than enlighten and save humanity, wilderness thinking has facilitated the perverse outcome of landscapes being idealized, imagined, and managed as intact, high-value biodiversity areas free from human disturbance. In many respects, such narrow interpretations of forest landscapes have justified the inhumane eviction of Indigenous and local peoples from their homelands following annexation as parks and protected areas, driving dispossession and conflict similar to the colonial period across the Americas, Africa, Asia-Pacific, and Australia. The Wilderness Project and efforts to map and classify high-value, intact wilderness zones (many of which overlap with the tropics and regions with high Indigenous populations), continue to this day.

Indigenous knowledge and the shackles of wilderness

[mariacallous]

ADRÉ, Chad—Abdussalam Mustapha and his friends used to play soccer for hours after school in El Geneina, a city in the West Darfur region of Sudan. But the 10-year-old can’t play anymore.

In April 2023, war came to Sudan. The Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary wing of Sudan’s army, allied with other militia groups to perpetrate an ethnic cleansing campaign against non-Arab populations in and around El Geneina. Abdussalam and his entire extended family were forced to flee their homes on foot late at night, carrying only what they could hold in their hands.

On the way, the group was attacked. Abdussalam clutched the hand of his 5-year-old brother and ran. Suddenly, he felt a searing pain, and blood began pouring out of a gunshot wound in his stomach. The little fingers gripping his hand went slack. His brother had been shot in the head and died instantly. Now he was seated next to his mother on the floor of the family’s tented shelter in a refugee settlement in Chad.

Nearly 2 million Sudanese people have escaped to neighboring countries since the war started, and approximately 600,000 of them have fled to Chad. About 88 percent of the refugees are women and children. Some new arrivals have physical wounds. Almost all have emotional scars. After they cross the border, they are dependent on United Nations agencies and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to provide water, food, shelter, medical care, and basic supplies, such as soap, blankets, and buckets.

Despite efforts to raise money to respond to the crisis, the international community is falling far short of fundraising goals. On April 15, one year after the start of the war, world leaders and humanitarians met in Paris for an event intended to raise funds to support all U.N. agencies and aid organizations involved in the Sudan conflict response. $2.7 billion would go toward helping people in Sudan and an additional $1.4 billion would go toward supporting five refugee-hosting neighbors: South Sudan, Ethiopia, Egypt, the Central African Republic, and Chad. Of the total $4.1 billion required, only $2 billion was committed in Paris, an amount that was “really worrying” when considering that the amount of money that actually comes in is always less than what is committed at a pledging event, said Harpinder Collacott, executive director of Mercy Corps Europe.

Around the world, the need for humanitarian funding is outstripping the money that can be raised. Experts say that the problem is the funding model itself. A small handful of donor countries determine who and what gets the funding, which means that funding is based on the generosity of governments with political agendas. The system is voluntary, and governments sometimes make commitments that they don’t follow through on. Some crises captivate public attention more than others, and are therefore better funded, experts say. Others, like protracted conflicts in African countries, receive scant media attention and far less funding.

“I always go back to the [idea of the] tin can. Government and the UN, on behalf of the people in crisis, have to ask every single time for money,” said Michelle Strucke, director of the humanitarian agenda at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Washington-based think tank. In terms of which crises get funding, “it almost seems whimsical from the outside.” The results are anything but.

The perpetrators murdered 38 members of Abdussalam’s family that night. “We were all running for our lives,” 30-year-old Mounira Oumar Mahamat Abdallah, Abdussalam’s mother, said tearfully. “Abdussalam was also shot. And was found by other people.” Those people brought Abdussalam to his mother. She hoisted him onto her back and started walking west. Abdussalam was delirious, drifting in and out of consciousness. The following day, they reached Adré, the Chadian border town that has become the busiest crossing point for refugees fleeing Darfur.

Abdussalam required multiple surgeries, so the family stayed in Adré while Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), a nongovernmental organization that provides medical care in crises, operated on him six times. MSF has established a large clinic in the Adré refugee settlement, providing everything from medical checkups and vaccinations to mental health counseling for 300 to 500 refugees per day. It has also embedded in the Chadian government hospital in Adré, where surgeons can perform lifesaving surgery on patients like Abdussalam.

MSF’s medical and humanitarian programs in eastern Chad had expenses of approximately $22 million in 2023 and have a planned budget of about $41.5 million in 2024. To fill the gap left by other underfunded U.N. agencies and NGOs, MSF has rapidly deployed across the region, digging latrines, drilling boreholes, and serving hundreds of thousands of Sudanese as well as local Chadians. “We’ve responded massively in eastern Chad because the needs are acute, but we’re overstretched and carrying a heavier load than we should within the humanitarian aid sector,” said Avril Benoît, executive director of MSF USA.

At MSF’s pediatric ward in the hospital, dozens of emaciated babies and toddlers receive treatment for severe acute malnutrition, which affects brain development and increases mortality in children under five years. Despite the best efforts of doctors and nurses, three to four of these children die each week from malnutrition, said Sachin Desai, an MSF pediatrician.

Malnutrition has become one of the top concerns of humanitarians working in Chad. Before the war, Sudan was considered the “breadbasket” of Africa: Farming accounted for 60 percent of total national exports in 2022. But scorching, dry weather combined with missed harvests due to conflict means there is almost no food available in parts of Sudan today. Nearly 18 million Sudanese are facing acute hunger, and more than 5 million are experiencing emergency hunger levels in the worst conflict-affected areas, the World Food Program (WFP) says.

Today, both hunger and violence are driving migration. Once refugees reach Chad, they are registered and given WFP food ration cards. WFP organizes massive monthly food distributions, serving between 15,000 to 20,000 people per day. The April distribution was delayed by several weeks due to lack of funding, which also affected the quantity of the food the refugees received. They should get 2,100 calories per refugee per day, but in April, they got only 1,700 calories.

On a scorching April morning, thousands of women wearing colorful laffayas, traditional Sudanese dresses, sit patiently in long lines to receive their food rations. Maryam Ibrahim Saif Addine, stands out in a tattered black laffaya. The 35-year-old lost her husband to violence in Sudan and depends on rations to feed her seven children. Addine carefully measures out her portion of oil, beans, soap, salt, and cereals, which she will grind into flour to make porridge.

“I came here to wait for food early in the morning. I didn’t even take tea,” Addine said. “It’s still not enough. Sometimes, we have to sell our food to get some money and buy other things.”

Hundreds of thousands of refugees are now camped out in Adré along the border with Sudan. The newest arrivals have no shelter and sleep beneath scarfs propped up with sticks. They are exposed to the harsh desert elements, and lack food, water, medical care, and basic goods. With the rainy season fast approaching, aid workers say the conditions are ripe for a compounded humanitarian disaster. The rains will destroy the flimsy shelters, wash out the roads, and bring malarial mosquitoes, cholera, and other diseases. Getting refugees into semi-permanent shelters as quickly as possible is crucial to ensuring their safety.

Between July and December 2023, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) relocated approximately 150,000 refugees from Adré to newly established settlements inland from the border.

“Finally, I was seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. Adré was starting to look again like a normal place,” said Laura Lo Castro, UNHCR’s Chad country director. Then, new waves of refugees began fleeing fresh outbreaks of violence. “Today, it looks the same as it did last July,” she said.

Today, another 170,000 refugees in Adré are waiting to be relocated. UNHCR has moved only 30,000 refugees in 2024 because of budget constraints. The agency wants to open a new site and relocate another 50,000 refugees, but it would cost approximately $17 million to build the necessary housing, water and sanitation infrastructure, and schools. “To be completely honest with you, I have no money to do that,” Lo Castro said.

Lo Castro is familiar with humanitarian emergencies. She helped refugees fleeing the Rwandan Genocide in 1994. Still, Lo Castro said the refugee crisis in Chad is one of the worst-funded emergencies she has ever worked on. The 2024 Sudan refugee response plan is only 8 percent funded. For Chad alone, $630 million is needed, but its part is only 6 percent funded. These numbers are in line with other major crises in the region: the Democratic Republic of Congo is also 8 percent funded, South Sudan is only 5 percent funded.

The problem is the international humanitarian funding model itself, which emerged from the ashes of World War II, when powerful nations came together to establish rules and institutions to regulate the global monetary system. The model, which was intended to help rebuild Europe, gave concentrated power to key stakeholder countries. Today, most international humanitarian responses are bankrolled by these influential top donors, including the United States, the European Union, and the United Kingdom.

“When you’ve got bilateral donors funding international humanitarian response, it’s always dependent on the political priorities of the donors on which one they will give to rather than others,” Collacott of Mercy Corps said.

The money often goes to the conflicts that suck up the most media attention. “When it bleeds it leads,” Strucke of CSIS explained. “If it’s a really high-profile conflict, or it’s a sudden onset disaster, like a catastrophic hurricane or earthquake situation, those get a lot of immediate attention, and that means the response plans are typically better funded.”

Inflation, rising costs, an increase in climate related disasters, and an increase in protracted conflicts around the world have created greater demand for humanitarian funding than ever before. The money feels less in part because of inflation and also because leading humanitarian donors are changing how they are using their dollars for assistance. Strucke said that some countries are repurposing parts of their budget that they would have used for development assistance towards border security instead. “And they think of it all as migration, but they’re actually doing a very dramatic shift in where the money is going,” Strucke said.

Diversification is key to improving the model, Collacott said. Receiving funding from more emerging market governments, such as India and Indonesia, private sector companies, and international NGOs could help combat the issue of not enough funding being concentrated in the hands of a few agenda setting countries. Funding must also be proactive, rather than reactive.

“We know every year there are going to be at least three new major global crises that we’re going to be fundraising for,” Collacott said. “We don’t want to be seeking funding after the crisis hits, but already have funding secured.”

Collacott floats the idea of a new humanitarian funding model based on three principles: all contribute, all benefit, all decide. “Until you make the connection that something happening miles away has a knock-on effect on your shores, people won’t see that this is a global conflict,” she said. “Crisis financing needs to be built on global public good, or we’re going to see the world destabilizing.”

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Noah Hurowitz at The Intercept:

Donald Trump has made no secret of his desire for revenge.

On the campaign trail, he joked about being a dictator on “day one” in office, pledged to jail journalists, and threatened to retaliate against political foes who he felt had wronged him. Now, just days after he secured a second term in the White House, Congress is already moving to hand a resurgent Trump administration a powerful cudgel that it could wield against ideological opponents in civil society. Up for a potential fast-track vote next week in the House of Representatives, the Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act, also known as H.R. 9495, would grant the secretary of the Treasury Department unilateral authority to revoke the tax-exempt status of any nonprofit deemed to be a “terrorist supporting organization.” The resolution has already prompted strong opposition from a wide range of civil society groups, with more than 100 organizations signing an open letter issued by the American Civil Liberties Union in September.

[...]

No Evidence Needed

Under the bill, the Treasury secretary would issue notice to a group of intent to designate it as a “terrorist supporting organization.” Once notified, an organization would have the right to appeal within 90 days, after which it would be stripped of its 501(c)(3) status, named for the statute that confers tax exemptions on recognized nonprofit groups. The law would not require officials to explain the reason for designating a group, nor does it require the Treasury Department to provide evidence. “It basically empowers the Treasury secretary to target any group it wants to call them a terror supporter and block their ability to be a nonprofit,” said Ryan Costello, policy director at the National Iranian American Council Action, which opposes the law. “So that would essentially kill any nonprofit’s ability to function. They couldn’t get banks to service them, they won’t be able to get donations, and there’d be a black mark on the organization, even if it cleared its name.”

The bill could also imperil the lifesaving work of nongovernmental organizations operating in war zones and other hostile areas where providing aid requires coordination with groups designated as terrorists by the U.S., according to a statement issued last year by the Charity & Security Network. “Charitable organizations, especially those who work in settings where designated terrorist groups operate, already undergo strict internal due diligence and risk mitigation measures,” the group wrote. “As the prohibition on material support to foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs) already exists, and is applicable to U.S. nonprofits, this proposed legislation is redundant and unnecessary.” If it proceeds, the bill will go to the House floor in a “suspension vote,” a fast-track procedure that limits debate and allows a bill to bypass committees and move on to the Senate as long as it receives a two-thirds supermajority in favor. [...]

Pro-Palestine Groups at Risk

In the past year, accusations of support for terrorism have been freely lobbed at student protesters, aid workers in Gaza, and even mainstream publications like the New York Times. In unscrupulous hands, the powers of the proposed law could essentially turn the Treasury Department into an enforcement arm of Canary Mission and other hard-line groups dedicated to doxxing and smearing their opponents as terrorists. With very few guardrails in place, the new bill would give broad new powers to the federal government to act on such accusations — and not just against pro-Palestine groups, according to Costello. “The danger is much broader than just groups that work on foreign policy,” said Costello. “It could target major liberal funders who support Palestinian solidarity and peace groups who engage in protest. But it could also theoretically be used to target pro-choice groups, and I could see it being used against environmental groups.

HR9495 needs to be opposed, as this civil liberties-violating bill could broadly define any organization a “terrorist supporting organization”, such as pro-reproductive rights/abortion access, pro-LGBTQ+, pro-Palestine, and progressive groups such as Indivisible.

[reasonsforhope]

Non-paywall version here.

"When Arley Gill, head of Grenada’s National Reparations Committee, envisioned his work seeking repair for centuries of enslavement on the Caribbean island, one thing was certain: It was going to be a long slog.

But just two years since its founding, the task force is fielding calls from individuals around the world looking to make amends for ancestors who benefited from enslavement in Grenada. 

“If you had told us this would be happening, we wouldn’t have believed you,” Mr. Gill says, crediting a burgeoning movement of descendants of enslavers getting wise to their family’s history and taking action. 

In Grenada’s case, the momentum began with a public apology made by former BBC journalist Laura Trevelyan and her family in February at a ceremony on the island. They apologized for their forebears’ enslavement of people in Grenada and their enrichment from it, pledging an initial contribution of £100,000 ($130,000) toward education on the island.

“She opened the doors for people to feel comfortable” coming forward, says Mr. Gill.

In April [2023], Ms. Trevelyan and journalist Alex Renton co-founded an organization called Heirs of Slavery. Its eight British members have ancestors who benefited financially from slavery in various ways...

Heirs of Slavery says wealth and privilege trickle down through generations, and that there are possibly millions of Britons whose lives were touched by money generated from enslavement. 

The group aims to amplify the voices of those already calling for reparations, like Caribbean governments. And it supports organizations working to tackle the modern-day consequences of slavery, both in the United Kingdom and abroad, from racism to health care inequities. But it’s also setting an example for others, drafting a road map of reparative justice for enslavement – at the individual level...

“Shining a light is always a good idea,” says Mr. Renton, who published a book in 2021 about his family’s ties to slavery, donating the proceeds to a handful of nongovernmental organizations in the Caribbean and England. “You don’t have to feel guilt about it; you can’t change the past,” he says, paraphrasing Sir Geoff Palmer, a Scottish Jamaican scholar. “But we should feel ashamed that up to this point we’ve done nothing about the consequences” of slavery.

Start anywhere

Most Africans trafficked to the Americas and Caribbean during the trans-Atlantic slave trade ended up in the West Indies. The wealth generated there through unpaid, brutal, forced labor funded much of Europe’s Industrial Revolution and bolstered churches, banks, and educational institutions. When slavery was abolished in British territories in 1833, the government took out a loan to compensate enslavers for their lost “property.” The government only finished paying off that debt in 2015. 

The family of David Lascelles, the 8th Earl of Harewood, for example, received more than £26,000 from the British government after abolition in compensation for nearly 1,300 lives, while “the enslaved people were given nothing,” Mr. Lascelles says. He joined Heirs of Slavery upon its founding, eager to collaborate with peers doing work he’s been focused on for decades.

“People like us have, historically, kept quiet about what our ancestors did. We believe the time has come to face up to what happened, to acknowledge the ongoing repercussions of this human tragedy, and support the existing movements to discuss repair and reconciliation,” reads the group’s webpage.

For Ms. Trevelyan, that meant a very public apology – and resigning from journalism to dedicate herself to activism...

For Mr. Lascelles, a second cousin of King Charles, making repairs included in 2014 handing over digitized copies of slavery-related documents discovered in the basement of the Downton Abbey-esque Harewood House to the National Archives in Barbados, where much of his family’s wealth originated during enslavement. 

“What can we do that is actually useful and wanted – not to solve our own conscience?” he says he asks himself...

“Listen and learn”

...The group is planning a conference this fall that will bring together families that benefited from the trans-Atlantic slave trade along with representatives from Caribbean governments and Black Europeans advocating for reparations. In the meantime, members are meeting with local advocacy groups to better understand what they want – and how Heirs of Slavery might assist.

At a recent meeting, “there was one man who said he wanted to hear what we had to say, but said he saw us as a distraction. And I understand that,” says Mr. Renton. “Maximum humility is necessary on our part. We are here to listen and learn, not try to take the lead and be the boss.”

Mr. Renton’s family has made donations to youth development and educational organizations, but he doesn’t see it as compensation. “I see this as work of repair. If I sold everything I own, I couldn’t begin to compensate for the lives my ancestors destroyed,” he says."

-via The Christian Science Monitor, August 1, 2023

Note: I know the source name probably inspires skepticism for a lot of people (fairly), but they're actually considered a very reliable and credible publication in both accuracy and lack of bias.

[darkeagleruins]

Philadelphia City Commissioners' Office Tells O'Keefe Non-Citizens Can Vote as Long as They Are Philadelphia Residents

In a recent conversation with an undercover O’Keefe Media Group journalist, Milton Jamerson, Election And Voter Registration Clerk from the Philadelphia City Commissioners Office, stated that non-citizens can vote in local elections as long as they are residents of Philadelphia.

This claim is echoed by the nongovernmental organization (NGO) “Ceiba,” (@CeibaPhiladelp1) located just across the street, which asserts that individuals with an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN) are eligible to vote.

An ITIN is a 9-digit number issued by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to individuals who are required to file a tax return but do not qualify for a Social Security number. While the ITIN serves as a means for tax reporting for those who are not U.S. citizens, possessing an ITIN does not equate to legal voting rights, raising questions about Ceiba's claim that ITIN's deem individuals eligible for participation in the electoral process.

[azspot]

Online, climate disinformation dominates the social media swamp. Facebook and X feature prominent climate deniers. The YouTube recommendation engine feeds science disinformation to viewers regularly, especially if it tags you as Republican. Meanwhile, the philanthropic and nongovernmental organization sectors have massively underinvested in public education on the issue. They have largely ceded the information wars, with the fossil fuel industry dominating the propaganda battlefield. Billions of environmental NGO dollars go into science, policy and law, but little goes to helping the public understand the imminent climate threat to their homes, insurance, health and children. Public perception is the foundation of political will. When it comes to climate, we lack it.

DNC ignores climate change crisis in 2024

[liesmyteachertoldme]

A New Type of War

While many still have not realized it, we are at war. The aggressors are government intelligence and security agencies that have turned their weapon of choice — information — against their own citizens.

And, while the organizations doing the CIA's dirty work may have changed, the basic organizational structure is the same as it was in 1967. Taxpayer money gets funneled through various federal departments and agencies into the hands of nongovernmental agencies that carry out censorship activities as directed. As recently reported by investigative journalists Alex Gutentag and Michael Shellenberger:6

"The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), and the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) are nongovernmental organizations, their leaders say.

When they demand more censorship of online hate speech, as they are currently doing of X, formerly Twitter, those NGOs are doing it as free citizens and not, say, as government agents.

But the fact of the matter is that the US and other Western governments fund ISD, the UK government indirectly funds CCDH, and, for at least 40 years, ADL spied on its enemies and shared intelligence with the US, Israel and other governments.

The reason all of this matters is that ADL's advertiser boycott against X may be an effort by governments to regain the ability to censor users on X that they had under Twitter before Musk's takeover last November.

Internal Twitter and Facebook messages show that representatives of the US government, including the White House, FBI, Department of Homeland Security (DHS), as well as the UK government, successfully demanded Facebook and Twitter censorship of their users over the last several years."

What we have now is government censorship by proxy, a deeply anti-American activity that has become standard practice, not just by intelligence and national security agencies but federal agencies of all stripes, including our public health agencies.

September 8, 2023, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court's injunction banning the White House, the surgeon general, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the FBI from influencing social media companies to remove so-called "disinformation."7

According to the judges' decision,8 "CDC officials provided direct guidance to the platforms on the application of the platforms' internal policies and moderation activities" by telling them what was, and was not, misinformation, asking for changes to platforms' moderation policies and directing platforms to take specific actions.

"Ultimately, the CDC's guidance informed, if not directly affected, the platforms' moderation decisions," the judges said, so, "although not plainly coercive, the CDC officials likely significantly encouraged the platforms' moderation decisions, meaning they violated the First Amendment."

Unfortunately, as mentioned earlier, the U.S. government is not acting alone. Governments around the world and international organizations like the World Health Organization are all engaged in censorship, and when it comes to medical information, most Big Tech platforms are taking their lead from the WHO. And, if the WHO's pandemic treaty9 is enacted, then the WHO will have sole authority to dictate truth. Everything else will be censored.

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

Brazil’s Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty

On November 18, 2024, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva delivered a speech at the Summit of the Heads of State, urging leaders from 40 nations to support the Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty. Under Lula’s leadership, Brazil joined forces with 82 other countries to establish the alliance, commonly called the G20.

The term “G20” stands for “Group of 20,” which consists of 20 of the world’s biggest economies gathering to help rebuild the world in times of crisis. The G20 was formed in 1999 to discuss policy matters and provide aid to countries in a financial crisis. The member countries of the G20 include the following: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Türkiye, the U.K. and the U.S. Initially, there were only 19 countries that were considered “member countries.” However, Spain has been and is currently included in the group as a permanent guest.

The G20 comprises 31 nongovernmental Organizations (NGOs), philanthropic organizations and 24 international organizations, nine of which are financial institutions. The group’s purpose or ultimate goal, is to “accelerate global efforts to eradicate hunger and poverty” through its initiative to reach 500 million people with cash-transfer programs in low and middle-income countries by 2030.

Brazil has already implemented public policies, such as the Food Acquisition Program and the School Meals Program, which the Alliance plans to use as a “benchmark for combating hunger.” The principles of the Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty inspired these initiatives. A High-Level Champion Council will supervise the Alliance to oversee the work that it’s doing. Additionally, it will hold regular Summits Against Hunger and Poverty.

Continue reading.

[rapeculturerealities]

The Case for Ending the “Global Gag Rule” and the Helms Amendment | Guttmacher Institute

The global gag rule prevents foreign nongovernmental organizations from using their own, non-U.S. funds to provide abortion services, information, counseling, referrals or advocacy. Since it was first created in 1984, the policy has historically been put in place by Republican presidents and rescinded by Democratic ones. The Trump administration put the global gag rule on steroids, massively expanding it multiple times and making additional attempts to do so even as it was leaving office.

Although President Biden has rescinded the global gag rule, that is only a short-term solution to the long-term problem of this devastating policy. The new administration and Congress have a unique opportunity to end the global gag rule permanently by supporting and passing the Global Health, Empowerment and Rights (Global HER) Act, which was reintroduced in the House and Senate on the same day as President’s Biden executive action. The bill would prevent future presidents from unilaterally reinstating the global gag rule via executive action and end the policy’s intermittent use. With 177 cosponsors in the House of Representatives and 46 in the Senate just two weeks after reintroduction, passing the Global HER Act is politically feasible, if leadership makes it a priority. Enacting the bill would end U.S. interference in what organizations do with their own money, but would not address restrictions on whether U.S. money can be used to fund global abortion services.

[humanrightsupdates]

International Criminal Court Members Speak Out

Ninety-three member countries of the International Criminal Court (ICC) have declared their “unwavering support” for the court in the face of recent threats.

The June 14 statement by an unprecedented number of ICC members across the globe follows a slew of threats, particularly after ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan announced on May 20 that he was seeking arrest warrants against two senior Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, along with three Hamas leaders.

The joint statement reconfirmed ICC members’ support for the court “as an independent and impartial judicial institution” and their committment to defending the ICC, its officials, and those cooperating with it from any political interference and pressure. It follows similar expressions of support by the Presidency of the ICC Assembly of States Parties, several ICC member countries—including UN Security Council members—the high representative of the European Union, UN special procedures, and nongovernmental organizations.

In April, amid speculation ICC warrants for crimes committed in Gaza were imminent, 12 US senators threatened to sanction Khan should he pursue cases against top Israeli officials. Netanyahu also called on governments to prevent the court from issuing warrants. Khan’s office denounced the threats, noting that the ICC can also prosecute individuals for obstructing justice.

On June 4, after the warrant applications were announced, the US House of Representatives passed a bill aimed at imposing sanctions against the ICC, its officials, and those supporting investigations at the court involving US citizens or allies. The bill is now under consideration in the US Senate. The proposed law is reminiscent of the sanctions imposed by President Donald Trump on the previous ICC prosecutor to intimidate the court from pursuing cases against US and Israeli personnel for crimes committed in Afghanistan and Palestine. President Joe Biden revoked those sanctions in 2021 and has so far opposed the current bill.

The ICC is also in Russia’s crosshairs. In 2023, Russian authorities issued arrest warrants against Khan and six ICC judges after the ICC issued an arrest warrant against Russian President Vladimir Putin and another Russian official for war crimes committed in Ukraine. Russian lawmakers also enacted a law criminalizing cooperation with the ICC.

In both the Palestine and Ukraine investigations, ICC officials are simply doing their job. The joint statement sends a strong message that ICC members have the court’s back and will not bow to efforts to undermine its independence.