#social media complaints policy

[germiyahu]

I also don't like the assertion that Jews are trying to conflate "criticism of Israel with antisemitism/the Israeli state with Jewishness as a whole" because you... YOU... did that first and you do it more easily than you breathe.

You interrogate every complaint of antisemitism, just to make sure it's not actually whining about someone being mean to Israel. You investigate the person's social media history to make sure they're not a Zionist. You turn around and act so enlightened and wise when you say "Right because Netanyahu wants Jewish people to think criticism of Israel is antisemitic, and he wants Jewish people to think that they have to have ties to Israel and that Israel is the only place they'll feel safe, that plays right into his hands," like you're doing this for Jewish people's benefit. Like you're not one of the people making Jews feel unsafe.

The fact of the matter is that Israel is intrinsically Jewish. By design yes. But also for the fact that it's just logically true? Most Israelis are Jewish. Most Diaspora Jews have friends and family in Israel. It's not a function of flags or national anthems. It's a function of people. Saying "Well conflating Israel with the idea of Jewishness is antisemitic," changes nothing about that. It's words with no value. It's empty air. Because what have you done to advocate for Diaspora Jewry and make them feel like they're not subordinate to Israel? What have you done to assure them that your disdain for a country that most of them have personal familial and cultural ties to is not motivated by bigotry? What have you done to include them and center their safety when advocating against Israel's policies?

Yes, the more people are antisemitic and weird about Israel to Diaspora Jews' faces, the more of them will gravitate closer to Israel. But that's not the point. The point is that if your criticisms of Israel were normal, we wouldn't have a problem. 99% of Diaspora Jews would join you. But you tell them they're not allowed to defend Israel in any context and they're not allowed to defend themselves when your "criticism" of Israel harms them. You don't want to admit that these can overlap. You just want them to silently add a rubber stamp of approval of whatever you say or they can leave.

It's clear you don't see Jews as a marginalized group. This is not how Leftists treat marginalized groups. This is how they treat the oppressor group, the dominant group. Diaspora Jews are at best an ally to Palestinian liberation. Because you don't see them as different from Israelis, you see them as the group that benefits from the oppression of Palestinians, not as a group that has nothing to do with Palestine and is historically and contemporarily marginalized by Western society, the society you live in.

And yet for all you conflate Diaspora and Israeli Jews you clearly want to keep Israel and the Diaspora divided, isolated from each other. They can't show solidarity with one another because that's (((ZIONIST COLLUSION))) and confirmation of a media controlled conspiracy or something. You want Diaspora Jews under your thumb and you want Israeli Jews dead. You're not as subtle as you think you are.

[argumate]

there are a few reasons for why someone might wish to reduce the level of immigration rather than increase it:

it's illegal to build housing, so there will be nowhere for them to live -- this is a valid concern! a society where it is illegal or very costly to build housing will have difficulties with immigration, and population growth in general, new family formation, seniors downsizing, people living closer to their jobs, in fact there will be many problems; please consider legalising the construction of housing immediately, it makes everything so much easier.

we don't have enough schools/hospitals/trains for more people -- similar to a housing shortage this is a valid concern and has a similar solution: build more infrastructure! if you have a shortage of vital infrastructure and an inability to construct more then that will be a constant drag on growth regardless of immigration.

immigrants reduce wages -- this is a complicated one as it gets tangled up in so many different hypotheses:

immigrants that are not allowed to work may work illegally and accept low wages without complaint as they fear deportation, while immigrants that have rights may demand higher wages.

population increase does not automatically lower wages as people consume as well as work (wages rose faster in the 1960s despite population growth being high).

if immigrants reduce wages, why doesn't that lower prices? if lower wages flow through to higher corporate profits then that suggests issues with market concentration and lack of competition that are independent of immigration.

many industries have gatekeeping bottlenecks that prevent new workers from joining in order to keep wages high, like healthcare (which often leads to a two tier system where e.g. nurses might be paid less than doctors if they aren't protected by the same guild).

immigrants require too much public support -- another complicated one if you believe that immigrants work too much for too little, since this idea suggests that immigrants import excess consumption instead of excess production; of course it's possible that young immigrants work hard and don't consume much in the way of healthcare while older immigrants work less and consume more healthcare, so both assertions could be true simultaneously depending on which immigrants you are talking about (in practice I don't think it's the case that immigrants or their descendants consume noticeably more public support than non-immigrants).

immigrants might be axe murderers -- unclear whether this belief relies on immigrants having committed axe murders in the past or planning to commit them in the future, but with crime rates at historic lows it seems that axe murders fluctuate due to reasons that are not tied to immigration levels (and there are so many candidates to choose from: social policy, incarceration rates, abortion access, lead in the petrol, war and mass mobilisation, availability of mobile phones and the internet, dozens more hypotheses).

immigrants might make people racist -- this sounds funny but it's true that due to the way people get tribal (and unfortunate media incentives) if any immigrant does turn out to be an axe murderer then it will potentially prejudice popular opinion against all immigrants, much like the way if a serial killer turns out to be a middle aged man it justifies treating all middle aged men as serial killers, etc.

I'm ignoring the overtly racist reasons why someone might want to constrain immigration as those are unpleasant; there are obviously a lot of covertly or implicitly racist reasons but I think it's better to take them at face value first.

I believe there are strong moral and economic arguments in favour of what you might call a "let people do what the fuck they want" policy towards immigration, and that most of the challenges to adopting this relate to self-inflicted own goals where a society shoots itself in the dick by making it impossible to build housing where people want to live, or impossible to build power stations, or impossible to build train lines, and then laments the lack of the infrastructure necessary for life; we don't have to do this, and we could all be a lot richer if we just stopped choosing not to be.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Elsie Carson-Holt at LGBTQ:

Jack Daniel’s has joined a growing number of brands that have cut their commitments to diversity, after conservative influencer Robby Starbuck threatened to make the company his next target. Last week, it was Harley Davidson, and before them it was Tractor Supply Co. and John Deere. Starbuck’s method of rallying his online followers to deluge companies social media with complaints about their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives and donations to social justice organizations has proven effective.

Jack Daniel’s, the whiskey company, is the latest. On August 21, Starbuck posted on X (formerly known as Twitter) “Big news: The next company we were set to expose was Jack Daniels,” but that the company had ended several initiatives and partnerships.

Starbuck said, “They must have been tipped off by us going through employee LinkedIn pages” and that the company had “just preemptively announced” changes to DEI programs. Starbuck had obtained an email from Brown Forman (Jack Daniel’s parent company) saying that “the world has evolved” since launching a DEI campaign in 2019. The company said that since January, it had been evolving the current program to a “strategic framework,” which includes ending its partnership with the Human Rights Campaign and its Corporate Equality Index (CEI), which tracks how large employers treat their LGBTQ+ employees through various policies.

Jack Daniel’s is the latest company to shamefully cave into right-wing faux outrage artist Robby Starbuck’s bad-faith campaign against DEI and LGBTQ+ initiatives in workplaces by ending their participation in Human Rights Campaign’s CEI program and diversity initiatives.

[papapandashipyards]

Spaceshiptember Day6 CORPORATE "...regarding the complaints we received in relation to asteroid strikes of the Worker quarters; we hear you and understand your concerns! However, Company policy is clear: Asteroids are a VITAL part of the natural beauty of the universe as well as a major source of income for the ship. Therefore any negative mention of Asteroids in any Communique, News release, social media, personal correspondence, or verbal utterance will result in immediate termination."

[nikethestatue]

A personal rant.

About the state of fandom in romantasy in general.

I scrolled through Reddit today and encountered this:

This is a comment—one out of over 160, about a popular series. This is not SJM specific, but I see something similar day in and day out.

Specifically regarding SJM, a good chunk of comments are all about how SJM is a money grabber, how every character sucks, how Rhys is a dictator, Feyre is a breeder, Elain should’ve died, cassian is an abuser, and on and on.

And then we all complain about SJMs silence. Her lack of interaction with the fandom. Her disinterest in the readers.

And then I think: writers, who write for weeks, months and sometimes years are doing this as a Job. This is their work. And not only do they deserve to be compensated for their work, but also….appreciated? How about that?

How would any of these keyboard warriors feel if someone came to them and berated every single thing that they did. Publicly. Wrote long reviews of every mistake, fault, and totally personal opinions about the quality of their performance at work?

Oh, well, authors should have thicker skin!!!’

Why?

Authors write books.

It’s a boring and lonely activity (trust me I know). And they often crank out huge book annually.

And then…they have to deal with this avalanche of hate, derision and complaints.

No one trains authors to develop ‘thicker skin’. They are often suburban moms who wanted to write. They aren’t trained by the CIA to develop survival tactics and not pay attention to all the crap that is being posted about them and their work.

SJM’s writing has been called every possible derogatory word, she’s been called everything from a racist to a money grabber to a plagiarizer.

Honestly? When is this going to stop?

The way readers treat writers is revolting.

What happened?

Is this because the internet offers anonymity and you can just say anything?

I get writing an honest review (hey I hated HOFAS! But I chose not to write a review because I knew it wouldn’t have been kind) or offering a genuine critique about something, but my god…a little kindness? A little grace?

Can anyone really blame SJM for completely withdrawing from the fandom? Can you imagine waking up, going on your basic social media and only seeing endless vitriol in regard to what you’ve created?

I don’t even know why I’m writing this but I guess I’m just tired of seeing books and authors that I love and who changed the trajectory of my life being bashed and insulted all over the internet.

Sometimes, not saying anything is the best policy.

[eretzyisrael]

by Ashe Schowe

A tenured Columbia University law professor says she was effectively terminated after an investigation found she discriminated against Jewish and Israeli students.

Katherine Franke, who was investigated after she gave an interview claiming that Israeli students were harassing students on campus, on Friday announced she was retiring and released a statement criticizing the university.

“For the last year and a half, as students at Columbia University and across the globe have protested against the Israeli government’s genocidal assault on Palestinians after the October 2023 attacks, a response that has resulted in horrendous devastation in Gaza, I have ardently defended students’ right to peaceful protest on our campus and across the country,” Franke began her statement. “I truly believed that student engagement with the rights and dignity of Palestinians continued a celebrated tradition at Columbia University of student protest.”

She said she had been “targeted” for her “support of pro-Palestinian protesters – by the president of Columbia University, by several colleagues, by university trustees, and by outside actors.”

“This has included an unjustified finding by the University that my public comments condemning attacks against student protesters violated university non-discrimination policy,” she added.

Those public comments, however, suggested Israeli students were the ones harassing other Columbia students, particularly Palestinian students.

“So many of those Israeli students, who then come to the Columbia campus, are coming right out of their military service,” she said in January 2024. “They’ve been known to harass Palestinian and other students on our campus.”

In that interview, Franke also repeated the false allegation that Israeli students had sprayed anti-Israel protesters with skunk spray, with Franke claiming they were hospitalized due to a “chemical attack.” She also claimed the students responsible were part of Columbia’s dual degree program with Tel Aviv University – but they weren’t.

“The students were able to identify three of these exchange students, basically, from Israel, who had just come out of military service, who were spraying the pro-Palestinian students with this skunk water,” Franke said in her interview with the leftist organization “Democracy Now.”

The “chemical attack” was actually a non-toxic gag spray from Amazon, and Columbia paid $395,000 to a Jewish student after it suspended him for the incident.

Other professors at Columbia Law filed a complaint against Franke following this interview, arguing that Franke “harassed members of the Columbia community based on their national origin,” according to The Times of Israel. The investigation determined that Franke violated the school’s anti-discrimination policy during her interview and also violated school policy regarding retaliation by revealing to a reporter the name of a professor who reported her. On social media, Franke also targeted the professors who filed the complaint.

“As made public by parties in this matter, a complaint was filed alleging discriminatory harassment in violation of our policies,” Columbia said in a statement to the Times. “An investigation was conducted, and a finding was issued. As we have consistently stated, the University is committed to addressing all forms of discrimination consistent with our policies.”

Franke also supported the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which aims to harm Israel economically for perceived slights while targeting no other nation for similar or worse aggressions.

Protesters at Columbia and other Ivy League universities have promoted open calls for violence, the Times previously reported. As The Daily Wire reported, these student protests likely caused Columbia’s annual “Giving Day” donations to plunge nearly 30% in 2024.

[starredforlife]

how are you expecting Trump not to win though

this is a strange question. are you trying to say you expect that if harris becomes massively criticized in a pressure campaign, then she will stay locked into her stance of supporting Israel, not budging, and lose momentum and appeal, enough to lose to trump? because i don't know, genocide should make your party completely unappealing. maybe that's just me.

HOWEVER a pressure campaign/criticism of her "platforms" (which are completely vibes and not written down anywhere yet btw) are made by people who believe SHE CAN change. i think this is where y'all are tripping up--the progressive base that shares thousands of smaller complaints with the more moderate dem policies would be willing to buck up on those, and vote full-heartedly for harris if she changed on this issue!!! it's the red line. i mean, it's fucking genocide. the uncommitted movement has a very specific demand--weapons embargo. her promising to work toward that now and during her presidential term would guarantee their votes. it's really not rocket science. so people asking her for change are people who want to vote for her--she simply hasn't done enough to earn our votes yet. but she's seemed susceptible to listening to what's the most popular stance (and i think this is always how she's worked in politics) so it's up to US to make a weapons embargo to Israel the most popular stance. does that make sense? her social media team is listening rn. they want to win and they're looking for what might throw them. it's why their border policy has fully shifted right-wing, bc that's the much more popular stance right now. it's why she's talking about no taxes on tips all of the sudden. so our threats need to hold water.

all harris has to do is agree to these demands and she won't lose those votes. it's up to her to win this election--not for us to hand it over to her regardless of what her policies are. locking yourself into the system and giving up on doing anything is actually killing people, right now. you cannot be scared to raise your voice over fear that trump may win. nobody is saying "don't vote for harris". we are saying "tell harris she is not winning our votes until she changes on this issue.". and then see if she fucking listens. and if she doesn't, i can't stop you from voting for her. but she will have lost our votes and it will be her fault--not ours.

[mariacallous]

In March 2019, TikTok agreed to a US federal court order barring the social media giant from collecting personal information from its youngest users without their parents’ consent. According to a new lawsuit filed by US authorities, TikTok immediately breached that order and now faces penalties of $51,744 per violation per day.

TikTok “knowingly allowed children under 13 to create accounts in the regular TikTok experience and collected extensive personal information from those children without first providing parental notice or obtaining verifiable parental consent,” the US Department of Justice alleged on behalf of the Federal Trade Commission in a complaint lodged on Friday in federal court in California.

TikTok spokesperson Michael Hughes says the company strongly disagrees with the allegations. He reiterates a statement the company issued in June, when the FTC had voted to sue, that many of the issues raised relate to “practices that are factually inaccurate or have been addressed.” Hughes adds that TikTok is “proud of our efforts to protect children, and we will continue to update and improve the platform.”

Lawsuits over alleged violations of children’s privacy are almost a rite of passage for social platforms these days, with companies such as Google, Microsoft, and Epic Games collectively having paid hundreds of millions of dollars in penalties.

But the case against TikTok also falls into the US government’s escalating battle with the service, whose ownership by China-based ByteDance has drawn national security concerns. Some US officials and lawmakers have said they worry about China exploiting TikTok to spread propaganda and gather data on vulnerable Americans. TikTok has refuted the concerns as baseless fear-mongering and is fighting a law that requires it to seek new ownership.

The complaint filed on Friday alleges that as of 2020, TikTok wouldn’t let users sign up on their own if they entered a birthdate that showed they were under 13 years old. But it allowed those same users to go back, edit their birthdate, and sign up without parental permission.

TikTok also wouldn’t remove accounts purporting to belong to children unless the user made an explicit admission of their age on their account, according to the lawsuit. TikTok’s hired content moderators allegedly spent just five to seven seconds on average reviewing accounts for age violations. “Defendants actively avoid deleting the accounts of users they know to be children,” the lawsuit states. Additionally, millions of accounts flagged as potentially belonging to children allegedly were never removed because of a bug in TikTok’s internal tools.

The lawsuit acknowledges that TikTok improved some policies and processes over the years but that it still held on to and used personal information of children that it shouldn’t have had in the first place.

Authorities also took issue with TikTok’s dedicated Kids Mode. The lawsuit alleges that TikTok gathered and shared information about children’s usage of the service and built profiles on them while misleading parents about the data collection. When parents tried to have data on their kids deleted, TikTok forced them to jump through unnecessary hoops, the lawsuit further alleges.

TikTok should have known better, according to the government, because of the 2019 court order, which stemmed from TikTok’s predecessor—a service known as Musical.ly—allegedly violating a number of rules aimed at protecting children’s privacy. Those rules largely come from the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, a law dating to the late-1990s dotcom era that tried to create a safer environment for children on the web.

Lawmakers in the US this year have been weighing a major update in the form of the Kids Online Safety Act, or KOSA. The proposed measure, which passed the Senate earlier this week, would require services like TikTok to better control kids’ usage. Detractors have said it would unfairly cut off some young populations, such as transgender kids, from vital support networks. KOSA’s fate remains uncertain. But as the case against TikTok allegedly shows, stricter rules may do little to stop companies from pursuing familiar tactics.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Harry Litman at Talking Feds:

It reflects the brutality of the constitutional attack that Trump has unleashed during his first two weeks in office that conduct resembling the actions that led to two impeachments four years ago has barely registered among the dizzying blitzkrieg of assaults. The episode that I have in mind took place last week, but originates from a (meritless) lawsuit that he filed against CBS as a private citizen last October. The outlandish $10 billion lawsuit alleged that CBS edited an interview with Kamala Harris in a biased fashion. The interview was part of the traditional campaign sit downs with both candidates. Trump declined to participate, but he wound up complaining bitterly about an answer Harris gave concerning Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Trump’s beef was that the network aired one version of the answer on “Face the Nation” and a different (he alleged better) version that evening on “60 Minutes.”

In a screed dressed up as a legal complaint, Trump launched scattershot charges such as “CBS and other legal legacy media organizations have gone into overdrive to get Kamala elected… [n]otwithstanding her well documented deep unpopularity even with her own Party.” He asserted that CBS engaged in malicious distortion to “tip the scales” in favor of the Democratic ticket. Trump brought the case under Texas state law against deceptive business practice. Why Texas state law? Well for starters, there’s no viable lawsuit based on federal law. More importantly, the state law theory permitted Trump to bring the case in the Amarillo division of the federal court in the Northern District of Texas, because the constitution allows parties to bring state law cases in federal courts where the parties are from different states (aka diversity jurisdiction). What’s so special about Amarillo? It meant that he was virtually guaranteed to get the federal judge who sits there. That would be Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk. The name will likely ring a bell. Known for his ardent devotion to conservative social causes, Kacsmaryk is the judge who suspended the FSA’s approval of mifepristone, among many other highly controversial rulings. Trump was engaging in naked forum shopping, exploiting a gaping design defect in the system that needs to be corrected. At the time Trump brought the lawsuit, CBS described it as “completely without merit” and pledged to defend itself vigorously. It said that the Harris interview was edited solely for time constraints on “60 Minutes”—routine editorial stuff—and they denied Trump’s charge that the tape had been doctored.

[...] As soon as he took office, Trump appointed Brendan Carr, a Republican ally whom he appointed to the Commission during his first term, as FCC Chair. In a way that is highly unusual for a regulatory appointee, Carr has been an outspoken advocate for Trump and conservative causes. He has accused Adam Schiff of overseeing a "secret and partisan surveillance machine." He has continuously leveled accusations against the media for supposed bias against Trump. In an interview with Lou Dobbs, he alleged that "[s]ince the 2016 election, the far left has hopped from hoax to hoax to hoax to explain how it lost to President Trump at the ballot box." Most notably, Carr authored the FCC section of Project 2025, which proposed lower legal shields to lawsuits and other policies to bolster conservative speech. Trump in turn has called Carr a “warrior for Free Speech.” Translated, that means a willing henchman in Trump’s shakedown efforts to force media into more favorable coverage and muddle over of his endless stream of lies. Immediately after assuming the Chair, Carr revived the investigations that the FCC had dismissed against CBS, ABC, and NBC (but not Fox). Then last Thursday he launched new investigations into PBS and NPR, both of which Project 2025 calls to defund. Those moves were already high-handed and likely unlawful: The Communications Act of 1934 affirms (and the First Amendment already provides) that the FCC cannot impose content-based restrictions on broadcasters. The FCC has no right to order what the Washington Post and LA Times have of late done voluntarily: gentler (and less honest) coverage of Trump.

On Wednesday, the FCC sent CBS a “Letter of Inquiry” seeking the full unedited transcript and camera feeds from the Harris interview. Like other networks, “60 Minutes” normally doesn’t release interview transcripts to avoid public second-guessing of its editing process. Moreover, the move was nonsensical and highly intrusive: it suggested that the FCC wants to pass judgment not only on what CBS broadcasted but what it didn’t broadcast and how it edited the material it collected for the story. There is no plausible, much less tenable, theory of FCC power that would countenance any scrutiny of that internal process. It was, in fact, a kneecap move. And the kneecap in question is the application of CBS’s parent company, Paramount Global, for a merger with Skydance Media, the film studio run by the son of Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison. The merger is an $8 billion deal in its closing stages that will create a new company worth about $28 billion.

[...] In its essential structure, Trump’s tactics are no different from his attempted shakedowns of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, as well as his effort to enlist the Department of Justice to help him steal the 2020 election. With Zelenskyy, Trump, in what he has never varied in describing as a “perfect conversation,” tried to hold aid hostage to the Ukrainian president’s agreement to falsely certify corruption by Joe and Hunter Biden. The first articles of impeachment alleged that Trump had abused his power and obstructed Congress for personal political benefit, as was essentially undeniable. (Importantly, Congress had already appropriated the aid that Trump was using to bribe Zelensky; his actions are echoed in his recent effort to freeze nearly all aid and grants, which critics contend violates the anti-impoundment principle of the constitution.) Lead House manager Adam Schiff presciently told the country in closing argument that if Trump were not removed, he would violate the Constitution again. Trump tried to pull the same swindle in the aftermath of his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden. Conspiring with a hand-picked mid-level DOJ official Jeff Clark, whom he proposed to make the Acting Attorney General, Trump tried to manipulate the Department of Justice into sending a letter to Georgia officials suggesting falsely that the Department had found fraud in the election results. As Trump said to the actual Acting Attorney General, Jeff Rosen, "just say that the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen.” But in a dramatic standoff in the Oval Office, Rosen and other Department officials threatened a mass resignation that forced Trump to back down. Trump and Carr’s shakedown of CBS is structurally identical to these two first term outrages. Trump is seeking to force CBS to pay off his lawsuit that he brought as a private citizen based on a claims that have no possible connection to his official responsibilities.

[...] In fact, Trump tried a similar caper in his first administration, trying to strong arm Time Warner, parent company of CNN, based on its proposed merger with AT&T. But since it was clear at the time (as it is now, despite the FCC’s will assertions otherwise) that the FCC merger review doesn’t take account of CNN’s editorial practices, AT&T and Time Warner were able to successfully push back on Trump’s attempts to intervene. This almost certainly is not the end of Trump’s war on the media, whom he has assailed with the same furor he reserves for DEI and illegal immigrants. Trump has called for ABC to lose its license. He has said NBC should be investigated for treason. He crowed in a campaign rally about forcing journalists to reveal their sources by throwing them in jail, saying “When this person realizes that he’s going to be the bride of another person shortly, he will say ‘I’d very much like to tell you exactly who that was.’” And, along with other recent moves like pardoning the January 6 rioters and withdrawing security detail from his political enemies, Trump’s demonization of the media threatens violence. Numerous studies have found increased threats of physical violence, as well as actual violence, against journalists, and anecdotal evidence confirms harassment is rampant at Trump rallies. After the election, a former Marine was arrested for attempting to strangle a Pacific Islander TV news reporter while taunting, “Are you even a US citizen? This is Trump’s America now.” The bottom line is that the kind of behavior every bit as corrupt as what led to the two impeachments, and that poses a grave threat to freedom of the press, now passes by as a page 3 story easily overlooked in the avalanche of outrages with immediate tangible impact, such as the OMB’s recent effort to halt nearly all federal assistance, or unelected mischief maker Elon Musk’s infiltration of the US Treasury’s payment system.

Tyrant 47 doing the same stuff he got impeached for twice in his first go. It’s time to impeach 47! #Impeach47

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

Inside a Chaotic U.S. Deportation Flight to Brazil

The Trump administration’s first flight deporting Brazilians involved aborted takeoffs, sweltering heat, emergency exits and shackled deportees on a wing.

Temperatures were rising inside the plane. Eighty-eight Brazilian deportees, most of them handcuffed and shackled, were getting restless on Friday under the watch of U.S. immigration agents. The passenger jet, dealing with repeated technical problems, was stuck on the tarmac in a sweltering city in the Amazon rainforest.

Then the air conditioning broke — again.

There were demands to stay seated, shoving, shouting, children crying, passengers fainting and agents blocking exits, according to interviews with six of the deportees aboard the flight. Finally, passengers pulled the levers to release two emergency exits, and shackled men poured out onto the plane’s wing, shouting for help.

Brazil’s federal police quickly arrived and, after a brief standoff, told the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to release the deportees, though they had not yet reached their scheduled destination.

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva ordered a Brazilian Air Force aircraft to pick up the deportees and take them the rest of the way. His government’s ministers then publicly slammed the Trump administration’s handling of the deportees as “unacceptable” and “degrading.”

It was those complaints about the Brazilian flight that President Gustavo Petro of Colombia was replying to on social media when he announced Sunday that his government had turned away two deportation flights from the United States. That set off dueling threats of tariffs between the United States and Colombia that ultimately ended in Mr. Petro backing down.

The diplomatic dust-up over the deportation flights to Brazil and Colombia marked a turbulent first weekend for President Trump’s hard-line policy to deport millions of undocumented immigrants.

Continue reading.

[doctorjameswatson]

In a continuation from yesterday. The man with the homophobic review didn’t like our response and has updated his review, changing it from 3 to 1 star, and has put in an official complaint to our head office.

He also claims that almost everyone on his social media pages agrees with him.

My colleagues think it’s laughable and in a way it is because my company’s policies are very pro-lgbt and the law also backs us.

But it just gives me anxiety 😔

[eretzyisrael]

Philadelphia School District Under Federal Investigation for Antisemitism

Since April 2024, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) has been investigating the School District of Philadelphia (SDP) for unparalleled levels of antisemitism in its schools.

The two filed complaints specifically include abhorrent harassment of Jewish teachers and students following the October 7, 2023, Hamas massacre of 1,200 Israelis.

Both federal complaints sought intervention by the OCR to compel SDP’s compliance with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which explicitly prohibits public schools from perpetrating or failing to respond to acts of discrimination and intimidation due to religious and ethnic bias.

SDP is the largest school district in Pennsylvania and the eighth-largest school district in America. It serves 118,335 students in grades K-12.

Key Findings

There are unparalleled levels of antisemitism and harassment of Jewish students and teachers in Philadelphia’s K-12 schools post October 7: This has prompted two TItle VI complaints to be filed with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights.

Canary Mission has identified antisemitic teachers: The teachers’ names were redacted in the above complaints.

Systemic Use of Social Media to Promote Antisemitism: Educators and administrators in the Philly school district have used their social media platforms to disseminate antisemitic content and propagate hatred towards Israel. This activity is in violation of district policy.

Sanctioned Antisemitic Curricula and Events: The district has allowed the promotion of antisemitic content through sanctioned school events, “teach-ins” and class assignments.

Active Alignment with Anti-Israel Activist Groups: Philly educators have aligned themselves with anti-Israel activist groups, such as the Racial Justice Organizing Committee and Philadelphia Educators for Palestine. These groups actively push an anti-Israel agenda in schools, including the organization of events and the distribution of materials that promote antisemitism and glorify violence.

Retaliation Against Jewish Parents and Students: Jewish parents and students who have raised concerns about antisemitism in Philly’s schools have faced retaliation and public denigration by teachers and administrators. This has created a culture of fear and reluctance to report incidents, further perpetuating a hostile environment.

Refusal to Take Action: Despite numerous complaints, the district has failed to take adequate action to address these issues, resulting in Jewish students withdrawing from schools and Jewish teachers retiring early due to the hostile environment.

Facilitation of Antisemitism by High-Ranking Administrators: Senior officials in the district have fostered a culture of antisemitism through public social media posts and by supporting antisemitic rhetoric and events.

[ukrfeminism]

Westminster city council and Social Work England last week became the latest to join a list of organisations – including Arts Council England, a barristers’ chambers and a thinktank – found to have discriminated against a female worker because of their gender-critical beliefs.

The social worker Rachel Meade’s winagainst the council and her profession’s regulator means she joins a select but growing group of gender-critical feminists who have successfully brought discrimination claims on the basis of their beliefs.

Gender-critical feminists believe sex is biological and cannot be changed, and disagree with trans rights activists who say gender identity should be given priority in terms of law-making and policy. Clashes in workplaces – in some cases with those who regard the focus on biological sex as transphobic – have led to a string of employment tribunals.

On Monday, a tribunal began hearing a constructive dismissal claim from Roz Adams against Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre. Next month, Kenny McBride’s case against the Scottish government is due to be heard in Glasgow, while judgments are pending in a claim from Prof Jo Phoenix against the Open University and that of the Green party’s former deputy leader Shahrar Ali against the party.

In all four cases – and more in the pipeline – the claimants argue they were discriminated against because they hold gender-critical beliefs.

They hope to follow in the footsteps of the barrister Allison Bailey, and of the researcher Maya Forstater who obtained a landmark judgment in 2021 that her gender-critical beliefs were a protected philosophical belief under the Equality Act. The campaign group Sex Matters, founded by Forstater, has identified at least 19 current cases.

After the Meade case last week, which like several others involved disciplinary action being initiated against an employee as a result of social media postings, Westminster council said it would “consider what changes we need to make”. For the local authority it comes too late to prevent a payout, but other employers may need to learn from it.

Lucy Lewis, a partner at the law firm Lewis Silkin, said that on such a politically charged issue, employers could feel they must act quickly after a complaint.

“Because this has become a politically toxic issue, there’s a sort of temptation [on the part of employers] to take a kneejerk reaction rather than the considered view of actually, what is the impact, is there another way we can address this [other than disciplinary proceedings or suspension]?

“People are being influenced by the very public and political dialogue on this and actually there’s value in just taking a step back and understanding all the factors.”

Georgina Calvert-Lee, an employment and equality barrister at Bellevue Law, agreed that the wider debate – in which gender-critical feminists and advocates of transgender rights have been at loggerheads – may have influenced employers, but said they must adjust their behaviour in light of the case law.

“What Forstater and Bailey have done is they’ve set this very strong precedent of tolerance,” Calvert-Lee said.

“Above all, in a pluralistic society, which is what we want, you have to accept that people are going to have different views and some people are going to find their colleagues’ views completely obnoxious – but nevertheless protected because freedom of speech is something that … has been really promoted and underlined.

“It’s always been there but it’s been sort of forgotten in some of these culture wars.”

After settling a case with a gender-critical volunteer, Katie Alcock, Girlguiding UK said it remained “a home for trans people” but added: “We agree that sex and gender are different, and will reflect this in the language we use.”

After another case that was settled out of court, brought by the student James Esses, who was thrown off his course for expressing gender-critical views, the UK Council for Psychotherapy conceded it was a valid professional belief that children suffering from gender dysphoria should receive counselling rather than medical intervention and people should not be discriminated against for such beliefs. Esses’ case against the Metanoia Institute continues.

Calvert-Lee said the cases to date showed the importance of employers training staff “about what is acceptable and what’s not and what amounts to harassment and what probably doesn’t – the sort of respect they should give to each other”, as well as giving training to those staff investigating complaints.

“Whenever there’s some sort of complaint which involves a belief that’s basically pitted against another belief, they [the investigator] have to be completely neutral,” she said. “It’s not on for the investigator to come to it very overtly with their own value judgment.”

The tribunals have made clear that it is not a free-for-all but a balancing exercise. For instance, David Mackereth – an outlier in that he lost his case based on gender-critical beliefs – was found to have crossed the line by misgendering service users at the Department for Work and Pensions, making its decision to dismiss him reasonable.

Calvert-Lee believes the recent increase in cases will ultimately be a blip rather than a growing trend, as workplaces become more aware of the need to handle complaints and concerns more carefully.

The events that led to Meade’s claim came “just weeks before the Forstater employment appeal tribunal decision was given”, she said, and the results of the Forstater and Bailey cases would mean “employers will have training, and so they’re likely to fall off, you’re likely to have fewer cases”.

Lewis said there would always be “bad eggs” but compared the situation to legal cases on manifestations of religious belief at work, such as wearing a cross.

“You have a flurry of cases and people that aren’t lawyers … wonder why those cases go away,” she said. “In a common law system like ours, you have cases that set out some of the principles employment tribunals need to consider and then really good organisations like the CIPD [Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development] take all that reasoning, they give advice and training to employers and then employers are clear about what they need to do, how they should manage this kind of conflict in the workplace.”

She added that the media attention afforded to gender-critical cases perhaps suggested that they were more common than they really were. In fact, she suggested there were likely to be a greater number of claims brought by transgender people alleging harm, though many go unreported.

“The overwhelming majority of employers are not setting out to discriminate; they’re not just thinking ‘well all people with gender-critical views are bad, so we’re just going to get rid of them’,” said Lewis.

“They just have got strong alternative views in the workplace and they haven’t known how to navigate through that conflict.”

[mariacallous]

On Tuesday, the Senate passed a massive foreign aid package that included an ultimatum for TikTok: Divest or be banned from operating within the US. The package was approved by the House of Representatives on Saturday, and President Joe Biden said that he intends to sign the bill on Wednesday.

“Even as our social media platforms have fumbled in their response to foreign influence operations, there was never any concern that these platforms are operating at the direction of foreign adversaries,” Mark Warner, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said ahead of the vote on Tuesday. “I cannot say the same for TikTok.”

For more than four years, Congress has threatened to ban TikTok, citing potential risks to national security. Last month, the House approved a separate divestiture bill, but the measure stalled out in the Senate after lawmakers like Senator Maria Cantwell argued that giving TikTok six months to find a new owner was too little time. The new bill extends the deadline for up to an additional six months, giving TikTok a year to sell.

“It is unfortunate that the House of Representatives is using the cover of important foreign aid and humanitarian assistance to once again jam through a ban bill that would trample the free speech rights of 170 million Americans,” TikTok said in a statement shortly after Saturday’s vote. The company did not immediately respond to the Senate’s vote on Tuesday.

The effort to ban TikTok has become politically fraught, especially as more politicians join the platform to campaign in the 2024 election. For years, the Biden administration and campaign avoided creating their own accounts on the app, opting to build out a network of influencers to fill the void. But in February, Biden’s reelection campaign joined TikTok. In March, Biden told reporters that he would sign the bill.

Responding to this revived divestment effort, former president Donald Trump blamed Biden for attacks against the app. “Just so everyone knows, especially the young people, Crooked Joe Biden is responsible for banning TikTok,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Monday. “He is the one pushing it to close, and doing it to help his friends over at Facebook become richer and more dominant, and able to continue to fight, perhaps illegally, the Republican Party.”

The Trump administration was the first to go after TikTok. In 2020, Trump signed a series of executive orders banning apps like TikTok, Alipay, and WeChat. Court challenges prevented these orders from going into place. Last year, Montana lawmakers voted to ban the app, but a federal judge blocked the law from taking effect, saying that it “likely violates the First Amendment.” After the bill passed the House on Saturday, the company’s head of public policy, Michael Beckerman, told staff in an email that if the bill were signed into law, “we will move to the courts for a legal challenge.”

Many lawmakers have cited national security and data privacy concerns as their primary motivation for supporting the bill.

"Congress is not acting to punish ByteDance, TikTok or any other individual company,” Democratic senator Maria Cantwell, said in a floor speech on Tuesday. “Congress is acting to prevent foreign adversaries from conducting espionage, surveillance, maligned operations, harming vulnerable Americans, our servicemen and women, and our U.S. government personnel.”

Critics of a ban have long argued that passing a sweeping data privacy bill could satisfy most of the complaints lawmakers have over TikTok’s security, as well as those posed by US-based companies.

“Congress could pass comprehensive consumer privacy legislation, which would, I think, take more meaningful steps toward addressing a lot of the data privacy concerns that have been raised about TikTok,” says Kate Ruane, director of the Center for Democracy and Technology's Free Expression Project. “And I do not think that there is public evidence that is currently available to demonstrate that extreme, serious, immediate harm exists.”

[kick-a-long]

y

Haley Cohen

September 4, 2024

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The new school year is bringing fresh protections for Jewish students at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, following the administration’s announcement on Tuesday that its nondiscrimination policy will now extend to harassment or discrimination based on Jewish students’ connections to Israel and Zionism.

The guidelines are part of a new agreement with Hillel International, Illini Hillel and the Jewish United Fund, Chicago’s federation, and it comes as several elite universities have received criticism for a lack of transparency about specific messaging as to what university policies are and how they are going to be enforced.

Under the agreement, announced on Tuesday, the University of Illinois declared that the protections offered by the university’s nondiscrimination policy extend to harassment or discrimination of Jewish students, including harassment or discrimination based on Jewish students’ connections to Israel and Zionism.

UIUC published a set of examples, for the first time, of discrimination and harassment of protected classes as part of its nondiscrimination policy.

The examples include the use of antisemitic slurs and stereotypes, blaming a Jewish student for Israel’s policies, physical contact with an individual and derogatory or hostile messages on social media.

In 2020, the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and the law firm of Arnold & Porter filed a Title VI complaint on behalf of University of Illinois Jewish students who alleged antisemitism on campus. Also on Tuesday, a resolution agreement issued by the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) was reached.

Catherine Lhamon, assistant secretary for civil rights at the Department of Education, said that UIUC “has now agreed to take the steps necessary to ensure its education community can learn, teach, and work without an unredressed antisemitic hostile environment, or any other hostility related to stereotypes about shared ancestry.”

Lonnie Nasatir, president of JUF, told Jewish Insider that “the terms in this settlement are the best achieved across the country and will have a significant positive impact on the campus climate for Jewish students.”

Additionally, the university agreed to publish a summary report of bias incidents every month, commit to mandatory antisemitism training for administrators and students and hire an expert on campus antisemitism to enhance the university policies.

The agreement does not include implementation of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism, a definition that mainstream Jewish groups and congressional leaders have called for universities to adopt as schools confront antisemitism on campus. .

In a statement, Robert Jones, UIUC’s chancellor, said that the university is “deeply committed to implementing the Mutual Understandings we are announcing today and to working together to provide a safe and supportive educational environment for our entire Jewish student community and for all students at Illinois.”

Erez Cohen, executive director at Illini Hillel, said in a separate statement that Hillel will “work alongside UIUC during the implementation of their new policies and to help reaffirm their promise to protect the rights of Jewish students on campus.”

While antisemitism on campuses has skyrocketed since the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks and the subsequent war in Gaza, the university’s agreement with Jewish groups had already been in discussion for several years. An OCR investigation from 2015 through December 2023 found 135 allegations of anti-Jewish discrimination (compared to four related to anti-Muslim, anti-Palestinian or anti-Arab discrimination). Incidents in the OCR investigation include flyers distributed around campus via plastic bags containing rocks stating, “Every single aspect of the Covid agenda is Jewish” and a student throwing a rock toward an event at the Hillel Center.

Brandeis Center President Alyza Lewin said in a statement that “UIUC’s administration began engaging in meaningful discussions with the Jewish community about how to address antisemitism on campus after we filed our OCR complaint years ago.”

Lewin called the agreement “a significant milestone,” adding that it will “when implemented, improve the campus climate for Jewish students

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Nikki McCann Ramírez at Rolling Stone:

Republicans returned to their districts last week only to be met with legions of angry constituents demanding answers over their acquiescence to drastic cuts orchestrated by Elon Musk and the Trump administration. Instead of actually listening to the voters who put them in office, GOP leaders are reportedly advising lawmakers to simply stop meeting with them in person. 

According to a Tuesday report from NBC News, House Republican leadership has advised members of the caucus to avoid in-person town halls for fear that voter backlash may become viral if circulated online.  “I don’t know that a specific edict is going to come down from on high that they need to stop or anything, but a message I believe has been clearly sent that this narrative should end very soon,” one Republican National Committee official told NBC News.  Over the course of the last week, multiple Republican House members saw their names make headlines after tense confrontations with constituents in their home districts went viral on social media. Many of the complaints centered around Musk and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency, which has been conducting mass firings of federal workers, while gutting or effectively eliminating congressionally authorized programs.

Rep. Rich McCormick (R-Ga.) was recently mercilessly heckled during a town hall in Georgia’s 7th Congressional District. He was booed by constituents, several of whom questioned the authority granted to Musk, the seemingly arbitrary nature of the cuts, and Trump’s statements comparing himself to a king. “Why is a supposedly conservative party taking such a radical and extremist and sloppy approach to this?” one constituent asked. In Texas, Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas) recently sparred with furious voters who accused him of ceding his authority as a member of Congress to the executive. “The executive can only enforce laws passed by Congress; they cannot make laws,” one attendee said. “When are you going to wrest control back from the executive and stop hurting your constituents?”

Republican politicians cannot stand their constituents turning the heat on them for defending unpopular policies at town hall forums, so GOP leadership is advising them to stop holding town halls.

Cowardice in action.

See Also:

Daily Kos: New GOP plan to deal with angry voters: Run and hide

NBC News: House Republicans hit the brakes on town halls after blowback over Trump's cuts