Category Archives: Freedom

(ANALYSIS) Every year, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) releases a report on religious oppression around the world, recommending that the State Department designate specific countries as especially severe violators. In this years report, released May 1, 2023, Iran came in for particular criticism after months of protests and arrests sparked by headscarf laws. Sri Lanka, Cuba and Nicaragua were also singled out as areas of concern; Nicaragua is specifically accused of persecution against Catholics.

Created through the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998, the commission exemplifies how the right to freedom of religious expression has come to play a significant role in U.S. discussions about human rights and not just abroad. Legislation and recent Supreme Court rulings have created a new legal landscape in which religious freedom claims have become more likely to prevail at home, including well-known court cases like the Hobby Lobby ruling on contraception.

Underlying many debates about how courts and policies treat religion is an often-unspoken question: Is any human right religious freedom in particular more important than another? And what happens when human rights claims come into conflict?

As a scholar of human rights and religion, I believe its important to unpack those questions and to unpack the difference they make in the lives of people affected by U.S. policies around the world.

For the last several decades, the United Nations has been careful to describe all human rights as interdependent. In this view, protecting any human right requires protecting all human rights.

As an example, think of two distinct rights recognized in the Declaration of Human Rights: the right to adequate food and the right to protest. A person who doesnt have enough food to live on is unlikely to have the health and energy to protest, and someone deprived of food because of government policies may find it necessary to protest in order to claim their right to food.

The U.N. and many human rights advocates have also argued that all rights are equal: No human right outweighs another.

According to this view, the only permissible reason one right could ever be temporarily suspended is to protect some other right. Even then, restricting the first right should be a last resort, and it should be restored as soon as possible.

For instance, a person with active tuberculosis or some other contagious disease might be ordered to quarantine for a period. Forced quarantine restricts the individuals right to freedom of movement, but it is considered more urgent to protect other peoples rights to life and health.

In other words, rights might sometimes conflict, but they all depend on each other and are of equal importance in principle. No human right can be ignored or downplayed.

International discussion of human rights has not always reflected this view.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted in 1948, after the horrors of the Holocaust and World War II. It captured a general international consensus that rights protection should shape international humanitarian policy. However, when the U.N. General Assembly attempted to make the rights in the declaration enforceable in international law, disagreements about the importance of different types of rights led to not one but two treaties: the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Some countries have not ratified the first, including China and Saudi Arabia; others have not ratified the second, including the United States.

Today, too, many political leaders do not view all rights as equally weighty. For example, the Chinese government is known to regularly invade citizens privacy and has brutally repressed minority groups. Chinese leaders and state-owned media have insisted that advancing peoples social and economic rights, such as peace and the right to basic subsistence, takes priority over pursuing civil and political rights.

In the United States, the opposite is true. U.S. leaders and influential thinkers have often argued that civil and political rights, like the right to vote or to a fair trial, are more fundamental than economic and social rights, that they are more practical to uphold, or that they fit more neatly into the countrys history of political thought. For example, some Republican politicians, such as Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, have argued that health care is a privilege, not a right.

Questions about how U.S. foreign policy should balance protections for different kinds of rights came under a spotlight in 2019, when then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo created the Commission on Unalienable Rights. This commissions stated goal was to advise the U.S. government on human rights, drawing on both the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the founding documents of the United States.

USCIRF was not involved in the Commission on Unalienable Rights, but put out a statement in support of its work. At the time, USCIRFs president was Tony Perkins, best known for his leadership of the evangelical nonprofit Family Research Council. In the statement, Perkins referred to religious freedom as the most foundational fundamental right.

The commissions report received both praise and criticism from advocates and scholars for its attempt to distinguish unalienable rights, which all individuals have by nature, from positive rights, which are based in custom and written law. The report contends that, from the founders point of view, property rights and religious liberty are most essential, and governments should promote economic rights only insofar as those rights do not infringe on property and religious liberty rights.

The report also describes a few types of rights claims as matters of debate rather than settled law, such as the right to same-sex marriage, which it calls one of several divisive social and political controversies where it is common for both sides to couch their claims in terms of basic rights. Two sentences later, the writers argue that an increase in rights claims, in some ways overdue and just, has given rise to excesses of its own.

In short, the commission prioritized property rights and religious freedom claims. Pompeos State Department acted in line with these priorities, holding two summits on religious freedom with civic and religious leaders from around the world. The State Department also created an International Religious Freedom Alliance with more than two dozen nations, without similar initiatives around other human rights.

Under the administration of President Joe Biden, the Commission on Unalienable Rights was shelved. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has argued that all human rights are co-equal and has criticized the commissions report for seeming to create a hierarchy of rights.

The State Department under Biden has expressed its intent to advance rights claims of LGBTQ+ individuals. Recently, it threatened sanctions on Uganda over a new bill that would impose punishments as severe as death for same-sex relationships.

The latest International Religious Freedom report demonstrates that the right to religious freedom is threatened in many places. The entire world has a long way to go in ensuring it is meaningfully protected. At the same time, debates remain heated over whether protecting this right should ever mean violating others.

This post originally appeared at The Conversation.

Read more:

Are Some Human Rights More Important Than Others? Religious Freedom Advocates Often Put It First - Religion Unplugged

Last week, a sex tape purporting to feature Muharrem nce, a third-party candidate in Turkeys presidential election, circulated online. nce said that the tape was a deepfakeThis is not my private life, its slander, he said, according to The Guardian, claiming that the footage had been ripped from an Israeli porn sitebut he dropped out of the race regardless, citing a longer campaign of character assassination. What I have seen in these last forty-five days, I have not seen in forty-five years, he said. The supposed sex tape was not the only occasion on which claims of technological deception had surfaced during the campaign. Kemal Kldarolu, the main opposition candidate, accused Russia (without offering specifics) of weaponizing deepfake technology to boost Recep Tayyip Erdoan, the incumbent president. And, at a rally, Erdoan played footage that had been manipulated to suggest close ties between Kldarolu and the Kurdistan Workers Party, which the US and EU have branded a terrorist group.

According to the BBC, nce also said that he was dropping out to avoid being blamed for splitting the anti-Erdoan vote. At the time, pundits deemed it a live possibility that, despite nces slender support, his withdrawal could put a nail in Erdoans coffin after twenty years in powerwith days to go until the vote, Kldarolu was polling just one percentage point shy of the fifty-percent threshold needed to win the election outright. But the results would paint a different picture: as the official count neared completion, it was Erdoan who sat just shy of that threshold, with Kldarolu further back on forty-five percent of the vote. (In confidently predicting Erdoans demise, many pundits, Sinan Ciddi and Steven A. Cook wrote for Foreign Policy, indulged too much focus on polls and too much Twitter navel-gazing. Sound familiar?) The election is now set for a runoff on May 28. Erdoan is expected to prevaildespite having overseen an economic crisis, deepening political authoritarianism, and the botched response to the massive earthquake that devastated southern Turkey and neighboring Syria in February.

Among other groups, the stakes of the election have been particularly acute for Turkeys press, which has seen its freedom to report systematically eroded under Erdoan. While the election was mostly considered to be free, it was also in many respects unfairnot least due to Turkeys deeply skewed media environment. After the first round, observers led by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe deemed that continued restrictions on fundamental freedoms of assembly, association and expression hindered the participation of some opposition politicians and parties, civil society and independent media in the election process.

As the election unfolded, I spoke with my colleague Pesha Magid, who has covered Turkey, including for CJR; in March, she profiled a reporter who had tracked the aftermath of, and political fallout from, the earthquake. We talked about the context for the vote, the threats that journalists faced in covering it, and what a victory for Erdoan or Kldarolu would respectively mean for press freedom. Our typed conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.

You recently wrote for CJR about Murat Bayram, a reporter in Turkey who covered the aftermath of the devastating earthquake that hit that country and Syria earlier this year. How did the upcoming election play into yourand hisreporting? And how has the earthquake aftermath affected the electionand the coverage of itsince then?

Since the earthquake, I think the election has been lurking at the back of most people who cover Turkeys minds. The failure of the governments earthquake response caused a backlash of anger from communities that would normally support Erdoans Justice and Development Party (AKP). Many survivors were first-hand witnesses to the governments fatal mismanagement of the emergency response, waiting days for lifesaving rescue teams to show up. Over fifty thousand people died in the earthquake. Many of those deaths could have been prevented either through a competent rescue effort or through the government enforcing building codes.

Murat Bayram witnessed for himself some of the anger on the streets when he was reporting on the earthquake. He spoke about people who were asking where the government and the media were. I dont think anyone has forgotten the earthquake or the images that spread on social media of people waiting for their loved ones to be rescued from the rubble. Theres an odd symmetry with Erdoans own rise to power, which followed another devastating earthquake in 1999 and a bungled response from the government of the time. One of Erdoans electoral promises back then was to do better on earthquake preparedness.

The coverage of the election in Turkey has been a complicated topic as the vast majority of major news organizations have been co-opted by the government and no longer provide independent or critical reports. Much of the government-affiliated press took the line that the earthquake was an unpreventable disaster and that the government was doing the best it could. They blamed scapegoats for some of the worst failures. Election coverage has followed a similar pattern of most major channels supporting the AKP, while a slim slice of independent media has been providing more critical coverage.

Going into the election, what were the stakes for the Turkish press?

Under Erdoan, Turkey has become one of the worlds worst jailers of journalists. Journalists are commonly beaten, harassed, or targeted with legal cases. Only a scattered few small outlets remain independent. The stakes were the freedom of the press as a whole.

Did we see any repression of the press linked directly to election coverage? And how did this affect the way in which the first round of the election was conducted?

The short answer is yes. Since May 9, at least four journalists have been found guilty of terrorism charges, while others have faced beatings and harassment during their work.

On May 10, a journalist named Muhammed Yava posted a critique of the Grey Wolves, a hypernationalist group, on Facebook, only to then be beaten up by a local leader of the group. In a joint statement on May 10, the monitoring organizations Human Rights Watch and Article 19 warned of the Turkish governments history of online censorship and throttling of social media ahead of the elections; subsequently, Twitter blocked some posts inside Turkey.

There was also the worry that pro-government media may skew information in favor of the AKP. According to the journalist Amberin Zaman, writing in Al-Monitor, In April, Erdogan got 32 hours of air time on state TV compared with 32 minutes for Kilicdaroglu. As the election results began to come in, some expressed fears that the state-run Anadolu agency may preemptively announce an Erdoan victory before all the results were counted. In the end, both sides claimed to be ahead, with Erdoan telling his supporters, Although the final results are not in yet, we are leading by far, according to the New York Times.

What has the opposition, led by Kldarolu, said about press freedom in the country, if anything? And how credible has that sounded?

Kldarolu has promised a return to democracy and many journalists expressed hope that this would mean that press freedom would again be possible. Many media watchers seem cautiously hopeful that a Kldarolu victory would also be the way to open the door to an independent press. We still would have a press freedom problem if the opposition takes power, said Kenan ener, general secretary of the Ankara-based Journalists Association, in an interview with the Committee to Protect Journalists. However, I believe its certain that we will be in a better spot than this.

On the other hand, when Kldarolus opposition party, the CHP, was in power in the nineties it had a checkered record when it came to freedom of the press. It was known for also jailing journalists that opposed it, although not to the same extent as Erdoan.

How do you see the Turkish media landscape changing as a result of this election, as it now heads to a runoff?

It truly depends on the results. If the opposition wins then I anticipate that we will see an initial gleeful rush of media freedom as journalists stretch their wings for the first time in years. But its unclear how long that would lastas I said, the CHP does not have the best record when it comes to journalists though it seems unlikely that the crackdown on the press would remain as stringent as it has been under Erdoan. I am hopeful that journalists who have long been in jail on trumped-up charges might finally be released.

If Erdoan wins, things will undoubtedly get worse. If nothing else, the closeness of this election shows that the AKPs grip on power is fraying. That insecurity may cause it to take an even more draconian grip on power. As Bar Altnta, the director of Istanbuls Media and Law Studies Association, said in the same CPJ interview: If they [the AKP] win by a slim margin, they might lose some of their perceived legitimacy, feel cornered, and become more repressive towards free speech and media freedoms.

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Q&A: Pesha Magid on an existential election for press freedom in ... - Columbia Journalism Review

By Kris Leonhardt

GREEN BAY A Green Bay man was among three Wisconsin veterans to receive a Harley Davidson motorcycle through the 2023 Hogs for Heroes program.

Injured U.S. Army Veteran Paul Kruse, of Green Bay, was able to select a bike from Docs Harley-Davidson in Bonduel, along with U.S. Marine Veteran Tim Bahr of Crandon and fellow Army Veteran Mike Erickson of Oconto.

The keys were presented to the three veterans during a ceremony on May 6 in Bonduel.

This is the seventh year that the program has gifted motorcycles to Wisconsin veterans, putting 34 bikes in the hands of those who were injured while serving.

Hogs for Heroes was created in 2014, fundraising began in 2015 and the first motorcycle was gifted in 2016.

Nine bikes were presented to the states veterans in 2022.

Thats nine more lives fractured in service that will regain peace, freedom and control from riding, the organization explained.

Riding is an alternative therapy and our gifts are the tools by which one gains its healing benefits.

Excerpt from:

Road to freedom - The Press - The Press-Times

Freedom Flyer after her victory in the Wishing Well Feb. 18 (Ernie Belmonte/Past The Wire)

Santa Anita Press Box

ARCADIA, Calif. With a return to her preferred surface, trainer Leonard Powells Freedom Flyer merits strong consideration among a wide-open field of nine older fillies and mares in Saturdays $100,000 Mizdirection Stakes, to be contested at about 6 furlongs down Santa Anitas hillside turf course.

A 5-year-old Kentucky-bred mare by Constitution, Freedom Flyer went to the front and prevailed by a neck over the course in the restricted Wishing Well Stakes, two starts back on Feb. 18. In her most recent start, the Grade III Monrovia Stakes, which was transferred off the hillside turf to the main track at 6 furlongs April 8, she was away slowly and was never a factor when beaten 17 lengths.

A close third down the hill three starts back in the Grade III Las Cienegas on Jan. 2, Freedom Flyer has two wins from four tries over the course. Owned by Marsha Naify, Freedom Flyer, who was ridden in her last three starts by the recently departed Frankie Dettori, will be reunited with Juan Hernandez, who guided her to a 1 length second condition allowance win over the course five starts back on Sept. 30.

Out of the Carson City mare Rebuke, Freedom Flyer is 22-4-5-4 overall with earnings of $272,620.

A gem of consistency, California-bred Big Summer comes off a big second on dirt in the Grade III Monrovia and is two-for-three over the hillside turf course. Trained by Carla Gaines since this past August, this 5-year-old mare by Mr. Big out of the Cees Tizzy mare Ultimate Summer has won three of her seven starts with Gaines while not finishing worse than second.

With regular rider Joe Bravo engaged, Big Summer, who was second, beaten a neck by Freedom Flyer as the 9-5 favorite two starts back in the Wishing Well Stakes Feb. 18, took the Sunshine Millions Filly & Mare Turf Sprint three starts back down the hill and thus seeks her second stakes career stakes win.

Bred in California by Bob Abrams and Mitchell Dutko, Big Summer is owned by her breeders along with Michael Paran. With an overall race record of 13-4-7-2, she has earnings of $355,160.

Trainer Ian Kruljacs Very Scary appears well-positioned to post a major threat in what will be her first try over the hillside turf. Third going a flat mile on turf in her last two startsthe Grade III Wilshire on April 30 and the Grade II Royal Heroine (when beaten 1 lengths by Closing Remarks) on April 1, Very Scary has won three of her last five starts and will be ridden for the fifth consecutive time by Kent Desormeaux.

A 4-year-old Kentucky-bred daughter of Connect out of the Hard Spun mare Summer Reading, Very Scary, who was claimed for just $20,000 nine starts back on Sept. 2, will be bidding for her first stakes win in the Mizdirection.

Owned by Walter Luedtke, Robert Oracheff and Robert Scott, is 16-3-4-4 overall with earnings of $179,090.

Doug ONeills Maryland-bred One Silk Stocking is one of several that rate big chances as well on Saturday. Most recently fifth, beaten three-quarters of a length in a second condition allowance over the course on April 22, shell be ridden for the first time by highly regarded recent arrival Antonio Fresu, who seeks his first-ever Santa Anita stakes win.

A 4-year-old filly by Lord Nelson out of the Street Cry mare Keep Right, One Silk Stocking has one win from three tries down the hill. Owned by Roadrunner Racing, Neil Haymes, William Strauss and Dennis ONeill, One Silk Stocking is 11-3-2-0 and will be seeking her first career stakes win.

Phil DAmatos Elm Drive, who relished the change in surface when taking the Grade III Monrovia Stakes by three-quarters of a length on April 8, will be making her second start of the year and her first on turf in the Mizdirection.

Owned by Little Red Feather Racing, Elm Drive is a 4-year-old filly by Mohaymen out of the Indian Charlie mare Lets Dance Charlie. With four wins and a third from nine starts, Elm Drive, who will be ridden back by Ramon Vazquez, has earnings of $348,140.

Originally trained by Christophe Clement, Honey Pants, idle since running fourth in an ungraded stakes going six furlongs on turf Nov. 27 at Aqueduct, will make her first start for DAmato in what will be her Southern California debut on Saturday.

Stakes placed on six occasions, all on turf, Honey Pants, a 5-year-old Kentucky-bred mare by Cairo Prince out of the Afternoon Deelites mare Queens Carousel, is owned by Jim Bakke and Gerald Isbister. Raced nearly exclusively on turf and unplaced in her lone dirt try, Honey Pants, who will be ridden by Umberto Rispoli, is 17-3-7-1 and has earnings of $264,346.

Race 8 of 10 Approximate post time 4:30 p.m. PT

First post time for a 10-race card on Saturday is at 1 p.m. with admission gates opening at 11 a.m.

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Freedom Flyer Back to Turf in Wide-Open $100K Mizdirection - Past The Wire

Editors note: This is the first installment of our monthly Into the Omniverse series, which highlights the latest advancements to NVIDIA Omniverse furthering the evolution of the metaverse with the OpenUSD framework, and showcases how artists, developers and enterprises can transform their workflows with the platform.

An update to the Omniverse Connector for Adobe Substance 3D Painter will save 3D creators across industries significant time and effort. New capabilities include an export feature using Universal Scene Description (OpenUSD), an open, extensible file framework enabling non-destructive workflows and collaboration in scene creation.

Benjamin Samar, technical director of video production company Elara Systems, is using the Adobe Substance 3D Painter Connector to provide a uniquely human approach to an otherwise clinical discussion, he said.

Samar and his team tapped the Connector to create an animated public-awareness video for sickle cell disease. The video aims to help adolescents experiencing sickle cell disease understand the importance of quickly telling an adult or a medical professional if theyre experiencing symptoms.

According to Samar, the Adobe Substance 3D Painter Connector for Omniverse was especially useful for setting up all of the videos environments and characters before bringing them into the USD Composer app for scene composition and real-time RTX rendering of the high-quality visuals.

By using this Connector, materials were automatically imported, converted to Material Definition Language and ready to go inside USD Composer with a single click, he said.

The Adobe Substance 3D Art and Development team itself uses Omniverse in their workflows. Their End of Summer project fostered collaboration and creativity among the Adobe artists in Omniverse, and resulted in stunningly rich and realistic visuals.

Learn more about how they used Adobe Substance 3D tools with Unreal Engine 5 and Omniverse in this on-demand NVIDIA GTC session, and get an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at Adobes NVIDIA Studio-accelerated workflows in the making of this project.

Plus, technical artists are using Adobe Substance 3D and Omniverse to create scratches and other defects on 3D objects to train vision AI models.

Adobe and Omniverse workflows offer creators improved efficiency and flexibility whether theyre training AI models, animating an educational video to improve medical knowledge or bringing a warm summer scene to life.

And soon, the next release of the Adobe Substance 3D Painter Connector for Omniverse will further streamline their creative processes.

Version 203.0 of the Adobe Substance 3D Painter Connector for Omniverse, coming mid-June, will offer new capabilities that enable more seamless workflows.

Substance 3D Painters new OpenUSD export feature, compatible with version 8.3.0 of the app and above, allows users to export textures using any built-in or user-defined preset to dynamically build OmniPBR shaders programs that calculate the appropriate levels of light, darkness and color during 3D rendering in USD Composer.

To further speed and ease workflows, the Connector update will remove rotating texture folders, uniquely generated temporary directories that textures were exported to with each brush stroke.

With each change the artist makes, textures will now save over the same path, greatly speeding the process for locally saved projects.

Discover the latest in AI, graphics and more by watching NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huangs COMPUTEX keynote on Sunday, May 28, at 8 p.m. PT.

#SetTheScene for your Adobe and Omniverse workflow by joining the latest community challenge. Share your best 3D environments on social media with the #SetTheScene hashtag for a chance to be featured on channels for NVIDIA Omniverse (Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram) and NVIDIA Studio (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram).

Get started with NVIDIA Omniverse by downloading the standard license free, or learn how Omniverse Enterprise can connect your team. Developers can get started with Omniverse resources.

Stay up to date on the platform by subscribing to the newsletter, and follow NVIDIA Omniverse on Instagram, Medium and Twitter. For more, join the Omniverse community and check out the Omniverse forums, Discord server, Twitch and YouTube channels.

Featured image courtesy of Adobe Substance 3D art and development team.

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Adobe Substance 3D Connector Enhances Creative Freedom - Nvidia

Quit imposing Christianity on elementary schoolchildren, theFreedom From Religion Foundation is insistingto an Arkansas school district.

Numerous Arkansas citizens have informed the state/church watchdog that Prescott Elementary School recently distributed New Testament Bibles to its fifth and sixth grade students. A May 4 post on the official Prescott School District Facebook page stated:

This is a sight that should make anyone happy! It sure does us! Our 5th and 6th grade students received New Testament Bibles today and were reading them at lunch and even on the bus this afternoon. God is so good!

The faculty and staff at Prescott Elementary School have also led pre-kindergarten students in prayer and encouraged them to pray. Another recent post on the official district Facebook page states:

Our sweet little PreK students praying before they eat lunch! At Prescott, we pray.

The First Amendment of the Constitution dictates that public schools may not show favoritism toward or coerce belief or participation in religion, FFRF Anne Nicol Gaylor Legal FellowSamantha Lawrence writesto Prescott School District Superintendent Robert Poole. When a public elementary schools faculty and staff lead students in prayer, encourage students to pray, and distribute bibles to students, the district displays blatant favoritism towards Christianity and coerces elementary school students to participate in a religious exercise and accept religious literature.

It is unconstitutional for public school districts to allow the distribution of bibles in classrooms during the school day, FFRF emphasizes. Courts uniformly have held the distribution of bibles to students at public schools during instructional time is prohibited. Additionally, bible distributions needlessly alienate and exclude those students who are a part of the49 percent of Generation Zthat is religiously unaffiliated.

Furthermore, public school faculty and staff may not lead their students in prayer, encourage or coerce students to pray, or participate in student-initiated prayer. The Supreme Court has continually struck down teacher or school-led prayer in public schools. These students are young, impressionable and eager to please their teachers and fit in with their peers. When fifth and sixth grade students see their peers taking and reading bibles, it is only logical that they will take one and read it to fit in; when faculty and staff lead pre-kindergarten students in prayer or encourage them to pray, students that young will no doubt take that as a command that they must obey.

It is important to note that this case is readily distinguishable from the Supreme Courts recent ruling in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District. In Bremerton, the court held that a high school football coachs silent, private post-game prayer was constitutional. In stark contrast, faculty and staff at Prescott Elementary School have actively led pre-kindergarten students in prayers.

In order to protect the First Amendment rights of all Prescott Elementary School students and respect the constitutional rights of parents, the school district must ensure that Prescott Elementarys faculty and staff cease leading students in prayer, encouraging students to pray and distributing religious literature to students, FFRF insists.

Such a blatant foisting of sectarian religion upon a captive audience of young and impressionable schoolchildren is beyond disturbing, says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. It shows a complete disregard for those in the community with minority and nonreligious backgrounds and for our secular Constitution.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with more than 40,000 members and several chapters across the country, including hundreds of members and a local chapter in Arkansas. Our purposes are to protect the constitutional principle of separation between state and church, and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.

The rest is here:

Freedom from Religion Foundation cautions Prescott schools over ... - Arkansas Times

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks to Iowa voters. Scott Olson/Getty Images

Calling Florida a "refuge of sanity," Gov. Ron DeSantis said Saturday people can't stop moving to the state because of its track record as a "citadel of freedom."

In the same speech, DeSantis proudly spoke of his administration's track record of pushing for books to be removed from schools, eliminating diversity programs, ousting critics from office, and moving toward banning teachers from sharing their preferred pronouns.

DeSantis who is expected to announce his 2024 presidential campaign at any moment attended the Saturday event in support Iowa Rep. Randy Feenstra. Former President Donald Trump, who is running again in 2024 as a Republican, is also planning a large outdoor rally in Des Moines, Iowa later in the day.

In his speech, DeSantis pointed to rankings released by US News & World Report on May 2, which places Florida at #1 in education based on graduation rates. DeSantis, said he's "very proud" that Florida also ranks in first place for parental involvement in education.

"We're very proud of that," he said. "But none of that would have been possible had we not stood up when it counted."

On May 3, Florida passed two billsthat ban college diversity programs and make it illegal to require students or teachers to use pronouns that do not align with someone's assigned sex at birth.

DeSantis, who will soon sign them into law, said the legislation was designed to "nix the pronoun Olympics in schools."

"We're not doing the pronoun stuff," DeSantis said. "Your teacher can't make you list pronouns. We're just not doing it."

Research has shown that using incorrect pronouns or misgendering transgender people can have harmful effects on their mental health. According to a survey from The Trevor Project, More than 40% of LGBTQ youth said they considered suicide in the last year, and that anti-LGBTQ laws were making their mental health worse.

Moms for Liberty, which originated in Florida, is a conservative parent group that has led the charge nationally in the push to remove books from schools with LGBTQ+ themes. The group has pushed to have its members elected to local school boards. Last month, the state Department of Education triedto oust a superintendent critical of DeSantis after the group sent him a letter about the official.

DeSantis also touted his habit of removing government officials who are critical of him or disagree with his political views from office in his speech on Saturday.

DeSantis bragged about ousting elected Tampa prosecutor Andrew Warren in August 2022 after Warren said he would not enforce the state's restrictions on abortion on gender-affirming care.

"I removed him from his position," he said. "He is gone and that's the type of accountability we need."

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DeSantis talks 'freedom' in Iowa, while touting Florida's book bans - Business Insider

Tunisia

Union says increased sentence against Khalifa Guesmi under anti-terrorism law represents dangerous authoritarian drift

Agencies

Tue 16 May 2023 14.35 EDT

A Tunisian appeals court has sentenced a radio journalist to five years in prison for disclosing information about the countrys security services.

Khalifa Guesmi, of the Mosaique FM radio station, had appealed against a one-year term handed down in November before the sentence was increased under an anti-terrorism law.

Amira Mohamed, vice-president of the Tunisian journalists SNJT union, said: This is the heaviest sentence pronounced by the Tunisian courts against a journalist. It presents a dangerous authoritarian drift and is a flagrant attack on the freedom of the press.

Guesmi was found guilty of having taken part in intentionally disclosing information relating to operations of interception, infiltration, audiovisual surveillance or data collection, said his lawyer, Rahal Jallali.

A police officer, who had been found guilty of providing the information to the journalist, was sentenced to 10 years in prison on appeal, up from an initial three-year term.

Guesmi was arrested and held for a week in March last year, after the Radio Mosaique online service published a report on the dismantling of a terrorist cell and the arrest of its members.

Several local and international rights groups and labour organisations including the Tunisian League for Human Rights and I Watch issued a joint statement on Tuesday, denouncing the sentence as a masquerade verdict and a major setback for the judicial system.

They warned against the seriousness of the repressive direction of the current authorities and called on activists and civil society to mobilise to defend freedoms and human rights.

These groups have criticised the decline in civic freedoms in Tunisia since the president, Kais Saied, launched a sweeping power-grab in July 2021. In its report published in early May, the journalists union warned of serious threats to press freedom in the country.

On Monday, another court sentenced the Tunisian moderate Islamist leader Rached Ghannouchi to a year in prison for allegedly referring to police officers as tyrants in what his party said was a sham trial.

Ghannouchi, 81, a founder of the Ennahdha party, has refused to be removed from his place of detention for questioning or to attend the trial because the cases were political settling of scores targeting opponents of the regime, said the lawyer and former Ennahdha minister Samir Dilou.

Ghannouchi, a former parliamentary speaker, is the most prominent critic of Saied.

Ghannouchi was detained in mid-April on the charge of plotting against the security of the state. He has been called in several times for questioning on various matters, but this was the first time he was not released.

Mondays case grew out of a complaint by a security union member who claimed that Ghannouchi used the word taghout, or tyrant, while eulogising a member of his party at a funeral in February last year. According to a tweet by Ghannouchis daughter Soumaya, her father said the deceased did not fear poverty, ruler or tyrant.

Ennahda condemned the decision to prosecute as an unjust political ruling and called for his immediate release.

Ghannouchi is also being investigated for what his party says is another case of twisting his words, in which he allegedly evoked the threat of civil war if Ennahdha and other opposition parties were excluded from the political scene.

His party said on its English-language Twitter account that Ghannouchi was charged with conspiracy against state security and ordered to remain in prison pending trial.

Kais Saied is making a mockery of the judiciary, using it as a tool for political revenge and persecution, his daughter tweeted.

Saieds crackdown on his opponents comes amid growing social tensions and deepening economic troubles in Tunisia, the birthplace of the Arab spring pro-democracy movement more than a decade ago.

Read more:

Tunisian journalist given five-year prison term in attack on press freedom - The Guardian

One of the most egregious recent examples of the Kremlins attack on media freedom is the arrest on completely spurious charges of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who remains wrongfully detained. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)

As delivered by Ambassador Michael Carpenterto the Permanent Council, ViennaMay 11, 2023

We warmly welcome the Representative on Freedom of the Media back to the Permanent Council. Dear Teresa, thank you for your report and your excellent work defending and enhancing media freedom in the OSCE region. Your commitment to your mandate, I think, is evident to everyone in this room. As you noted, the continued deterioration of media freedom in our region is a cause of great concern that must be urgently addressed. When freedom of expression and media freedom are not respected, there can be no democracy. When power is unchecked by a free press, the human rights of persons and the security of states are at risk. You put it exactly right: there is no security without media freedom.

As was stated last week at the Permanent Council on the 30th anniversary of World Press Freedom Day, Russias brutal aggression against Ukraine and the Kremlins repression of journalists and freedom of expression at home have taken a toll on media freedom in Russia and on the lives and safety of journalists in Ukraine, where over a dozen reporters and media workers have been killed since February 24, 2022. Most recently, just two days ago, French journalist Arman Soldin was killed by rocket fire near Chasiv Yar in eastern Ukraine when his AFP team came under fire while with a group of Ukrainian soldiers. And, as your report points out, the situation for media actors in Russia-occupied Crimea has worsened significantly.

The Kremlin has dramatically intensified its efforts to silence independent reporting in Russia through censorship, licensing requirements, closure of independent media organizations, banning foreign media, and arresting and imprisoning journalists on trumped up charges such as discrediting Russias military and even treason. Your report rightfully notes the list of independent journalists imprisoned for their work includes Dmitry Ivanov and Maria Ponomarenko. Maria was sentenced in February to six years in prison for posting on social media about Russias infamous bombing of the Mariupol theater in Ukraine. And one of the most egregious recent examples of the Kremlins attack on media freedom is the arrest on completely spurious charges of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who remains wrongfully detained.

The Lukashenka regime in Belarus is working hard to erase any trace of free media in the country by forcibly liquidating nearly all independent media outlets, classifying them as extremist, arresting and detaining journalists, and forcing many into exile. Journalists such as those mentioned in your report, Andrzej Poczobut, Maryna Zolatava, and Liudmila Chekina, and many others have been sentenced to years in prison simply for their reporting. We also highlight the plight of RFE/RL journalist Ihar Losik, who is unjustly serving a 15-year sentence in prison while his wife Darya is serving a two-year prison sentence for speaking with an independent media outlet about her husbands prison conditions. Ihar has attempted suicide twice. We call on authorities to immediately release him and Darya so they can be reunited with their young daughter.

Meanwhile, assaults on media freedom are happening elsewhere in the OSCE region beyond Russia and Belarus. Journalists and other media workers remain detained or imprisoned for their work in Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkiye, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. We call for the release of all those incarcerated for carrying out their journalistic profession. Journalism is not a crime.

We share the RFoMs concerns about laws envisioned or enacted in a number of participating States with potential or actual adverse effects on media freedom. These include efforts in Bosnia and Herzegovinas Republika Srpska to criminalize defamation. In Turkiye, we see the rise in criminal insult suits and the first application of its disinformation laws against journalists. We remain concerned about the restrictive media law that went into effect in Azerbaijan last year. We have raised concerns with Kyrgyz Republic officials about a number of existing or draft laws, including the Law on Protection from False Information adopted in August 2021 used to block Azattyk, RFE/RLs Kyrgyz service.

We agree with the RFoM that the safety of journalists remains a serious concern across the OSCE region. No threat or use of violence against journalists should ever be tolerated and all such cases should be investigated, and if appropriate, prosecuted. For example, we share the RFoMs concern about recent threats and attacks on journalists in Serbia. We urge Serbian authorities to thoroughly investigate all incidents and bring those responsible to justice. After a series of attacks against journalists this year in Kazakhstan, President Tokayev ordered prompt investigations. An individual was arrested in February, but no further details have been made public.

While threats and use of violence against journalists occur in many countries in the region, we are particularly concerned when they appear the result of government actions, including acts of transnational repression. For example, exiled journalists affiliated with the independent Azda TV report ongoing pressure on their relatives in Tajikistan. In March, a criminal case was opened against Rustam Zhoni, a former journalist for RFE/RLs Tajik service Radio Ozodi, who now lives in Prague. Zhoni and his spouse Anora Sarkorova, a former BBC radio journalist, report government authorities have interrogated their relatives in Dushanbe to intimidate them from publishing critical posts on social media.

The report also underscores the importance of media pluralism, an issue in a number of countries. For example, the media pluralism environment in Georgia has been worsening. Opposition-leaning media outlet head Nika Gvaramia was convicted in 2022 for abuse of power and harming the financial interests of the Rustavi 2 TV channel, charges Georgias Public Defenders Office and domestic and international NGOs criticized as politically motivated. In Hungary, media consolidation under government-aligned or state-funded control has made it difficult for the public to get reliable, unbiased information or exchange of ideas freely.

The United States takes our media freedom commitments seriously, and constantly strives to do more. We recognize our record is not perfect. As you noted in your report, President Biden signed an executive order on the use of commercial spyware to address the misuse of surveillance-based digital infrastructure. And as he said on World Press Freedom Day last week, the United States is working with partners around the world to launch a new fund to provide defense counsel to journalists. We are also funding the Promoting Information Integrity and Resilience Initiative, which will support independent media, strengthen global information integrity, and help keep journalists safe.

Dear Teresa, you and your team should be proud of your extraordinary efforts to tackle the many challenges media freedom faces in the OSCE region. We look forward to the two regional conferences you are organizing later this year, focused on Southeast Europe and Central Asia.

The United States fully supports the autonomous mandate and work of the Representative on Freedom of the Media. The RFoMs accomplishments prove the OSCE is a valuable and constructive partner in collective efforts on freedom of expression, media freedom, the safety of journalists, and access to information. And we are fully committed to helping you in that work moving forward.

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By U.S. Mission OSCE | 11 May, 2023 | Topics: Civil Society and NGOs, Freedom of Expression, Media Freedom, Statements | Tags: Belarus, RFOM, Russia, Ukraine

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Response to the Report by the OSCE Representative on Freedom of ... - US Mission to the OSCE

MONTECH is proud to unveil its latest offeringthe MKey mechanical keyboard collection. This collection, available in two captivating colorsFreedom and Darkness, encompasses both full-size and TKL keyboard options.

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Available starting May 17th, 2023 on Amazon and Newegg MSRP for the TKL size is $89 USD with the full size keyboard priced at $99 USD.

Originally posted here:

Introducing MONTECH MKey Mechanical Keyboard Collection ... - guru3d.com