cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/9213703

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/69385

Women’s groups took to the streets this Sunday across several cities of Brazil to demand that the National Congress vote on and immediately approve Bill 896/2023, scheduled for August, which equates misogyny with the crime of racism.

The demonstrations were spearheaded by the Ascent for Living Women (Levante das Mulheres Vivas) movement and took place on August 2 ahead of the resumption of legislative activities. The main objective was to pressure the speaker of the Federal Chamber, Representative Hugo Motta, to bring the bill to a vote within the next 15 days, specifically between August 11 and 12.

The protests were organized in 10 states across the country, including the capital cities of São Paulo (Avenida Paulista), Brasília, Rio de Janeiro, Salvador, João Pessoa, Boa Vista, Curitiba, and Campo Grande and the cities of Medianeira, Ponta Grossa, and São José.

Irina Cezar, a member of Levante das Mulheres Vivas, stated in an interview with the program Es de Mañana on Radio Brasil de Fato that support for the bill is widespread. The movement engaged in dialogue with legislators from the left, right, and center, securing support from parliamentarians across various ideological sectors, including members of parliament and activists.

The legislative text was unanimously approved by the Senate in March and sent to the Chamber of Deputies, where it remained stalled without a scheduled vote. It includes a report prepared by federal deputy Tabata Amaral and awaits debate in plenary session following its approval as an urgent matter in early July.

The passage of this law seeks to establish a legal framework for violence against women that protects collective rights, an area not covered by current legislation. Cezar emphasized the urgency of the law given the discourse disseminated by digital content creators that promotes the subordination or harassment of women, behaviors that lack adequate legal definition in current criminal law regarding collective violence.

From the movement’s perspective, collective protection has a direct influence on reducing individual attacks.

Criminalizing hate speech reduces violence against women as a collective, thus decreasing the intervention of the judicial system, police action, and the burden of prosecution in Brazil.

Lula Rejects US Terrorist Designation of Brazilian Criminal Gangs

(Telesur)

Translation: Orinoco Tribune

OT/CB/SL

From Orinoco Tribune via This RSS Feed.

The Arctic is cooking. Across northern Russia—a region that is famously bitterly cold—temperatures this week have routinely surpassed 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32.2 degrees Celsius), adding to the mountain of broken heat records this summer has racked up so far.

A remote mining town gripped by fear saw hundreds of suspected cases before the government declared an outbreak, report says

But why, in a country that has seen 16 previous Ebola epidemics, didn’t anyone alert the government to the burgeoning catastrophe? The report suggests people in Mongbwalu had alternative explanations for the symptoms. “Theories included AIDS, tuberculosis, and the working conditions of artisanal gold miners, who inhale dust and use toxic substances,” Villa said at the Zoom meeting. “Mystical causes” were also invoked.

“A culture of secrecy” delayed the alert further, Villa said. Many Mongbwalu residents prefer private clinics over public hospitals, where “care is perceived as expensive and of poor quality,” he said. Those private facilities were afraid to report cases, fearing blame, fines, or even closure.

MSF was alerted by an anonymous group of physicians in early May, Albela says. By that time, “It was already all over Ituri province.”

Tl;Dr: FIFA president is trying to sell FIFA with the extended Trump family and the European and North American soccer world quickly said "hell no, we're firmly boycotting"

European nations agreed to boycott all FIFA competitions, including the World Cup, after an emergency meeting on Thursday resolved to "unequivocally reject" FIFA president Gianni Infantino's plan to sell stakes in the World Cup to a private equity group.

Infantino's proposal was later dealt another major blow when North America's soccer body Concacaf joined European counterpart UEFA in rejecting the plan.

The decision of UEFA's 55 members means that major nations including Germany, France, England and world champions Spain would not participate in the men's or women's World Cups as long as FIFA's proposal remains active.

"UEFA and its national associations will not participate in FIFA competitions," UEFA said in a statement.

Following its own meeting later in the day, the 41-member Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football said it had also rejected the proposal.

Concacaf members include 2026 World Cup hosts the United States, Canada and Mexico. The U.S. Soccer Federation wrote on social media that it "stands with Concacaf and its members."

Infantino revealed plans earlier this week for the sale of a stake in FIFA Forward Enterprises (FFE) that would raise $20 billion in exchange for influence over future World Cups including broadcasting and commercial deals linked to the tournament.

The effort is being bankrolled by Joshua Kushner, the brother of Jared Kushner, U.S. President Donald Trump's son-in-law.

Tl;dr: Italy's restricting online access to reproductive health care and abortion information

Our analysis of OONI data collected from OONI Probe tests of Women on Web (www.womenonweb.org) and Women Help Women (womenhelp.org) in Italy between 1 November 2025 and 1 June 2026 indicates that at least 6 Internet Service Providers (ISPs) – including several of Italy’s largest networks by end-user population – began blocking access to both domains in mid-February 2026 through DNS tampering.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/29544531

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/29544481

So what does the West want to do with Gaza ?

Cross posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/33679319

[...]

With a population of 1.4 billion, China has, in theory, a huge domestic market. But there's a problem. They don't appear willing to spend money while the country's economic outlook is uncertain.

This has not been prompted by the trade war – but by the collapse of the housing market. Many Chinese families invested their life savings in their homes, only to watch prices plummet in the last five years.

Housing developers continued to build even as the property market crumbled. It's thought that China's entire population would not fill all the empty apartments across the country.

The former deputy head of China's statistics bureau, He Keng, admitted two years ago that the most "extreme estimate" is that there are now enough vacant homes for 3 billion people.

[...]

And it's not just house prices that worry middle-class Chinese families.

They are concerned about whether the government can offer them a pension – over the next decade, about 300 million people, who are currently aged 50 to 60, are set to leave the Chinese workforce. According to a 2019 estimate by the state-run Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the government pension fund could run out of money by 2035.

There are also fears about whether their sons, daughters and grandchildren can get a job as millions of college graduates are struggling to find work. More than one in five people between the ages of 16 and 24 in urban areas are jobless in China, according to official data published in August 2023. The government has not released youth unemployment figures since then.

The problem is that China cannot simply flip a switch and move from selling goods to the US to selling them to local buyers.

"Given the downward pressure on the economy, it is unlikely domestic spending can be significantly expanded in the short term," says Prof Nie Huihua at Renmin University.

[...]

Xi is also aware that China has a disheartened younger generation worried about their future. That could spell bigger trouble for the Communist Party: protests or unrest.

A report by Freedom House's China Dissent Monitor claims that protests driven by financial grievances saw a steep increase in the last few months.

All protests are quickly subdued and censored on social media, so it is unlikely to pose a real threat to Xi for now.

[...]

China will have to tread carefully. Some countries will be nervous that products being manufactured for the US could end up flooding into their markets.

[...]

There are barriers to Xi presenting himself as the arbiter of free trade in the world.

China has subjected other nations to trade restrictions in recent years.

In 2020, after the Australian government called for a global inquiry into the origins and early handling of the Covid pandemic, which Beijing argued was a political manoeuvre against them, China placed tariffs on Australian wine and barley and imposed biosecurity measures on some beef and timber and bans on coal, cotton and lobster. Some Australian exports of certain goods to China fell to nearly zero.

Australia's Defence Minister Richard Marles said earlier this month that his nation will not be "holding China's hand" as Washington escalated its trade war with Beijing.

China's past actions may impede Xi's current global outreach and many countries may be unwilling to choose between Beijing and Washington.

[...]

This trade war has China looking in the mirror to see its own flaws – and whether it can fix them will be up to policies made in Beijing, not Washington.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/33597000

Archived

On a chilly afternoon in the spring of 2021, while awaiting an extradition hearing in Bordeaux, France, Businessman H. received an unexpected call from an old friend and business partner.

Jack Ma was on the line.

H. was surprised to hear from Ma, the tech titan and one of China’s richest men, according to a transcript of the call.

Ma said he was calling at the behest of Chinese authorities, who were seeking H.’s immediate return to China.

“Did they approach you?” H. asked.

“Mmh,” Ma acknowledged. “They said I’m the only one who can persuade you to return.”

A few weeks earlier, H. had been arrested by French authorities on the basis of a red notice, an alert circulated among police forces worldwide by Interpol, the international police organization that critics say is often misused by authoritarian regimes.

[...]

Despite attempts at reforming Interpol, the organization’s secretive processes and reluctance to hold system abusers publicly accountable remain a boon for authoritarian regimes. China does not appear to be among countries currently subject to Interpol corrective measures for alleged misuse of the organization’s system, ICIJ [International Consortium of Investigative Journalists] and its Slovenian media partner Oštro found.

The findings are part of ICIJ’s China Targets investigation, a collaboration of 43 media partners in 30 countries that exposes the mechanics of the Chinese government’s global repression campaign against its perceived enemies and the governments and international organizations that allow it. The investigation found that China’s misuse of Interpol is part of a well-organized effort to silence and coerce anyone that the Chinese Communist Party deems as a threat to its rule, including those no longer on Chinese soil. Chinese authorities also use surveillance, hacking, financial asset seizure and intimidation of targets’ relatives in China and other measures to neutralize regime critics beyond its borders.

[...]

Ted Bromund, a strategic studies specialist and expert witness in legal cases involving Interpol procedures, says Interpol has become central to China’s campaign of transnational repression, a vital “tool” to put pressure on targets abroad. In particular, China uses red notices “like a pin through a butterfly,” he said. “It holds someone down, locks them in place so they can’t get away.”

[...]