Armand1

Edit: Also covered by the Guardian here

After recently announcing they'd like to take the gold and jewellery of incoming immigrants, Nazi style, last week, the UK government has now revealed it's latest plan to make immigrant lives worse, possibly fatally.

The government now plans to restrict access to benefits (unemployment or health-based financial help) immigrants without Settled Status.

Settled Status, previously available for anyone who has been in the country for more than 5 years, will now also be raised to up to 20 years for legal entry and 30 years for illegal entry.

This double-whammy of changes will likely result in huge amounts of unnecessary suffering, homelessness and possibly death.

If that wasn't enough, homelessness is a lot more expensive than paying out benefits, so this is likely to further add to the financial burden of the country.

Who is to say whether the government will stop there? How long until they start revoking settled statuses and kicking out people who have lived here for decades (like myself)?

On top of this, all of these actions embolden the far-right. People are regularly having to stop them from trying to harass refugees currently being kept in hotels.

...I could have told you that 🤷

Source: https://x.com/BriannaWu/status/1984574165643403370

Not my usual kind of source (Xitter), but I want any centrists out there who ask trans people to "just get along" / compromise with actual hate groups that want them eradicated to know that it doesn't work.

There is no such thing as a reasonable bigot, by definition.

The UK government admits that building camps to hold immigrants in would be more expensive than the current arrangement that holds them in hotels during the asylum seeking process, but says that it is worth it because it will please the right-wing protesters that fearmonger about immigrants being dangerous.

Opinion time: This is a terrible idea, as:

• You should never give ground to racists.
• Hotels are designed with paying customers in mind, so they are at least bearable to stay in. These camps will be designed by people who actively hate those who will stay in them, and as has been seen time and time again, that will mean borderline inhumane living conditions.

Adding to the above, Sex Matters (the anti-trans-rights organization) sees this as an opportunity to out all trans people, and given how often the EHRC listens to them, and how the government accepts the EHRC's guidance, there is real chance that this is very dangerous.

If you are a UK resident and are against the introduction of Digital ID, a petition is available to vote against it's introduction. So far it has gained over 1.7 million signatures. Only yesterday it was at just under a million.

Sorry for the weird source, a YouTube Post, but this is where I first saw it.

Part of the Republicans' Big Beautiful Bill includes a stipulation (that Planned Parenthood is challenging in court) that no federal funding or Medicaid dollars would be given to clinics that provide abortion. It was already against the law for any organization to use federal dollars towards abortion services other than for cases of rape, incest, or to save the life of the pregnant person. In other words, no one's tax dollars were being used to fund abortions.

Activists say this was a targeted move to finally 'defund' Planned Parenthood, a long-term goal of Republicans.

Medical facilities, including Planned Parenthood, need that money to stay open. So, the Wisconsin branches, even though they're in a state where abortion is legal, will stop performing abortions since they can't afford to lose the federal money.

Microsoft has terminated the Israeli military’s access to technology it used to operate a powerful surveillance system that collected millions of Palestinian civilian phone calls made each day in Gaza and the West Bank, the Guardian can reveal.

Microsoft told Israeli officials late last week that Unit 8200, the military’s elite spy agency, had violated the company’s terms of service by storing the vast trove of surveillance data in its Azure cloud platform, sources familiar with the situation said.

The decision to cut off Unit 8200’s ability to use some of its technology results directly from an investigation published by the Guardian last month. It revealed how Azure was being used to store and process the trove of Palestinian communications in a mass surveillance programme.

surprise surprise

Every time you hear a right-winger accusing someone of something, there's a good chance they have done it themselves.

It is likely protesting the Palestine Action ban.

When the right talk about free speech, they only defend the free speech of bigots and right-wing politicians.

As soon as someone disagrees with them or calls them out, suddenly speech isn't so free after all.

Palestine Action is a direct action group that was proscribed a terrorist organization after they spray-painted some RAF planes in defiance of UK military aid to Israel.

Most arrested individuals were retirees, with some blind and otherwise disabled people also arrested.

Over 500 people were arrested, the most for a peaceful protest since 1961.

Spotted in London. There were some for gay, lesbian and straight. 🏳️‍🌈

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/32225244

The UK's EHRC recently opened a public review period for their new Code of Practice for following the Equality Act of 2010.

Despite previous claims that this judgement does not reduce trans rights, its new Code of Practice tells a different story.

I spent 8 hours reading through the entire Code of Practice, analysing it and writing up my feedback. Like all the trans people who organized a Mass Lobby over this, I also concluded that this new guidance was horrific. See Trans Solidarity Alliance's guidance on this situation.

Amongst many other dangerous and belittling statements about "biological sex" and how trans people should use services that align with their sex at birth stated throughout the entire thing, it clearly states in Section 13.3.19 that single sex services cannot lawfully include trans people of a matching gender. Asserting that this would amount to discrimination against cis people of the opposite sex.

Picture this: You're a trans person that has suffered domestic abuse. You seek a support group to help you. You find a women's support group friendly to trans women. A gender critical finds out about this, and asks a cis male friend to threaten to sue the support group for discrimination. The support group is forced to make a difficult decision: become trans-exclusionary, leaving you with no support or go to court on the matter.

This EHRC views the complaint by the cis man, here as completely lawful and in following with the Equality Act, an act meant to protect minorities, and urges organizations to not include trans people because of it.

It bases its entire guidance on the idea that trans people are not their acquired gender, and it's ok to pry into and treat them as their birth sex.