"Whether you are a fan of Star Trek or not the following has universal appeal to all. "A dream that became a reality and spread throughout the stars." – James T. Kirk, 2269 (TOS - "Whom Gods Destroy") "The United Federation of Planets was a supranational interstellar union of multiple planetary nation-states that operated semi-autonomously under a single central government, founded on the principles of liberty, equality, peace, justice, and progress, with the purpose of furthering the universal rights of all sentient life. Federation members exchange knowledge and resources to facilitate peaceful cooperation, scientific development, space exploration, and MUTUAL DEFENSE."** I've emphasized "Mutual Defense" because its important! While an obvious interpretation is "military defense", it also means Mutual Defense of Morals, Mutual Defense as in Care of Each Other. The US Senate are the rare few who are given the honor and duty of representing us all. But Minority Leader McConnell has vowed to put all of his efforts into blocking Democratic legislations to help all of us. We need to pass the President's Infrastructure Bill, the country needs roads, bridges, transportation, Broadband Internet, and We Need Clean Water. We need to Pass the For the People to help protect us from malicious voter suppression bills that are being passed by State Legislatures in multiple states. We need to have a commission to investigate the seditious attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6th, who are the Republican's trying to protect? We also need to Pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, The John Lewis Act, The Equality Act, The Pro Act, The Breathe Act, American Jobs Plan, American Families Plan, and Washington DC (our nation's great Capitol, is home to 712,000 people that are taxed hire per capita than any other state) should 100 percent be a state! We need common sense gun control like Mandatory Background Checks. We need the multiple Immigration Acts to Pass, We must raise taxes for the wealthiest one percent, they must pay their fair share, TAX THE RICH, We need NON-TRUMP JUDGES and damn it WE DIRELY NEED CLIMATE CARE!! WE NEED ALL THE THINGS NOW! WE CAN'T HAVE ANY OF THE THINGS WITHOUT ENDING THE FILIBUSTER! The Conservative Dems like Joe Manchin (WV) and Kristen Sinema (AZ) have said they want bi-partisanship. We have tried this to no avail. The Republican Senators do not represent the majority of the country, they do not speak for all of us, and they do not even speak for their constituents they claim to be speaking for. These policies are overwhelmingly popular with over 80 percent of the country's population. Enough is Enough. The Filibuster was established to protect Systematic Racism, and it continues to be in the way of changing that racist system.We need all of our Democratic Senators to ABOLISH THE FILIBUSTER NOW because WE NEED ALL THE THINGS NOW!! **(c/o https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/United_Federation_of_Planets)

The U.S. government’s unconditional support for the state of Israel has informed how the American news media reports—or fails to report— on the Israeli government’s ongoing violations of Palestinian human rights. But during Israel’s assault on Gaza this May, Palestinians shared their experiences on social media, enabling the American public to get a clearer understanding of the violence that Palestinians face. As a result, the news media’s lopsided stories that privileged the narrative of the Israeli government began to fracture. American news media has played a significant role in promoting the false understanding that this is a conflict between two equal parties, not a struggle between an occupying force violating international law and a people fighting for the safety of their families and the basic human rights they are routinely denied. U.S. mainstream news regularly creates a false equivalency between the power of the Israeli government and Hamas and fails to provide historical and present day context, including information about the Nakba, the blockade on Gaza, and the imbalance of resources and power between Israelis and Palestinians. Moreover, mainstream news frequently only interviews Israelis and far too regularly uses the passive voice to avoid holding the the Israeli government accountable for its own horrific violence (an example from the New York times: “Just minutes after the war between Israel and Hamas broke out, Baraa al-Gharabli, 5, was killed in Gaza”). The Arab and Middle East Journalists Association issued clear guidelines for responsible reporting on Palestine / Israel. It's time for major news media outlets to balance the narrative and center the voices and experiences of Palestinians by using the active voice in describing Israeli violence, interviewing Palestinians, and including proper context in describing history, sources of conflict, and the disparity in power and resources.

Danny is the managing editor of Frontier Myanmar, and was detained at Yangon International Airport on Monday May 24th, 2021, shortly before he was due to board a flight to Kuala Lumpur. He was on his way home to the US to surprise us; we hadn’t seen him in over three years. We understand he has been transferred to Insein Prison in Yangon, a political prison notorious for its human rights abuses. We do not know why Danny was detained and have not been able to contact him or confirm his safety since Monday. We —his mother Rose, his father Bud, his brother Bryan, and his whole family — are concerned for his well being and are calling for his immediate release. The United States has a profound interest in preserving the freedom of the press worldwide in order to guarantee direct access to independent information for all people. As a nation that is deeply committed to protecting the freedoms, safety, and human rights of its citizens, U.S. officials should be making every effort to ensure that Danny is returned home safely; now. We urge the Biden Administration and U.S. Department of State to act with the utmost urgency to secure Danny’s immediate, unconditional, and safe release and return to the United States. #BringDannyHome

This was preventable. Facebook has willfully enabled anti-Muslim violence and genocide around the world—including Myanmar, India, Australia, Sri Lanka and more. Today, it's the Palestinians who are targeted. Will you sign this petition to Facebook right now and demand that they stop this violence from taking place. They have enabled so much death against vulnerable communities, it must stop.

Palestinians have lived under Israeli military occupation and apartheid for decades. And the U.S. government has forced U.S. taxpayers to give Israel tens of billions of dollars in military funding along the way. In its April 2021 report, Human Rights Watch stated that "Israeli authorities are committing the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution ... based on an overarching Israeli government policy to maintain the domination by Jewish Israelis over Palestinians..." As documented in the Human Rights Watch report, Israeli apartheid and persecution includes: - "The suspension of basic civil rights to millions of Palestinians." - "Confiscation of more than a third of the land in the [Occupied Palestinian] West Bank." - "The forcible transfer of thousands of Palestinians out of their homes." Apartheid itself is defined by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court as “Inhumane acts ... committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime.” The U.S. has long been a major funder of Israeli apartheid, forcing taxpayers in the U.S. to give billions of dollars to Israel's military. Meanwhile, the Israeli government uses its military to confiscate Palestinian land and enable the building of Jewish-only settlements. Palestinians who dare to oppose these policies are often arrested, imprisoned, tortured, or even killed by Israeli soldiers and police. What can be done? The Human Rights Watch report says, “The Israeli government should dismantle all forms of systematic domination and oppression that privilege Jewish Israelis and systematically repress Palestinians, and end the persecution of Palestinians.” It is time for the U.S. to stop funding Israel's crimes against humanity. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris must immediately end all U.S. funding for the Israeli military. Sources: 1. “Abusive Israeli Policies Constitute Crimes of Apartheid, Persecution,” Human Rights Watch, April 27, 2021. https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/04/27/abusive-israeli-policies-constitute-crimes-apartheid-persecution. 2. “A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution,” Report, Human Rights Watch, April 27, 2021, https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/israeli-authorities-and-crimes-apartheid-and-persecution. 3. “Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court,” Article 7 - 2(h); https://legal.un.org/icc/statute/romefra.htm. * The artwork above is by Shirien.Creates. You can see more of her beautiful work on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shirien.creates/

Google’s censorship of high-resolution maps in Israel-occupied Palestinian territories hinders the ability of humanitarian and human rights groups from documenting home demolitions, settlement growth, and land loss. In Gaza, it’s preventing accuracy in documenting war crimes and human rights violations.[1] Google is inconsistently applying their own internal rules on mapping. In other conflict areas, such as eastern Ukraine, Google responsively and quickly put up new imagery on Google Earth. When it comes to Gaza though, Google has had access to high-resolution maps for over a year. But even during an active bombing campaign, where over 200 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed and infrastructure like a building housing journalists is destroyed, Google isn’t updating to high-res maps.[2] Google Maps has access to new imagery that would replace the blurry maps they have with updated ones. But so far they have sat on their hands, even though obscure, outdated laws that prevented these updates have been reversed for over a year. [1] It’s moments like these that reinforce tech is not neutral. By failing to consistently apply their policies Google and its Google Maps platform is helping to hide human rights abuses. But this isn’t new for Google. For some Palestinian digital rights activists, the slowness to update Gaza maps is a continuation of Google’s unequal handling of Palestine mapping overall. 7amleh, a digital rights group in Ramallah, asserts that the unequal mapping of Palestine is a human rights issue. Google Maps rarely includes the names of Palestinian areas unrecognized by Israel, yet has no problem including the names and locations of Israeli settlements. The maps don’t show roadblocks and checkpoints — resulting in Google Map routes that are useful only for Israelis and can be dangerous for Palestinians.[3] Sign our petition to demand that Google provide an answer for its inconsistent policy that prevents a better view of Gaza to allow researchers, activists, and the media access to high-resolution maps. Sources: 1. “Israel Can’t Hide Evidence of Its Occupation Anymore,” Foreign Policy, August 3, 2020. https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/08/03/israel-cant-hide-evidence-of-its-occupation-anymore/ 2. “Google Won't Say If It Will Update Its Blurry Maps of Gaza,” Motherboard, Tech by VICE, May 17, 2021. https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7evkn/google-maps-gaza-israel 3. Google Maps’ Endangering Palestinian Human Rights, 7amleh, September 18, 2018. https://7amleh.org/2018/09/18/google-maps-endangering-palestinian-human-rights

On Sunday, May 16, Senator Jon Ossoff led 29 Senators in calling for an immediate ceasefire in Israel & Palestine to prevent further killing of civilians. On Monday, May 17, the Washington Post reported that members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee [HFAC] had just learned that Biden had approved a new weapons deal with Israel, even though the deal had been notified to the committee as required by law on May 5. These are offensive weapons similar to those that Saudi Arabia has used to kill civilians in Yemen. In response, Texas Rep. Joaquin Castro and other HFAC members expressed concern about the weapons deal and the message it would send about the urgency of a ceasefire and urged that the weapons deal be delayed so Congress could review it. But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi & Majority Leader Steny Hoyer overruled them and insisted the weapons deal would go forward without Congressional review. Senators don't work for Nancy Pelosi & Steny Hoyer. If even one Democratic Senator would speak up about this, it would give House Democrats more courage to insist on reviewing the weapons deal before it goes forward. In addition, under the Arms Export Control Act, a single Senator can introduce can introduce a resolution of disapproval on the arms deal and force a floor vote, as Senators Murphy and Paul did on Saudi arms deals in September 2016 & June 2017 in opposition to unconstitutional U.S. participation in the Saudi war in Yemen. Urge Members of Congress, especially Senators Sanders & Warren, to speak up about this weapons deal, demand that it be delayed & reviewed, and introduce legislation to force a floor vote, by signing our petition. References: Sen. Ossoff leads 29 Senators to call for immediate ceasefire: https://www.ossoff.senate.gov/press-releases/sen-ossoff-leads-28-senators-urging-immediate-ceasefire-in-middle-east/ WaPo article on House Dem opposition in arms deal https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/05/17/power-up-biden-administration-approves-735-million-weapons-sale-israel-raising-red-flags-some-house-democrats/ Rep Castro's statement demanding delay and review: https://twitter.com/AlexWardVox/status/1394369401420488708 House Dems demanding delay & review overruled by Pelosi & Hoyer: https://twitter.com/AlexWardVox/status/1394680891088285699

The characterizations by Knotts and the GOP are designed to shut down important dialogue and run counter to free speech principles. Education systems must welcome diverse opinions.

Palestinian people have the right to live in peace and with dignity. They have the right to control their land and natural resources. They have the inalienable right to be free. We, everyone committed to justice, must commit ourselves to freedom for all: "Freedom is indivisible...." June Jordan

Devastating videos of Israeli forces attacking Muslim Palestinians praying in Al-Aqsa Mosque during the holy month of Ramadan began to proliferate on social media late last week. In one such video, Palestinian women in the mosque are seen screaming and running from stun grenades fired by Israeli soldiers. This is in one of the holiest places of worship in one of the holiest months for Muslims around the world. Israeli forces injured hundreds of Palestinians, including medics treating injuries nearby, and the Israeli government has used airstrikes, rockets, and rubberized steel bullets to inflict violence against any resistance from the Palestinians. These troubling videos followed the decision of the Israeli government to forcibly evict families from the Palestinian neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem. Although the Israeli Supreme Court stepped in to pause the evictions, this is part of a larger decades-long pattern of forced evictions, home demolitions, and displacement of Palestinians. The violence that started in Jerusalem has continued and spread, leading to massive unrest in the region and the worst escalation of violence in seven years between Israel and Palestine. Potential increased military action will only exacerbate the current situation with daily air strikes by the Israeli military in Gaza, Hamas launching over a thousand rockets to Southern and Central Israel, and growing violence on the streets already plaguing communities across the region. Morally courageous American leaders, including a slew of members of Congress, have already come out in support of the Palestinian people and called for an immediate ceasefire and an end to the Israeli policies of occupation and displacement of Palestinian families. The Biden administration must immediately do the same by leveraging its longstanding relationship with the Israeli government to call for an immediate ceasefire. In contrast, Biden and top cabinet officials seemingly offered support to the Israeli government to continue its policies precipitating the current crisis. In a call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Biden offered “unwavering support” for Israel’s “right to defend itself,” and made no mention of Netanyahu’s responsibility in inflaming and perpetuating violence as a political ploy to distract from his own diminishing power to govern. The United States even blocked the UN Security Council’s attempts to reduce tensions between Israel and Palestinians. With nearly $4 billion a year in U.S. military aid to Israel, the Biden administration has a responsibility to hold the Israeli government accountable. Before more violence ensues, the U.S. government must denounce the recent violence and call on the Israeli government to stop forced evictions, mass arrests, and other policies meant to harm and escalate tensions. We urge the Biden administration to forcefully advocate for an immediate ceasefire before many more civilians -- who will disproportionately be Palestinian --lose their lives.

India is in the midst of the world's worst COVID outbreak. Hospitals in India are stretched beyond their breaking point. Mass crematoriums cannot keep pace with the constant stream of the dying. Helping India in its hour of crisis is the right thing to do morally – but it's also the right thing for America. None of us are safe until the entire world is rid of COVID.

Landmines don’t understand a ceasefire. That means, even years after hostilities have ended, they can be triggered by a cow or a child and explode everyone and everything within a 27-meter radius. It’s a no-brainer that these abhorrent weapons should’ve NEVER gone into the ground in the first place. On the campaign trail, President Biden agreed, stating a commitment to "promptly roll back Trump’s deeply misguided decision" to continue their use. But the toing and froing since he’s taken office is not a great sign. That means we need to get LOUD to tell him that we demand an end to the use of landmines — for good. Will you add your name demanding President Biden end Trump’s reprehensible landmine policy?