Latest news with #politicalactivism
ABC News
a day ago
- Politics
- ABC News
How are online tools being used to track and resist fascism across the globe?
What are the online tools that fueled 'No Kings' and the Trump Resistance? From Signal to Reddit, people across the world are using tech tools to plan, analyse, and carry out political activism. We explore what those tools look like and how effective they are in preventing a bleak political future, including an explainer on the website 'Realtime Fascism' that uses AI to track fascism online. Also, Tesla's have been causing drama -- from phantom braking to a rise in Robotaxi issues. Will this stall the progress of automated vehicles in Australia? Plus, AI overviews have transformed the way we search for things online. What does this mean for old-school search engines and the sources we can trust? Plus why and how have 40,000 Cameras, from bird feeders to baby monitors, been exposed to the internet? GUESTS: Petra Stock, environment and science reporter for the Guardian Australia environment and science reporter for the Guardian Australia Charles Gretton, Director of Attention and Innovation, Integrated AI Network, and Associate Professor at ANU This episode of Download This Show was made on Gadigal land and in Naarm and on Ngunnawal country. Technical production by Allyse Simons.
The Guardian
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Michael Eavis: people who disagree with Glastonbury's politics can go elsewhere
The founder of Glastonbury, Michael Eavis, has said anyone who does not agree with the politics of the festival 'can go somewhere else'. Glastonbury, which has a history of political activism, opened on Wednesday and is set to be especially charged this year, with performances, talks and installations taking aim at big tech, campaigning for free speech, tackling the climate emergency and calling for action on a range of social and political issues. The focus this year will probably be rising tensions in the Middle East, especially the plight of Palestinians in Gaza, with a number of acts expressing support for them. The Irish rap group Kneecap are due to perform on Saturday, despite criticism from the UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, who said they should be banned from the festival after the band member Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh, also known as Mo Chara, was charged with a terrorism offence. The 27-year-old is accused of displaying a flag representing Hezbollah, a proscribed organisation, at a gig in November last year. In response to the allegations, Kneecap wrote on X: 'We deny this 'offence' and will vehemently defend ourselves. This is political policing. This is a carnival of distraction.' However, Emily Eavis, Michael's daughter who has taken over organising the festival, said the group were 'welcome' at Worthy Farm. She told BBC Breakfast: 'There have been a lot of really heated topics this year, but we remain a platform for many, many artists from all over the world and, you know, everyone is welcome here.' When asked by Glastonbury Free Press, the festival's newspaper, whether the event still stood for something, Michael Eavis said: 'Oh heaven's above, yes, of course it does. 'And I think the people that come here are into all those things. People that don't agree with the politics of the event can go somewhere else.' He added: 'I still take a lot of pleasure from all of it. I'm enjoying every day. 'And Emily is doing so well. I'm just feeling really safe with the show being in her hands.' The former Match of the Day presenter Gary Lineker, who left the BBC One show last month, will be speaking at the Information stage in the Silver Hayes area on Saturday as part of a panel called Standing Up for 'Getting Along' in a World That's Being Pushed Apart. He told the festival newspaper: 'It's basically along the lines of: everything is done to try and divide us, and I think if people can pull together – because I think most of us are decent human beings – then just a bit more kindness in the world would go a long way at the moment.'
Khaleej Times
2 days ago
- Politics
- Khaleej Times
US tightens monitoring of social media accounts of foreign students applying for visa
President Donald Trump's administration on Wednesday ordered the resumption of student visa appointments but will significantly tighten its social media vetting in a bid to identify any applicants who may be hostile towards the United States, according to an internal State Department cable reviewed by Reuters. US consular officers are now required to conduct a "comprehensive and thorough vetting" of all student and exchange visitor applicants to identify those who "bear hostile attitudes toward our citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles," said the cable, which was dated June 18 and sent to US missions on Wednesday. On May 27, the Trump administration ordered its missions abroad to stop scheduling new appointments for student and exchange visitor visa applicants, saying the State Department was set to expand social media vetting of foreign students. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio had said updated guidance would be released once a review was completed. The June 18 dated cable, which was sent by Rubio and sent to all US diplomatic missions, directed officers to look for "applicants who demonstrate a history of political activism, especially when it is associated with violence or with the views and activities described above, you must consider the likelihood they would continue such activity in the United States." The cable, which was first reported by Free Press, also authorised the consular officers to ask the applicants to make all of their social media accounts public. "Remind the applicant that limited access presence could be construed as an effort to evade or hide certain activity," the cable said. The move follows the administration's enhanced vetting measures last month for visa applicants looking to travel to Harvard University for any purpose, in what a separate State Department cable said would serve as a pilot program for wider expanded screening. Online presence The new vetting process should include a review of the applicant's entire online presence and not just social media activity, the cable said, urging the officers to use any "appropriate search engines or other online resources". During the vetting, the directive asks officers to look for any potentially derogatory information about the applicant. "For example, during an online presence search, you might discover on social media that an applicant endorsed Hamas or its activities," the cable says, adding that may be a reason for ineligibility. Rubio, Trump's top diplomat and national security adviser, has said he has revoked the visas of hundreds, perhaps thousands of people, including students, because they got involved in activities that he said went against US foreign policy priorities. Those activities include support for Palestinians and criticism of Israel's conduct in the war in Gaza. A Tufts University student from Turkey was held for over six weeks in an immigration detention centre in Louisiana after co-writing an opinion piece criticising her school's response to Israel's war in Gaza. She was released from custody after a federal judge granted her bail. Trump's critics have said the administration's actions are an attack on free speech rights under the First Amendment of the US Constitution. Fewer appointments? While the new directive allows posts to resume scheduling for student and exchange visa applicants, it is warning the officers that there may have to be fewer appointments due to the demands of more extensive vetting. "Posts should consider overall scheduling volume and the resource demands of appropriate vetting; posts might need to schedule fewer FMJ cases than they did previously," the cable said, referring to the relevant visa types. The directive has also asked posts to prioritise among expedited visa appointments of foreign-born physicians participating in a medical programme through exchange visas, as well as student applicants looking to study in a US university where international students constitute less than 15 per cent of the total. At Harvard, the oldest and wealthiest US university on which the administration has launched a multifront attack by freezing its billions of dollars of grants and other funding, foreign students last year made up about 27 per cent of the total student population. The cable is asking the overseas posts to implement these vetting procedures within five business days.
The Guardian
3 days ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
Carol Evans obituary
My mother, Carol Evans, who has died aged 85, was a quiet force for social justice. When she was recently admitted to hospital, Carol was asked by a nurse what she did. 'I'm a political activist,' she replied. From 1998 until 2007, she worked for the High Peak Rural Deprivation Forum, a campaigning charity bringing together residents, voluntary groups and the statutory sector to take action for Peak District communities. Carol secured funding from Oxfam to research rural poverty and, as convener of the forum's farming working group, led the publication of Hard Times, a 2004 report into the difficulties experienced by farming families in the Peak District, for which she gained national media coverage. She lobbied parliament, often bringing marginalised groups face-to-face with policymakers. She believed in protest, going on marches and campaigning at party conferences. One of her later roles, from 2015, was with the Independent Constitutionalists, a group that helps independent MPs get elected, and through them she advocated for a bottom-up approach to democracy. She grew up in Bushey Heath, Hertfordshire, the youngest of the nine children of Eleanor (nee Banks) and Henry Morrell, a varnish manufacturer. While her brothers joined the family firm, a path barred to her and her sisters, Carol went to secretarial college. She found her calling as secretary in the politics department at the University of Essex. Underestimated by male academics, she proved herself by editing a political journal and organising sit-ins. At Essex, she met Richard Evans, then a PhD student and later a lecturer in further education, and they married in 1971, going on to have five children. The family moved with Richard's job first to Norfolk and then to various locations around the UK, ending up in the Peak District. In her self-styled 'Earth Mother' years, Carol was early to organic, Fairtrade and ethical consumption, sewed her children's clothes and cut their hair, baked bread, made yoghurt and banned processed food. After separating from Richard in the 1990s, Carol sought a fresh intellectual challenge. She embarked on a degree in politics and philosophy at Manchester University, approaching it with characteristic determination, and went on to immerse herself in political campaigning. Carol believed politics happened not just in Westminster; it lived in everyday choices. She invested in her local hydroelectric plant and community shop, and banked with a credit union. She chaired her local transport group, advocating for rural rail access, and served on the board of High Peak CVS, which helps voluntary and community organisations, for nearly two decades. Her colleagues described her as a determined campaigner who refused to take no for an answer. She believed in people, in progress and in showing up for what mattered. Richard died in 2022. Carol is survived by her children, Matthew, Imogen, Dominic, Tristan and me, and six of her seven grandchildren.
The Guardian
4 days ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
Letter: Alasdair MacIntyre obituary
I was a student at Essex University in 1968 when Alasdair MacIntyre opposed its occupation by students attempting to reinstate three of their number sent down for disrupting a lecturer from Porton Down, the government's research base for chemical and biological warfare. At a mass meeting of occupying students, I said: 'Professor MacIntyre, let me read you a recent review of a book on student politics in the US. It says that when students find constitutional avenues of change blocked, they will resort to direct action, and are quite right to do so. The reviewer? Why, none other than our dean of students, Alasdair MacIntyre!' He was not best pleased and never again bought me a malt whisky in the student bar.
