Access Now helps you helps you tell the government of the United Arab Emirates to release human rights blogger Ahmed Mansoor. What did Mr. Mansoor supposedly do? Well, let's look at the charges: he did time in 2011 for insulting the President, Vice President, and Crown Prince of the UAE, and now he's charged with "publish(ing) false information that damages the country's reputation" and "spread(ing) hatred and sectarianism" on social media. So, in order, that's one charge only a snowflake government would file and two charges snowflake governments make up to punish folks who resist them. On the latter two charges the UAE has held Mr. Mansoor in solitary for three months, without access to a lawyer or his family, apparently because the state's too good for law and order. So let's wield the Big Stick of Bad PR against the UAE. (And, ah, if you're tempted to say this Can't Happen Here, recall that some Americans want to outlaw "fake news" and our own snowflake President wants "tougher libel laws.")
Meanwhile, H.R. 1299, the Berta Caceres Human Rights in Honduras Act, still awaits Congressional consideration, so the Sierra Club helps you tell your Congressfolk to support human rights in Honduras by supporting H.R. 1299. H.R. 1299 would use that vaunted leverage we have that we never seem to use at the right time: it would cut off military and financial aid to soldiers or police in Honduras until such time as they stop killing activists. Berta Caceres is, of course, the famous Honduran activist who got killed in her own home last year, and since the 2009 coup, when right-wing militarists ousted the left-leaning and democratically-elected President of Honduras, over 100 such activists have died under, shall we say, mysterious circumstances. Our government may have sat back and watched the Honduran coup under President Obama, but that doesn't mean we stop doing the right thing, and it doesn't mean we wait for our government's permission to act, either.
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