September, 12 2019, 12:00am EDT

For Immediate Release
Contact:
Shuo Peskoe-Yang, press@fightforthefuture.org, 757-376-1808
Nathalia Clark, nathalia@350.org, +55 61 991371229
Over 1,000 Websites and Major Companies Plan to Join 'Digital Climate Strike' Next Week
Tumblr, Kickstarter, WordPress, Imgur, BitTorrent, are among the companies to support the Global Climate Strike.
WASHINGTON
Over 1,000 websites and companies are joining the Digital Climate Strike on September 20th, in response to the call-to-action from young people around the world.
Modeled after massive online protests like the SOPA strike and the Internet Slowdown for net neutrality, the Digital Climate Strike will raise visibility about the upcoming youth-led global climate strike. Many of these largest websites in the world are participating, such as Imgur, Tumblr, and Wordpress, by spreading the word on social media, donating ad space, or putting banners on their websites to announce the strikes. Some companies, like Burton and Patagonia, will be taking more aggressive action, such as shutting down both their physical and online stores on September 20th and encouraging employees and customers to strike.
Websites can join by contacting Fight for the Future or by visiting the campaign landing page. See the landing page for the campaign here.
"From the SOPA blackout to net neutrality we've used the Internet to mobilize people on an unprecedented scale to achieve grassroots victories that were previously thought to be impossible," said Evan Greer, Deputy Director of Fight for the Future, a digital rights organization that has been working with an ad hoc coalition of environmental groups, tech workers, and others to organize the Digital Climate Strike. "Politicians and lobbyists want us to think that solving the climate crisis is impossible. We need to channel the power of the Internet to turn the impossible into the inevitable. Our future depends on it."
Youth around the world have been striking from school on Fridays, demanding action to stop the global climate crisis. These youth are calling for a mass mobilization on Friday, September 20th -- three days ahead of a United Nations emergency climate summit -- to move world governments to take emergency action and end the fossil fuel era. Over 1,700 strikes are planned in more than 150 countries to disrupt business as usual, and strikers are calling on everyone to join them.
While some companies, like Seventh Generation, Patagonia, and Atlassian are encouraging their employees to participate in the global strikes, many of the largest companies like Microsoft and Amazon have stayed silent. In response, their workers, however, have taken on their own initiative to walk out on September 20th to demonstrate their solidarity with youth strikers. In the case of Amazon, at least part of their action is directed at the company itself for its inaction to address the climate crisis.
"Climate change is the greatest crisis humanity has ever faced, and it will affect our generation the most," said Alexandria Villasenor, school striker and founder of Earth Uprising. "That's why at the global climate strike on September 20th, youth must lead the way and demand climate action NOW from our world leaders!"
"This is the tipping point. Today's youth are not fooled: their futures are being stolen before their very eyes by the fossil fuel industry and corrupt politicians. We're joining them because we refuse to be bystanders while our children are left with an unlivable planet by our inaction," said Shuo Peskoe-Yang, with Fight for the Future. "There is no room for neutrality. The children are calling on us, and the time to act is now."
"Climate change is affecting everyone and it's imperative that we continue to create and push those conversations," said Bridget Kyeremateng, Tumblr's Social Impact Lead. "Tumblr's passionate and driven community is always eager to find ways that they can get involved in their communities and the Climate Strike is a great opportunity to take issues off the platform and onto the streets."
"In the digital era, the internet has democratized the connection between people all over the world. Similarly, the climate crisis also knows no borders. It affects everyone and is now the most urgent challenge of our time," said Sarah Wilbore, Digital Engagement Director at 350.org. "We only have a few years to change things, and this will only be possible with participation and pressure from everyone: civil society, business and governments. We have a joint responsibility to contribute to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and we can't delay any further, it must start now."
"Climate change is disrupting business as usual for everyone. It doesn't matter what industry you're in or how big your organization is. Our team cares deeply about this and our clients rely on us for responsible technology," said Tim Frick CEO of Mightybytes. "Participating in the digital strike is one way for Mightybytes to let people know that addressing climate change is a priority for us."
350 is building a future that's just, prosperous, equitable and safe from the effects of the climate crisis. We're an international movement of ordinary people working to end the age of fossil fuels and build a world of community-led renewable energy for all.
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Military spending worldwide soared to $2.718 trillion last year, meaning it "has increased every year for a full decade, going up by 37% between 2015 and 2024," according to an annual report released Monday.
The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) has tracked conflict, disarmament, and weapons for nearly six decades. Its 2024 spending report states that "for the second year in a row, military expenditure increased in all five of the world's geographical regions, reflecting heightened geopolitical tensions across the globe."
In a Monday statement, Xiao Liang, a researcher with the SIPRI Military Expenditure and Arms Production Program, highlighted that "over 100 countries around the world raised their military spending in 2024."
"It was the highest year-on-year increase since the end of the Cold War."
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Liang warned that "as governments increasingly prioritize military security, often at the expense of other budget areas, the economic and social trade-offs could have significant effects on societies for years to come."
The United States—whose Republican lawmakers are currently cooking up a plan to give even more money to a Pentagon that's never passed an audit—led all countries, with $997 billion in military spending. The report points out that the U.S. not only allocated "3.2 times more than the second-largest spender," but also "accounted for 37% of global military expenditure in 2024 and 66% of spending by North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) members."
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Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday announced an upcoming three-day truce to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe. In response, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called for an immediate monthlong cease-fire.
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"It is worth saying that boosting spending alone will not necessarily translate into significantly greater military capability or independence from the USA," the expert added. "Those are far more complex tasks."
Another SIPRI researcher, Lorenzo Scarazzato, highlighted that "for the first time since reunification Germany became the biggest military spender in Western Europe, which was due to the €100 billion special defense fund announced in 2022."
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As for the Middle East, SIPRI researcher Zubaida Kari said that "despite widespread expectations that many Middle Eastern countries would increase their military spending in 2024, major rises were limited to Israel and Lebanon."
In addition to slaughtering at least tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza over the past nearly 19 months, Israel has killed thousands of people in Lebanon while allegedly targeting the political and paramilitary group Hezbollah. Kari said that elsewhere in the region, "countries either did not significantly increase spending in response to the war in Gaza or were prevented from doing so by economic constraints."
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In a report published Monday, a leading human rights group calls for international political action to prohibit and regulate so-called "killer robots"—autonomous weapons systems that select targets based on inputs from sensors rather than from humans—and examines them in the context of six core principles in international human rights law.
In some cases, the report argues, an autonomous weapons system may simply be incompatible with a given human rights principle or obligation.
The report, co-published by Human Rights Watch and Harvard Law School's International Human Rights Clinic, comes just ahead of the first United Nations General Assembly meeting on autonomous weapons systems next month. Back in 2017, dozens of artificial intelligence and robotics experts published a letter urging the U.N. to ban the development and use of killer robots. As drone warfare has grown, those calls have continued.
"To avoid a future of automated killing, governments should seize every opportunity to work toward the goal of adopting a global treaty on autonomous weapons systems," said the author behind the report, Bonnie Docherty, a senior arms adviser at Human Rights Watch and a lecturer on law at Harvard Law School's International Human Rights Clinic, in a statement on Monday.
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Drones relying on an autonomous targeting system have been used by Ukraine to hit Russian targets during the war between the two countries, The New York Timesreported last year.
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A senior Navy admiral recently toldBloomberg that the program is "alive and well" under the Department of Defense's new leadership following U.S. President Donald Trump's return to the White House.
Docherty warned that the impact of killer robots will stretch beyond the traditional battlefield. "The use of autonomous weapons systems will not be limited to war, but will extend to law enforcement operations, border control, and other circumstances, raising serious concerns under international human rights law," she said in the statement
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The report also lists cases where it's more ambiguous whether autonomous weapons systems would violate a certain right.
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Several cases of undocumented immigrants who have been sent to El Salvador's notorious Terrorism Confinement Center have made national headlines in recent weeks, including that of Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia; Merwil Gutiérrez, a 19-year-old who federal agents acknowledged was not who they were looking for during a raid; and Andry Hernandez Romero, a makeup artist who was accused of being a gang member solely because he had tattoos.
O'Handley's suggestion that the bedrock legal principle be suspended for undocumented immigrants—hundreds of whom have already been forced out of the country without due process—came ahead of Trump's scheduled signing of two new immigration-related executive orders.
One would direct the departments of Justice and Homeland Security to publish a list of sanctuary cities and states—those where local law enforcement are directed not to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement as it seeks to arrest undocumented immigrants.
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