Monthly Archives: May 2023

Experts Urge Action to Mitigate ‘Risk of Extinction From AI’

It “should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war,” says a new statement signed by dozens of artificial intelligence critics and boosters.

By Kenny Stancil. Published 5-30-2023 by Common Dreams

A growing number of experts are calling for a pause on advanced AI development and deployment. Graphic: deepak pal/fickr/CC

On Tuesday, 80 artificial intelligence scientists and more than 200 “other notable figures” signed a statement that says “mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.”

The one-sentence warning from the diverse group of scientists, engineers, corporate executives, academics, and other concerned individuals doesn’t go into detail about the existential threats posed by AI. Instead, it seeks to “open up discussion” and “create common knowledge of the growing number of experts and public figures who also take some of advanced AI’s most severe risks seriously,” according to the Center for AI Safety, a U.S.-based nonprofit whose website hosts the statement.

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Turkey’s Marginalized ‘Deeply Afraid’ as Erdoğan Wins Presidential Runoff

“Erdoğan’s victory will consolidate one-man rule and pave the way for horrible practices, bringing completely dark days for all parts of society,” warned one Kurdish opposition leader.

By Brett Wilkins. Published 5-29-2023 by Common Dreams

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan. (Photo: public domain)

As supporters of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan at home and abroad celebrated his win of Sunday’s runoff election, human rights defenders and marginalized people including Kurds and LGBTQ+ activists voiced deep fears about how their lives will be adversely affected during the increasingly authoritarian leader’s third term.

Turkey’s Supreme Election Council confirmed Erdoğan’s victory over Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu on Sunday evening. Erdoğan, the 69-year-old leader of the right-wing Justice and Development Party who has ruled the nation of 85 million people since 2014 and dominated its politics for two decades, won 52.18% of the vote. Kılıçdaroğlu, a 74-year-old social democrat who leads the left-of-center Republican People’s Party, received 47.82%.

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Could Iran’s new nuclear bunker increase the risk of an Israeli attack?

If Israel keeps its far-right government and Trump returns, chances of an attack on Iran will increase

By Paul Rogers. Published 5-26-2023 by openDemocracy

Former President Donald J. Trump participates in a bilateral meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Monday, Jan. 27, 2020, in the Oval Office of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)

Reports that Iran is constructing a very large, deep bunker as part of its nuclear programme mean there is a renewed risk of an upsurge in tension, and the potential for conflict, most likely involving Israel but always with risk of it spreading much wider.

Context here is important.

During Barack Obama’s second term in the White House, countries including the UK, France and Germany, worked hard with the US to forge an agreement with the Iranian regime to avoid Iran developing nuclear weapons. A powerful motivation was the risk of Israel otherwise taking unilateral action.

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‘Enormous Policy Failure’: States Throw Hundreds of Thousands—Including Many Children—Off Medicaid

“We knew this was coming,” wrote one policy expert. “But we still treat these burdens like they’re unavoidable natural disasters.”

By Jake Johnson. Published 5-27-2023 by Common Dreams

Photo: Ted Eytan/CC

With a green light from the federal government, states across the U.S. have thrown hundreds of thousands of low-income people off Medicaid in recent weeks—and many have lost coverage because they failed to navigate bureaucratic mazes, not because they were no longer eligible.

More than a dozen states, including Florida and other Republican-led states that have refused to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, have begun removing people from Medicaid as part of the “unwinding” of a pandemic-era federal policy that temporarily barred governments from kicking people off the program.

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‘This Is the First Step’: Minnesota Passes Most Comprehensive PFAS Ban in the Nation

“This law shows that states are a key part of ensuring that communities are safe from PFAS,” one advocate said.

By Olivia Rosane. Published 5-26-2023 by Common Dreams

Amara Strande, the late frontline anti-PFAS advocate who gave her name to Minnesota’s sweeping ban on forever chemicals, speaks in support of the bill. (Photo: Clean Water Action)

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz on Wednesday signed into law the broadest ban on dangerous “forever chemicals” in the nation.

The ban forms part of H.F. 2310—an omnibus environment bill—and is one of the many new policies to come out of what progressives say is a “transformational” legislative session for the state. Minnesota is now the first of any U.S. state to prohibit per- and polyfluorinated substances (PFAS) in menstrual products, dental floss, cleaning supplies, and cooking equipment.

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Right-Wing US Supreme Court Delivers ‘Catastrophic Loss for Water Protections’

The court “ripped the heart out of the law we depend on to protect American waters and wetlands,” said one critic, warning that the ruling “will cause incalculable harm.”

By Jessica Corbett. Published 5-25-2023 by Common Dreams

Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge, Cambridge, MD. USEPA Photo by Eric Vance. Public domain image

The U.S. Supreme Court’s right-wing majority on Thursday severely curtailed protections for “waters of the United States.”

The decision in Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is “unanimous in result but very split in reasoning,” explained Slate‘s Mark Joseph Stern. “The upshot of Sackett is that, by a 5–4 vote, the Supreme Court dramatically narrows” which wetlands are covered by the Clean Water Act (CWA).

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‘Shooting the Messenger’: German Police Target Climate Group Last Generation in Nationwide Raid

“When will they raid the lobby structures and seize the government’s fossil fuel money?” the group wrote in response to the raids.

By Olivia Rosane. Published 5-24-2023 by Common Dreams

Last Generation road blocks at Berlin Central station (2022) Photo: Stefan Müller/flickr/CC

German police on Wednesday raided the climate activist group Letzte Generation, or Last Generation, seized accounts, and shut down its website.

Last Generation is an Extinction Rebellion-style group that uses direct-action tactics such as blocking traffic, shutting off oil pipelines, or dousing a Monet in mashed potatoes to call for more ambitious climate policies. The raids were part of an investigation into seven members of the group for “forming or supporting a criminal organization,” the Prosecutor General’s Office in Munich said in a statement reported by CNN.

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Minnesota Dems Set Bar for State Legislatures, Passing Nearly Every Item on ‘Transformational’ Agenda

“The work we’ve done over the last five months will make a generational impact on our state—it will lower costs, improve lives, and cut child poverty,” said Gov. Tim Walz.

By Julia Conley. Published 5-23-2023 by Common Dreams

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz hugs students at Webster Elementary School in Minneapolis on March 17, 2023 after signing a law that makes school meals free for all public and charter school students. (Photo: @GovTimWalz/Twitter)

Progressives are applauding what Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman called the state’s “transformational” legislative session, which ended on Tuesday after the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party passed nearly every item on its agenda, securing economic justice, reproductive rights, and labor protections for Minnesotans.

With the DFL holding only a narrow majority in the state House and Senate—a six-vote and one-vote margin, respectively—policy researcher Will Stancil said on social media that “the scale of their achievement cannot be overstated.”

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Chinese Immigrants Sue Florida Over DeSantis’s Discriminatory Law Banning Home Purchases

“All Asian Americans will feel the stigma and the chilling effect created by this Florida law, just like the discriminatory laws did to our ancestors more than a hundred years ago.”

By Julia Conley. Published 5-22-2023 by Common Dreams

Governor Ron DeSantis speaking with attendees at the 2022 Student Action Summit at the Tampa Convention Center in Tampa, Florida. Photo: Gage Skidmore/flickr/CC

Accusing Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis of enacting an unconstitutional law that would not have been out of place at the turn of the last century, a group of Chinese American immigrants on Monday filed a lawsuit against the state over S.B. 264, which restricts most Chinese citizens from purchasing homes in Florida.

The law is set to take effect on July 1, but the plaintiffs and the groups representing them—including the ACLU, the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF), the Chinese American Legal Defense Alliance (CALDA), and the ACLU of Florida—hope to block the measure in the courts.

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‘A Death Sentence’: Green Groups Decry G7 Support for More Gas Investments

“Energy security can only be achieved by rapidly and equitably phasing out fossil fuels and transitioning to renewable energy, not locking in deadly fossil fuels and lining the pockets of oil and gas executives,” said one critic.

By Jessica Corbett Published 5-21-2023 by Common Dreams

Activists with masks of Group of Seven leaders protest fossil fuels. (Photo: 350.org Japan/Friends of the Earth Japan/Oil Change International)

Since Group of Seven leaders on Saturday put out a wide-ranging communiqué from a Japan-hosted summit in Hiroshima, climate action advocates from G7 countries and beyond have blasted the statement’s support for future investments in planet-heating gas.

The statement comes after G7 climate, energy, and environment ministers were criticized for their communiqué from a meeting in Sapporo last month as well as protests around the world this week pressuring the summit’s attendees to ditch fossil fuels and “deliver a clear and just renewable energy agenda for a peaceful world.”

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