Author Archives: MNgranny

About MNgranny

MNgranny has been an activist since the age of 17. After earning a BA in Mass Communications and enjoying a 30 year career, she is now disabled and dedicates her life to that activism. Her experiences include volunteering in community service organizations and taking leadership roles throughout her academic and professional life. She is also a survivor of rape and domestic violence, a published author and a master naturalist. She is also a professional member of the United States Press Association. She has focused for the last several years and specializes in Kurdish history, culture and politics.

EU Deal on AI Act Is ‘Missed Opportunity’ to Ban Mass Surveillance, Say Privacy Groups

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“Whilst the Parliament fought hard to limit the damage, the overall package on biometric surveillance and profiling is at best lukewarm,” said one advocate.

By Julia Conley. Published 12-9-2023 by Common Dreams

*The European Union reached an agreement on December 8, 2023 regarding the use of artificial intelligence. Image: Electronic Frontier Foundation/CC*

Privacy advocates on Saturday said the AI Act, a sweeping proposed law to regulate artificial intelligence in the European Union whose language was finalized Friday, appeared likely to fail at protecting the public from one of AI’s greatest threats: live facial recognition.

Representatives of the European Commission spent 37 hours this week negotiating provisions in the AI Act with the European Council and European Parliament, running up against Council representatives from France, Germany, and Italy who sought to water down the bill in the late stages of talks.

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Critics Say Biden Plan to Cut Drug Costs Too Friendly to Big Pharma

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“Federal agencies have shown themselves reluctant to act against unreasonable prices, and this new proposal may give them permission to continue to do nothing,” said one expert.

By Brett Wilkins. Published 12-7-2023 by Common Dreams

While welcoming the White House’s willingness to tackle pharmaceutical companies’ patent abuse and high prescription drug prices, progressive critics argued Thursday that U.S. President Joe Biden must do more to challenge Big Pharma’s monopoly power.

The White House on Thursday announced “new actions to promote competition in healthcare and support lowering prescription drug costs for American families, including the release of a proposed framework for agencies on the exercise of march-in rights on taxpayer-funded drugs and other inventions.”

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Post-Dobbs Bans Leave 14 States With No Abortion Clinics

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A new analnysis shows how “abortion bans, extremist harassment, and the financial realities of operating community-based clinics make it increasingly difficult for independent clinics to stay open.”

By Brett Wilkins Published 12-5-2023 by Common Dreams

*Stop Abortion Bans Rally in St Paul, Minnesota May 2019. Photo: Lorie Shaull/flickr/CC*

Scores of independent reproductive health centers have been forced to close or stop offering abortion care, with 14 states now having no abortion clinics, a report published Tuesday revealed.

Abortion Care Network (ACN) released its annual Communities Need Clinics report, which details how “abortion bans, extremist harassment, and the financial realities of operating community-based clinics make it increasingly difficult for independent clinics to stay open” after the right-wing U.S. Supreme Court canceled half a century of federal abortion rights in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization a year-and-a-half ago.

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Families Rally for Opioid Accountability as Supreme Court Hears Purdue Case

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“I don’t want their money,” one woman who lost a son to the opioid crisis said of the Sackler family. “I want them in prison.”

By Julia Conley. Published 12-4-2023 by Common Dreams

Family members who lost loved ones to the opioid epidemic rallied at the U.S. Supreme Court on December 4, 2023 to oppose a bankruptcy deal that would allow Purdue Pharma to avoid liability for the deaths of millions of people from opioid use disorder.
(Photo: @aneripattani /Twitter)

At the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday, families whose loved ones are among the tens of thousands of Americans who have died of opioid use disorder each year over the past two decades rallied to push the nine justices to reject a proposed bankruptcy plan that would give the former owners of Purdue Pharma legal immunity—with many joining the U.S. Justice Department in arguing that the company should not be released from accountability for the opioid epidemic.

Purdue Pharma filed for bankruptcy in 2019, as the number of Americans killed by opioids hit 50,000 and the OxyContin manufacturer faced thousands of lawsuits alleging its aggressive marketing of the addictive painkiller had fueled the rising death toll.

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‘Disastrous’: Michigan Regulators Approve Enbridge Line 5 Expansion

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“Today’s decision is another notch in a long history of ignoring the rights of tribal nations,” said one Indigenous leader.

By Julia Conley. Published 12-1-2023 by Common Dreams

*Activists in Michigan gather around a sign reading, “Line 5: people or pipeline? Which side are you on?” (Photo Ben Jealous/X)*

Days after climate advocates applauded Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s signing of a package of clean energy bills that one campaigner said would “translate into better air, water, and health for everyone,” state regulators took several steps back from a sustainable future as they approved a key permit for Enbridge’s Line 5 expansion project beneath the Great Lakes.

In a 2-0 vote with one member abstaining, the Michigan Public Service Commission (MPSC) approved siting for the project, granting Canadian oil firm Enbridge permission to build a concrete tunnel beneath the Straits of Mackinac—which connect Lake Michigan and Lake Huron—to house a four-mile section of its 645-mile petroleum pipeline.

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200,000+ Urge DOE to ‘Do the Right Thing’ and Block LNG Buildout

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One project in particular, the CP2 export terminal, “would be the most harmful facility built in the United States,” one frontline activist said as campaigners delivered petition signatures.

By Olivia Rosane. Published 11-30-2023 by Common Dreams

Roishetta Ozane, founder and director of the Louisiana-based mutual aid organization Vessel Project, speaks as activists deliver 200,000 signatures opposing the LNG buildout to the U.S. Department of Energy in Washington, D.C., on November 30, 2023. (Photo: Jamie Henn/X)

Climate and environmental justice campaigners on Thursday delivered more than 200,000 petition signatures calling on the Biden administration to reject the Calcasieu Pass 2, or CP2, liquefied natural gas export facility as well as all other planned LNG infrastructure.

Environmental advocates and progressive lawmakers have been increasingly raising the alarm about CP2 and the broader expansion in LNG exports, pointing out that they put both the U.S. climate goals and frontline Gulf Coast communities at risk. CP2, for example, would emit 20 times as many greenhouse gases as the controversial Willow oil drilling project in Alaska.

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McDonald’s Fined 0.0002% of 2022 Profits for Child Labor Violations

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“Less than $1,000 per child,” said one critic. “For one of the biggest franchises on Earth.”

By Julia Conley. Published 11-28-2023 by Common Dreams

McDonald’s, one of the largest employers in the world, was fined just $26,000—a tiny fraction of its profits—on Monday for violating child labor laws in Pennsylvania, with two franchisees found to be violating numerous rules in five stores.

The U.S. Department of Labor’s (DOL) Wage and Hour Division found that Paul and Meghan Sweeney, owners of a company called Endor, which runs five McDonald’s locations, employed 34 children who were 14 and 15 years old.

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Biden Request Would Create ‘Free-Flowing’ Arms Pipeline to Israel

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The request would remove most conditions on Israel’s use of a U.S. weapons stash, including a requirement that it only use surplus or obsolete weapons and a cap on how much the U.S. can spend resupplying the stash.

By Olivia Rosane Published 11-26-2023 by Common Dreams.

*155-mm artillery shells,. Photo: US Department of Defense*

President Joe Biden has requested that Congress to lift most of the restrictions on Israel’s access to a U.S. stockpile of weapons in the country, The Intercept reported Saturday.

The request came in the administration’s supplemental budget request to the U.S. Senate, sent October 20. It concerns the War Reserve Stockpile Allies-Israel (WRSA-I) that the U.S. has stored in Israel since the 1980s for its own use in a potential conflict in the region. The U.S. allows Israel to access the stockpile under certain conditions, but Biden’s request would remove most of these conditions, including a requirement that Israel only use surplus or obsolete weapons and a cap on how much the U.S. can spend resupplying the stash.

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‘Biggest Ever Global Strike Against Amazon’ Kicks Off on Black Friday

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“This day of action grows every year because the movement to hold Amazon accountable keeps getting bigger and stronger,” said the head of UNI Global Union.

By Jake Johnson. Published 11-24-2023 by Common Dreams

*Amazon workers and allies take part in a “Make Amazon Pay” day of action on November 24, 2023. (Photo: Global Justice Now)*

Amazon workers and allies in dozens of countries around the world took to the streets Friday to protest the e-commerce behemoth’s atrocious working conditions, low pay, union busting, tax dodging, and inaction on planet-warming emissions.

The “Make Amazon Pay” strikes and rallies coincided with Black Friday, the busiest shopping day of the year and one of Amazon’s most profitable. Amazon workers across the globe—in ever-larger numbers—have been walking off the job on Black Friday for years to demand better treatment from the $1.5 trillion company.

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Gulf Oil Spill Shows ‘Danger of Banks Owning Energy Companies’

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“The Federal Reserve must enforce the Bank Holding Company Act and disallow Wall Street banks from controlling energy infrastructure, as it poses systemic risks,” said a Public Citizen campaigner.

By Jessica Corbett. Published 11-23-2023 by Common Dreams

*An aircrew detected oil in the Gulf of Mexico on November 16, 2023. (Photo: USCG Heartland/X)*

Banking giant JPMorgan Chase has financial ties to a company that owns the pipeline suspected of leaking up to 1.1 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico—a situation that watchdogs say demonstrates the danger of such business relationships.

“JPMorgan’s control over a company involved in a massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico clearly illustrates the danger of banks owning energy companies,” Tyson Slocum, director of consumer watchdog Public Citizen’s Energy Program, declared Wednesday.

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Occupy World Writes

The Movement Continues – Globally

Author Archives: MNgranny

About MNgranny

Gulf Oil Spill Shows ‘Danger of Banks Owning Energy Companies’

“The Federal Reserve must enforce the Bank Holding Company Act and disallow Wall Street banks from controlling energy infrastructure, as it poses systemic risks,” said a Public Citizen campaigner.