Category Archives: Banking & Lending Issues

Ethics Group Asks SEC to Probe Musk Claims About ‘Gruesome’ Neuralink Monkey Trials

“It seems obvious to everyone but Elon Musk that Neuralink’s device is unsafe,” said one critic. “Now he is deliberately misleading investors and the public by outright lying about the company’s monkey experiments.”

By Brett Wilkins. Published 9-21-2023 by Common Dreams

After obtaining records showing a dozen monkeys were euthanized in “gruesome” trials, a national physicians group on Wednesday asked the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate claims made by Elon Musk, owner of the biotech firm Neuralink, about the company’s experimental brain implants.

Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) requested an SEC probe into possible securities fraud committed by Musk when he claimed that “no monkey has died as a result of a Neuralink implant” during testing of the company’s implantable brain-computer interfaces (BCI), and that the animals who died were all already terminally ill when chosen for experiments.

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With Alito’s Billionaire Patron Holding $90 Million in Finance Firms, Watchdog Demands Recusal From CFPB Case

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“Should Justice Alito preside over this case despite his clear conflicts of interest, it would add to the worsening Supreme Court corruption crisis and underscore the urgent need for ethics reform,” said one critic.

By Julia Conley. Published 9-18-2023 by Common Dreams

Samuel-Alito. Screenshot: Conversations with Bill Kristol

Anti-corruption watchdog Accountable.US on Monday said there is a clear need for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito to recuse himself from an upcoming court case regarding the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, as a new analysis revealed the extent of one of his key associate’s financial interests in the case.

The group released new data showing that hedge fund manager Paul Singer holds at least $90 million in financial firms overseen by the CFPB, which was established in 2011 through the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act and has since provided $16 billion in financial relief to defrauded consumers and ordered companies to pay $3.7 billion in penalties.

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New Tool Creates Personalized Legal Memo Asking Education Department to Cancel Student Debt

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“President Biden says he is going to use every tool he can to cancel student debt, but there is still much more he can do,” said a co-founder of the Debt Collective. “With this new tool, we are calling his bluff.”

By Jessica Corbett. Published 8-28-2023 by Common Dreams

“Filling out this form creates an individual demand letter, tailored to your own student debt story, calling on the Department of Education to use its powers to cancel not just your debt, but everyone’s.”

That’s how the Debt Collective describes a tool it launched Monday to increase pressure on the Biden administration to deliver on long-promised relief from federal student loan repayments.

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Thousands Evacuated After Chemical Leak and Massive Fire at ‘Cancer Alley’ Oil Refinery

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“Such events are an all-too-common and exceptionally dangerous reality for those living within fossil fuel and petrochemical ‘sacrifice zones,'” observed one researcher.

By Brett Wilkins. Published 8-25-2023 by Common Dreams

A massive plume of smoke—visible from outer space—billows from a burning storage tank at Marathon Petroleum’s Garyville, Louisiana refinery on August 25, 2023. (Photo: Mike Friloux/Facebook)

A mandatory evacuation was ordered for thousands of people living within a two-mile radius of a Marathon Petroleum refinery in Louisiana’s so-called “Cancer Alley” after a chemical leak and massive fire broke out at a storage tank there on Friday.

The temporary evacuation order, which Marathon Petroleum called “precautionary,” followed a leak of naphtha—a hazardous and highly flammable liquid hydrocarbon mixture—and blaze at the refinery in Garyville in St. John the Baptist Parish, located about 45 miles upriver from New Orleans.

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Mastercard Move at Cannabis Shops Intensifies Call for US Decriminalization

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“An industry that employs hundreds of thousands of people, provides billions in economic benefits, and promotes safer alternatives to pharmaceuticals and commonplace vices continues to be treated like a pariah,” said one cannabis entrepreneur.

By Julia Conley. Published 7-28-2023 by Common Dreams

A recreational marijuana dispensary in Denver, Colorado Photo: My 420 Tours/Wikimedia Commons/CC

Cannabis reform advocates on Friday said a new decision by credit card company Mastercard illustrates why the substance must be decriminalized at the federal level to ensure that legal U.S. dispensaries are able to operate safely and securely.

The company announced this week that it has instructed U.S. financial institutions to stop allowing customers to use its debit cards to purchase marijuana products at cannabis stores, which now operate legally in 38 states for medicinal use and 23 states for recreational use, as well as in the District of Columbia.

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Rights Groups Blast UK Bill to Ban Public Bodies From Boycotting Israel

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Civil society critics argue the proposal threatens “freedom of expression, and the ability of public bodies and democratic institutions to spend, invest, and trade ethically in line with international law and human rights.”

By Jessica Corbett. Published 6-19-2023 by Common Dreams

A Palestine Solidarity Campaign rally outside Downing Street in 2016. Photo: Alisdare Hickson/flickr/CC

Advocacy organizations raised the alarm on Monday as a bill to ban local councils and universities in the United Kingdom from boycotting Israel over human rights abuses was introduced in the U.K. Parliament.

The Economic Activity of Public Bodies (Overseas Matters) Bill—tabled by Michael Gove, the Conservative secretary of state for leveling up, housing, and communities—aims to “prevent public bodies from being influenced by political or moral disapproval of foreign states when taking certain economic decisions, subject to certain exceptions.”

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As Insurers Cut Coverage Due to Climate Disasters, Senators Probe Continued Backing of Fossil Fuels

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“By underwriting and investing in new and expanded fossil fuel projects, U.S. insurers are helping Big Oil bring us closer to the worst runaway climate scenarios,” said Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse.

By Kenny Stancil. Published 6-9-2023 by Common Dreams

Storm damage from Hurricane Ian. Photo: Florida Fish and Wildlife/flickr/CC

As insurance giants limit coverage in hundreds of disaster-prone areas across the United States, a Senate panel on Friday launched an investigation into seven major carriers’ continued backing of planet-heating fossil fuel projects that are driving increasingly frequent and severe extreme weather.

Senate Budget Committee Chair Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) sent letters to the executives of seven companies—American Insurance Group (AIG), Berkshire Hathaway, Chubb, Liberty Mutual Group, Starr Wright USA, State Farm, and Travelers Insurance—demanding that each firm disclose how it underwrites, invests in, and profits from coal, oil, and gas.

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‘Utterly Absurd’: Rich Nations Spending Climate Dollars on Coal Projects and Chocolate Shops

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“Essentially, whatever they call climate finance is climate finance,” said one developing nation’s lead climate negotiator.

By Brett Wilkins. Published 6-2-2023 by Common Dreams

Activists including members of frontline communities protest Japanese financing of international fossil fuel projects including coal plants in Matarbari, Bangladesh and Indramayu, Indonesia on October 4, 2021 in Tokyo. (Photo: @market_forces/Twitter)

Wealthy nations are spending money under the guise of “climate finance” to fund projects that have little or nothing to do with tackling the climate crisis and—as in the case of three Japanese-backed coal plants—are sometimes fueling the planetary emergency, according to a Reuters investigation published Thursday.

While media outlets including Reuters have recently reported that rich countries are on track—albeit long overdue—to finally meet their 2009 pledge to invest $100 billion annually in climate financing by 2020, the new Reuters investigation shows that governments are funding climate-harming projects and counting the expenditures toward their giving total.

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

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

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“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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Occupy World Writes

The Movement Continues – Globally

Category Archives: Banking & Lending Issues