Category Archives: Uncategorized

Report Shows How Governments Reach Beyond Their Borders to Crush Dissent

Human Rights Watch examines how repressive governments use harassment, surveillance, and assassination to target dissidents.

By Jake Johnson. Published 2-22-2024 by Common Dreams

Vladimir Putin and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Photo: Kremlin/Wikimedia Commons

report published Thursday by Human Rights Watch details how governments around the world relentlessly target dissidents, journalists, and others beyond their borders, resorting to threats, harassment, and even abduction and assassination to silence those perceived as threats.

“Transnational repression looks different depending on the context,” notes the new report. “Recent cases include a Rwandan refugee who was killed in Uganda following threats from the Rwandan government; a Cambodian refugee in Thailand only to be extradited to Cambodia and summarily detained; and a Belarusian activist who was abducted while aboard a commercial airline flight. Transnational repression may mean that a person’s family members who remain at home become targets of collective punishment, such as the Tajik activist whose family in Tajikistan, including his 10-year-old daughter, was detained, interrogated, and threatened.”

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

“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

“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

Photo: ccPixs.com

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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‘Huge Win for the Planet’ as Panama Court Shuts Down Massive Mine

“The people have spoken and expressed that they don’t want more mines, that they want sustainable economic development, and have no intention of destroying the country for profit,” said one campaigner.

By Brett Wilkins. Published 11-29-2023 by Common Dreams

Photo: Radio Temblor

Indigenous and environmental campaigners this week hailed a landmark win for the Rights of Nature movement, the Panamanian Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling that the contract for the Cobré mineral mine—one of the world’s largest—is unconstitutional and must be shut down.

The November 24 ruling against Minera Panamá, a subsidiary of the Canadian company First Quantum Minerals, followed weeks of nationwide protests against the open-pit mine, which began operations in 2019 and where mainly copper, but also gold, silver, and molybdenum, are extracted. Opponents say the mine threatens area water supplies. A gunman shot and killed two people at a protest against the mine earlier this month.

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Carbon markets that benefit the West will not solve Africa’s climate crisis

Western interests dominated the Africa Climate Summit. Time for African nations to put themselves first

-By Claire Nasike and Peter Osogo Published 9-15-2023 by openDemocracy

The First Africa Climate Summit was held at the Kenyatta International Convention Center in Nairobi, Kenya on September 6 2023. Photo: Paul Kagame/flickr/CC

The Africa Climate Summit 2023 in Kenya last week united African leaders for a discussion on the climate crisis, with a specific focus on Africa and its policy stance ahead of COP28 in Dubai.

One would have expected African leaders to propose sovereign solutions to the challenges faced by their countries. These include recurrent hunger, flooding, drought, resource exploitation, water and soil pollution, and control of food systems by Western corporations.

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‘Wrong and Frightening’: Alito Claims Congress Can’t Regulate SCOTUS

“What a surprise, guy who is supposed to enforce checks and balances thinks checks shouldn’t apply to him,” said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

By Jessica Corbett. Published 7-28-2023 by Common Dreams

Justice Samuel Alito in 2017. Photo: JoshEllie1234/Wikimedia Commons/CC

While conservative Justice Samuel Alito’s new Wall Street Journal interview covered various topics, one that provoked intense ire on Friday was his suggestion that federal lawmakers don’t have the power to regulate the U.S. Supreme Court.

For a series of Journal opinion pieces—the first was published in April—Alito spent four hours speaking on the record with David B. Rivkin Jr., an attorney who currently has a case before the high court, and James Taranto, the newspaper’s editorial features editor.

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Conservatives could take over key inter-American human rights body

Countries will this week elect members to the Americas’ most important institution for protecting human rights

By Angelina De Los Santos Published 6-21-2023 by openDemocracy

Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in 2021 – the first year that the leading three commisioners were women Photo: Comisión Interamericana de Derechos Humanos/flickr/CC

Governments across the Americas are set to take part in a crucial vote that could decide the future of a body that has been vital in protecting human rights in the region for more than 60 years.

Since 1959, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) has guided countries in establishing legal standards and assisting millions of victims of violence and inequality.

It is responsible for investigating human rights violations – including unfair trials, extrajudicial executions and violence against women and vulnerable populations – and submitting cases to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR, founded in 1979). Both bodies comprise the Inter-American Human Rights System (IAHRS).

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

“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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Bolsonaro Requests Six-Month US Tourist Visa to Prolong Florida Trip as Brazilian Probes Mount

Brazil’s far-right ex-president has applied for a visa to remain in the U.S. amid worsening legal troubles in his home country, where he is facing multiple investigations.

By Kenny Stancil.  Published 1-30-2023 by Common Dreams

Jair and Michelle Bolsonaro in Jacksonville, FL, 2020 Photo: Alan Santos/PR/flickr/CC

Brazil’s far-right ex-president Jair Bolsonaro has applied for a six-month visitor visa to remain in the United States amid worsening legal troubles in his home country.

U.S. authorities received Bolsonaro’s application on Friday, The Financial Times reported Monday, citing “his lawyer, Felipe Alexandre, who has advised the former president not to leave the country while it is being processed—a period that could last several months.”

Bolsonaro is facing multiple investigations in Brazil. That includes longstanding probes into alleged wrongdoing committed during his four-year presidential term as well as the Brazilian Supreme Court’s recently launched inquiry aimed at determining whether his incessant lies about electoral fraud are to blame for the coup attempt that his supporters launched in Brasília on January 8. Continue reading

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Rallies Across Africa Demand Global Action, Climate Justice Ahead of UN Summit

“The urgency of the climate crisis cannot be understated, particularly here in Africa, which is the region most vulnerable to climate impacts,” said one campaigner.

By Brett Wilkins  Published 9-23-2022 by Common Dreams

Ugandan climate activists demonstrate in Kampala on September 23, 2022. (Photo: Hilda F. Nakabuye/Twitter)

Thousands of African activists and members of communities on the frontlines of the worsening climate emergency turned out Friday to call on world leaders—who will gather in Egypt in November for the United Nations Climate Summit—to urgently address a crisis that disproportionately impacts their lives.

Demonstrators took to the streets, public spaces, and even waterways in countries across a continent that’s responsible for just 4% of global greenhouse emissions to demand climate justice and an end to fossil fuel exploration and extraction ahead of the U.N.’s COP27 conference, scheduled to start November 6 in Sharm El-Sheikh. Continue reading

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