Tag Archives: Joe Biden

22 Years, 4 Presidents, and Just 1 Conviction Later, Dozens Still Jailed at Guantánamo

“The Biden administration needs no new authority or ideas” to close the notorious torture prison, one rights group argues. “All it needs is the political will and a willingness to do the work.”

By Brett Wilkins. Published 1-11-2024 by Common Dreams

*Protest in front of the White House on the 17th anniversary of Guantanamo Bay, 1/11/19. Photo: Victoria Pickering/flickr/CC*

Human rights defenders marked 22 years since the opening of the U.S. military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba with renewed calls for President Joe Biden to fulfill his stated intention to close the notorious torture camp, where 30 men—16 of them cleared for release—remain behind bars.

Like most of the roughly 750 prisoners released from Guantánamo, the majority of remaining detainees have never been charged with any crime. Only one—Ali Hamza Ahmad Suliman al-Bahlul, a Yemeni national—has ever been convicted of terrorism-related charges under the highly controversial military commission regime established by the George W. Bush administration in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

Continue reading →

‘Hard-Won Movement Victory’: MVP Extension in NC Halved

Leave a reply

“Mountain Valley Pipeline and its Southgate extension have been poorly conceived from the beginning, but today some of the communities in harm’s way can breathe easier,” said one campaigner.

By Jessica Corbett Published 12-30-2023 by Common Dreams

*Photo: Anne_Way_Bernard/Oil Change International*

Frontline critics of the Mountain Valley Pipeline celebrated after Equitrans Midstream revealed Friday in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing that the distance of the proposed Southgate extension project has been cut in half.

The partially completed MVP project—long delayed by legal battles until congressional Republicans and President Joe Biden included language to fast-track it in a debt limit deal earlier this year—is set to cross 303 miles of Virginia and West Virginia.

Continue reading →

Experts ‘Terrified’ of AI-Driven Misinformation ‘Tsunami’ in 2024 Election

Leave a reply

“If people don’t ultimately trust information related to an election, democracy just stops working,” said a senior fellow at the Alliance for Securing Democracy.

By Olivia Rosane. Published 1226-2023 by Common Dreams

*An ad for a deepfake video maker. Screenshot: OpenAISee*

As 2024 approaches and with it the next U.S. presidential election, experts and advocates are warning about the impact that the spread of artificial intelligence technology will have on the amount and sophistication of misinformation directed at voters.

While falsehoods and conspiracy theories have circulated ahead of previous elections, 2024 marks the first time that it will be easy for anyone to access AI technology that could create a believable deepfake video, photo, or audio clip in seconds, The Associated Press reported Tuesday.

Continue reading →

SCOTUS Agrees to Hear Case That Could Limit Abortion Pill Access

Leave a reply

“This case is the next step in the extremists’ plan to prevent anyone in the country from being able to get an abortion no matter where they live,” said the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project director.

By Jessica Corbett. Published 12-13-2023 by Common Dreams

The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday agreed to hear consolidated cases about expanded access to the abortion medication mifepristone, setting the stage for a potentially devastating ruling in the midst of next year’s critical national elections.

The development has some reproductive rights advocates worried. This is the same conservative court that, in its Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling last year, reversed a half-century of nationwide abortion rights affirmed by Roe v. Wade, paving the way for GOP bans in over a dozen states.

Continue reading →

Appeals Court Tells Texas to Remove Rio Grande Buoy ‘Death Traps’

Leave a reply

“Despite this small victory, the razor buoys are only a fraction of Gov. Abbott’s racist and murderous Operation Lone Star,” one group noted.

By Jessica Corbett. Published 12-1-2023 by Common Dreams

A federal appellate court panel on Friday delivered a blow to Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s anti-migrant regime, ruling 2-1 that the state must remove from the Rio Grande a buoy barrier intended to block people from crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) sued Texas and Abbott over the buoys, which are part of the governor’s Operation Lone Star, in July. U.S. Judge David A. Ezra of the Western District of Texas, an appointee of former President Ronald Reagan, ordered the state to remove the barrier and prohibited new or additional blockades in September.

Continue reading →

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

Leave a reply

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.

Continue reading →

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

Leave a reply

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.

Continue reading →

Exposé of ‘Scandalous’ US Spying Sparks Calls for Congress to Act

Leave a reply

“These new details add up to a horrifying picture that proves the need for Congress to… enact comprehensive privacy protections for Americans before reauthorizing any spying powers,” said one campaigner.

By Jessica Corbett. Published 11-20-2023 by Common Dreams

A U.S. senator is sounding the alarm about a “long-running dragnet surveillance program” enabling law enforcement to :request often-warrantless searches of trillions of domestic phone records.” Photo: Ivan Radic/flickr/CC

Privacy advocates on Monday renewed demands for swift congressional action on government surveillance in response to new WIRED reporting on a federally funded program through which law enforcement obtains phone records from AT&T.

“This is a long-running dragnet surveillance program in which the White House pays AT&T to provide all federal, state, local, and tribal law enforcement agencies the ability to request often-warrantless searches of trillions of domestic phone records,” U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) wrote Sunday in a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland, which WIRED obtained and published in full.

Continue reading →

Global Cease-Fire Call Grows as Israel Wages ‘War Against Hospitals’ in Gaza

Leave a reply

“Children in Gaza are hanging by a thread,” said a UNICEF director, calling for attacks on healthcare facilities to stop immediately and the urgent delivery of supplies to hospitals.

By Jessica Corbett. Published 11-10-2023 by Common Dreams

As Israeli forces waged what al-Shifa’s director described as a “war against hospitals” in Gaza on Friday, United Nations officials, human rights groups, and doctors demanded the protection of medical facilities and renewed calls for a cease-fire.

“Half of the Gaza Strip’s 36 hospitals and two-thirds of its primary healthcare centers are not functioning at all,” World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told the U.N. Security Council. “Those that are functioning are operating way beyond their capacities. The health system is on its knees, and yet somehow is continuing to deliver some lifesaving care.”

Continue reading →

‘Let Gaza Live!’: A Month Into Israeli War, Massive US Protests Demand Cease-Fire

Leave a reply

“We came here to let our voices be heard,” said one demonstrator in Washington, D.C. “Every human is entitled to basic human rights, not killing kids, not torturing people.”

By Jessica Corbett. Published 11-4-2023 by Common Dreams

*Protesters marching in New York City. Photo: PRO_NYC/X*

Huge crowds of protesters filled the streets of Washington, D.C. and other U.S. cities on Saturday to demand a cease-fire in Israel’s war on Hamas, which has killed and wounded thousands of Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip over the past month.

“We came here to let our voices be heard and our hearts and hoping we’ll change the way people see this conflict,” 70-year-old Manar Ghanayem told The Washington Post in the nation’s capitol, where demonstrators gathered in and around Freedom Plaza.

Continue reading →

Occupy World Writes

The Movement Continues – Globally

Tag Archives: Joe Biden