OLIVER MILNE – Anti-nuclear campaigners said that any decision to upgrade Britain’s nuclear tech should have been debated by MPs.
Category: February 2020
Can Civil Disobedience be seen as ‘Good Behavior’ in a Time of Climate Crisis?
ARNIE ALPERT – While New Hampshire seeks to prosecute #NoCoalNoGas campaigners for “bad behavior,†activists continue their struggle against the region’s worst offender.
Sunrise PDX Is Latest Progressive Group to Oppose Oregon Cap-and-Trade Bill
BLAIR STENVICK – A bill that would aim to regulate and reduce greenhouse gas emissions in Oregon is dominating this year’s short legislative session. But while the political dynamic in Salem is mostly focused on Democrats who support the bill and Republicans who oppose it, the bill is also receiving pushback from progressive environmental groups in Portland.
Donald Trump’s Plan for America: Make it Ignorant
WIM LAVEN – The Trump administration’s proposed budget is alarming in what it presents as the actual priorities of the White House. Among many other disastrous priorities, Trump’s budget for 2021 includes funding “for the orderly closure of the [National Endowment for the Humanities].â€
Big 5 Leaders’ Meeting Proposed by Putin Can Be Helpful amid Changing Int’l Situation
MOHAMMED ALI – A meeting of the leaders of Russia, China, the United States, France and the United Kingdom, the permanent members of the UN Security Council, which was proposed by Russian President Vladimir Putin, can be helpful and even necessary in light of the changing international situation.
Epidemic Violence on Indian Reservations Must Be Addressed
GAIL SKENANDORE and TOM HASTINGS – We believe a light needs to shine on the pockets of escalating violence on Indian reservations. The intersection of guns, drugs, poverty, scant education, substandard health care, high unemployment, and corruption are literally producing conditions that invariably redound the hardest and worst on young people of color.
Real Conservatives Don’t Try to Dictate Their Religion
BOB TOPPER – The religious right has changed what it means to be a conservative. And the religious right seems hell-bent on dictating “their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of ‘conservatism,’†as they try to rewrite American history, and change the meaning of the Constitution. Should they succeed, it will be sad day for everyone,…Christians included.
The Wall: Separating Democracy from Voters
ROBERT C. KOEHLER – The mainstream media imposes some serious certainties on the 2020 presidential election that drive me into a furious despair.
‘Really, Really Bad’: Scientists Raise Alarm Over Warm Ocean Water Beneath ‘Doomsday Glacier’ in Antarctica
JULIA CONLEY – A study by British and American scientists revealed that a massive sheet of ice known as the “doomsday glacier” is melting faster than experts previously believed—edging the world closer to a possible sea level rise of more than 10 feet.
NATO’s Upcoming War Games Targeted Against Russia
PAUL ANTONOPOULOS – Last week NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg explained why the U.S. are strengthening their military presence in Europe. The reason is unsurprisingly to pressurize and intimidate Russia, but also against China and the so-called fight against terrorism. Stoltenberg explained that there are now more U.S. soldiers in EU Member States, more than ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. In the coming months, the Defender-Europe 2020 exercises, the largest of its kind in the last 25 years, will begin. And with this exercise, U.S. troop numbers will only increase in Europe with another 20,000 troops and officers arriving.
Blocking Trains and Removing Coal, Climate Activists Fight to Close One of New England’s Largest Power Plants
SARAH FREEMAN-WOOLPERT and ARNIE ALPERT – By escalating from symbolic actions to obstruction, the #NoCoalNoGas campaign is mounting a serious challenge to the fossil fuel industry with a growing network of climate activists.
1970 New York Times Ad Helped Spark an Environmental Revolution. 50 Years Later, 2020 Ad Hopes to Make History Again
DENICE ZECK – On Sunday, February 2, Earth Day Network ran a full-page ad in The New York Times announcing a global day of activism to mark the 50th anniversary of Earth Day on April 22, 2020. The advertisement ran nearly 50 years to the day that a full-page ad in The New York Times used the words “Earth Day†for the first time. The ad changed everything about environmental awareness.
What if the Media Stopped Giving War a Moral Pass?
ROBERT C. KOEHLER – When the mainstream media writes about war, even critically, the image that often comes to mind for me is an infant wrapped in plastic. That infant is naked reality, a.k.a., the present moment, suffocating and screaming for its life; the plastics smothering it are the journalistic euphemisms by which murder and terrorism turn into abstract acts of national necessity.
New York City about to Divest from the Nuclear Weapons Industry?
MOVE THE NUCLEAR WEAPONS MONEY – In January 2018, New York City decided to divest the city’s $189bn pension funds from fossil fuel companies within the next five years. Now the city looks set to also divest from the nuclear weapons industry.
Fouling Our Own Nest & Draining Our Wallets: It’s Time to Divest from Endless Wars
GRETA ZARRO – Just one month into a new decade, we face an ever-increasing risk of nuclear apocalypse. The U.S. government’s assassination of Iranian General Soleimani on January 3 intensified the very real threat of another all-out war in the Middle East. On January 23, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists accordingly reset the Doomsday Clock to just 100 short seconds to midnight, apocalypse. Where do we go from here?