DAVID ROBERTS – While President Obama’s climate plan addresses U.S. coal-fired plants through EPA regulations, it neglects another, equally large aspect of the coal problem. Specifically, coal mining, leasing, transport, and export in the U.S. Northwest. There’s a bad situation there and it’s getting worse. Obama can and must address the situation head on and end coal leases on Montana and Wyoming public lands.
Climate Change Poses Grave Security Threat
DAMIAN CARRINGTON – Climate change poses as grave a threat to the UK’s security and economic resilience as terrorism and cyber-attacks, according to a senior military commander who was appointed as William Hague’s climate envoy this year. In his first interview since taking up the post, Rear Admiral Neil Morisetti said climate change was “one of the greatest risks we face in the 21st century,” particularly because it presented a global threat.
Reward of a Whistleblower: Solidarity or Solitary?
NORMAN SOLOMON – Rarely has any American provoked such fury in Washington’s high places. So far, Edward Snowden has outsmarted the smartest guys in the echo chamber — and he has proceeded with the kind of moral clarity that U.S. officials seem to find unfathomable. Bipartisan condemnations of Snowden are escalating from Capitol Hill and the Obama administration. More of the NSA’s massive surveillance program is now visible in the light of day — which is exactly what it can’t stand.
Mayors Call for Nuclear Abolition
DAVID SWANSON – Congress can’t break 10 percent approval. Obama’s arms shipments to Syria just crack 10 percent, with 11 percent approval. Over 80 percent of Americans in more polls than I can count say over and over again that the government is broken and does not represent us. But when the mayors of the cities of the United States get together nationally one begins to see positions taken, at least rhetorically, that resemble government of, by, or for the people.
U.S. Backs Violence and Torture in Bahrain
MATAR EBRAHIM MATTAR and JEFF BACHMAN – The U.S government is arming the authoritarian regime of the Bahraini royal family that uses wide-spread violence and torture to suppress its own people and crush a popular pro-democracy movement. Nearly two-and-a-half years after a peaceful uprising began in Bahrain, mass human rights abuses and torture are reaching new levels. They are used as a tool to extract forced confessions from journalists, democracy leaders, and medical doctors on trumped up terrorism charges.
Obama Launches ‘Coordinated Assault’ Against Warming
JEAN CHEMNICK – In a speech on Tuesday, June 25, at Georgetown University, President Obama said that rather than waiting for Congress to act on climate change, his administration would move forward in every way it could — curbing emissions, shoring up American infrastructure and heading “a coordinated assault” abroad on global warming.