NORMAN SOLOMON – Today, with nuclear arsenals vastly larger and more powerful, scientists know that a nuclear exchange would cause “nuclear winter.” And the nearly complete end of agriculture on the planet. Some estimates put the survival rate of humans on Earth at 1 or 2 percent. More than 1,000 Holocausts.
Tag: Biden administration
This Election’s Impact on Immigration
ANDREW MOSS – With enough engagement and the right kinds of pressure, we might just get the kind of immigration system our nation needs: not the policies that squander tens of billions on a carceral, dead-end deportation machine, but a just system that invests in enough people and the right kinds of processes to minimize backlogs, expedite asylum claims, and provide the legal pathways that will help immigrants begin working and contributing to a land that needs them.
Joint Statement of U.S. Government Officials who have Resigned over U.S. policy towards Gaza, Palestine, and Israel
JOSH PAUL (for himself and eleven other former U.S. government officials) – We are former U.S. Government Officials who resigned from our respective positions over the last nine months due to our grave concerns with current U.S. policy towards the crisis in Gaza, and U.S. policies and practices towards Palestine and Israel more broadly.
The GOP’s Stalinesque Plan 2025 to Shape the Future of U.S. Food and Agriculture
ELIZABETH HENDERSON – The conservative think tank Heritage Foundation wants to rid the USDA
of sustainability, climate change mitigation, and racial equity.
Biden Is Quietly Funding Nuclear Weapons Upgrades That Could Imperil the Planet
JONATHAN KING and RICHARD KRUSHNIC – The continued funding of nuclear weapons development is a pork barrel of herculean proportions, funneling tax dollars from all Americans into the pockets of the nuclear weapons industry. We suspect that the Biden administration’s silence represents their decision to keep this boondoggle out of public view.
Biden Hits “Pause” on New Gas Exports Following Pressure From Climate Activists
MIKE LUDWIG – The move is a win for the climate and Gulf Coast frontline communities, but activists warn a “pause” is easily undone.
Israel’s Military Is Part of the U.S. War Machine
NORMAN SOLOMON – In January 2019, House speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi was recorded on video at a forum sponsored by the Israeli American Council as she declared: “I have said to people when they ask me — if this Capitol crumbled to the ground, the one thing that would remain is our commitment to our aid, I don’t even call it aid — our cooperation — with Israel. That’s fundamental to who we are.” Even making allowances for bizarre hyperbole, Pelosi’s statement is revealing of the kind of mentality that continues to hold sway in official Washington. It won’t change without a huge grassroots movement that refuses to go away.
Seeing Through the Economic Bait and Switch
SONALI KOLHATKAR – The values of the U.S. public are not the same as those of the wealthy and corporations. It took a UN official—an outsider—to point out the dissonance. Furthermore, evaluations of the U.S. economy by the U.S. media and politicians are based on corporate prosperity while the UN’s evaluation is based on individual prosperity.
If You Love Nuclear Energy, Then You Love Nuclear Weapons
HARVEY WASSERMAN – There is no separation between nuclear power and nuclear war. The “Peaceful Atom” is a radioactive myth. The world’s fleet of atomic reactors is the happy-faced infrastructure for the global radioactive weapons industry.
U.S. Plan to Put Weapons-Grade Uranium in a Civilian Reactor Is Dangerous and Unnecessary
ALAN J. KUPERMAN – The Biden administration’s intention to use dozens of bombs’ worth of highly enriched uranium as fuel in a new civilian reactor sets a dangerous precedent, one that could help our foes get nuclear weapons.
The Pimps of War
CHRIS HEDGES – The same cabal of war mongering pundits, foreign policy specialists and government officials, year after year, debacle after debacle, smugly dodge responsibility for the military fiascos they orchestrate. They are protean, shifting adroitly with the political winds, moving from the Republican Party to the Democratic Party and then back again, mutating from cold warriors to neocons to liberal interventionists. Pseudo intellectuals, they exude a cloying Ivy League snobbery as they sell perpetual fear, perpetual war, and a racist worldview, where the lesser breeds of the earth only understand violence.
We Need Another President Kennedy to Avert a Nuclear Catastrophe
DENNIS KUCINICH – President Kennedy held firm for a peaceful outcome in the Cuban Missile Crisis. As a result, Russia removed its missiles from Cuba. The U.S. removed its then-secret nuclear missile base from Turkey and made a commitment not to invade Cuba. Some believe that to fight is to show strength. America’s doctrine of ‘Peace through Strength’ is an invitation to war. Transformed, ‘Strength through Peace’ emphasizes restraint and inner fortitude, which Kennedy demonstrated at a moment of peril. We need another President Kennedy, with the grace, the inner strength and the intelligence to guide us from our contemporary dangerous encounter with potential nuclear catastrophe … to peace. America and the world are more at risk than ever from the threat of nuclear annihilation brought about through mentalities of greed and hubris.
Agrivoltaics: The Farm-to-Solar Trend That Can Help Accelerate the Renewable Energy Transition
TINA CASEY – Using the same land for the production of both agriculture and solar energy is a win-win for the climate and farmers.
A Victory for Abolitionists: ICE-Run Immigration Prison Shuts Down Today
ADRIANNA TORRES-GARCIA and JASMINE RIVERA – It took nearly a decade of exposing the patterns of abuse and neglect at the facility in Berks County, Pennsylvania.
Nuclear Guinea Pigs: NRC’s Licensing of Experimental Nuclear Plants
KARL GROSSMAN – “Guinea Pig Nation: How the NRC’s new licensing rules could turn communities into test beds for risky, experimental nuclear plants,” is what physicist Dr. Edwin Lyman, Director of Nuclear Power Safety with the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), titled his presentation last week.
Our Climate is On the Ballot – Protect It
MICHAEL DOVER – It’s no secret that the extremists who now control the Republican Party are vehemently opposed to ending our addiction to fossil fuels, the main culprits in the climate crisis. Even before the rise of Donald Trump, diplomats who forged the Paris Accords cited the U.S. Republican Party as the most serious obstacle in the world to climate progress.
How a Clean Energy Future is Colliding with Mining’s Dark Past
LYLLA YOUINES – “There are different types of sustainable mining, and one of those is the actual process of choosing where,” said Blaine Miller-McFeeley, a senior legislative representative at Earthjustice. “That is just as important as choosing how.”
Manchin Poison Pills Buried in Inflation Reduction Act Will Destroy a Livable Planet
THE CENTER FOR BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY – A proposed climate and energy package would require massive oil and gas leasing in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska, reinstate an illegal 2021 Gulf lease sale and mandate that millions more acres of public lands be offered for leasing before any new solar or wind energy projects could be built on public lands or waters.
Offshore Wind Installations Surged Threefold Last Year
MARIA GALLUCCI – Offshore wind power is surging around the world as countries adopt ambitious clean energy policies and as wind equipment costs decline. That growth is expected to explode over the next decade, even as the industry faces supply-chain snags and other headwinds. Those are the main takeaways from two new reports charting the recent progress and future trajectory of global offshore wind development.
3 Oil Companies Pull Out of Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
OLIVIA ROSANE – Three oil companies have canceled their leases in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. “These exits clearly demonstrate that international companies recognize what we have known all along: drilling in the Arctic Refuge is not worth the economic risk and liability that results from development on sacred lands without the consent of Indigenous Peoples,” the Gwich’in Steering Committee said in a statement.
Here’s How the War in Ukraine Should End
JOHN QUIGLEY – At some point, hopefully sooner than later, there will be a negotiated settlement that will need to deal with the Donbas region in Eastern Ukraine. The Donbas was the focus of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decree he issued three days before invading, recognizing the claimed separate status of the region’s two provinces.
What Does International Law Say About the Ukraine Invasion?
MEL GURTOV – In just the past few years, we have witnessed mass violence directed at innocent people in many places: China’s Xinjiang province, the Saudi-led war in Yemen, the Myanmar (Burma) junta’s atrocities against the Muslim Rohingya, and of course Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Each of these episodes has its distinctive characteristics, but they all violate international law and our common humanity. None of them can be excused by arguments based on state sovereignty, national security, historical analogy, or the sins of others past and present.
Ukrainian Climate Activists Say They Don’t Want the US’s Fracked Gas Exports
CANDACE BERND – Climate activists living under the constant blare of air raid sirens in Ukraine say they don’t want the United States’ fracked gas exports, and don’t want frontline communities along the U.S. Gulf Coast living with the impacts of so-called liquefied natural gas (LNG) infrastructure to become sacrifice zones in their name. Instead, they say, they want a dramatic, wartime mobilization for a transition to clean energy.
Commercial Defrauding of Uncle Sam—Biggest Booming Business
RALPH NADER – Corporate fraud against the U.S. government—which occurs no matter which party is in power—costs taxpayers billions of dollars per year. Neither Congress nor the White House has met this challenge of titanic corruption which should become a major campaign subject in the coming elections.
US Freezing of Afghan Assets Is Causing Starvation in Afghanistan
KATHY KELLY – People in the United States must recognize the suffering their country continues inflicting in Afghanistan.
Memo to Congress: Diplomacy for Ukraine Is Spelled — M-I-N-S-K
MEDEA BENJAMIN and NICHOLAS J. S. DAVIES – Ukrainians of all ethnicities deserve genuine support to resolve their differences and find a way to live together in one country—or to separate peacefully.
Why is U.S. Military Spending Increasing to New, Outlandish Levels?
LAWRENCE S. WITTNER – Although critics of the Biden administration’s Build Back Better plan to increase funding for U.S. education, healthcare, and action against climate catastrophe say the United States can’t afford it, there are no such qualms about ramping up funding for the U.S. military.
Louisiana Plastics Plant Put On Pause In A Win For Activists
OLIVER LAUGHLAND – The US government has placed further delays on a proposed multibillion dollar plastics plant in south Louisiana, marking a major victory for environmental activists and members of the majority Black community who have campaigned for years against construction.
Corporate Liberalism Is No Match for Trumpism
NORMAN SOLOMON – A vital challenge for progressives is to not only block Republican agendas but also to effectively campaign for policy changes that go far beyond the talking points of current Democratic leaders offering to tinker with the status quo. Merely promising a kinder, gentler version of grim social realities just won’t be enough to counter the faux populism of a neofascist Republican Party.
Reckoning and Reparations in Afghanistan
KATHY KELLY – The U.S. government owes reparations to the civilians of Afghanistan for the past twenty years of war and brutal impoverishment.
Biden Administration Picks the Wrong Side in Immigration Dispute
ANDREW MOSS – The Biden administration’s support of an appeal of an earlier U.S. District Court ruling that largely upheld a 2019 California law mandating the phase-out of private immigration detention facilities in the state constitutes a serious mistake. It’s not just a matter of the fact that this legal position contradicts Biden’s expressed commitments to end private prisons and detention facilities; it also continues support for a dark and destructive side of our immigration policies.
‘Horrible and Unconscionable Betrayal’: Biden DOJ Backs Trump Line 3 Approval
JESSICA CORBETT – Indigenous and environmental activists fighting against the Line 3 tar sands pipeline were outraged Thursday, June 24, after the Biden administration filed a legal brief backing the federal government’s 2020 approval of the project under former President Donald Trump.
Education of the US Public About Climate-Related Migration Urgently Needed
ANDREW MOSS – The Biden administration has made some admirable moves and gestures toward addressing the immense challenges posed by climate-related migration. But it hasn’t adequately educated the American people about the issue.
Schumer’s Anti-China Bill Sacrifices Climate for Empire
MARCY WINOGRAD and MEDEA BENJAMIN – “United States Innovation and Competition Act of 2021” would sabotage an opportunity for the U.S. and China—countries responsible for releasing half of the world’s fossil fuel emissions — to partner on curbing emissions and sharing strategies for greening the Earth.
Like Biden’s Bold Moves on Government Spending? Thank Social Movements.
MARK ENGLER and PAUL ENGLER – The importance of grassroots organizing is still being underestimated.
Again, Washington Jumps to Conclusions over Ukraine-Russia Skirmish
ANATOL LIEVEN – The initial reaction of Biden administration officials to the latest clash between Ukrainian troops and pro-Russian militia (or Russian soldiers serving as militia) in eastern Ukraine exemplifies a very dangerous pattern in U.S. and Western behavior: to believe whatever “our†side in a given crisis tells us, automatically, and without checking facts.
Trapped at the Border: Their Fate is our Fate – The Immigration Issue is Complex
ROBERT KOEHLER – It’s far too easy to envision the chaos of emigration getting worse, with the world’s poorest (and most deserving) people trapped in ever-intensifying violence and desperation, increasingly walled off from hope by racist ignorance. Something else becomes possible when we begin to realize that unless we change the world, their fate is our fate.
Concerning Violence and Hate: A New Year’s Wish
SASKIA HOSTETLER LIPPY MD – Lately, I have been reflecting on what I have in common with extremists. It turns out that the list is longer than one would think. I hold their same passions for change, an ability to withstand discomfort–put more bluntly, tolerance for risk of pain that some term masochism–and I share a lack of tolerance for passivity and denial. Extremists are people of action. I am a person of action. I empathize with their demand to be heard and seen. They want us to feel their pain, even to the point of killing us to further their cause. As a pacifist and humanist, where I differ radically is in the choice of tactics.
Biden’s Hawkish Foreign Policy Picks Are a Very Bad Sign | Common Dreams Views
SARAH LAZARE – Biden’s incoming team helped shape some of the most militaristic policies of the Obama administration.