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The state of Texas is facing growing calls to halt the upcoming execution of Rodney Reed, an African-American man who has spent over 20 years on death row for a rape and murder he says he did not commit. A group of 26 Texas lawmakers — including both Democrats and Republicans — have written a letter this week to Governor Greg Abbott to stop the execution planned for November 20. More than 1.4 million people have signed an online petition to save Reed’s life. Supporters include celebrities Kim Kardashian West, Rihanna and Meek Mill. Reed was sentenced to die after being convicted of the 1996 murder of a 19-year-old white woman, Stacey Stites, with whom he was having an affair. But since Reed’s trial, substantial evidence has emerged implicating Stites’s then-fiancé, a white police officer named Jimmy Fennell, who was later jailed on kidnapping and rape charges in another case. In a major development, a man who spent time in jail with Fennell signed an affidavit last month asserting that Fennell had admitted in prison that he had killed his fiancée because she was having an affair with a black man. We speak with Rodney Reed’s brother Rodrick Reed, his sister-in-law Uwana Akpan and lawyer Bryce Benjet of the Innocence Project.

The post Is Texas About to Execute an Innocent Man? Rodney Reed’s Family Demands Retrial Amid New Evidence appeared first on KPFA.

The Trump administration notified the United Nations Monday that it would withdraw the U.S. from the historic Paris climate agreement, starting a year-long process to leave the international pact to fight the climate crisis. The United States — the world’s largest historic greenhouse gas emitter — will become the only country outside the accord. Trump’s announcement of the withdrawal came on the first day possible under the agreement’s rules. From Middlebury, Vermont, we speak with Bill McKibben, co-founder of 350.org. “The decision of the United States to be the only country on Earth … unwilling to take part in a global attempt at a solution to the greatest crisis we’ve ever faced — there’s a lot to be ashamed of in the Trump years and a lot of terrible things that have happened — it’s pretty hard to top that,” says McKibben.

The post Bill McKibben on U.S. Withdrawal from Paris Accord, California Fires, Climate Refugees & More appeared first on KPFA.

An indigenous forest protector named Paulo Paulino Guajajara was shot dead in the Amazon by illegal loggers on Saturday. It is the latest incident in a wave of violence targeting indigenous land protectors since the election of Brazil’s far-right President Jair Bolsonaro last year. Guajajara was killed when he and another forest protector were ambushed by a group of illegal loggers inside the Araribóia reservation in the northeastern state of Maranhão. We speak with João Coimbra Sousa, a field coordinator and legal adviser for Amazon Watch, in São Luís in the northeastern state of Maranhão. And in San Francisco, we speak with Christian Poirier, program director at Amazon Watch.

The post Emboldened by Bolsonaro, Illegal Loggers in Amazon Kill Indigenous Leader Paulo Paulino Guajajara appeared first on KPFA.

“This Is a Win for Our City”: Chicago Teachers Celebrate End of Historic Strike After 11 Days; Chicago Teachers and UAW Members Show That Labor Movement Is Back After “Decades of Concessions”; “It Was Necessary”: Gambian Beauty Queen Returns Home to Testify About Rape By Former Dictator; Five Indigenous Leaders Massacred in Colombia; New Wave of Violence Feared as 2,500 Troops Deployed.

The post “This Is a Win for Our City”: Chicago Teachers Celebrate End of Historic Strike After 11 Days appeared first on KPFA.

As a shocking new report finds that many coastal cities will be flooded by rising sea levels by 2050, Chile’s President Sebastián Piñera announced Wednesday that the U.N. climate summit in Santiago has been canceled. Anti-inequality protests have entered their third week in the country, with protesters calling for the Piñera government to resign. The U.N. said it is now looking for an alternative venue for the annual climate meetings. Meanwhile, a dire new report has warned 300 million people are at risk from rising sea levels, with the most vulnerable populations concentrated in the Global South. According to the study published in Nature Communications, global sea levels are expected to rise between two and seven feet, or possibly more, with some coastal cities being wiped off the map. We speak with Harjeet Singh, the global lead on climate change for ActionAid, who is based in New Delhi, India; and Benjamin Strauss, co-author of the study in Nature Communications and CEO and chief scientist at Climate Central.

The post New Study: 300 Million Face Severe Risk of Climate-Fueled Coastal Flooding by 2050 appeared first on KPFA.

Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri announced the resignation of his government on Tuesday following nearly two weeks of nationwide anti-government protests. In a televised address, Hariri said he had hit a “dead end” in resolving the crisis. Demonstrators “were congratulating each other while at the same time acknowledging that the struggle is very long,” says Lebanese journalist Lara Bitar, who joins us from Beirut for an update. She says protesters have promised to stay in the streets until all of their demands are met, including the resignation of all top government officials, early parliamentary elections and the creation of a transitional Cabinet of people unaffiliated with traditional political parties.

The post Lebanon’s Prime Minister Hariri Resigns, But Protests and Demands for a New Government Continue appeared first on KPFA.

In Iraq, masked gunmen shot dead 18 protesters overnight and injured more than 800 people in the Shiite holy city of Karbala on Monday. Nearly 225 Iraqis have been killed since a wave of anti-government protests swept the country last month. The protesters in Karbala were attacked while they camped out in the city’s Education Square to protest corruption, lack of jobs and poor public services. Meanwhile, in Baghdad, hospital officials said four people died during protests on Monday, while another 109 were injured. On Monday, the Iraqi Parliament met for the first time since the protests began. Lawmakers voted to dissolve provincial councils and cut the salaries of some high-ranking officials. But the influential Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr dismissed the measures as a “sham” and called on the Iraqi government to announce early parliamentary elections. We speak with Yanar Mohammed, president of the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq.

The post As Death Toll Tops 220, Iraqi Protesters Stay in Streets Calling for End to Corrupt Government appeared first on KPFA.

President Trump announced Sunday that ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed in a U.S. Special Forces raid on his compound in northwestern Syria. According to Trump, al-Baghdadi detonated an explosive vest he was wearing, killing himself and three of his children. The raid began early Sunday when eight U.S. military helicopters flew from a base near Erbil, Iraq, to northwestern Syria over airspace controlled by Syria and Russia. Baghdadi had led ISIS since 2010. In 2014, he proclaimed the creation of an Islamic State or caliphate during a speech in Mosul. At its peak, ISIS controlled a large swath of land across Syria and Iraq and maintained a force of tens of thousands of fighters recruited from more than 100 countries. The group also claimed responsibility for deadly attacks across five continents. We speak with three guests: Juan Cole, author and professor of history at the University of Michigan; Emma Beals, award-winning investigative journalist and researcher who has covered the Syrian conflict since 2012; and Rami Khouri, senior public policy fellow and journalist-in-residence at the American University of Beirut, and a columnist at The New Arab.

The post The Death of al-Baghdadi: ISIS Grew Out of U.S. Invasion of Iraq. What Will Happen Next? appeared first on KPFA.

Source: www.democracynow.org

“You Won’t Take Down Lies or You Will?”: AOC Grills Facebook’s Zuckerberg on Lies in Political Ads; Rashida Tlaib to Mark Zuckerberg: Why Haven’t You Stopped Hate Groups From Organizing on Facebook?; “State of Emergency”: Special Report on California’s Criminalization of Growing Homeless Encampments; Kings Bay Plowshares 7 Found Found Guilty of Conspiracy at Naval Base Housing Nuclear Arsenal.

 

The post “You Won’t Take Down Lies or You Will?”: AOC Grills Facebook’s Zuckerberg on Lies in Political Ads appeared first on KPFA.

President Trump has announced sanctions will be lifted on Turkey as a ceasefire remains in place in northern Syria, where Turkey invaded earlier this month after Trump withdrew U.S. troops. On Tuesday, Turkey reached an agreement with Russia that would force Syrian Kurdish forces to retreat from a wide swath of the Syrian-Turkish border. The United Nations is reporting Turkey’s offensive in northern Syria has displaced over 176,000 people, including nearly 80,000 children. The Turkish assault also led to a number of former ISIS fighters escaping from jail in northern Syria. We speak with Andrew Bacevich, co-founder of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and author of several books. He is professor emeritus of international relations and history at Boston University. “I think in any discussion of our wars, ongoing wars, it’s important to set them in some broader historical context,” Bachevich says. “To a very great extent, we created the problems that exist today through our reckless use of American military power.”

The post Ending Endless War: Andrew Bacevich on How Reckless Use of U.S. Military Power Caused Today’s Crisis appeared first on KPFA.