KPFA - Democracy Now!

Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has launched a formal impeachment inquiry into President Trump following allegations from an intelligence community whistleblower that Trump sought help from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in a July 25 phone call to investigate Democratic presidential front-runner Joe Biden and his son Hunter. On Tuesday, the Republican-controlled Senate unanimously passed a nonbinding resolution calling for the Trump administration to release the whistleblower complaint to the House and Senate Intelligence Committees. We get response and look at next steps with Congressmember Al Green, Democrat from Texas, who in 2017 was the first congressmember to call for President Trump’s impeachment from the floor of the House of Representatives. We also speak with John Nichols, political writer for The Nation and author of the book, “The Genius of Impeachment: The Founders’ Cure for Royalism.”

The post “We’ve Reached Critical Mass”: Rep. Al Green on Pelosi Vow to Impeach Trump for “Dastardly Deeds” appeared first on KPFA.

Scores of world leaders gathered in New York on Monday for the U.N. Climate Action Summit, but the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitters announced few new measures to address the climate crisis. President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence briefly attended the summit but left after just 14 minutes. At the beginning of the summit, 16-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg delivered an impassioned address to world leaders, explicitly naming their inaction on the climate crisis. “People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing,” Greta said. “We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!”

The post How Dare You! Greta Thunberg Slams World’s Focus on Economic “Fairy Tales” While Ecosystems Collapse appeared first on KPFA.

Following Friday’s youth-led climate strike — the largest-ever global protest focused on climate — we speak with Bill McKibben, longtime journalist and co-founder of 350.org. McKibben’s latest piece for The New Yorker is titled “Money Is the Oxygen on Which the Fire of Global Warming Burns,” and his cover piece for Time magazine is headlined “Hello from the Year 2050. We Avoided the Worst of Climate Change — But Everything Is Different.” McKibben’s 1989 book, “The End of Nature,” was the first book for a general audience about climate change.

The post Bill McKibben: Youth Who Led Global Climate Strike Are Bringing a New “Spirit” to Climate Fight appeared first on KPFA.

Source: www.democracynow.org

“Young People Have Had Enough”: Global Climate Strike Youth Activists on Why They Are Marching Today; Kelsey Juliana v. U.S.: Meet the Young Woman Suing the Federal Government over the Climate Crisis; This Afghan Teen Was Set to Join First-Ever U.N. Youth Climate Summit, But U.S. Denied His Visa.

 

The post “Young People Have Had Enough”: Global Climate Strike Youth Activists on Why They Are Marching Today appeared first on KPFA.

[caption id="attachment_320844" align="aligncenter" width="253"] Courtesy of democracynow.org[/caption]

More than a million students are expected to walk out of class on Friday in a Global Climate Strike, with more than 800 climate strikes scheduled in the United States alone. Strikes are also being organized in another 150 countries around the world. In our New York studio, we speak to Amnesty International’s Secretary General Kumi Naidoo, who has urged school districts across the globe to allow students to walk out of school on Friday without facing punishment. In a letter, Naidoo, who is also the former executive director of Greenpeace, writes, “Children should not be punished for speaking out about the great injustices of our age. In fact, when it has fallen on young people to show the leadership that many adults who hold great positions of power have failed to, it is not young people’s behavior we should be questioning. It is ours.”

Israel is facing political turmoil as Tuesday’s election remains too close to call. With 92% of the vote counted, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party and ex-military chief Benny Gantz’s Blue and White party appear to be nearly tied. Both leading candidates aiming to be prime minister had run on platforms vowing to take harsh measures targeting Palestinians. Netanyahu promised to annex nearly a third of the occupied West Bank, in violation of international law, if he won re-election. Earlier this year, Gantz bragged about bombing Gaza back to the “Stone Ages.” On Tuesday night, Gantz said he had fulfilled his mission by preventing Netanyahu’s outright re-election, while Netanyahu did not claim victory or concede defeat in a speech to supporters. From Jerusalem, we speak with Palestinian attorney Diana Buttu about the significance of the snap election. “It’s not clear who will be the ultimate victor,” Buttu says. “I can tell you who will be the ultimate loser, and that’s the Palestinian people.”

Amid mounting climate disasters across the planet, from the fires ravaging the Amazon to Hurricane Dorian’s destructive path through the Bahamas, we speak with renowned journalist, author and activist Naomi Klein. In her new book, “On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal,” Klein looks unsparingly at the rise of ecofascism, as Western countries fortify their borders and white supremacy surges around the world in response to the climate crisis. But she also lays out another path forward in which mankind meets the challenge of global warming with radical and systemic transformation. “We do know that if we are going to lower our emissions in time, it is going to take transformations of how we live in cities, how we move ourselves around, how we grow our food, where we get our energy from,” Klein says. “Essentially, what the Green New Deal is saying: If we’re going to do all that, why wouldn’t we tackle all of these systemic economic and social crises at the same time? Because we live in a time of multiple, overlapping crises.”

[audio mp3="https://kpfa.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/klein-interview.mp3"][/audio]

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="640"] Source: www.democracynow.org[/caption]

Saudi Oil Refinery Attack Raises Fears of “Wider Regional War” Involving U.S. & Iran; “We in the Media Have Not Been Doing Our Job”: 250+ News Outlets Pledge to Focus on Climate Crisis; “Biological Annihilation”: The Danger of Opening Alaska’s ANWR to Oil & Gas Drilling.

During the third Democratic debate Thursday night, the discussion of race and racism got personal for former HUD Secretary Julián Castro, who brought up last month’s El Paso massacre. He said the white gunman who killed 22 people, mostly Latinos, had driven to the border city “to kill people who look like me.” Former Texas Congressmember Beto O’Rourke, who is from El Paso, said racism is endemic and foundational of the United States. He mentioned that this year will mark the 400th anniversary of the first enslaved African being brought to America, and promised he would create a slavery reparations commission.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="704"] Source: www.democracynow.org[/caption]

Racism in America Is Endemic”: Democratic Candidates Vow to Confront White Supremacy & Legacy of Slavery; Joe Biden Faces Criticism over His Healthcare Plan & His Support for Iraq Invasion at Third Debate; Should Latinos Trust Biden? Former VP Refuses to Criticize Obama’s Deportation of 3 Million People; Bernie Sanders on Democratic Socialism: We Want to Create an Economy That Works for All of Us.