The largest ever climate-change-related protest actions in world history took place on Friday as part of the Global Climate Strike. Organizers estimated that about 4 million people all over the planet participated in thousands of actions. According to Vox, “[t]here were over 2,500 events scheduled in over 163 countries on all seven continents.” In New York City alone, which is where the United Nations climate conference is being held on Monday, a whopping 250,000 people showed up for an event that had been permitted for 5,000 attendees. Swedish teen activist Greta Thunberg addressed the crowd and also spoke at the UN Climate conference on Monday. We’ll be bringing you excerpts of both her speeches on our show. 

Climate-related actions are expected to continue through September 27th. A group called Shut Down DC has pledged to bring Washington DC to a standstill on Monday. About 14 streets were shut down at various times during the day. In other climate-related news, Oxfam International released a major report on Monday about how the world’s poorest communities, who have had the least contribution to fossil fuel emissions, and are the worst impacted by climate change, are also disproportionately paying for the damage from the climate crisis.

Meanwhile, at the United Nations, President Donald Trump was expected to skip the climate conference and focus only on a forum on religious freedom, but he ended up making a surprise visit to the conference for a few minutes. Politico described the UN gathering saying, “The summit brings together leaders from dozens of countries to submit climate plans intended to surpass the emissions reduction and renewable energy goals of the 2016 Paris Agreement, an accord from which Trump withdrew and that many of the remaining signatories are well short of fulfilling.” 

While at the UN during his 3-day visit to New York, Trump is hoping to build support for a US-led response to Iran amidst allegations that Iran struck Saudi Arabia’s oil fields. He is also expected to face questions about Ukraine over a major scandal threatening his presidency. On Sunday Trump admitted to reporters that he had solicited information about his rival former Vice President Joe Biden from the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky during a phone call that prompted a whistle blower to file a complaint. Trump has called into question the patriotism of the whistleblower who first made the complaint about the President’s phone call to Ukraine. Senate Minority leader Chuck Schumer has called on Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to release transcripts of the call. High ranking Republican Senator Lindsey Graham has also called the White H...

This is a special report from Pershing Square in downtown Los Angeles where thousands of climate activists including school kids took the day off from school and work on September 20th to strike for the climate. Around the US and the world climate strikers in thousands of cities are demanding action on climate change from their political leaders. You’ll hear some of the voices of the Global Climate Strike as part of our series Rising Up in the Streets.

Cover photo by Brian Biery: Global Climate Strike in Los Angeles on Friday, September, 20 2019.

FEATURING SVEN HARMELING – Friday’s global climate strike is timed to come just ahead of a major United Nations climate meeting. On September 23rd at the UN headquarters in New York city, country representatives will make their pledges to curb carbon emissions. To his credit UN Secretary General Antonio Guterrez has decided to exclude from presentations those nations building new coal plants such as Japan, South Korea and South Africa. Additionally, the US will be left out because of its undermining of the Paris Accord, Brazil because of President Jair Bolsonaro’s assault on the Amazon rain forest, and Saudi Arabia for its relentless promotion of petroleum.

Swedish teen activist Greta Thunberg will address the UN General Assembly and is leading the New York climate strike. Just days ago she testified in front of several Senate and House panels alongside American youths about the importance of taking climate action.

For more information visit www.careclimatechange.org.

Sven Harmeling, CARE’s Global Policy Lead on Climate Change and Resilience.

The whistleblower complaint made by an intelligence official to their agency’s inspector general has triggered a new front in the battle between Congress and the President. The incident revolves around President Donald Trump allegedly making a promise to an unnamed foreign leader during a phone conversation. Now news reports have emerged that Ukraine was one of the nations involved in the conversation. A few weeks before the date of the complaint President Trump did have a phone conversation with newly elected Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. In fact Democrats in the House were already investigating a public claim by Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani to pressure Ukraine’s new President to dig up dirt on Trump’s rivals in the 2020 election. After this week’s whistleblower complaint came to light, Mr. Giuliani gave an interview on CNN during which he blatantly contradicted himself. In a closed door briefing on Thursday the intelligence inspector general Michael Atkinson refused to reveal details of the whistleblower complaint. California Representative Adam Schiff, head of the House Intelligence Committee spoke to press after the briefing.

 In other news, tropical storm Imelda has dumped record amounts of rain in Texas specifically over Houston, resulting so far in at least two deaths. Many are comparing the storm to Hurricane Harvey two years ago that caused tremendous damage. Associated Press reported that, “Officials in Harris County, which includes Houston, said there had been a combination of at least 1,700 high-water rescues and evacuations to get people to shelter as the longevity and intensity of the rain quickly came to surprise even those who had been bracing for floods.” Meanwhile, underscoring the increasing frequency of such deadly storms is a massive global climate strike taking place Friday all over the world. There were marches and rallies led by young people, many of them skipping school to strike for climate action. The earliest marches of the day began in Australia where record numbers of people took to the streets of cities in numbers that rivaled the anti-Iraq war protests. On the same day as the climate strike, German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced a $60 billion plan to take climate action after an all-night set of negotiations between parties. 

A new scientific report has found that bird populations in the US and Canada have fallen dramatically. There are now nearly one third fewer birds in the two nations compared to 1970. That amounts to about 3 billion missing birds. A spokesperson for the National Audubon Society called the study’s results, “a full-blown crisis.” Among the reasons that scientists think are behind the decline in bird populations are modern methods of agriculture, rapid development, and the widespread use of neonicotinoids-based pesticides that have decimated the insects that birds feed on. Climate change is also a factor– one that will only worsen the problem as the planet heats up.

FEATURING STEPHEN KINZER – The story of one man’s relentless pursuit of mind control through the CIA’s secret program MK Ultra might immediately be dismissed as conspiracy theory. But Sidney Gottleib was a real person and was at the center of a story that defies the boundary between fiction and non-fiction. Gottlieb’s oversight of a secret government mind-control program is the focus of a new book by the acclaimed journalist and author Stephen Kinzer.  

Stephen Kinzer is the author of nine books, including The True Flag, The Brothers, Overthrow, and All the Shah’s Men. An award-winning foreign correspondent, he served as the New York Times bureau chief in Nicaragua, Germany, and Turkey. He is a senior fellow at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University and writes a world affairs column for the Boston Globe. His latest book is Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control.

FEATURING SARAH PHILIPS – India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi is visiting the US this weekend and will be joined by President Donald Trump at a rally in Houston, Texas in front of tens of thousands of people. The Indian leader is notorious for his strongman tactics of promoting a fascist Hindu nationalism in India, a country that is home to millions of non-Hindus. But Trump has found common purpose with Modi – as has been his tendency – cozying up to the Indian PM at last month’s G7 meeting in France. 

South Asian activists in Texas are gearing up for the visit, ready to meet Modi with protests drawing attention to his devastating policies.

Sarah Philips, organizer with Azaad Austin, a South Asian social justice organization.

A member of the US intelligence community was so troubled by President Donald Trump’s promise to a foreign leader that they became a whistleblower and filed a complaint with their agency’s inspector general. Two former US officials spoke to the Washington Post about the matter. So far it is not known which foreign leader Trump allegedly made a promise to, and what the content of the pledge was. According to the Washington Post, “Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson determined that the complaint was credible and troubling enough to be considered a matter of ‘urgent concern,’ a legal threshold that requires notification of congressional oversight committees.” Meanwhile Mr. Atkinson, in a closed-door briefing to lawmakers on Thursday refused to give any details about the complaint according to anonymous sources speaking to the New York Times. Additionally, “The acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, has refused to give the complaint to Congress, as is generally required by law, the latest in a series of fights over information between the Democratic-led House and the White House.”

Meanwhile President Trump continued his multi-day trip to California with a visit to the southern border in Otay Mesa, San Diego where he engaged in what amounted to an election campaign style photo-op at the border barrier while the Coast Guard conducted a flyover. Meanwhile news emerged late Wednesday that the Interior Department was transferring 560 acres of federal land to the US Army in order to continue building Trump’s border wall. Trump also visited San Francisco during his California trip and issued a bizarre threat to city officials saying that the federal Environmental Protection Agency would be charging them with violations. Trump has been slamming liberal Democrat-run cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles for the crisis of homelessness while his administration cuts housing assistance. In other news, Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders released an ambitious 10-year plan to ensure “Housing for all.”

The Defense Department released a letter to the House Oversight committee this week detailing the military’s expenses at President Trump’s golf resort in Turnberry, Scotland. So far up to $184,000 worth of taxpayers money is estimated to have been spent directly on service members lodging at the President’s resort. The revelation offers new fodder for accusations that the President has violated the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause. A GOP group called

FEATURING NORMAN SOLOMON – Former Vice President Joe Biden has maintained his front-runner status among Democrats for his party’s Presidential nomination. But, given Biden’s very long political career, there is much to explore in his record and compare to what he says now. One of the most glaring instances of revisionism that Biden has engaged in is his vote for the 2002 Iraq war. 

Biden claimed that he quickly backtracked on supporting the war. But analysts have pointed out just how untrue this claim is. Meanwhile a new film based on a true story of a British whistleblower called Official Secrets, has revived those fraught months when the West concocted a deceptive case for the Iraq war nearly 2 decades ago.

Read Norman’s article ‘The ‘Official Secrets’ Movie vs. Joe Biden’s Lies About the Iraq War,’ HERE.

Norman Solomon, journalist with ExposeFacts.org, a project of the Institute for Public Accuracy, where he’s executive director. Norman is the author of War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death; and a co-founder of RootsAction.org.

FEATURING MEGAN PETERSON – Massachusetts Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley this week filed an impeachment resolution aimed at Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, which now triggers an investigation by the House Judiciary Committee. Pressley filed the resolution after fresh scrutiny on Kavanaugh’s past from a New York Times article published over the weekend. 

Specifically, the paper published in its opinion section an excerpt from a new book by two of its reporters. The book, The Education of Brett Kavanaugh, An Investigation, details allegations made by women other than Dr. Christine Blasey Ford who famously testified before the Senate last year saying Kavanaugh tried to rape her in high school. The Times piece focuses on Deborah Ramirez, who says that Kavanaugh exposed himself to her at a Yale University Party and caused her to touch his genitals. The FBI apparently declined to investigate that incident. 

Megan Peterson, Executive Director at Gender Justice, a legal and policy advocacy org committed to gender, economic and reproductive justice.

Saudi Arabia says it has gathered evidence that Iran was behind a recent air attack on its oil production facilities. The Saudi Defense Ministry held a press conference displaying debris and parts of weapons that it says were collected from the site of the attacks and that apparently proves that Iranian delta-wing unmanned aerial vehicles were involved. American forensics experts have traveled to Saudi Arabia to examine the evidence. Defense Minister Turki Al Maliki said, “We have witnessed distinct growth in Iranian aggression…This attack wasn’t against Saudi Aramco or Saudi Arabia, it was an attack against the international community, the whole world economy, and global trade.” Saudi Arabia is suffering from a serious credibility problem however given its recent role in the killing and dismembering of journalist Jamal Al Khashoggi that reached the highest level of the Saudi monarchy and for which there has yet to be an admission of guilt or accountability. Meanwhile in the US, Defense Department officials are claiming that satellite data showed Iranian forces preparing drones and missiles ahead of the attack on Saudi Arabia. 

Iranian officials have responded saying they would aggressively retaliate against any armed response. The government’s official news agency said, “Iran’s response will be prompt and strong, and it may include broader areas than the source of attacks.” According to the Washington Post, “There have long been fears that Iranian proxy forces in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and elsewhere might attack U.S. forces in the region.” President Donald Trump on Twitter announced that he has increased sanctions on Iran. Writing, “I have just instructed the Secretary of the Treasury to substantially increase Sanctions on the country of Iran!,” Trump gave no other details. And in other news Trump has named Robert O’Brien, a Hostage Negotiator, as his National Security Adviser to replace John Bolton. O’Brien has experience negotiating with regimes like North Korea and Turkey to free hostages. He used to work for Bolton and reportedly has similarly hawkish views. 

Trump’s former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski testified to the House Judiciary Committee this week in what was that committee’s first impeachment hearing. When confronted with inconsistencies in his testimony to reporters versus Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Lewandowski essentially admitted he had been lying.

Also testifying on Capitol Hill this week is the 16-year old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg. On Tuesday she addressed a Senate panel on the climate crisis where she slammed lawmakers saying, “Please save your praise. We don’t want it…Don’t invite us here to just tell us how inspiring we are without actually doing anything about it because it doesn’t lead to anything.” Thunberg also