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From Media Darling To Persona Non Grata: Greta Thunberg’s Journey

Once the favored child of the establishment, Greta Thunberg has been dropped by the global elite. A MintPress News study finds that coverage of Thunberg in The New York Times and Washington Post has dwindled from hundreds of articles per year to barely a handful, precisely as she widens her focus from the environment to the capitalist system that is causing climate breakdown, and the Israeli attack on Gaza, which the Swedish activist has labeled a “genocide.” Greta Thunberg was once a media darling. Organizing a climate strike at her local school when she was just fifteen, she shot to fame and was quickly embraced by the establishment. In 2019, she was invited to the European Union Parliament and received a standing ovation from the politicians and diplomats in attendance.

The Fall Of 2020: How Liberals Ceded Solidarity

Last Sunday marked five years since the world witnessed the public lynching of George Floyd at the hands, or as it was, the knee of the State. The aftermath of the livestreamed white “supremacy” webinar on the denial of the human rights of Black/Afro-resident people in the United States was the proliferation of incendiary uprisings nationwide that saw the incineration of buildings that housed businesses and even police precincts. - The nation was jolted awake after months of being moribund due to State-sanctioned covid quarantines and isolation. The streets were transformed from apparition avenues to lively lanes of social activity as people of all races, ethnicities, and genders coalesced to demand “justice” for Floyd and Brianna Taylor, both executed by the State, and Ahmad Aubrey who was shot to death by a civilian lynch mob.

Finding And Keeping Our Balance: Elders At The Crossroads

I long for peace and ease as stress and anxiety overtake me. How can I be an active part of the resistance against the fascist regime bludgeoning my people and still hope for some comfort along the way? Many of us elders who are seasoned activists are halted at rocky crossroads: Do we put on our protective masks, dig out our marching boots and join the protests flooding the streets of our towns and cities? We’re not those sure-footed, fearless, feisty, determined warriors we once were. We have osteoporosis, bronchitis, vestibular imbalance, high blood pressure, diabetes, arthritis. … We’re vulnerable and afraid.

How 77 Tons Of Radioactive Waste Ended Up In Brooklyn

New York City’s second largest utility is being sued in federal court for the alleged inappropriate handling of at least 77 tons of radioactive waste at a 120-acre site located in Brooklyn, the city’s most populous borough. The radioactive waste, as well as other hazardous coal waste, is a leftover of a bygone era, more than a century ago, when the parcel was the location of Equity Works, a manufactured gas plant (MGP) that derived gas from heating coal, and then piped it across the city to power lighting, cooking, and heating. Cooper Tank & Welding, which purchased the site from London-based National Grid in 1987, is seeking “no less than $2,000,000” in damages, charging in its lawsuit that the multinational electric and gas utility’s “negligent operating and waste management practices resulted in contamination” from “concentrated radioactive materials,” as well as “coal tar and other hazardous substances.”

David Hartsough: The World Has Lost A Champion Of Peace

David Hartsough, whom we have just lost to cancer at the age of 84, was a giant in the world of recent and not so recent peace activism and not just peace activism. While nobody focused more on highlighting and promoting the work of others, and on organizing and funding and supporting the work of others, David Hartsough’s own story is one of the most remarkable to be found in the genre of lives lived to their fullest for the good of all. Parts of David Hartsough’s story are told in his 2014 memoir, Waging Peace: Global Adventures of a Lifelong Activist.

Where Have All The Liberals Gone?

I simply cannot figure American liberals and “progressives”—’pwogwessives,’” as the late Alexander Cockburn used to call them. They do nothing when faced with calamitous events and call it hard work. Then, when the political process (such as it is) takes a radical turn for the worse and there is serious work to do, they announce that they are exhausted and must “take a break” from it all. And then they go off to Mexico City or Barbados or the Cotswolds. Can’t figure it. When the going gets tough, liberals get… tickets to Santorini or Sicily.

The Case For A ‘Bold Idea’ To End The Era Of Coal, Oil And Gas

Could the world negotiate a wind-down of the fossil fuel industry — just as Cold War adversaries once agreed to limit their stockpiles of nuclear weapons? In an interview for the Climate Consciousness Summit 2024, Tzeporah Berman, founder and chair of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative said a growing wave of support for the proposal — which has been endorsed by more than 3,000 scientists, 121 cities and sub-national governments, and 14 nations — could ultimately make new fossil fuel projects unacceptable, even in the United States, the world’s biggest producer of oil and gas.

How A Former ExxonMobil Employee Confronted Climate Disinformation

Lindsey Gulden, a climate scientist, spent more than a decade working as a data scientist for ExxonMobil until she was fired in 2020 after internally reporting an allegedly fraudulent overvaluation of the company’s assets in the Permian Basin, an oil and gas-producing region spanning Texas and New Mexico. (ExxonMobil says her termination was unrelated and denies fraud took place). That experience prompted her to ask deeper questions about the oil and gas company’s assurances to staff that it is committed to playing a leading role in the energy transition.

Why The Climate Crisis Demands More Than Relentless Positivity

When the COP29 climate talks open in Azerbaijan next week, we’ll no doubt be told that we’re in an unprecedented and dangerous situation, that there’s little time left, and that we’re not moving in the right direction. The speeches will likely culminate in a general call for urgent action, emphasising the critical importance of maintaining hope. This anticipated opening speech already has a sense of déjà vu. Hasn’t it been time to act for decades? What makes each new speaker so hopeful that their call to action will be the one to finally be heeded? And exactly what action is called for?

Mapped: How Big Industries Hope To Sway The UN Biodiversity Talks

Under thundery tropical skies, and amid ever more dire warnings on the precarious state of the world’s ecosystems, the United Nations Biodiversity Conference is unfolding in Colombia. This year’s summit, known as COP16, follows on from the last biodiversity conference held in Montréal in 2022, when negotiators struck an historic deal – the equivalent of the Paris Agreement on climate change – to “halt and reverse” nature loss. Now, government representatives from nearly 200 countries, along with scientists, Indigenous groups, and environmental activists, are gathered in the southern city of Cali to negotiate how to put this plan into action: protect earth’s habitats and the people who depend on them.

EPA Found No Threat Of Air Pollution During An Oil Spill In Louisiana

The pungent smell of oil woke Gerald and Janet Crappel on the morning of Saturday, July 27. Stepping outside their home on the banks of Bayou Lafourche in Raceland, Louisiana, they spotted the fumes’ source: crude oil from Crescent Midstream’s Raceland pump station was gushing into the picturesque waterway, sparsely lined with homes and fishing boats, via a stormwater canal directly across from their home. The oil’s fumes were thick that morning. “It choked you,” Gerald told DeSmog correspondent Julie Dermansky, who documented the incident as it unfolded. Before cleanup crews contained the spill, reportedly 34,000 gallons of crude oil, a slick stretched for eight miles, just past the area’s drinking water system.

Israeli Army Kills American Activist In Occupied West Bank

An American woman was shot and killed by Israeli forces during a protest in Beita near Nablus in the northern occupied West Bank on Friday. On Friday morning the State Department confirmed that Aysenur Eygi, a 26-year-old American citizen born in Turkey, had died. Two Palestinian doctors told the AP that Eygi had been shot in the head and died after arriving at the local hospital. “We tried to save the American citizen, we tried to revive the heart for several stages, but unfortunately, we did not succeed in restoring the heart to function,” said Rafidia Hospital director Dr. Fouad Naffa. “We are deeply disturbed by the tragic death of an American citizen, Aysenur Egzi Eygi, today in the West Bank and our hearts go out to her family and loved ones,” said White House National Security Council spokesman Sean Savett

A Plea To The Next Government From Young People

Labour, which is likely to win the next general election, has just published its disappointing manifesto. While we should not look to the next government for an answer to climate breakdown, it is especially unfortunate that Labour is backing out of preexisting promises to provide adequate climate education. If the leaders of today cannot provide the far-sighted direction we need, let’s at least make sure those of us who are to inherit this tormented world have the tools to navigate it. As a woman in her twenties who has worked to promote mainstream climate action with the Climate Majority Project for the past two years, here are my thoughts on the kind of education we need in the coming decades

Cooking Sections’ Singular Stew Of Art, Activism, And Local Food

What a delight to encounter the work of the British artistic duo Cooking Sections, two British artists whose virtuoso artworks effortlessly blend art with activism, local commoning, and eco-stewardship in the service of climate-friendly foodways. Alon Schwabe and Daniel Fernández Pascual -- Senior Research Fellows at the Royal College of Art in London – create distinctive works of art about modern food that are also enmeshed in the fabric of everyday life:  land, intertidal waters, restaurants, buildings, social festivals. The canvas for their art is large and unconventional: the bioregional theaters of the world where food is grown and harvested, from Scotland and Istanbul to southern Italy and South Korea, and beyond.

The Slow Death Of A Prison Profiteer

Last week, the nation’s largest prison and jail telecom corporation, Securus, effectively defaulted on more than a billion dollars of debt. After decades of preying on incarcerated people and their loved ones with exploitative call rates and other predatory practices that have driven millions of families into debt, Securus is being crushed under the weight of its own. In March, the company’s creditors gave the corporation an eight-month extension to pay up, urging its sale to a new owner to stave off an otherwise imminent bankruptcy.

Urgent End Of Year Fundraising Campaign

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Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

Urgent End Of Year Fundraising Campaign

Online donations are back! 

Keep independent media alive. 

Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

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