‘We must save the soul of America’

Last night, as he welcomed the audience to a Democratic Party Presidential Primary debate, on the same day the United States Ambassador to the EU testified under oath that President Trump directed an interconinental extortion plot, Rep. John Lewis told the nation “We must save the soul of America.”

Posted by Joseph Robertson

Joseph is Executive Director of Citizens' Climate International. He represents Citizens’ Climate in the Carbon Pricing Leadership Coalition, the UNFCCC negotiations, and other UN processes. He is the lead strategist supporting the Acceleration Dialogues (diplomatic climate-solutions roundtables) and Resilience Intel—an effort to move the world to 100% climate-smart finance. He is Senior Advisor Sustainable Finance for the EAT Foundation, where he served as Interim Director for the Food System Economics Commission, during its start-up phase from April through November 2020, and now serves on the Secretariat of the Good Food Finance Network. He is founder of Geoversiv and a lead contributor to the Earth Intelligence podcast. He publishes a free newsletter at LivingFutures.net

Impeachment Depositions Made Public

After the White House demanded all testimony given in closed depositions before three committees in the House of Representatives be made public, House leadership agreed to release those transcripts, in preparation for open hearings in the House.

The releases made from Monday, November 4, to Friday, November 8, 2019, are linked below. Each “Committees Release” link includes links to the full transcripts. Key excerpts and files including new information are linked below.

Posted by Joseph Robertson

Putin Squanders Olympic Glow to Seize Crimea

Russian President Vladimir Putin has thrown away the halo of global good feeling that might have come with the success of the Sochi Olympic Games. Russia’s hosting of the Games was marred when armed paramilitary extremists linked to Putin publicly whipped members of the punk rock protest band Pussy Riot, but Putin’s government handled that situation by scolding the responsible Cossacks and denouncing such abuse of citizens.

Posted by Joseph Robertson

Why Kiev Matters

The struggle over Ukraine’s political system is important to the world for a lot of reasons. In short:

It matters whether any human population has fair and transparent, democratically accountable government;
Ukraine is a strategic crossroads, both for political and economic reasons;
The tension over violence against protesters in Kiev could explode into a regional war that no one can afford;
A peaceful resolution is an indicator of whether Russia and Europe can work together;
Ukraine’s strategic value is partly to do with geopolitical spheres of influence, partly about carbon-based energy.

So, what is happening at this hour in Kiev matters to the wider world for moral reasons, for strategic political and economic reasons and because the outcome may determine whether petrostate hegemony will hold sway over the future of more than half a billion people. That authoritarian petrostate model—an outgrowth of both the Soviet dictatorship and the post-Soviet plutocracy in Russia—severely limits the power of individuals and communities to influence government, and to build a more humane, more collaborative, more sustainable future, from the ground up.

Posted by Joseph Robertson

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