Author Archives: MargieLadner7

The sea is rising three times faster than we thought.

A lot of climate hawks spent late 2016 and early 2017 in reassessment or mourning. Meanwhile, Anthony Torres was busy channeling his fellow engaged millennials into direct action, including coordinated sit-ins at the offices of New York’s Chuck Schumer, the new Senate Minority Leader, and Sen. Tom Carper of Delaware. The message: Do not play ball with the polluter-in-chief.

The son of a Nicaraguan immigrant father and a working-class New Yorker mother, Torres grew up with sea-level rise on his Long Island doorstep, and he understands how poverty, climate, and other social challenges are all knitted together. He’s proven especially adept at rallying peers to his side, both in an official capacity at the Sierra Club (where he helped coordinate communications and direct actions that aided in a defeat of the Trans-Pacific Partnership) and in extracurricular work with groups like #AllOfUs, a progressive collective aimed at organizing young people around threatened communities.

His advice on connecting different constituencies: “Activists need to create a story that is accessible to people who are not necessarily in our movements but who are in need of a bold and inspiring vision,” Torres says. “To me, it’s telling a story of America that intersects with race, gender, and class” and turning what might seem like differences into “a weapon in our arsenal that creates an America that never has happened before — a country for all of us.”


Meet all the fixers on this year’s Grist 50.

Continued here:

The sea is rising three times faster than we thought.

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, ONA, oven, OXO, Ringer, solar, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The sea is rising three times faster than we thought.

Is Donald Trump’s Campaign Manager Still on the Payroll of a Ukrainian Political Leader?

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Is Donald Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, still on the payroll of a Ukrainian politician or party?

According to the New York Times, which on Monday published an investigation into Manafort’s decadelong involvement in Ukrainian politics, the answer is unclear. As the Times detailed, Manafort—who has a lengthy history of helping dictators and strongmen rehab their reputations—once represented Ukraine’s former President Viktor Yanukovych, a pro-Russian politician with ties to Vladimir Putin who fled Ukraine in 2014 as demonstrations and uprisings raged in the country. But Manafort’s work in Ukraine didn’t end with Yanukovych’s ouster. He subsequently went to work for Serhiy Lyovochkin, Yanukovych’s former chief of staff, to revitalize Yanukovych’s beleaguered political party. The Times reported this intriguing detail near the end of its article:

It is not clear that Mr. Manafort’s work in Ukraine ended with his work with Mr. Trump’s campaign. A communications aide for Mr. Lyovochkin, who financed Mr. Manafort’s work, declined to say whether he was still on retainer or how much he had been paid.

Hope Hicks, Trump’s spokeswoman, did not respond immediately to questions about whether Manafort is currently involved in any work related to Ukrainian politics. If Manafort does have active ties to Lyovochkin or other Ukrainian politicians, this would raise conflict-of-interest questions and fuel the controversy surrounding Trump’s foreign policy stance on Russia and his relationship with Putin.

The Trump campaign has raised the eyebrows of the press and many foreign policy experts by repeatedly advocating a softer stance toward Russia. Over the weekend, for instance, Trump told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that he would look into recognizing Russia’s annexation of Crimea and that the people of Crimea would rather be part of Russia (which also happens to be the official line of the Kremlin).

Another example of the Trump campaign’s pro-Russia maneuvering came last month while the Republican Party was drafting its platform in Cleveland. According to the Washington Post, Trump aides removed a provision from the platform that called for the United States to provide “lethal defensive weapons” to Ukraine’s military to defend itself against Russia and dissidents. Instead, the campaign worked behind the scenes to replace the pledge to provide weapons with a call for “appropriate assistance.”

When Stephanopoulos asked Trump about this change in the platform, Trump said he had not been involved. But he added, “It’s, well, you know, I have my own ideas.”

Visit source – 

Is Donald Trump’s Campaign Manager Still on the Payroll of a Ukrainian Political Leader?

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Is Donald Trump’s Campaign Manager Still on the Payroll of a Ukrainian Political Leader?