Independent Journalist & Author
New Orleans Drops Charges in Mother’s Day Shootings
I was one of 20 people sent to hospital when gunmen sprayed bullets into a second line parade last Mother’s Day in New Orleans, as I described here: http://www.thenation.com/article/174325/i-got-shot-new-orleans/. As the one year anniversary of the shootings approached, I learned that all 20 attempted murder charges filed in the case had been dropped. They were replaced with federal drug and gun charges, a decision mayor Mitch Landrieu defended in an interview with me: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/05/09/twenty-of-us-were-shot-on-mother-s-day-but-new-orleans-dropped-the-attempted-murder-charges.html/…. Read more
Earth Day’s Lesson: Protest To Survive
The unsung history of Earth Day shows that public protest, more than public opinion, is what delivers real progress. I explain further in the lead piece for The Nation’s special Earth Day issue, which features wall-to-wall coverage of the climate challenge. See especially the pieces by Naomi Klein, Rebecca Solnit and Wen Stephenson. And as you ponder the climate crisis, remember: if you don’t like the news, go out and make some of your own!… Read more
Can Generation Hot Avoid Its Fate?
I read the latest UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s report both as a journalist and as a father whose precious daughter just turned nine. The IPCC’s projections of what lies ahead for Chiara and the rest of Generation Hot left me feeling grief, fear, rage and frustration. But also a determination to resist, guided by Hope, always Hope…. Read more
UN Climate Report: The Future Is Here
US media finally sound the climate alarm after the latest IPCC report, detailing how severe, worldwide impacts have already begun and threaten to spin “out of control” without urgent counter-measures. Adaptation will in any case be necessary. Read more in my Nation article:… Read more
The Other Keystone
The Nation has just posted my article about Cove Point, the proposed liquid natural gas export facility that represents the next front in the escalating clash between President Obama’s “all of the above” energy strategy and the growing grassroots movement against fracking and climate change: http://www.thenation.com/article/178922/other-keystone/…. Read more
Keystone, Obama and the US Petro-state
Why is President Obama finding it so hard to announce a decision on Keystone XL? Because, I argue in Bloomberg Businessweek, Mr. Obama presides over a petro-state, a country whose political economy has been dominated by oil so profoundly and for so long that it ranks as an OPEC nation in all but name. The only way Obama (or any US president) can successfully stand up to Big Oil is if he is pushed by a strong, insistent popular movement…. Read more
Latest Book
By now, almost everyone knows what Edward Snowden did: leak top secret documents revealing that the US government was spying on hundreds of millions of people around the world. But if you want to know why Snowden did it, the way he did it, you need to know the stories of two other men.
The first is Thomas Drake, who blew the whistle on the very same surveillance ten years before Snowden did and got crushed. The other is The Third Man, a former senior Pentagon official who comes forward in this book for the first time to describe how his superiors repeatedly broke the law to punish Drake—and unwittingly taught Snowden how to evade their clutches.
Pick up your copy at:
Amazon.com | Barnes & Noble