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Hollywood star Mark Ruffalo calls Obama ‘immoral’ at climate rally

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Hollywood star Mark Ruffalo accused US President Barack Obama of hypocrisy for allowing fracking and other fossil fuel extraction while presenting himself as a green president.

The Oscar-nominated “Spotlight” and “Avengers” actor spoke out at a rally in Los Angeles protesting against man-made climate change and, in particular, the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline, the site of escalating protests in recent weeks.

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“President Obama, it is immoral for you to keep drilling in our state lands, in our federal lands, off our federal waters, while at the same time calling yourself a climate change leader,” he said.

Ruffalo, 48, recently narrated and produced “Dear President Obama: The Clean Energy Revolution Is Now,” a critical documentary on the outgoing head-of-state’s environmental legacy.

He was joined on stage by actresses Shailene Woodley, 24, and Susan Sarandon, 70, for a five-hour event featuring music and speeches in front of around 800 people at MacArthur Park in downtown LA.

The heavens opened as Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter Antonique Smith started playing Beatles hit “Here Comes the Sun,” and a prolonged downpour, rare in drought-hit Southern California, delighted the crowd.

Woodley, who stars in Oliver Stone biopic “Snowden” and the “Divergent” film franchise, was arrested at the Dakota Access Pipeline earlier this month.

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She was charged with criminal trespass and engaging in a riot, and is due in court on Monday.

“Indigenous people, for the most part, and marginalized communities, are the first communities to get compromised and get taken out by the fossil fuel industry,” she said.

“Their lands are flooded from dams being built, their fish are taken and put in other countries, their mountains are compromised without any regard to their sacred ancestry and their traditions.”

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Protests have drawn thousands of people to the area where Texas-based Energy Transfer Partners is trying to complete a 1,172-mile (1,886-kilometer) pipeline from a vast underground deposit in North Dakota southwards into Illinois.

– ‘Greed is deciding policy’ –

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More than 220 people have been arrested since demonstrations began in August.

Protesters say the $3.8 billion pipeline will damage the environment and affect historically significant Native American tribal land.

The Standing Rock Sioux tribe, whose reservation in North Dakota is near the pipeline route, says the project would destroy some of their sacred sites.

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“The world is a mess. We’ve got wars, we’ve got the Mother Earth being raped constantly,” Sarandon told the crowd, to cheers.

“Not only is it an environmental, but it’s a problem in terms of social justice. We can do it. We can stop fracking. We can stop the pipeline.”

Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, is the extraction of natural gas from deep in the ground by blasting water and chemicals under extremely high pressure.

It is estimated to have offered gas security to the US and Canada for about 100 years, presenting an opportunity to generate electricity at half the CO2 emissions of coal.

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But the process uses huge amounts of water, which must be transported to the fracking site at significant environmental cost, and critics say the potentially carcinogenic chemicals involved could contaminate groundwater.

The rally was part of a series of gatherings across the US organized by Josh Fox, best known for Oscar-nominated 2010 documentary “Gasland” and his opposition to fracking.

“No matter what happens in this election, we need a strong movement to fight the fossil fuel industry and to fight to preserve our planet against climate change,” he said, referring to next month’s presidential vote.

Sunday’s event included an outdoor screening of Fox’s “How to Let Go of the World and Love All the Things Climate Can’t Change.”

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The film was produced by Deia Schlosberg, who is facing a possible 45-year prison sentence after she was arrested while documenting the shutdown of five major pipelines by environmental activists.


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2020 Election

Donald Trump ‘facing a rapid decline’ as he wallows in ‘rage and denial’ over election loss: report

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President Donald Trump's mental health since losing the 2020 presidential election was the focus of a new analysis by New York Times chief White House correspondent Peter Baker that was published online Saturday.

"Over the past week, President Trump posted or reposted more than 130 messages on Twitter lashing out at the results of an election he lost. He mentioned the coronavirus pandemic now reaching its darkest hours four times — and even then just to assert that he was right about the outbreak and the experts were wrong," Baker reported under the headline, "Trump’s Final Days of Rage and Denial."

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2020 Election

Trump handed Democrats the ‘playbook’ to defeat Loeffler and Perdue at his Saturday rally: Georgia’s GOP Lt Gov

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Appearing on CNN's "State of the Union," Georgia's Republican Lt. Governor Geoff Duncan expressed dismay with the message Donald Trump delivered to a rally crowd in Valdosta Saturday night, saying the president may have hurt the re-election prospects of both of the state's GOP U.S. Senators.

Speaking with host Jake Tapper, Duncan said Trump's speech was a mixed bag for Republicans.

Asked if the president helped or hurt Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, Duncan -- very cautiously -- criticized the president.

"The president at a rally in Georgia last night insists he won your state, which is not true," Tapper began. "He attacked your governor and attacked the Republican Secretary of State, going after [Brad] Raffensperger, a friend of yours. He called the election rigged. Set the record state if you would."

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2020 Election

‘A massive failure by President Trump’: Chris Wallace beats down HHS secretary over COVID debacle

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Fox News host Chris Wallace on Sunday grilled Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Alex Azar after polls show that Americans do not trust a COVID-19 vaccine that has been rushed through the approval process by the Trump administration.

During an interview with Azar on Fox News Sunday, Wallace noted that 40% of Americans have told pollsters that they are reluctant to get the vaccine.

"One of the reasons is because concern about politics," Wallace explained. "Why not stop the politics and let the scientists do their jobs?"

For his part, Azar insisted that he had not prevented scientists from making sure the vaccine is safe.

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