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How Israel plans to whitewash its war crimes in Gaza

How Israel plans to whitewash its war crimes in Gaza

Dan Owen writes: The scale of horror that Israel has inflicted upon Gaza over the last nine months is almost impossible to comprehend. The Israeli army’s decision from the start of the war to significantly expand its authorization for bombing non-military targets and causing harm to civilians has resulted in the killing of tens of thousands of Palestinians, and has left the Gaza Strip unrecognizable. The surviving population faces mass hunger and displacement as a result of intentional Israeli policies, which are in violation of international laws…

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Food as you know it is about to change

Food as you know it is about to change

David Wallace-Wells writes: From the vantage of the American supermarket aisle, the modern food system looks like a kind of miracle. Everything has been carefully cultivated for taste and convenience — even those foods billed as organic or heirloom — and produce regarded as exotic luxuries just a few generations ago now seems more like staples, available on demand: avocados, mangoes, out-of-season blueberries imported from Uruguay. But the supermarket is also increasingly a diorama of the fragility of a system…

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How decline of Indian vultures led to 500,000 human deaths

How decline of Indian vultures led to 500,000 human deaths

BBC News reports: Once upon a time, the vulture was an abundant and ubiquitous bird in India. The scavenging birds hovered over sprawling landfills, looking for cattle carcasses. Sometimes they would alarm pilots by getting sucked into jet engines during airport take-offs. But more than two decades ago, India’s vultures began dying because of a drug used to treat sick cows. By the mid-1990s, the 50 million-strong vulture population had plummeted to near zero because of diclofenac, a cheap non-steroidal…

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Kamala Harris: We can’t look away from Palestinian suffering

Kamala Harris: We can’t look away from Palestinian suffering

  The Guardian reports: Progressive US representative Pramila Jayapal has said Kamala Harris is “listening” to young people’s concerns about Israel’s war in Gaza as the newly elevated presumptive Democratic nominee rides an “undeniable” wave of momentum. In the days since Joe Biden ended his presidential re-election campaign and endorsed the vice-president for November’s race against Republican nominee Donald Trump, gen Z supporters have flooded social media with coconut tree video cuts and “brat summer” memes – a reflection of…

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How Trump and Vance went from a ‘threat to democracy’ to ‘weird’

How Trump and Vance went from a ‘threat to democracy’ to ‘weird’

Politico reports: In the days since Vice President Kamala Harris has taken over the campaign against former President Donald Trump and his running mate JD Vance, Democrats are leaning into a new attack line against the Republican ticket: that they’re just really weird. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz , a potential Harris running mate who’s been using this description for months, said it during his first viral TV appearance of the week, and then in others. The Democratic Governors Association, which…

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Kamala Harris has brought joy to politics

Kamala Harris has brought joy to politics

Paul Waldman writes: “I call her laughing Kamala,” Donald Trump recently said about his new opponent. “You ever watch her laugh? She’s crazy. You know, you can tell a lot by a laugh — she’s crazy, she’s nuts.” He’s right about one thing: You can indeed tell a lot by a laugh. And you can also tell a lot by how people react to a laugh. Perhaps Trump will choose “Laughing Kamala” as his go-to nickname for Vice President Harris,…

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Harris’ Zoom-fueled campaign triggers a dormant Democratic base

Harris’ Zoom-fueled campaign triggers a dormant Democratic base

Politico reports: When a group of Black women political organizers assembled for a regular Zoom call on Sunday, they suddenly had a new mission. A mere hours earlier, President Joe Biden had ended his reelection bid and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as his successor. Interest in the call had skyrocketed, and some 40,000 attendees logged on. The Win With Black Women collective, nervous that Harris would be facing competition, ferociously pushed back on the idea of an open primary…

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Why did progressive Democrats support Joe Biden?

Why did progressive Democrats support Joe Biden?

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor writes: After weeks of debate about the viability of President Joe Biden’s run for reëlection, the mounting pressure for him to leave the race finally overwhelmed his own efforts to stay. In the immediate aftermath of Biden’s historic decision to end his campaign, the enthusiasm that coalesced around Vice-President Kamala Harris as his replacement seemed to be as much a reflection of relief about Biden as it was excitement about Harris herself. Since Biden’s revealing performance in the…

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How the U.S. became the world’s biggest fossil fuel producing state

How the U.S. became the world’s biggest fossil fuel producing state

The Guardian reports: To witness how the United States has become the world’s unchallenged oil and gas behemoth is to contemplate the scene from John Allaire’s home, situated on a small spit of coastal land on the fraying, pancake-flat western flank of Louisiana. Allaire’s looming neighbor, barely a mile east across a ship channel that has been pushed into the Gulf of Mexico, is a hulking liquified natural gas (or LNG) plant, served by leviathan ships shuttling its chilled cargo…

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Every university in Gaza has been destroyed. So have these students’ dreams

Every university in Gaza has been destroyed. So have these students’ dreams

Sondos Fayoumi writes: Around 88,000 higher education students in Gaza were supposed to sit for their exams last month. Many looked forward to completing their final assessments and celebrating their hard-earned graduation. Thanks to Israel’s genocidal war, though, nobody wore their caps and gowns. Instead, young people are enduring devastation of unparalleled magnitude. Every university in Gaza has been obliterated. Libraries have been burned to the ground. And the aspirations of Palestinian graduates lie in tatters. In addition to the…

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The 2024 map just got a major shakeup

The 2024 map just got a major shakeup

Politico reports: Choosing a running mate isn’t the only big decision awaiting Vice President Kamala Harris in the 100-day sprint to Election Day. Her campaign must also chart a course to 270 electoral votes across a map that bears little resemblance to 2020. The map she inherits from President Joe Biden is grim. Before the president withdrew his candidacy Sunday, he was trailing in the polls in every battleground state, including the five he flipped to win the White House:…

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The GOP’s secret weapon for 2024? Bogus lawsuits

The GOP’s secret weapon for 2024? Bogus lawsuits

Mother Jones reports: On March 19, Staci Lindberg, the elected clerk of Nevada’s Lyon County, was hit with some unsettling news: She was being sued for the first time in her life. The plaintiff? Her own political party. The Republican National Committee had filed a lawsuit against Lindberg and five other Nevada election officials, alleging they had failed to follow a 1993 federal law requiring they maintain accurate voter registration rolls. As evidence, the RNC pointed to three counties it…

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‘It must end’: Australia, New Zealand, Canada call for immediate Gaza ceasefire

‘It must end’: Australia, New Zealand, Canada call for immediate Gaza ceasefire

The Times of Israel reports: Australia, New Zealand and Canada on Friday called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and asked Israel to respond to a United Nations court that last week ruled that the West Bank settlements and Israel’s military rule there are illegal. “Israel must listen to the concerns of the international community,” the leaders of the three countries said in a joint statement. “The protection of civilians is paramount and a requirement under international humanitarian law. Palestinian…

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Britain drops its challenge to ICC arrest warrants for Israeli leaders

Britain drops its challenge to ICC arrest warrants for Israeli leaders

The Guardian reports: The UK has dropped its opposition to an international arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu, removing a key hurdle to one being issued and underlining the tougher stance being taken towards Israel by the new Labour government. Downing Street confirmed on Friday that the government would not submit a challenge to the jurisdiction of the international criminal court, whose chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, is seeking a warrant against the Israeli prime minister. The move, first reported by the…

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