Megatsunami risk on the rise as glacial melt drives landslides

Megatsunami risk on the rise as glacial melt drives landslides

The Guardian reports: Just under a year ago, the east coast of Greenland was hit by a megatsunami. Triggered by a large landslide entering the uninhabited Dickson Fjord, the resulting tsunami was 200 metres high – equivalent to more than 40 double-decker buses. Luckily no one was hurt, though a military base was obliterated. Now analysis of the seismic data associated with the event has revealed that the tsunami was followed by a standing wave, which continued to slosh back…

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Why America fell for guns

Why America fell for guns

Megan Kang writes: In 1970, amid a national confrontation with the United States’ gun culture following the assassinations of Robert F Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr, the historian Richard Hofstadter struggled to make sense of how the country had become the ‘only industrial nation in which the possession of rifles, shotguns, and handguns is lawfully prevalent among large numbers of its population.’ Writing for the magazine American Heritage, he expressed grave concern for a country ‘afloat with weapons –…

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What I saw was ‘unfathomable’: Doctor who worked in Gaza speaks out against U.S. arming of Israel

What I saw was ‘unfathomable’: Doctor who worked in Gaza speaks out against U.S. arming of Israel

  A group of American doctors who treated patients in Gaza held a press conference in Chicago on Tuesday to describe the suffering they saw among Palestinians injured and killed in Israel’s war on the territory. The press conference, taking place during the Democratic National Convention, was organized by the Uncommitted National Movement, which is pressuring Democrats for an end to blanket U.S. support for Israel. Among those who spoke was Dr. Ahmed Yousaf, who returned from Gaza just weeks…

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Former Rep. Andy Levin: ‘The acid test for Jewish people is, how do we treat our Palestinian cousins?’

Former Rep. Andy Levin: ‘The acid test for Jewish people is, how do we treat our Palestinian cousins?’

  We speak with former Michigan Congressmember Andy Levin, a former synagogue president, who lost his 2022 Democratic primary in a race that saw millions spent by pro-Israel groups to unseat the progressive Jewish lawmaker. AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, and other lobby groups have used the same playbook over the years to defeat members of Congress who do not toe the line, and Levin says the Democratic Party has to act to stop such “dark money” from…

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Countries fueling Israel’s Gaza war may be complicit in war crimes, experts warn

Countries fueling Israel’s Gaza war may be complicit in war crimes, experts warn

The Guardian reports: Israeli tanks, jets and bulldozers bombarding Gaza and razing homes in the occupied West Bank are being fueled by a growing number of countries signed up to the genocide and Geneva conventions, new research suggests, which legal experts warn could make them complicit in serious crimes against the Palestinian people. Four tankers of American jet fuel primarily used for military aircraft have been shipped to Israel since the start of its aerial bombardment of Gaza in October….

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With six words, Michelle Obama rewires America’s conversation on race

With six words, Michelle Obama rewires America’s conversation on race

Philip Bump writes: In her speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2016, Michelle Obama coined one of the defining phrases of the political era: “When they go low, we go high.” Going high did not work. Donald Trump won that election. While many of his supporters expressed discomfort with his go-low approach to politics, far more embraced it. Trump, despite his pedigree as a New York billionaire, would embarrass and attack and disparage the perceived elites, and many Americans…

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How Kamala intends to bring prices down

How Kamala intends to bring prices down

Robert Reich writes: [T]he administration should be using the threat of antitrust enforcement to force corporations in concentrated industries to lower their prices. Biden’s trust-busters — Lina Khan at the FTC and Jonathan Kanter at the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department — have been doing excellent work but they need to do more targeting and threatening. This is the direction Kamala Harris wants to go. Since the 1980s, after the federal government all but abandoned antitrust, two-thirds of all…

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U.S. investigating Americans who worked with Russian state television

U.S. investigating Americans who worked with Russian state television

The New York Times reports: The Department of Justice has begun a broad criminal investigation into Americans who have worked with Russia’s state television networks, signaling an aggressive effort to combat the Kremlin’s influence operations leading up to the presidential election in November, according to American officials briefed on the inquiry. This month, F.B.I. agents searched the homes of two prominent figures with connections to Russian state media: Scott Ritter, a former United Nations weapons inspector and critic of American…

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Quadrillions of ants have created a strange and turbulent global society that shadows our own

Quadrillions of ants have created a strange and turbulent global society that shadows our own

John Whitfield writes: It is a familiar story: a small group of animals living in a wooded grassland begin, against all odds, to populate Earth. At first, they occupy a specific ecological place in the landscape, kept in check by other species. Then something changes. The animals find a way to travel to new places. They learn to cope with unpredictability. They adapt to new kinds of food and shelter. They are clever. And they are aggressive. In the new…

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First ever DNC panel on Palestinian rights: We need to ‘restore the soul of the Democratic Party’

First ever DNC panel on Palestinian rights: We need to ‘restore the soul of the Democratic Party’

  This year, the Democratic National Convention held its first-ever panel on Palestinian human rights. The panel came after persistent grassroots organizing against U.S. support for Israel’s assault on Gaza. We play excerpts, including from the Arab American Institute’s James Zogby, a former executive member of the Democratic National Committee; Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan, a pediatric intensive care surgeon who recently worked in Gaza; and Layla Elabed, co-chair of the Uncommitted National Movement. Later that day, during President Biden’s convention speech,…

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Former Israeli spy chief: If I was a Palestinian, I would fight against Israel’s occupation

Former Israeli spy chief: If I was a Palestinian, I would fight against Israel’s occupation

  Mehdi Hasan interviews Ami Ayalon, the former head of Israel’s Security Service, Shin Bet, and the ex-commander of the Israeli Navy, in the latest episode of ‘Mehdi Unfiltered.’ Ayalon discusses why he believes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and far right politician Itamar Ben-Gvir pose a threat to Israeli democracy, calls for an end to the occupation, and explains why he would resist Israel if he were Palestinian. As reports of Israeli torture and abuse against detained Palestinians continue…

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Abortion takes center stage

Abortion takes center stage

Helen Lewis writes: The most emotional moment of last night’s Democratic National Convention was supposed to be Joe Biden’s farewell, after his party’s power brokers made clear he could not run again. And true, his address showed a graciousness in defeat that Donald Trump could never hope to understand. But the most moving speech of the evening was only a few minutes long, and it was given by a young woman from Kentucky. Her name was Hadley Duvall, and she…

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Ex-Haley voters rally behind Harris: ‘I picked the side that had the least issues’

Ex-Haley voters rally behind Harris: ‘I picked the side that had the least issues’

The Guardian reports: After the former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley dropped out of the Republican primary earlier this year, some conservatives across the US continued to vote for her in subsequent primaries, casting ballots that indicated dissent within a party that has otherwise fully embraced Donald Trump. When Haley finally announced that she would be supporting the ex-president in the upcoming election, she said that it was on him to mobilize her loyalists. “Trump would be smart to reach…

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Republicans scrambled to get Cornel West on the Arizona ballot. The left-wing academic is OK with it

Republicans scrambled to get Cornel West on the Arizona ballot. The left-wing academic is OK with it

The Associated Press reports: A group of lawyers with deep ties to the Republican Party scrambled over the weekend to rescue an effort to get independent presidential candidate Cornel West on the Arizona ballot, offering one of the clearest examples yet of the GOP’s extensive involvement in furthering the left-wing academic’s long-shot bid. As a deadline loomed to submit the needed paperwork, two well-known Republican lawyers in the state and a GOP attorney working to get West on the ballot…

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