Music: Béla Fleck, Zakir Hussain, Edgar Meyer ft. Rakesh Chaurasia — ‘As We Speak’
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…
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…
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,…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Music: Kessoncoda — ‘Greyscale’
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:…
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…
‘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…
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…
EU finally sends €1.5B from Russian assets to Ukraine
Politico reports: The European Commission transferred €1.5 billion of profits from investing frozen Russian assets to buy weapons for Ukraine. After months of grueling negotiations in Brussels, the EU executive finally sent the first batch of funding to the war-torn country. Ninety percent of the cash will be used for military purposes, while the remaining amount will go towards humanitarian aid. EU capitals agreed to use the proceeds generated by investing €192 billion immobilized Russian assets held by the Brussels-based…
Ukrainian ecologists document what they say is Russian ecocide
Ghanna Mamonova writes: Before the dam explosion, residents of the Kherson region in southeastern Ukraine referred to the local reservoir simply as the “sea.” Now, just one year after the June 6, 2023, attack on the Kakhovka Dam, they call it the “dead sea.” Once vast, its water irrigated farms and kept hundreds of thousands of people hydrated. It was replete with fish that had provided sustenance to the local population for generations. The attack, which was carried out by…
How fetuses learn to talk while they’re still in the womb
Darshana Narayanan writes: Loud, shrill and penetrating – a baby’s cry is its first act of communication. A simple adaptation that makes it less likely that the baby’s needs will be overlooked. And babies aren’t just crying for attention. While crying, they are practising the melodies of speech. In fact, newborns cry in the accent of their mother tongue. They make vowel-like sounds, growl and squeal – these are protophones, sounds that eventually turn into speech. Babies communicate as soon…