Reading

Richard Powers on his 3 greatest revelations while writing his latest novel, Playground.

The post Our Magnificent Ocean appeared first on Nautilus.

Weapons used in earlier Israeli strikes into Lebanon that have killed civilians have been found to be U.S.-made.

The post Israel Bombed Lebanon Today, Killing Hundreds. The U.S. Is Sending More Bombs. appeared first on The Intercept.

by Nicole Brown* Dovie Coleman, considered one of the “founding mothers” of the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO), was affectionately known as the “human tornado”. Her boldness and highly effective organizing strategies demonstrated her strategic acumen and leadership centered on the issues affecting those impacted by the system of poverty in Chicago neighborhoods. Coleman was […]

Greg Stoker goes live to unpack Israel’s latest airstrikes in Lebanon, the propaganda fueling it, and what this means for Hezbollah.

The post Why Israel Can’t Win in Lebanon: Greg Stoker Explains appeared first on MintPress News.

Supporters and detractors of mining both recognise the rapid economic, social and political change that mining brings can completely transform societies, which is certainly so in Indonesia, where the research for my new book Undermining Resistance: The governance of participation by multinational mining corporations took place.

The post Undermining Resistance appeared first on Progress in Political Economy (PPE).

At least until Trump does JV Last reminisces about America’s halcyon days when winning the popular vote meant that you’d also win the electoral college, something we all took for granted until 2000 when we learned otherwise. (Ye, it happened once before in the 1870s but nobody gave it much of a thought after that.) He talks about all the variables, including the impact of late-breaking news about one side or the other,and how these variables have changed over the years and concludes: Unless Harris expands her lead over Trump to greater than a +5 margin on Election Day, we’re in coin-flip territory for the next 42 days. Yeah. This is one of the reasons I really wish the news media would be careful about how they frame the polling. Here’s the bad news we can definitely count on: Not being able to see over the electoral horizon is a problem because we know what Trump is going to do on Election Day: He’s going to claim victory. His voters will believe him, and this in turn will cause Republican elites to support his claims, irrespective of evidence.

The Washington Post’s Ashley Parker with a long overdue proper description of Trump’s campaign theme: In Donald Trump’s imaginary world, Americans can’t venture out to buy a loaf of bread without getting shot, mugged or raped. Immigrants in a small Ohio town eat their neighbors’ cats and dogs. World War III and economic collapse are just around the corner. And kids head off to school only to return at day’s end having undergone gender reassignment surgery. The former president’s imaginary world is a dark, dystopian place, described by Trump in his rallies, interviews, social media posts and debate appearances to paint an alarming picture of America under the Biden-Harris administration. It is a distorted, warped and, at times, absurdist portrait of a nation where the insurrectionists who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to deadly effect were merely peaceful protesters, and where unlucky boaters are faced with the unappealing choice between electrocution or a shark attack.

In an open letter, activist Zoe Rogers describes the horrors of war in Gaza and her emotional drive to confront the UK’s complicity in arms sales to Israel.

The post A Letter From Jailed Palestine Action Activist Zoe Rogers appeared first on MintPress News.

You betcha In her newsletter today, Margaret Sullivan discusses the astonishing fact that media organizations are sitting on a trove of hacked emails from the Trump campaign and refusing to publish them, in stark contrast to their behavior in 2016 when they eagerly pounced on similarly hacked emails from the Clinton campaign. She asks herself, what if it these were hacked emails from the Biden or Harris campaign. Would they be similarly protected? A group of well-known journalists got together last week to kick this topic around at the behest of Steve Adler, the former top editor of Reuters who now runs an ethics initiative at NYU. Adler moderated a panel including Ben Smith of Semafor who — when he was the editor of BuzzFeed News — famously published the so-called Steele dossier. That dossier was full of unverified and in some cases salacious information about Trump, much of which has turned out to be untrue. The other panelists were Sewell Chan, the new editor of Columbia Journalism Review, and Kathleen Carroll, the former executive editor of the Associated Press.

“‘I will protect women at a level never seen before. They will finally be healthy, hopeful, safe and secure,’ Trump said. ‘Their lives will be happy, beautiful, and their lives will be great again. So women, we love you. We’re going to take care of you.’ The former president said women won’t have to think about abortion because decisions about regulating it are now left to the states.”
— Los Angeles Times, 9/21/24

The people of Dune are thirstier, sandier, less safe in the dunes, and unhappier now than they were four years ago. I am also unhappier now than I was four years ago. That’s the last time I ruled this planet, or, as you may recall, the last time Dune (or “Arrakis” to be “politically correct”) was great, again.

Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans got a little bit of good news over the weekend with some highly respected polls coming in showing that Kamala Harris is continuing to grow a lead over Donald Trump. According to the NBC poll, Harris leads by 5 points nationally and has received a mind-boggling 16 point bump in favorability since July. NBC reports that it’s “the largest increase for any politician in NBC News polling since then-President George W. Bush’s standing surged after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.” It appears that the more people see of her, the more they like her. The CBS News Poll found Harris up 52-48 percent nationally and 51-49 percent in the battlegrounds. Importantly, the poll found that views of the economy have improved a bit and her numbers on that issue have improved with them. Those who are voting on personal qualities favor Harris 66-33% and those who are voting on “policy” are 50% for her and 50% for Trump. G Elliot Morris of 538, posted this on Sunday night: That does throw some cold water on any euphoria Harris supporters might be feeling.

Stoking and exploiting racist fears of immigrants is essentially all that Trump is running on.

The post Trump’s Conspiracy Theory Campaign appeared first on The Intercept.

In this episode of The Watchdog, Lowkey is joined by co-host Mnar Adley and former Labour Shadow Cabinet member Chris Williamson and his communications officer Ammar Kazmi to discuss the limitations of the political systems in the US and UK.

The post How the Democrats and Labour Party Protect the Status Quo in the West appeared first on MintPress News.

Mark Robinson’s sinking campaign N.C. Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, Republican candidate for governor, had a pretty lousy weekend. He’s looking at a blue Monday too (CNN): Several top operatives on Republican Mark Robinson’s campaign for North Carolina governor have stepped down, just days after a CNN report uncovered inflammatory comments the candidate made on a porn website. Robinson’s campaign announced Sunday evening that general consultant and senior adviser Conrad Pogorzelski III, campaign manager Chris Rodriguez, finance director Heather Whillier and deputy campaign manager Jason Rizk have stepped down from the campaign. Pogorzelski confirmed the news when reached by CNN. “The reports are true that I, along with others from the campaign have left of our own accord,” he told CNN in a statement. Republicans expect Robinson to lose. Reports suggest he is persona non grata at Trump-Vance rallies in the state. Trump frets that Robinson’s drag on the slate will cost him North Carolina’s 16 electoral votes and the presidency (and in due course, his freedom).