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Progressive Politics
jacobin.com
Everything seems to be coming up Democrats. The party is still riding its wave of excitement over its “brat” new nominee, Donald Trump and his campaign are floundering, and their candidate has just widened her lead over him after a debate most everyone agreed Trump lost badly. What could possibly stop this kind of momentum? Another dumb, disastrous quagmire in the Middle East could. In their euphoric haze, Democrats and the Kamala Harris campaign have been doing their best the past two months to more or less ignore the ongoing, bloody tumult in the Middle East, which was already on the brink of tipping over into a region-wide war back when Joe Biden was still on the ticket. The most dramatic sign was yesterday’s rash of Hezbollah pager explosions, which wounded 2,800 people across Lebanon and killed twelve, including two young children, and which an aide to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeared to take credit for in a tweet If Democrats are hoping Harris might get a rally-round-the-flag bump in the event of US troops getting killed by Hezbollah or Iranian proxies, and so possibly shift public opinion in favor of war, they should be careful. If the wanton slaughter in Gaza isn’t enough to make them cut Israel off, then Harris and the Democrats might want to at least think about their own political futures and take some similar advice: You might prefer to ignore the chance of regional war, but a regional war won’t ignore you.
theintercept.com
In a Brooklyn subway station on Sunday afternoon, police shot and injured three people and a fellow New York Police Department officer over a $2.90 fare. This is what safety and security looks like in Mayor Eric Adams’s New York, where problems of poverty and hardship are met with policing and state-sanctioned violence. At around 3 p.m. Sunday, at the Sutter Avenue stop in Brownsville, Brooklyn, a 37-year-old man allegedly evaded paying the subway fare. According to reports, two police officers pursued this man up three flights of stairs and confronted him on the station platform. Police say the man pulled out a knife. Both officers opened fire on the man, piercing him with several bullets, while also striking two bystanders; one of the officers was hit with friendly fire. One of the bystanders, a 49-year-old man, is in critical condition in the hospital from a bullet wound to the head.
www.thecollector.com
It’s common for people to claim they dislike both the Democratic and Republican parties. Are there any other political parties? Do they ever win any elections?
bigthink.com
The world isn’t ending! But we are likely at the beginning of a profound transformation.
www.commondreams.org
One expert even asked if Israel's United Nations membership should be reconsidered given the country "seems to have zero respect" for the world body.
Now obviously we all espouse ranked voting, but the most popular rule—the single transferable vote—is known to sometimes eliminate candidates for getting too many votes, which is what happened in the 2022 Alaska special election (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monotonicity_criterion#Runoff_voting for an explanation of how this happens). So, which voting rule do you like the most? I'm new to this world, but so far the Dowdall system seems like a good compromise.
www.commondreams.org
The new research, said one union leader, provides Democrats with a "clear roadmap to winning back" working-class voters.
truthout.org
In praising fossil fuels alongside clean energy, Kamala Harris echoed past Republican talking points.
www.gq.com
The Pentagon is the world’s biggest consumer of fossil fuels—and agent of climate change.
boltsmag.org
The Alaska Federation of Natives is hoping to defeat a November ballot measure that would repeal the state’s new election rules, adopted just four years ago.
The Kiffness
www.middleeasteye.net
At least nine people killed, including 10-year-old girl, as blasts were reported across Lebanon and Syria
www.propublica.org
## Devin Nunes, the former congressman who runs the company behind Truth Social, traveled to North Macedonia as former President Trump vies to once again shape U.S. foreign policy.
Kravits
truthout.org
Secretary of State Antony Blinken has repeated an unverified Israeli claim about its killing of at least 18 people, including six UN employees, in its strike of a school in Gaza this week — even as he supposedly called on Israel to do more to protect humanitarian sites in its genocide of Palestinians in the region. On Thursday, Blinken said, “we need to see humanitarian sites protected, and that’s something that we continue to raise with Israel.” He added, without evidence, that Hamas soldiers had been using the al-Jaouni school-turned-shelter that Israel attacked on Wednesday as a command center, and therefore bore responsibility for Israel’s bombs. This remark, made in a press conference, comes despite Israeli officials providing zero substantial evidence of this claim and Israel’s pattern of using this exact excuse as a guise to continue committing genocide in Gaza.
boltsmag.org
Candidates are debating how easy to make mail voting and direct democracy. And in some states, election deniers are still bidding to take over the system.
www.motherjones.com
## The consequences of this election could extend for millennia.
I've come to learn there is no discernible difference between Democrats and Zionists. Their entire argument hangs on changing the topic of debate as rapidly as possible. They cannot engage with a subject. They can only shift the blame. Zionists will tell you Genociding people is the lesser evil by fearmongering about Hamas. Democrats will tell you Genociding people is the lesser evil by fearmongering about Trump
www.commondreams.org
In an incident all but completely ignored by the U.S. corporate media, a man identified as Matt Nelson set himself alight near the Israeli Consulate in Boston at around 8:15 pm local time on Wednesday, September 11. "We are slaves to capitalism and the military-industrial complex. Most of us are too apathetic to care," Nelson continued. "The protest I'm about to engage in is a call to our government to stop supplying Israel with the money and weapons it uses to imprison and murder innocent Palestinians, to pressure Israel to end the genocide in Gaza, and to support the [International Criminal Court] indictment of [Israeli Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu and other members of the Israeli government." "A democracy is supposed to serve the will of the people, not the interests of the wealthy," he added. "Take the power back. Free Palestine." NBC Boston and other local media took flak from critics on social media, who noted that the outlets chose to report the incident's location as "outside the Four Seasons Hotel" instead of by the Israeli Consulate.
www.commondreams.org
Sure, there might be a few people who will drink from the doomer cup and curl into fetal surrender. But there will be far more who will take this message and fight back.
www.commondreams.org
Days after Secretary of State Antony Blinken signaled that there would be no U.S. inquiry into Israel's killing of Turkish American activist Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi in the occupied West Bank last week, Sen. Bernie Sanders on Friday called on the Department of Justice to open an investigation of the young campaigner's death. Sanders noted that both U.S. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, the 2024 Democratic presidential nominee, both called for "full accountability" for Eygi's killers. "Let's be clear: There will be no accountability if the United States defers to the extremist Israeli government to investigate its own actions," he said in a statement.
www.commondreams.org
Kroger executives have "proven they'll take advantage of their customers to bolster their profits," said watchdog Accountable.US.
www.motherjones.com
## The “somewhat threatening” messages sent to ActBlue users are part of a campaign of baseless allegations against the fundraising platform.
www.middleeasteye.net
The Green Party of England and Wales has voted to recognise Israel's actions in Gaza as a genocide, becoming the first major British political party to do so. Having made Gaza a prominent plank of its campaign in several areas during the July general election, the party won an unprecedented four seats in parliament. The motion, which was passed at the party's annual conference on Sunday afternoon, branded Israel's assault on Gaza a "genocide" - and declared support for the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions (BDS) movement
zeteo.com
One week has passed since US-backed Israeli forces shot and killed 26-year-old US citizen Ayşenur Eygi as she demonstrated against US-condemned illegal settlement activity in the West Bank. And the White House has still not reached out to the victim’s family. Since the shooting, Eygi’s family has made repeated appeals to the US government for an independent investigation, and for at least a simple phone call from US leaders. “No one from the investigation has contacted us,” said Vivi, a volunteer with Faz3a, a group leading a campaign to provide protective presence to Palestinians against illegal Israeli settler activity. **“So, it’s a bit frustrating, because what kind of investigation are you doing if you aren’t even talking to the people who are right next to her when she was killed.”**
www.thetimes.com
Students are one of the biggest contributors to rising economic inactivity, with deteriorating mental health a key factor
www.middleeasteye.net
More than half a dozen groups representing human rights organisations, former diplomats, and activists have filed briefs urging a US federal court to rehear a case alleging the Biden administration is complicit in genocide in Gaza. In February, a US federal judge in Oakland, California, dismissed a lawsuit accusing the Biden administration of failing to prevent a genocide in Gaza,** saying that the court did not have jurisdiction over the issue**. The ruling was a legal blow to Palestinian plaintiffs' who are either in Gaza or have family members there. The amicus curiae briefs were filed on Monday and argue that the court should review its decision not to weigh in on whether the US president’s action violates the law when engaging in foreign policy. “The Panel’s decision is one of profound importance, doing serious damage to Congress and the Judiciary, the rule of law, and the United States’ credibility in the world,” one brief filed by former US intelligence officers and diplomats said. "US statutes prohibit committing or assisting genocide and mass atrocities, mankind’s worst crime”.
www.marxist.com
Marxist.com
theintercept.com
A St. Louis County, Missouri, judge upheld the murder conviction of Marcellus Williams, ruling that a prosecutor who contaminated key evidence by handling it without wearing gloves before Williams’s trial had not acted in “bad faith,” but instead was merely following his normal procedure. Williams maintains his innocence in the killing. No crime scene evidence linked him to the murder inside Picus’s home, and Williams long argued that testing of the weapon used to kill Picus could prove he was innocent. The trial judge denied his attorneys’ request to test the knife for DNA before trial, and he was convicted in 2001 based on the questionable testimony of two informants. DNA testing done in 2016, however, revealed unknown genetic material on the knife’s handle. Based in part on the unidentified DNA, Bell filed a motion in January to vacate Williams’s conviction, invoking a relatively new Missouri law that allows elected prosecutors in the state to undo convictions they believe their offices wrongly obtained. The court was scheduled to hold an evidentiary hearing on the case, where a special-appointed counsel was slated to argue that Williams should be freed. Yet additional testing on the knife revealed at the last minute that neither Larner nor his investigator could be excluded as the source of the unknown DNA. In other words, whatever crime scene DNA might have been on the knife was irrevocably lost by the prosecution team’s handling of it before Williams’s trial. Rojo Bushnell, of the Midwest Innocence Project, said Williams’s legal team would continue to seek relief via the courts and Gov. Mike Parsons, who could grant clemency. “We will continue pursuing every possible option to prevent Mr. Williams’s wrongful execution,” she said in her statement. “There is still time … to ensure that Missouri does not commit the irreparable injustice of executing an innocent person.”
substack.com
Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib on Thursday called out her state’s Democratic attorney general, and vowed to help “fight” the criminal charges against 11 pro-Palestine protestors at the University of Michigan. “Instead of getting justice, not one criminal charge in the Flint Water Crisis, you're going to spend time in trying to use the power of your office to silence people's First Amendment right,” she said, adding: “Literally, we have protests and marches for Black Lives Matter, for immigrant rights, for climate, for reproductive health, nothing. But when it's for Palestine, all of a sudden we have people saying, what Constitution?” Hasan asked Tlaib how she herself was thinking about November—and the Democratic nominee for president. “This question comes up a lot, but it's like, why is it on us and not on the party?” she responded. “I mean, look, this is real: a majority of Americans want us to end the support of the genocide,” prompting applause from the room. Mehdi floated the question once more, **asking Tlaib whether she had endorsed Harris — upon which Georgia state Rep. Ruwa Romman, another panelist, chimed in. “Hey hold on, I offered it and it was rejected**, so like I don’t even know if they want it,” prompting the room to applaud once more. **“Real talk: do they want it?”**
theintercept.com
The Iraq war — sold on lies and bungled in its prosecution — has become the embodiment of American hubris in the 21st century. Today, those same diehard war hawks — the very people who planned and carried out the Iraq invasion — are proudly throwing their full support behind Vice President Kamala Harris in the November presidential election. These hawks say they’re endorsing Harris largely to stop Donald Trump — citing his conduct and “chaotic leadership” — but these prominent conservatives are backing the Democratic nominee because their visions for U.S. foreign policy increasingly appear to be aligned. The Democratic and Republican parties are more unified than ever in their commitment to preserving American hegemony and preventing the multipolar world from emerging. The party’s 2024 platform also reflects this rightward shift. A section from the 2020 platform on ending forever wars and opposing regime change was completely removed in 2024. The Democratic Party went from calling for an end to U.S. support for Saudi Arabia’s brutal war in Yemen to championing the Biden administration’s plan for a normalization deal between Israel and the Persian Gulf monarchy — a plan that could also put American lives on the line to protect the Saudi dictatorship for decades to come.
newsroom.co.nz
We’re all doomed, says freshwater ecologist Dr Mike Joy