Heat Waves Scorch US; Crisis in Lebanon; World Bank Immune From Lawsuits

President Biden speaks on withdrawal from Afghanistan as the Taliban* gains ground. What was the US doing there for 20 years?

Tina Landis, environmental and social activist and the author of the book “Climate Solutions Beyond Capitalism,” talks to us about the heat dome that smothered the Pacific Northwest earlier last month, ending the hottest June on record, how this heatwave was not confined to the region and affected other regions of the world, causing hundreds of deaths and severely taxing the landscape and infrastructure of the places affected. We also talk about how climate change will affect disease spread by creating suitable environments for vectors, and what could be done to ameliorate this crisis that will harm generations to come. 

Rania Khalek is a producer and host for Breakthrough News. Her work has also appeared at Truthout, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, Al Jazeera America, The Nation, Salon, AlterNet, Vice and more. She talks to us about the current social and economic crisis affecting Lebanon that could provoke a total collapse of the country, how political elites aligned with US interests are insulating themselves from this crisis, and how the media narrative about Lebanon always links the situation to the relationship with the US, Iran and Israel. 

Terry Collingsworth, Executive Director of International Rights Advocates, and labor & human rights attorney specializing in trade and international labor rights issues, talks to us about a case the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit affirmed this week involving fishermen, farmers and others in Gujarat, India, who say a coal-fired power plant funded by the World Bank ruined their environment and their livelihoods, and how the court ruled that the World Bank is immune from lawsuits despite not enforcing its own environmental policies as written in the loan agreement.

Ted Rall, award-winning political cartoonist, columnist, and author of the book “The Stringer,” talks to us about Joe Biden addressing the nation on the Afghanistan withdrawal, about what the US was actually doing in Afghanistan for so long, and what the legacy of the invasion will be. We also talk about the evolving investigation into the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in Haiti, and the case of the strange housing crisis in Ketchum, Idaho.

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*The Taliban is a terrorist group, banned in Russia.