August 23, 2024 ❧ The DNC snubs Palestinian speakers, Ron DeSantis loses big, and the Ukraine war spills into Africa

Plus: RFK Jr. drops out, a landlord tries to extort a dead woman, and Swedish crows collect cigarette butts 

My dad was a newsmaker.

CROOKS vs. SICKOS (Or, “What's going on with our politicians and oligarchs?”)

❧ The Democratic National Committee refused to let any Palestinian speaker onstage at this week’s convention. Pro-Palestinian delegates, including those from the Uncommitted national movement, spent months negotiating with the party in hopes that it would allow a Palestinian American speaker, or a doctor who has worked in Gaza, to speak at the convention. The DNC allowed Rachel Goldberg and Jon Polin, an Israeli-American family whose son was taken captive by Hamas ten months ago, to give a heart-rending speech in which they called for the release of hostages and an end to the war. But the Democrats did not grant a Palestinian-American that same dignity.

In an interview with Mother Jones, Uncommitted movement leader and Michigan delegate Abbas Alawieh said his group made numerous efforts at compromise. He offered a myriad of different speakers for them to choose from, promising that they would unequivocally endorse Kamala Harris and that the party would have the ability to vet the speech beforehand. He says that, throughout the week, the party told him that they were “considering it.” But late on Wednesday night, he received a call that they would not be granted a speaking slot. Alawieh, who has been a Democratic congressional staffer since 2018, said he was “stunned” by the betrayal.

Alawieh and his fellow delegates speak outside

the convention center, since they're not allowed to inside.

(Image: Aaron Navarro via Twitter)

It would have cost Democrats nothing to give someone just a few minutes to speak about the Palestinian plight. As Sophie Hurwitz writes for Mother Jones:

This was the smallest and most immediately achievable of the Uncommitted movement’s demands, a matter of simple representation. Their larger goals—a ceasefire, an arms embargo, the end to the killing of thousands of Palestinian children with American bombs—went unmentioned. And, nonetheless, the answer, after weeks of silence, was “no.” 

The DNC featured speeches from Uber’s chief lawyer, the former CEO of American Express, the daughter of a Nicaraguan Contra, and at least seven Republicans. But giving the stage to Palestinian-American Georgia state legislator Ruwa Romman for a measly two minutes was apparently a bridge too far, even though her speech (which you can read in full here) was totally laudatory toward the Harris campaign and praised the Democrats as a “beautiful, multifaith, multiracial, and multigenerational coalition.” 

This is a profound show of contempt and disrespect towards everyone with a modicum of concern for the Palestinian people. There is no political excuse for this, either. In fact, it’s the opposite. The overwhelming majority of Americans support a permanent end to the war, and recent polls show that in critical swing states, Harris would gain much more support than she would lose were she to achieve a ceasefire or impose an arms embargo on Israel. 

Democrats appear to have permanently alienated a lot of potential voters with their latest display, including the group Muslim Women for Harris-Walz, which withdrew its endorsement of the candidate and formally disbanded after a Palestinian speaker was rejected. And it’s hard to blame them. It’s bad enough that Democrats have been lying to us on the substance of the issue: claiming to be working tirelessly for a “ceasefire” (as Harris did in her acceptance speech last night) less than two weeks after giving Israel $20 billion in military aid. But they couldn’t even stomach giving a cursory, symbolic acknowledgement of Palestinians’ humanity. 

Uncommitted delegates Ruwa Romman, Andy Levin, and Leyla Elabed spoke with Mehdi Hasan of Zeteo about being denied a voice at the DNC.  (Full video at Zeteo)

PAST AFFAIRS

Stephen Prager writes that “Our Leaders and Media Have Totally Normalized Anti-Palestinian Racism”

In other news…

• While most of us were focused on the awful foreign policy positions in their platform, the Democrats also quietly removed the passage calling for the abolition of the death penalty, which has been in their platform since 2016. It just so happens that Alabama is currently using a particularly gruesome new form of capital punishment as we speak (more on that in a bit). It would be nice if one of the major parties would oppose it. (Huffington Post)
  
  
• There's also been very little discussion of Medicare for All at the convention, with only a few progressive figures like Bernie Sanders and Pramila Jayapal even mentioning it. (New York Times)
  
  
• In an apparent effort to appear neutral after savaging the Republican convention for lying voluminously, fact-checkers have been issuing some absurdly pedantic and sometimes flat-out incorrect corrections to speakers at the Democratic convention. The New York Times, Washington Post, and PolitiFact have all been caught this week bending over backwards to call objectively true criticisms of Donald Trump—including that he wants to cut Medicare, wants to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and won’t accept the result of the election—“false” or “misleading.” (Columbia Journalism Review)

• There was also a “maggot incident” at the DNC. Police are investigating after “saboteurs” placed the bugs in the breakfast buffet served to delegates. While no culprit has been identified, it has been pointed out that protesters have previously placed bugs in the hotel room of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last month when he visited Washington. (The Guardian)
  
  
• Speaking of pests, the Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh has been seen skulking around the DNC in a ridiculous disguise, including a “White Dudes for Harris” shirt. He is apparently doing viral marketing for his upcoming movie about race in America, titled Am I Racist?. Given Walsh’s past statements on the subject (including that “All of us today would be in a worse spot if slavery never existed”), this new film might manage to be even more prejudiced and ignorant than his documentary about trans people. (Read our review of that cinematic disaster here!) 

Photo: Joe Perticone via Twitter

• MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell was also there and also in disguise, having shaved his iconic mustache. Unfortunately, his “undercover” mission did not last very long, as he immediately got into a shouting match about election fraud with a 12-year-old. (New Republic)

Correction: LOST a shouting match about election fraud to a 12-year-old.

• A federal judge in Texas—it’s always Texas—has struck down the Biden administration’s ban on “noncompete agreements,” which drive wages down and make it harder for workers to find new jobs in the same industry if they lose their original one. It’s a major setback for labor reform in the U.S., and a spokesperson for the Federal Trade Commission says the agency is considering an appeal. (Reuters)
  
  
• Wall Street investors reportedly got access to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ new jobs report—which showed 818,000 fewer jobs than was previously estimated—15 minutes before it was officially released, raising big questions about corruption and insider trading. (New York Times)
  
  
• Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has suspended his campaign for president and endorsed Donald Trump. This may indicate that Trump has cut a deal with Kennedy, and agreed to offer him the health secretary job after all. Kennedy’s falcons, brain worm, and dead bear cub could not be reached for comment. (New York Times)

Just because Kennedy drops out, does not mean the

brain worm can’t continue to run as an Independent.

• Every 2024 presidential candidate, in both parties, supports expanding the corn-based alternative fuel ethanol. But, as is normally the case with things supported by both parties, ethanol is actually terrible. (New Republic)

From the Current Affairs Big Book of Amusements

• J.D. Vance visited a donut shop. The result was unnerving and upsetting in a way that only he could make possible.

The most delicious kind of donut: “Whatever makes sense.” 

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AROUND THE STATES

❧ Governor Ron DeSantis’s preferred school-board candidates absolutely flopped in the latest round of elections. As you probably know by now, school board elections are a cornerstone of the right-wing culture war DeSantis and his cronies have been waging in Florida. This year, DeSantis personally endorsed 23 candidates for his state’s primary elections, many of them affiliated with the ultra-right-wing parents’ group “Moms for Liberty.” (You remember them. They’re the ones who got the comic-book version of the Diary of Anne Frank banned from Vero Beach High School, and who have sued to block Title IX protections for transgender youth.)

On Tuesday, though, Florida voters roundly rejected DeSantis’s choices. Out of the 23 candidates he endorsed, only six of them actually won. Eleven lost outright, and another six races were too close to call, leading to a runoff. On her Substack page, independent journalist Erin Reed has a helpful breakdown, with losses in red, wins in green, and runoffs in yellow: 

Image from the DeSantis campaign, edited by Erin in the Morning

Last year Josh Cohen of the Ettingermentum blog wrote that “transphobia was, and is, the dog that couldn’t hunt” in U.S. elections, and that analysis is looking more accurate by the day. In the space of less than a year, Ron DeSantis has gone from being a credible candidate for president to eating dirt in local school-board races, largely because of his laser-beam focus on purging public schools of any mention of LGBTQ people. It turns out that the average American, even in a firmly red state like Florida, isn’t obsessed with policing other people’s lives and gender expression the way a lot of Republican politicians are. In fact, when voters are asked what issues they’re concerned about, culture wars over gender and sexuality don’t even crack the top ten. On top of that, Americans don’t like being told what to read, or what to discuss in class. If you push the issue hard enough, it can even rile them up enough to come out and vote against you. As long as that’s the case, the GOP has a serious problem on its hands. 

In other news…

• Defense lawyers in Alabama are trying to prevent the execution of a prisoner, Carey Dale Grayson, via nitrogen gas suffocation—a method of capital punishment that United Nations human rights experts have condemned as “gruesome” and “nothing short of State-sanctioned torture.” If the current plans go forward, Grayson would be the third Alabama prisoner to die in this way, after the killing of Kenneth Smith in January and the scheduled execution of Alan Eugene Miller in September. This is a barbaric practice that needs to be banned outright. (Associated Press)
  
  
• New York state has granted the city permission to start evicting migrants from homeless shelters after 60 days. Eviction notices have already been issued to more than 20,000 people, leaving many families, including children, left without anywhere to stay. It is effectively the end of New York City’s 42-year-old “right to shelter” guarantee. (The City)
  
  
• The American Civil Liberties Union is suing the city of Medford, Oregon, alleging that its police department illegally monitored the social media accounts of local mutual aid groups, including a harm-reduction nonprofit that gives out free Naloxone for drug overdoses. (Oregon Public Broadcasting)
  
  
• Georgia’s Governor Brian Kemp continues to defend his policy of requiring Medicaid recipients to work at least 80 hours a month—a requirement which only the “Georgia Pathways” Medicaid program has among all 50 states. (Associated Press)

Kemp recoils in disgust at the thought of free healthcare. 

(Image: Wikimedia Commons)

• The Department of Justice is pursuing a civil rights investigation into claims of widespread violence, sexual abuse, and mismanagement at the Trousdale Turner Correctional Center, a private prison run by the notorious CoreCivic corporation. (The Tennesseean)
  
  
• A landlord in San Antonio, Texas tried to charge the family of an elderly woman more than $15,000, claiming she’d broken her apartment lease… by dying. They swiftly reversed course after public backlash, but it’s a great reminder that no money-grab is too ludicrous or distasteful for U.S. landlords to attempt. (NBC News 4 San Antonio)
  
  
• Chick-Fil-A…yes, that Chick-Fil-A…is launching a streaming service that will reportedly focus mostly on “unscripted” TV shows. We can’t even begin to imagine what that will look like. (Maybe Paul Ryan’s Gender-Conforming Clothes Race?) Whatever it is, you probably shouldn’t delete your Netflix and Hulu accounts. You’ll need something to watch on Sundays. (Deadline)

Amusement by Mort Todd and Ryan Darrah from Current Affairs Magazine, Issue 44, September/October 2023.  

AROUND THE WORLD

❧ The war between Russia and Ukraine is spilling over into Africa, with deadly consequences. It’s now been more than two years since Russia’s initial invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and as wars between European powers tend to do, the conflict has become a major problem for people in Africa. 

Across the continent, and especially in its northern half, Russia has been contracting out its infamous Wagner Group mercenaries to various conflict zones. Among other places, they’re currently fighting in the Central African Republic, Mali, Libya, and Sudan, usually as “counterterrorism” or “security” forces. The relationship is a nuanced one. On the one hand, mercenaries fight for whoever will pay them; that’s nothing new. But on the other, Wagner is definitely an instrument of Russian paramilitary power with close ties to the Kremlin, and part of Russia’s overall strategy to gain geopolitical influence in Africa. So there’s always been a danger that wherever they go will become another front in the war with Ukraine—and increasingly, that’s exactly what’s happening. 

(Chart: Statista)

Since December 2021, Wagner has been contracted to the government of Mali in its ongoing war against Tuareg rebel groups and Al Qaeda affiliates—a role that’s become even more prominent since Mali ejected the French military in 2022. And on July 29 of this year, Andriy Yusov—a senior official in the Ukrainian intelligence services—boasted that his agency had provided important intel to some of those Tuareg militants, giving them “all the information they needed, which allowed [them] to carry out their operation against the Russian war criminals.” In the attack in question, at least 84 Wagner fighters and 47 soldiers in the Malian military died. 

As Yusov said, the Wagner Group’s mercenaries could fairly be described as “war criminals.” Human Rights Watch has documented their use of “indiscriminate drone strikes” against Malian civilians, among other abuses. But for Ukraine to step in and encourage even more violence isn’t helping anything. It can only prolong and intensify the war, turning Mali into a proxy battleground. Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger have now cut diplomatic ties with Ukraine over the incident, and it’s hard to blame them. For centuries, countries in Europe have made their squabbles everyone else’s problem, and innocent people in Africa have been caught in the crossfire; that’s one of the bitterest forms of imperialism and colonialism there is. It can’t be allowed to continue. 

Wagner Group mercenaries in Mopti, Mali.

(Image: All Eyes on Wagner via Twitter)

In other news…

• As expected, Venezuela’s supreme court has formally certified Nicolás Maduro as the winner of its presidential election. However, vote totals demonstrating his victory have still not been made public. Virtually every country in South America, including left-wing allies like Brazil and Chile, is crying foul, asking Maduro to either hold new elections or relinquish the presidency. But despite doubts about his legitimacy, Maduro appears determined to hang onto power, saying that the decision of his handpicked court is “definitive.” (The Guardian)
  
  
• A homeless man in Australia, who’d recently been released from jail, deliberately trespassed and started a small fire—all so he could go back to jail and at least have a roof over his head. That’s how bad the housing crisis has gotten there. (ABC)
  
  
• Also in Australia, workers are getting a “right to disconnect” from work-related communications while they’re off the clock, as a new law comes into effect on Monday. (Reuters)
  
  
• King Mohammed VI of Morocco has issued royal pardons for more than 4,800 cannabis farmers, making him significantly more progressive on drug policy than many U.S. governors. (Morocco World News)

We’re generally anti-king, but this guy made the right decision. 

(Image: Paul Kagame via Flickr)

• As Uruguay’s October 27 general election draws nearer, the leftists have a big lead in the polls. (BNAmericas)
  
  
• According to a special report by journalist Katie Dancey-Downs, the disturbing trend of book bans in school libraries has spread to the U.K., with more than half of British school librarians in a survey sample of 53 saying they’d been asked to remove titles from their shelves. (Index on Censorship)
  
  
• There is a famine in Sudan that is affecting 1 in 5 families in the country. But the U.N. has not officially declared a famine because the Sudanese government is denying that one is occurring. The government has allowed in enough aid for about 13,000 people and may soon give permission to bring in aid for 500,000 more. But it is a fraction of what is needed to fend off hunger in the country. (NPR)
  
  
• The government of Pakistan has been caught engaging in “transnational repression.” Disturbing audio obtained by DropSite News demonstrates that agents of the state kidnapped and tortured a citizen in an effort to coerce his brother, an expat living in Australia, to delete posts in support of recently ousted Prime Minister Imran Khan. DropSite also commissioned an animation to bring the unbelievable phone call to life: 

• The Chinese government is “opening up” more sectors of their economy, including healthcare and education, for both private investment and foreign capital. They also held a big 120th birthday celebration for Deng Xiaoping, who got the whole pro-market reform ball rolling in the first place. (South China Morning Post)
  
  
• In an effort to protect rainforests, a nonprofit in Peru is experimenting with a universal basic income program of $72 per month for some Indigenous Amazon communities. “Poverty is the biggest driver of deforestation in these areas,” said Isabel Felandro, the global head for Cool Earth. (The Guardian)

BIRD FACT OF THE WEEK

Crows are helping to keep Sweden beautiful!

Södertälje, a town about an hour outside Stockholm, had a problem. Its streets were covered with cigarette butts, which are by far Sweden’s largest source of litter. The city was spending a fortune on street cleaning, about 20 million kronor (nearly $2 million) per year. Facing a tight budget, they found a unique solution. 

They turned to a company called Corvid Cleaning, which enlists an army of native crows to clean the streets at a fraction of the cost. Crows are incredibly smart, capable of reasoning at the level of a seven-year-old child. They can recognize human faces, create tools, and develop trust. They are also able to distinguish between different types of trash. 

Is this ethical? Well, Corvid Cleaning founder Christian Günther-Hanssen says that “They’re wild birds taking part on a voluntary basis.” (Since crows don’t have to pay rent or buy food, this libertarian framing is arguably more true of their labor than that of humans.) The crows also don’t work for free: Corvid Cleaning created a device that allows them to deposit cigarette butts in exchange for small food rewards, like peanuts. 

The irony is, of course, hard to miss: We can train crows to throw out our rubbish, but we can’t train ourselves to do it? The good news is that, while crows have shown themselves willing to work for a time, they also have little patience for humans and their bullshit. Other places in Europe have tried to outsource street cleaning labor to crows, only to find the little sanitation workers on strike. A French theme park that tried to use crow labor found this out the hard way a few years ago. “They don’t play the game if they work too much,” The theme park’s president told the New York Times. “They are French,” he added. “We have to be careful with the unions.” If the crows wouldn’t work for peanuts in France, then you can bet they won’t in Sweden.