June 4, 2024 ❧ China's diabetes cure, elections in India and Mexico, and Mr. Netanyahu goes to Washington

Plus: Alabama is hiding death-penalty records, North Korea sends "filth balloons" flying, and Corgis are the new greyhounds

Don't you step on my blue suede news

STORIES THAT SHOULD BE BIGGER 

Why is the State of Alabama refusing requests for Kenneth Smith’s autopsy report?  

[Content warning: capital punishment]

As you might remember from our News Briefings on January 9 and 30, Kenneth Smith was the first person in the United States to be executed using the disturbing new method of nitrogen gas hypoxia. In the simplest terms, this means putting an airtight mask over a prisoner’s face and forcing them to breathe nitrogen, rather than air, until they suffocate to death. It’s been approved for use by Republican state leaders like Alabama’s Governor Kay Ivey and Louisiana's Governor Jeff Landry, who insist it’s perfectly humane. 

But when Smith was executed in Alabama on January 26, an eyewitness from the Associated Press reported that he “began to shake and writhe violently, in thrashing spasms and seizure-like movements.” The entire execution took 22 minutes, throughout which Smith showed obvious signs of pain and distress. Another journalist, who had previously observed four lethal injections, said his death was “more violent than any previous execution I’d witnessed in Alabama.” That makes sense, given the many warnings from organizations like the United Nations, Amnesty International, the ACLU, and members of the Christian and Jewish clergy that nitrogen hypoxia is a cruel, abhorrent way of killing. 

(Graphic: WKRG)

Now, officials in Alabama are trying to prevent anyone from looking at Smith’s autopsy report. On Substack, investigative reporter Beth Shelburne (who has also worked for Birmingham’s WBRC) writes that she filed an open records request for the report a week after Smith’s death, and was refused for a bizarre reason: 

According to [the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences], Kenneth Smith’s autopsy report isn’t publicly available because Escambia County District Attorney Stephen Billy notified them that the case “remains under criminal investigation.” But we already know [Alabama Department of Corrections] officials carried out the execution and Alabama’s top prosecutor lauded it as an achievement. Is Kenneth Smith’s execution being investigated as a possible criminal act? If so, who exactly is being investigated?

As Shelburne says, it’s difficult to see what the “investigation” would be. Instead, it looks more like the State of Alabama is trying to conceal the medical evidence that shows just how horrific nitrogen hypoxia is. If there’s a crime here, it was approving the execution in the first place, and people who care about human rights should keep putting pressure on Alabama’s leaders to tell the truth about it. 

CROOKS vs. SICKOS (or, "What's going on with our politicians?")

❧ Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been invited to speak to the U.S. Congress despite being an accused war criminal. The leaders of both parties signed onto the invitation, which described his visit as an act to “highlight America’s solidarity with Israel” as most of the world recoils in horror at the carnage in Gaza. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jefferies (D-NY) joined with Republicans in the cordial invitation. Schumer’s turn is particularly surprising since just months ago he called out Netanyahu for “allowing his political survival to take precedence over the best interests of Israel,” and urged him to resign. 

As Netanyahu plows ahead with a bloodcurdling invasion of Rafah, over the supposed objections of a Democratic president, Schumer and Jefferies would be well within their rights to tell him to go kick rocks. After all, Netanyahu has, in the past, openly aligned himself with the Republicans, spoken to Congress against Obama’s nuclear deal, and has signaled a desire to see Biden defeated by Trump. In the past, liberals have never had any issue distancing themselves from Netanyahu. In fact, he’s been a useful scapegoat that allows them to pretend that all of Israel’s problems are the result of his power hunger and coterie of far-right fanatics, rather than endemic to the project of creating an ethno-state. 

To their credit, anywhere from 50 to 100 Democrats are likely to skip the speech according to Axios, while Bernie Sanders has called Netanyahu “a war criminal” who “should not be invited to address a joint meeting of Congress.” But this is still, at best, a minority of the party. For many, including, Democratic leaders,’ “support of Israel” seems functionally indistinguishable from “support of Netanyahu.” They are funding his government and helping to prolong his political fortunes even after he wantonly steps over “red line” after “red line.” And they have responded with fury at war crimes charges against him. And even when it comes to token gestures like this speech, they don’t have the spine to say no to him.

The last time Netanyahu spoke to Congress in 2015, it was basically just a campaign speech for Republicans. (Photo: Heather Reed, Flickr)

❧ The Republican candidate for Missouri Secretary of State, 25-year-old Valentina Gomez, has been posting some extremely weird videos for her campaign. Back in February, she torched a stack of LGBTQ books with a flamethrower. Last month, she made another ad where she is seen jogging in a bulletproof vest, telling people, “Don't be weak and gay.” This week, she accused her former employer, the Purina pet food company (owned by Nestle), of “wanting to empower pedophiles,” due to its pro-LGBTQ stances and urged people to “feed your dog something that is not weak and gay.” (Calling things “weak and gay” is basically her campaign slogan. She seems nice.) 

And, of course, she wouldn’t be a young conservative influencer without a terrible rap:

In other news:

• Hunter Biden’s trial is beginning in Delaware. The President’s son is accused of lying about his history of drug use on a gun application back in 2018. (The New York Times)
  
  
• Less than a week after Trump’s conviction for falsifying business documents, Democrats are pursuing another inquiry after Trump told oil and gas executives that he’d give them tax breaks and loosen regulations in exchange for $1 billion in campaign donations. Apparently, he learned how to ask for bribes from Police Chief Wiggum. (The Guardian)
  
  
• Senator “Gold Bar” Bob Menendez of New Jersey is facing corruption charges, but the political machine that put him in office is now trying to set up his son with a seat in the House. (The Daily Beast)

AROUND THE STATES

❧ The Texas Republican Party—ever a bellwether for fresh new forms of insanity—held its state convention last week and has passed a tentative platform. Coming out of a convention where many speakers described themselves as engaging in “spiritual warfare” against the “demonic” godless left, it is a frightening blueprint for undisguised theocratic governance. 

The Texas GOP’s new platform included many of the planks of its 2022 platform. Editor-in-chief Nathan J. Robinson did a deep dive into that nightmarish document two years ago. It includes, among other things: 

• Eliminating nearly every federal tax and, by extension, the public services provided by those taxes including “all welfare programs”
• Fully legalized discrimination against gay people
• “Oppos[ing] all efforts to validate transgender identity” and banning any form of gender-affirming care before the age of 21
• The complete “abolition of abortion” and jailing of the doctors who perform them for homicide
• Banning “education involving race, discrimination, and racial awareness.”
• Requiring social studies classes to teach “American exceptionalism” and “the benefits of the free market system”
• “[Opposing] all efforts to classify carbon dioxide as a pollutant,” and, naturally, any efforts to mitigate their use

In 2024, they’ve upped the ante even further. The new platform advocates the death penalty as punishment for murdering someone under 15, and since it considers the “preborn” to be fully formed people and abortion to be “homicide,” then this implies that the death penalty would be extended to abortion providers and, as some legal scholars have suggested, abortion patients. The platform describes gender-affirming care for minors as “child abuse,” and supports banning it for anyone under 26 and even allowing parents access to their children’s medical records until the age of 26 if they are dependents. It advocates requiring public schools to teach the Bible and “Christian self-governance.”

But perhaps the most significant change—one that would make all the above changes easier to implement—would effectively bar Democrats from winning statewide elections. The platform advocates for the adoption of a constitutional amendment that would eliminate the popular vote, instead giving the election to whichever candidate wins the most counties. If you think the Electoral College is unrepresentative, this is even worse. It would effectively mean that you’d gain the same amount from winning King County, which has 216 residents, as you would from winning Harris County, which contains the city of Houston and more than 4.7 million people. If this were to be implemented, it would effectively guarantee that Republicans would win the governorship, both Senate seats, and other statewide offices in perpetuity. 

As the Texas Tribune reports,  “In 2022, [Republican] Gov. Greg Abbott carried 235 counties [out of 254], while Democrat Beto O’Rourke carried most of the urban, more populous counties and South Texas counties. Statewide, Abbott won 55% of the popular vote while O’Rourke carried 44%.” 

There is a chance that such an amendment could be struck down on Voting Rights Act grounds because it would seriously curtail the voting power of non-white voters who are largely concentrated into a small number of populous counties. But the Supreme Court has grown increasingly hostile to enforcing the VRA, so we can’t take anything for granted. Meanwhile, states are given pretty wide latitude to govern their own elections. In an era where Republicans are struggling to maintain power as a minority party, if Texas pulls something like this off, it could set an example of how the rural-urban divide could be exploited nationwide to create more one-party states. 

This is what Texas looks like broken down by county. Boy, howdy! That’s a lot of red. If each of these counties were worth one point, as the Texas GOP wants, they may as well not even have elections. (Graphic: Axios Austin)

But THIS is what Texas looks like if you take the populations of its counties into consideration. It turns out a lot of those red counties in the north and west have approximately six people living in them. (Graphic The Dallas Morning News)

❧ Vermont has passed groundbreaking “superfund” legislation that will require fossil-fuel companies to pay for the damage inflicted by climate-related disasters. As Dharna Noor writes for the Guardian, the new law allows Vermont’s government to “assess the total costs to the state from greenhouse gases emitted between 1995 and 2024, including the impacts on public health, biodiversity and economic development,” and charge companies who contributed to those emissions accordingly. It’s modeled after the EPA’s Superfund program, which similarly holds companies responsible for toxic waste leaks financially liable. A legal challenge from the industry is expected, but if it stands up in court, Vermont’s version of the “superfund” concept could be an important tool in forcing carbon-burning energy companies to stop creating so much pollution—before it’s too late. 

❧ A small town in Missouri is demanding justice for Teddy the Shih Tzu, a local dog who was deaf and blind, but still got shot by the cops. This is just the latest in a long string of incidents where U.S. police officers randomly kill dogs they perceive as a threat, something that happens as many as 10,000 times a year. It’s the most ridiculous one yet, too, since Teddy weighed just 13 pounds and lacked two of his senses—not exactly a menacing guy. 

The cop in question, Officer Myron Woodson, claims that he thought the dog had rabies, and the police department is defending him, leading to outrage in the community and a $1 million lawsuit from the nonprofit Animal League Defense Fund. The whole situation is stupid, ugly, and tragic, and it says a lot about the police as an institution. When you have a bunch of twitchy, insecure cops with guns running around, what happened to Teddy can easily happen to anyone, and that’s why we need to defund and disarm the police ASAP. 

Pictured: A terrifying sight, if you’re a cop. (Image: NBC News via YouTube)

❧ Jerry Seinfeld has taken a weird turn to the right. In a recent interview with the deeply tedious Bari Weiss, the comedian said he misses “dominant masculinity” in society, and that he believes people need a “sense of hierarchy.” Recently, he also mocked protesters for Gaza when they interrupted one of his standup shows. It’s unclear why Seinfeld is now talking like a bargain-bin Jordan Peterson, or why he thinks anyone would care about his political views, given that his most recent contribution to society was the Pop-Tarts movie. But hey, at least he’s talking to adults now. 

PAST AFFAIRS

In August 2023, Samuel Miller McDonald wrote about how Seinfeld and Friends, two of the 90s’ most beloved sitcoms, reflect the rapidly atomizing culture emerging at the time. Check out the full article here!

Just pure masculine energy. (Image: Wikimedia Commons)

❧ Complete exoneration: The driver from a recent viral video who showed up to a Zoom court hearing about his suspended drivers’ license… while driving… was innocent after all! The suspension was lifted in 2022, but never properly recorded, which forced Corey Harris—the driver—to spend two days in jail for something that wasn’t even a crime. It just goes to show, the criminal “justice” system in this country is anything but just. 

If he wanted to, Harris could probably sue over this little disaster. (Image: ABC News via YouTube)

In other news:

• Rupert Murdoch, now 93 years old, just got married for the 5th time. What was that saying about the good dying young again? (New York Daily News)
  
  
• The Hyundai corporation is accused of using child labor at its assembly plant in Luverne, Alabama, after a 13-year-old girl was found working 50 to 60 hours a week there. (CBS)
  
  
• Most of the world’s lunch meat—including everything provided to public school students and the military— is produced by a single company owned by a billionaire family with a long history of illegal activity. (The Lever Podcast)
  
  
• After the police killing of Tyre Nichols during a traffic stop, organizers in Memphis successfully passed an ordinance banning traffic stops for minor infractions like a burnt out tail light or a slightly outdated registration. But Tennessee’s governor Bill Lee essentially eviscerated the new measure by signing a law banning all local police reforms. (In These Times)
  
  
• Georgia may soon have a democratic socialist in its legislature, as DSA-endorsed candidate Gabriel Sanchez has defeated incumbent state Representative Teri Anulewicz in the Democratic primary. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

AROUND THE WORLD

❧ The results of India’s seven-week parliamentary election are rolling in. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will likely retain power, but has had a much weaker showing than exit polls predicted. For the first time since coming to power in 2014, his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) may not win an outright majority and could be forced to form a coalition with other parties. This is a major humiliation for Modi, who predicted that his coalition, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) would win 400 or more of the 543 seats in India’s lower house, the Lok Sabha. Instead, they may not even crack 300.

This is a pretty considerable rebuke to Modi’s elitist, Hindu supremacist politics. Many Indian commentators seem to think that Modi’s embrace of hate speech against Muslims on the campaign trail ultimately hurt him. Yogita Limaye, for the BBC News in Delhi pointed to campaign tactics, like calling Muslims “infiltrators” and inaugurating a Hindu temple at the site of a mosque destroyed by Hindu nationalists in the 1990s, as having “achieved the opposite” of its intended effect, “uniting Muslim minorities against the BJP” rather than galvanizing Hindus.

Others pointed to bubbling resentment among India’s working class. Amid rapid industrialization and a booming stock market, India’s rise as an economic powerhouse has been portrayed as a boon to Modi. But unemployment and poverty are still widespread. In a report that proved prescient, Krutika Pathi and Sheikh Saaliq wrote for the Associated Press days before the election that:

Only a small portion of India’s 1.4 billion people has been able to cash in on the good fortune…

Modi’s economic policies have failed to generate employment that moves people from low-paying, precarious work to secure, salaried jobs. With inequality, joblessness and underemployment soaring, they’ve become central themes of the election.

Even as India’s millionaires multiply, nearly 90% of its working-age population earns less than the country’s average annual income of around $2,770, according to a World Inequality Lab study. The top 1% own more than 40% of the country’s wealth, while the bottom 50% own just above 6%, the study found.

Modi’s major losses came from poorer, more rural parts of India, whom he had hoped to win over. As Menoka Doshi wrote in Bloomberg, “Rural Indians have just taught Modi and the stock markets a tough lesson — that millionaires are no measure of a country’s prosperity.” 

Projections as of Tuesday afternoon for the number of seats for each coalition. Not exactly the 400 seat landslide Modi expected.  (The Hindustan Times)

❧ Chinese scientists say they may have a cure for diabetes. As Dannie Peng writes for the South China Morning Post, the breakthrough comes from researchers at Shanghai’s Changzheng Hospital. Back in 2021, they gave a 59-year old male patient with Type 2 diabetes an experimental stem cell therapy, known as “islet transplant.” Just eleven weeks later, his pancreas resumed working normally, and he no longer needed insulin injections. A year later, he was even able to stop taking oral medication. Now, the scientists have published their findings in the journal Cell Discovery, where people smarter than us can read all the details. 

If it really works the way it’s described, this could be a life-changing discovery for the millions of people around the world who currently live with diabetes. It would also completely destroy the for-profit insulin industry. For the Baffler, Edward Ongweso Jr. and Athena Sofides recently wrote an in-depth history of what they call “The Insulin Empire,” and it’s truly horrifying. Although the original patent for insulin was sold to the University of Toronto for just $1 so everyone could benefit from it, companies like Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk have conspired to drive the price up through various underhanded means over the decades. Today, 1.3 million Americans with diabetes are forced to ration their doses—but thanks to China’s heavy state investment in science, the whole rotten scam may soon come crashing down on the profiteers’ heads. If you hear U.S. lawmakers who take donations from the pharmaceutical industry talking about China’s “unfair competition” in medicine soon, you’ll know why. 

And Now, Let’s Take a Moment to Point and Laugh at the Cato Institute:

❧ In response to a series of balloons that scattered propaganda leaflets over North Korea, Pyongyang is now sending its own balloons carrying “trash and filth” to the South. So far, South Korean authorities report that the balloons contain “nothing hazardous,” but are “dirty provocations no normal country would think of.” In a modest escalation, they’re considering blasting K-Pop music across the border in retaliation, since Kim Jong Un apparently hates it. For two nations with such a long history of violence between them, this is an amusingly low-stakes form of conflict, kind of like two neighbors throwing dog poop and pinecones back and forth across a fence. It’s certainly better than actual war. From now on, can we just settle all international disputes via nuisance balloon?

Deep in the heart of Pyongyang, an order goes out: “Deploy the filth.” (Image: The Japan News via Twitter)

In other news:

• Claudia Sheinbaum, the candidate for the left-wing Morena party, has been elected as Mexico’s next president. (Jacobin)
  
  
• France is sending trucks armed with machine guns to clamp down on unrest in its Pacific colony New Caledonia (The New Zealand Herald). In recent weeks, the indigenous Kanak people launched a series of uprising against a voting reform that gave more power to French nationals. (BBC)
  
  
• Ireland is going through a “nightmare” potato growing season, which may result in a shortage. (Salon)
  
  
• The Australian airline Qantas has agreed to pay a $100 million fine after it sold tickets for more than 8,000 flights that had already been canceled. (EuroNews)
  
  
• Thanks to climate change, Brazil has a lot more cases of dengue, a deadly infection that spreads from mosquitoes. (The Financial Times)
  
  
• Nayib Bukele, known mostly for his Bitcoin obsession and mass imprisonment of suspected gang members, was just sworn in for a second term as El Salvador’s President—and Donald Trump Jr. attended the ceremony. That seems like a bad sign. (Politico)
  
  
• Nigeria’s major labor unions have launched a massive general strike that has paralyzed the nation’s transportation, electricity, schools, and hospitals. The Nigerian Labour Congress and the Trade Union Congress say they will continue to strike until their government raises the minimum wage to keep up with the cost of living. (Semafor)
  
  
• In CounterPunch, Ramzy Baroud describes how surprising the International Criminal Court’s indictment of Israel is from a historical standpoint. “Out of 54 individuals indicted by the ICC since its inception in 2002, 47 are Africans, a fact that has rightly agitated governments, civil societies and intellectuals throughout the Global South for many years.”

DOG FACT OF THE WEEK

The town of Arcadia, California hosts semiannual Corgi races!

This year’s “Summer Corgi Nationals” were profiled in the New York Times and are somehow even more delightful than they sound. The three-day event draws corgi owners and appreciators from around the world to enjoy “everything that fans of the breed could want, including vendors of doggie attire and food trucks for both humans and canines.” As Times reporter Francesca Forquet writes, “The corgi theme was ever-present. Merchandise on display included corgi-themed pajamas and welcome mats, along with corgi-shaped headbands (for people) and custom-made goggles, bow-ties and hats (for dogs).”

Someone get this lovely lady a mint julep. (Photo: Francesca Forquet, The New York Times)

In 2012, a couple of corgi enthusiasts began to host “beach days,” for owners to meet up and frolic with their dogs. The attendance quickly ballooned to include “thousands of corgis.” The idea for a race grew out of the stumpy-legged breed’s tendency to get “the zoomies” and run around in circles, which one owner says makes their house “feel like a hurricane is coming through.” 

In 2018, the Corgi Nationals were spawned to filter that chaotic energy into the white-hot intensity of canine competition. Throughout the day, dozens of corgis (including household names like Oliver Oak Muffin, Sir Rockey Honey Pumpkin, Jimmy Big Bones, and Alfredo Linguine) participated in ten “heats,” that determined the most elite racers. They then gathered at the Santa Anita race track — which is normally reserved for horses — for the championship run. 

Photo: SoCal Corgi Nation

The winner of this year’s race was a dog named Captain, a seasoned veteran who’d previously taken home the racing title at Corgi Con in 2022 and nearly repeated in 2023. Having now taken the cup in two of the last three years, he has firmly cemented himself in the conversation for GCOAT (Greatest Corgi of All Time) 

Captain, apparently the Usain Bolt of corgis, celebrates the thrill of victory with his trainers. (Photo: corginationals on Instagram)

The winner of this year’s race was a dog named Captain, a seasoned veteran who’d previously taken home the racing title at Corgi Con in 2022 and nearly repeated in 2023. Having now taken the cup in two of the last three years, he has firmly cemented himself in the conversation for GCOAT (Greatest Corgi of All Time) 

But Captain will need to watch his large, furry posterior if he wants to maintain that status. Amid the festivities, the Corgi Nationals have also begun scouting the next generation of talent using a “corgi speed zone.” A new challenger is approaching: Mr. Corgington, who completed the 50-foot dash in an astonishing 1.894 seconds and punched his ticket for next year’s Winter Nationals. Corgington has made clear his intent to come for Captain’s title in the near future, posting a video of himself on Instagram set to the DJ Khaled track “All I Do is Win.” 

One hopes that Captain—a veteran athlete who has dealt with his share of doubters—will be able to stay focused and block out the noise.