❧ A nonprofit group believes it has identified Hind Rajab’s killer, and has filed charges with the International Criminal Court. As you may remember, Rajab was the six-year-old Palestinian girl who was murdered by the Israel Defense Forces, who fired 335 bullets into her family’s car, killing her, six family members, and two paramedics back in January 2024. Now, the nonprofit Hind Rajab Foundation believes it has identified the officer responsible for giving the killing order: Lieutenant Colonel Beni Aharon of the 401st Armored Brigade of the IDF. The foundation has submitted a war crimes complaint against Aharon at the Hague, and is demanding a warrant for his arrest. Given the severity of the crime, the ICC should grant it—and the United States, together with the rest of the world, should be putting pressure on Israel to hand Aharon over to face a fair trial. (The New Arab)
❧ Meanwhile, the victims of another genocide in Sudan are struggling to get justice. The United Nations’ International Court of Justice has dropped a genocide case brought against the United Arab Emirates. Last month, the Sudanese government brought the case, citing rampant war crimes by the UAE-backed Rapid Support Forces militia against ethnic minorities amid the country’s catastrophic civil war. The ICJ threw the case out by a vote of 14 to 2 not due to its merits, but because it “lacks jurisdiction.” When the UAE signed the 1948 Genocide Convention, it opted out of a clause allowing countries to sue one another. While Sudan can still attempt to bring charges against individual RSF members for their crimes, they are now severely limited in their efforts to hold the country funding those atrocities to account. (New York Times)
❧ The far-right Reform Party just won ten town councils in the UK, marking the first time it will hold actual power. The anti-immigrant party won 677 local seats across England, by far the most of any party that ran candidates. Its leader, Nigel Farage, is a sometime Elon Musk ally, and says he wants there to be “a DOGE in every country.” And with the feckless Labour Party and the widely loathed Tories continuing to lose support, it may not be long before he gets to bring that vision to the UK. (BBC)
❧ Things aren’t going so well for humanity, in general… But there may be some good news on the horizon for the endangered axolotl!A new study at a Mexican university has revealed that axolotls bred in captivity can survive in the wild. Axolotls are critically endangered, with fewer than 1,000 adults left in the wild as a result of climate change and environmental destruction. Conservationists and researchers have bred axolotls in captivity, but there were doubts about whether they could actually survive in the wetlands they traditionally call home. But the axolotls in the study thrived! This points to the possibility of a population rebound if enough wetlands can actually be restored. These weird little guys have a special place in our hearts here at Current Affairs (Shoutout to Seymour!), so we are thrilled to hear this news! (NPR)
Art by Ellen Burch from Current Affairs Magazine, Issue 45, November/December 2023
CROOKS vs. SICKOS (or, “What’s going on with our politicians and oligarchs?”)
❧ A disturbing piece published this weekend in New York Magazine reveals that Senator John Fetterman’s (D-PA) mental state was even more dire than we’d realized, and that his staff have gone to great lengths to hide his downward spiral from the public following a stroke in 2022. Fetterman’s transformation from a flawed but promising Berniecrat to a petulant, frothing reactionary is something this magazine has been keeping tabs on for a while (See here, here, and here.) But this article reveals that his staff and even his own family were deeply disturbed by his behavior behind the scenes: going on paranoid self-centered tirades, refusing to take his medications, and acting strangely and erratically, including nearly wandering off into traffic and getting into an argument with the airplane pilot when he refused to wear a seatbelt on a plane.
❧ A new executive order signed by Trump to “unleash” law enforcement just gave cops dangerous new power and freedom from accountability. It will give the Justice Department the power to rescind ongoing consent decrees against police departments for misconduct and threatens to criminalize public officials it decides have “obstructed” law enforcement. In misconduct cases, it orders the federal government to pay for cops’ legal representation. And perhaps most disturbingly,it directs the Defense Department to determine how the military can be used to “prevent crime,” which sounds dangerously close to martial law. (The Nation)
❧ A white woman, Shiloh Hendrix, has raised more than $700,000 on right-wing Twitter after she was filmed calling a Black, autistic 5-year-old the N-word. Popular influencers like Matt Walsh and Elijah Schaffer have promoted her crowdfunding campaign in response to efforts to “cancel” her, which put them in company with users who named themselves “Legalize segregation” and “Unapologetic racist” when making donations. These people seem a little racist, you guys!(New Republic)
❧ Attorney GeneralPam Bondi has spent the past week claiming that if it were not for Donald Trump, 75 percent of Americans would be dead. In a press conference to mark Trump’s 100th day in office, she bragged that the administration had seized 3,400 kilos of fentanyl, “which saved — are you ready for this, media? — 258 million lives.” Incredible work! Even more incredible is the speed with which the president has moved. The day before, Bondi tweeted out that the administration had “saved over 119 million lives,” meaning that Trump somehow managed to save nearly 140 million lives within 24 hours. If he keeps up at this rate, he will have saved every human beingon the planet from an overdose within the next two months! Or perhaps the attorney general is just making all of this up. But she’d never do something like that! (Rolling Stone)
The implication that each pill would have somehow killed 5.4 people is especially funny.
AROUND THE STATES
❧ The Trump administration has sued four states that have taken legal actions against the fossil fuel industry for its role in the climate crisis. Hawai’i was sued for launching a lawsuit alleging that oil companies misled the public about the role of their products in warming the planet, while Michigan was sued for planning to launch a similar lawsuit. New York and Vermont, meanwhile, have been sued over climate “superfund” laws, which require major polluters to pay to fix climate-related damage.
The administration has sued these states on the grounds that their actions stand in the way of Trump’s domestic energy policy and claimed he has the authority to do this under the federal Clean Air Act. As the Wall Street Journal reported last month, Big Oil has been directly lobbying the Trump administration to go after these laws to make some of its biggest legal headaches go away. They have also separately pushed for Congress to give them immunity to lawsuits related to their contributions to climate change. If there is ever going to be justice for the incalculable damage they’ve caused then holding them legally accountable is the only way.
❧ At UCLA, dozens of university police officers in full riot gear stormed a showing of the documentary The Encampments on Wednesday. The Encampments, which Alex Skopic recently reviewed in Current Affairs, is a compelling account of the pro-Palestine movement that sprang up across college campuses last year. The screening at UCLA was held by the college’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter, which was suspended along with another pro-Palestine group this February.
The school has essentially outlawed pro-Palestine activism of any kind, and for that reason, felt comfortable carrying out a massive show of force, leading to two arrests and one student being “physically assaulted.” The school has acknowledged and apologized for the injury to this student. But what it should apologize for is banning political dissent in the first place, and calling the SWAT team on a bunch of students for watching a movie with politics they found objectionable.
You know, this becomes less and less exaggerated by the day.
(Art by Ellen Burch from Current Affairs Magazine, Issue 50, September/October 2024)
❧ Scientists are researching the blood of a Wisconsin man who has survived hundreds of venomous snake bites. The man, Tim Friede, is a snake enthusiast who began injecting himself with small amounts of snake venom in order to “build up a tolerance.” This sounds at first glance like some RFK, Jr. type shit, but in essence he just created a home-brew snake vaccine. No scientist or doctor would ever recommend doing this, but despite a few scares (one of which cost him part of his finger), the treatment seems to have worked! It has allowed him to resist poisoning despite being chomped by black mambas, water cobras, rattlesnakes, and others that would usually be life-threatening. Scientists are now researching his blood to develop an anti-venom treatment that has shown some promise in mice, though it is a long way off from being usable in humans. (Associated Press)
SEA LION FACT OF THE WEEK
Sea lions have the ability to dance to a rhythm…and one of them may be better at it than any human.
Her name is Ronan. For a long time, scientists believed humans and parrots — both animals capable of vocal mimicry — were the only species on Earth capable of keeping time with a musical beat. But Ronan helped to prove that other animals could groove.
Fifteen years ago, Ronan became the first non-human mammal who show herself able to follow a rhythm. Researchers at UC Santa Cruz used a metronome to train Ronan to follow a repetitive sound. Pretty soon, she was able to bob her head up and down effortlessly to pop music, like the disco classic “Boogie Wonderland.”
Just this past week, another study was published. A group of scientists checked back in with Ronan 15 years later to see if she’d lost her step. They tested out her ability to dance to three drum beats that she’d never heard. They measured her performance against ten human college students.
Not only does Ronan still have the rhythm in her bones, she utterly thrashed every single one of her human competitors in the dance battle!
Writing and research by Stephen Prager. Editing and additional material by Nathan J. Robinson,Lily Sánchez, and Alex Skopic. Header graphic by Cali Traina Blume. This news briefing is a product of Current Affairs Magazine. Subscribe to our gorgeous and informative print edition here, and our delightful podcast here.
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