Plus: Clearing up the confusion about the Gaza death toll, Tony Blinken's embarrassing jam session, some boring headlines from foreign newspapers, and thieving foxes
May 17, 2024 ❧ The feds interrogate a historian for his Palestine views, union busting in Alabama, and the truth about "woke" colleges
Plus: Clearing up the confusion about the Gaza death toll, Tony Blinken's embarrassing jam session, some boring headlines from foreign newspapers, and thieving foxes
Federal agents interrogate a leftist Israeli historian in Detroit
This week, U.S. law enforcement agencies stooped to a new low in their crackdown on dissent around Palestine and the ongoing ethnic cleansing of the Gaza Strip. On Monday, the acclaimed Israeli historian and author Ilan Pappé reported that he was taken aside by government agents at the Detroit airport, detained for two hours, and interrogated about his political views and personal relationships. As Pappé puts it on Facebook:
I arrived on Monday at Detroit airport and was taken for a two hours investigation by the FBI, and my phone was taken as well. The two men team were not abusive or rude, I should say, but their questions were really out of the world! Am I a Hamas supporter? Do I regard the Israeli actions in Gaza a genocide? What is the solution to the "conflict" (seriously this [is] what they asked!) Who are my Arab and Muslim friends in America… How long do I know them, what kind of relationship I have with them.
[In] some cases I sent them to my books, and [in] some cases I answered laconically yes or no… (I was quite exhausted after an 8 hours flight, but this is part of the idea). They had [a] long phone conversation with someone, the Israelis? And after copying everything on my phone allowed me to enter.
In a statement to the Detroit Free Press, the FBI has denied questioning Pappé, who now says he may have been confused about which specific agency it was. But that’s hardly the point. This was a shocking abuse of state power, on par with the ones committed in the McCarthy era. In a country that claimsto care about free speech and academic liberty, we should never see writers and scholars treated in this way. (It’ll be interesting to see the response, if any, from alleged “free speech defenders” like Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson. Our money’s on crickets.) In particular, the detail about the agents “copying everything on my phone” stands out as an unjustifiable invasion of privacy, which likely violates the Fourth Amendment (although it’s unclear if the agents had a search warrant, or if Pappé gave permission.)
Apparently “stopping antisemitism” requires harassing Jewish intellectuals for their opinions. (Image: Hossam el-Hamalawy via Flickr)
It’s also absurd to insinuate that Pappé has any involvement with terrorism or Hamas. To put it bluntly, the man’s nearly 70, so if he was going to commit some threatening act he would probably have done it by now. You might as well search Noam Chomsky for concealed weapons—but then, maybe we shouldn’t give the feds ideas.
In another sense, though, the U.S. government is absolutely right to be worried about Pappé and scholars like him. After all, he’s written several books—including Ten Myths About Israel and the best-selling The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine—that expose the long, dark history of violence and abuse committed against the Palestinian people by Israel and the United States. And since he’s an Israeli himself, it’s all but impossible to use the usual smear tactics and accusations of antisemitism against him. For a status quo built on lies, someone who tells the truth is the greatest threat of all.
If you haven’t already, this is worth a read.
The truth about "woke" colleges
You’ve heard it over and over again: College campuses have been taken over by wokeness! But is this really true? A new study, covered by TheFinancial Times, begs to differ. The nonprofit group Open Syllabus, which collects data on course syllabi across the United States examined 5.6 million courses at nearly 4,000 American colleges. It found that just 0.08 percent mention critical race theory, structural racism, systemic racism or diversity, equity, and inclusion. That’s less than 1 in 1,000 courses. And even in sociology, which is typically considered the most impenetrable holdfast of the woke army, less than 1 percent of courses contain woke terms like “critical race theory,” “structural racism,” and “transgender.”
That seems like a far cry from the picture painted by right-wing fearmongers like Elon Musk, who claims that the “woke mind virus has infested [academic] institutions” to “a shocking degree” or Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk who says that “colleges need to fail” as a whole because they have been “going so far in the woke direction.” This data seems to blow a hole in the argument that has justified states’ crackdowns on “woke” education, which is that “radical” viewpoints are supposedly being jammed into subjects where they aren’t relevant.
The Current Affairs poster of “The Campus, As it Exists in the Mind of a U.S. Conservative” grows more relevant by the day.
CROOKS vs. SICKOS
(or, "What's going on with our politicians?")
❧ In his never-ending quest to alienate every progressive voter who once supported him, Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman was recorded this week being a massive jerk to an environmental activist concerned about a pipeline in her community. “I'm from Chester County, Pennsylvania, and I'm really concerned about the way that pipelines are being built in our communities, in our backyards, threatening our lives and water. In 2018, you actually joined us for a protest when you were running for Lieutenant Governor of the pipeline running through Chester County, through my community. Why the change of heart?" the constituent—a member of the Sunrise Movement—is shown asking (pretty politely, we might add).
This is an entirely reasonable thing for a constituent to be concerned about. The Mariner East Pipeline, which runs through Chester County, has leaked multiple times since its construction and has “wreaked havoc” by creating sinkholes and polluting wetlands according to WHYY. In 2020, Energy Transfer—the company in charge of the project—was forced to pay out $4 million in damages after the project caused more than 20,000 gallons of drilling mud to pour into Marsh Creek Lake and contaminate soil and aquifers. This past February, Pennsylvania’s EPA identified that the same material was spilling into the wetland again.
But when this voter brought up her concerns about the pipeline to Fetterman—who indeed used to oppose the construction of new pipelines but has since flip-flopped—he whipped out his phone to film her and began mocking her and rolling his eyes before hopping in a members-only elevator to escape. Here is a video of the encounter:
Democratic politicians often speak with indignation about young voters’ lack of enthusiasm for them. But what are they supposed to take away from behavior like this? What Fetterman conveys here is that he is totally indifferent to the concerns of not just this voter, but everyone who is harmed by the oil industry.
For more Nohopémon, see our latest print issue. By Shawn Vulliez and Matt Beaudoin.
Somehow I don’t think telling a bunch of rightfully angry people that their concerns are meaningless is going to get them to shut up... If anything, it only confirms their belief that neither of the major parties represents them. Democrats can stomp their feet with indignation and entitlement as much as they want about this characterization and tell voters they are idiots for saying Biden is no better than Trump. I don’t even disagree with them: As furious as I am with Biden over Gaza and lots of other things, I still think Trump would be worse (including on Gaza) and would prefer to see him lose. But it’s the politician’s job to persuade the voter that they are the better choice. And whether Democrats like it or not, a sizable number… don’t believe Biden is a better choice. It is up to him to change that, or they won’t vote for him.
❧Joe Biden is pursuing an absurd new series of tariffs on China—and they look a lot like Trump’s. In a statement on Tuesday, the President announced sharp increases on the import tariffs for many important commodities, if they’re bought from China specifically. Among others, the items on the list include batteries, semiconductors, steel and aluminum, and medical supplies. Two of the most notable, though, are solar cells—which are being raised from a 25 percent tariff to a 50 percent one—and electric vehicles (EVs), which will now have an astonishing 100 percent tariff. In other words, if you want to buy an electric car from China, the price just skyrocketed.
Ironically, Biden criticized Donald Trump over this exact kind of policy during his last presidential campaign:
But now, like with mass deportations and closing the U.S.-Mexico border, it seems he’s warmed to Trump’s way of thinking. As a rationale for the new tariffs, Biden keeps saying that China is “cheating” by “pour[ing] state money into Chinese companies,” and that it’s “flooding global markets with artificially low-priced exports.” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who visited China a few weeks ago, concurs, warning of the “global economic consequences of China’s overcapacity.”
There are so many things wrong with this logic, it’s hard to know where to start. In the first place, what on Earth is an “artificially low price”? All prices are artificial! If anything, a tariff is a measure to keep them artificially high. And how is it “cheating” for China to devote state resources to manufacturing green technology? The United States does the same with agricultural products, and sends them all over South America; are they “cheating?” Shouldn’t we want the market to be “flooded” with cheap electric cars and solar panels, so we can all afford them and transition away from fossil fuels more quickly? In a very telling statement during a January earnings call, Tesla CEO Elon Musk admitted that China’s EVs are “extremely good,” and that “they will pretty much demolish most other car companies” unless the U.S. government establishes “trade barriers.” If that’s the case, maybe state-run manufacturing is just better.
Thanks to the free market, you’d be legally penalized for buying this sporty little Wuling Hongguang. Ain’t capitalism grand? (Image: Wikimedia Commons)
AND NOW, THE BORING NEWS
There’s a lot going on in the world, isn’t there? Genocide, poverty, a steadily melting climate, scurrilous politicians—the events just keep coming. It’s enough to stress anyone out. Thankfully, there are still places in the world where all is placid, and where journalists struggle to find anything to report on. As a little island of relief in the fast-flowing stream of news, we’ve collected some of the most boring headlines we could find this week. Take a deep breath, relax a little, and enjoy:
Have YOU seen a dull headline? Write to briefing@currentaffairs.org for a chance to win our Boring News Contest!
(We now return to your regularly scheduled atrocity and horror…)
AROUND THE STATES
❧ In Alabama, union-busting legislation is ramping up to new heights. Right now, workers at the Mercedes-Benz plant in Tuscaloosa, Alabama are having their votes counted on whether or not to join the United Auto Workers. There’s also an ongoing struggle in Bessemer, Alabama to organize the Amazon warehouse there. If both succeed, it would be a major breakthrough for workers in the South—but some people are determined to prevent that breakthrough at any cost.
One of those people is Alabama Governor Kay Ivey, who’s just signed a new law that will penalize union-friendly employers. Under Senate Bill 231, any company operating in Alabama that voluntarily recognizes a union will no longer be eligible for state economic incentives, like grants and tax credits. Ivey didn’t even try to hide the fact that SB 231 is an anti-UAW law, saying in a recent speech that “We want to ensure that Alabama values, not Detroit values, continue to define the future of this great state.” In other words, she wants Alabama to remain a safe haven for unscrupulous bosses, and ensure that Southern workers have to fight an uphill battle for their rights. With any luck, this effort will fall flat on its face.
By “economic development,” the Governor means that wages should remain low. (Image: Gov. Kay Ivey via Flickr)
AROUND THE WORLD
❧In London, a new official portrait of Charles Windsor (sometimes known as the “King of England”) has been unveiled. The handiwork of painter Jonathan Yeo, the painting can best be described as extremely red. Apparently, the color palette is meant to emphasize Charles’ crimson Welsh Guards uniform, but it has the side-effect of making him look like a gaunt, disembodied head emerging from a fog of blood. He strongly resembles something you’d use to scare small children on Halloween. But then, maybe that means it’s a great painting. After all, Windsor now sits at the head of the British Empire, one of the most destructive regimes in human history, and his own lifespan encompasses the unspeakable atrocities committed by the British against the indigenous people of Kenya. (There’s also his tireless pushing of quack pseudo-medicine on the British public, which may well have led to preventable deaths.) Intentional or not, this nightmarish painting captures the essence of someone who would willingly wear the looted jewels that make up the British crown.
We have a suggestion for an alternate Charles portrait that might more accurately convey the character of the British monarchy in 2024.
❧ Speaking of grotesque British people, Keir Starmer has accepted former Tory MP Natalie Elphicke into the Labour Party. Until approximately five minutes ago, Elphicke wasn’t just a member of the Conservative Party, but part of its rightward fringe. As Owen Jones writes for the Guardian, she “cut her teeth scaremongering about refugees and immigrants,” writing op-eds for the Daily Express where she argued that small boats carrying asylum-seekers “undermine our national security” and that “the Government’s Stop the Boats bill is so vital.” She’s also railed against what she calls “militant unionism,” attacked football star Marcus Rashford over his advocacy against child hunger, and been suspended from Parliament for a day after she tried to influence a judge ruling on her ex-husband’s sexual assault case. But earlier this month, Elphicke decided to defect to the Labour Party—and despite her abysmal track record, Keir Starmer allowed her in. In his editorial, Jones condemns the move as morally bankrupt:
Yes, the received wisdom would be that a political party welcoming defections from its chief rival has a strong hand. It shows the game is truly up for its opponents. It should, in fact, be seen as a weakness in a democracy, where the difference between two main political parties has become so narrow that its representatives can glide between the two.
It’s also worth noting that this decision comes at a time when Labour has exiled Jeremy Corbyn from the party he once led, and opted to stand a candidate against him for the Islington North seat (a decision people who actually live in Islington have no say in.) Apparently in Starmer’s version of Labour, being anti-immigrant and anti-union is just fine, but being a committed socialist and anti-war activist is unacceptable.
When you’re both sufficiently fancy, things like “principles” and “loyalties” are just details. (Image: Keir Starmer MP via Flickr)
THIS WEEK IN NOT UNDERSTANDING SONG LYRICS
Hot off the success of his “Hoochie Coochie Man” rendition last year, Secretary of State Antony Blinken is back with a barn-burning performance of Neil Young’s “Rockin’ in the Free World,” which he debuted at a performance at a bar in Kyiv. He clearly meant the performance as a pronouncement of democracy’s resolve. “Your soldiers, your citizens, particularly in the northeast in Kharkiv, are suffering tremendously. But they need to know, you need to know, the United States is with you, so much of the world is with you. “And they’re fighting not just for a free Ukraine but for the free world, and the free world is with you, too. So maybe we can try something?” he said before hopping into the chorus.
“Rockin’ in the Free World” is not a song about the strength of American resolve, and it's certainly not a celebration of American military might. It’s a song about Americans facing dire poverty despite living in the “free world.”
Seriously…how could anyone hear lines like these and be convinced that the “Rockin’ in the Free World” chorus is anything but an ironic satire of blind American optimism in the midst of suffering:
“There's colors on the street
Red, white, and blue
People shufflin' their feet
People sleepin' in their shoes”
–
“We got a thousand points of light
For the homeless man
We got a kinder, gentler machine gun hand”
Luckily for Blinken this was only the second-worst misappropriation of a protest song for the purposes of flag-waving jingoism (Ronald Reagan famously used “Born in the USA” as a patriotic campaign trail anthem, apparently oblivious to its hard-edged critique of the Vietnam War and America’s abandonment of working-class veterans.) But the fact that Blinken presumably took the time to rehearse this song without actually stopping to think about what the words mean arguably makes it more embarrassing.
NONSENSE SONG OF THE WEEK
Speaking of strange music, have you ever wondered what happens when you bash random keys and submit them as lyrics to an AI music generator? Current Affairs editor in chief Nathan J. Robinson has. Check out his new smash hit single “boobybobbyobbyobobyoboyoboyoboyboobybobbyobbyobobyoboyo,” exclusively on SoundCloud.
❧There has been a lot of confusion this week about the death toll out of Gaza and the language used by the media has contributed to it. You’ve likely seen headlines like “United Nations cuts estimate for deaths of women and children in Gaza in half” from USA Today, or “U.N. Lowers Count of Women and Children Killed, Citing Incomplete Information” from The New York Times. These headlines give the impression that the United Nations has reduced its estimation of how many people have been killed during the conflict and many pro-Israel commentators are seizing on it. But this is not actually what happened.
The UN has not actually reduced the overall death count, but was publishing data about how many casualties have been fully identified. As CNN reports:
The number was reduced because the UN says it is now relying on the number of deceased women and children whose names and other identifying details have been fully documented, rather than the total number of women and children killed. The ministry says bodies that arrive at hospitals get counted in the overall death count.
UN spokesperson Farhan Haq told a daily briefing at the UN that the health ministry in Gaza recently published two separate death tolls – an overall death toll and a total number of identified fatalities. In the UN report, only the total number of fatalities whose identities (such as name and date of birth) have been documented was published, leading to confusion.
According to Haq, the ministry published a breakdown for 24,686 fully identified deaths out of the total 34,622 fatalities recorded in Gaza as of April 30. The fully identified death toll comprises of 7,797 children, 4,959 women, 1,924 elderly [it did not specify their gender], and 10,006 men, the UN spokesperson said, citing the Gaza health ministry.
So the UN did not actually “cut in half” the estimated number of dead women and children, as many media outlets implied. Rather, they clarified which reports were of people whose identities were fully confirmed and which were not. And among those who have been fully identified about 70 percent have been women and children. When all the people killed have been fully identified, there is a good chance that this proportion will shift, but since many of the unidentified will surely be women and children as well, the suggestion that the UN’s estimation of those deaths was “cut in half” is pretty misleading.
But by the time the UN had clarified this, the media’s misleading framing had already spread across social media and been boosted by people looking to downplay the war’s destruction. Pitchfork writer-turned-Israel war cheerleader Eve Barlowtold more than 200,000 viewers that “The UN is walking back the death toll in Gaza by half. By half. 50 per cent.” Israel Katz, Israel’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, called it “a miraculous resurrection of the dead in Gaza” and said “Anyone who relies on fake data from a terrorist organization in order to promote blood libels against Israel is antisemitic and supports terrorism.” Both of these statements are wildly incorrect, but if you just looked at the headlines reported by US media institutions, you’d be inclined to believe them.
We should absolutely scorn those who seized on this misleading reporting to deny the massive amounts of death in Gaza. But with Israel facing international condemnation and its leaders staring down the barrel of International Criminal Court, indictments is it really any surprise that propagandists are looking for anything to use in its defense? The journalists who used misleading language are also responsible for helping them downplay the war’s destruction.
We aren’t typically in the business of issuing “fact checks” at Current Affairs, but this feels like it deserves some “Pinocchios”
LONG READ: President Trump has announced a plan to launch assassination attempts against drug cartel leaders. This is pitched as a more moderate alternative to other Republican candidates’ plans for a full-scale invasion of Mexico. But in Responsible Statecraft, Christopher Fettweis explains why Trump’s plan “will backfire dramatically” and explores alternatives for dealing with the opioid crisis:
Invading Mexico, which think tanks close to the former president have recommended, is a spectacularlybadidea for many reasons. Employing special forces to do the job, like Trump is apparently contemplating, may seem like a middle ground, an alternative that carries less risk and lower costs. While not as insane as an invasion, it would still be a dangerous, counterproductive and ultimately pointless endeavor.
The first problem would be tactical. While U.S. Special Forces would have little trouble killing drug kingpins, they may well have a tough time finding them. Since Trump has telegraphed the operation, cartel leaders — who are, as a rule, ardent self-preservationists — would go underground (or, more accurately, even more underground) immediately upon his election. Gathering intelligence on their whereabouts would prove difficult, since Mexican authorities would be unlikely to help. Security services generally object to having their sovereignty trampled.
Close coordination with those security services would be rather unwise anyway, since many Mexican officials are on the cartel payroll in one form or another…Even if it proved possible to track down the kingpins, killing them would have little effect on the drug trade. Those proposing the special forces “solution” to the fentanyl crisis do not appear to grasp the basic economics: Supply will always find its way to high demand, and new narcotics entrepreneurs will always arise. When the Colombian cartels waned in the 1990s, one may recall, other suppliers quickly emerged in Mexico. If the current moles in Mexico are whacked, new ones will soon pop up elsewhere. Killing the middlemen of the drug trade never solves the problem.
The long, sad history of drug interdiction should teach us all a lesson: The drugs always find a way…
There are better ways to address the fentanyl epidemic. For instance, the United States could take what might be called the “quaalude approach.” Some of us are old enough to remember that oddly named illegal depressant, which was popular in the 1970s but had essentially disappeared by the late 1980s. The United States did not militarize the issue but led an effort to eliminate, or at least control, the manufacture of the precursor chemicals for quaaludes around the world. Without those chemicals, the drug dealers could not create their poisons.
Fentanyl is also the product of complex chemical engineering, unlike cocaine or opium. Attacking its manufacturers, rather than its salesmen, contains the only possibility to control the epidemic. This would involve negotiation with China, which is the main supplier of fentanyl’s precursor chemicals today. Some progress has been made in this direction under President Biden, but not enough to make a substantial difference.
If revenge is the goal, then perhaps U.S. Special Forces are the best tool. But revenge very rarely makes for a sound basis for policy. Killing kingpins might make us feel good, and it might burnish presidential reputations, but it will not save vulnerable young people. Other options exist, ones that are far less risky, and that offer more hope for success.
FUN FOX FACT FOR FRIDAY (FFFFF)
Has someone stolen your newspaper recently? It might be a fox!
We encountered this information while looking for “Fox News” stories about “theft,” but it was definitely a happy accident. Across the country, there have been numerous incidents where a jaunty fox sneaks into someone’s yard or driveway, snatches a newspaper, and scampers off. They’ve struck in Virginia, in East Texas, in Pennsylvania, in North Carolina, and even across the Atlantic in London—and those are just the foxes who happened to get caught on camera. For Canada’s CBC, biologist Marina Silva-Opps says the foxes are probably using the papers as construction material, “to make sure [their] dens are solid and warm enough and dry enough for the young.” More morbidly, other experts suggest that mother foxes use them as a kind of training dummy for their pups, since “Dragging a newspaper around is a good way to learn how to drag a squirrel around.” Either way, they probably need the morning paper more than we do.
Writing and research by Stephen Prager and Alex Skopic. Editing and additional material by Nathan J. Robinson and Lily Sánchez. Header graphic by Cali Traina Blume. Fact-checking by Justin Ward. 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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