In Switzerland, U.S. officials accuse a Chinese family of being spies
In the Wall Street Journal this week, we find a strange account of what writers Drew Hinshaw, Joe Parkinson, and Liza Lin call a “Mystery in the Alps.” That’s one way of looking at the story. Another would be that U.S. military officials whipped themselves up into a paranoid frenzy about alleged Chinese espionage, and kicked a perfectly ordinary family out of their business with no evidence of any wrongdoing.
The family in question are the Wangs: Lin Jing, her husband Wang Jin, and their son Dawei. Until recently, they owned and operated a small skiing hotel in Unterbach, Switzerland, called the Hotel Rössli. They bought the place in 2018, and for a while, everything was fine. But unfortunately for the Wangs, the U.S. military was also interested in Unterbach.
As the Wall Street Journal points out, the Hotel Rössli sits about 100 yards away from a “runway where the Swiss military had agreed to base several F-35s, the world’s most advanced jet fighter” upon purchasing them from the United States. The airstrip is “only partly fenced,” and neighboring farmers and their cows sometimes wander across it. This led U.S. officials to worry about security, and soon they concluded that the hotel could be an ideal vantage point to observe the new planes. Because the Wangs were Chinese, they automatically fell under suspicion of transmitting sensitive information about the F-35 back to Beijing.
According to the U.S. government, this place is deeply sinister. (Image: Hotel Rössli Unterbach)
That isn’t an exaggeration, by the way. There’s no evidence whatsoever that the Wangs were ever spies, beyond the simple fact of their Chinese nationality. The Wall Street Journal lists only small details of their behavior that were supposedly suspicious. (For instance, Wang Dawei apparently used cold milk to make coffee, which isn’t “the Swiss fashion.”) But it made no difference. As the Journal puts it, “The U.S. laid down a condition: If Switzerland wanted the F-35, the area had to be secure. That meant the Wangs had to go.”
And go they did. Last summer, the local police raided the Hotel Rössli and led the Wangs away in handcuffs; shortly thereafter, the property was quietly put up for sale and purchased by the Swiss government at a price of $1.8 million. This is only now coming to light thanks to the WSJ’s investigation, but it’s pretty obvious what happened: the U.S. government got what it wanted. The Swiss kicked the Wangs out, based on nothing more than a vague suspicion that they might be spies.
It should go without saying, of course, that this whole sequence of events was enormously racist. In case you have any doubt on that point, just look at a few selected comments from below the Wall Street Journal’s article:
Some of these read like opinions from 1924, not 2024. The idea that Chinese people are inherently “shrewd, persistent and unscrupulous” is a longstanding racist canard, and it’s come back in a major way with the escalation of tensions between China and the United States. In recent months, we’ve seen absurd panics over so-called “Chinese spy balloons” floating across North America, or “spy cranes” at major naval ports, despite the fact that the U.S. routinely spies on China from above. We’ve seen Congress vote to ban TikTok over a nebulous threat of Chinese espionage that experts admit is “purely hypothetical.” Now, we’re seeing a family of hoteliers exiled from their place of business, purely because they happened to be Chinese. This is the sort of xenophobic fearmongering that, historically, has made it a lot easier to beat the drum for war. We have to be very, very careful not to let Sinophobia take hold in our society.
BIG STORY
ICC issues arrest warrants for leaders of Israel and Hamas
The prosecutor for the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, has announced that he has filed arrest warrants for the leaders of both Israel and Hamas for war crimes. The ICC is the sole international body with the authority to prosecute individuals for crimes against humanity, war crimes, and genocide.
An ICC statement issued Monday accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant of using “starvation as a method of warfare together with other attacks and collective punishment against the civilian population” of the Gaza Strip. The statement cited a warning from U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres from March that “1.1 million people in Gaza are facing catastrophic hunger – the highest number of people ever recorded – anywhere, anytime” as a result of an “entirely man-made disaster.” Khan also named three top Hamas officials for indictment: Yahya Sinwar, the leader of the organization; Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri, the commander-in-chief of its military wing the Qassam Brigades; and the head of its political wing, Ismail Haniyeh, accusing them of responsibility for attacks that killed hundreds of Israeli civilians and for capturing hostages and subjecting them to inhumane treatment, including sexual assault.
The ICC does not have the power to arrest these leaders, and it will rely on its signatory nations—of which there are 124—to bring them to justice. Israel and the United States, importantly, have not ratified the existence of the Court and claim that it has no jurisdiction. The rest of the ICC also still needs to approve Khan’s warrants before they go into effect.
However, this is still an extraordinarily significant development, particularly for the United States, which will now have to contend with the fact that it is arming an accused war criminal. You might think that such an accusation would finally give President Biden the excuse he needs to distance himself from Netanyahu, who has been nothing but a political liability to him and seems to prefer his opponent. But Biden, ever stuck in his default mode of backing Israel to the hilt, is staying the course.
On Monday, his administration issued a statement calling the prosecution’s allegations “outrageous” as there is “no equivalence — none — between Israel and Hamas.” (We suppose he’s technically right: Israel has killed nearly 30 times as many people as Hamas over the course of this war. But this is obviously not what he was referring to.)
Biden has also further highlighted how selective the United States’ belief in the so-called “rules-based international order” really is. The U.S. has long been hostile to the ICC, refusing to recognize its authority because of the possibility that it might one day prosecute an American leader or service member. (There is even a law on the books authorizing the U.S. to use military force to prevent any American or citizen of a U.S.-allied country from being held by the court!)
When the Court has been deployed against our adversaries, we have been its biggest cheerleaders. For instance, when Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, the Biden administration was quick to condemn him for violating international law and encourage an ICC investigation, even though Russia, like Israel, does not recognize the ICC’s jurisdiction. The Intercept’s Ryan Grim also pointed out in a press briefing on Monday that the Obama administration at multiple points encouraged ICC prosecutions of war criminals in the Congo and other African nations.
But now that Israel’s leaders are accused of war crimes (and a State Department investigation has even found it “reasonable to assess” that Israel has violated international humanitarian law during this war) the administration has suddenly reverted back to the belief that the ICC is an illegitimate body, and international law is just a suggestion. State Department spokesman Matt Miller said that Israel—as a non-signatory—is “not under the ICC’s jurisdiction” and therefore not liable for prosecution. Meanwhile, he says that instead of being tried by an international body, Hamas leaders should be either killed or tried in Israeli courts. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, meanwhile, has indicated he wants to work with congressional Republicans to punish the ICC for indicting Israel. This hardly sounds like the position of an administration that adheres to a universal standard of justice.
This begs the question: What “rules” comprise this so-called “rules-based order” anyway? It’s certainly not international law. If anything, it seems that the only “rule” the US cares to enforce is that they and their allies get to do whatever they want, and other nations aren’t allowed to question it.
For more on the United States’ rampant disregard for international law and human life, pre-order The Myth of American Idealism, co-written by Professor Noam Chomsky and Current Affairs editor-in-chief Nathan J. Robinson!
It’s fun for the whole family, assuming the whole family likes uncovering disturbing truths about their nation’s leadership.
AROUND THE STATES
❧ TheLouisiana school system, already facing serious issues, is about to get worse. Like with many things in Louisiana, it’s mostly the fault of the state’s Republican Party. Last Thursday, the state Senate approved one of Governor Jeff Landry’s signature policies, passing a bill that would allow public funds to be spent on private schools. Called SB 313, the legislation would create so-called “education savings accounts” (ESAs) for Louisiana parents. The state would pay into the accounts, and parents could then spend the money on things like private school tuition, uniforms, and other related expenses. Democratic state Senator Royce Duplessis calls the plan “an abandonment of public education,” and he has a point; by definition, any dollar from the Louisiana education budget that’s put into a “savings account” is not being spent on improving public schools for everyone. And since the entire Louisiana legislature is Republican-controlled, SB 313 is almost certain to pass.
To add insult to injury, Landry’s government is also pushing religious indoctrination on Louisiana students. A separate bill working its way through the legislature, HB 71, would require every classroom in the state to display the Ten Commandments “on a poster or framed document that is at least eleven inches by fourteen inches.” The legislation is sponsored by state Representative Dodie Horton (would you be shocked to learn she’s a middle-aged white woman?), who previously got a law passed to force teachers to display the words “In God We Trust.” The new bill pushes the envelope even further, and is almost certainly a massive First Amendment violation, since it requires a religious display in public buildings and compels speech by public employees. Senator Duplessis, once again a rare voice of reason, points out that it would also waste “valuable state resources” on fighting the inevitable lawsuits from groups like the ACLU and Freedom From Religion Foundation. But apparently for Louisiana Republicans, the chance to force their particular brand of religious conservatism on everyone else’s kids is worth it.
The competition is stiff, but Landry is in the running for “worst Governor in America.” (Image: Wikimedia Commons)
PRO-PALESTINIAN PROTESTS ARE CAUSING CHEESE ADDICTS TO RELAPSE
At Current Affairs, we have given ample praise to the brave students around the United States who have risked their careers and physical safety to protest the unjust war in Gaza. But we must temper that praise somewhat in light of revelations about a new, hitherto unseen victim of these demonstrations: Cheese addicts.
A recent New York Post “exclusive,” titled “The Gouda, the Bad, and the Ugly,” covers the struggle of Adela Cojab, an NYU Law Student and activist for the Zionist group Realize Israel. The Post reports that being “at odds with other student activists and professors calling on the university to sever ties with Israel,” caused Cojab to gorge on block after block of raw cheese to cope. At the peak of her addiction, The Post says, “The feta fiend said she devoured an estimated 5.5 blocks of cheese per week, along with savory parmesan crisps she stocked in her pantry.” Thankfully, she was able to mostly kick the habit after attending a nearly $6,000 “rehab” (brie-hab?). Though, she says that having to bear witness to the most recent wave of protests have caused periodic “relapses.” (Perhaps she was feeling bleu?)
Cojab in the throes of her Tim Minchin phase. (Helayne Seidman, via The New York Post)
Cheesy puns notwithstanding, we don’t mean to make light of Cojab’s eating disorder. It’s serious stuff, and we are sincerely glad to see that she’s been able to recover (and return to being “string-cheese slim” as The Post puts it!)
But it does seem a bit rich (almost as rich as a block of mozzarella, in fact) for The New York Post to act as if the real victims of the ongoing massacre in Palestine are comfortable NYU students whose biggest problem is having too much cheese to eat. The Post extends no such sympathy to the more than a million people in Gaza who are facing starvation as a result of Israel’s blockade of humanitarian aid. Instead, they publish op-edscalling that starvation a “myth” because—no joke—enough aid has supposedly entered to feed half of the Gazan population. (The Post’s estimate likely severely underestimates the amount of food needed to feed the population of Gaza. But even if we take their claim at face value, half of the population being fed still means more than a million starve!) We're sure a lot of the people currently living on weeds and animal feed would appreciate a bit of Cojab’s excess Havarti right now, but the Israeli government, and some of its citizens, are making sure that can’t happen.
⚜ LONG READ: A new report from the Bittman Project, a publication about equitable food policy, describes the unseen role that coercive prison labor serves in American food production. Joey Ayala writes:
The phrase “a well-deserved meal” isn’t just a platitude, it is an acknowledgement of the relationship between work and reward. The irony of our American food culture, though, is that many of the people most deserving of a good meal are the least likely to get it. Perhaps the clearest example of this fact is the forced labor programs in our prisons, many of which involve agriculture.
Prisons run labor programs throughout the country. Some of these are mandatory, with no payment to the prisoner at all, and those that do pay may offer between ten cents and sixty cents an hour. In those programs involving agriculture, prisoners can be forced to raise cattle, keep bees, grow produce, and maintain grounds on prison-owned farms, or they can be leased out to farms owned by private companies. The harvest is then sold and shipped off to some of the country’s largest food distributors. The saddest part of this story is that prisons then provide inmates with highly processed and often terrible (and, of course, unhealthy) food, produced specifically for use in prisons…
Whatever the justification for each of these programs, the bald fact is that prison labor generates over $2 billion in goods and $9 billion in services every year. Only a portion of this revenue is made from agriculture, but it is worth highlighting a few key points about prison agriculture labor and revenue. Between 2018 and 2024, about a dozen prisons that run cattle-raising programs generated over $60 million dollars. In 2020, during the height of the COVID epidemic, it was reported that over 100 imprisoned women were moved from their prisons directly onto a warehouse owned by Hickman’s Family Farm, with whom the prison held a labor contract, to work directly on site. This contract is estimated to be worth just under $6 million a year. A comprehensive analysis done by the Associated Press reports that they traced over $200 million in agricultural sales directly linked to prison labor within the last six years…
For all the money generated from prison agricultural labor, accounted for and otherwise, the people laboring get next to nothing. Among all paying jobs within prison and as extensions of labor contracts, the average prisoner can expect to make under fifty cents an hour…In addition to being poorly paid (if at all), prisoners are also poorly fed. Only about 20 states actually use food grown by inmates in prison kitchens. In 2020, Impact Justice ran a study asking inmates about their access to fresh fruits and vegetables. Over 62% of inmates surveyed said they rarely, if ever, have access to fresh vegetables, and 54% said the same about fresh fruits. In terms of general well-being, imprisoned people are six times more likely to suffer from food-born illness as well as being significantly more susceptible to diabetes and heart disease when compared to the rest of the American public.
AROUND THE WORLD
❧ Right now, an anti-colonial uprising is rocking New Caledonia. If you haven’t heard of New Caledonia before, you’re not alone. It’s a small group of islands in the Pacific Ocean, and one of France’s last remaining colonies—although the French government and press prefer to use euphemisms like “overseas territory” to describe it. It’s also one of the world’s largest sources of nickel—a metal that’s become increasingly important with the rise of rechargeable battery technology, and which accounts for the lion’s share of the islands’ economy.
Properly, of course, the area should be called Kanaky. That’s the name its indigenous people, the Kanaks, gave to it long before Europeans showed up. But like many places around the world, Kanaky was colonized by France in 1853, and its people were enslaved for labor across the then-burgeoning French empire. Ever since that point, there have been periodic uprisings against French rule, like the one waged by the Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front in the mid-to-late 1980s. (Ever discreet about empire and its opponents, Le Monderefers to this struggle as “the ‘events.’”) Today, another revolt has broken out.
The flashpoint was a dramatic change to the New Caledonian constitution, enacted by the French Parliament earlier this month. As Yan Zhuang reports for the New York Times, the constitutional reforms expand “French citizens’ eligibility to vote in provincial elections,” magnifying the votes of loyalists who want New Caledonia to remain under French control and diluting those of the pro-independence movement. (And all by decree from Paris, with no local input!) This was just the latest step in what Dr. Adrian Muckle, an expert on New Caledonia who was interviewed by the Times,calls“a more aggressive attempt by the French government to assert its will over the territory” since President Emmanuel Macron came to power in 2017.
As a result, pro-independence demonstrators—many of them ethnically Kanak—have staged anew uprising. They’ve blocked roads, burned police stations and businesses,shot at the police, barricaded the airport, and generally tried to make the area completely ungovernable for the French authorities. In response, France hascracked down hard, sending 600 armed cops (100 of them from elite counterterrorism units) to New Caledonia to reassert their control. They’ve alsoblocked TikTok, which the independence movement used to communicate, from functioning in an attempt to “limit contact between rioters.” (Does thatsound familiar?) The situation is getting ugly, with at leastsix people(two cops, three Kanak protestors, and one unconfirmed) killed so far, and more injured.
Today, a spokesperson for Emmanuel Macronannouncedthat he’ll be making an emergency trip to New Caledonia. No doubt he’ll make a speech urging the protestors to stand down, and waxing poetic about how much he wants peace. But if he truly wants to end the violence, there’s only one clear path. France needs to surrender the remaining vestiges of its colonial power, recognize the Kanak people as the rightful authorities over the land and its resources, and get out. Nothing less will do.
The Kanak people and their allies hope to erase that smug little “(France)” label from the map soon. (Map:Encyclopedia Britannica)
❧ Julian Assange has won the right to appeal against his extradition to the United States. In what Amnesty International is calling a “rare piece of positive news” in Assange’s case, the U.K. High Court ruled on Monday that the journalist has a legal right to appeal on two separate grounds. In the first case, Assange and his lawyers can argue that his extradition would violate the European Convention on Human Rights, which offers protections for freedom of speech and the press similar to those found in the U.S First Amendment. In the second, his defense can make the case that because Assange is an Australian citizen, he may receive unfair treatment in the United States on account of his nationality.
Either one would be a strong case, especially since human rights organizations like Amnesty have publicly said that Assange “will be at risk of serious abuse” if he’s extradited, and Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has been advocating for his release. But along with prominent voices like those, ordinary people have an important role to play here too. As the Associated Pressnotes, the recent court proceedings were accompanied by crowds of protestors who bore slogans like “Publishing Is Not a Crime. War Crimes Are” into the streets of London. They’re completely right, and that kind of public pressure will be an important factor in the ongoing battle to secure Assange’s freedom.
Assange has supporters around the world, like this recent demonstration in Catalonia. (Image: Wikimedia Commons)
❧ Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian were shockingly killed in a helicopter crash on Sunday that occurred as the result of poor weather. The nation will now need to hold elections in 50 days, a year sooner than expected. A hardline religious conservative, Raisi was long considered to be a natural successor to Iran’s Supreme Leader, the 85-year-old Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (Not to be confused with the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who was a different guy.) Raisi, also a high-ranking cleric, won his election in 2021 under incredibly dubious circumstances and with record-low turnout, as the country’s religious clerics banned all opposition-minded candidates. For the time being, according to Al Jazeera, Raisi’s death likely won’t trigger much of a change in how Iran is governed. As its editorial board writes: “The establishment is now run by conservative and hardline political camps, and any potential power struggles are expected to be within those ranks – with reformists out of the picture.”
Ebrahim Raisi at a 2017 campaign rally. (Hamed Malekpour, the Tasnim News, via Wikimedia Commons)
❧ Three U.S. nationals have been detained in the Democratic Republic of the Congo as part of a group that the government says was attempting to launch a coup. On Sunday, the alleged coup plotters, dressed in military fatigues, attacked the Palais de la Nation—the residence of the DRC’s President Felix Tshisekedi—and the home of another legislator. The man leading the attack, who was ultimately killed during a shootout with police, was identified as Christian Malanga—his 21-year-old son Marcel was also detained after becoming wrapped up in the plot. Malanga was a former army captain and politician who’d fled to the U.S. after being arrested by then Congolese president Joseph Kabila and founded a party opposing the Congolese government.
Malanga described himself as “President of New Zaire.” That is the former name of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, back when it was ruled by the CIA-backed military dictator Joseph Mobutu. Another of the co-conspirators. The U.S., of course, has a long history of covert interventions in the Congothat many analysts name as a direct contributor to the nation’s instability today. Another of the American co-conspirators has a sketchy background as a marijuana trafficker in South Africa and was connected to Malanga through his stake in a gold mining company (In other words, he sounds like exactly the sort of character that U.S. intelligence services love to use for their dirty work).
The U.S. also has a huge stake in the politics of the DRC because of the country’s unparalleled mineral wealth. It produces 68 percent of the world’s cobalt, a valuable mineral used to power many electronic devices, including the iPhone. (Apple has, in fact, been accused by the DRC of using "illegally exploited" minerals from its war-torn east.) While it remains to be seen whether the US had any direct involvement in this coup attempt, it would hardly be out of character.
For more background on the war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and America’s interests in the region, check out this interview with Kambale Musavuli of the Center for Research on the Congo from Breakthrough News:
BEAR FACT OF THE WEEK
Polar bears are technically black, not white!
This is a counterintuitive thing to realize. In almost every photograph, calendar, commemorative mug, and PEZ dispenser depicting a polar bear, they look white. But in reality, their fur has no pigment at all. Instead, as Rachel Feltman writes for the Washington Post, it’s actually clear, and each individual hair is “hollow like a straw” with “enough room for light to scatter inside.” That unique, fiber-optic fur causes the bears to look white when they stand in the sunshine and reflect it. But when a polar bear at a zoo or aquarium needs medical attention, a vet will sometimes shave part of its fur away—and when they do, the skin underneath is actually black. It’s just another incredible thing about these furry behemoths, and another reminder that we need to stop climate change before it melts even more of their Arctic home.
Luna, a polar bear at the Buffalo Zoo, sports a two-toned color scheme after a visit to the vet. (Image: Buffalo Zoo via Facebook)
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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