May 7, 2024 ❧ The truth behind the TikTok ban, Cuellar corruption, and Conde Nast's union win
Plus: Israel invades Rafah instead of freeing hostages, Macklemore drops an anti-war rap, Tyson pollutes waterways, and a raccoon runs amok in the White House
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STORIES THAT SHOULD BE BIGGER
Romney and Blinken have admitted the real reason for TikTok ban legislation
Last week, President Biden signed a bill banning the Chinese-owned social media platform TikTok unless it is sold to an American company. Much of the discourse in favor of the ban centered on scantily evidenced, often vague claims about the possibility of China using it to harvest Americans’ information. But some comments made this week at the John McCain Institute Forum by Senator Mitt Romney and Secretary of State Antony Blinken have made clear what many, including us, suspected: That this ban had little to do with Americans’ safety and privacy and was instead about keeping a lid on the information they are allowed to freely access, particularly that which might lead viewers to call America’s foreign policy narratives and objectives into question.
The subject of TikTok came up when Romney asked Blinken why he thought “the PR has been so awful” for Israel since they are “typically good at PR.” Blinken said that some of it was due to “an intravenous feed of information with new impulses, inputs every millisecond,” He continued:
And of course the way this has played out on social media has dominated the narrative. You have a social media ecosystem, environment in which context, history, facts get lost and the emotion, the impact of images dominate. We can’t discount that, but I think it also has a very, very challenging effect on the narrative.
Romney added on in even more explicit terms:
Some wonder why there was such overwhelming support for us to shut down TikTok or other entities of that nature. If you look at the postings on TikTok, the number of mentions of Palestinians relative to other social media sites, it’s overwhelmingly so among TikTok broadcasts. So I’d note that’s of real interest, and the President will have the chance to make action in that regard.
If you watch the clip, it’s pretty remarkable how casually the two discuss this, as if they don’t even realize that it’s something that could be considered scandalous. Romney and Blinken here are saying that TikTok needed to be banned because it allows the public to freely view “images” of the war’s horrors—children reduced to skeletons due to starvation and crying after having just watched their families blown up in airstrikes—of their own volition.
In the past, Americans’ sense of what happened in Israel and Palestine was mediated by what the newspapers and TV news were willing to show them, and that information is often heavily limited (See The Intercept’s reporting on how all the reporting from CNN’s Jerusalem Bureau is subject to IDF censorship). But now, ordinary people in Gaza only need a cell phone and internet access to show the world the hell they are living through. That Americans are sympathizing with them is not the result of machinations by nefarious foreign governments or Hamas infiltrators. It’s the result of Americans seeing other human beings subjected to brutality and injustice and finding it disgusting.
Blinken and Romney’s admission is an incredibly candid one about how our leaders view the freedom of information: Not as an essential good that is necessary for a democratic society, but as a negotiable means to an end that needs to be reined in the second it challenges the goals of the US state. But perhaps even more revealing is what this tacitly admits about how our leaders view Israel: For it to maintain “good PR,” there needs to be tight control over what information about the conflict Americans are able to access. That PR can no longer function in a truly democratic media environment.
CROOKS vs. SICKOS (or, “What’s going on with our politicians?”)
❧ Democratic Congressman Henry Cuellar of Texas and his wife have been indicted for charges of conspiracy and accepting nearly $600,000 in bribes from the government of Azerbaijan and a bank headquartered in Mexico. According to the Department of Justice, Cuellar accepted the money through a series of shell companies owned by his wife and, in exchange, agreed to pursue US policy favorable to Azerbaijan (which, it should be mentioned, is currently carrying out an ethnic cleansing of Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh) and to promote legislation and Executive Branch actions favorable to the Mexican bank. With this corruption scandal, Cuellar follows in the footsteps of the equally slimy Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) who was indicted last year for receiving, among other things, bars of gold as part of a bribe from the Egyptian government. Corruption is not the only thing Cuellar has in common with Menendez.
Like Menendez, Cuellar is also essentially just twelve corporations stacked on top of each other in a tailored suit. Critics on the left have long pointed out that Cuellar is awash in lobbyist money and beholden to every malignant interest under the sun, from Big Oil to the NRA to the private prison lobby. Many of his positions are near-indistinguishable from Republicans’: He has supported keeping assault weapons legal, opposed climate legislation, and advocated for migrant detention in private prisons while calling undocumented immigrants “rapists” and “killers.” Most of the Democratic Party’s most soulless corporate drones at least support abortion rights, but Cuellar is even opposed to abortion and campaigned against it during the post-Dobbs 2022 midterms when it was Democrats’ #1 selling point.
Nevertheless, in the last two Democratic primaries for TX-28, Nancy Pelosi and other party leaders in the House have backed Cuellar, now an eight-term incumbent, to the hilt against an inspiring young progressive challenger in immigration lawyer Jessica Cisneros. Now the Democratic leadership is paying the price for overlooking Cuellar’s obvious corruption. As they gear up for a knock-down, drag-out fight to retake the House in the upcoming elections, where every seat will count, his will now be open and much more vulnerable to a Republican takeover. Though, given how often Cuellar voted like a Republican, we’re not sure it will make much of a difference.
❧ Kristi Noem just can’t stop talking about killing dogs. Last week, we told you the unsavory details about the South Dakota Governor’s new memoir, in which she admits to shooting a rambunctious young dog named Cricket in a gravel pit on her ranch. Now, Noem has gone on the record to say that she thinks Joe Biden’s dog should be shot too. In a segment on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Noem compared Cricket to Biden’s dog Commander, who has reportedly bit Secret Service agents on 24 occasions, saying ominously that Biden should “make a decision on a dog.” This is a pretty weird thing to say, since Biden’s seemingly unconditional love for his terribly-behaved dog is one of the only charming things about him, and it’s not clear why Noem thought calling for more canicide would be a winning message. Was she trying to throw Republicans a bone? Barking up the wrong tree, perhaps? Feeling ruff about her electoral chances?
In a separate incident, Noem seems to have lied about meeting Kim Jong-Un, saying in her book that she had “experience staring down little tyrants” thanks to her time as a children’s pastor. When questioned by ABC News about the claim, her staff said that it was simply a mix-up with another dictator’s name, but that’s not exactly convincing. How many “tyrants” around the world can be described as “little” to make that joke work? Overall, Noem is developing a knack for telling bizarre and unsettling personal stories that can only be matched by one person: Donald Trump. No wonder she’s rumored to be his VP pick.
AROUND THE STATES
❧ The city of Detroit just got a community-owned, democratically-run co-op grocery store. It’s called the Detroit People’s Food Co-Op, and it already has 2,740 members. Launched last Wednesday with the help of a group called the Detroit Black Community Food Sovereignty Network, the store looks like any other supermarket. It sells produce, meat, baked goods, medicines, and (presumably) Mom’s spaghetti. Only the ownership model is different: each of the members owns an equal share in the enterprise, and there’s no CEO or board of shareholders skimming profits off the top. Instead, the project’s website says any member will be able to run for a position on the Board of Directors, which will be elected annually.
This is not something you’re invited to. It’s literally yours,” says Lanay Gilbert-Williams, president of the co-op’s board of directors. “There is no rich person in the shadows. People can’t imagine such a heaven where all types of people have come together to do a thing and take ownership of a thing. It belongs to the entire community.
In Europe, the co-op model is a popular one, with Spain’s Mondragon Corporation employing around 70,000 people and running a successful chain of Eroski supermarkets. There’s also the cooperative S-Market chain in Finland, which is the country’s single largest private employer, and the aptly-named Co-Op Food stores in the United Kingdom. There are varying degrees of worker control at each, and the model doesn’t always guarantee decent labor practices. At some co-ops in the United States, like Seattle’s PCC, the same low wages and other labor issues that plague chains like Walmart have arisen, and workers have had to unionize and threaten to strike to correct them. It’s possible the same will happen here.
But for Detroit—which, like a lot of American cities, has developed “food deserts” where privately-owned businesses don’t believe it’s profitable enough to operate—a co-op could be a valuable step forward. Apart from anything else, the for-profit model often leads to price-gouging on basic necessities, something Canadian grocery chains like Albertson’s and Loblaw have been accused of. If Detroit can take even a small step toward democratic control of its food resources, and away from rampant profiteering, so much the better.
❧ Magazine giant Condé Nast has agreed to a deal with the union that represents the writers at Vogue and its other publications. They did it just in the nick of time, 12 hours before members of the Condé Nast union planned to crash Monday night’s Met Gala, the annual high-society soirée hosted by Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, which costs $75,000-a-ticket. “Meet us at the table or meet us at the Met,” the Conde Nast Union declared this weekend.
Contract negotiations between Condé Nast and its union had been more than a year in the making. But the union’s effort shifted into high gear in November of last year after Condé announced that was laying off 5 percent of its workforce and 94 union members. The union threatened a walkout and began hanging up fliers around Wintour’s neighborhood in New York City reading “Anna wears Prada, workers get nada.”
The tentative agreement includes sizable gains for the writers, who are employed at Vogue (and its Teen counterpart), Vanity Fair, Gentleman’s Quarterly, Architectural Digest, and several other magazines. According to The Guardian, it “includes $3.6m in wage increases, including a starting salary floor of $61,500 annually, an increase of two weeks of paid parental leave, just cause protections, conversion of subcontracted workers to staff, and negotiated terms of the previously announced layoffs – later this week.”
READ MORE IN OUR LATEST ISSUE
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Art by Nick Sirotich from Issue 47 of Current Affairs Magazine, March/April 2024
⚜ LONG READ: A new analysis from the Union of Concerned Scientists shows how the poultry processing company Tyson Foods has been flooding American waterways with pollutants:
Tyson Foods meat and poultry processing plants released more than 371.1 million pounds of pollutants into local waterways across the country between 2018 and 2022, according to an analysis released today by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). It found that over half of the pollutants were dumped into water, including streams, rivers, lakes and wetlands, in just three states: Nebraska, Illinois and Missouri.
The analysis is a conservative accounting of the wastewater pollution released by Tyson plants, through activities like animal washing, cleaning meat and animal products, sanitizing equipment and scrubbing work areas. The study looked at the corporation’s 41 slaughterhouses and large processing plants wastewater discharges. Those facilities account for one third of Tyson plants.
“As the nation’s largest meat and poultry producer, Tyson Foods plays a huge role in our food and agriculture system and has for decades exploited policies that allow big agribusiness corporations to pollute with impunity,” said Dr. Omanjana Goswami, interdisciplinary scientist with the Food and Environment Program at UCS and report co-author. “In 2022, the latest year for which we have data, Tyson plants processed millions of cattle and pigs and billions of chickens, and discharged over 18.5 billion gallons of wastewater, enough to fill more than 37,000 Olympic swimming pools.”
The discharged wastewater contains animal waste and chemicals, including 34.25 million pounds of nitrogen and 5.06 million pounds of phosphorus between 2018 and 2022. Large amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus feed algal blooms that can exacerbate respiratory conditions like asthma, clog water infrastructure and cause ‘dead zones’ by depleting oxygen levels in water and causing fish and other marine life to suffocate and die.
AROUND THE WORLD
❧ Israel is beginning its ground invasion of Rafah, the last refuge for more than 1 million people who have been displaced over the last seven months of war. The Israel Defense Force on Sunday ordered more than 100,000 people to “evacuated immediately” to a barren “humanitarian area” in the west of Gaza with virtually no remaining infrastructure. For those who remain in Rafah, international observers have warned that an Israeli invasion will be catastrophic. “Israel’s military offensive in Rafah could lead to the deadliest phase of this conflict, inflicting horrific suffering on approximately 1.4 million displaced civilians in the area,” said Jan Egeland, head of the Norwegian Refugee Council. Jens Laerke, spokesperson for the U.N. humanitarian office, warned that the invasion would mean the “slaughter of civilians” and that it could be a “an incredible blow to the humanitarian operation in the entire strip because it is run primarily out of Rafah.”
That destruction appears to have already begun. According to Al Jazeera reporter Tareq Abu Azzoum, who is on the ground in Rafah, “There has been an escalation of air raids and artillery bombardment in the eastern part of Rafah. We’re talking nonstop bombing of residential houses. The vast majority of residents there have started to flee the area where the Israeli military is trying to mobilize more troops.” (It seems like no coincidence that Israel this week also ordered Al Jazeera, one of the few international news agencies with reporters in Gaza to provide 24/7 coverage, to shut down.) As of Tuesday morning, Israel has taken over the Palestinian side of the Rafah Crossing.
The invasion of Rafah is continuing even as Hamas agreed on Monday to a deal proposed by Egyptian and Qatari mediators which would release dozens of Israeli hostages in exchange for a temporary pause to the war. According to Ha’aretz, which quotes an unnamed “diplomatic source” — likely someone from the Qatari or Egyptian delegation— the deal Hamas accepted is “is, at its core, the same as the Egyptian proposal which Israel has already approved.”
The[re] were celebrations in Gaza as news of the Hamas statement spread. But an unnamed Israeli official swiftly told Reuters news agency that the proposal Hamas had accepted was a "softened" version of an Egyptian proposal which included "far-reaching" conclusions that Israel could not accept.
"This would appear to be a ruse intended to make Israel look like the side refusing a deal," the official said.
Later, Prime Minister Netanyahu's office said in a statement: "Even though the Hamas proposal is far from Israel's basic requirements, Israel will send a delegation of mediators to exhaust the possibility of reaching an agreement under conditions acceptable to Israel."
According to another Ha’aretz report, Israeli leaders were determined to enter Rafah no matter what, with one official saying that, “Israel will, under no circumstances, agree to end the war as part of a deal to release the hostages.” Netanyahu confirmed this on Sunday, saying that he would not accept any end to the war that “leave[s] Hamas intact.”
Returning the hostages has been one of the primary justifications Israel and its supporters across the West have used to defend the war. But the families of hostages in Israel have, of course, been some of the most vocal supporters of a ceasefire to bring their loved ones home. Increasingly, Israeli commentators suggest that Netanyahu is seeking to sabotage a peace agreeement, prolonging the war for the sake of his own political fortunes. Yossi Verter, a columnist for Ha’aretz summed this up in a blistering op-ed:
It is not the 33 hostages who might be released – the sick, the injured, the old; women, including female soldiers – who are uppermost in his thoughts, but rather the 64 Knesset members of his coalition and above all, himself…Netanyahu had hoped that the Egyptian proposal, which was more far-reaching than anything he had been willing to accept in the past, would be rejected by Hamas. Over the weekend, when the negotiations took a positive turn, Netanyahu found himself in distress, as was expressed by his flurry of statements.
SONG OF THE WEEK
On “Hind’s Hall,” Macklemore redeems himself from past corniness with a nearly three-minute protest rap in support of the pro-Palestine student movement. The title is a reference to Hind Rajab, the 6-year-old Palestinian child who was killed by the Israeli military this January. (Famously, when protestors at Columbia University occupied its Hamilton Hall, they renamed it “Hind’s Hall” in Rajab’s honor.) Macklemore has indicated all streaming proceeds will go to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which was shamefully defunded by many countries earlier this year.
If students in tents posted on the lawn Occupyin’ the quad is really against the law And a reason to call in the police and their squad Where does genocide land in your definition, huh? Destroyin’ every college in Gaza and every mosque Pushin’ everyone into Rafah and droppin' bombs The blood is on your hands, Biden, we can see it all
Listen to the full song here, or read the lyrics
BAD TAKE OF THE WEEK
Sure, that’ll work swimmingly, Andy. Israeli weapons factories in Gaza, so Palestinians can build the bombs that’ll later be dropped on their homes. What a genius you are.
⚜ LONG READ: We hear a lot about “Chinese disinformation” polluting the minds of Americans. But a new piece in Wired by David Gilbert argues that China is actually very bad at getting people to pay attention to its propaganda:
The headlines sounded dire: “China Will Use AI to Disrupt Elections in the US, South Korea and India, Microsoft Warns.” Another claimed, “China Is Using AI to Sow Disinformation and Stoke Discord Across Asia and the US.”
They were based on a report published earlier this month by Microsoft’s Threat Analysis Center which outlined how a Chinese disinformation campaign was now utilizing artificial technology to inflame divisions and disrupt elections in the US and around the world. The campaign, which has already targeted Taiwan’s elections, uses AI-generated audio and memes designed to grab user attention and boost engagement.
But what these headlines and Microsoft itself failed to adequately convey is that the Chinese-government-linked disinformation campaign, known as Spamouflage Dragon or Dragonbridge, has so far been virtually ineffective.
“I would describe China's disinformation campaigns as Russia 2014. As in, they're 10 years behind,” says Clint Watts, the general manager of Microsoft’s Threat Analysis Center. “They're trying lots of different things but their sophistication is still very weak.” …
“Spamouflage is like throwing spaghetti at the wall, and they are throwing a lot of spaghetti,” says Jack Stubbs, chief information officer at Graphika, a social media analysis company that was among the first to identify the Spamouflage campaign. “The volume and scale of this thing is huge. They're putting out multiple videos and cartoons every day, amplified across different platforms at a global scale. The vast majority of it, for the time being, appears to be something that doesn't stick, but that doesn't mean it won't stick in the future.”
Since at least 2017, Spamouflage has been ceaselessly spewing out content designed to disrupt major global events, including topics as diverse as the Hong Kong pro-democracy protests, the US presidential elections, and Israel and Gaza. Part of a wider multibillion-dollar influence campaign by the Chinese government, the campaign has used millions of accounts on dozens of internet platforms ranging from X and YouTube to more fringe platforms like Gab, where the campaign has been trying to push pro-China content. It’s also been among the first to adopt cutting-edge techniques such as AI-generated profile pictures.
Even with all of these investments, experts say the campaign has largely failed due to a number of factors including issues of cultural context, China’s online partition from the outside world via the Great Firewall, a lack of joined-up thinking between state media and the disinformation campaign, and the use of tactics designed for China’s own heavily controlled online environment.
RACCOON FACT OF THE WEEK
President Calvin Coolidge had a pet raccoon who ran rampant through the White House!
According to the Library of Congress, some supporters from Mississippi decided to gift the stoic Republican president a live raccoon in 1926. They had meant for the raccoon to be served up at the Coolidges’ Thanksgiving dinner. But the Coolidges, who kept all manner of exotic pets from geese to bobcats, took a liking to her. They named her “Rebecca.”
Rebecca was gifted a special red collar with the title “Raccoon of the White House” and she let the power get to her head. According to the Library, she had a habit of “knocking over plants, unscrewing jar lids, cavorting in the bathtub, and generally living la vida loca.” Rebecca’s elusive escapes from frustrated staffers and into the many trees on the White House grounds became fodder for the papers. Though the Coolidges kept enough of a leash on her that she could be brought to public appearances like the 1927 White House egg roll.
The White House decided to capitalize on Rebecca’s celebrity status by attempting to slot her into a power couple. In an article for the White House Historical Association, historian Matthew Costello describes it thusly: “An unnamed White House policeman took it upon himself to be the raccoon matchmaker. He captured a male raccoon in northern Virginia, and brought it with him to the White House to serve as Rebecca’s ‘boyfriend.’ His name was Horace, but the president did not care for that name very much. He changed it to Rueben, but this did not improve relations between the two raccoons. Rueben escaped from his cage frequently, scaled the highest trees, and on one occasion climbed the White House fence and leaped onto Pennsylvania Avenue, halting traffic for 30 minutes.”
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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