Nov. 24, 2023 ❧ Climate activists get hacked, a far-right victory in the Netherlands, and price-fixing on eggs…
Plus orcas on the rampage, the ACLU’s lawsuit against book-banners, and a big stupid police vehicle
STORIES THAT SHOULD BE BIGGER
IT’S OFFICIAL: U.S. EGG COMPANIES FIXED PRICES
In a U.S. District Court in Illinois, a long-running civil case has finally reached a verdict. On Wednesday, a jury found that Cal-Maine Foods and Rose Acre Farms, the two largest egg producers in the United States, conspired to fix prices with help from trade groups like the United Egg Producers. According to the Associated Press, these companies “exported eggs to reduce the overall supply in the domestic market, as well as limiting the number of chickens through means including cage space, early slaughter and flock reduction” from 2004 to 2008, all in a deliberate effort to drive prices higher. The companies will now have to pay damages to food manufacturers like Nestle and General Mills, who originally sued them back in 2011.
This case is important, because it provides a useful example of how corporate greed drives inflation. In the past few years, a debate has raged over the concept of “greedflation”—in other words, the idea that prices on basic items like bread and eggs rise because companies decide to gouge their customers. A loud chorus of the habitually wrong, from the Cato Institute to the Economist, have insisted that no such phenomenon exists. But the Illinois courts have just shown that it does—and it’s not the only example, either. In October 2022, Tyson Foods agreed to a $10.5 million settlement after the Washington attorney general’s office alleged that it had conspired to fix the prices of broiler chickens. North of the border, Canada Bread admitted in June that it had engaged in systematic price-gouging, and agreed to pay $50 million in fines. Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey has released a sixteen-page report on greedflation with numerous other examples. These aren’t isolated incidents, but a consistent pattern.
In the media, we often hear prices discussed like the weather; they appear to “rise” and “fall” of their own accord. This is false. Like money itself, prices are human creations: if they rise, it’s because someone made the decision to raise them. Inflation is a real problem, but the tepid responses we’ve seen from our political leaders—which mostly involve raising interest rates—aren’t the answer. Instead, what’s needed is to take control of the economy away from people like the CEOs of Cal-Maine Foods and Rose Acre Farms, and place it into the hands of ordinary working people.
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For more on prices and the people who gouge them, check out Alex Skopic's review of “Price Wars: How the Commodities Markets Made our Chaotic World” by Rupert Russell.
EXXON USED INFORMATION FROM HACKERS TO TARGET CLIMATE ACTIVISTS
An Israeli private investigator, Aviram Azari, was sentenced by a U.S. court last Thursday to more than six years in prison for orchestrating a massive hacking operation targeting American climate activists. Azari pleaded guilty to acting as a “hacker-for-hire” who, along with dozens of others in a team called “Dark Basin,” used spear phishing tactics to steal emails and other digital documents from American climate activists. The Toronto-based cybersecurity watchdog Citizen Lab identified thousands of victims and hundreds of institutions across six continents, including dozens of journalists, elected officials in multiple countries, human rights organizers, and even an advocacy group for Net Neutrality. According to their report: “Dark Basin likely conducted commercial espionage on behalf of their clients against opponents involved in high profile public events, criminal cases, financial transactions, news stories, and advocacy.” He was paid a total of $4.8 million over five years by a series of thus-far unnamed clients. Common Dreams first reported on Dark Basin’s hacking operation in 2020, revealing that it targeted “numerous progressive organizations—including Public Citizen, Greenpeace, 350.org, the Union of Concerned Scientists, and Oil Change International.”
Federal Prosecutors said that emails obtained by the hackers were leaked to media outlets in an effort to discredit the “#ExxonKnew” movement—which has demanded public reparations from Exxon for misleading the public about the destruction oil and gas can cause to the environment (Exxon and other oil companies have had inside knowledge that oil and gas were driving global warming since the 1970s, according to internal documents, but did not make this information public). As of now, there has not been direct evidence that the hacking team was paid by Exxon, but federal prosecutors who brought the case against Azari have said that ExxonMobil used information from the leaked emails to fight state investigations into their conduct. At one point, Exxon even published a hacked 2016 email between climate activists on its website, which has since been taken down. For the time being, federal prosecutors have not charged Exxon with any wrongdoing, but according to the Wall Street Journal, part of the investigation has focused on how that document came to be leaked. Azari has not revealed who funded his hacking operation, but ominously suggested following his sentencing, “You don't know everything. There will come a day.”
In a statement following the sentencing of Azari, Kathy Mulvey of the Union of Concerned Scientists said:
“We're eager to see the bad actors behind the attack publicly named and held accountable…this sentencing serves as a stark reminder of the lengths powerful corporations and special interests will go to evade responsibility. Now more than ever, scientists, advocates, and our policymakers must fight back against scare tactics, delay maneuvers, or other abuses of power from this industry. A safer, healthier, and more just future is at stake.”
The protest group #ExxonKnew, which was hacked by Azari, created this video in which Darth Vader gives Exxon props for its evil deeds:
AROUND THE STATES
❧ Cops in Pullman, Washington now have an MRAP—a military vehicle used in American war zones. On Monday, the city’s police department announced that it had added what it calls an “urban rescue vehicle” to its fleet. In fact, the “vehicle” in question is a Mine Resistant Ambush Protection unit, or MRAP, designed for military use in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. But at the risk of stating the obvious, there aren’t a lot of landmines or IEDs going off on the mean streets of Pullman. In fact, there’s very little crime of any kind: in 2020, the city boasted a grand total of 10 assaults, 3 robberies, 5 auto thefts, and zero murders. Deploying an armored combat vehicle into an environment like that is practically the definition of “overkill”—and yet, it’s become a common practice. On their website, the police claim the MRAP was “obtained free of cost to the department,” which likely means it was transferred through the controversial 1033 program. Created in 1996, this program allows the Department of Defense to send its surplus equipment to police departments across the country, mostly free of charge. It’s also been used to supply cops with things like bayonets and grenade launchers, which have been filled with tear gas and used against protestors on college campuses. Despite the Pullman PD’s claim that an MRAP will provide “exceptional public safety value,” multiple peer-reviewed studies have shown that providing police with military hardware does not lead to any measurable reduction in crime. Instead, data shows that the militarization of police only encourages disproportionate use of force. In Georgia, for example, only 7 percent of law enforcement agencies received military gear, but those agencies accounted for 17 percent of the people shot by Georgia cops over a ten-year period. None of this should be surprising; after all, if you arm your police with literal weapons of war, can you be surprised when they start to act like an occupying army?
❧ A Utah landscaping company systematically trafficked & abused migrant workers. In what the Utah Attorney General’s office is calling an “appalling” case, Rubicon Contractors LLC is accused of bringing approximately 150 workers from Mexico to Utah under H-2B visas, then forcing them to live and work in “subhuman” conditions through the threat of deportation. The descriptions of the workers’ lives sound like something straight from the company towns of the 1800s:
What money employees did receive was loaded onto a debit-like card, from which the company could withdraw funds. Employees were routinely peppered with deductions to their meager pay for housing and equipment, according to a news release. For instance, workers were forced to buy a cellphone from the company so they could use its mobile app to log hours; had to pay for their own equipment, like shovels; and were charged if equipment was damaged or work wasn’t completed on time, according to a probable cause statement. Rubicon also allegedly charged workers about $300 every two weeks to live with other employees, two to three people per room, in unfurnished houses. Law enforcement documents say the employees were not allowed to work or live elsewhere, were forced to work when they were sick and were not allowed to use the restroom when working.
Three of Rubicon’s executives have been arrested so far, and the state attorney general’s office intends to charge them with seven counts of aggravated labor trafficking, per the Salt Lake Tribune. Other employees will likely also be arrested. (The company, of course, denies any wrongdoing.) The case is an important one, not just because of the heinous abuse these workers suffered, but for what it reveals about race, class, and labor in the United States. Demagogues like Donald Trump like to pit workers of different races and nationalities against each other, telling Americans that Mexican workers “take our jobs” and should be seen as threats. But really, it’s capitalists like the owners of Rubicon Contractors who threaten every worker, everywhere. They would have us all living in company housing, paid on debit cards they control, if they could—and only an international, multi-racial coalition of workers fighting together can stop them in their tracks.
❧ The ACLU is suing an Alaska school district over its book bans. The lawsuit, which was filed on the 17th, names six parents and two students from Matanuska-Sunitsna Borough as co-plaintiffs. It details how the school district removed 56 books from its library system, including Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five, André Aciman’s Call Me By Your Name, and Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, simply because they offended the sensibilities of conservative parents. (A full list of the banned books can be found here.) The ACLU is arguing, quite rightly, that such bans violate both the First and Fourteenth amendment, since students’ right to read a wide variety of books is “a necessary predicate to their meaningful exercise of the rights of speech, press, and political freedom.” It’s not the first book-ban suit the ACLU has filed on behalf of kids in America’s public schools; there’s also an ongoing case in South Carolina’s Pickens County, and another in the confusingly-named Kansas City, Missouri. As groups on the political right increase their demands for censorship, though, it’s important that every case be decided in favor of free expression, lest anyone think the cowardly practice of book-banning has any legitimacy.
BERTOLT BRECHT ON BOOK BANS
AROUND THE WORLD
❧ Israel has agreed to a four-day halt in the war against Gaza in exchange for the release of 50 hostages taken by Hamas during its Oct. 7 attack. Israel also agreed to release 150 Palestinian prisoners. On both sides, the people released will be women and children. The deal, brokered by Qatar, the US, and Egypt, began to take effect at 7 a.m. Friday, local time. As of Friday afternoon, Hamas has released 13 Israeli hostages, as well as 12 Thai prisoners and 1 Filipino who were not part of the agreement, while Israel has released 33 Palestinians from a West Bank prison. This four-day truce will provide a brief respite from the onslaught of Israel’s unprecedented bombing campaign, part of a war which killed an estimated 14,800 Gazans in just a month and a half (70 percent of whom have been women and children). But Gaza is still totally destroyed: 45 percent of homes in the strip have been either destroyed or severely damaged and 80 percent of its residents have been displaced according to U.N. estimates. As Owen Jones writes in The Guardian:
This truce is welcome but the widespread destruction of infrastructure will mean people keep dying long after the bombs stop falling. And with Israel’s stated desire to occupy Gaza “for an indefinite period,” much violence is surely yet to come. We are left with a bleak conclusion. There isn’t even a pretence that Palestinian life matters. An Israeli civilian death toll of more than 1,000 was rightly understood to be intolerable, but there appears no limit to how many Gazans can meet violent ends.
❧ Geert Wilders, a Dutch politician known for his Islamophobia, won big in Wednesday’s elections. Not only did Wilders himself win reelection as a member of Parliament, but his far-right Freedom Party (PVV) became the largest in the Dutch parliament, winning 37 out of 150 seats. Politico says it’s “unlikely” that Wilders will become Prime Minister, since several of the other parties have vowed to oppose him taking that role. Still, the PVV will be a dominant force in Dutch politics for the foreseeable future. That’s a terrifying prospect for the country’s Muslims, since Wilders is loud and proud about his Islamophobia, and his party platform reflects it. In the leadup to the election, he promised to reduce immigration to zero, and has even threatened to close mosques and Islamic schools and ban the Quran. He also supports a referendum on the Netherlands leaving the EU, Brexit-style, and a halt on all people seeking asylum. Of course, picking on Muslims (and religious freedom in general) will do nothing to address the Netherlands’ very real cost-of-living crisis, one of the election’s central themes. In any case, Wilders may have to abandon some of his more radical proposals in order to form a government; right now, his most likely partners are the center-right People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD), who are at least marginally less insane. Still, the sooner this guy is out of power, the better.
❧ As the global average temperature passes 2C above pre-industrial levels for the first time in recorded history, the United Nations is urging the world to adopt much swifter action to combat climate change. Summarizing the UN’s most recent Emissions Gap Report, unveiled before next week’s Climate Change Summit in Dubai, UN Secretary General António Guterres gave a harrowing update: “Present trends are racing our planet down a dead-end 3C temperature rise…The emissions gap is more like an emissions canyon.” Scientists say that warming of 3C puts the globe well past the point of no return for catastrophic damage: including the drying of the Amazon rainforest and the unstoppable melting of ice sheets. You’ll remember that the initial benchmark set by the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015 was to attempt to limit global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. While the increase of emissions was less severe than predicted in 2015 as nations have stepped up clean energy production, the clean energy transition has still been far too slow and miniscule to remain at that trajectory. The UN gives only a 14 percent chance of humanity keeping warming below the 1.5C threshold—but it is possible, the report says, if emissions manage to be cut by 42 percent by 2030. This is a lofty goal, but as a species we have no choice but to try: we have seen over the past year—the worst on record for major natural disasters—how devastating the consequences of global warming will be. Unless our leaders treat climate change as an emergency and undertake a massive effort to transition the country away from fossil fuels, we can expect this—and worse—to become a new normal for the planet.
CROOKS vs. SICKOS vs. THE OCCASIONAL DECENT PERSON (or, “What is going on with our politicians?”)
❧ Pervez Agwan, a democratic socialist, is running for the House in Texas. Agwan is aiming to unseat Representative Lizzie Fletcher, the Democratic incumbent, in the state’s 7th district. It’s the first time as a sitting congresswoman that Fletcher has faced a primary challenger and the first election to be held since the district itself was redrawn in 2022. The latter fact is key; as Agwan points out, the new 7th district is one of the most diverse in the state, and has “more Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren voters than Joe Biden voters.” Agwan’s platform includes strong support for universal healthcare, and in an interview with Jacobin, he speaks movingly about losing his father to preventable disease:
My dad was a diabetic, and it’s $300 for a checkup. Houston doesn’t have a safety net. The state refuses to expand medical coverage — we refuse to expand Medicare and Medicaid. Within three months of losing his job, he started going through health issues, and he passed away very quickly. We tried to figure out why, and it was because he was a diabetic with heart disease. He just couldn’t get the care he needed. [...] I refuse to let this system continue. I blame health insurance companies funneling thousands of dollars to politicians for why we can’t expand medical coverage. Seventy-five percent of Americans want universal health care; 80 percent want paid family leave. But we can’t get anything done, because politicians are bought and paid for.
Agwan has also drawn a sharp line between himself and Fletcher, who is endorsed by AIPAC, on the issue of U.S. military aid to Israel. Speaking to The Intercept, he says forthrightly that “Israel is an apartheid state that commits atrocities against native Palestinians on a daily basis,” and that he supports “ending all aid to and implementing economic sanctions on any foreign country that egregiously violates human rights.” In a moment where supposed progressives like John Fetterman are bending over backward to support the massacre of civilians in Gaza, it’s refreshing to see a candidate who won’t toe the line. In 2024, we’ll learn if Agwan can pull off the difficult task of defeating a well-funded Congressional incumbent, and expand the Democratic party’s left flank.
ON “PARDONING” TURKEYS
Here are some thoughts on the ritual of the presidential Turkey Pardon from animal activist and Current Affairs contributor Kecia Doolittle, who went on a “pardoning” spree of her own at a Jennie-O factory farming facility in early November:
On the afternoon of November 2nd, Wayne Hsiung, a California-based activist and former law professor, was convicted and jailed (pending sentencing) for rescuing sick chickens from a factory farm. On the night of the second, I walked into a Jennie-O turkey farm and did a little pardoning of my own.
Of course, “pardon” is the wrong word—the thousands of turkeys I found in the cavernous barn I stopped by hadn’t done anything wrong. This is a fine point that underlines the weirdness and conspicuous silliness of the whole concept (one which apparently warrants a morning of the most powerful man in the world’s time). Occasionally, various presidents feel obliged to point it out—or can’t resist, in spite of themselves. At the same event in 2016, Barack Obama said that “I want to take a moment to recognize the brave turkeys who weren’t so lucky, who didn’t get to ride the gravy train to freedom, who met their fate with courage and sacrifice and proved that they weren’t chicken.” Trump went even further, saying at the 2020 pardon, “Thanksgiving is a special day for turkeys—I guess, probably for the most part, not a very good one when you think about it.” The fact that the “pardon” isn’t really a pardon at all is the punchline to the joke, the core, naked absurdity without which the tradition wouldn’t have legs.
People seem to have fun with the turkey pardon—even if the laughter sounds a little forced, and one might speculate that the morbidity-cloaked-in-pageantry leaves some needing to shake off a feeling of slight unease. But while this year’s turkeys, Liberty and Bell, surely appreciate that they’ll get to continue living their lives, those lives may be short. Domestic turkeys have been genetically re-shaped to grow at a catastrophic rate to reach slaughter at just a few months old, and they’re massively overweight and deformed compared to their wild relatives. Past presidential birds, like 2016’s “Tater” and “Tot,” only lived for a few months after their pardon. Still, Liberty and Bell are at least more likely to dine on honeycrisp apples, which Biden says he’s been told they enjoy, than their millions of near-identical siblings who’ll be slaughtered before the next Thanksgiving pardon comes around.
Biden thanked Steve Lykken, the President of the Turkey Federation who was in attendance, and told the audience the two birds had been raised on Lykken’s “family farm” in Minnesota. The term “family farm” implies something small and cozy, and this is an image the industry pushes hard, leaning on the narrative of the hardworking, weathered-handed farmer trying to feed America and his family. It’s a narrative Biden clearly embraces, like most politicians do. In reality, though, 99 percent of the animals raised for food in the U.S. come from factory farms, and turkeys are no exception.
There were probably a thousand birds in the Jennie-O barn I visited that night, which was only one of several that composed just that one farm. Said barn was featureless except for some feeders, litter on the ground, and a couple of fans that did their best with air that was so foul-smelling it started to make my throat burn after a while. And, of course, the turkeys. It was like walking into the New Orleans Superdome after Hurricane Katrina, but with fewer amenities—an accidental-feeling arrangement, where living beings were dumped in a place that was never made to be lived in, but which they’d had to make the best of. The turkeys regarded me like an uncontacted Amazonian tribe would a nervous missionary, with a dignity and keen scrutiny I was unprepared for.
‘Jennie-O cares about turkeys, and you should too.’ I saw the sign on the wall on my way out, as I carried the first of the two turkeys I thought I might be able to save if I got them emergency veterinary care, who I called Gabriel. As I walked briskly—it was very cold—along the windowless barn that stretched as long as two football fields, and toward the relative comfort and safety waiting at the edge of the property, I realized that Gabriel had never seen the sky. Or much of anything, but the sky seemed particularly important. It was before dawn, and, partly to distract myself from my jangled nerves, partly out of sleep-deprived childlike talkativeness, I said to him, “Hey, this is called the outside! It’s not always dark like this. There’s this thing called the ‘sun’ that’ll blow your mind.” Gabe was half the size of the rest of the turkeys, probably due to malnutrition. He had a ghastly wound on one wing, the bone protruding, but he seemed interested in what I had to say…
READ KECIA’S FULL ESSAY “MY TURKEY PARDON” IN CURRENT AFFAIRS MAGAZINE
ORCA FACT OF THE WEEK
Heavy metal music can’t stop the orca insurgency!
For the last four years, killer whales have been attacking boats along the Iberian peninsula. There have been hundreds of instances of the orcas ramming into yachts and other vessels—a few of which have sunk. This includes one catamaran in the Strait of Gibraltar last month, which capsized after orcas plowed into its rudder.
After everyone had been safely returned to shore, its Captain Florian Rutsch, who’d had another orca encounter earlier in the year, revealed to The New York Times that his crew had attempted to deter the orcas by blasting heavy metal music at them to muffle the sound of engines, an idea that has gained steam in online sailors’ group chats which share ideas on how to navigate “orca alley.” Some sailors have even taken to deploying underwater speakers. One of them, Rutsch began to blast a playlist titled “Metal for Orcas,” which can be found here. It seems they enjoyed the concert because they head-banged right into the rudder of his ship, which disabled the steering. Though it certainly failed in Rutsch’s case, difficult to tell whether this approach works—different sailors report varying levels of success. But scientists discourage it. Marine mammal expert Andrew Trites at the University of British Columbia says “The playing of loud sounds underwater might mask the signature sounds of sailboats — but ultimately, the whales would catch on and use it to more easily locate vessels playing it.”
CLIMATE CROSSWORD ANSWERS
Writing and research by Stephen Prager and Alex Skopic. Editing and additional material by Nathan J. Robinson and Lily Sánchez. 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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