Nov. 28, 2023 ❧ 50TH BRIEFING SPECTACULAR: Amazon workers strike on Black Friday, Israel's "administrative detention" system, and a bewildering otherworldly particle
Plus a brewing border dispute in South America, a long lost Chumbawamba-Chomsky crossover, an Oregon church faces fines for loving thy neighbor, and Current Affairs adopts an axolotl!
It is a momentous day in Current Affairs history as we celebrate our 50th News Briefing! They said it couldn’t be done…that news briefings were “only for the president and not for the common workaday reader.” But you, our beloved subscribers, have proven those naysayers wrong. This is as much your achievement as it is ours—after all, Current Affairs would not be what it is without our loyal subscribers. So on this historic day, we invite you to fill your tankards to the brim, feast upon the celebratory beignet, and light the ceremonial Magazine Achievement Torch that you surely keep in your home for occasions such as this one. We have even provided you with some indoor-safe fireworks to help you set the mood:
But even amid the festivities, there is news afoot which warrants briefing. So without further ado, we give you…
FIGHTING BACK
AMAZON WORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE
Black Friday was a day for labor action, not just shopping, this year. Across 30 different countries, Amazon workers took advantage of the unofficial holiday—one of the company’s biggest sales events—to stage strikes, walkouts, and other forms of protest against low pay and unsafe working conditions. The “Make Amazon Pay” campaign was organized by a wide coalition of international labor groups, including the UNI Global Union, Amazon Workers International, Germany’s Union Verdi and Britain’s GMB Union. It’s the fourth time workers at the retail giant have staged a Black Friday revolt, dating back to the 2020 protests over the company’s disregard for their safety at the height of the pandemic. It’s also estimated to be one of the biggest strikes yet.
In Germany, roughly 2,000 workers walked off the job, slowing work at 6 different fulfillment centers across the country. In India, there were protests against Amazon in at least ten major cities, including Mumbai, New Delhi, Kolkata, and Bhopal. In England, hundreds of workers were already walking the picket lines at the company’s facility in Coventry, part of a pay dispute that’s been raging for more than 28 days; they were joined by protesters in London. Bangladesh’s garment workers, who have been subjected to some of the worst safety conditions on Earth by Amazon, also held mass protests. In a statement to the UNI Global Union, Nazma Akter—a former child laborer who’s now the president of the Sommilito Garments Sramik Federation—drove home the high stakes involved:
In Bangladesh, garment workers make the clothes that Amazon sells and profits from. But Amazon doesn’t even recognize us as its workers nor sign the Accord on Fire and Building Safety to keep our factories safe. That precarity leaves us open to even more abuse: dangerous working conditions, a minimum wage below the $209 per month we are demanding, and trade unionists attacked and killed by police. We make Amazon’s profits and together with our brothers and sisters around the world, we will Make Amazon Pay.
Even Japan took part, with a protest march of workers chanting “reduce the volume of merchandise!” in front of the company’s regional headquarters in Tokyo’s Meguro ward. Along with labor conditions, the Make Amazon Pay movement condemns the company’s climate impact, noting that Amazon had only a 0.4 percent decrease in emissions in 2022—at which rate, it would take until the year 2378 to reach net zero.
The global nature of this strike is critical. One of the major advantages of multinational companies like Amazon has been their ability to organize across national borders; it’s allowed them to seek cheap labor around the world, exploiting workers in one country to make near-record profits in another, and become more wealthy and powerful than many governments. If working people are going to stand up to them, and win decent lives for themselves and their families, they’ll have to stand together across every country. With this newest day of action, they’ve begun to do exactly that.
AS SOME HOSTAGES GO FREE, THOUSANDS STILL REMAIN IN ARBITRARY DETENTION IN ISRAEL
AS SOME HOSTAGES GO FREE, THOUSANDS STILL REMAIN IN ARBITRARY DETENTION IN ISRAEL
The war in Gaza has been on pause since Friday, as Israel and Gaza’s Hamas government have agreed to exchange some prisoners. Hamas has so far given up 69 Israeli women and children taken hostage on Oct. 7 and released another 17 Thai hostages as part of a separate deal with Thailand’s government mediated by Qatar and Egypt. Meanwhile, Israel has also given up 150 Palestinian women and children who were being held prisoner in Israel. For the families on both sides who have been living in fear for their loved ones, this is a momentous day. “The families of the kidnapped are not posters, they are not slogans, they are real people, and the families of the kidnapped are from today my new family, and I will make sure and do everything that the last of the kidnapped comes home,” said Doron Asher—whose wife and two daughters were returned this week after spending nearly two months as hostages.
The plight of the more than 200 Israeli hostages has been at the top of the news cycle since the latest outburst of violence began, and rightfully so. But comparatively little attention has been paid to the fact that more than 7,800 Palestinians are being held in Israeli jails with dozens more arrested in the West Bank each day. Many of them are held under “administrative detention,” which Amnesty International describes as “arbitrary detention…without charge or trial.” Many of the Palestinian women and children released by Israel had never actually been charged with a crime. Amnesty says that the number of Palestinians under administrative detention shot from just over 1,300 to more than 2,000 after Oct. 7. However, even before Oct. 7, the use of administrative detention was at the highest levels in three decades. An estimated 500 to 1,000 children are also detained each year, according to the United Nations. Of the 300 people Israel has suggested releasing, 287 of them are under 18.
Detainees have been routinely denied contact with lawyers and their families, the Red Cross says. They are subject to wretched conditions, not fit for human habitation. One report describes 8x4 cells holding 10 to 20 prisoners and a diet of less than a single egg, a fifth of a cucumber, and some bread per day. Reports from those who have suffered in administrative detention over the years are often harrowing and abuses have only gotten more extreme since Oct. 7. One report from the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz described Shin Bet agents stripping down Palestinian detainees to their underwear, beating them with an iron pipe, pulling out their fingernails, and putting out lit cigarettes on their skin—one prisoner compared it to the torture of captives by US soldiers at Abu Ghraib during the Iraq War. Other images have circulated online of Palestinian prisoners being blindfolded, tied up, and beaten by Israeli guards—many of which are boastfully posted by the soldiers themselves. The use of solitary confinement is also rampant—in fact, one report from Save the Children found that 60 percent of detainees under eighteen were held in solitary confinement at some point.
Israel’s arbitrary detention of Palestinians has been a reality for decades, but it has not gotten anywhere near the attention from the press that the Israeli hostages captured by Hamas have gotten even though there are far more of them. There are numerous “kidnapped” posters put up all over the United States for Israeli hostages, but it’s rare to see the same thing for detained Palestinians, and politicians routinely call for the release of Israeli hostages without a word for Palestinians under arbitrary detention. The dichotomy in treatment was perhaps best encapsulated by an article about the hostage exchanges in The Guardian this week which referred to released Israeli hostages as “women and children” and Palestinian prisoners as “women and people aged 18 and younger” within the same paragraph. (Upon the sudden realization that Palestinians aged 18 and under are also children, The Guardian has since changed the wording.) Nobody—Israeli or Palestinian—should be held in arbitrary detention, and it should be treated as an egregious offense regardless of who the perpetrators are.
An actual, real interaction between New Yorker journalist Isaac Chotiner (bolded) and Senator Ben Cardin (D-MD, not bolded):
AROUND THE WORLD
❧ Egypt’s government is cracking down on dissent before December’s elections. The country is scheduled to vote between December 10 and 12, but as Amnesty International reports, police repression has ramped up significantly. Ahmed Altantawy, a former member of parliament who had planned to run for president, has been arrested on charges of “conspiring and inciting others to disseminate election-related material without authorization,” after having his phone activity systematically surveilled using Predator spyware. 196 other Egyptians have also been arrested, either for taking part in unauthorized protests or spreading what the government deems “false news.” Solidarity demonstrations for Palestine, predictably, have been criminalized with particular harshness. Philip Luther, one of Amnesty International’s top officials in Egypt, describes the situation as a “suffocating web of repression” marked by “utter intolerance for even the faintest whisper of dissent,” and in that climate, the election itself can hardly be called legitimate.
❧ A territorial dispute between Venezuela and Guyana could get ugly quickly. Since 1899, both nations have claimed the mineral-rich Essequibo region, which currently forms more than half of Guyana’s internationally-recognized territory. Venezuela insists that Britain, Guyana’s colonial administrator until 1966, forged maps that were used to grant control of the area to Guyana, and calls Essequibo la zona en reclamación, or “zone in reclamation.” Until recently, this has been a low-simmering tension—but in April, the UN’s International Court of Justice agreed to hear a case between the two nations, which Venezuela had argued was inadmissible without Britain’s involvement. Seemingly in response, Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro’s government has fanned the flames of nationalism, promoting a referendum on December 3 that will supposedly decide the fate of the region. Ominously, the referendum’s ballot questions include whether Essequibo is an “existential threat” to Venezuela, whether its residents should be granted Venezuelan citizenship, and whether to create a “Venezuelan state” there. Although Maduro hasn’t presented any details on what will happen if Venezuelans vote yes, this all sounds suspiciously like the language used to justify an invasion and annexation. And in turn, if Venezuela does decide to attack its neighbor, there’s a real possibility the United States—which has considered a “military option” against Maduro in the not-too-distant past—could get involved, with disastrous consequences for everyone. Let’s hope world leaders decide not to be suicidally reckless for once.
AROUND THE STARS
❧ Astronomers in Japan and Utah detected a strange, high-energy particle falling to Earth on Friday that has left them totally bewildered. Scientists say that Amaterasu (named after a Japanese sun goddess) is one of the highest-energy cosmic rays ever observed—the second largest in history behind only the “Oh My God” particle, which was seen in 1991. Scientists say that this ray was likely caused by a celestial event more powerful than the explosion of a star, but they remain flummoxed about where exactly it could have come from. “You trace its trajectory to its source and there's nothing high energy enough to have produced it. That's the mystery of this — what the heck is going on?” said John Matthews, a spokesman for the Utah-based Telescope Array which first sighted the mysterious particle. This means that the particle likely did not come from the Sun (where most cosmic rays like it originate), but from somewhere outside the Milky Way galaxy—some speculate it came out of the Local Void—an empty area of space next door to the Milky Way. The possibility that a particle, which Matthews says is vastly more energetic than those that make up a supernova, could emerge from literal nothingness is one of those totally baffling instances that make the universe inscrutable and magical, even to non-scientific laypeople like us.
CURRENT AFFAIRS HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE
For that loved one who has everything, why not give the gift that really says “I care”? That’s right: a double CD featuring a Noam Chomsky lecture and a live performance by the mid-1990s punk band Chumbawamba! We’re told Professor Chomsky goes especially hard when played in a car with a really loud subwoofer.
AROUND THE STATES
❧ Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer convicted for murdering George Floyd, was stabbed Friday by another inmate in an Arizona prison. Law enforcement says he is expected to survive after prison staff performed “life-saving measures.” Chauvin became a worldwide symbol of police brutality and racial inequality in 2020 when he knelt on the neck of Floyd, an unarmed Black man who’d already been physically restrained for allegedly passing a counterfeit $20 bill, for around nine minutes. The act was caught on film and sparked months of protest and unrest across the United States and resulted in Chauvin’s sentencing to more than two decades in prison. The irony of Chauvin being stabbed in prison is hard to miss: He used the criminal justice system to inflict arbitrary punishment and death upon people for years—racking up 17 misconduct complaints over nearly two decades on the force—and is now experiencing what it’s like on the other end. The jokes, about how “maybe Chauvin had fentanyl in his system” or how it’s fine that he was stabbed because he was “no angel,” (arguments that were used to justify Chauvin’s murder of Floyd) write themselves.
But if we truly believe in building a criminal justice system where even people who have done horrible things are treated like human beings, it seems hypocritical to take schadenfreude from this attack on Chauvin. He may have done horrible things—but even people who have done horrible things should not be physically assaulted in prison. Violence, like what happened to Chauvin, is a routine occurrence in American prisons: one 2016 report found that 19 percent of male prisoners have been victims of attacks by other inmates and 21 percent have been victims of attacks by staff. A prison system that allows this is not only inhumane but also harmful to broader society. As Nazish Dholakia of the Vera Institute of Justice points out:
The impact of incarceration far outlasts whatever time people spend behind bars. The inhumanity of U.S. jails and prisons—the physical violence and abuse, as well as unsanitary conditions and low-quality health care—means people can leave incarceration in poorer physical and mental health than when they entered. More than 95 percent of people in prison will someday return home, but prisons fail to prepare people for a successful life after release. Instead, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, the current U.S. criminal legal system apparatus “routinely and persistently fails to produce the fair and just outcomes that will make us all safer.”
❧ The Department of Justice officially opposes Brookings, Oregon’s attempt to forbid a church from feeding the homeless. Since 2021, there’s been a major dispute between city officials and St. Timothy’s Episcopal Church. After a group of Brookings residents petitioned the city to “prevent the congregation of vagrants or undesirables,” the council decided that the church’s longstanding soup kitchen was in fact a restaurant, and therefore not allowed in a residential area. This was transparently ridiculous, not to mention cruel; as a rule of thumb, any time the word “undesirables” is used to describe human beings, the people using it are in the wrong. What’s more, the city’s edict was a clear violation of the churchgoers’ First Amendment rights, since feeding the poor is a religious duty commanded on numerous occasions in the Christian Bible. In the United States, the banner of religious liberty is often used by unscrupulous people to defend bigotry, but in this case, just the opposite has happened. The members of St. Timothy’s have stood by their commitments to serve the most vulnerable in their community, even after Brookings threatened to fine them $720 a day for doing so. Speaking to Oregon Public Broadcasting, Father Bernie Lindley insisted that “we can’t apply for a permit to only feed people two days a week when they may or may not need to be fed by us much more often than that.” Now, it appears the federal DOJ agrees. In a statement last Tuesday, the Department said “The issues with noise, aesthetics, and crime that prompted the ordinance are byproducts of homelessness and poverty that would persist in Brookings regardless of St. Timothy’s meal service — and indeed may even be made worse if St. Timothy’s were forced to curtail its meal service,” and has asked a judge to rule in the church’s favor in its ongoing lawsuit against the city. If they have any sense—which, so far, looks unlikely—Brookings’ leadership will take the hint, and stop trying to punish people whose only crime is taking “love thy neighbor” seriously.
❧ Missouri’s Governor Mike Parson has issued more than 600 pardons in the last three years. Once a small-town sheriff, the Associated Press now calls Parson “the face of mercy” for his prolific use of his power to grant pardons and clemencies (a good nickname, though “Mike Pardon” was also right there). Despite saying that “I still believe in law and order” and that “criminals need to be treated as such,” Parson also acknowledges that “it doesn’t mean they’re a criminal all their life,” and has begun working through a backlog of 3,700 requests he inherited from his predecessor Eric Greitens in 2018. His record of 613 pardons and 20 commutations has one glaring flaw; it includes pardons for Mark and Patricia McCloskey, the couple who pled guilty of misdemeanor assault and harassment (respectively) after pointing guns at George Floyd protesters in 2020. Still, Parson is a notable improvement for deep-red Missouri, where previous governor Matt Blunt pardoned just 14 people in the years 2005-2009, and Jay Nixon pardoned only 110 from 2009 to 2017. Of his 613 pardons, 42 percent were for nonviolent drug offenses and 28 percent were for theft, followed by drunk driving, forgery, and miscellaneous other crimes. Most offenses were committed decades ago. Wisconsin governor Tony Evers has done better, issuing a record 1,111 pardons after his predecessor, Scott Walker, granted none at all. The rejection of tough-on-crime politics is a good sign, especially in the case of Parson, a Republican. For the pardonees, who will no longer have a criminal record hanging over them when they try to get a job, find a home, or even exercise the right to vote, it’ll make all the difference.
⚜ LONG READ: A disturbing new ProPublica investigation identified a trend in which railway companies—bent on maximizing speed, efficiency, and ultimately profit—neglect to make repairs and even fire safety inspectors who bring dangers to their attention. Danelle Morton and Topher Sanders write:
As the nation’s rail companies double down on increasing the speed and frequency of trains to grow their profits, managers at all levels must fulfill that vision and decide if keeping the trains moving requires them to neglect repairs, ignore safety issues and fire those who complain.
ProPublica uncovered 111 instances of workers who claimed in federal court that they had been disciplined or fired for reporting safety concerns like failing brakes and damaged tracks.
In at least three cases in recent years, including one filed by Taylor, juries awarded over $1 million to fired workers. The rail companies quietly settled most of the rest.
But rail workers have gotten the message loud and clear, dozens of them told ProPublica: Their bosses make examples of those who speak up — or, worse, work with regulators to force fixes. As a result, workers said they have struggled with whether to risk their jobs to raise safety issues.
CROOKS vs. SICKOS (or, “What’s going on with our politicians?”)
❧ [CONTENT WARNING: EXTREME ISLAMOPHOBIA, THREATS OF VIOLENCE, AND INSUFFERABLE SMIRKING]
A man by the name of Stuart Seldowitz was arrested this past week for repeatedly harassing a halal food truck vendor in New York City with Islamophobic insults and threats. Videos show Seldowitz, on at least three separate occasions, spewing grotesque insults at the 24-year-old driver—calling him a “terrorist” and asking if he “rape[d] his daughter like Muhammad?” Seldowitz refers to having “friends in immigration” before telling the vendor to “learn English” or he’ll be “deport[ed]... back to Egypt,” where “The Mukhabarat [Egypt’s Intelligence Service] will get your parents…Does your father like his fingernails? They will take them out one-by-one.” He later accused the driver of “supporting Hamas,” and made his own thoughtful commentary on the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict, stating “If we killed 4,000 Palestinian kids, you know what, it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough.” Amid the disgusting tirade, the vendor can be heard fearfully asking Seldowitz to leave, but Seldowitz is shown refusing, instead asking him to “smile for” the camera. After videos of Seldowitz were put online, he admitted that it was indeed him. On Friday, he was arrested for harassment, aggravated hate crime, and two counts of stalking. You can hear Seldowitz’s full tirade below, though we absolutely do not recommend it:
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This would be horrifying enough if Seldowitz was just a garden-variety bigot. But he’s actually a rather influential bigot. He has worked in important foreign policy roles in three presidential administrations: Under Obama, he was acting director for the National Security Council South Asia Directorate and was the deputy director and senior political officer for the Office of Israel and Palestinian Affairs (God help us all) from 1999 to 2003 under Clinton and Bush, Jr. As of the time of his tirade, he worked in the private sector for a lobbying firm called Gotham Government Relations, which has fired him (Seldowitz says he was “blindsided” by the decision). The fact that a guy like this could end up in charge of American foreign policy is bone-chilling, but not exactly shocking. While they are perhaps slightly less vulgar and graphic, government officials over the last two months have expressed sentiments that are equally murderous towards Arabs and received almost no pushback from colleagues—from Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL), who said “there are very few innocent Palestinian citizens” comparing them to “Nazi civilians,” to Rep. Max Miller (R-OH) who said “We’re gonna turn that [Palestine] into a parking lot,” to Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) who said there was “no limit” on the number of civilian casualties he’d accept in Gaza and called on Israel to “level the place.” When comments like these are treated as broadly acceptable by sitting members of Congress, it makes a bit more sense why Seldowitz felt he could threaten a random Muslim man with no consequences.
LONG READ: In The Nation, Jeet Heer examines why some purportedly “liberal” donors are giving to American Compass, a “populist” right-wing think tank that helped put together Donald Trump’s authoritarian Project 2025. He writes:
Over the last seven years, right-wing institutions have become steadily Trumpized, so that the MAGA vision of Trump as the head of a radical right-wing transformation of American politics has been fleshed out in terms of both policy and personnel. For a road map to the future, all one needs to do is read the 920-page Mandate for Leadership crafted by a group called Project 2025 Presidential Transition Project, a consortium of right-wing organizations including the Heritage Foundation, the American Legislative Exchange Council, and the Family Research Council. As Roger Sollenberger of The Daily Beast notes, Project 2025 “has been criticized for its hard-right, authoritarian agenda—including ‘dehumanizing”’ rhetoric towards the LGBTQ community, re-upping Trump’s attempt to include citizenship on the census, leveraging the power of the Justice Department to crack down on critics, and a potentially unconstitutional plan to sic U.S. troops on domestic protesters.”
Given the extremism of Project 2025, you might expect that anyone who claims to be a progressive would steer clear of it. Yet, as Roger Sollenberger’s reporting makes clear, American Compass, a think tank that contributed heavily to Project 2025’s section on labor policy, is getting funding from some extremely wealthy progressive donors. Two of the five major funders for American Compass, Sollenberger notes, “stand out for their prominent histories of supporting liberal causes—the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Omidyar Network Foundation.” The Hewlett Foundation, which claims its agenda is to “strengthen our economy, democracy, and climate” gave American Compass nearly $2 million. The Omidyar Network, created by Ebay founder Pierre Omidyar, has chipped in another $500,000. Previously, Omidyar had given to many progressive causes, including providing the seed funding for the excellent investigative magazine The Intercept. A third liberal-leaning group, Action Now Initiative, has donated $250,000 to American Compass.
Formed in 2020 by Oren Cass, a former Mitt Romney adviser, American Compass is an attempt to flesh out Donald Trump’s vague rhetoric of economic populism with actual policies. The think tank often makes noises about the need to check corporate power and support workers. This rhetoric provides ideological cover to liberal supporters who present the group as a useful instrument for getting the Republican Party to become more pro-worker.
Matt Stoller, a Democrat known for his advocacy of anti-monopoly policy, countered the Daily Beast exposé by claiming that “American Compass is going after fake private equity returns, anti-labor policies, credit card monopoly profits, and unregulated railroads. Authoritarian? No.” (Stoller is an adviser to American Compass, as well as running his own think tank, the American Economic Liberties Project). In an online statement, the Hewlett Foundation credits American Compass with “orienting political focus from growth for its own sake to widely shared economic development that sustains vital social institutions.” A spokesperson for Omidyar Network Foundation advised The Daily Beast “to reach out to American Compass directly for comment on the pro-worker elements they were able to advocate for related to Project 2025.”
The argument is that American Compass is a useful stalking horse for getting the Republican Party to become more pro-worker and progressive on economic policies. This line of reasoning might be persuasive—if it weren’t for the fact that, based on Project 2025, American Compass gives every evidence of being as anti-worker and plutocracy-friendly as any other right-wing think tank. Labor reporter Hamilton Nolan, who has written an extensive explication of the labor sections of Project 2025, concluded that the authors, “intend to use every regulatory mechanism they can to weaken unions. They intend to make it harder for workers to organize and build power against corporations. They intend to make it easier for employers to flout safety laws and many other types of pro-worker regulations.”
AXOLOTL FACT OF THE DAY
The axolotls are in trouble—but YOU can help!
According to a worrying new report from Mexico, the axolotl population has fallen by a staggering 99.5 percent in less than twenty years, leaving the amphibians critically endangered. Wild axolotls are found only in Mexico City, in Lake Xochimilco—and unfortunately, a combination of pollution from nearby water-treatment plants, skin fungus, and carnivorous fish who eat the axolotls’ eggs have pushed them to the edge of extinction.
The axolotl is a truly unique creature, and it would be a shame to lose them. Not only are they extremely cute, but they’re the only species of salamander that never undergoes metamorphosis, remaining in the same form for their entire life. They have powerful limb-regenerating abilities, which scientists believe could lead to breakthroughs in medical science for humans. They also inspired one of Argentinian-French author Julio Cortázar’s best short stories.
Fortunately, there’s something we humans can do to help the axolotls out. Mexico’s National Autonomous University has launched a campaign where people around the world can virtually “adopt” an axolotl for 600 pesos (around $35 USD,) which will go toward conservation efforts, and receive live updates on how the axolotl is doing. For a lesser donation, you can also buy an axolotl a meal.
Current Affairs has adopted a charming female axolotl, who we’ve named Seymour (the university requires you to name them as a condition of adopting them); this holiday season, why not join us in supporting Mesoamerican lake creatures in need?
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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