Oct. 31, 2023 ❧ UAW deal with GM and Stellantis, Israel's ground invasion in Gaza, and an antisemitic attack in Dagestan
Plus Charlottesville melts Robert E. Lee, defense contractors buying subway eyeballs, destitution in the UK, possible dog fraud, and a look back at our best spooky art!
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FIGHTING BACK
UAW WINS TENTATIVE DEALS WITH GM, STELLANTIS
In last Friday’s briefing, we reported that the United Auto Workers had secured a tentative deal with Ford, the first of the Big Three manufacturers to adequately meet its demands. Over the last 48 hours, the union has reached further deals with GM and Stellantis, the other major Detroit auto firms, bringing its 44-day strike that much nearer to a conclusion.
At Stellantis, the terms are almost identical to the Ford deal: a 25 percent increase in pay through the life of the contract, plus cost-of-living adjustments (COLA) and the end of the divisive tier system. Some workers at the company’s Mopar parts division will see their pay increase by as much as 76 percent when (and if) the contract is ratified. Not only this, but the union has forced the company to maintain, or even re-open, plants that it had planned to close:
“Through the power of our Stand Up Strike, we have saved Belvidere,” said UAW Vice President Rich Boyer. “Eight months ago, Stellantis idled Belvidere Assembly Plant, putting 1,200 of our members on the street. From the strength of our strike, we are bringing back those jobs and more. Stellantis is reopening the plant, and the company will also be adding over a thousand jobs at a new battery plant in Belvidere.”
At GM, meanwhile, workers will get the same 25 percent pay increase and COLA, and those at the company’s Ultium battery plant will be included in the overall agreement for the first time, ensuring that well-paid union jobs do not become a thing of the past during the transition to electric vehicles.
One item notably absent from the new agreements is a four-day, 32-hour work week, which the UAW had originally proposed. That remains to be fought for. Still, this is a historic win, and the union is already laying the groundwork for future campaigns. Announcing the Stellantis deal, president Shawn Fain promised to “organize like we’ve never organized before” going forward, saying that “When we return to the bargaining table in 2028, it won't just be with the Big Three but with the Big Five or the Big Six.” In the New York Times, auto industry journalist Neal E. Boudette interprets the comment as a sign that the UAW will try to unionize Toyota, Honda, and Tesla next. What’s more, Fain has encouraged unions in other industries to set their contracts to expire on May 1st, International Workers’ Day, in 2028, and prepare to “strike together”—setting the stage for something that might very well resemble a general strike.
BIG STORIES
ISRAEL GROUND ASSAULT ON GAZA: STRIP CUT OFF FROM THE OUTSIDE WORLD
Israel unleashed what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called a “second stage” of its war on Gaza this weekend, which the Prime Minister called “the second War of Independence.” The Israel Defense Forces began a ground offensive into the territory while continuing its relentless aerial bombing campaign. The IDF says the “expansion of activity” was intended to target Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters and the infrastructure in which militants operate. The UN says the weekend’s ground operations were accompanied by “the most intense Israeli airstrikes and artillery shelling” since the war began. The Gaza Health Ministry reported Monday that the death toll within the territory has passed 8,000 people, the majority of whom have been women and children.
Figuring out exactly what happened during Israel’s invasion of Gaza this weekend is a challenge. Gaza was hit by a “total or near-total blackout” of landline, cellular, and Internet communications on Friday night as bombs knocked out communications lines and towers. For 36 hours, as bombs rained down, this made communication both within Gaza and with the outside world nearly impossible. Friends and family were left with no way of determining whether their loved ones survived the bombardment, and paramedics were left to guess who needed help by driving toward the sounds of explosions. The communications blackout also made it impossible for many journalists within the strip (few of which have been allowed access at all) to report what was happening to the outside world. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch warned that the blackout could be “contributing to impunity for human rights violations.” Thankfully, internet and phone service “are gradually being restored” as of Sunday, according to the Paltel Group which provides communications services in Gaza.
As Israel has pushed deeper into Gaza, at least one Hamas captive, Private Ori Megidish. was freed. She joins three others whom Hamas has released since its attack on October 7 which killed 1,400 Israelis. But Hamas is still believed to be holding 240 Israeli hostages—whose ages range from a few months old to more than 80—which the militant group says they plan to release in exchange for the release of thousands of Palestinian prisoners held in Israel and in exchange for a ceasefire. Hamas claims that almost 50 of the hostages have been killed during Israel’s assault on Gaza, however, they provided no evidence of this. Increasingly, families of hostages being held by Hamas have demanded that their government end the siege of Gaza and attempt to broker the release of their loved ones. After police lifted a ban on protests, thousands of Israelis, including some whose relatives are being held captive, poured out in protest in front of the IDF headquarters in Tel Aviv and in front of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s home, where they called for the end to the war and a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. But these pleas have fallen on deaf ears, as Netanyahu rejected calls for a ceasefire during a news conference yesterday, where he said the assault on Gaza will “continue and intensify.”
SIDEBAR: Why the Gaza Health Ministry is Considered Reliable
President Biden recently contended that he had “no confidence in the number that the Palestinians are using” to determine the death counts, without citing any specific evidence calling the Gaza Health Ministry’s figures into question. Though the Ministry contains some people hired by Hamas (and others who are holdovers from when it was controlled by the Hamas antagonist Fatah) it’s worth pointing out that in audits of past conflicts, the Ministry’s death count reports have been found to be consistent with independent investigations by U.N. observers, Human Rights Watch, and even the Israeli government itself. Even Channel 14, an ardently pro-Netanyahu news network in Israel, has used the Gaza Health Ministry’s casualty numbers in its running tally of “terrorists we eliminated.” (Apparently the network considers all Palestinians, including babies, to be “terrorists”).
And though Biden has stated that they are unreliable, his own State Department has relied on the Ministry nearly 20 times to report death counts over the first two weeks of the conflict, raising no objections about its accuracy. Nihad Awad, the director of the Council on American Islamic Relations said: “President Biden should watch some of these videos and ask himself if the crushed children being dragged out of the ruins of their family homes are a fabrication or an acceptable price of war. They are neither.” For more on how the Ministry’s collection of casualty data works and is scrutinized, we recommend this article from the Associated Press.
ANTISEMITIC MOB IN DAGESTAN ATTACKS PLANE IN SEARCH OF ISRAELIS
When a flight from Tel Aviv arrived in Dagestan, a majority-Muslim, semi-autonomous republic in the southern tip of Russia, hundreds of angry men rushed onto the tarmac in search of Israeli passengers. Some of the men carried banners with antisemitic slogans while others said “Child killers are not welcome in Dagestan” and “We’re against Jewish refugees.” Others carried the Palestinian flag. More than 20 passengers were injured by the attack, though none of the victims turned out to be Israeli. Police arrested 60 of the men who stormed the terminal building and more than 150 have been identified according to Russia’s interior ministry.
This repugnant attack should serve as a reminder that justified criticism or opposition to the Israeli government does not excuse or warrant attacks on innocent Israelis or Jews. Though thankfully none of them were hurt, the Israeli refugees targeted here bear zero responsibility for the actions of the Israeli government. They are victims in this war just as the Palestinians currently facing bombardment in Gaza are victims of it. The people who perpetrated this heinous attack claimed to be doing so in defense of Palestine, but all they did was inflict pain upon innocent people while doing nothing to help those they claimed to be fighting for.
It’s important for people who support the rights of Palestinians to remember that even while they are often met with spurious allegations of antisemitism for criticizing Israel, there are people out there who use the plight of Palestinians as a convenient camouflage for the hatred of Jews. They should not be tolerated. The goal of freedom for Palestinians should be rooted in a belief in fundamental human equality. There is no place within that movement for antisemitism, and pro-Palestinian groups must remain vigilant against any form of prejudice.
AROUND THE STATES
❧ Mississippi cops ran over a Black man, buried him in an unmarked grave, and waited six months to tell his mother. A police SUV struck and killed 37-year-old Dexter Wade as he tried to cross a highway on foot, on the night of March 5. The death was ruled accidental, and the Hinds County coroner’s office gave the name and address of Wade’s mother, Bettersten Wade, to police as his next of kin. That was on March 9. Rather than notify her, though, the Jackson Police Department did nothing until Ms. Wade filed a missing-persons report for Dexter; then, they reportedly told her that “they’d been unable to find him.” It took 172 days for her to learn the truth: that the department had simply buried her son in a pauper’s field at the Hinds County Jail’s penal farm, and marked the plot with a tiny “672.” For NBC, reporter Jon Schuppe recounts the heartbreaking moment Wade was finally taken to see the grave:
“Girl, look at this,” Bettersten, 65, said to her sister. “Would you believe they would bury someone out here?”
The caravan came to the end of the road, at another clearing with more markers. The deputy took one of Bettersten’s hands, her daughter the other, and they walked to the mounds of loosely packed dirt. They stopped at grave No. 672.
“Really?” Bettersten said.
She bent over, hands on her knees. She cried out, her voice echoing off the surrounding trees. “I’m sorry, baby. I’m so sorry.”
In a statement last Thursday, the mayor of Jackson blamed a “lack of communication” for the tragedy, calling it a “failure.” More than simple negligence, though, Bettersten Wade suspects the police may have acted maliciously. Dexter isn’t the first of her relatives to die at their hands; in 2019, witnesses say, officer Anthony Fox struck her brother George with a flashlight and slammed him to the ground, killing him, and was later convicted of manslaughter in a high-profile court case. “Maybe it was a vendetta. Maybe they buried my son to get back at me,” Ms. Wade now says. A full investigation is still pending, but the Wade family—now represented by noted civil rights lawyer Ben Crump—is determined to get justice.
❧ Maine faces an important referendum about the future of its electric utilities. On November 7, the state’s voters will be presented with Ballot Question 3, which offers them a chance to replace their current, privately-owned electric companies. If they vote “yes,” the state will create Pine Tree Power, a publicly-owned electric service with a democratically-elected board, ultimately accountable to Maine residents themselves. Neither nationalization, which is done by nations, or municipalization, which is done by cities, this would be something in between. Unsurprisingly, the parent companies of the firms in question—Central Maine Power and Versant Power—are fighting tooth and nail to prevent the measure from passing, and have spent $15 million on lobbying efforts. In a week, we’ll know which side prevails.
❧ Virginia has melted down the statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee that was at the center of 2017’s deadly “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, at which one anti-fascist protester was killed by a white nationalist. The statue of Lee, which stood in a park named after the slaveholding general, was protested for years as a symbol venerating slavery and white superiority.
It was finally removed in 2021 after the city council voted to donate the Lee statue to the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center, a local black history museum, to create a new work of “public art that expresses the City’s values of inclusivity and racial justice.” The project is known as “Swords Into Plowshares”—referencing Isaiah 2:4, which the group says “celebrates turning tools of violence into ones of peace and community-building.” They plan to have transformed Lee into a new piece of art by 2027. For now, we can delight in watching the visage of one of history’s great villains incinerated in a 2,250-degree furnace!
⚜ LONG READ: Defense contractors are flouting advertising regulations to advertise on the Washington D.C. subway with the goal of influencing the thousands of policymakers who commute using the Metro each day. Here’s what The Lever’s Brett Heinz found while riding the subway:
As the home to countless government agencies, Washington’s population is dense with people whose choices at work can affect the entire world. This has made the capital metro system a magnet for government contractors and other advertisers looking to shape policymakers’ activities. Yet a systematic analysis of that advertising has proven difficult. WMATA does not make advertising data available to the public, and has yet to respond to multiple requests for the data. A similar request was denied by Outfront Media, the private marketing firm contracted by WMATA to handle transit ads. So, I obtained what information I could the old-fashioned way — I rode the Metro, a lot. For five consecutive weeks, I visited 11 WMATA Metro stations and recorded the names of every advertiser. All were located within one mile of major policymaking institutions: Capitol Hill, the White House, the Pentagon, and the State Department.
The survey recorded 75 different advertisers, excluding transit agencies. Fifteen received at least $5 million in financial awards from the federal government in fiscal year 2023. Four of those were universities and another was United Airlines, while the remaining 10 were government contractors. Altogether, these 10 contractors received approximately $83.1 billion from the federal government in the 2023 fiscal year. Nine of the 10 advertising contractors count the Department of Defense (DOD) as their largest government customer: Boeing, CACI, General Dynamics, Google, IBM, KPMG, L3Harris, RTX, and SourceAmerica. Ads for pharmaceutical distributor McKesson, which does the vast majority of its government contracting for the Department of Veterans Affairs, were spotted only within the McPherson Square station — two blocks away from the VA headquarters.
The data suggests that contractors are most focused on targeting the Pentagon and Capitol Hill. Contractors made up just 6 percent of all advertisers in Foggy Bottom-GWU, the only stop near the State Department. In the four stops around the White House, they averaged 9 percent. Among the three stops closest to Capitol Hill, this number rises to 21 percent. In the three stations closest to the Pentagon, an average of 46 percent of all advertisers were contractors.
IT’S HALLOWEEN!
The news is full of doom and gloom. It’s time to take a break from the grim horror and enjoy some FUN horror. Let’s take a look back at some of Current Affairs Magazine’s best spooky artwork and amusements!
All of this art and so much more like it can be found in the pages of our gorgeous print edition of Current Affairs magazine!
AROUND THE WORLD
❧ Benjamin Netanyahu has intensified Israel’s genocidal rhetoric against Palestinians. In a speech on Saturday, Netanyahu said the following, according to the translation used by NBC and Middle East Monitor:
You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible. And we do remember, and we are fighting. Our brave troops and combatants who are now in Gaza or around Gaza, and in all other regions in Israel, are joining this chain of Jewish heroes, a chain that has started 3,000 years ago.
But who or what is “Amalek,” and what Israeli “heroes” is Netanyahu referring to? The answer can be found in the biblical Book of Samuel, and it’s a dark one:
Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass. (Chapter 15, verse 3, KJV).
That’s right: Amalek is a nation that, in the Old Testament canon, God ordered Israel to utterly annihilate, killing even infants. The late Christopher Hitchens frequently referenced the story, noting that “Israeli rabbis solemnly debate to this very day whether the demand to exterminate the Amalekites is a coded commandment to do away with the Palestinians.” Taken in context with the rhetoric of Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant, who has described the residents of Gaza as “human animals,” it’s hard to read Netanyahu’s comments as anything but a thinly-veiled call for genocide.
Netanyahu’s speech becomes all the more chilling in light of recent reports that Israeli think tanks have laid out proposals for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, cynically noting that the Hamas attacks on October 7 present a “unique and rare opportunity to evacuate the entire Gaza Strip” and forcibly relocate its population to Egypt. Far from a fringe group, the Misgav Institute for National Security and Zionist Strategy, which produced this plan, has deep ties to the Netanyahu government. Its current leader, Meir Ben-Shabbat, was Netanyahu’s national security advisor from 2017 to 2021. And according to a report from the Israeli magazine Local Call, the proposal to expel all 2.2 million Palestinians from Gaza is being internally recommended by Israel’s Intelligence Ministry. Across the board, prominent Israeli elected officials, military leaders, and policy advisors are being very open about their intentions for Palestine. Perhaps it’s time the world, and the International Criminal Court, took them at their word.
❧ Nearly 4 million people in the United Kingdom are now facing “destitution.” More than simple poverty, “destitution” refers to people who are unable to meet their most basic physical needs—food, clothing, water, and warmth, among others. According to data from the UK’s Joseph Rowntree Foundation, there are now “an estimated 1.8m UK households containing nearly 3.8 million people” who faced this dire situation in 2022, including more than 1 million children. For the Guardian, columnist Frances Ryan argues that the British government has a moral responsibility to end financial austerity, and provide its people with a decent standard of living:
Destitution isn’t simply about skipping meals. It is a psychological assault: lying awake at night anxious about the bailiffs knocking, or counting the slices of bread in the cupboard, wondering which day your children won’t get breakfast this week. Protecting people from destitution won’t just give them more cash in their pocket – it can give them part of themselves back.
❧ The world’s oldest dog—a 31-year-old Portuguese mastiff named Bobi—died this week (RIP, Bobi!). But Bobi’s claim to the title of “world’s oldest dog” is in dispute. Bobi’s alleged age has been challenged by multiple veterinarians who say that it would be physically impossible for a dog to live 31 years, which is equivalent to 200 years in human time. “This…is completely implausible. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and no concrete evidence has been provided to prove his age… We are a science-based profession, so for the Guinness Book of Records to maintain their credibility and authority in the eyes of the veterinary profession, they really need to publish some irrefutable evidence,” said Danny Chambers of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons in The Guardian. For reference, the previous oldest dog, Spike the Chihuahua, lived to be 23 years old, which is eight years younger than Bobi! Though, his owners insist that Bobi just has good genes, as his parents lived to be 18 and 21. Bobi’s true age—which has thus far only been declared via self-report from his owner—will be investigated by Guinness World Records. We hope this blue ribbon commission will help to lift the cloud of scandal and speculation from the elderly dog community.
CROOKS vs. SICKOS (or, “What’s going on with our politicians?”)
❧ Mike Pence has bowed out of the GOP primary. In an announcement to the Republican Jewish Coalition in Las Vegas, Pence said that “after much prayer and deliberation” it’s become clear that “this is not my time.” This isn’t exactly shocking. It’s hard to think of anyone who actually likes Mike Pence, including the throngs of Trump supporters who wanted to hang him in 2021, and he never polled higher than single digits. Still, it’s a little embarrassing that Pence, a former Vice President, got outlasted by relative nobodies like Doug Burgum and Asa Hutchinson. At least he'll have more time for his real passions: going on cable news and talking about civility, and being homophobic.
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❧ California Governor Gavin Newsom is in China, where he is seeking to reaffirm the relationship between the People’s Republic and the state of California as business partners and partners in the fight against climate change. It’s a bit weird that a state governor needs to maintain diplomacy with a foreign nation, but this is actually something prior governors Jerry Brown and Arnold Schwarzenegger did as well. During the trip, Newsom played basketball at a park with some local children, where he was seen plowing into one of them while driving to the hoop.
As you can see, the kid clearly planted his feet, which makes this a charging foul by Newsom. And wrestling with the kid afterward should warrant a technical!
BAT FACT OF THE WEEK
Do you like margaritas? Thank a bat!
Agave, which is fermented to produce tequila, is primarily pollinated by bats who slurp up the plant’s sweet nectar. Because they can fly long distances, bats are essential to the spread of agave seeds. Mexican long-nosed bats feed on agave as a source of energy while migrating hundreds of miles to give birth.
Bats are becoming endangered partially due to climate change, habitat loss, and the decrease in bug populations. But they are also affected by the increase in industrial agave production, which involves cutting down stalks before bats have a chance to pollinate and instead using artificial pollination. This cloned agave is more susceptible to fungus that can wipe out entire crops. Bats have had less agave to munch on, and what is left is often sprayed with pesticides that can harm them. According to Bat Conservation International, one of the best ways to help bats is to plant more natural agave, and they have undertaken the goal of planting 300,000 new agaves by 2025.
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. Current Affairs is 100% reader-supported and depends on your subscriptions and donations.