Tuesday, July 11, 2023
Fossil fuel lobbyists, RoboCops in schools, “fake” nukes, Amazon deforestation, Big Sphere news, and more…
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STORIES THAT SHOULD BE BIGGER
FOSSIL FUEL LOBBYISTS ACTING AS ‘DOUBLE AGENTS’ IN CLIMATE GROUPS
More than 1,500 state-level lobbyists have been found to simultaneously be working for fossil fuel companies while also being seated within environmental groups. A new database called F Minus says,
Local governments paying to deal with the climate crisis employ the very oil, gas, and coal lobbyists who are making the crisis worse. Colleges and universities—whose students are pushing for divestment from fossil fuels—continue to employ lobbyists who also work for ExxonMobil, the Koch Companies, and other funders of climate denialism.
As Oliver Milman writes in The Guardian, many organizations that publicly make pledges to combat the climate crisis simultaneously employ fossil fuel lobbyists, and somehow many of them see no contradiction between these two interests:
“A spokesperson for the Environmental Defense Fund said that working for big oil is ‘not, in itself, an automatic disqualification. In some cases it can actually help us find productive alignment in unexpected places.’ Microsoft said despite its lobbying arrangements there is ‘no ambiguity or doubt about Microsoft’s commitment to the aggressive steps needed to address the world’s carbon crisis’.”
Some organizations argue that employing these lobbyists gives them a foot in the door with politicians that would otherwise not be amenable to working with them. But according to environmental sociologist Timmons Roberts, the fossil fuel industry clearly benefits from embedding these lobbyists:
“The fossil-fuel industry is very good at getting what it wants because they get the lobbyists best at playing the game…They have the best staff, huge legal departments, and the ability to funnel dark money to lobbying and influence channels. This database really makes it apparent that when you hire these insider lobbyists, you are basically working with double agents. They are guns for hire. The information you share with them is probably going to the opposition.”
HOW THE DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY SCHEDULE WAS CHANGED TO HELP BIDEN
Earlier this year, the Democratic presidential primary’s schedule was changed dramatically. Instead of the historical tradition of beginning with the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary, where incumbent President Joe Biden finished fourth and fifth place respectively, the campaign will begin with a primary in South Carolina, where he performed sensationally in 2020 and essentially brought his campaign back from the grave (after a critical endorsement from South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn, who is now the second-ranking House Democrat). According to a new report from Ross Barkan in the New York Times, the Biden team ran a full-court press to make sure that Democratic National Convention members gave him a more favorable schedule. Some were shocked by how brazen it was:
“Privately, some members were astounded. ‘Everyone was shocked,’ one told me, speaking on the condition of anonymity to avoid antagonizing the White House. ‘We would have to vote for it anyway, because the feeling was you’re either with the president or against him.’ A few members of the Democratic National Committee had known what was coming — but only because Biden-administration officials called them on the phone mere hours after Biden himself sent a letter to the rules and bylaws committee, on the first day of December, outlining his demand for a primary calendar that ensured that ‘voters of color have a voice in choosing our nominee much earlier in the process and throughout the entire early window.’ Biden called Black voters the ‘backbone’ of the party, though he didn’t specifically mention South Carolina in his letter. It was left to his aides to tell the top-ranking D.N.C. members…that South Carolina was the new first-in-the-nation primary. It had been decreed, and so it would be done.”
On one hand, deprioritizing the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary are long overdue. The caucus system is needlessly complicated, leading to much lower turnout than primaries. It also violates the right to a private ballot by requiring caucus-goers to publicly declare their support for a candidate, which leaves people open to group pressure. And Biden is right that both of these states are much whiter than the median of the party.
But the way we got to this change is quite discouraging. It seems clear that Biden is exerting a similar influence over the party to what Hillary Clinton did in 2016, when the DNC was stacked with her acolytes and put her team in control of fundraising. The fact that members still feel totally disempowered to defy the party’s leader is a sad indictment of the institution. Establishment Democrats have learned very little from their prior failures to give due influence to their progressive critics.
NEW CONSPIRACY THEORY OF THE WEEK
“Nukes aren’t real”
Owen Benjamin is a conservative YouTube personality best known for his appearances on PragerU and as a fill-in host for Steven Crowder. Once described by Bethany Mandel as an “up-and-coming conservative comedian,” he’s since gone around the bend into total conspiracy derangement. He’s spent many years plagiarizing the theories of other crackpots—denying the Holocaust and speaking at flat Earth conferences. But last week, he finally presented some original material. In response to footage of the Teapot Apple 2 nuclear test in 1955, Benjamin said the following:
Now that’s a new one. We knew that birds weren’t real, but nukes? We hope we don’t need to spend too much time explaining why this is ridiculous. It seems sufficient to say that the survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings did deal with the effects of fallout: beyond the tens of thousands who died on impact, abnormally high rates of leukemia and other cancers caused thousands more deaths over the next several years. (Saying that nukes aren’t real seems a pretty convenient way to exonerate the U.S. for being the only country ever to drop nuclear bombs on human beings.) Also, the filming of this test reportedly involved 48 different cameras that shot from as far as 10,000 feet away while closer ones were kept inside bunkers with the film protected with thick lead coverings. And considering how important nukes are as pieces of geopolitical leverage, you’d think that—if they weren’t real—every country without them would be eager to blow the whistle on their nonexistence. For instance, wouldn’t Iran have every incentive to say, “Of course we don’t have a nuclear weapons program. Nukes don’t even exist! Please don’t invade us!”?
Hopefully this won’t catch on. But nothing is so deranged that it can’t be widely believed. Never forget that conspiracy-brained lunatics can very easily ascend to the highest offices in the land. And serving in the heart of government doesn’t necessarily mean that you actually have a good understanding of how anything works. After all, if General Michael Flynn can work at the top of the U.S. national security establishment and somehow come out believing QAnon is real, the dangers of conspiracy-based governance are never fully out of the question.
AROUND THE STATES
A federal judge has ordered the Biden administration to halt its contacts with social media companies in order to recommend that certain content “containing protected free speech” be removed. There are some pretty concerning instances in the lawsuit of the administration pressuring companies to remove content they didn’t like. For example, White House Digital Strategy Director Rob Flaherty urgently asked Twitter to remove a parody account, which they did within an hour of the request:
An excerpt from Page 9 of the opinion by Judge Terry A. Doughty The judge here is correct in principle that the government should not be able to lean on social media companies in this way. But the judge only seems to recognize this censorship in one direction, calling out “a massive effort to suppress disfavored conservative speech.” As we have covered before, the Trump administration was just as prolific in requesting the takedown of damaging information. Ultimately, web censorship is bad, regardless of which party is doing it.
RoboCop may soon be coming to a school near you. The Santa Fe school district is experimenting with A.I.-powered police robots, which roam the campus 24/7 and collect surveillance footage. These robots were spawned in response to the endless barrage of school shootings and may soon be rolled out at other schools around the country (American politicians truly will do anything before trying to limit the number of guns). It seems far more likely that these unarmed robots will just be used to more efficiently arrest and incarcerate students, just like human security guards do. It seems like only a matter of time before these harmless WALL-Es are armed—as our editor Nathan Robinson says, “If I was a kid, I would be SO tempted to kick this MFer over.”
KRQE News Santa Fe
Republican state attorneys general have threatened Target with obscenity charges for selling LGBTQ pride merchandise aimed at children. According to a letter sent by seven of them, the company’s sale of Pride merchandise, including “LGBT-themed onesies, bibs, and overalls…,” “appeals to the prurient interest in sex.” This letter follows a months-long campaign among far-right influencers to demonize public association with Pride, which culminated in acts of vandalism and numerous threats of violence against Target employees. As one of this movement’s thought-leaders, Daily Wire host Matt Walsh, put it:
“The goal is to make ‘pride’ toxic for brands. If they decide to shove this garbage in our face, they should know that they’ll pay a price.”
The invocation of obscenity laws is another way they are attempting to silence pro-LGBTQ speech. As independent journalist Erin Reed writes,
“Obscenity laws have previously been invoked in efforts to target LGBTQ+ content in the United States…For example, Texas passed a law widely interpreted as banning LGBTQ+ books from schools. Llano County in Texas also enacted a ban on several LGBTQ+ books, which was subsequently blocked by a judge on the grounds of likely unconstitutionality. Moreover, a number of states approved laws categorizing drag — defined by these laws as dressing and performing in a gender different from one’s assigned birth gender — as obscene. Among the proposed laws that did not pass were a West Virginia bill that sought to label ‘exposure to transgenderism’ as obscene and a Montana amendment aimed at designating LGBTQ+ internet content as obscene if accessible by minors.”
At the same time, a U.S. appeals court has upheld a Tennessee law banning gender-affirming care for minors. This reverses a lower court ruling striking the law down, saying that it violated the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause, with one judge writing that it constituted a form of sex discrimination. Many other states have passed similar laws in spite of the wealth of research demonstrating the harms of denying gender-affirming care. According to Scientific American:
“Data from more than a dozen studies of more than 30,000 transgender and gender-diverse young people consistently show that access to gender-affirming care is associated with better mental health outcomes—and that lack of access to such care is associated with higher rates of suicidality, depression and self-harming behavior.”
(Current Affairs, meanwhile, has a lengthy article debunking the widespread, unscientific moral panic about transgender youth.)
A $2.3 billion sphere has been erected in Las Vegas—in fact, it is apparently Earth’s largest sphere (unless you count Earth itself). The structure, which has a 580,000 square-foot, outdoor LED screen, sits outside the Venetian Resort and will host concerts and sporting events.
The MSG Sphere under construction in 2022 (PHOTO: SounderBruce/Wikimedia Commons) While we at Current Affairs have no problem with spheres generally—and, in fact, believe they are among the best three-dimensional shapes—this is an atrocious waste of money. This comes after the city spent $750 million in taxpayer money to build the similarly gargantuan Allegiant Stadium for the Raiders NFL team just three years ago and will use more public funding to build a stadium for the Oakland Athletics baseball team to move to Vegas as well. Sports franchise owners love to claim that these public expenditures pay for themselves by bringing revenue into their cities, but most studies suggest that this is nonsense. Although the Sphere was privately financed by large corporate interests, that money still could have instead provided shelter for the 1,500 homeless people who squat in Vegas’ underground tunnel system every night or resources for the city’s chronically underfunded school system.
Reader poll: Would noted dome-lover Buckminster Fuller approve of the Las Vegas sphere? We suspect not. (PHOTO: Buckminster Fuller, c. 1978/Frank Lennon/Toronto Star via Getty Images)
HOW IT GOT ITS NAME
Ostrich (n.) “aw-strich”
In our last briefing, we discussed the remarkable speeds of these flightless birds, which can run faster than horses over short distances. But the story of how the noble ostrich got its name is quite fascinating as well. According to Dictionary.com the word “ostrich” is an offshoot of the Ancient Greek word “strouthion,” which means “big sparrow.” Apparently, the Greeks thought these lanky birds were just gigantic, goofy looking sparrows. Somewhat more accurate is their use of the word “strouthokamelos,” which means “camel sparrow,” presumably a reference to the arched protuberances coming off these birds’ backs.
LONG READ: The Nation’s Chris Lehmann describes the mainstream press’s whitewashing of the far-right group Moms for Liberty. The astroturfed, Christian nationalist political movement, which routinely threatens and harasses teachers and school board officials, has been one of the driving forces behind laws censoring the discussion of race and LGBTQ people in classrooms around the nation.
“New York Times reporter Jonathan Weisman opens his own report on the event with an account of a recent PR fiasco for the group, when the Hamilton County, Ind., Moms for Liberty chapter quoted Adolf Hitler in a newsletter and issued a shamefaced retraction along with a public apology. But instead of allowing readers to dwell on the autocratic tendencies of a Hitler-quoting political faction, Weisman instead cites the Hamilton County chapter’s antics as a case study in movement-building by means of ‘controversy’...Toggle over to the Associated Press dispatch from the event, and things are more bloodless still. Where Weisman at least managed to mention a recent school board meeting where a Moms for Liberty member had a handgun fall out of his pocket, the AP report doesn’t even bring up the Hitler-quoting fiasco. Instead, it…treats it as a business-as-usual power broker on the right, one that has evidently accrued power simply by standing in place.”
AROUND THE WORLD
Staff for London’s underground rail system (the Tube) plan to strike for six days later this month. The strike is in response to plans by London’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, to cut 600 rail jobs and reduce employees’ pensions. Union leaders have been fighting for over a year for wage increases to keep up with inflation, which has only recently dropped below 10 percent. Meanwhile, the Conservative majority in Parliament is considering a law that would severely curtail the right to strike by forcing unions to maintain “minimum service levels” and allowing workers to be fired if they don’t comply. Its provisions are so harsh that the U.K.’s Joint Committee on Human Rights said it “fails to meet the UK’s human rights obligations.”
As climate change causes Greenland’s ice sheets to pour into the sea, mining companies with backing from billionaires Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Michael Bloomberg have spotted an opportunity for fabulous profits. They are sizing up the glaciated island for mining cobalt, nickel, copper, lithium, and platinum. Ironically, these materials—which are only becoming accessible from the Arctic due to climate change—are needed to create the batteries for electric cars and wind turbines. But the U.S. has plenty of these materials already, so one wonders why neocolonialism is the go-to answer here. The largely Indigenous residents of the territory have protested the project, saying that it could cause severe environmental damage to the area. As Jack Ewing wrote in The New York Times back in October 2021 right before Greenland banned uranium mining,
“Residents, who are already suffering the effects of climate change, don’t want to suffer even more so that the rest of the world can drive electric cars.”
Deforestation rates in Brazil have slowed by 34 percent in 2023, following major policy changes by President Lula to protect the Amazon rainforest. His far-right predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, shredded many environmental protections and turned a blind eye to illegal logging and land-grabbing, which saw deforestation spike to a 15-year high. Preserving forests is a critical part in any fight against climate change: trees serve as a massive carbon sink, with one estimate from the World Resources institute saying that tropical tree-cover alone “can provide 23 percent of the cost-effective climate mitigation needed before 2030.” Lula has pledged to end deforestation entirely by 2030. This is something he has a strong track record on—as deforestation rates also fell sharply during his first term from 2003 to 2010. Since retaking office in January, he has used new surveillance technology to crack down on illegal deforestation while rehiring the environmental regulators fired by Bolsonaro and even seizing cattle from illegal ranches.
BARBIE HAS BEEN OUTED AS A CHINESE SLEEPER AGENT
It turns out that the new Barbie movie’s eponymous doll really can do anything she puts her mind to: she’s moved on from her past careers as a ballerina, a zookeeper, and a doctor to become a duplicitous Chinese intelligence asset.
The Barbie film, set to be released later this month by Warner Bros., has caused a geopolitical ruckus, seemingly by accident. A screenshot from the trailer shows a crayon doodle of a world map, which appears to contain the controversial nine-dash line which China often uses to legitimize its claims to disputed territory in the South China Sea.
Neighboring Vietnam has banned the film for threatening its own territorial claims, and the Philippines may be next. Ted Cruz has accused the Barbie movie of “pushing Chinese propaganda” because the toys are made in China. Warner Bros. has denied that they intended to make any political statement. And while there have been past instances of entertainment companies tailoring their products to appease the sensibilities of the Chinese government, it seems very far-fetched in this case.
We would like to note that the Barbie map has several other objectionable features that suggest it is NOT the work of honest and professional cartographers. Several other distortions appear to make political statements. For instance, it appears that the map is endorsing Greenland’s right to annex Iceland. Meanwhile, Europe appears to be upside down, while India has become an island. The implications could be analyzed endlessly. Ted Cruz also may want to call out the film’s sinister climate change agenda as well, as the map appears to show that Australia has been entirely submerged by the Pacific Ocean. Vietnam may be correct that Barbie is a spreader of sinister propaganda, but plenty of the world’s other nations also have grounds for complaint.
A group of African human rights organizations has called for the Intel Corporation to dismiss a top employee, Greg Slater, whose evangelical organization is allegedly responsible for promoting Uganda’s vicious new laws allowing for the execution of gay people. The group, Family Watch International, which is rabidly homophobic, hosted a conference on “family values” in Uganda just months before the bill passed, and Slater’s wife has opposed decriminalization of homosexuality in the past. Family Watch International is one of many evangelical organizations that have poured a combined $50 million to promote laws criminalizing the LGBTQ community, abortion, and sex education across Africa.
DOLPHIN FACT OF THE WEEK
Dolphins love to get high! They unwind by squeezing puffer fish, which secrete a neurotoxin that causes dolphins to hallucinate and generally vibe out. Here is a delightful video of some stoned dolphin pals “passing the puffer”:
Hopefully there isn’t a dolphin Nancy Reagan who will come along to spoil their fun.
Writing and research by Stephen Prager. 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.