August 2, 2024 ❧ Harris abandons progressive policies, the Amazon Labor Union gets new leadership, and the IMF is meddling with Egypt again

Plus: Climate protests in Uruguay, Elon Musk wants to fistfight Maduro, and... can chimps talk?

News in the mirror may be closer than it appears

CROOKS vs. SICKOS (or, "what's going on with our politicians and oligarchs?")

❧ Kamala Harris is renouncing every progressive position she’s ever held, one-by-one. Just in case anyone still had an iota of hope that she might be better than Joe Biden on policy, Harris has spent the last few days making it clear that she is, indeed, running as just another centrist Democrat. 

Her tack to the right started on July 26, when a campaign official told the Hill that Harris “will not seek to ban fracking if she’s elected.” This was a complete U-turn from her 2020 run, when she said that “There’s no question I’m in favor of banning fracking.” The following day, CNN reported that “the vice president no longer supports a single-payer health care system,” despite having co-sponsored the original Medicare for All bill back in 2017. And on July 31, a Washington Examiner exclusive revealed that Harris has “changed her position” on a federal jobs guarantee—a component of the Green New Deal she backed in 2019—and no longer supports that either. 

At this point, the Democratic Party’s official motto should be “You get nothing!” 

(Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr)

Obviously, these moves stink in terms of the policies themselves. People need healthcare, jobs, and a clean environment. But even if you look at the situation purely in terms of winning the election and beating Donald Trump, it’s hard to see how this will help. Moving to the right on policy will not prevent Trump and his proxies from attacking Harris as “dangerously liberal,” a line they’ve already started using. Nothing will. But it will allow Republicans to use a second line of attack, namely that she’s untrustworthy and doesn’t keep a consistent position on anything. And they wouldn’t even be wrong. (Some of us are old enough to remember the John Kerry “flip-flop” ads from 2004. Same principle.)

People do not get excited to go out and vote for centrism. They get excited for policies they believe will make their lives better. The majority of Americans say they support some form of public healthcare; the same is true for a jobs guarantee, which gets an average of 59.1 percent approval in the polls. Harris has chosen to ignore the public’s views, in favor of some outdated conventional wisdom rattling around the Democratic Party—or, more likely, the will of wealthy donors. It may be her downfall.

In other news…

• Harris will be announcing her pick for Vice President next Tuesday, at a rally in Philadelphia. So it looks like Pennsylvania’s Governor Josh Shapiro is the most likely name. (The Guardian)
  
  
• Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans have been making some truly wild comments about Harris, including saying that she “happened to turn Black” recently. Apparently they haven’t quite wrapped their heads around the idea that biracial people exist. (CNN)

• In Missouri, progressive “Squad” member Cori Bush’s primary is coming up on August 6—and her opponent has received roughly $7.1 million in support from AIPAC, part of the group’s yearlong campaign against pro-Palestinian lawmakers. (Roll Call)

Bush (right) with Ilhan Omar in 2021. (Image: Chad Davis via Flickr)

• The GOP just released a slate of 26 candidates it considers to be its “Young Guns,” and most of them look… not very young. (The Hill)

Mr. McGraw appears to have graduated from college in 1978.

(Image: @LinkofSunshine via Twitter)

• Major U.S. airlines are still fighting the Biden administration’s “automatic refund” rule, which guarantees cash refunds for any flight that’s canceled or delayed. (The Lever)
  
  
• The U.S. Forest Service is not doing a very good job of protecting old-growth trees from logging, according to conservationists with the John Muir Project. (The Guardian)

AROUND THE STATES

❧ Big things are happening in the Amazon Labor Union. At the Staten Island Amazon warehouse, the union finished counting votes in its leadership election on Tuesday—and the ALU Democratic Reform Caucus won handily. Its leader, Connor Spence, is a founding member of the ALU who was fired by Amazon for organizing in November 2023. 

Over the last few years, rank-and-file members of the union had been growing dissatisfied with the leadership of Christian Smalls, who refused to hold elections before a contract with Amazon was ratified (which could take years), and who some felt was spending too much time traveling and speaking around the country. So they formed the Reform Caucus and forced a vote, in which Smalls opted not to run for re-election. 

Instead, Spence received 137 of the 247 votes cast, defeating two other candidates. In a statement to the Associated Press, he promised to “reform our union to make it more democratic, transparent, and militant,” and says he’s “relieved to finally be able to turn our attention toward bringing Amazon to the table and winning an incredible contract.”

Spence (right) out organizing in 2023.

(Image: Amazon KCVG Teamsters via Twitter)

The leadership election has a few important benefits. Now that it’s over, there should be less of a rift within the union for Amazon and its union-busting operation to exploit. More concretely, having the leadership question settled will allow joint strategy sessions with the Teamsters—who the ALU workers are now affiliated with—to begin. 

Amazon is visibly worried about the Teamsters, and has already brought in the NYPD to arrest seven of their members at a protest outside the Staten Island warehouse, along with reportedly “disciplining people like crazy” since the affiliation was announced. And they’re right to be worried, as the union has 1.3 million members—many of them at companies like UPS that are directly involved in Amazon’s business model—and extensive experience combating anti-union tactics. With everyone on the same page and fighting together, the labor struggle may soon kick up to a whole new level. 

In other news…

• In a win for the labor movement, the state of Illinois has banned employers from holding mandatory anti-union meetings and speeches. (NPR)
  
  
• The United Auto Workers are condemning John Deere’s recent decision to lay off more than 1,500 employees at plants around the country, pointing out that the company has also spent “$43.6 billion on stock buybacks and dividends over the past two decades.” (Common Dreams)
  
  
• Massachusetts Governor Maura Healy has signed a law to make community college free “no matter your age or income.” The plan also includes an allowance of up to $1,200 per student for books and other school supplies. (CBS)
  
  
• Thanks to a Michigan Supreme Court ruling, the state’s minimum wage is about to increase from $10.33 per hour to around $12.50, and the tipped minimum wage will increase from $3.93 to around $6. According to the labor activist group One Fair Wage, roughly 494,000 workers will be getting a raise. (Detroit News)

(Graphic: Detroit News)

• In Virginia, cases of COVID-19 have more than doubled over the past month, as a new variant called “FLiRT” has started to spread. (WRIC)

• A very creepy company, called “Friend,” is advertising AI “friends” who live in a little plastic amulet around your neck. Apparently they spent $1.8 million of their $2.5 million in startup funds to buy the URL “friend.com,” which doesn’t seem like the world’s greatest financial decision. (The Independent)

No, it’s not a Black Mirror trailer. This is an actual product

a bunch of Silicon Valley guys think is good.

• The CEO of GLAAD, Sarah Kate Ellis, is under fire for a pattern of “lavish spending” including luxury travel and a $20,000 home office, all paid for by the nonprofit organization. (New York Times)

Happy 100th Birthday, James Baldwin!

The legendary novelist and political activist was born on this day, exactly a century ago, in 1924. Baldwin is best known for his role as one of the foremost literary voices of the Civil Rights era, but he was also an insightful advocate for the Palestinian people, and for socialism. As he writes in his 1972 memoir, No Name in the Street:

Huey [Newton] believes, and I do, too, in the necessity of establishing a form of socialism in this country — what Bobby Seale would probably call a “Yankee Doodle type” socialism. This means an indigenous socialism, formed by, and responding to, the real needs of the American people. This is not a doctrinaire position, no matter how the Panthers may seem to glorify Mao or Che or Fanon. . . . The necessity for a form of socialism is based on the observation that the world’s present economic arrangements doom most of the world to misery; that the way of life dictated by these arrangements is both sterile and immoral; and, finally, that there is no hope for peace in the world so long as these arrangements obtain.

Baldwin, impeccably cool, hanging out with a statue of Shakespeare in 1969. 

(Image: Wikimedia Commons)

AROUND THE WORLD

❧ The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is pushing privatization in Egypt. The Fund announced on Monday that it would release $820 million in loans to help the country stabilize its economy, on top of $8 billion it’s already allocated. Good news, right? Wrong! As has been extensively reported in the left-wing press, IMF loans are often distinctly predatory in nature, especially when taken out by “desperate” countries in the Global South. In Egypt’s case, the new money comes with all kinds of terms and conditions attached. Most notably, Reuters reports that the IMF is requiring Egyptian leaders to “accelerate a programme of divestment of state-owned enterprises,” selling them off to the private sector. 

Unfortunately for the Egyptian people, a lot of privatization has already been going on, and it’s made getting the basic necessities of life a lot harder. In a disturbing human rights report, Amnesty International points out that President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi signed a law in June allowing private companies to take over public healthcare facilities without any price regulations, and with a meager requirement that they retain only 25 percent of staff. Amnesty warns that the change “threatens to reduce access to healthcare for millions” as prices soar—and now, the IMF has successfully pushed for more of the same privatization policy in other industries. The influx of loans may help in the short term, but by allowing his country’s public services to be ransacked by private capital, President al-Sisi may soon find that he’s made a deal with the devil. 

Pictured: The biggest loan sharks in human history. (Image: IMF via Flickr)

PAST AFFAIRS

Back in 2021, Current Affairs house economist Rob Larson wrote about “The IMF’s Bottomless Bottom-Line Cruelty”:

If you live in one of the developed world’s rapidly crumbling democracies, remember that each night as you sleep, governments in the poorest countries on the planet are cutting social supports and raising taxes to line the pockets of rich foreigners. This is the way of the (neocolonial) world. And as long as these practices continue in the name of progress, there will be more IMF riots, and potentially revolution to come. Bet your bottom dollar on it.

Art by Skutch, from Issue 32 of Current Affairs Magazine, July/August 2021

In Other News…

• The Israeli intelligence services have assassinated Ismail Haniyeh, the former Palestinian Prime Minister and current political leader of Hamas, at a guest house in Tehran. Iran has sworn to take revenge, and there are widespread fears that the move could further destabilize the Middle East and lead to a regional war. (New York Times)

(Graphic: Al Jazeera)

• Israel has also killed Al Jazeera journalists Ismail Al-Ghoul and Rami Al-Rifi in Gaza, in what the network is calling a “targeted assassination.” This brings the total of journalists and media workers killed during the current war to 113, making it the deadliest single event since the Committee to Protect Journalists started tracking the numbers in 1992. (Truthout)

NEW IN CURRENT AFFAIRS

On the Current Affairs podcast, Israeli dissident journalist Gideon Levy stopped by to give his perspective on “The Killing of Gaza”:

I want to cry. I want to scream. I don’t know what to say. How dare you? How dare Israelis speak about a moral difference, or the moral values of the Israeli army, when this is the outcome? How can you say the Israeli army is doing anything possible to prevent it, when you know that the majority of victims in this war—there are no questions—are innocent people? Even Israel admits it. It’s not like a Hamas claim. There’s no doubt about it. No doubt about it that in no other war were 250 journalists killed. In no other war were over 500 medical teams killed. So many figures which leave this argument so hollow… It’s a hell by any criteria, and Israel claims that all this is legal and moral. This is a moment in which words are running out. 

• In happier news for journalists, Wall Street Journal correspondent Evan Gershkovich is now free after a prisoner swap between Russia and the United States. Our disdain for the Journal is well-known, but we wish Gershkovich and his family all the best. (Reuters)
  
  
• In the United Kingdom, a woman has been given a four-year prison sentence for renting a safe house that was used by Just Stop Oil protestors before they blocked a highway. It’s an absurd, disproportionate sentence, clearly motivated more by political retaliation than any kind of justice. (The Times)
  
  
• Speaking of climate protests, there’s a big one going on in Uruguay, where people are trying to stop Google from building a huge, polluting data center—free of tax, of course. (The Guardian)
  
  
• In a truly baffling development, Nicolás Maduro has apparently accepted an offer from Elon Musk to fistfight him for the presidency of Venezuela. The rules are simple: If Musk wins, Maduro has to step down, but if Maduro wins, he gets a free trip to Mars. Given that Musk is still ducking a boxing match with Mark Zuckerberg, this probably won’t actually happen. (Forbes)

Maduro is a genuinely awful dictator, but he looks like

he can probably take a punch better than Elon.

• After several days of huge street protests, the government of Bangladesh has banned the right-wing Jamaat-e-Islami party. (Daily Star)
  
  
• LONG READ: After its landmark Third Plenum meeting, what’s going on with China’s economy? A lot! For the South China Morning Post, professor Justin Lin Yifu breaks it all down.

APE FACT OF THE WEEK

Some chimpanzees can say simple English words!

The website All Things Interesting recently ran an eye-catching headline: “New Study Finds That Chimpanzees May Be Capable Of Human Speech.” That was a little clickbait-y of them, as it’s not exactly complex speech we’re talking about. Sadly, a chimp isn’t going to be reading you Proust or the shipping forecast any time soon. However, it does appear that some individual chimps, at least, have been able to say some basic words.

The study in question was published in the journal Scientific Reports, and says that the authors “recovered original footage of two enculturated chimpanzees uttering the word ‘mama.’” One of the two was a chimp named Johnny, and in a camcorder video from the mid-2000s, you can indeed hear him say a clear “mama” when prompted:

The scientists claim this means that “great ape vocal production capacities have been underestimated” and that “Chimpanzees possess the neural building blocks necessary for speech,” including the ability to learn words they hear others use. Adding to the case, there’s footage of a chimp from the 1950s who learned to say “mama,” “papa,” and “cup” when she saw the appropriate person or object:

It’s not entirely clear how much these chimps understand what they’re saying, or how much they’re simply repeating sounds—but it’s definitely a question that should be studied further. And in the meantime, we humans need to stop destroying our evolutionary cousins’ habitats, as chimpanzees are nearing extinction in many countries—a fate no animal, capable of speech or not, deserves.