❧ The U.S. is introducing new sanctions against Cuba’s international medical aid program. Cuba’s “medical internationalism” is famous around the world, and rightfully so. Since the 1959 revolution, it’s been the policy of the Cuban government to send doctors to any country in the world that requests them, and scholars estimate Cuba provides “more medical personnel to the developing world than all the G8 countries combined.” Obviously, there’s a propaganda element to this: like every world government, the Communist Party of Cuba wants to generate good press for itself. But they’ve also saved countless lives, intervening in the West African Ebola epidemic in 2014 and sending a “white coat army” of medical workers to nearly 40 different countries during the height of the COVID pandemic.
Cuban doctors arrive in South Africa to fight COVID in 2020.
But the U.S. and its policymakers, especially Secretary of State Marco Rubio, don’t like this one bit. For several years now, Rubio and other anti-Cuba “hawks” have been pushing claims of forced labor in the international doctors’ program—something the medical workers themselves have denied on several occasions, saying that “we do it out of conviction” when interviewed by scholar Vijay Prashad in 2020. Regardless, Rubio and the State Department have created punishing new sanctions that target medical internationalism specifically, with visa restrictions for any individual involved in the program and even “the immediate family of such persons.” It’s just the latest move in Rubio’s anti-Cuba vendetta—and it’s a despicable case of a country that doesn’t even have a functional healthcare system of its own trying to destroy one of the best in the world. (People’s Dispatch)
❧ In a historic peace deal, imprisoned Kurdish resistance leader Abdullah Öcalan has called for the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) to disarm. Conflict between the PKK and the Turkish government—which has systematically abused and discriminated against the country’s Kurdish minority, provoking armed resistance—has been ongoing since the mid-1980s, and Öcalan himself has been imprisoned on the island of Imrali since 1999. During that time, he also became a key inspiration for the majority-Kurdish Rojava movement in northern Syria and their unique form of socialism.
Now, thanks to negotiations organized by Turkey’s minority People’s Equality and Democracy (DEM) party, a deal has been reached. On Thursday, Öcalan ordered that “All groups must lay down their arms and the PKK must dissolve itself.” In exchange, he and the DEM party want “democratic reforms” that would give Turkish Kurds greater rights and legal protections. But it’s unclear if President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan will grant them—and some members of the PKK say they won’t disarm until they see Öcalan freed from prison, so the opportunity for peace has complications. (The Guardian)
It’s been a long road for the PKK, but it might be coming to an end.
❧ The Taliban has installed 90,000 security cameras in Kabul. Officially, this expansive new surveillance system is meant to crack down on crime in the city. But international observers and dissidents within Afghanistan are worried that it will also be used to track down and punish anyone who transgresses the Taliban’s strict Islamic morality codes, like their recent edict against women’s voices being audible in public. Ironically enough, though, they’re only copying the surveillance systems that have been in place in European cities like London and Amsterdam for decades now, which have been used to track and suppress dissent there too. (BBC)
❧ Weeks after promising to permanently cleanse Palestinians from Gaza, to replace it with a “Riviera of the Middle East,” President Trump gave us a window into what he imagines it will look like. On Truth Social, he posted an A.I. generated video depicting “Trump Gaza” and it’s one of the most nauseating things we’ve ever seen:
In addition to the numerous golden Trump statues, Trump balloons, and Trump-branded buildings, you’ll notice a few other familiar faces. You see Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu—the man most responsible for making Gaza unlivable—bathing in the sun, and you see an Elon Musk-shaped AI amalgam housing some pita bread and throwing money everywhere. Trump has, of course, made it clear that Palestinians would not have the right to return after being removed. Instead, the “golden future” depicted in the video would be for the people who destroyed their society and the rest of the global elite, who would use it as a playground.
AROUND THE STATES
❧ Earlier this month, we informed you that a measles outbreak had begun in Texas, mostly among unvaccinated children. Now it has been reported that an unvaccinated school-aged child has died, and the worst is probably yet to come. This is the largest measles outbreak Texas has seen in 30 years and the largest in the U.S. in five years. But it’s not exactly surprising. It has coincided with a significant dip in vaccination rates within the state. Measles is the most contagious illness humans face—more easily transmissible than Ebola, smallpox, COVID or anything else. Vaccination has been found to dramatically reduce the rate at which children get measles and transmit it to others, which explains why, until recently, the disease was virtually eradicated in the U.S.
According to the Texas Tribune, local and state officials in Texas have been racing to set up vaccination clinics to limit the spread of the disease. But there has been a notable silence on the issue of vaccination from Governor Greg Abbott and many other state legislators.
This is also not exactly surprising, since anti-vaccine sentiment has infected the Republican Party at the national level. The Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has spent decades ginning up fears about vaccinating children against the measles—a crusade that has likely led to deaths. He has previously made the claims that kids who get measles are healthier than ones who don’t, and that “healthy” children are “hard to kill” with diseases like measles. (Not even remotely true: More than 100,000 people died of measles worldwide in 2023 and many of them were unvaccinated children.)
Even as he’s had to watch his worldview get dismantled before his very eyes, RFK, Jr. has continued to double down on his denialism. He’s downplayed the number of people who have been hospitalized due to measles in Texas and insisted that measles outbreaks are “not unusual” in the U.S., which is also totally bogus. There have been outbreaks of the measles in recent years, but they’ve involved an average of just six cases over 20 days. This outbreak has seen at least 120 within just one month. This is absolutely not normal, and it does not have to be this way. We have the tools to eradicate this awful disease and we should not allow charlatans who lie constantly to talk us out of using them.
CURRENT-EST AFFAIRS
In another takedown of RFK, Jr.’s latest round of bullshit, Nathan J. Robinson wrote about how being “skeptical” of the scientific consensus is not the same thing as actually doing science:
“To be a scientist does require a willingness to look at seemingly settled truths and ask curious questions. But that is not all it requires. It also requires a process of testing hypotheses carefully to try to arrive at what is actually true, and abandoning a hypothesis when the evidence in front of you keeps telling you that your hypothesis is wrong (such as, for instance, the hypothesis that vaccines cause autism). This is the part of science that Kennedy, who is now our Health and Human Services Director, does not engage in. He cultivates the image of someone who is engaged in critical reasoning, but he is not actually doing it.”
❧ Indiana’s House of Representatives has passed a bill that would allow payday lenders to charge rates that are currently considered criminal “loan sharking.” For those unfamiliar, payday loans are short-term, high-interest loans that are typically taken out by people badly in need of cash to pay rent, credit card bills, or other expenses. The industry is famously predatory: Lenders often charge obscene interest rates that trap borrowers—often minorities, the elderly, and those with less education—in ever-worsening, inescapable pools of debt. They also tend to be deceptive, laden with service fees and other charges buried in the fine print.
Currently, Indiana limits payday lending interest rates to 72 percent, which is already higher than a lot of other states, and caps loans at $825. But if the new legislation is signed into law, lenders will be able to issue loans up to $5,000 at interest rates as high as 150 percent, which is currently defined as felony loan sharking. It also allows for service fees of as much as 6 percent to be tacked on each month in addition to interest. The Indianapolis Starcalculates that under the new law, “a $2,000 loan with a term of 18 months would rack up $2,160 in fees. That would be in addition to interest and other fees.”
Republicans have been showered with donations from the payday loan industry, and it has paid dividends at the national level. Most notably, Elon Musk and Project 2025 architect Russ Vought just shuttered the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which went after payday lenders for their predatory practices. While the fate of this bill still remains to be determined in the Indiana senate, it has a good chance of passing the overwhelmingly red chamber. (Indianapolis Star)
Coming soon to a shitty strip mall near you!
❧ There’s been a big new development in the Luigi Mangione case. On Wednesday, Mangione’s lawyers introduced a motion to suppress some of the most important evidence against him, including the 3D-printed gun and fake IDs that police say they found in the accused shooter’s bag. The attorneys claim the Altoona Police Department illegally detained and searched Mangione in the McDonald’s where he was arrested, holding him there for around 15 minutes and going through his bag before reading his Miranda rights. If confirmed, this could indeed result in the evidence being thrown out, as it would be considered the “fruit of the poisonous tree”—a colorful metaphor for evidence obtained illegally. But beyond Mangione’s specific case, it’s a reminder of just how common illegitimate searches and seizures and dubious evidence are in American policing, which badly needs a complete overhaul. (WJAC)
❧ [Content warning: Animal abuse] Coca-Cola’s premium milk brand Fairlife is being sued for allegedly abusing its cows, polluting waterways, and generally engaging in false advertising. The company’s website boasts that it has a “commitment to well-cared-for cows” but its practices suggest otherwise, according to the 88-page class action suit.
It cites evidence compiled by the Animal Recovery Mission, an animal rights group, which infiltrated two major Fairlife suppliers in Arizona. They found that calves were separated from their mothers, confined to tiny crates. They were often beaten and abused by staff and left without food, water, or treatment for infections—mistreatment that resulted in several deaths. And they were kept in conditions that sometimes reached 135F, resulting in exhaustion and dehydration. They also found evidence that workers were illegally disposing of the carcasses of the dead cows in ways that risked polluting the local water sources. The lawsuit also alleges that the company’s claims that its bottles are made with recycled materials are untrue.
What’s especially galling is that this is not the first time Fairlife has been called out for animal abuse. Another investigation in 2019 found similar conditions at their farms, which led Coca-Cola to pledge over $40 million toward animal welfare reforms and pay out a $21 million settlement. But this evidence seems to reveal that they have not cleaned up their act whatsoever. (Courthouse News Service)
CROOKS vs. SICKOS (Or, "What are our politicians and oligarchs up to?")
❧ The third-richest man in the world, Jeff Bezos just announced that he will be censoring his news outlet, the Washington Post. When Bezos bought the outlet in 2013 for $250 million, he pledged not to interfere with its editorial independence. But on Wednesday, he announced that he was mandating a change to the Post’s opinion pages:
We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets. We’ll cover other topics too of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.
Nothing says respecting “personal liberties” like censoring certain viewpoints from one of the most widely read papers in America! Promoting “free market economics” is not exactly new for the Bezos Post, which has had an evident rightward shift in recent years and has published some nauseating op-eds attacking unions and defending corporate price gouging. And Bezos has recently been cozying up to Donald Trump by directly intervening to prevent criticism of him in the outlet and contributing to his inauguration fund. But now the interference is more blatant than it’s ever been. (Bezos is reported to have dined with Trump mere hours after announcing the new policy.) Understandably, readers are furious—at least 75,000 digital subscribers have cancelled their subscriptions and columnists like Jeff Stein and Dana Milbank have voiced their disgust.
This is ultimately the consequence of having a press owned by the wealthy. They will use it to protect their own wealth and power at the expense of any other principles. This was a paper that, in direct response to Trump, put the words “Democracy Dies in Darkness” on its masthead. But in furtherance of its billionaire owner’s interests, it is now going to become even more of a mouthpiece for an administration that it has acknowledged has authoritarian ambitions. It’s a horrific development for press freedom and makes it more clear than ever why we need independent media to flourish.
Unlike the Washington Post, Current Affairs is completely editorially independent and cannot be bossed around by billionaires. If you want some criticism of “free market economics,” well, we’ve got plenty of it!
We rely entirely on support from our readers. If you value independent media and can afford to toss us a few bucks, it means the world to us.
Art by Mort Todd, from Current Affairs Magazine, Issue 20, July/August 2019
❧ THIS WEEK IN RIGHT-WING POPULISM: President Trump has announced that he will begin selling a “gold card” for $5 million that rich immigrants can purchase in exchange for a pathway to citizenship. He has described it in very plain terms as a way for the rich to get around the immigration restrictions that everyone else has to go through: “Wealthy people will be coming into our country by buying this card.”
While more outwardly cartoonish, this is not actually that much different from how our immigration system currently works. There is already a program that allows for foreign investors to apply for residence if they invest in commercial enterprises that employ large numbers of people and “help the economy.” As is often the case with Trump, his program just removes any of the pretenses about who is supposed to benefit from the immigration system: Rich people get to buy citizenship while poor people get brutalized and put in internment camps. (Time)
PAST AFFAIRS
Last August, Current Affairs house economist Rob Larson wrote about how the world’s border control systems already treat rich and poor immigrants completely differently, creating a two-tiered system of “Velvet Ropes and Poor Doors.”
❧ BUT WAIT, THERE’S EVEN MORE RIGHT-WING POPULISM TO LOVE: The awful GOP budget resolution that we discussed in our last briefing has passed the House. While the resolution does not explicitly include cuts to Medicaid—which funds health care for 72 million Americans—it does direct the House Energy and Commerce Committee to find $880 billion to cut from the programs it oversees, which is impossible to do without making deep cuts to Medicaid, Medicare or both. All of this, we remind you, is to pay for a massive $4.5 trillion tax cut that will mostly benefit the wealthiest Americans and will also dramatically balloon the deficit that Republicans are supposedly so concerned about. (New York Times)
Here is where the benefits of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which the proposed GOP tax cut intends to expand, went. (Center for Budget and Policy Priorities)
❧ A new poll shows democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani has a serious shot in the New York City mayoral race. Conducted by a consulting firm called Tusk Strategies, the poll has Mamdani at 12 percent support. That’s higher than incumbent Mayor Eric Adams, who got only 10 percent, and second only to Andrew Cuomo, who got 38 percent but hasn’t announced his candidacy yet. If this pattern holds, the race could effectively turn into a two-man contest between Mamdani and Cuomo—and Cuomo has major vulnerabilities, including his past sexual harassment scandal and placement of COVID patients in nursing homes during his time as New York’s governor. (New York Post)
If you’ve never heard of a Dik-dik before, it’s basically like if someone took a regular antelope and gave it the proportions of a My Little Pony doll. At just around a foot tall, they are cartoonishly stumpy and round with exaggeratedly big ears and eyes that are expressive to the point of being cloying.
Every Dik-dik looks like it wants to sell you a box of Thin Mints. (Image: Flickr)
But the Dik-dik’s eyes are not just for looking cute. Just below each one, you’ll notice a black spot. Those are the Dik-dik’s preorbital glands, which are similar to tear ducts in humans. When Dik-diks find their life partners (yes, as if they were not adorable enough, Dik-diks are also monogamous and mate for life), they use these glands to weep a sticky, tar-like substance all over the surrounding area to mark it as their home. When a family of Dik-diks relocates, the kids will often join in, crying all over the nearby twigs and leaves.
It is magazine policy not to rank animals, but we challenge anyone to think of another creature that is this comprehensively cute.
This is what it looks like / when Dik-diks cry (Photo: Flickr)
Writing and research by Stephen Prager and Alex Skopic. Editing and additional material by Nathan J. Robinson and Lily Sánchez. Header graphic by Cali Traina Blume. 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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