June 7, 2024 ❧ Bird Flu, Biden stops asylum, and the TRUTH about the Epoch Times

Plus: Texas builds its own stock exchange, more hulking police vehicles, how the U.S. right is pushing hate in Africa, and giant pangolins are back!

News? In MY briefing? It's more likely than you think.

STORY THAT SHOULD BE BIGGER

The bird flu situation really doesn’t look good.

Recently, doctors in Michigan detected the United States’ third human case of H5N1, a strain of bird flu, in a dairy farm worker. The first such case was reported in Texas back in March, and the second was also in Michigan, but at a different dairy farm. Unlike those first two, the New York Times reports that the new patient has “respiratory symptoms, including a cough, sore throat and watery eyes,” which “generally increase the likelihood of transmission to other people.” 

The United Nations, thankfully, says that human-to-human transmission of bird flu is rare. But it’s not impossible. And knowing the extent of the problem is difficult because testing is barely being done, with only around 40 farm workers in Michigan volunteering to be checked out so far. So the actual rate of infection may be a lot higher than anyone yet realizes.

If this news gives you flashbacks to the first few cases of what we called the “novel coronavirus” in 2019, you’re not alone. Speaking to the Times, public health consultant Rick Bright said that “there is no excuse for the lack of testing” and that “this is how pandemics start.” (There’s also the growing popularity of “raw milk” to worry about—as it turns out, we invented pasteurization for a reason!) 

Meanwhile, a poultry farm in Sioux City, Iowa, is about to kill 4.2 million chickens after bird flu was detected among its flocks, the latest addition to the 92.34 million birds that have been killed for that reason in the U.S. since 2022. That’s a staggering number of animals to lose their lives, and the mass killing may drive the United States’ already-high egg prices even higher. And in Mexico, the BBC reports that a man has died of a slightly different strain of bird flu—not H5N1, but its cousin H5N2. 

The common denominator here is factory farming, which crams far too many animals together in too little space, often without proper ventilation or hygiene. It’s both a morally indefensible practice and one that directly threatens everyone’s health, giving new bacteria and viruses an ideal breeding ground. The sooner it ends, the safer we’ll all be. 

It turns out having this many cows in one place isn’t a very good idea!

(Image: U.S. Department of Agriculture via Rawpixel)

CROOKS vs. SICKOS (or, “What are our politicians and oligarchs up to?”)

❧ President Biden has unveiled a new executive order to immediately curtail the rights of asylum seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border. The measure is even more restrictive on the right to claim asylum than the bipartisan bill that fell apart earlier this year. Biden’s executive order halts asylum claims at the border when arrests for unauthorized crossings reach 2,500 per day. Since the number of entries per day is currently at 4,000, that effectively means that the Biden administration will immediately begin curtailing the legal right to claim asylum.

The right to asylum is not only protected under international law, but has been enshrined in American law since the Refugee Act of 1980 granted the legal right of anyone with a “well-founded fear of persecution” to come to a legal U.S. point of entry and plead their case for protection and required for them to be given due process.

The Biden administration has also reduced the amount of time asylum seekers will have to find a lawyer from 24 hours (already a distressingly short amount of time), to just four hours. "If they cannot find a lawyer, they have to make a credible case on their own or be turned back immediately," according to the New York Times.

We have seen that previous restrictions on asylum claims have resulted in direct harm to thousands of migrants who were in danger elsewhere. For example, President Biden’s continuation of Title 42 restrictions, which used the COVID-19 pandemic as justification to expel asylum seekers until May 2023, resulted in at least “13,480 asylum seekers and migrants targeted for kidnappings, torture, sexual assault and other human rights abuses in Mexico” over his first two years in office according to a report from Human Rights First. A blanket ban on all asylum cases, regardless of their validity, will surely put more people in danger.

As the election draws nearer, President Biden is tacking hard to the right on immigration. Where he previously attacked Trump and Republicans for enacting cruel and restrictive policies, he is now faulting them for “refusing” to “take the necessary steps to secure our border.” He is essentially enacting Trump’s policy for him, accepting the conservative framing that undocumented immigrants are a menacing threat when the evidence does not bear that out. When asked why he’s suddenly enacting Trump’s immigration policy, he’s attempted to distinguish himself by saying “I will never demonize immigrants. I will never refer to immigrants as poisoning the blood of our country. And further, I’ll never separate children from their families at the border. I will not ban people from this country because of their religious beliefs.” In other words, his issue with Trump is not the cruelty of his policies, but the cruelty of his words. 

A lot of Democrats are, thankfully, pushing back against this and not buying Biden’s excuse. Perhaps the most forceful condemnation has come from Rep. Greg Casar of San Antonio, who said in an interview on MSNBC: 

The Republican Party here in Congress tries to cover up its own failures by scapegoating immigration…Unfortunately, it created this political pressure that has the President today responding by restricting asylum, which isn’t going to work because it doesn’t actually reduce the number of people being pushed out of their homes in Latin America.

If we want to address what’s going on in our community on immigration, we should finally provide protections to our Dreamers and to longtime families here.

And then third, we need to do what folks in D.C. don’t want to talk about which is: How are U.S. policies actually contributing, especially in places like Latin America, to starvation and poverty and violence that is pushing people out of their homes in record numbers?

The asylum process was already long and convoluted enough!

From Issue 6 of Current Affairs Magazine, March/April 2017

⚜ LONG READ: In the New Republic, Michael Brenes and William D. Hartung take you inside the horrifying push by military contractors to market AI-driven weapons to the US government:

At the AI Expo for National Competitiveness, sponsored by defense firm Palantir (of Peter Thiel fame), developers and policymakers heralded artificial intelligence as not only the inescapable future of international conflict but also the savior of mankind. You see, these A.I.-powered weapons of war, which are already in use, will actually save us from global destruction—and anyone who predicts otherwise is the real warmonger. “The peace activists are war activists,” said Palantir CEO Alex Karp, according to The Guardian. “We are the peace activists.”

 The “peace activists” is Karp’s derogatory term for A.I. skeptics, who, as the technology has proliferated from chatbots to the weapons industry, have become understandably worried about its potentially apocalyptic consequences. Foreign policy experts routinely express fears of robot wars, endless wars, and unregulated wars where the ethics and laws of war don’t apply. “The unconstrained development of autonomous weapons could lead to wars that expand beyond human control, with fewer protections for both combatants and civilians,” defense analyst Paul Scharre wrote in Foreign Affairs earlier this year…

The Department of Defense wants to support a new generation of venture capital start-ups that will purportedly give America a substantial edge over China in an era of “great-power competition.”  The Pentagon believes that the ingenuity of Silicon Valley will give the United States the technological prowess to deter Beijing from taking aggressive action in Taiwan—or the South China Sea—for fear it will be unable to win a potential confrontation with the U.S….

There are strong reasons to think that emerging A.I. military technologies could not only fail to pay off in superior capabilities but actually make the world a more dangerous place. 

Art by Pranas T. Naujokaitis from Issue 7 of Current Affairs Magazine, May/June 2017

And Now, a Joe Biden Joke from 1987:

It’s probably a good sign when the current President has been in politics so long there’s archival footage of Johnny Carson making fun of him, right? We’re told that’s definitely normal. 

In other news

• The New Republic got ahold of a WhatsApp chat run by military contractor and informal Trump adviser Erik Prince for his “Off Leash” podcast. The group contains around 650 “current and former political officials, national security operatives, activists, journalists, soldiers of fortune, weapons brokers, black bag operators, grifters, convicted criminals, and other elements in the U.S. and global far right” and displays their desire to wage genocidal wars abroad and unleash violence upon their domestic enemies.
  
  
• The Washington Post is undergoing a process of “Rupert Murdoch-ization,” as editor Sally Buzbee has been ousted in favor of Matt Murray and Robert Winnett, both former Murdoch associates. Just in time for the election! (Politico)

AROUND THE STATES

❧ The CEO for the The Epoch Times, the mysterious far-right newspaper, has been charged by the Department of Justice for using the outlet to commit a massive money laundering scheme. New York Magazine outlines the case as follows:

On Monday, federal prosecutors in New York charged the Epoch Times’ chief financial officer, Bill Guan, with conspiracy to commit money laundering for allegedly moving at least $67 million in illegally obtained funds to bank accounts in the media outlet’s name. According to the indictment, Guan was in charge of something (rather suspiciously) called the “Make Money Online” team, in which Guan and underlings “used cryptocurrency to knowingly purchase tens of millions of dollars in crime proceeds.” 

The alleged scheme was fairly simple, relying on prepaid debit cards, which are a common method in crypto laundering. The Make Money Online team, based abroad, would allegedly purchase “proceeds of fraudulently obtained unemployment insurance benefits” loaded onto prepaid cards. The team then allegedly traded them for cryptocurrency at 70 to 80 percent of the cards’ actual value. After making the deal, the Feds claim that those funds would then be transferred into bank accounts associated with the Epoch Times as well as into Guan’s personal bank accounts.

For years, Epoch’s rise has been the subject of bewilderment. It began in 2000 as a project of the Falun Gong religious movement, the same bizarre, cult-like organization behind the Shen Yun dance performances that have become ubiquitous across American cities (For more on Falun Gong, check out Gia Tolentino’s 2019 New Yorker piece about Shen Yun and the the TrueAnon podcast's three-part deep dive into their history). 

After years of languishing in obscurity (but somehow still giving out its newspaper for free on the streets of New York), Epoch’s penchant for anti-China conspiracism made it a favorite in the Trump White House. During the COVID-19 pandemic they really hit their stride, letting their freak flag fly with claims that COVID-19 was a Chinese bioweapon and that vaccines would kill 100 million people by 2028. (We’re still only halfway there, so there’s still time for that to pan out.) They also dutifully pushed the most outlandish of Trump’s election fraud conspiracy theories. 

2020 also happens to be when the “Make Money Online” scheme began, and prosecutors found that Epoch’s revenues had jumped 410 percent, from $15 million to around $62 million. Despite raising the eyebrows of investigators, Epoch managed to chug along for another four years, blasting this obnoxious guy’s face onto your YouTube feed on every other video:

Screenshot from The Epoch Times YouTube channel

And posting billboards that look like they were advertising a slip-and-fall law firm in 2001:

Did you know that you have rights? The Falun Gong says you do!

Photo from Rocky Mountain PBS

In hindsight, their rise from niche foreign publication to one that claimed to be the fourth most popular newspaper in the U.S. makes so much more sense. It turns out that there’s no limit to what you can accomplish with copious amounts of fraud! 

❧ Texas is creating its own stock exchange to compete with the NYSE and NASDAQ. Imaginatively called the “Texas Stock Exchange,” the new financial trading market will be located in Dallas, and has already received $120 million in investment from the (in)famous firms BlackRock and Citadel Capital. It also has the support of billionaire Mark Cuban, who says he’s a “huge fan of the concept.” For the Dallas Morning News, journalist Irving Mejia-Hilario writes that the TSE would bring around 100 jobs to Dallas, and would secure the city’s “reputation as the financial capital of the south.” But, he writes, it’s really Governor Greg Abbott’s laissez-faire attitude to finance that’s driving the project:

[Abbott has] proposed banning financial transaction taxes, will be appointing seven judges onto Texas’ new business courts and has touted himself as a pro-business governor who will protect businesses from pesky regulations. Texas also has no corporate income or personal income tax. Gov. Abbott, unsurprisingly, is a supporter of the Texas Stock Exchange.

In other words, companies like BlackRock and Citadel like the idea of moving to Texas to conduct their business because they wouldn’t have to pay tax or be accountable to regulators, even to the already pretty lax extent they are in New York. Which is the kind of thing you pursue when your entire industry is built on shuffling money around in ever-more-arcane ways to enrich a handful of people at the top, while exploiting and defrauding everyone else. 

Just what the world needed: More of this.

(Image: Scott Beale via Flickr)

In other news

• The Amazon Labor Union is now affiliated with the Teamsters, pending ratification of the agreement by the ALU rank-and-file. (Labor Notes)
  
  
• The Colorado GOP recently sent out a disturbing email calling LGBTQ people “godless” and urging readers to “burn all the #pride flags this June.” (ABC)
  
  
• A new bill under consideration in the Pennsylvania legislature could raise the state’s minimum wage to $20 an hour. (FOX 43)
  
  
• For years, rural states like Indiana have struggled with painfully slow Internet service. Despite tens of billions of dollars from the federal government to internet service providers across the country, the problem has still not been fixed. (The Indiana Capital Chronicle)
  
  
• As if climate change weren’t bad enough, high levels of CO2 also allow viruses to stay in the air for longer. (STAT)
  
  
• Ignoring the objections of tribal leaders, Oklahoma’s Governor Kevin Stitt has signed a law giving poultry companies immunity from lawsuits over water pollution. (KFOR, Oklahoma City)
  
  
• More than 800 construction workers, especially the operators of cranes and other heavy machinery, have gone on strike in southern Wisconsin. Best of luck to them! (WISN, Milwaukee)
  
  
• On Substack, Hamilton Nolan argues that building more housing is the single biggest thing policymakers could do to make people’s lives more affordable. (How Things Work) 

THIS WEEK IN ABSURD POLICE VEHICLES

For reference, the town of Prosper, Texas looks like this:

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Truly a terrifying urban war zone that would require an Armor-Plated Copmobile! When somebody in Prosper runs a red light or steals a Monster energy drink from the gas station, these guys will be prepared.

(Thanks to Current Affairs House Economist Rob Larson for bringing this story to our attention!)

AROUND THE WORLD

❧ The American right is helping to fuel Africa's anti-LGBTQ movement. According to the Guardian, a D.C. based anti-pornography group called the National Center on Sexual Exploitation “has advised, promoted and endorsed anti-LGBTQ+ activists and politicians in Uganda,” which last year passed one of the harshest bans on homosexuality in the world. 

The NCOSE got its start campaigning to have movies and books with sexual content banned (including such racy films as Monty Python’s Life of Brian). In the 1990s, it became deeply involved in anti-gay rights campaigns, urging a boycott of Disney for its granting of spousal benefits to same-sex couples and crusading against Massachusetts' legalization of gay marriage in 2003. As U.S. politics became less hostile to LGBTQ people, they turned their attention overseas. An NCOSE spin-off group worked closely with virulent homophobes like Ugandan government minister Sarah Achieng Opendi, who called for gays to be “castrated,” and supported a recent law that imposes life in prison or the death penalty for same-sex acts. 

NCOSE is just one of numerous organizations from America’s Christian right that have spent big money to make African politics more hateful. Prior reporting from openDemocracy revealed that:

More than 20 US Christian groups known for fighting against LGBT rights and access to safe abortion, contraceptives and comprehensive sexuality education have spent at least $54m in Africa since 2007… The Fellowship Foundation, a secretive US religious group whose Ugandan associate, David Bahati, wrote Uganda’s infamous “Kill the Gays” bill, is the biggest spender in Africa. Between 2008 and 2018, this group sent more than $20m to Uganda alone.

Many of these groups have direct links to the Trump administration. And while Africa has been a major focus, they have spent more than $280 million globally to export the culture war.

A graphic from openDemocracy’s 2020 investigation into Christian organizations’ dark money spending across the globe

⚜ LONG READ: Who is Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico's new president? For Compact Magazine, Juan David Rojas explores the question:

Sheinbaum is seen as perhaps overly technocratic, if also an effective administrator. During her tenure as mayor, she oversaw an even more effective expansion of social programs than Morena achieved at the national level, and presided over a noticeable improvement in security. Many voters told me they were struck by her skill at giving detailed answers to interview questions, but also felt that she often appeared overly rigid and uncharismatic. Sheinbaum has hewed so close to AMLO during the campaign that at times one gets the sense that she is telling morenistas—and the president—what they want to hear. [...]

The president-elect is less heterodox than her mentor, who has shown a profound respect for the conservatism of the Mexican masses. He is prone to moralistic and religious rhetoric, has single-handedly blocked the legalization of marijuana, and is currently promoting a constitutional ban on the use of vapes. In all likelihood, Sheinbaum will lead a far more conventionally progressive administration that gives greater priority to activist causes.

In truth, Sunday’s vote was effectively a contest between shades of social progressivism. Gálvez campaigned in favor of LGBT and abortion rights, even as she pledged to reopen Mexico’s energy sector to foreign capital and chastised non-homeowners as lazy. For her part, Sheinbaum as mayor was a champion of LGBT rights and opened gender clinics for Mexico City’s trans population. In and of itself, this was relatively innocuous in terms of public opinion in the nation’s cosmopolitan capital, famous for its gay-friendly culture. At the national level, however, a harsh pivot away from AMLO-style social conservatism could fuel a backlash.[...]

In terms of US-Mexico relations, Sheinbaum says she wishes to maintain good relations with the White House and has pledged to cooperate on immigration enforcement, regardless of who prevails in November.

The part about “cooperating on immigration enforcement” is sinister, but otherwise, Sheinbaum seems downright progressive compared to most U.S. politicians. (Image: Wikimedia Commons)

In other news

• Slovenia has become the latest country to recognize a Palestinian state, joining the vast majority of the world. (Associated Press)

• Using U.S.-provided munitions, Israel launched an airstrike upon a United Nations school where thousands of Palestinians have been taking shelter. At least 40 people were killed, including nine women and 14 children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. (Middle East Eye)

It’s not a school…it’s an EX-school!

• Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs has been using AI-bot accounts across social media to inundate American lawmakers with messaging in support of the war in Gaza. According to the New York Times: “Many of the campaign’s fake accounts on X, Instagram and Facebook posed as fictional American students, concerned citizens and local constituents. The accounts shared articles and statistics that backed Israel’s position in the war.”

• In a worrying new escalation, Ukraine has used American-provided weapons to strike inside Russian territory as part of its defense of Kharkiv. (Associated Press) 

• In Argentina, President Javier Milei's austerity policies are causing the homelessness rate to spike as pensions, government salaries, and even support for soup kitchens are slashed. (Reuters)

• Workers in the financial sector are on strike in Mali, after the leader of the National Union of Banks, Insurance Companies, Financial Institutions and Businesses was arrested under questionable circumstances. (The Sudan Times)

• The UN says that the civil war in Sudan is in danger of becoming a genocide. But unlike in 2006, when the Darfur genocide gained national attention from activists and celebrities, the current conflict has largely been invisible from the news despite what Yale researcher Nathaniel Raymond calls “Hiroshima and Nagasaki-level casualty potential.” (Foreign Policy)

• Activists in Australia are calling for the release of David McBride, a former Army lawyer and whistleblower who was sentenced to more than five years in prison for exposing Australian war crimes in Afghanistan. (Red Flag)

PANGOLIN FACT OF THE WEEK

Giant pangolins have returned to Senegal!

Known to science as Smutsia Gigantea, the giant pangolin is a curious creature. An armored, insect-eating mammal somewhat similar to American armadillos (but not actually related to them), it’s the largest of the extended pangolin family. And unfortunately, it’s also endangered in its native Africa thanks to extensive poaching—especially for its armored scales, which are used in traditional medicine. 

In Senegal, the pangolins are particularly scarce. In fact, one hadn’t been seen there since 1999. But that all changed last year, when researchers with the wildlife group Panthera set up camera traps in Niokolo-Koba National Park. To their surprise, a giant pangolin came shuffling across the path, seeking insects to devour. 

“When we saw the young pangolin it was very, very exciting,” said team member Mouhamadou Mody Ndiaye, speaking to New Scientist. The group now believes the park could be a “stronghold” for the pangolins in Senegal—and that if they’re carefully conserved, they could even make a comeback.  

Guess who’s back, back again. (Image: African Journal of Ecology)