❧ Rodrigo Duterte, the former president of the Philippines, will face trial at the Hague. Duterte was arrested under an International Criminal Court warrant on Tuesday, and has already made a preliminary appearance before the Court via webcam. He’s facing charges of crimes against humanity related to the widespread police killings—estimated to be at least 7,000—from “Operation Double Barrel,” the anti-drug crackdown he launched soon after taking office in 2016. Duterte compared himself to Hitler and said he’d be “happy to slaughter” drug users, and his police state also committed well-documented acts of torture, so his day in dock is long overdue.
This is a historic moment, and it’s an important demonstration of the ICC’s invaluable role in holding leaders who abuse human rights to account. However, it’s also another example of a longstanding pattern in which the ICC is only able to arrest leaders from less powerful countries in the Global South, while other human rights violators who are European or U.S. allies operate with impunity. Mohammed bin Salman and Benjamin Netanyahu, just to name two, are linked to abuses every bit as bad as Duterte’s, and Netanyahu even has his own ICC warrant. But so far, they’re still walking around free. For true international justice to prevail, that’ll have to change. (The Guardian)
Duterte finally faces the music. (Image: International Criminal Court via YouTube)
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“I just wanted to congratulate you because I am hearing of the unbelievable job on the drug problem… Many countries have the problem, we have a problem, but what a great job you are doing, and I just wanted to call and tell you that.”
❧ The U.S. and Israel are now trying to force the people of Gaza to relocate to Africa. According to an exclusive report from the Associated Press, diplomats from both nations have “reached out to officials of three East African governments”—Somalia, Sudan, and the separatist region of Somaliland—in search of a host country that might accept roughly 2 million Palestinians who would be removed from Gaza.
This is the textbook definition of ethnic cleansing—and considering that Sudan is embroiled in a brutal civil war, while Somalia and Somaliland are two of the poorest places in Africa, it shows that Palestinians’ well-being is not being considered at all. Trump has claimed he would give Palestinians a “beautiful alternative that’s safe” compared to remaining in Gaza, but in reality he wants to deport them into another war zone.
Thankfully, two anonymous Sudanese officials told the AP that their government “immediately rebuffed” the Trump administration’s proposal. It’s less clear where negotiations stand with Somalia and Somaliland, as officials there said they weren’t aware of the U.S. or Israel reaching out. But in any case, the genocidal nature of Trump and Netanyahu’s plans is becoming more undeniable by the day. So is the responsibility of people around the world to oppose them.
❧ Romania has become engulfed in further chaos after far-right candidate Călin Georgescu was barred from running for president by the nation’s election authority. What makes all of this very strange is that Georgescu actually already won the first round of the presidential election back in November of last year. But the result of that election was cancelled, and a do-over was announced after it was alleged that the Russian government was using a large network of TikTok and Telegram accounts to promote Georgescu, who is known to have warm feelings toward Putin.
Now, it looks like Georgescu won’t even get to stand in May’s do-over election because of his failure to disclose financial support from the Russian government. The court upheld the decision on Tuesday, prompting outrage from Georgescu and protests across Bucharest from his supporters, which have culminated in some violence. Georgescu has called it “a direct blow to the heart of democracy worldwide,” and, well, he’s not exactly wrong about that. Georgescu is a reprehensible political figure—he has a history of praising Nazi collaborators and has said some outrageous things about Ukraine, including calling it a “fictional state” that Romania should partially occupy along with Russia.
But even if Russia put its thumb on the scale, the people did ultimately choose to vote for this guy. And one of the risks you run when you live in a democracy is that the people might decide to elect someone reprehensible. You can argue he’s sufficiently terrible that overriding democracy is justified, but let’s not pretend that isn’t what’s being done here. One needn’t support Georgescu or any of what he stands for to find it disturbing. (Wall Street Journal)
❧ The nation of Australia is up in arms after an American social media influencer, Sam Jones, posted a video of herself picking up a baby wombat and stealing it from its mother. Jones let the wombat go pretty quickly after it began screeching and after noticing that the mother looked “pissed,” and both baby and mother appear to be unharmed. We certainly understand the urge to just pick up a wombat and hug it, as they are quite adorable. But it’s both reckless and tasteless to grab a wild animal from its habitat because you think it will make for a cute Instagram reel.
The wombat snatcher is now facing calls for her deportation, and has fled the country after Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke threatened to revoke her visa. The outrage has reached the very top, with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese saying that “To take a baby wombat from its mother, and clearly causing distress from the mother, is just an outrage.” He continued: “I suggest to this so-called influencer, maybe she might try some other Australian animals. Take a baby crocodile from its mother and see how you go there.” (CNN)
❧ Saudi Arabia’s monarchy has bought Pokémon Go. Once again, we feel compelled to say that, no, this is not a joke. The American software company Niantic just sold the popular mobile game—along with Pikmin Bloom and Monster Hunter Now—to Scopely, a similar firm which is owned by the Saudi government’s sovereign wealth fund. It’s a sign of Saudi Arabia’s continuing effort to expand its reach in the tech sector, but it’s also a digital form of “sportswashing.” That's the phenomenon where nations with atrocious human rights records try to drum up positive publicity by sponsoring golf, chess, and even e-sports tournaments. So if you don’t want to support slave labor or the indiscriminate use of the death penalty, both of which are common in the Saudi kingdom, it might be time to delete this particular app. (PC Gamer)
Pokémon Go to Riyadh? No, thank you.
AROUND THE STATES
❧ Another student protester has been arrested by the Department of Homeland Security. The DHS announced this afternoon that it has arrested Leqaa Korda, a Palestinian student from the West Bank. The stated reason is that Korda allegedly overstayed an F-1 student visa that expired in 2022—but, like with Mahmoud Khalil, it’s clear that the real reason is that Korda was involved in the anti-genocide protests at Columbia University. The DHS has also revoked the visa of Ranjani Srinivasan, a Columbia student from India who “self-deported” soon afterward—not that she had much choice in the matter. The Trump administration is following through on its promise that Khalil would be the “first of many” activists to be targeted, and this repression has to be fought and rolled back. (ABC 7 Los Angeles)
❧ FIGHTING BACK: In response to the Trump administration’s attempt to deport Mahmoud Khalil for his pro-Palestine speech, hundreds of protesters with Jewish Voice for Peace flooded Trump Tower in New York City to demand his release. The Trump administration has aggressively wielded Jewish identity to defend its persecution of pro-Palestine speakers, even announcing its arrest of Khalil with a graphic reading “Shalom, Mahmoud!”
But many Jewish Americans are disgusted at both the genocidal actions of Israel and the exploitation of antisemitism to persecute critics. In Trump Tower, the protesters assembled wore shirts reading “not in our names” and “Jews say stop arming Israel.” At least 65 of the protesters were zip-tied and dragged out of Trump Tower and into police vans (so much for Jewish safety!), but not before making their point. In a quote to the Associated Press, actress Debra Winger, one of the participants, called out the Trump administration for having “no interest in Jewish safety” and “co-opting antisemitism." She said “I’m just standing up for my rights, and I’m standing up for Mahmoud Khalil.”
Video: Al Jazeera
❧ SixteenStarbucks workers were arrested by Chicago and Pittsburgh police after staging protests for a fair contract on Tuesday. More than 11,000 Starbucks employees at 500 stores are now part of Starbucks Workers United. But though the company finally voted to recognize the union last year, they’ve dragged their feet in negotiating the fair contract employees want. During the last negotiations, they offered baristas an insulting agreement with no wage increases and a promise for increases of just 1.5 percent annually in future years, which led negotiations to break down before being relaunched in January. Meanwhile, their new CEO has been awarded $96 million in just his first four months.
With Starbucks’ annual shareholder meeting coming the next day, employees at five of the chain’s busiest locations participated in a strike to put pressure on them and, in the words of one striking shift manager, “to send the message to our shareholders that we’re done messing around.” Shortly into the sit-in, police arrived at the Chicago and Pittsburgh stores and hauled out the workers on charges of “trespassing.” While it’s not confirmed at this moment whether the cops were called in by Starbucks corporate or just by the shift managers, we know that the company has called the cops on their own workers to break up strikes in the past and used lots of other dirty tactics to bust up its union. If anything, the fact that they are going to these lengths just shows that they fear the power of their workers. (Seattle Times)
Starbucks baristas in Pittsburgh (left) and Chicago (right) were arrested with smiles on their faces. (Photos: Starbucks Workers United)
❧ A police officer in Vermont has been charged with negligence after he killed a cyclist in November while distracted by one of Matt Walsh’s anti-trans YouTube videos. According to charging documents dug up by the VT Digger, the cop, 41-year-old Kyle Kapitanski, had been watching YouTube videos for 11 minutes before hitting the cyclist, who was walking along the side of the road around 3 a.m. According to the documents, the last video on his screen was titled “Trans woman CONFRONTING Matt Walsh takes UNEXPECTED turn.” Body cam footage of “post-collision” events reveals that Kapitanski indeed had YouTube playing and that, after hitting the biker, he closed it and returned to the police dispatch screen he was presumably supposed to be looking at.
We can’t say for sure whether watching Walsh yell at a trans woman distracted the officer from seeing the biker. The documents also accuse him of speeding, which probably didn’t help either. But notably, he described the biker as having “come out of nowhere,” and the documents allege that he had a delayed reaction time, which suggests he may have been distracted. While it’s uniquely blood-curdling that someone could have lost their life because of a Matt Walsh video, of all things, the bigger problem is that cops often show a callous disregard for the safety of pedestrians and other motorists, which has resulted in death or serious injury on manyotheroccasions in recent memory.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ALBERT EINSTEIN!
Nearly everyone knows that Einstein—who was born on this day, 146 years ago—was a brilliant physicist. But as Billie Anania wrote for Current Affairs in 2021, Einstein was also a dedicated socialist who saw a for-profit economy as a threat to human learning and growth:
This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism. Our whole educational system suffers from this evil. An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future career. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.
Around the world, Einstein’s name is synonymous with genius. Perhaps it’s time we tried listening to him?
CROOKS vs. SICKOS (or, “What’s going on with our politicians and oligarchs?”)
❧ In his most blatant display of graft and corruption yet, Donald Trump has declared it illegal to boycott Tesla and started hawking cars from the White House lawn. Trump held a special pro-Tesla event with Elon Musk on Tuesday, in which he said he’d personally buy one of the company’s Model S cars. He appeared to read from a company sales pitch that said things like “Teslas can be purchased as low as $299/month.” It was a uniquely tacky moment, and shredded what little dignity the U.S. presidency had left.
But Trump also threatened a crackdown against anyone who doesn’t like Tesla, saying on Truth Social that it’s “illegal” and “collusive” to boycott the company, and that people who protest at its dealerships are “domestic terrorists” who should “go through hell.” To be clear, boycotting pretty much anything is not illegal. But at this point, the president of the United States is just openly saying that he’ll use state power to benefit his friend’s businesses. If this happened anywhere else in the world, we’d call it a failed state. (BBC)
In a new article, Nathan J. Robinson explains why Trump and Musk are so worried about the prospect of a nationwide Tesla boycott, and how ordinary people can use their economic leverage to strike back at the world’s richest oligarch:
Boycotts are not always an effective weapon, but in the case of Tesla, protesters may have found an important way in which the world’s richest man can be pressured, or at least punished, over his politics. If Elon Musk’s presence harms Tesla enough, a huge portion of his own net worth will be wiped out, and with it some of his power, because Musk uses Tesla stock as collateral for loans and sells the stock in order to buy things. A collapsing Tesla stock genuinely erodes Elon’s economic power. If the stock is hurt enough, Tesla’s board will have no choice but to remove Musk as CEO in order to save the company.
❧ There’s a succession battle among the creeps who get rich off prisoners. In an exposé co-published by the Lever and Jacobin, journalist Katya Schwenk dives into the inner workings of one of the most loathsome companies on Earth: Smart Communications. The firm’s business model is to sell software and electronic devices to prisons across the United States, then charge inmates extortionate fees—$1 to leave a 30-second voicemail, when many prisoners make only pennies per hour—to contact their family and friends.
Its CEO is Jonathan Logan, and he lives a luxurious life off the backs of the incarcerated, hosting yacht parties on a ship called the Convict and driving around in a Lamborghini with a license plate that says “INMATE.” But Logan has a problem: his father James, who was once co-owned Smart Communications with him, died in 2022, and the future of the company is tied up in the courts as he tries to gain sole control of it. Schwenk’s article is long, thorough, and full of horrifying details about both the Logan family and for-profit incarceration as a practice. It’s well worth a read.
Logan poses in a Rolls-Royce he got by taking prisoners’ last pennies from them. Weird shoes, too. (Image: Bianca Tylek via Twitter)
❧ And this week in Democratic Party fecklessness, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer caved and agreed to pass a horrendous Republican spending bill in order to prevent the government from shutting down. The bill, which funds the government until September, contains increases in military spending and cuts to rental assistance, public health, homeless services, disaster relief, and other programs that millions of Americans rely on. But it also gives Trump and Elon Musk more power to unilaterally cut spending as they see fit. Schumer, who originally appeared poised to block the bill, announced that he’d support its passage because “allowing Donald Trump to take even much more power via a government shutdown is a far worse option.” But this bill just enables him to take that power anyway, and essentially puts it in writing that Congress is fine with the president usurping its authority.
It’s yet another pathetic concession that seems in-line with the timid wait for Trump to “screw up” strategy Schumer is reportedly trying to execute. Though, at the very least, it seems to have shown even some of the most loyal Democratic partisans what a weak husk party leadership is. The expected anger has come from progressives like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who urged constituents to call their senators to push them to change their minds about voting for the bill. (Some senior House Democrats are now pushing for AOC to launch a primary challenge against Schumer.) But even former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is urging Senate Democrats to effectively defy Schumer and refuse to vote for the bill, instead opting for a one-month funding bill. The passage of this bill will be awful for the country, but perhaps it will also make it clear that the opposition is in urgent need of new leadership. (Common Dreams)
GIRAFFE FACT OF THE WEEK
“Mystery giraffes” are wandering around Coahuila, Mexico!
Traditionally, of course, giraffes are found in found in Africa. But according to Mexico News Daily, they’ve been showing up in the “semi-desert” plains of Coahuila, too, and nobody’s quite sure why. The sightings started back in December, when members of the State Police caught a giraffe running across a rural dirt road on their dash camera:
Since then, people in Coahuila have spotted groups of at least three giraffes hanging around the border with nearby Nuevo León:
Nobody knows where these non-native megafauna came from. But one popular theory is that they could have escaped from the ranch of millionaire Chito Longoria, who died in 2015 and reportedly kept “giraffes, antelopes and zebras” as pets, much like Pablo Escobar’s hippos. In any case, this is a reminder of both the dangers involved when humans take animals away from their natural homes, and how those animals can prove to be a lot more resourceful and adaptable to new environments than anyone expects.
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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