October 1, 2024 ❧ Harris “underwater” in Michigan?, Britain quits coal, and dockworkers on strike

Plus: Hurricane Helene, more horrible Newsom vetoes, a secret island in the Indian Ocean, and the “Pablo Escobar of Beavers”

Surgeon General’s Warning: News can be addictive. 

CROOKS vs. SICKOS (Or, "What are our politicians and oligarchs up to?")

❧ Election Day is just over a month away, and Kamala Harris is reportedly “underwater” in internal Democratic polls for the crucial swing state of Michigan. This is according to Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), who said in a fundraising call with Senator Cory Booker that “I'm not feeling my best right now about where we are on Kamala Harris in a place like Michigan.” As Axios pointed out, it’s very normal for campaigns to portray themselves as underdogs when attempting to draw in funds. Public polls have Harris leading in the state, though the margins are slim—FiveThirtyEight’s average has her up by 1.9 points, while the latest New York Times/Siena poll has her up by just 1.

One thing we absolutely know to be true is that Harris is not doing herself any favors in Michigan with her recent foreign policy positions. With more than 200,000, Michigan has America’s largest population of Arab Americans, and many are rightly appalled by the Biden-Harris administration’s continued support for Israel as it commits atrocity after atrocity in Palestine. A poll conducted earlier this month by the Council on American Islamic Relations found that 40 percent of Muslim voters in the state prefer Green Party candidate Jill Stein and 25 percent were not planning to vote at all, compared with just 12 percent who say they prefer Harris. Even Donald Trump, who has pledged to expand his Muslim ban and ban refugees from Gaza, polls better than Harris, with 18 percent support among Muslim Michiganders. This poll was frightening enough for Harris, but it gets even worse when you consider that it was taken over a week before Israel expanded its campaign of destruction to Lebanon, where it has since committed several more blatant war crimes. 

Around a quarter of Michigan’s Arabs are Lebanese, and many of them have family members whose lives are now in danger due to Israel’s bombing campaign. ABC News interviewed attendees at a rally to support Lebanon in Dearborn, Michigan—the city with America’s largest Muslim population—and found that many viewed the Biden-Harris administration’s continued arms sales to Israel to be a deal-breaker. “It’s really simple,” said Hossam Hossein, a Lebanese American born in Dearborn, who said he felt compelled to participate once the slaughter expanded to his family’s home country. “Biden just needs to pick up the phone and tell Israel that he’s not going to give any more weapons, that he needs to stop.”

And while they may feel it more acutely than most, it’s hardly just Arab Americans in Michigan who feel this way. Polls conducted in August by YouGov and the Middle Eastern Understanding Policy Project found that in the three critical swing states of Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Georgia, huge numbers of undecided voters said they’d be more likely to support Harris were she to pledge to withhold additional weapons to Israel. Leaving aside the obvious moral case for a weapons embargo, even if you only consider it in crude, cynical political terms, it is the obvious choice, and she is potentially risking everything by continuing to unconditionally support the endless slaughter.

In this short video from Voice of America, voters and activists with the Uncommitted and “Abandon Harris” movements explain why they can't support the Democratic nominee. 

In other news…

• Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) has introduced a bill for extensive reforms to the Council of Robed Elders—more commonly known as the "Supreme Court"—including expanding the number of justices to 15 and mandating a yearly audit of their finances by the IRS. Given the current state of Congress, Wyden’s proposal is unlikely to pass, but he’s got the right idea. (KOIN)

Ron just wants to Wyden the court a little. It’s been done before. 

(Image: Supreme Court Historical Society)

• During a rally in Pennsylvania, Donald Trump admitted that he “hated to give overtime” as a businessman and avoided it whenever he could, even choosing to “get other people in” (in other words, hire scabs.) So much for that “pro-worker” Republican Party we keep hearing about! (New Republic)
  
  
• At the same event, Trump also proposed giving police “one really violent day” where they’re allowed to be “extraordinarily rough” to bring down crime. Commentators were quick to point out that this is strikingly similar to the plot of the 2013 horror movie The Purge. (Daily Beast)
  
  
• As Alex Jones’ bankruptcy proceedings continue to drag on, a variety of liberal-leaning nonprofits—including the misinformation watchdog Media Matters—are reportedly considering buying his notorious InfoWars company. (Semafor)

Art by Nick Sirotich from Issue 43 of Current Affairs Magazine, July/August 2023 

• Meta has joined Elon Musk’s X in censoring the publication of an internal Trump campaign dossier about J.D. Vance on their platforms. It can also no longer be shared using Google Drive. Independent journalist Ken Klippenstein was permanently banned from X for publishing the dossier, something other media outlets have refused to do for months because it came from an Iranian hack into the Trump campaign. He writes:

The platforms said that the alleged Iranian origin of the dossier — which no one is calling fake or altered — necessitated removing any links to the document. These very same companies had earlier promised not to remove content for political reasons. 

AROUND THE WORLD

❧ The age of coal is over in Britain. After 142 years of belching black smoke into the sky, the country is closing down its final remaining coal-fired power plant at Ratcliffe-on-Soar in central England. It’s a bit of good climate news in a week of rampaging ecological catastrophes elsewhere in the world. With the closure of the last coal plant, the United Kingdom became the first of the G7 major economies to fully phase out coal. Its transition has been rather remarkable. As the Associated Press reports:

In 1990 coal provided about 80% of Britain’s electricity. By 2012 it had fallen to 39%, and by 2023 it stood at just 1%, according to figures from the National Grid. More than half of Britain’s electricity now comes from renewable sources such as wind and solar power, and the rest from natural gas and nuclear energy.

The rapid end of coal usage has been the product of an aggressive government intervention. In 2015, the U.K. set the goal of ending coal power generation by 2025. And, if you can believe it, they actually followed through! Its next target is transitioning the entire electricity sector to renewable energy by 2035 and achieving net-zero emissions by 2050. Their ability to achieve this is by no means certain—in fact, of the five biggest European economies, the U.K. has been spending the least on green energy, and it currently lags behind its decarbonization targets. 

Like other major economies (with the exception of China) the U.K. lags behind their 2030 renewable goals. (Graphic: Progress on 2030 Renewable Energy Targets by Country from Visual Capitalist's Decarbonization Channel)

But to American eyes, Britain looks like a lush green utopia: Renewables make up just 21 percent of America’s energy generation, compared with more than half in Britain.

We make fun of Britain a lot in this news briefing, and rightfully so. It is an absurd island where prime ministers swear to ban ninja swords and get ambushed with anthropomorphic heads of lettuce, and where strange medieval courtiers like the “Marker of the Swans” (whose job is to count all the King's swans) persist. But let it not be said that our ridicule comes from a sense of American superiority. To do something like eradicate coal production is unthinkable here in the States, where we have literal coal barons who hold veto power over climate legislation. Congratulations to Britain for showing at least the slightest modicum of seriousness about climate change.

In other news…

• Israel has already killed an estimated 1,000 civilians in airstrikes on Lebanese territory and appears poised to launch a full-scale invasion, despite impotent calls for a ceasefire from Western allies. More than 1 million Lebanese civilians have been forced to flee their homes, according to the United Nations. On Friday, a strike in central Beirut took out Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the militant group Hezbollah, which has led the group’s allies in Iran to launch at least 100 ballistic missiles at Israel in response earlier today, though no casualties have yet been reported.
  
  
• Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin lowered the threshold in the country’s oft-cited “nuclear doctrine.” He now says that an attack against Russia by a non-nuclear power, with the “participation or support of a nuclear power” will be considered a “joint attack on the Russian Federation.” Putin says he’d consider the “possibility” of using tactical nuclear weapons if Russia detected a large-scale attack of missles, drones, and aircraft into Russian territory. This is obviously intended as a deterrent for the West, as Ukraine made an incursion onto Russian soil using American weapons earlier this summer. (BBC)

• The BBC also has an investigation of the secretive U.S.-U.K. military base on the island of Diego Garcia, which is in the middle of the Indian Ocean, over 1,000 miles (1,600 km) from the nearest landmass and is one of the most restricted places on Earth for journalists and tourists. In the past, the island has been a black site for the interrogation of terror suspects and now the island faces new controversy for its treatment of 60 Tamil asylum seekers, whom the U.K. has stranded there for three years.

(Image: Google Earth, via BBC)

• Police in Bangladesh shot and killed a garment worker during a protest in the city of Ashulia, where the workers had blocked a highway to demand better pay and workplace conditions. (Reuters)
  
  
• Legislators in South Korea have passed a law banning pornographic “deepfake” images and videos, in response to several scandals where images of women were AI-generated and distributed without their consent. Possessing or watching the banned material will be punishable by up to three years’ imprisonment, or a fine of roughly $22,600. (CBS)

AROUND THE STATES

❧ A major strike has begun at shipping ports on the Gulf and East Coasts. At midnight on October 1, the six-year labor contract between the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) and the U.S. Maritime Alliance (USMX), a coalition of private shipping and logistics companies, expired. From Maine to Texas, 47,000 unionized dock workers have walked off the job at 14 major U.S. ports and started picket lines. Among other locations, they’re striking in Houston, in Charleston, in Baltimore, in Portsmouth, Virginia, in Savannah, Georgia, and right here in New Orleans, just ten minutes’ drive from the Current Affairs offices. It’s the first time U.S. ports have been shut down by labor action since 1977, and when you put them all together, the workers control an estimated 35 percent of all U.S. imports.

These workers aren’t messing around. (Image: ILA via World Cargo News)

As usual, wages and working conditions are the core of the dispute. The union’s initial demand was a 77-percent pay increase over the next six years (that is, a 12.8 percent raise every year), which they say is needed to keep up with the rising cost of living. So far, USMX employers have only agreed to a 50 percent increase, leaving a significant gap. The workers also want guarantees that their jobs won’t be automated out of existence, and have demanded a complete ban on automating cranes, gates, moving trucks, and other essential equipment. Again, USMX has stopped short of meeting the demand, offering to maintain “limits” on automation established by the old contract but not fully prevent jobs from being replaced. Like with any strike, the ILA has started with the maximum possible demands, with the tacit understanding that any eventual deal will be somewhere in the middle. Now, their negotiators’ job is to get as much as possible for their members. 

The shipping companies can afford to pay, too. Although USMX’s annual reports don’t include overall revenue and profit figures, its individual member companies are raking in impressive amounts of cash, with the Taiwanese firm Evergreen reporting a net profit of $1.4 billion in the first half of 2024, the Chinese COSCO reporting net profits of 28.4 billion yuan (a little over $4 billion) in 2023, and the Israeli ZIM Integrated Shipping making $373 million in the second quarter of 2024 alone. Those mammoth profits need to be passed out fairly to the workers who actually make the whole industry run, not hoarded by a few executives and shareholders.

(Image: American Journal of Transportation)

The workers have a huge amount of leverage here. According to a New York Times estimate, the U.S. economy could lose “$4.5 billion to $7.5 billion, or a 0.1 percent hit to U.S. annualized gross domestic product” every week the strike goes on. The longer it continues, the greater the ripple effects for industries like trucking, which would eventually run out of imported products to haul. Food items like bananas, cherries, and coffee could become much harder to find, which would cause problems for companies like Starbucks. In short, the dockworkers can remind the country exactly how important their labor is by withholding it. 

As Tom Hall points out for the World Socialist Web Site, this strike isn’t happening in a vacuum. Rather, it’s the latest front in a larger battle between labor and capital in the United States, which also encompasses the 33,000 aerospace workers currently on strike at Boeing and the ongoing campaigns of the United Auto Workers, Amazon Labor Union, and Starbucks Workers United. The stakes are nothing less than the rebirth of the American labor movement, and the future of life in the United States. If the workers win, everyone will benefit from higher pay and standards of living. If the bosses win, everyone will suffer from greater inequality and more miserable forms of exploitation.

Interestingly, President Biden has made the correct decisions on the strike so far. Under the notoriously anti-labor Taft-Hartley Act, he has the power to intervene, ordering an 80-day “cooling off” period in which the workers would be forced back on the job. The Chamber of Commerce has urged him to do it, as have the National Association of Manufacturers and Bloomberg. But to his credit, Biden says he won’t try to break the strike, and even said on Monday night that “I don’t believe in Taft-Hartley.” That’s a sharp contrast to what happened in 2022, when he did sign a law to prohibit rail workers from striking. Hopefully he’ll continue on his current, pro-union course—but it is an election year, and he’ll be under intense pressure to fold. Influential unions like the UAW and the Teamsters, the latter of which has already warned Biden and Vice President Harris to “stay the fuck out of this fight,” will need to keep the pressure on the Democrats from the opposite direction to keep them in line. 

In other news…

• The American Southeast has been ravaged by Hurricane Helene, which has killed upwards of 130 people at the time of writing, while more than 600 were reported missing as of Monday afternoon. Some of the most horrifying damage has been seen in Asheville, North Carolina, which the Associated Press called “a wasteland of splintered houses, crushed cargo containers and mud-covered highways,” where “emergency workers reached areas isolated by collapsed roads, failing infrastructure and widespread flooding.” As the Washington Post points out, Asheville, which has a cooler temperature and is far inland from the storm ravaged coast, has previously been described as a “climate haven” where the worst effects of climate change can be avoided. But the destruction of Helene demonstrates that nobody is safe.
  
  
• California’s Governor Gavin Newsom just vetoed a laundry list of bills, including ones that would have restricted private equity firms from buying healthcare institutions, given farm workers better protections against extreme heat, placed new regulations on AI, extended unemployment protections to undocumented workers, and allowed journalists to interview incarcerated people in person. He did sign bills banning mandatory anti-union meetings and octopus farming, but this is still a terrible set of decisions, and shows that Newsom is definitely not a “progressive.” (CalMatters)
  
  
• A meatpacking plant in Greeley, Colorado is accused of human trafficking and extensive labor violations. Union organizers say the JBS Foods company used TikTok to lure hundreds of Haitian immigrants to work at the plant, then forced them to live in abusive conditions with “eight or 10 people inside of one motel room.” (ABC 7 Denver)
  
  
• The Environmental Protection Agency is planning to withdraw its approval of plastic-based fuels that have been found to cause cancer. The decision comes after an investigation by ProPublica and the Guardian revealed that as part of a “climate-friendly” initiative, the EPA had approved a fuel that “could emit air pollution that is so toxic, 1 out of 4 people exposed to it over a lifetime could get cancer.” (ProPublica)
  
  
• Defending his title as America’s Worst Governor, Louisiana’s Jeff Landry—who has proposed cuts to health spending for children and disabled people—was able to find the money to “unilaterally increase Medicaid payments by $22 million to seven hospitals, four of which are owned by a Landry political donor who is also a friend and hunting buddy of Donald Trump Jr.” (Louisiana Illuminator)
  
  
• In more encouraging news from the labor movement, a group of Starbucks workers in Bellingham, Washington just became the 500th to unionize their store! (Starbucks Workers United)

(Image: Starbucks Workers United via Twitter)

BEAVER FACT OF THE WEEK

The “Pablo Escobar of Beavers” has been protecting animals across Europe!

That’s the colorful nickname the press has given to Gerhard Schwab, a wildlife manager and ecologist from Bavaria. Schwab is probably the world’s foremost expert on beavers, having studied them academically since 1988. But he’s also a key figure in the underground world of ecological activists who covertly re-introduce the aquatic animals to environments where they’ve been driven out—a practice known as “beaver bombing.” 

Beavers are incredibly important for woodland ecosystems, as their dams create “biodiversity hotspots” where many other plant and animal species can live. The dams also improve water quality by serving as huge filters, and protect areas downstream from flood damage. But unfortunately, beavers have been extensively hunted for their fur and natural oils, and they’re often killed by farmers and landowners who consider them a nuisance. In North America, which once had a population of around 400 million beavers, the number is down to only 15 or 20 million; in places like England, beavers were actually driven to extinction over the last few centuries. 

That’s where “beaver bombing” comes in. As Isobel Cockerell writes for Coda, a handful of particularly zealous ecologists have been illegally releasing the big rodents across Europe, where they can rebuild their natural populations:

[Olivier] Rubbers borrowed his father’s car and drove to Germany to pick up the beavers, then crossed the border back into Belgium and dropped them in a river. Throughout 1999 and 2000, Rubbers repeated the feat with 97 more beavers, bringing them from Bavaria to Belgium in a van kitted out with homemade beaver crates. “We wanted them all,” he said.

And who supplies the illicit beavers? Gerhard Schwab does, breeding them in captivity and supplying them to both official conservation programs and, occasionally, the secretive network of “beaver bombers.” Hence the “Pablo Escobar” nickname, as he’s essentially a beaver dealer—which has to be one of the cooler jobs in the world today. 

Schwab (right) with a beaver friend in 2019. (Image: Scottish Wild Beaver Group via Facebook)

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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