❧ Thousands of workers in India have taken to the streets to protest four labor codes put in place by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. In an effort to woo foreign investors, Modi has been steadily rolling back workers’ rights. Despite objections from labor unions, he has replaced 44 distinct labor laws with four less comprehensive labor “codes” which are much friendlier to corporations.
“The current government has introduced these four labour codes without any discussion or consultation with workers and trade unions,” Vivek Monteiro, secretary of the Centre of India's Trade Unions told the Hindustan Times back in May. Some of their effects are quite severe: For instance, the new codes lower the penalties for employers who fail to pay the minimum wage, allow for employers to require 12-hour work days without overtime pay, and introduce more restrictions on when employees can strike (including requiring them to give their bosses 60 days’ notice). The codes were first introduced in 2019, but are expected to actually take effect starting this year, and their implementation has been met with periodic waves of protest from the nation’s vibrant labor movement.
The latest wave hit New Delhi, Lucknow, Kolkata, and several other cities this week as major trade unions observed a “black day” in protest of the codes. In addition to the codes’ repeal, CITU demanded a minimum wage of 26,000 rupees (just over $300) per month, guaranteed pensions for all workers, and the abolition of informal and gig work contracts.
The protests also coincide with an ongoing strike by about 1,500 Samsung workers in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, which has come as the tech giant has refused to recognize the formation of a union. Last week, more than 100 workers were arrested for protesting without police permission, and Samsung has since threatened to revoke their pay until their “illegal strike” ends and fire those who don’t return promptly.
Over the past 24 hours, Israel has launched a massive bombing campaign in Lebanon that has killed at least 558 people—including 50 children and 94 women—while about 2,000 people were wounded, according to the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health. According to Al Jazeera, “More than 10,000 people have been forced from their homes in the most ferocious onslaught Lebanon has experienced since its civil war of 1975-1990.” Israel’s military is calling it a “new phase” of the war on Gaza, and they are already using identical justifications, including claiming that civilian homes are hosting Hezbollah rockets and that innocent people killed are being used as “human shields.” As Israel expands the war to another country, the U.S. is not using its leverage to force Prime Minister Netanyahu to de-escalate. On the contrary, it is sending more troops to the region to help Americans in the country flee the coming violence.
Netanyahu also revealed in a closed Knesset meeting that he is considering a “Generals' Plan” to ethnically cleanse the Gaza Strip, or, as CNN puts it, a “plan to force all Palestinian civilians out of northern Gaza, including Gaza City, in order to lay siege to Hamas and force the release of hostages.” Netanyahu has described the plan as a “means, not an end,” saying, "We will not annex Gaza.” However, kicking out the Palestinians annexing Gaza is very openly the goal of Netanyahu’s far-right cabinet ministers, and Netanyahu himself has frequently displayed a map portraying Gaza and the West Bank as part of Israel.
Netanyahu gives the game away at a United Nations General Assembly meeting in Sept. 2023.
Continuing a streak of politically conscious rap, Macklemore has dropped “Hind’s Hall 2”—the sequel to his Gaza protest anthem “Hind’s Hall,” named after Hind Rajab, the five-year-old Palestinian girl who was murdered by the IDF in January. The track features several Palestinian artists, including Ahmer Zahr and MC Abdul (who you might remember as the kid who went viral for rapping over Eminem beats from Gaza City back in 2021.)
Because having a conscience on Palestine is actively punished in the United States, multiple Seattle sports teams now say they’re “evaluating” their relationships with Macklemore after his “increasingly divisive comments.”
"Long live the resistance if there's something to resist Had enough of you motherfuckers murdering little kids
Hey Kamala, I don’t know if you're listening But stop sending money and weapons or you ain't winning Michigan
We uncommitted, and hell no we ain't switching positions Because the whole world turned Palestinian"
Sri Lanka has elected a Marxist president, Anura Kumara Dissanayake, who ran on a platform of renegotiating the country’s IMF loans. However, some commentators—including at the World Socialist Web Site, which endorsed rival candidate Pani Wijesiriwardena—feel Dissanayake isn’t far enough left, and should scrap Sri Lanka’s IMF deal entirely rather than adjusting it. (Al Jazeera)
Outgoing Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) blames the United States for escalating cartel violence in the state of Sinaloa. He claims the U.S. government created a power vacuum—and thus “instability and clashes”—by abducting cartel leader Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada for prosecution this July. (CBS)
Ireland has scrapped a hate speech bill that would have punished “incitement” of violence even for those who claim it was not intentional. Efforts to punish such incitements gained steam last year after far-right accounts stirred up anti-immigrant sentiments online, helping to fuel a riot that broke out in Dublin. However, the bill has been widely criticized both on the right and by some on the left (most prominently Sinn Féin) for its potential chilling effects on speech. The bill’s hate speech provisions likely won’t become law, but the government plans to press ahead with the part of the legislation that would increase the punishment for hate crime perpetrators. (Irish Times)
CROOKS vs. SICKOS (Or, “What's going on with our politicians and oligarchs?”
❧ Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and New York Magazine reporter Olivia Nuzzi are involved in a deeply embarrassing sex scandal. As you might remember, Nuzzi wrote a profile of RFK Jr. for New York back in November 2023. Like most of her reporting, it was based on meeting and interviewing the candidate—they even hiked together—and offered a humanizing look at Kennedy’s daily life and “mind-bending politics.” (Some might call this a “puff piece.”)
Now, it appears their contact didn’t end there. After the profile was published, the two apparently carried on a sexting affair for several months—which became public knowledge when Kennedy, in typical creepy-old-guy fashion, bragged about receiving “intimate” photos from Nuzzi. As a result, Nuzzi has been placed on leave at New York, and her now-ex partner Ryan Lizza has agreed not to cover Kennedy in his own role at Politico. (Unlike most of RFK’s scandals, no animal carcasses seem to be involved here, so at least that’s a small mercy.)
No, it doesn’t make sense to us either. Best not to think about it.
The point here isn’t the tawdry details of the sexting affair itself, but what it tells us about the absolutely dire state of journalism in the United States. This really shouldn’t have to be said, but if you have an ongoing relationship with one of the candidates, you should not be covering a presidential election, even if the candidate in question is a crackpot with no actual chance of winning. You cannot possibly put the interests of your readers first. In retrospect, it’s clear that the affair shaped Nuzzi’s coverage; in a New York Times roundtable in March 2024, she was vocally pro-RFK, saying that the election was “not a two-man race. It’s a three-man race” and that Kennedy was “polling competitively, especially among young people.” RFK was not, in fact, competitive, which you can tell because he suspended his campaign and endorsed Trump. This was just a misleading statement from someone with an obvious conflict of interest.
And yet, that hasn’t stopped prominent media figures from defending the whole situation. In a truly wretched newsletter on Monday, Semafor co-founder Ben Smith wrote the following:
Reporters have all sorts of compromising relationships with sources. The most compromising of all, and the most common, is a reporter’s fealty to someone who gives them information. That’s the real coin of this realm. Sex barely rates. You won’t hear many American journalists reckon with this. (Some British journalists, naturally, have been texting us to ask what the fuss is about. If you’re not sleeping with someone in a position of power, how are you even a journalist?)
It’s frankly astonishing that Smith typed this out, read it over, thought it looked acceptable, and hit “send.” It may be true that reporters have “all sorts of compromising relationships with sources,” but it shouldn’t be. That’s why they’re called “compromising”—because when they happen, integrity and credibility are irreparably damaged. And there’s a huge difference between a “source” and a politician who’s actually the subject of the coverage. The American public already doesn’t trust the media, and things like this are exactly why.
But then again, maybe this shouldn’t be surprising. In the last few decades, we’ve seen the rise of “access journalism,” which—as the name suggests—prioritizes getting exclusive “access” to events, spaces, and people above all else. It’s basically the polar opposite of real, investigative journalism. Instead of taking a skeptical and antagonistic approach to powerful figures, it’s servile, often compromising the coverage itself in order to maintain a cordial relationship with important figures. Journalists refuse to press politicians like Donald Trump on sensitive topics, knowing that if they ask “hardball” questions, they’ll never get an interview again. Politicians like Ron DeSantis take advantage of the dynamic, denying interviews and event passes to critical journalists as a form of punishment. As a result, we get fewer and fewer Seymour Hersh-style revelations, and more disgraceful spectacles like Chris Cuomo interviewing his own brother on CNN. Olivia Nuzzi isn’t even an outlier, really; her case just happens to be especially awkward. The whole industry is in shambles, and we desperately need independent media that will actually challenge people in power, instead of sending them “U up?” texts at 3 a.m.
In other news…
Speaking of gross sex scandals involving politicians, Representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL) has been accused of attending a “drug-heavy sex party” where a 17-year-old girl was also in attendance. The allegation is part of the ongoing sex trafficking inquiry into Gaetz. It's unclear if the allegation is true, but if so, it really doesn't look good for him. (Vanity Fair)
And elsewhere in terrible journalism, CNN’s Jake Tapper and Dana Bash accused Rep. Rashida Tlaib of being antisemitic based on a quote that the Michigan congresswoman never actually said. (Detroit Metro News)
It’s possible Ted Cruz could actually lose his Senate seat in Texas this year, as a new poll shows Democratic challenger Colin Allred one point ahead. It would be the first time Texas elected a Democratic senator since 1990. (Newsweek)
Nebraska is one of two states (Maine being the other) that do not follow the winner-take-all model for the Electoral College; instead, it apportions electoral votes based on congressional districts. While Nebraska on the whole is two-thirds Republican, its second district, which covers the Omaha–Council Bluffs area is expected to lean blue, yielding Democrats an extra electoral vote. In an effort to help Trump, the state’s Republicans—led by Governor Jim Pillen—tried to change this and make the state winner-take-all. Though it would only affect one vote, it could have been quite significant. Many of Kamala Harris’ routes to 270 electoral votes involve winning NE-2. In a close election, she’d potentially need to win another swing state to compensate. However, not all Republicans are on board, so the effort appears poised to fail. (New YorkMagazine)
Nightmare scenario averted.
Trump now claims he won’t run again if he loses to Harris this November. We’ll believe it when we see it, although he would be 82 years old in 2028, which might discourage him a bit. (BBC)
CURRENT-EST AFFAIRS
Have you ever wanted to hear Donald Trump read the entire text of the Communist Manifesto? Of course, you have! And now you can. It’s like an artifact from an alternate timeline where he had good ideas instead of bad ones.
MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell raised some eyebrows this week when he conspicuously marked down the cost of his pillows to the low, low price of $14.88 in a post on Twitter/X. For those not in the know (whom we envy), this may seem meaningless. But the number “1488” is a dog whistle widely used by neo-Nazi and skinhead groups—the 14 referring to white supremacist David Lane’s “14 words” slogan and the double-8s meaning “Heil Hitler.” It’s possible that this was merely a coincidence and that Lindell was not aware of the number’s significance. But given his role in trying to foment a military coup to overturn the 2020 election result and the extent to which open Nazism has flourished on Elon Musk’s platform, it’s hard to give him the benefit of the doubt. (Huffington Post)
How hard would it have been to increase the price by one cent?
Examples of the number 1488 being used in Nazi iconography.
❧ Texas police are expanding the use of a frightening new surveillance tool. In June, the Texas Department of Public Safety signed a $5.3 million deal with the company PenLink to access an A.I.-powered surveillance tool known as “Tangles.” According to the Texas Observer, which learned of the contract through a public records request:
Tangles is an artificial intelligence-powered web platform that scrapes information from the open, deep, and dark web. Tangles’ premier add-on feature, WebLoc, is controversial among digital privacy advocates. Any client who purchases access to WebLoc can track different mobile devices’ movements in a specific, virtual area selected by the user, through a capability called “geofencing.” Users of software like Tangles can do this without a search warrant or subpoena. (In a high-profile ruling, the Fifth Circuit recently held that police cannot compel companies like Google to hand over data obtained through geofencing.) Device-tracking services rely on location pings and other personal data pulled from smartphones, usually via in-app advertisers. Surveillance tech companies then buy this information from data brokers and sell access to it as part of their products.
WebLoc can even be used to access a device’s mobile ad ID, a string of numbers and letters that acts as a unique identifier for mobile devices in the ad marketing ecosystem, according to a US Office of Naval Intelligence procurement notice.
Oh yeah, Tangles is also owned by the Israeli tech company Cobwebs, whose technologies have previously been used to surveil racial justice protesters and other activists by the Department of Homeland Security.(Image: G2, promotionalmaterial provided by Cobwebs)
Following a 2018 Supreme Court ruling—Carpenter v. United States—police are not allowed to request cell phone data from mobile carriers without a warrant. But many of your phone’s applications also contain loads of data about you. Everything from the Weather app to the Chick-fil-A app keeps track of your location, and the Court’s ruling does not prevent the police from accessing any of that data. While the data is technically “anonymous,” it becomes extremely easy for police to determine a phone’s owner based on its location. For instance, if a certain phone spends forty hours a week pinging from the office of Current Affairs Magazine, the cops could reasonably deduce that its owner works for Current Affairs Magazine. From there, it can pretty much determine everything about said Current Affairs employee. As the Intercept reported last year:
WebLoc not only provides the exact locations of smartphones, but also personal information associated with their owners, including age, gender, languages spoken, and interests — “e.g., music, luxury goods, basketball.”
Texas has used this tool since 2021, when DPS purchased a license as part of Governor Greg Abbott’s “Operation Lone Star” immigration crackdown, which has been notorious for its horrific maltreatment of its detainees. (On Wednesday, in fact, the Border Network for Human Rights released a report documenting soldiers involved in the Lone Star program “calling migrants ‘rats,’ slapping them in the back of the head and choking them with the straps of a backpack.”)
The Intercept’s investigation was not able to determine precisely how such data has been used as part of Lone Star. But even some Republicans have raised alarms about its potential abuses. After the renewal of the state’s Tangles license, state Representative Brian Harrison said he’d request more information about it, telling the Observer, “I want to make sure that we don’t have Fourth Amendment violations going on here, whether it’s intentional or not.”
Regrettably, we must tap the sign.
In other news…
Following this past summer’s COVID-19 surge, Americans will once again be able to order free test kits from COVIDTests.gov starting in “late September 2024.” This is a very good thing. But the fact that this program was discontinued at all is totally outrageous, and it has certainly led to people spreading the disease without realizing it. (Associated Press)
Missouri is expected to execute Marcellus Williams for murder at 6 p.m. today, even though he is likely innocent of the crime. Williams’ trial was marred by racial bias and unreliable witnesses, and DNA analysis has not pointed to his involvement in the murder. Nevertheless, the state attorney general and governor have refused to halt his execution. (You can call Governor Mike Parson at 417-373-3400 to protest!) At this point, the U.S. Supreme Court may be the only body capable of intervening to stop this atrocious miscarriage of justice. (USA Today)
Just ten days since NYPD commissioner Edward A. Caban resigned after having his phone seized by the FBI, interim commissioner Thomas Donlon is also under federal investigation, as agents executed a search warrant on his home on Friday. At this point, it’s easier to count the people in Mayor Eric Adams’ administration who don’t have an ongoing federal case. (Gothamist)
More than 400 criminal cases from the past decade are under review in Wyoming, as the state’s police crime lab has failed a routine test for the reliability of its firearms unit. It’s currently unclear how many people may have been wrongfully convicted based on faulty ballistic tests, if any. (WyoFile)
Since 2017, U.S. Army counterterrorism training at Fort Liberty (formerly Fort Bragg) has been incorrectly identifying nonprofits—including People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the Animal Liberation Front, and various conservative anti-abortion nonprofits—as “terrorist groups.” Around 9,100 soldiers were reportedly trained using the faulty information. (Military Times)
To be more specific, the females of the species are the big ones, often measuring as much as six feet in length. They also have colorful membranes between their tentacles, called “blankets” or “capes,” and are generally spectacular-looking:
Just look at this octopus. Amazing stuff. (Image: Octo Nation)
By contrast, the male blanket octopi don’t actually have “blankets,” and they’re tiny—often as little as 1 inch in length. It’s one of the wildest cases of sexual dimorphism in the animal world, as the females are roughly 40,000 times more massive than their partners on average. (As Andy O’Dower memorably puts it on his Medium blog, the relationship is like “a full-sized human female next to a walnut-sized male.”) This results in a mating cycle like that of a queen bee, where multiple male octopi fertilize the eggs—and it’s somewhat unclear if the females even notice.
In fact, scientists didn’t find a male blanket octopus in the wild until 2002, they’re so small and elusive. But the eight-legged fellas have a cool ability of their own: they can steal venomous tentacles from a Portuguese Man O’ War jellyfish and whip them around like nunchucks as a defensive measure! (The juvenile females also do this.)
Note: “Feet” refers to the unit of measurement, not tentacles, of which all octopi have eight. The metric system doesn’t have this problem. (Image: Natural History Museum via YouTube.)
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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