Newsletter 6.18.19

Hi all, 

Hope your summer is going well. (yes, we know it's not technically summer but whatever). Please see our newsletter below and, as always, thanks for your support! 

-- Nima, Adam, Florence, and Marco

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Departing Alabama Sheriffs Deplete Funds And (Usually) Face No Consequences Sarah Lustbader, The Appeal (June 18, 2019

Fascinating story about how petty Alabama Sheriffs are. After losing an election, there's a "tradition" of departing Sheriffs depleting public funds to spite their replacement. Some examples: "One sheriff failed to have a badge made for the new sheriff; another threw all the sheriff’s office’s unmarked keys in a pile, leaving his replacement to figure out which went to which door or vehicle. Departing sheriffs pocketed public money, fudged financial reports, wasted sheriff’s office funds and destroyed or stole public property.” 

Jeff Bezos’s Corporate Takeover of Our Lives David Dayen, In These Times (June 10, 2019)

Amazon’s expansions into most industries has led to a massive accumulation of wealth and data for the company. However its workers, small businesses and the environment have suffered greatly as Amazon’s domination over our lives grows. Amazon is also assisted by laissez faire economic policies that have allowed it to grow to the point that it will become untenable.  

How Border Patrol Occupied the Tohono O’odham Nation Todd Miller, In These Times (June 12, 2019)

Incidents of U.S. Customs and Border Protection showing aggression towards the Tohono O’odham Nation in Arizona had been increasing since 9/11 led to CBP doubling in size. While these disputes have drawn more attention during Trump’s efforts to build a border wall, CBP has already started to bring in surveillance technology to monitor the reservation.   

Warnings of More Deadly Attacks on Yemen as Trump Permits Raytheon to Manufacture 'High-Tech Bomb Parts' Inside Saudi Arabia Jake Johnson, Common Dreams (June 07, 2019)

Trump’s emergency declaration greenlighting billions of dollars in U.S. weapons sales to Saudi Arabia without congressional approval contained a provision allowing Raytheon to build high tech bombs with Saudi Arabia. This provision could allow Saudi Arabia to develop the precision bombs that have been used against civilians in Yemen for four years. 

Hidden Plot Glenn Greenwald, Victor Pougy, The Intercept (June 9, 2019)

The Intercept published a blockbuster report confirming the worst fears of Brazilian observers, that the 2018 conviction of former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was politically motivated. Documents show that the prosecutors behind the conviction openly discussing the best way to neuter Lula’s political party, which polls show would have likely won that year’s presidential election if Lula was allowed to be on the ballot. 

Euphemisms All the Way Down Sam Husseini, FAIR (June 12, 2019)

The phrase “developers” has become such a commonly-accepted description of businesses working to gentrify neighborhoods that even leftists repeat the phrase without thinking much of how it is an inherently positive term. That is just one example of how much the preferred euphemisms of big business shape media coverage of gentrification.

Trump Administration Is Making It Harder to Find Out Whether It’s Fighting White Supremacist Terror Natasha Lennard, The Intercept (June 8, 2019)

The FBI and DOJ’s new category system for domestic terrorism makes it harder to track whether funding is going to combatting white supremacy or harassing anti-racist activists. The new broad category of “racially motivated violent extremism” could easily be used by this administration to funnel money into targeting Black Lives Matter while ignoring white supremacy.  

Quillette’s “Antifa Journalists” List Could’ve Gotten Me Killed Kim Kelly, The New Republic (June 14, 2019)

Quillette, a right-wing magazine that claims it is the voice of the intellectual dark web, published an article written by a far-right troll masquerading as an expert on extremism. The stated purpose of the article was to prove collusion between journalists that cover the far-right and antifa, but it was actually just a list of left-wing individuals who the far-right targeted.   

New York State Reaches Landmark Deal On Green New Deal-Style Climate Bill Alexander C. Kaufman, Huffpost (June 17, 2019)

The New York State Legislature reached an agreement to pass Climate and Communities Protection Act (CCPA), a plan to calls for zero fossil fuel emissions from utilities by 2040 and includes worker protections for the energy transition. An energized climate movement and newly progressive legislature succeeded where previous efforts failed due to Gov. Cuomo’s machinations.