❧ Antony Blinken lied to Congress about Israel’s obstruction of aid to Gaza. An explosive new report from ProPublica reveals that the Secretary of State received briefings from two of the United States’ most important organizations on humanitarian aid early this year, stating that Israel has deliberately blocked food and medicine from reaching civilians in Gaza. Despite this, Blinken chose to cover up the truth, deceiving the American public and leading directly to starvation and death for untold numbers of innocent Palestinian people.
In late April of this year, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) delivered a memo to Blinken’s desk with their assessment, saying clearly that Israel’s “arbitrary denial, restriction, and impediments” on aid would soon lead to famine in Gaza. Around the same time, top officials in the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration reportedly told Mira Resnick, the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Israeli and Palestinian Affairs under Blinken, that “the facts on the ground indicate U.S. humanitarian assistance is being restricted,” and said that the Foreign Assistance Act requires freezing arms sales to Israel as a result of its illegal actions.
A protest display in Philadelphia denounces the Biden/Harris
administration’s role in mass starvation. (Image: Joe Piette via Flickr)
Section 620I of the Act in question was passed in the late 1990s, when Turkey was blockading Armenia in a similar fashion to Gaza today. It expressly prohibits the United States from making arms sales to any country that “prohibits or otherwise restricts, directly or indirectly, the transport or delivery of United States humanitarian assistance.” There is a waiver system in which military aid can be delivered anyway, but it requires the president to make a specific report to Congress on the situation. To be clear, this is not a suggestion or a guideline. It is established U.S. law.
Antony Blinken chose to break it. As ProPublica reports, he delivered a report to Congress on May 10—more than two weeks after receiving the assessments from USAID and the State Department refugee bureau—stating that “We do not currently assess that the Israeli government is prohibiting or otherwise restricting the transport or delivery of U.S. humanitarian assistance.” There is no room for ambiguity here: this was an outright lie. Blinken told Congress the exact opposite of what he knew to be the truth. As a result, the money and weapons continued to flow to Israel, with ProPublica reporting that “about $827 million in U.S. taxpayer dollars” was freed up soon after Blinken’s report, and billions more in the ensuing months. Also as a result, Gaza has been plunged into one of the worst crises of starvation on Earth.
There is no way back from this. In the most literal sense of the word, Blinken has committed a crime. Actually, he’s committed several. Lying to Congress is itself illegal, and he did it in service of a larger crime, namely violating Section 680I. What he did is every bit as bad as Ronald Reagan’s lies about trading arms for hostages in the Iran-Contra affair, or George W. Bush’s lies about WMDs in Iraq, or any lie Donald Trump has told in his wretched career. It’s all the more disgusting since the Biden administration has positioned itself as the champion of “decency” and truth in contrast to Trump. Blinken should be held in contempt of Congress, if not charged with perjury—and above all, he needs to resign.
There’s been a massive wave of protests against the high cost of living in Martinique, a French colony (er, excuse us, “overseas region”) in the Caribbean. In response, France has sent in the Companies for Republican Security, a notorious special police unit that’s been banned from Martinique ever since they killed several protesters in 1959. (Associated Press)
The Taliban is being taken to the International Court of Justice for gender discrimination over its decrees prohibiting women from speaking in public. It’s the first time a government has been taken to the ICJ for violations of women’s rights, and the Taliban now has six months to prepare a response. (The Guardian)
GAFFE OF THE WEEK
During a speech at the British Labour Party conference on Tuesday—where he also lost an important vote over benefit cuts for elderly people—Sir Keir Starmer accidentally called for the “return of the sausages,” rather than the “hostages,” to Israel:
Unfortunately, the sausages cannot be returned, since Starmer has supported the Israeli blockade of Gaza and now there is very little food there.
Rebels in Myanmar have rejected an offer from the ruling military dictatorship to end the civil war within the country. The junta has lost a majority of territory in Myanmar to the nation’s many rebel groups. The exiled National Unity Government, made up of politicians ousted in the 2021 coup that put the military in power, has said they will not consider the offer. One of the largest rebel groups, the Karen National Union, says they are unwilling to negotiate unless the military agrees to a democratic constitution, opts not to participate in elections, and allows itself to be held accountable for its war crimes. (BBC)
Japan will have a new prime minister, Shigeru Ishiba. The former defense minister achieved a come-from-behind win against Sanae Takaichi, who would have been Japan’s first female PM but is also a harsh social conservative and admirer of Margaret Thatcher. In addition to regaining public trust after a series of scandals for his Liberal Democratic Party, one of Ishiba’s top priorities as a self-described “military geek” is to form an Asian version of NATO. (The Guardian)
In other election news, Haiti is hoping to have its first since 2016. Last week, they set up a provisional electoral council which will oversee the process. They have been tasked with organizing a nationwide vote by February 2026. The presidency in Haiti has remained vacant since the assassination of Jovenel Moïse in 2021. And after armed gangs took over the Port-au-Prince airport and prevented interim president Ariel Henry from returning, the war-torn nation has been ruled by an interim governing council. (BBC)
CROOKS vs. SICKOS (Or, “What's going on with our politicians and oligarchs?”
❧ New York City’s Mayor Eric Adams has been indicted on five federal charges. Most people saw this coming, as Adams had been under investigation by the FBI for almost a full year, and several other prominent figures in his administration have had their phones seized or their homes searched by federal agents. Still, the corruption Adams is being accused of is pretty serious. He’s facing five separate charges: two for illegally seeking campaign donations from foreign citizens, along with bribery, wire fraud, and conspiracy. (You can read the full indictment here.)
The core of the government’s case is Adams’ relationship with businessmen and government officials from Turkey. According to the indictment, he accepted free luxury travel valued in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, including trips to India, France, China, Hungary, Ghana, and Turkey itself. The indictment also claims he “not only accepted, but sought illegal campaign contributions to his 2021 mayoral campaign, as well as other things of value, from foreign nationals.” In exchange, Adams allegedly helped to open a new Turkish consular building in Manhattan without the proper fire inspection, which it would likely have failed. He’s also accused of running an extensive cover-up operation surrounding this corrupt deal, deleting relevant communications and records and ordering others to do so.
It turns out wearing your Official Mayor Jacket doesn't protect you from the feds.
Like with Donald Trump, though, the really infuriating thing is that Adams’ worst misdeeds aren’t even being considered as “crimes.” We’re talking about a mayor who tried to defund the New York Public Library and pre-K education in order to give more money to the cops, wanted police surveillance drones to fly constantly over Central Park, pursued violent police “sweeps” against the homeless, and backed the disastrous subway policing plan that led to the shooting of four people over less than $3 in fare evasion this month. Compared to that disgraceful track record, taking bribes from Turkey to open a dodgy skyscraper (if that is what Adams has done) doesn’t even measure up.
❧ Independent journalist Ken Klippenstein has published a 270-page internal dossier compiled by the Trump campaign about the potential weaknesses of vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance. The document’s claims are publicly verifiable, as it is full of links to publicly available information. But because it was obtained through an Iranian government hack of the Trump campaign, the media has refused to publish it since June because it was from a “foreign malign influence.” (Note: The media did not show similar restraint when WikiLeaks published information about the 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign, which was obtained by Russia.) Klippenstein said he believed that the dossier is in the public interest, “providing Republican Party and conservative doctrine insight into what the Trump campaign perceives to be Vance’s liabilities and weaknesses. Those perceptions provide clues about what a campaign of remarkably little substance might actually think.” A few quotes from the document highlighted by Klippenstein include:
“Vance has been one of the chief obstructionists to U.S. efforts to providing [sic] assistance to Ukraine.”
“Vance criticized public health experts and elected officials for supporting Black Lives Matter protests while condemning anti-lockdown [Covid] protests.”
“Vance 'embraced non-interventionism.”
“In 2020, Vance criticized President Trump's airstrike killing Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, worrying it would continue to bog down America in the Middle East to the advantage of China.”
"Vance suggested that the country had been entangled in wars in the Middle East so 'financial elites' could profit from the rise of China.”
Weaknesses: Being J.D. Vance, doing J.D. Vance type things.
Immediately after Klippenstein published the dossier, Twitter/X suspended Klippenstein and prevented users from sharing his article, claiming he’d violated the terms of service by posting “private information,” including Vance’s home address and part of his Social Security number. Klippenstein argues that none of the information in the dossier was truly “private.” He writes:
The document itself describes its method of acquiring the so-called “private” information about Vance: "We undertook an examination of all readily available and relevant electronic and online records, several hundred Nexis and news articles, dozens of active and archived web pages, and several dozen public records from Nexis and the resources of various federal, state, and municipal government offices." In other words, everything was out there, either readily or for purchase.
The irony of this is especially grand given Elon Musk’s pretenses about being a “free speech” warrior, who opposes “government censorship.” Musk famously cried foul about Twitter’s alleged suppression of the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story, which also contained private information (and may have contained materials hacked by Russia). But now, in service of his preferred candidate, he is once again participating in that censorship, and doing so in a much more blatant and partisan way than the previous Twitter regime ever did.
We love to enjoy free speech here on 𝕏, the Everything* App! (Screenshot: The Verge)
Are YOU in New York City?
Then drop by the New School on Wednesday, October 16 for a special panel on the life and work of Professor Noam Chomsky! Panelists include Amy Goodman from Democracy Now!, authors Greg Grandin and Victor Pickard, Chomsky’s longtime colleague Bev Stohl, and our own editor-in-chief Nathan J. Robinson, who co-wrote The Myth of American Idealismwith the Professor. It’s free! Don’t miss it!
In other news…
Donald Trump has proposed a “temporary” 10 percent cap on credit card interest, saying that he wants to let “working Americans catch up” with record-high levels of debt. He’s been slammed as “socialist” by CEO Mark Cuban for the proposal, but it could actually be a good idea—Bernie Sanders and AOC wanted a 15 percent cap in 2019, and Trump’s plan actually goes further. The problem is, of course, that Trump is a massive liar who’ll say anything to get elected. (CNN)
Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) has introduced legislation proposing the deportation of “Hamas sympathizers.” But if you read the actual text of the bill, it’s clear that by “Hamas supporters,” Mace means all Palestinians. It specifically states that “Any alien who habitually resided in the Palestinian-administered territory within Judea and Samaria [what Israel calls the occupied West Bank] or Gaza, or who holds a passport or other travel document issued by the Palestinian Authority, is deportable.” It also bars anyone with Palestinian documents from receiving asylum in the United States. (ABC 4 News)
Kamala Harris once decried “dark money” and said we needed to get it “out of politics.” Now she's accepting tons of it and has stopped talking about the issue. According to the Lever:
Behind the scenes, political committees supporting Democratic candidates have reported more than $100 million in dark-money contributions this election season […]
At the same time, the Harris campaign is further obscuring the origins of its donations. Harris has yet to release the names of her “bundlers” — fundraisers who compile massive “bundles” of campaign checks from numerous donors.
Current Affairs is always looking for new articles on politics and culture around the world! If you’re a writer, PITCH US HERE!
AROUND THE STATES
❧ Florida’s Department of Education is cracking down on sex education across the public school system. As Rebecca Crosby and Noel Sims report for Popular Information:
The Florida Department of Education is prohibiting school districts from including core topics in their sex education courses, including contraception, consent, domestic violence, abuse, and LGBTQ issues. Instead, the state is instructing schools to “emphasize abstinence.”
According to the Orlando Sentinel, educators in Broward and Orange County were warned that “Pictures of external sexual/reproductive anatomy should not be included in any grade level,” that “contraceptives are not part of any health or science standard” and should only be described as a “health resource,” and that “pictures, activities, or demonstrations that illustrate their use should not be included in instruction in any grade level.” In other words, sexual education in Florida is not allowed to contain any information about…you know…sex.
If you’re a student in Florida, you’re officially not allowed to know what these are. (Image: Condom Depot)
The department is following a law signed by Governor Ron DeSantis in May 2023 which requires schools to “teach abstinence from sexual activity outside of marriage as the expected standard for all school-age students.” (Note: No recorded human society has ever succeeded in eliminating extramarital sex. Not even the Amish. And they say socialism goes against human nature!) It also requires sexual education to conform to many other right-wing political dogmas, including that sex is “binary, stable, and unchangeable” (meaning that transgender people are effectively illegitimate), that sex outside of marriage is frowned upon, and that “monogamous heterosexual marriage” is preferable to any other arrangement. Rather than teach this warped version, many schools around Florida have opted not to teach sex-ed at all.
DeSantis’ website describes this law as “Legislation to Protect the Innocence of Florida’s Children.” But if anything, not teaching them about their natural human functions is putting them at risk. Sex-ed teachers across the state told Elissa Barr, a public health professor at the University of North Florida, that they’ve been barred from teaching about “abuse” and “domestic violence” in their classrooms, as well as the concept of “consent.” Of course, one would hope that no child would face sexual abuse, but the fact is that it happens every day. Attempting to shield children from those realities, or concepts like consent, which help them to recognize it, can only serve to put them in more danger. Teachers also reported that discussion of sexual “fluids” was being banned, meaning that it was effectively impossible to teach about the spread of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases. Florida has the third-highest rate of HIV diagnoses in the U.S., and rates of other STDs like gonorrhea and syphilis are climbing among teens.
A spokesperson for Florida’s Department of Education justified this crackdown to the Associated Press, saying that “a state government should not be emphasizing or encouraging sexual activity among children or minors and is therefore right to emphasize abstinence.” But teenagers have been found to have sex at about equal rates regardless of whether they’ve had comprehensive sex-ed, and the ones who have had sex-ed have lower rates of teen pregnancy and STDs. So the fundamental choice is not between “protecting” children from the realities of having a body or exposing them. They will be exposed to those realities no matter what. The question is whether they enter adulthood informed and prepared to use their bodies safely, or whether they enter confused and ignorant. Florida has chosen the path of ignorance, and they're putting their children at risk.
Ironically, if there were any U.S. state that you could use for a condom
demonstration, Florida is probably it. Shame they don’t do them there.
❧ The State ofMissouri has executed Marcellus Williams, even though he was likely innocent of the 1998 murder for which he was convicted. According to the Innocence Project:
His conviction was based on the testimony of two eyewitnesses who were paid for their testimony. No DNA evidence linked him to the crime. And the current St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney acknowledged that errors made by the trial prosecutors – including mishandling the murder weapon and intentionally excluding Black prospective jurors in violation of the Constitution – contributed to a wrongful conviction.
But nevertheless, the Missouri attorney general relentlessly pursued his execution while Governor Mike Parson and the U.S. Supreme Court denied requests to halt the execution, even from the victim’s husband.
Williams’ execution coincided with nationwide protests against Israel’s bombing of Lebanon, which had killed 615 people as of Tuesday, and its continued assault on Palestine. At some demonstrations, participants recited a poem by Williams in his final days, titled “The Perplexing Smiles of the Children of Palestine":
As the Intercept reports, many of those decrying the injustice against Palestinians have recognized parallels with what was done to Williams. Houston organizer Eyad El-Akoum said: “There are thousands of Palestinians that are sitting in Israeli prisons that have done nothing, that haven’t been charged with a crime, and the same fate can happen to them as it did Marcellus Williams.”
In other news…
Oakland’s Mayor Sheng Thao has ordered all homeless encampments in the city to be forcibly shut down, regardless of whether enough shelter beds are available—which they currently aren’t. Advocacy groups say the order will “immediately cause catastrophic harm.” (The Oaklandside)
policy she favors, that isn’t exactly a surprise. (Image: Sheng Thao via Instagram)
The state superintendent of Oklahoma, Ryan Walters, has requested $3 million in the 2026 budget to provide Bibles to every public school. Walters claims that the Bible will only be there “for its historical context, not any pushing of one religion over another.” But that’s a bit hard to believe when he’s previously mandated that schools “incorporate the Bible, which includes the Ten Commandments, as an instructional support” and threatened to remove the teaching licenses of educators who don’t comply. (Oklahoma Voice)
Amazon workers at the company’s warehouse in Garner, North Carolina have begun filling out union cards, the first step toward possibly joining the Amazon Labor Union. If they’re successful, Garner would become the second unionized Amazon facility in the U.S. after the historic victory at Staten Island in 2022. (News & Observer)
With the Phillies’ baseball playoffs upcoming and the Eagles’ football season in full swing, Aramark workers at Philadelphia’s pro sports stadiums are on strike and asking fans not to buy food and drinks while watching games. Though Aramark is used by all three Philly stadiums, UNITE HERE Philly Local 274 says the company has been dividing workers’ hours by location in order to avoid paying them full-time benefits. (Philadelphia Inquirer)
PENGUIN FACT OF THE WEEK
The Sea Life Melbourne Aquarium has a new baby penguin…
This is Pesto, a nine-month-old King Penguin. At nearly 50 pounds, he is close to twice the weight of an adult of his species. The aquarium said he’s the biggest baby penguin they’ve ever seen, a hulking mass of fluff and feathers who weighs more than both his parents put together.
The aquarium attributes Pesto’s tremendous girth to “a number of factors.” His father, named Blake, is reportedly the “biggest and oldest penguin” in the exhibit. And Pesto has also reportedly “had amazing parents raising him.” Aquarium employees told the BBC that Pesto has a “very healthy appetite,” swallowing 30 fish daily. We should admire the profundity of his rotundity while we still can. Pesto will soon go through a “fledging” period during which he’ll shed his baby fluff to reveal a sleek coat of feathers. In the process, he’ll drop a lot of weight. Keepers estimate that Pesto will probably end up around 33 pounds, which is about average.
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.
Current Affairs is an independent leftist media organization supported entirely by its readers and listeners. We offer a beautiful bimonthly print and digital magazine, a weekly podcast, and a regular news briefing service. We are registered with the Internal Revenue Service as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization with EIN 83-1675720. Your gift is tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law. Donations may be made through our website, via wire transfer, or by sending us a check. Email [email protected] with any questions.
Copyright (C) 2024 Current Affairs. All rights reserved.
Current Affairs is a nonprofit independent progressive magazine producing incisive commentary and analysis on U.S. politics and culture. Read our online edition, listen to our podcast, and subscribe to our News Briefing service. Pitch us writing here. We carry no advertisements and have no corporate backers. We depend entirely on reader support, so please consider making a donation or subscribingto our print magazine. Current Affairs Inc is registered with the IRS as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization with EIN 83-1675720. Gifts are tax deductible to the extent allowed by law.
Our mailing address is:
Current Affairs Inc, 300 Lafayette Street, Suite 210, New Orleans, LA 70130
.jpg?upscale=true&width=1120&upscale=true&name=New_York_City_Mayor_Eric_Adams_Small_Business_Week_Kickoff_Brooklyn_New_York_2022_(52529888648).jpg)
