And Justice for Whom?
Purdue Pharma & Sacklers declare bankruptcy and then laugh all the way to the bank, South Korea has something to say about Apple's unfair practices...
In this edition: (1) Purdue Pharma and the Sacklers declare bankruptcy and then laugh all the way to the bank, (2) South Korea has something to say about Apple’s business practices, (3) The U.S. pulls out of Afghanistan by the Sept. 1 deadline but leaves something for the civilians to remember us by—fondly, we hope. Also: Has Biden ended our forever wars?… (4) Introducing: Texas’ anti-abortion private bounty hunters.
Housekeeping: ‘The Stringer’ is publishing every other week. Don’t be shy. Share this newsletter with your dirty, uninformed friends. See you in two weeks.
The infrastructure bill is moving through the committees this week, which is worth keeping an eye on. Scholars have suggested that the infrastructure bill would provide overdue improvements and it contains numerous provisions aimed at addressing inequality.
Looking backward, the news just keeps on coming. It’s almost as if it refuses to come in line with our publishing schedule. I’ll have a word with it privately after class. In the meantime…
Since our last edition, there have been a few big news items:
And Justice For None: Purdue Pharma, the company at the heart of the opioid crisis, has dodged liability for the death and ruin they’ve wrought with OxyContin. The company successfully filed for bankruptcy in New York, and they got “sweeping immunity” from liability in the cases against them. NPR has reported that Federal Judge Robert Drain approved the bankruptcy that “grants them ‘global peace’.” The Sackler family, the private owners of the company, somehow finagled themselves into immunity from future lawsuits in New York, after giving up ownership of the company and paying $4.3 billion. They have admitted no villainy or lawbreaking. They offer no apologies. And they earned an estimated $10 billion from the mess. "A forced apology is not really an apology," Judge Drain reportedly said: "So we will have to live without one." Victims will also have to live without justice, apparently… Watch as, having declared bankruptcy, they laugh all the way to the bank.
Antitrust: The National Assembly of South Korea has voted in favor of a rule to require Apple Inc. and Google to allow alternative payment methods from developers, The Wall Street Journal reported, making it the first country to do so. It’s a swipe at the companies’ anti-competitive practices in the wake of the Apple v. Epic Games case. The case had subjected Apple’s business practices to antitrust scrutiny, resulting in a jury judgment (although the ordeal is ongoing).
It Ended How It Began: The U.S. pulled out of Afghanistan by September 1. Questions remain about a drone strike that the military has admitted killed at least three civilians and which they claim was a “righteous strike” against a sedan that contained explosives for a second attack against the Kabul airport despite shaky evidence, according to The New York Times. The decision to pull troops out of Afghanistan has won President Biden some reflexive praise for “ending” America’s forever wars, but has he? Some analysis, as I’ve written about in the context of the U.S.-Philippine mutual defense treaty, has suggested that really the U.S. is moving resources from the Middle East and towards the Asian Pacific.
Abortion Bounty Hunters: Texas’ new abortion law, which in the words of NPR, effectively “bans abortion as soon as cardiac activity is detectable,” is going to be a fierce fight. The law allows, in a fiendishly clever ploy, for private citizens to bring civil cases against people or places that assist a woman in obtaining an abortion. The Supreme Court allowed it to come into effect by a 5-4 vote, which means this will play out for a while. But it hasn’t ruled on the merits of the law. Abortion clinics have secured orders from state courts to avoid enforcement but have not secured a block from the state’s supreme court.