WHAT’S THIS? The Stringer publishes a news roundup—with a global bent.
The ‘Twitter Files’: bombshell or dud?
Twitter has been a trove of air-sucking scandals lately. The latest: Substack writer Matt Taibbi published a review of thousands of internal documents this week.
The report came after Taibbi was handed internal debates about Twitter’s content moderation. It claims that Twitter censored material on behalf of the White House and the Biden campaign.
It’s ongoing. But there are some things worth keeping an eye on as Taibbi continues to publish:
This story potentially raises First Amendment questions, given the White House’s involvement.
Taibbi’s journalistic credibility is in doubt. His report was framed as an investigation into censorship by Twitter. But the “report” itself was based on a publishing deal Taibbi cut with the company’s new owner, Elon Musk. The billionaire has even said “we” fact-checked the story, suggesting Taibbi was anything but an independent investigator.
Corporate media has cast this as a smokeless gun, one which allegedly shows alternative media’s alliance with their enemies in Silicon Valley.
Taibbi thinks he’s delivered a bombshell, but it may be going off in his hands. Still, political scandals probably don’t hurt his bottom line—or Musk’s.
POLITICS and WORLD
TOUGH TALKS: Though the Taliban’s rule in Afghanistan hasn’t been recognized, the U.N. flew its ambassadors to Kandahar this week to meet with them. Meanwhile, Afghanis are suffering executions, public floggings and bans against educating girls. Some have even been reduced to feeding drugs to their children to prepare them for starvation this winter.
BACKING DOWN? In Iran, the ruling clerical class may be about to blink amid the ongoing protests that resulted from its “morality police” killing 22-year-old Masha Amini earlier this year.
‘BRICK FIREWALL’: Raphael Warnock, the U.S. Democrat candidate, won the Georgia Senate seat over former athlete (and complete mess) Herschel Walker. Warnock reinforces Democrats’ control of the Senate, which is why Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer described him as the “last brick in [the Democrats’] firewall” against the GOP.
RISKY BUSINESS: Following up on a pattern of caving to religious hardliners, Indonesia’s parliament approved a criminal code banning sex outside of wedlock entirely. The “crime” carries up to a year-long jail sentence. The code even threatens to jail the millions of people who don’t have certificates but were married in traditional ceremonies.
IN THE NAME OF LOVE: With established court precedents in question, the U.S. legislature wrote marriage equality into federal law by passing a bill known as the Respect for Marriage Act. Though, it’s actually pretty limited in scope, according to the ACLU.
DEATH BY ROBOT: The San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted to let police use remote-controlled robots to deploy “deadly force” last week. Under pressure, the board changed its mind, voting to allow police to use the robots but not to kill.
BUSINESS
THE TAX-MAN COMETH: Former U.S. President Donald Trump’s company was found guilty of 17 counts related to tax fraud in New York. Relatedly, the U.S. Congress finally got its hands on six years of Trump’s personal tax returns, though it’s unlikely they’ll be publicly released. I wonder if he’s as rich as he says he is.
LET’S JUST MOVE ON: Not long after paying nearly half a billion dollars to close state investigations into their conduct, vaping company Juul agreed to settle 5,000 lawsuits in California connected to its actions in the teenage vaping crisis. The company hasn’t disclosed how big this tab was.
ALL THE LIVE-LONG DAY: The U.S. narrowly avoided a railroad strike. Railroad workers had rejected a deal mediated by the White House, in part because it failed to grant paid sick leave. That the Biden administration forced them to work anyway— argues John Cassidy in The New Yorker—is a “parable of contemporary American capitalism.”
EDUCATION
PROFIT MOTIVES: Members of the U.S. legislature are calling for a formal investigation into how colleges’ outsource the management of their online programs to for-profit companies.
BUSINESS SCHOOLS GO ANTICAPITALIST? Prominent business schools, like Harvard Business School, are reportedly espousing social impact investing and other forms of “conscious capitalism.” Milton Friedman’s corpse must be rolling in its grave.
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