Marcela’s weekly digest: 22nd November

Hi, I’m Marcela: I’m a comedian, I live Brooklyn, and I really like to tell people how to feel about the news. After wowing zoomers all over on TikTok by giving them news with a sense of humour and anarchy, I decided to start a weekly Sunday newsletter to share my feelings about more news. 

My weekly newsletter has evolved into this beautiful Tuesday weekly news column for shado which also covers international news. I hope the newsletter keeps you informed and makes you laugh a little. We live in hell and I believe humour helps keep this place a little bit cooler.

I’m back from Atlanta to share my feelings about Joe Biden defending Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman from a civil suit for murdering journalist Jamal Khashoggi, companies funding the destruction of the Weelaunee Forest in so-called Atlanta, Trans activists preventing a TERF from speaking in so-called NYC, and the untrue news about Iran sentencing 15,000 protestors to death.

Onto the news…

News that made me wonder what good customer service in the arms trade industry looks like

Joe Biden, a man who uses human rights as voting bargaining chips, is standing up for his fellow war criminal Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) because that’s just what friends do. During his presidential campaign, Joe said he would hold MBS accountable for the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Joe is now saying it’s actually perfectly okay to murder people if you are the head of a state. 

Okay, he didn’t say that, but the United States Department of Justice told a US federal court that, due to head-of-state sovereign immunity, Kashoggi’s fiance could not bring up a civil suit against MBS for ordering the murder of Jamal. I would say this is pretty much saying you have a licence to kill if you are head-of-state. I wonder if MBS orders his martini shaken not stirred like James Bond? Is a shaken martini the drink of choice for war criminals?

But I digress. As someone who has been alive for the past two years and watched Joe go back on campaign promises like I go back for seconds and thirds when my dad makes my favourite lentil soup, I am not surprised by his change of heart to pretend to care about human rights. 

What’s interesting to me is that no one asked the justice department about their opinion about the case. Joe didn’t have to send his lawyers to court to show the world once again the one thing the United States stands for is human rights violations. This was an unnecessary wrong choice that Joe made.

If you are reading this news and you are wondering, oh why Joe? Why would you go out of your way to support a murderer? Don’t you know murder is bad? 

Joe knows murder is bad; that is precisely why he is defending it. He can’t have his war criminals friends thinking he doesn’t have their back. Also, MBS is not just part of Joe’s war criminal brunch crew, he also buys lots of weapons from the United States. I know very little about the arms industry but I’m assuming holding your customer accountable for murder is not considered good customer service.

News that made me remind you capitalism doesn’t make sense

Other than being entities that should not exist, what do Wells Fargo, Chick-fil-A, and Amazon have in common? They are all part of a group of twelve companies funding the destruction of the Weelaunee Forest in so-called Atlanta! Come on, you knew with Amazon’s name in the mix, the answer to that question was going to be bad. 

Amazon is not going to let sharing a name with a forest prevent it from razing one. I swear if I got a penny every single time I found out Amazon was part of something horrendous I would have more billions than Jeff Bezos. To be honest, if we all got a penny for every single time any corporation did something horrendous, we would all be billionaires. However, we shouldn’t want that because no one should want to profit from horrendous things. 

Corporations love making money from doing horrendous things and that’s why they are funding the destruction of a forest. These corporations are not just cutting down trees because they enjoy the destruction of nature and everything good in the world (even though they do). I’m sure there is a CEO of a company out there who has taken up deforestation just for the kick of it. 

But it’s not just a hobby: these twelve corporations are cutting down the trees to build a police training facility for the Atlanta Police Department! That’s right, Amazon and friends are funding a police training facility through the Atlanta Police Foundation because cops are here to serve corporations. 

Imagine destroying a forest so you can make more money when money literally grows on trees? Okay not trees literally, but money is made from cotton which is a plant and trees are plants. Anyway, my very little understanding of plant classification is not the point here.

The point is corporations are funding the destruction of nature which they generate wealth from so they can keep their wealth through policing because capitalism doesn’t make sense and we should end it immediately.

News that made me happy to live in so-called New York City

Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist Kellie-Jay Keen was hoping she could finish her hateful transphobic “Let Women Speak” tour with a speech in so-called New York City and trans activists in this city were like, umm actually, no. New York City trans activists outnumbered the TERFs forcing Kellie-Jay to cancel her speech, which is great because no one should be listening to transphobes. 

Also can we briefly take a moment to talk about naming a tour whose main purpose is to disparage other women “Let Women Speak”. Kellie-Jay, you cannot call your tour “Let Women Speak” when you are using the tour to silence other women. I suggest maybe renaming the tour to “Hateful Women Speak.”

Actually, my general recommendation is for you, Kellie-Jay, to look deep inside and ask yourself why you hate other women and view human rights as a zero sum game – but I know you are not reading this so I’m going to stop talking to you and go back to talking about the amazing people who prevented you from saying things you shouldn’t be saying in the city I live in. 

These amazing people who showed up to stand up against so-called feminists who hate women were met with brutal police repression. According to The Indypendent, at least nine activists were arrested, because one thing you can always count on the NYPD to do is to stand between us and our rights. 

Despite the arrests, I’m really happy to live in a city where TERFs are not welcome. This is further proof that when we stand up against hate, we can win. So if you hear Kellie-Jay or another TERF is coming to your city to host a festival of hate, get your crew and do everything you can to make sure they don’t speak. Feel free to name your crew “let women speak”, because unlike Kellie-Jay when you say women you mean all women.

News that made me defend my neighbour’s cat

Many people, from Justin Trudeau to my neighbour’s cat, tweeted their condemnation of Iran when news spread through social media that the Iranian government had sentenced 15,000 protestors to death. 

I don’t blame my neighbour’s cat for tweeting untrue news because he is a cat, he doesn’t know any better. He doesn’t know what he is tweeting. He didn’t know that tapping my neighbour’s keyboard with his paw would lead to him retweeting untrue news.

I do however blame Justin Trudeau for tweeting untrue news. Doesn’t he have a whole government funded by taxpayer dollars to make sure he doesn’t go on Twitter and say things that can be disproven by reading beyond the headlines? Justin, isn’t it literally your job to read beyond the headlines?

Which brings me to the people who write headlines. Headlines are not written to give you a brief summary about the news you are about to read. Headlines are written to entice you to click on the news and read it because the more news you read the more money media companies make. 

Since there is a financial incentive to get you to read the news, Newsweek will use this headline, “Iran protesters refuse to back down as 15,000 face execution”, instead of, “Iran’s parliament voted to ask the judiciary to kill all protestors which might not happen because the parliament thankfully doesn’t have the power to sentence people to death.”

Members of parliament requesting for the people to be killed is bad enough! It’s awful, it’s cruel, it doesn’t need a saucier take. However, when you are Newsweek and you want to keep making as much money as possible because capitalism says you can never make enough money, you feel a parliament requesting that people be put to death is not enough. You have to add your own sauce that contributes to viral misinformation because viral misinformation equals money money money!

That’s it for the news. See ya next week,

Marcela