by ALBERT SERNA, Jr.

Throughout Pride Month, it has become increasingly common for corporations to adorn their websites in rainbow flags, espouse their support for LGBTQ+ rights and try to win over a community that has historically been stereotyped as having a disposable income. But some of those companies still steer big money to groups and politicians who oppose LGBTQ+ rights.

Chief Economist at the Koppa LGBTI+ Economic Power Lab, Lee Badgett, said that the idea that LGBTQ communities have more money to spend is a misrepresentation of the community as a whole.

“There’s long been an incorrect stereotype about LGBTQ people that they are well off, lots of income, no real financial problems,” Badgett said. “We know that gay and bisexual men and bisexual women in particular tend to have lower earnings than their heterosexual counterparts. Same for transgender and cisgender people, transgender people are earning less.”

Lack of clarity on how politicians and corporations are spending can create a false narrative that a specific corporation or political figure solely aligns with LGBTQ rights, when they may also give to anti-LGBTQ groups. OpenSecrets has found that even corporations that publicly condemn anti-LGBTQ legislation regularly steer tens of thousands of dollars in political contributions to legislators who advanced those bills. 

Melissa Michelson, professor of Political Science at Menlo College, calls this behavior during Pride month a type of “rainbow washing.” 

“Politicians engage in rainbow washing for the same reason that corporations do because they want consumers, slash voters, slash potential donors to think well of them. And maybe that means you will donate money to them, or maybe you will consider voting for that,” Michelson told OpenSecrets. “Either way that’s the currency of politics, whether it’s a financial donation or a vote, that’s what every candidate needs.”

Fairweather support

Large donors to Pride events in June have done everything from changing their logos to making posts on social media, but some of their political giving tells a different story. 

Delta Air Lines sponsored multiple Pride events in California, New York and Washington D.C. 

The airline’s PAC donated more than $300,000 to Republican candidates, including $8,500 to Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) and $5,000 to Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) – both of whom have supported anti-LGBTQ legislation according to GLAAD. Blackburn has been a vocal opponent of gender-affirming care for transgender youth, and Scalise who has a long history of introducing and supporting anti-LGBTQ bills. All Republican Senators who received funds from the PAC received less than 20 from the Human Rights Campaign Congressional scorecard. Many did not reach the double digits. 

The airline donated another $45,000 to GOPAC and $10,000 to the dark money group Alliance for American Exceptionalism, both of which work to elect conservatives with records of voting against LGBTQ+ rights at the state and federal level. Mark Green who compared LGBTQ Americans to ISIS, received $5,000 from GOPAC, filings show. GOPAC also gave $5,000 to Michigan State Sen. Tom Barrett whose campaign sent out anti-trans text messages.

Open Secrets for more

by MARY-JANE RUBENSTEIN

The past decade has seen a rapid expansion of the commercial space industry. Rival nations are competing for prime military and economic positions beyond the Earth. Public and private entities are clamoring to mine the Moon, and a growing halo of space junk is polluting low Earth orbit.

In a 2023 white paper, a group of concerned astronomers warned against repeating Earthly “colonial practices” in outer space. But what’s wrong with colonizing space if there’s nothing there to begin with?

I am a philosopher of science and religion who has been writing about the space industry for several years. As government agencies and private companies turn their eyes toward the stars, I’ve noticed many of the factors that drove European Christian imperialism between the 15th and 19th centuries reappearing in high-speed, high-tech forms.

Some of these colonial practices might include the enclosure of land, the exploitation of environmental resources and the destruction of landscapes – in the name of ideals such as destiny, civilization and the salvation of humanity.

Many space industry leaders, such as Mars Society President Robert Zubrin, argue that although European-style colonialism may have had unsavory consequences on Earth, it is the only way to proceed in outer space. In fact, he warns, any attempt to slow down or regulate the space industry will make the Martian frontier inaccessible to humanity, leaving us stuck on an increasingly dull and decadent Earth.

The Conversation for more

by JESSE EISINGER, JEFF ERNSTHAUSEN, & PAUL KIEL

ProPublica has obtained a vast cache of IRS information showing how billionaires like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Warren Buffett pay little in income tax compared to their massive wealth — sometimes, even nothing.

In 2007, Jeff Bezos, then a multibillionaire and now the world’s richest man, did not pay a penny in federal income taxes. He achieved the feat again in 2011. In 2018, Tesla founder Elon Musk, the second-richest person in the world, also paid no federal income taxes.

Michael Bloomberg managed to do the same in recent years. Billionaire investor Carl Icahn did it twice. George Soros paid no federal income tax three years in a row.

ProPublica has obtained a vast trove of Internal Revenue Service data on the tax returns of thousands of the nation’s wealthiest people, covering more than 15 years. The data provides an unprecedented look inside the financial lives of America’s titans, including Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch and Mark Zuckerberg. It shows not just their income and taxes, but also their investments, stock trades, gambling winnings and even the results of audits.

Taken together, it demolishes the cornerstone myth of the American tax system: that everyone pays their fair share and the richest Americans pay the most. The IRS records show that the wealthiest can — perfectly legally — pay income taxes that are only a tiny fraction of the hundreds of millions, if not billions, their fortunes grow each year.

Many Americans live paycheck to paycheck, amassing little wealth and paying the federal government a percentage of their income that rises if they earn more. In recent years, the median American household earned about $70,000 annually and paid 14% in federal taxes. The highest income tax rate, 37%, kicked in this year, for couples, on earnings above $628,300.

The confidential tax records obtained by ProPublica show that the ultrarich effectively sidestep this system.

America’s billionaires avail themselves of tax-avoidance strategies beyond the reach of ordinary people. Their wealth derives from the skyrocketing value of their assets, like stock and property. Those gains are not defined by U.S. laws as taxable income unless and until the billionaires sell.

To capture the financial reality of the richest Americans, ProPublica undertook an analysis that has never been done before. We compared how much in taxes the 25 richest Americans paid each year to how much Forbes estimated their wealth grew in that same time period.

We’re going to call this their true tax rate.

The results are stark. According to Forbes, those 25 people saw their worth rise a collective $401 billion from 2014 to 2018. They paid a total of $13.6 billion in federal income taxes in those five years, the IRS data shows. That’s a staggering sum, but it amounts to a true tax rate of only 3.4%.

It’s a completely different picture for middle-class Americans, for example, wage earners in their early 40s who have amassed a typical amount of wealth for people their age. From 2014 to 2018, such households saw their net worth expand by about $65,000 after taxes on average, mostly due to the rise in value of their homes. But because the vast bulk of their earnings were salaries, their tax bills were almost as much, nearly $62,000, over that five-year period.

ProPublica for more

by HARRIS KHALIQUE

For more than seven decades, Pakistan and Pakistanis have harboured a unique ability to discriminate against people on every possible metric.

On August 11, 1947, the founder of Pakistan, Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah, gave his most important official speech — not to a political gathering, but as the president of the first Constituent Assembly of Pakistan.

Almost at the beginning he said: “The Constituent Assembly has got two main functions to perform. The first is the very onerous and responsible task of framing our future constitution of Pakistan, and the second of functioning as a full and complete sovereign body as the Federal Legislature of Pakistan.”

Towards the end of his speech he stated: “…you will find that, in course of time, Hindus would cease to be Hindus and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense, because that is the personal faith of each individual, but in the political sense, as citizens of the state.”

He reaffirmed his vision for the federal character of the state, where all federating units would have identical stakes, as was first mentioned in the 1940 Lahore Resolution, besides his desire for an equal citizenship for all, irrespective of their personal faith.

Regrettably, since the very early years, the powers that be in Pakistan decided to choose a political course that was opposite to what Jinnah had stated — from the passing of the Objectives Resolution in 1949, which was further tweaked by Gen Ziaul Haq in 1984. On the one hand, Pakistan’s journey since then has been marred by ethnic strife, emanating out of regional disparities and provincial inequities. On the other hand, religious extremism was also encouraged to grow and become uglier with time.

After 77 years of existence as a country, we see ethnic, provincial, religious and sectarian prejudices being consolidated again. On a regular basis, there are incidents of hate speech and ensuing violence reported from different parts of the country. Political differences have also morphed into bitter animosity, leading to complete intolerance for any political views that may conflict with one’s.

These solidifying prejudices will eventually lead to more extremism and violence in various shapes and forms. Consequently, religious and ethnic minorities in the country are becoming more and more vulnerable with each passing day.

Dawn for more

by PAUL Le BLANC

Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov — known by his revolutionary alias, Lenin — was a central figure in the history of the twentieth century. He was a leader of the 1917 Russian Revolution and a founder of the modern Communist movement, who was perceived by millions of people either as Evil Incarnate or a Benevolent Genius. I would argue that he should be seen as a human being who can be shown to have made more than one serious mistake. But as Lenin himself noted, “he who never does anything never makes mistakes,” and Lenin did quite a lot. His development of Marxism’s revolutionary cutting edge has relevance for the future. I want to focus on some ways revolutionary activists can make use of his ideas today. The great African American poet, Langston Hughes, expressed his global impact in these lines:

Lenin walks around the world.
Black, brown, and white receive him.
Language is no barrier.
The strangest tongues believe him.

If we do it right, we can draw useful notions from what this comrade has to offer, as we face such realities as anti-racist upsurges, the multi-faceted escalation of feminist struggles, the immense challenges of climate change, wars in Gaza and Ukraine and elsewhere. In the United States, we have also been faced with the interrelated phenomena of mild socialist Bernie Sanders and super-capitalist Donald Trump. Rightward veering “Trumpism” poses an especially ominous threat — one that dovetails with the ascent of right-wing authoritarians around the world, such as Javier Milei in Argentina, until recently Jair Bolsanaro in Brazil, Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Narendra Modi in India, Vladimir Putin in Russia, and Recep Tayyip Erdo?an in Turkey. I will focus on the US electoral realities later in this presentation, because I am most familiar with them.

In the face of all this, what would Lenin do? To deal with this question adequately, I think it will help to broaden it. Is it possible for us to make use of Lenin’s ideas 100 years after his death, and if so — how? Another way of posing this question would be: “What would Lenin’s approach be to using Lenin’s basic orientation 100 years after his death?”

All the specifics of Lenin’s analyses cannot not simply be assumed to be applicable in the very different context of our time. At the heart of Lenin’s political approach is the notion that while the use of Marxist theory is essential for building revolutionary movements and struggles, it must be used not as a dogma, but as a guide to action. Related to this is the dialectical notion that “nothing is constant but change.” Essential to Lenin’s dialectics is also a recognition that continuities are blended intimately into the changes.

Another essential element in Lenin’s orientation involved the non-dogmatic utilization of historical materialism, which helps us see three realities: (1) economic development is central to the development of history; (2) the incredibly dynamic capitalist system is the dominant form of economy in modern times; and (3) class divisions are decisive, and under capitalism a small minority of capitalists secure immense wealth and power by exploiting the labor of, and squeezing wealth out of, the lives and labors of the great majority of people who make up the working class.

Despite multiple changes — for example, in the size and nature of the working class (which is bigger and more occupationally diverse than it used to be) and the structures and technologies associated with today’s capitalist system as a whole — the underlying dynamics of capitalism remain similar from Lenin’s time to ours. The three points I identified as part of historical materialism manifest themselves differently than was the case 100 years ago, but nonetheless they continue to operate and shape the reality of our own world.

Two essential elements were constant in Lenin’s approach. One was not to settle for simplistic and comforting dogmas, but instead to approach everything with a critical mind, to base one’s understanding on what he called “stubborn facts,” seeking real information with a drive to keep learning and learning and learning about the complexities of reality. A second essential element involved a refusal to settle for Marxist analysis as simply a passive contemplation of what and how things are. Lenin refused to detach social, economic and political analysis from an activist engagement, from the restless and insistent question: what is to be done?

For Lenin — from the time he became a young Marxist activist to the end of his life — this added up to an insistence that we must not bow to the oppressive and exploitative powers-that-be, and that we must never submit to the transitory “realism” of mainstream politics. Instead, all political action should be measured by how it helps build working-class consciousness, the mass workers’ movement, and the revolutionary organization necessary to overturn capitalism and lead to a socialist future.

Links for more

by JAN KRIKKE

US weaponization of dollar is backfiring as BRICS and wider developing world accelerate away from dollar-based trade and holdings

Economic and financial sanctions often backfire. The most notable example is the weaponization of the dollar against Russia. The measure has sparked a global movement to de-dollarize, the opposite of the punitive move’s strategic intent.

The historic miscalculation didn’t stop US Senator Marco Rubio of Florida from introducing a bill in Congress to punish countries that de-dollarize. The bill seeks to ban financial institutions facilitating de-dollarization from the global dollar system.

Rubio’s bill, ominously called the Sanctions Evasion Prevention and Mitigation Act, would require US presidents to sanction financial institutions using China’s CIPS payment system, Russia’s financial messaging service SPFS and other alternatives to the dollar-centric SWIFT system.

Rubio is not alone in targeting countries bidding to de-dollarize. Economic advisors to presidential candidate Donald Trump are discussing ways to punish nations that are actively shifting away from the dollar.

The Trump team has proposed “to sanction both allies and adversaries who seek active ways to engage in bilateral trade in currencies other than the dollar.” Violators would be subjected to export restrictions, tariffs and “currency manipulation charges.”

Awakening BRICS

US policymakers and pundits in the financial media were initially dismissive of de-dollarization. They argued the dollar is used in some 80% of all global financial transactions. No other currency even comes close.

But financial sanctions against Russia, imposed after Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine’s Donbas region in 2022, became a turning point. The trend to de-dollarize expanded rapidly and has now arguably become irreversible.

In May this year, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) announced plans to de-dollarize their cross-border trade and use local currencies instead. The announcement made few global headlines but ASEAN is a huge trading bloc comprised of ten countries with a combined population of 600 million people.

Other agreements to bypass the dollar system include barter deals. Iran and Thailand are trading food for oil while Pakistan has authorized barter trade with Iran, Afghanistan and Russia. China is building a state-of-the-art airport in Iran, to be paid for in oil.

Cryptocurrencies are also being used to bypass the dollar system and avoid scrutiny from the long arm of American law. Cryptos like Bitcoin enable individuals to send and receive funds from anywhere in the world anonymously, outside the legacy banking system.

De-dollarization is high on the agenda of BRICS, which is rapidly becoming the world’s largest economic bloc.

Asia Times for more

by DOUGLAS MAIN

A growing body of scientific evidence shows that microplastics are accumulating in critical human organs, including the brain, alarming findings that highlight a need for more urgent actions to rein in plastic pollution, researchers say. 

Different studies have detected tiny shards and specks of plastics in human lungs, placentas, reproductive organs, livers, kidneys, knee and elbow joints, blood vessels, and bone marrow. 

Given the research findings, “it is now imperative to declare a global emergency” to deal with plastic pollution, said Sedat Gündo?du, who studies microplastics at Cukurova University in Turkey. 

Humans are exposed to microplastics – defined as fragments smaller than five millimeters in length – and the chemicals used to make plastics from widespread plastic pollution in air, water, and even food. 

The health hazards of microplastics within the human body are not yet well-known. Recent studies are just beginning to suggest these particles could increase the risk of various conditions such as oxidative stress, which can lead to cell damage and inflammation, as well as cardiovascular disease. 

Animal studies have also linked microplastics to fertility issues, various cancers, a disrupted endocrine and immune system, and impaired learning and memory.

There are currently no governmental standards for plastic particles in food or water in the United States. The Environmental Protection Agency is working on crafting guidelines for measuring them, and has been giving out grants since 2018 to develop new ways to quickly detect and quantify them. 

Finding microplastics in more and more human organs “raises a lot of concerns,” given what we know about health effects in animals, studies of human cells in the lab, and emerging epidemiological studies, said Bethanie Carney Almroth, an ecotoxicologist at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. “It’s scary, I’d say.” 

“Pretty alarming” 

In one of the latest studies to emerge — a pre-print paper still undergoing peer-review that is posted online by the National Institutes of Health — researchers found particularly concerning accumulation of microplastics in brain samples. 

An examination of the livers, kidneys and brains of autopsied bodies found that all contained microplastics, but the 91 brain samples contained on average about 10 to 20 times more than the other organs. The results came as a shock, according to study lead author Matthew Campen, a toxicologist and professor of pharmaceutical sciences at the University of New Mexico.

The researchers found that 24 of the brain samples, which were collected in early 2024, measured on average about 0.5 percent plastic by weight. 

“It’s pretty alarming,” Campen said. “There’s much more plastic in our brains than I ever would have imagined or been comfortable with.” 

The study describes the brain as “one of the most plastic-polluted tissues yet sampled.” 

The pre-print brain study led by Campen also hinted at a concerning link. In the study, researchers looked at 12 brain samples from people who died with dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease. These brains contained up to 10 times more plastic by weight than healthy samples.

“I don’t know how much more plastic our brain can stuff in without it causing some problems,” Campen said. 

The New Lede for more

by Dr. MUHAMMAD ALI EHSAN

What has happened in Bangladesh is a link in the chain of disturbing events that Asia is likely to continue to witness in the coming years and decades in the 21st Century. The reason is simple – Asia has become the heartland of the global economy and so, like never before, the interests of great powers are converging with great speed in this geographic space. When interests converge, opportunities arise but so do threats and dangers. Bangladesh belongs to South Asia and if I am not wrong South Asia is probably the only regional bloc in the world that lacks any regional organisation to bring all countries together on one platform. Home to around a quarter of the world’s population the leaders from the eight countries of this bloc – Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka – look not towards each other but towards the outside world, towards the Middle East, Southeast Asia and the West.

Countries in South Asia had a regional forum by the name of SAARC but it is long dead. The last SAARC Summit was held in 2014 and since then every country in the region is for itself. The South Asian University, set up by the SAARC countries in New Delhi in 2010, is a picture of a ghost that reminds all South Asians of what SAARC was meant to achieve and what it looks like today. External forces cannot convert their power into influence if the countries in the region are united. A regional forum creates and allows that unity and also allows the countries to guarantee each other’s domestic stability and territorial integrity by agreeing and vouching for non-interference in each other’s internal affairs. Else great powers have a knack of finding ways of messing the geopolitics of regions by rebalancing strategic relations to achieve their strategic interests. Doing this they resort to punishing the small and medium powers for making choices that are contrary to great powers dictates and their vital interests. Has Bangladesh been punished? Given that Times and Forbes were repeatedly naming the Bangladeshi PM as one of the world’s most powerful people and The Economist describing her as ‘Asia’s Iron lady’, how could her political fortunes reverse in matter of days? Four great powers – the US, China, Russia and India – have great interests in the region. Has Bangladesh become a latest victim of their great power rivalry?

Bangladesh is strategically located on the hinge between South Asia and South East Asia and that makes it a country of extreme geopolitical significance in the region. The Sino-Indian rivalry, the Myanmar conflict, the political and financial crisis in Sri Lanka, the contest for power in Pakistan and the close proximity of South China Sea make the Bay of Bengal a crucial strategic space and an important future battleground in the region. To answer the question – which great power would be more interested in bringing down the 16 years’ long and strong Sheikh Hasina’s government – one needs to look at the interests of each great power. Let’s start with China.

Resource acquisition is the principal goal of China’s foreign policy and China desperately wants to maintain the standard of living of its people. Both China and India may be geopolitical rivals but both are great competitors in their push for securing natural resources in the region. Both need plenty of energy to run their industries. Both harbour the hope of building gas pipelines running from offshore fields in the Bay of Bengal. A destabilised Bangladesh is not in China’s interest. What about India?

Bangladesh under Sheikh Hasina was an Indian vassal state. India has the most to lose in what has happened in Bangladesh. Extending its economic dynamism towards Southeast Asia, India needed a client state in Bangladesh. Strategically, India provides the only big land outlet for Bangladesh to the outside world as it shares 2,545 miles of border with it. The only other country Bangladesh shares the border with is Myanmar with which it shares 168 miles of border in the east. Bangladesh’s border with India in the north is under the famous chicken neck, a 12-mile-wide corridor that separates the eight northeastern Indian states from mainland India. Many insurgencies involving local tribes seeking self-rule from India operate in the region and so India would be extremely unhappy to lose an ally that was bordering the region. To quickly summarise the current Indian apprehensions after what has happened in Bangladesh, one may say the next government in Bangladesh is not likely to be India-friendly. The long, porous Bangladeshi border with northeastern Indian states would no more be under Indian control which means more trouble for India in the eastern states. With sporadic border disputes raging with China in the north and likely influx of more refugees in India from Bangladesh, India will be confronted with great challenges to both its domestic stability and territorial integrity.

The Express Tribune for more

In “Burnt Country” — the Second-Place Winner of the 2024 Yale Environment 360 Film Contest — filmmaker Kirsten Slemint centers the work of Tasmania’s Melukerdee people, who have long used low-temperature fires to reduce fuel loads and control far more destructive burns.

Australia’s unprecedented bushfires of 2019 to 2020 burned an area larger than the United Kingdom, killed at least 33 people, killed or displaced close to 3 billion animals, and destroyed the habitats of more than 500 species. In 2023, the fires were even larger. Such devastation has prompted scientists and planners to ask how the world’s most fire-prone continent can prepare for future megafires. Today, they’re drawing both inspiration and lessons from Indigenous peoples, who have been lightly burning the land for some 60,000 years.

Filmmaker Kirsten Slemint followed James Shaw — of the Melukerdee tribe of the South East Nations — as he trained young Indigenous people to execute cultural burns on Tasmania’s Bruny Island. Burning the land at low temperatures, he says, reduces the fuel load and provides nutrients for the plants and seeds under the ash. Notes conservation biologist Hugh Possingham, “The whole system evolved with Indigenous burning. It’s one of the cultures that humanity needs to learn from in the coming years if we’re actually going to stabilize this planet.”

Asked what inspired her to focus a film on cultural burning in Australia, Slemint said, “Australia is not alone in facing devastating wildfires, and it has a wealth of knowledge and experience to offer the global community. I think the film’s messages of respect, community, and hope are critical to creating a brighter future — where both our environmental and cultural heritage are protected and celebrated.”

Yale Environment 360 for more