by SAM PIZZIGATI

The quarter-trillionaire has had plenty of help — from all of us U.S. taxpayers.

Once upon a time, here in the United States, we taxed the rich. Significantly. Today, by contrast, we’re actively enhancing their fortunes. Including the biggest personal fortune of them all, the quarter-trillion-dollar stash that belongs to Elon Musk, the current numero uno on the Forbes real-time list of the world’s largest fortunes.

Musk owes a hefty chunk of his own personal fortune to the taxes average Americans pay. He just happens to be, notes a just-published Politico analysis, “the single biggest beneficiary of U.S. government contracts.”

Two of Musk’s commercial operations, Tesla and SpaceX, have received billions in American taxpayer support. The federal government, Politico points out, has essentially “outsourced its space program” to SpaceX, and Tesla, a shaky electric vehicle company when Musk bought it, only “took off after receiving $465 million in subsidies from the Obama administration in 2010.”

All the tax dollars that Musk has collected from the Defense Department, NASA, and the U.S. intelligence community — coupled with the “generous government subsidies and tax credits to the electric-vehicle industry” that have so boosted Musk’s Tesla — have Council on Foreign Relations senior fellow Max Boot fairly fuming.

Taxpayers like himself, Boot notes, are subsidizing the “fire hose of falsehoods” that now appear on X, the former Twitter, the social media app that Musk bought for $44 billion two years ago. Our tax dollars have essentially supersized our world’s single wealthiest individual.

Back in the middle of the 20th century, the United States took quite a different approach to the money pouring into rich people’s pockets. From the early 1940s through the mid-1960s, the incomes of America’s richest faced a tax bite that would be unimaginable today.

In 1942, then-president Franklin Roosevelt proposed a 100 percent tax rate on income over $25,000, the equivalent of about $484,000 today. Congress wouldn’t go along with that 100 percent top rate. But lawmakers did give the okay to a 94 percent top tax rate on 1944 income over $200,000.

In the 1950s, under the Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, the federal tax rate on top-bracket income never dipped below 91 percent.

Today’s top-bracket federal income tax rate? That stands, on paper, at 37 percent on income over $693,751 for a couple filing jointly. But assorted loopholes have left the tax rate the rich face on their actual annual gains enormously lower.

In 2021, a joint report from the Biden administration’s Office of Management and Budget and Council of Economic Advisers calculated that America’s wealthiest 400 billionaire families, between 2010 and 2018, “paid an average of just 8.2 percent of their income” — counting the gains in the value of their investments — in federal individual income taxes.

“That’s a lower rate,” the report noted, “than many ordinary Americans pay.”

Could we ever get back to anything close to Eisenhower-era tax rates on the richest among us? This past March, the Biden administration proposed a 25 percent minimum tax on the total income — including unrealized capital gains — of the nation’s top 0.01 percent, households worth at least $100 million.

About the same time, progressive lawmakers — led by U.S. senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and representatives Pramila Jayapal from Washington State and Brendan Boyle from Pennsylvania —  introduced the Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act, legislation that would impose a wealth tax on America’s 100,000 wealthiest households, our richest 0.05 percent.

Under this proposed legislation, wealthy households worth up to $1 billion would face an annual tax of 2 percent on their wealth over $50 million. Richer households would face an additional 1 percent tax on wealth over $1 billion.

One of the Senate co-sponsors of that legislation, Vermont’s Bernie Sanders, has also gone a step further and called for a 100 percent tax on wealth over $1 billion.

“I think people can make it on $999 million,” Sanders told journalist Chris Wallace last year.

Sanders and one of America’s most famous deep pockets, Bill Gates, have actually had a friendly podcast discussion over whether our tax rates should allow billion-dollar fortunes to even exist. The Sanders proposal, noted Gates, would tax away over 99 percent of his personal fortune. Gates would be willing to let the IRS take 62 percent, about $100 billion.

For a better America, that certainly might make a good place to start.

Inequality for more

by B. R. GOWANI

The criteria for winning a presidential debate is very simple: the candidate who fumbles less, makes less mistakes, avoids too many verbal gaffes, etc., who is able to present a rosy picture for the future, and, who believes in people’s “ambition, the aspirations, [and] the dreams,” is the winner — provided all bullshitting is done with a serious face.

However, it’s entirely a different matter whether that person has any genuine solutions to the problems majority of the people face.

Exactly eight years ago, first time in US history of 240 years, a woman had a chance to reach the highest office — Hillary Clinton won popular votes by almost 3 million votes, but that rare opportunity was snatched away by the Electoral College. The victory went to Donald Trump, a slowly evolving fascist. It is to be remembered that Clinton was not that woman progressives have been waiting for.

This time, another woman, Kamala Harris, is in the race for presidency. Her opponent is none other than Trump. Harris was not in the competition but got her opportunity when the Democratic establishment realized, after the Biden/Trump debate, that the horse they have been trying to steady for three and a half years cannot any more stand on its own, and could give up any moment.

Thus, Joe Biden was pushed aside with a tribute that he left the race for a second term out of patriotic duty. Everyone knows that almost no one gives up power, whether s/he is an authoritarian or a “democrat,” without a rough push.

Kamala is the in-girl

Kamala is the in-girl — so many love and support her, not only most of the Democrats but also some prominent Republicans! Within 36 hours of Biden’s decision not to run, and his nominating of Harris as his successor, Harris campaign raised $100 million that jumped to $310 in less than two weeks, with new donors contributing two-thirds of the amount. By September 6, the number had nearly doubled to $615 million. Andrew Byrnes, a tech policy strategist and Harris fundraiser, said the amount he raised for Kamala in one week was double the amount he raised for Biden in a whole year.

In two months, the amount rose to $1 billion. No other presidential candidate has accumulated such a huge amount in such a short period!

Trump is no match for Harris in fundraising despite the fact that his campaign received $100 million from Miriam Adelson who likes Trump so much that she said “Book of Trump” <1> should be added to the Bible, i.e. the Old Testament. Trump allied PAC also got $150 million from Timothy Mellon. Trump’s equally nasty buddy Elon Musk has contributed $76 million.

Trump is the best thing that has happened to the Democratic Party. Most Democrats never tire of ridiculing him. This enables them and the Democrat-leaning news media to keep their supporters busy in Trump’s antics and eccentricities and thus saves the party from answering hard questions.

MSNBC is also known as MSDNC or Democratic National Committee mouthpiece. MSNBC is a cheerleader for the Democrats. Biden and Harris regularly watch MSNBC’s Morning Joe with Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski. “A Jacobin analysis of six months of its Gaza coverage reveals an unflagging role cheering on Israel’s genocide.”

Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn co-founder and billionaire, is backing Kamala because he wants to get rid of Lina Khan, chair of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Billionaire Mark Cuban endorsed Harris too for the same reason: dump Khan.

Sheryl Sandberg is “thrilled to support” Kamala <2>, because

She is an accomplished leader, a fierce advocate of abortion rights, and the strongest candidate to lead our country forward.

Ron Conway, a billionaire, has asked tech community to join hands to salvage “our democracy” by getting behind Kamala, whom he has known “for decades” to prevent Trump’s reentry into White House. Conway says she is an “advocate for the tech ecosystem since the day we met.”

Melinda French Gates ($13 million), Reed Hastings (Netflix), George Soros and Alex Soros, Vinod Khosla, Jeffrey Katzenberg (former president of Walt Disney Studios), Bill Gates ($50 million), and other billionaires numbering 81 (or more) have joined the Kamala bandwagon, whereas, Trump has 52 billionaires with him.

Billionaires’ bribes count. Harris, who was with Biden’s plan of raising capital gains tax from 23.8% to 44.6%, opted for 33%, instead.

More than 90 business leaders, including over a dozen billionaires, wrote and signed an endorsement letter to Harris.

“Her election is the best way to support the continued strength, security, and reliability of our democracy and economy. … [She] ensure[s] American businesses can compete and win in the global market. … she will strive to give every American the opportunity to pursue the American dream.”

These billionaire and multimillionaire business people have nothing to do with democracy. The main thrust of the letter is US “businesses can compete and win in the global market,” under Harris, that is, the US government either diplomatically or through military force opens up foreign markets for them like US Commodore Matthew Perry forced Japan to open up for business in 1853. The other fallacy is that Kamala will try to provide people with “the opportunity to pursue the American dream.”

A few corporations are controlling most businesses in US. People are free to dream but whose dreams get realized is decided by the people in power.

Many US presidents, have warned about the increasing corporate power and its harmful effect on country. Thomas Jefferson had hoped in 1816 to “crush” the corporate power which was challenging government and defying laws. Instead the corporations crushed the government power and as journalist and novelist Theodore Dreiser puts it, “the corporations are the government.” (China is a capitalist country but the government controls the capitalists; this is anathema to the US; it wants China to go the US way.)

Women are elated with Harris entering the race for two main reasons: one is that someone from their gender has a chance to win and the other is Harris’ support for abortion. Sadly, most of these women have no Palestinian and Lebanese women and children on their mind.

Porn actors, some of them, are spending over $100,000 in seven swing states in support of Harris because they fear Trump presidency and Project 2025 will ban the porn industry. Harris should thank them but should ask them to stop violence and degradation of women in many of their videos.

Jeff Bridges extended his support to Kamala who is “just so certainly our girl.” He proudly proclaimed: “I’m white, I’m a dude, and I’m for Harris.” Bridges was a part of White Dudes for Harris Zoom call; over 180,000 joined in and raised about $4 million for her campaign. The invitation to join in was based on: “Are you a white guy who believes in science, human rights, and democracy?”

There have been several similar events: such as Latinas for Harris; White Women: Answer the Call; the Black Women Zoom; Caribbean-Americans for Harris; South Asian Women for Harris; Disabled Voters for Harris; Black Men for Harris; Win With Black Women; and South Asian Men for Harris.

Salman Rushdie, an author, joined the South Asian Men for Harris virtual meet and declared he’s in for Harris “1,000 per cent.” <3> One could understand Rushdie’s worry as a writer because if Trump wins and turns dictator, of which there are great chances, then he and his ministers, like Elon Musk, won’t tolerate any kind of criticism. The Kamala government would let them write in small publications and press which have limited reach and do not disturb or threaten the ruling class and the system.

Singer-songwriter Taylor Swift is for Kamala too because “She is a steady-handed, gifted leader and I believe we can accomplish so much more in this country if we are led by calm and not chaos.”

Billionaire Swift resides in her own bubble and is unaware that, until now the US has been led by calm leaders, but most people have achieved nothing but decline.

In 1982, when the Forbes 400 list was initiated, one could join the list with $100 million ($300 million in today’s money). There were only 13 billionaires then. Today, you need eleven times that amount or $3.3 billion to be one of 400 wealthy in US. So, 400 billionaires made it to the list but 415 individuals couldn’t make it, including Oprah Winfrey who has $3 billion, less than the required $3.3 billion.

What about the rest of the people? A whopping 37% of people in US have less than $400 in savings!

Singer-songwriter Beyonce joined Kamala at a rally in Houston to extend her support. Many celebrities including Leonardo DiCaprio, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Eminem, Bruce Springsteen, Patti LaBelle, Jennifer Lopez, Jamie Lee Curtis, George Clooney <4>, and Sarah Jessica Parker (who is voting for Kamala for 31 things, including “For our military, past and currently serving” but not for peace or ceasefire in Gaza).

Dick Cheney, the Vice President in George W. Bush regime and one of the major architects of the Iraq War, a Republican, has also announced that he’ll vote for Kamala Harris.

“[There had] never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump”

“He [Trump] tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him.” “He can never be trusted with power again.”

“As citizens, we each have a duty to put country above partisanship to defend our constitution.” “That is why I will be casting my vote for Vice-President Kamala Harris.”

Liz Cheney, a Republican and Dick Cheney’s daughter, supports Harris too, and joined her campaign events thrice in early October. Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez , the progressive supporters and Democrats like Harris, are campaigning for her but have not been invited to appear with Harris, as yet.

Liz Cheney criticized Trump: “He is petty, he is vindictive, and he is cruel.” If she had not mentioned Trump’s name, one would have assumed she was talking about her dad Dick Cheney who is not any better, in any respect, but is worst than Trump –until now. Liz Cheney also added: “Violence does not and must never determine who rules us. Voters do.”

Trump called Dick Cheney (whose approval rating, when he left office, was mere 13%) a “King of Endless, Nonsensical Wars,” and blasted both father- daughter duo on his TruthSocial account.

“… Her father, Dick, was a leader of our ridiculous journey into the Middle East, where Trillions of Dollars were spent, millions of people were killed – and for what? NOTHING! Well, today, these two fools, because the Republican Party no longer wants them, endorsed the most Liberal Senator in U.S. Senate, further Left than even Pocahontas or Crazy Bernie Sanders – Lyin’ Kamala Harris. What a pathetic couple that is, both suffering gravely from Trump Derangement Syndrome. Good Luck to them both!!!”

Trump is correct about Dick Cheney. He was George H. W. Bush’s Defense Secretary when US went to war against Iraq and destroyed that country. Dick Cheney was Vice President of Bush Jr., when US devastated Afghanistan in 2001, and again went to war against Iraq, in 2003.

Trump lies a great deal but then every now and then he also shows a mirror of the US empire, and its imperialist crimes. Trump once told Bill O’Reilly,
“We’ve got a lot of killers. What do you think — our country’s so innocent?” Or just recently he said: Trillions of Dollars were spent, millions of people were killed. Now this kind of talk can’t be conducive to people running the empire because they suffer from spectrophobia.

238 staffers from four previous Republican governments and many more, including John Negroponte, one of the criminal minds of US imperialism, endorsed Kamala. Barbara Pierce Bush (daughter of former Republican president George W. Bush) is supporting Kamala with the hope the US moves “forward and protect women’s rights.”

Why so many wealthy and powerful people have gotten behind Kamala? The reasons, as we have seen vary, but the most important one is that Kamala will maintain the statue quo. She’s not going to make any drastic changes, but just the cosmetic type.

On the other hand, many rich, and not very rich, in the ruling class are scared of Trump’s unpredictable nature. The wealthy class may benefit much more under Trump than under Harris. In 2017, Trump lowered the corporate tax rate from (Obama government’s) 35% to 21% and corporations benefited a lot. (Biden raised it to 28% and not the 35% it used to be during his vice presidency.)

Trump may concentrate on domestic issues rather than waging foreign wars; but, then if something triggers him, or he is incited by his aides, or perceives a threat from foreign leader(s), then he may go unhinged.

Biden praised Liz Cheney’s “courage” to appear with Harris. “I admire her. Her dad and I worked together a long, long time.” Biden, like Cheneys, loves violence and war. Republicans and Democrats working together can screw the people within and without the US. It becomes so much easier to wage a war against “foreign enemy” when both parties are working together.

Trump will probably do within the US, what the US has been doing to the world for several decades. He will unleash the army on his opponents and critics. Here is Trump:

“The threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous, and grave, than the threat from within, Despite the hatred and anger of the Radical Left Lunatics who want to destroy our Country, we will MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

Irony

In 2021, Trump’s vice presidential candidate, J. D. Vance had portrayed Vice President Kamala Harris and other women Democrats as, “a bunch of childless cat ladies miserable at their own lives.”

During the presidential debate in September 2024, Trump falsely charged Haitians residing in Springfield, Ohio, of “eating the dogs … the cats … the pets of the people that live there.”

On October 31, Trump said “Well, I’m going to do it whether the women like it or not. I am going to protect them.”

On October 27, comedian Tony Hinchcliffe made racist fun of Latino people by saying “These Latinos, they love making babies,” he called Puerto Rico “a floating island of garbage,” and repeated the lie about Haitians eating pets.

Donald Trump and his team, it seems, is striving to lose the election. Despite that, the polls show a tight race between Trump and Harris.

On Harris’ side, she is careful but had to distance herself from Biden telling Latinos “The only garbage I see floating out there is his [Trump] supporters — his — his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American.” Harris has yet to comment on former president Bill Clinton‘s “racist Michigan speech” as Sanjana Karanth puts it. Bill Clinton said:

“I understand why young Palestinian and Arab Americans in Michigan think too many people have died — I get that, but…” “Hamas makes sure that they’re shielded by civilians, they’ll force you to kill civilians, if you want to defend yourself.”

Harris is very popular, was able to amass great amount of money, got lot of support but somehow the polls — which may be wrong , as often happens — are not favoring her. Who knows, as investigative reporter Dave Lindorff points out, Harris could win if she gets “secret women’s vote” in rural Pennsylvania similar to what happened in Kansas in 2022 regarding the banning of abortion referendum. Julia Roberts encouraged women to exercise their right to choose, within the privacy of the election booth:

This is an election where voters will decide between possible drastic changes that result in fascism, versus, maintaining the unjust pro-war inegalitarian status quo.

However, those who are fed up with the two main lesser and greater evils, there are two other candidates to choose from who are anti-war and pro-common people: Jill Stein of Green Party and Claudia De la Cruz of Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL).

Notes

<1> Miriam Adelson wrote in her paper Israel Hayom:

“Would it be too much to pray for a day when the Bible gets a ‘Book of Trump,’ much like it has a ‘Book of Esther’ celebrating the deliverance of the Jews from ancient Persia?

“Until that is decided, let us, at least, sit back and marvel at this time of miracles for Israel, for the United States, and for the whole world.”

<2> In June 2024, Kamala Harris joined by Sandberg screened Sandberg’s documentary Screams Before Silence at the White House. The film was about alleged rapes by Hamas members — a long debunked theory. See Briahna Joy Gray’s detailed expose about the entire issue.

<3> Once accepted by US mainstream, which Rushdie has been, he toned down or ignored the crimes of the US, and its ally, Israel. There was a time when Rushdie was for the Palestinian cause; he interviewed Professor Edward Said, the most prominent Palestinian in the Western world then. Last year, Rushdie repeated the Western line of argument labeling Hamas “as a “terrorist organization.” One should have asked Rushdie as to how the occupied people should fight their occupiers.

<4> In March 2012, George Clooney was arrested in Washington DC while protesting in front of Sudan’s embassy for violence in South Sudan. He then boasted: “We are the antigenocide paparazzi.” But nowadays Clooney is careful what he says:

“I’m very careful not to use words like genocide, occupation, colonialism, open-air prisons — despite believing they do accurately describe what’s happening in Gaza. Those put a target on your back. I also don’t use the word unprovoked. A lot of people say October 7 was “unprovoked.” Well, it’s a massive chicken-and-egg situation, this back-and-forth. Also, I didn’t know the word cease-fire would be such a problem! I would hope we don’t want wars!”

B. R. Gowani can be reached at brgowani@hotmail.com

CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY

Breathing thin air at extreme altitudes presents a significant challenge—there’s simply less oxygen with every lungful. Yet, for more than 10,000 years, Tibetan women living on the high Tibetan Plateau have not only survived but thrived in that environment.

A study led by Cynthia Beall, Distinguished University Professor Emerita at Case Western Reserve University, answers some of those questions. The research, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, reveals how the Tibetan women’s physiological traits enhance their ability to reproduce in such an oxygen-scarce environment.

The findings, Beall said, not only underscore the remarkable resilience of Tibetan women but also provide valuable insights into the ways humans can adapt in extreme environments. Such research also offers clues about human development, how we might respond to future environmental challenges, and the pathobiology of people with illnesses associated with hypoxia at all altitudes.

“Understanding how populations like these adapt,” Beall said, “gives us a better grasp of the processes of human evolution.”

Beall and her team studied 417 Tibetan women aged 46 to 86 who live between 12,000 and 14,000 feet above sea level in a location in Upper Mustang, Nepal on the southern edge of the Tibetan Plateau.

They collected data on the women’s reproductive histories, physiological measurements, DNA samples and social factors. They wanted to understand how oxygen delivery traits in the face of high-altitude hypoxia (low levels of oxygen in the air and the blood) influence the number of live births—a key measure of evolutionary fitness.

Adaptation to thin air

They discovered that the women who had the most children had a unique set of blood and heart traits that helped their bodies deliver oxygen.

Women reporting the most live births had levels of hemoglobin, the molecule that carries oxygen, near the sample’s average, but their oxygen saturation was higher, allowing more efficient oxygen delivery to cells without increasing blood viscosity; the thicker the blood, the more strain on the heart.

“This is a case of ongoing natural selection,” said Beall, also the university’s Sarah Idell Pyle Professor of Anthropology. “Tibetan women have evolved in a way that balances the body’s oxygen needs without overworking the heart.”

A window into human evolution

Beall’s interdisciplinary research team, which included longtime collaborators Brian Hoit and Kingman Strohl, from the Case Western Reserve School of Medicine, and other U.S. and international researchers, conducted fieldwork in 2019. The team worked closely with local communities in the Nepal Himalayas, hiring local women as research assistants and collaborating with community leaders.

One genetic trait they studied likely originated from the Denisovans who lived in Siberia about 50,000 years ago; their descendants later migrated onto the Tibetan Plateau.

The trait is a variant of the EPAS1 gene that is unique to populations indigenous to the Tibetan Plateau and regulates hemoglobin concentration. Other traits, such as increased blood-flow to the lungs and wider heart ventricles, further enhanced oxygen delivery.

These traits contributed to greater reproductive success, offering insight into how humans adapt to lifelong levels of low oxygen in the air and their bodies.

PhysOrg for more

Youtube for more

by ISABEL RIKKERS & NOELLE BRIGDE

President Nayib Bukele’s framing of security as a spiritual battle between good and evil helps to explain his popularity and his support for Israel.

On October 8 of last year, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele published a post on X outlining his position on Palestine. “As a Salvadoran of Palestinian ancestry, I’m sure the best thing that could happen to the Palestinian people is for Hamas to completely disappear. Those savage beasts do not represent the Palestinians,” he wrote. Drawing parallels between Hamas and gangs in El Salvador, Bukele continued: “It would be like if Salvadorans would have sided with MS13 terrorists, just because we share ancestors or nationality. The best thing that happened to us as a nation was to get rid of those rapists and murderers and let the good people thrive.” Bukele closed his post with a word of advice, drawing from his nearly 30-month long—and counting—assault against gangs. “Palestinians should do the same: get rid of those animals and let the good people thrive.”

The parallel drawn by Bukele between Hamas and MS13 derives from an evangelical Christian understanding of “terrorist” security threats as a spiritual contest between good and evil. Bukele uses biblical allegories, religious narratives, declarations of devotion, and visual propaganda leveraging sacred symbols to justify the country’s security policies, in addition to asserting the Salvadoran government’s unwavering support for Israel during its genocide of Palestinians.

Security Theology

According to Bukele’s formulation, the great battle for the soul of nations demands a cleansing of uncivilized individuals living among otherwise good people.Since first declaring a state of emergency in March 2022, the Bukele regime’s hardline against gangs remains popular and most Salvadorans perceive an increase in public safety, despite a deepening record of political repression, authoritarianism, arbitrary detentions, the suspension of constitutional rights, and widespread human rights abuses—including 265 deaths in state custody and torture in prisons. El Salvador now has the highest incarceration rate in the world. According to Bukele’s formulation, the great battle for the soul of nations demands a cleansing of uncivilized individuals living among otherwise good people. Recycled iterations of security discourse from the Cold War through the War on Terror and the current “war on gangs” rearticulate a colonial imaginary buttressed by Christian Zionism.

To celebrate his first presidential victory in 2019, Bukele posted an Instagram photo of himself praying at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. In the photo, taken during an official visit to Israel in 2018, then-mayor Bukele wears his trademark leather jacket and closes his eyes in devotion. The image speaks to multiple, long-standing sources of Israeli influence on Salvadoran foreign policy; it explains why, after October 7, 2023, the Salvadoran government refused to criticize the Israeli genocide of Palestinians, despite the country being home to a sizeable and politically consequential population of Palestinian ancestry, including Bukele. Furthermore, the image elucidates a common ideological frame underpinning both Salvadoran and Israeli security politics. Within this frame—what Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian calls “security theology”—security itself becomes religion, intertwined with biblical narratives.

Christian Zionism and “Spirit-Filled Geopolitics”

In 2018, prior to becoming president, Bukele arrived in Jerusalem at the invitation of deputy foreign minister Tzipi Hotovely and Jack Rosen, the president of the American Jewish Congress, to attend an urban policy conference. At such conferences, policymakers, consultants, and tech industry representatives broker deals for security initiatives. Indeed, shortly after his election, Bukele announced a $3 million donation from the nonprofit Jerusalem Foundation for police and military medical supplies. Since assuming the presidency, Bukele has also extensively used Israeli spyware to track the activities of independent journalists, human rights defenders, and members of opposition parties.

Israeli exports to El Salvador have grown at an annual rate of 21.1 percent from 2017 to 2022, with the top products being firearms and military weapons. These connections highlight the material influence of the Israeli military-industrial complex and continuing Salvadoran security dependence on Israel, which began with the bloody military regimes of the 1970s. Israel provided 83 percent of Salvadoran military imports between 1975 and 1979, and these agreements continued throughout the Salvadoran civil war (1980-1992) with deals for napalm, arms, and military technology and training.

NACLA for more

by HAMID DABASHI

The acclaimed African-American author’s new book marks his deliverance from Zionist prose and signals a broader cultural shift in the US that is critical of Israel

The United States is the single most powerful supporter of the Israeli settler colony.

The US government heavily arms and gives political cover to Israel, and considers the people at the mercy of its aggression as America’s enemies. And president after president, Republican and Democrat, has enabled Israel to commit war crimes, crimes against humanity, and even genocide with total impunity.

The current genocide Israel is committing in Palestine is legally and morally placed at the doorstep of the US.

Therefore, what happens in the US – especially when the political mainstream begins to wake up and see Zionism for the apocalyptic genocidal fanaticism that it is – matters for world peace.

Zionists – whether Israeli or American, Christian or Jewish – do not like the prospects of that awakening.

As the racist and colonial nature of Israel’s regime became more widely recognised, the experiences between Palestinians and the African American community also became more prominently linked, especially in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Over the last year, several outlets – from The New York Times to Politico, Vox, and others – published articles examining the history of Black and Palestinian solidarity.

Indeed, these discussions emerged in full force after 7 October 2023 as several leading African American public figures and intellectuals made clear their stance on Israel – even making headlines on “how Gaza has shaken Black politics”.

When US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield raises her hand and vetoes one Security Council resolution after another to stop the Israeli murderous machinery; when we see US Secretary of Defence Lloyd J Austin III in the news pledging his mighty military will protect Israel against attempts to stop its rampage; when the irredeemably corrupt New York City Mayor Eric Adams delivers nauseating “stand with Israel” speeches, something deep in the history of African American experience cries foul.  

And when Congresswoman Cori Bush of Missouri avows: “Aipac [American Israel Public Affairs Committee], I’m coming to tear your kingdom down!” she invokes an entirely different legacy of solidarity with Palestinians in African American history, as Israel systematically unleashes its savageries against Palestinians and other Arab nations like Lebanon.

Towering figures like Malcolm X, James Baldwin, Angela Davis, Alice Walker, and Cornel West have been bold, precise, and hard-hitting when it comes to condemningthe criminal atrocities of the US and Israel in cahoots together.

Re-enter Ta-Nehisi Coates

It was not too long ago when the heat on Ta-Nehisi Coates, a prominent African-American literary and critical voice, got so bad he ran out of the kitchen.

Back in 2017, he deleted his Twitter account with millions of followers and went into occultation following a scathing critique levelled against him by the unflinching moral conscience of Cornel West, a distinguished scholar and activist who called him “the neoliberal face of the black freedom struggle”.

Middle East Eye for more

by SPENCER McDANIEL

On August 24th, 2024, Elon Musk, who is currently one of the richest, most powerful, and most influential human beings on the planet, tweeted, “Can’t recommend The Iliad enough! Best as Penguin audiobook at 1.25 speed.” He accompanied these words with a link to the audiobook edition of E. V. Rieu’s 1946 prose translation of the Odyssey (a different poem from the Iliad), published by Penguin Classics. This tweet has created a lot of discourse in the online classics community, with many classicists criticizing Musk while others are left wondering what there is to criticize. In this post, I will explain what the problems are with Musk’s recommendation, which basically break down into two separate issues: right-wing dog whistling and bad practical advice.

Use of ancient Greek literature as a dog whistle for right-wing social politics

Classics has been a small academic field for a long time and, unfortunately, in recent years, our field has become increasingly endangered due to many colleges and universities eliminating or downsizing their classics programs and not hiring new tenure-track faculty to replace old faculty who are retiring. In most contexts, a prominent public figure with a large platform recommending that his followers read the Iliad and/or the Odyssey would be a good thing for classics.

Context, however, is extremely important. Elon Musk isn’t just any high-profile public figure and he isn’t just recommending that people read Homer in vacuum; he is a man who seeks to advance a particular sociopolitical agenda and he is recommending that people read the Iliad in the context of this agenda.

Over the past few years, Musk has increasingly embraced white male supremacist, anti-LGBTQ social politics. As the new owner of Twitter (which he has tried and largely failed to rebrand as X), he has invited right-wing figures and Neo-Nazis who were previously banned from the site for hate speech to return, he has deliberately boosted right-wing and anti-trans accounts, he has significantly relaxed enforcement of rules banning transphobic harassment on the site, and he has banned use of the words cis and cisgender as “slurs.” Most of his own recent activity on the site consists of racist, sexist, queerphobic (especially transphobic), and antisemitic dog whistling.

Moreover, under Musk’s ownership, accounts promoting hard-right ideologies centered around the glorification of “traditional” white masculinity have absolutely exploded in both number and prominence. Many of these accounts use a front of promoting “western” literature, art, and philosophy to appeal to a broad audience while also promoting their ideologies in sometimes subtle and sometimes not-so-subtle ways. Many of these accounts focus specifically on content related to ancient Greece and Rome.

Only a few days before Musk made his tweet recommending the Iliad, the prominent right-wing political operative Christopher F. Rufo, who is best known for having basically single-handedly manufactured the media hysteria over “critical race theory” back in 2020, issued a tweet celebrating that the recently right-wing-hijacked New College of Florida will be teaching Greek literature instead of “gender studies.”

Tales of Times Forgotten for more

by UMAR A FAROOQ

Hassan Abdel Salam’s protest organising in West Bank led to imprisonment. Now he’s leading push against Harris in US presidential elections

Hassan Abdel Salam is a newcomer to grassroots American politics.

With a PhD in sociology and a career focused on exploring human rights within the realm of Islamic law, Salam was living the life of a typical Muslim scholar in American academia before the 2024 US presidential election cycle.

The fity-six-year-old Egyptian American was teaching at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, and was a welcomed presence among students who described him as one of the “nicest and kind-hearted people I have ever been taught by”.

But with outrage over US support for the war on Gaza creating a huge rift between Muslim voters and the Democratic Party, Abdel Salam has found himself at the helm of a political campaign that could potentially cost Vice President Kamala Harris the presidency, because she has not agreed to an unconditional ceasefire to Israel’s war on Gaza or an arms embargo.

As one of the co-founders of the Abandon Harris campaign, which recently endorsed Green Party candidate Jill Stein for president, Abdel Salam has spent the last several months travelling from state to state trying to convince Muslim voters and other Americans enraged with the war on Gaza to both protest against the Biden-Harris administration’s support for Israel and chart a new political path outside of the two-party structure.

“We need to begin to look like independents that can swing either way, so that both parties bid for our approval, such that we begin the process of making the two parties move towards Muslim Americans,” he told MEE.

Salam never saw himself as an activist at the forefront of a pivotal moment in a US election, but his stint in Israeli detention thrust him into a struggle to stop American military support to Israel.

Israel’s Moscobiyeh prison 

In 2022, Salam’s research on the strategies Palestinian youth activists were utilising to peacefully protest against the Israeli occupation of Palestine brought him to Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank.

He began working with activists, organising a peaceful protest inspired by the 2018 Great March of Return protests in Gaza and the 2011 Tahrir Square protests in Egypt which spurred President Hosni Mubarak’s resignation.

As soon as he stepped foot in Jerusalem and attempted to enter the site of Al-Aqsa Mosque, Abdel Salam said he witnessed firsthand the reality of the Israeli occupation and how it had affected the morale of Palestinians living there.

In the neighbourhood of Silwan, he saw Israeli forces demolish a Palestinian home as residents on the streets watched helplessly. He spoke to young Palestinians whose fathers were in Israeli prisons, and who say they had seen Israeli forces beat their mothers at military checkpoints.

“They’re often feeling a lot of contradictory emotions because they see the disaster all around them, and they want to do something, but they’re constantly being made impotent because they’re met by detention, attack, the possibility of injury,” Abdel Salam told MEE.

“Their homes are being demolished, which I saw with my own two eyes.”

The plan was to launch a protest at a single site in the Palestinian territories where Palestinians and peace activists could gather to call for the “liberation of Palestine”, as international media covered the demonstrations for a global audience.

That plan, however, soon fell apart. On 1 December 2022, Abdel Salam’s research assistant was arrested while travelling into the occupied West Bank from Jordan.

That day, when Abdel Salam went to Al-Aqsa to pray, he said he was immediately handcuffed, stripped of his clothes and taken into detention.

“There was one guy who really hated me. I’d seen him many times before. As I was approaching the gate around a little bit after 6pm, he really excitedly came at me while tripping over himself – sort of thrilled now – and he started scrolling down his phone,” Abdel Salam said.

“I could see there was a photo of me on it, and the intelligence or the government of Israel was calling for the capture of me and my research assistant. I hadn’t known by then that my research assistant was already captured.”

The American professor was detained and sent to Moscobiyeh prison in West Jerusalem, which according to the prisoners’ rights organisation, Addameer, is known for torturing detainees. 

“They blindfolded me in a claustrophobic experience and guided me as I humbly tiptoed to my dungeon cell – a poorly lit, windowless cell where I spent 23 days behind two metallic doors.”

“My company was this toilet hole, which was disgusting, and I engaged in 12 days of hunger strike.”

Middle East Eye for more

by CHRIS HEDGES

The choice in the elections is between corporate and oligarchic power. Corporate power needs stability and a technocratic government. Oligarchic power thrives on chaos and, as Steve Bannon says, the “deconstruction of the administrative state.” Neither are democratic. They have each bought up the political class, the academy and the press. Both are forms of exploitation that impoverish and disempower the public. Both funnel money upwards into the hands of the billionaire class. Both dismantle regulations, destroy labor unions, gut government services in the name of austerity, privatize every aspect of American society, from utilities to schools, perpetuate permanent wars, including the genocide in Gaza, and neuter a media that should, if it was not controlled by corporations and the rich, investigate their pillage and corruption. Both forms of capitalism disembowel the country, but they do it with different tools and have different goals.

Kamala Harris, anointed by the richest Democratic Party donors without receiving a single primary vote, is the face of corporate power. Donald Trump is the buffoonish mascot for the oligarchs. This is the split within the ruling class. It is a civil war within capitalism played out on the political stage. The public is little more than a prop in an election where neither party will advance their interests or protect their rights.

George Monbiot and Peter Hutchison in their book “Invisible Doctrine: The Secret History of Neoliberalism,” refer to corporate power as “housebroken capitalism.” Housebroken capitalists need consistent government policies and fixed trade agreements because they have made investments that take time, sometimes years, to mature. Manufacturing and agriculture industries are examples of “housebroken capitalism.”

You can see my interview with Monbiot here.

Monbiot and Hutchison refer to oligarchic power as “warlord capitalism.” Warlord capitalism seeks the total eradication of all impediments to the accumulation of profits including regulations, laws and taxes. It makes its money by charging rent, by erecting toll booths to every service we need to survive and collecting exorbitant fees.

The political champions of warlord capitalism are the demagogues of the far right, including Trump, Boris Johnson, Giorgia Meloni, Narendra Modi, Victor Orban and Marine Le Pen. They sow dissension by peddling absurdities, such as the great replacement theory, and dismantling structures that provide stability, such as the European Union. This creates uncertainty, fear and insecurity. Those that orchestrate this insecurity promise, if we surrender even more rights and civil liberties, that they will save us from phantom enemies, such as immigrants, Muslims and other demonized groups.

The epicenters of warlord capitalism are private equity firms. Private equity firms such as Apollo, Blackstone, the Carlyle Group and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, buy up and plunder businesses. They pile on debt. They refuse to reinvest. They slash staff. They willfully drive companies into bankruptcy. The object is not to sustain businesses but to harvest them for assets, to make short-term profit. Those who run these firms, such as Leon Black, Henry Kravis, Stephen Schwarzman and David Rubenstein, have amassed personal fortunes in the billions of dollars.

Trump’s cohort of Silicon Valley backers, led by Elon Musk, were what The New York Times writes, “finished with Democrats, regulators, stability, all of it. They were opting instead for the freewheeling, fortune-generating chaos that they knew from the startup world.” They planned to “plant devices in people’s brains, replace national currencies with unregulated digital tokens, replace generals with artificial intelligence systems.” 

Billionaire Peter Thiel, a founder of PayPal and a Trump supporter, has waged war on “confiscatory taxes.” He funds an anti-tax political action committee and proposes the construction of floating nations that would impose no compulsory income taxes. 

Israeli-American billionaire Miriam Adelson, widow of casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, with an estimated net worth of $35 billion, has given Trump $100 million for his campaign. While Adelson, who was born and raised in Israel, is a fervent Zionist, she is also part of the club of oligarchs who seek to slash taxes for the rich, taxes that have already been cut by Congress, or diminished through a series of legal loopholes. 

The economist Adam Smith warned that unless rentier income was heavily taxed and put back into a financial system it would self-destruct.

The wreckage private equity firms and the oligarchs orchestrate, is taken out on workers who are forced into a gig economy and who have seen stable salaries and benefits eradicated. It is taken out on pension funds that are depleted because of usurious fees, or are abolished. It is taken out on our health and safety. Residents of nursing homes, for example, owned by private equity firms, experience 10 percent more deaths — not to mention higher fees — because of staffing shortages and reduced compliance with standards of care.  

Private equity firms are an invasive species. They are also ubiquitous. They have acquired educational institutions, utility companies, and retail chains, while bleeding taxpayers hundreds of billions in subsidies which are made possible by bought-and-paid-for prosecutors, politicians, and regulators. What is particularly galling is that many of the industries seized by private equity firms — water, sanitation, electrical grids, hospitals — were paid for out of public funds. They cannibalize the nation, leaving behind shuttered and bankrupt industries. 

Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner document how private equity works in the book “These are the Plunderers: How Private Equity Runs-and Wrecks-America.”

“Routinely lionized in the financial press for their dealmaking and lauded for their ‘charitable’ giving, these unbridled capitalists have mounted expensive lobbying campaigns to ensure continued enrichment from favorable tax laws,” they write. 

“Hefty donations have won them positions of power on museum boards and think tanks. They’ve published books on leadership extolling ‘the importance of humility and humanity’ at the top, while eviscerating those at the bottom. Their companies arrange for them to avoid paying taxes on the billions in gains that their stockholdings generate. And, of course, they rarely mention that the companies they own are among the largest beneficiaries of government investments in highways, railroads, and primary education, reaping massive perks from subsidies and tax policies that allow them to pay substantially lower rates on their earnings,” they explain 

“These men are America’s modern-age robber barons. But unlike many of their predecessors in the nineteenth century, who amassed stupefying riches by extracting a young nation’s natural resources, today’s barons mine their wealth from the poor and middle class through complex financial dealings.” 

Scheerpost for more