Elon Musk’s Alarming Influence; Fighting for Veterans Who Were Deported–Coachella Valley Independent’s Indy Digest: Nov. 11, 2024

Indy Digest: Nov. 11, 2024

Here are links to two pieces. They have one thing—a person, actually—in common.

The first is from The Washington Post, headlined “Elon Musk joins Trump’s call with Ukraine’s Zelensky.” An excerpt:

Elon Musk joined a Wednesday call between President-elect Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, said four people familiar with the matter, in the latest sign that the tech billionaire intends to intertwine himself with Trump’s governing apparatus.

The call began with a conversation between Trump and Zelensky, who remarked how the call was possible because of Musk’s Starlink internet service, which connected the two leaders while Zelensky was on a train to Budapest, said two of the people familiar with their conversation. Trump said Starlink had provided internet access to recent hurricane victims in the United States, noted that Musk was with him, and then put him on the call.

“It was very pleasant,” said a Ukrainian official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the private conversation. Zelensky “thanked” Musk for the Starlink terminals Ukraine relies on for much of its military communications amid Russia’s ongoing invasion of the country, the official added. …

Ukrainian officials came away from the call feeling that Musk, one of Trump’s largest donors, would join additional calls between the president-elect and world leaders as U.S. allies and adversaries scramble to prepare for a change of leadership in Washington following this week’s election.

The second piece, headlined “Elon Musk suggests support for replacing democracy with government of ‘high-status males,” comes from the Independent (U.K.). It was published in September, but it’s gained recent traction because of Elon Musk’s huge influence on the president-elect right now. An excerpt:

Elon Musk has used his large platform on X to promote a theory that a free-thinking “Republic” could only exist under the decision-making of “high status males” – and women or “low T men” would not be welcome in it.

On Sunday, Musk re-posted a screenshot of the theory – which appears to have been conceived on 4chan in 2021– on the social media site.

The theory, written by an anonymous user, suggests that the only people able to think freely are “high [testostrone] alpha males” and “aneurotypical people,” and that these “high status males” should run a “Republic” that is “only for those who are free to think.”

“People who can’t defend themselves physically (women and low T men) parse information through a consensus filter as a safety mechanism,” the post reads. …

Theories like this, which promote hegemonic masculinity, are often criticized for being sexist, exclusionary, not realistic and “toxic.” They are popular in alt-right communities.

“Interesting observation,” Musk said, in response to the post.

In a related vein, The Associated Press today published a piece with this lede: “Elon Musk’s super PAC spent around $200 million to help elect Donald Trump, according to a person familiar with the group’s spending, funding an effort that set a new standard for how billionaires can influence elections.”

Just when I convince myself that maybe, just maybe, things might not be so horrifying during the next Trump presidency, something like this comes along to disrupt that hope.

—Jimmy Boegle

More News

• Today, of course, is Veterans Day—and a group working on behalf of tens of thousands of U.S. military veterans who have been deported are worried the president-elect could kill efforts to allow those veterans to return to the country for which they fought. Border Report says: “Advocates for Deported Veterans around the world are concerned with Donald’s Trump’s election and with Republicans headed for control of the House of Representatives and the Senate, according to Robert Vivar, Director of the Unified U.S. Deported Veterans Resource Center. Vivar and others, have been lobbying for the Veterans Service Recognition Act, which would give about 40,000 members of the military, who are non-citizens, a path to citizenship. This would avoid deportation in the future should they be convicted of a crime while on active duty or after their days in uniform. The bill will also create a committee that would review cases and in some instances, reverse them, allowing deported veterans to return to the U.S. … A PBS report three years ago said 94,000 vets have been deported since 1996 when the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act was approved.“

• Authorities have determined the source—but not the senders—of a spate of racist text messages to young people, including some in California. ABC News says: “Many teenagers and college students reported being among those who received racist text messages sent to phone numbers across the U.S. last week. The texts, which tell the user they’re going to be taken to a plantation to ‘pick cotton,’ have been reported in at least 24 states, plus Washington, D.C, and primarily appeared to target Black users from teenagers to adults, according to investigators in several states. Most of the texts were sent last Wednesday, the day after the presidential election. … TextNow, a mobile provider that allows people to create phone numbers for free, said Friday that it discovered ‘one or more’ of its users allegedly sent out racist text messages and that the service quickly shut down the accounts. The text messaging service told ABC News that they were cooperating with law enforcement and condemned the messages. Some of the messages address the recipients by name. … As of Saturday, the texts were reported by authorities in California, Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Kansas, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, Connecticut, Illinois, Nevada, Tennessee, Indiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Washington, D.C.”

• The Washington Post profiles Michael Fanone, a member of D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department who was badly injured on Jan. 6, 2021. It’s a frightening, heartbreaking piece. A snippet: “Fanone, 44, has spent the past few years trying to tell people about what it was like to defend the Capitol. … How he’d been stripped of his badge, his radio, his ammunition and, nearly, his gun, which the rioters threatened to kill him with as he pleaded ‘I’ve got kids.’ How he’d been repeatedly Tasered and eventually pummeled unconscious, waking up in a hospital to learn he’d suffered a heart attack, a concussion and a traumatic brain injury. He’d testified before the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, describing how the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, had inspired him to join law enforcement. … He’d received a Congressional Gold Medal from Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-California) and the Presidential Citizens Medal from President Joe Biden. Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-Mississippi), the chair of the Jan. 6 committee, had promised Fanone and his comrades that ‘history will remember your names and your actions.’ Whatever. As Pennsylvania’s vote count tilted toward Trump, it all now seemed like a waste of time. ‘Those are hours, days and weeks of my life that I’ll never get back. I would have better spent them f—ing watching Pornhub,’ he said. Fanone had concluded, long before a single vote had been cast in the general election, that what unfolded at the Capitol that day hadn’t been some grand MAGA finale, but ‘just the f—ing beginning.’”

• Amsterdam police continue to make arrests following a series of antisemitic attacks after a soccer game. The New York Times reports: “The total number of people who are still being held in connection to with the violence is now eight, the police said, and more arrests were possible. The people arrested were all men ranging in age from 18 to 37. The police urged people to share any video footage as a way to aid their investigation. On Monday afternoon, Dick Schoof, the prime minister of the Netherlands, told Dutch reporters that the perpetrators who attacked Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters in Amsterdam primarily had ‘a migration background.’ ‘We have an integration problem,’ Mr. Schoof said. ‘This is an expression of that.’ Over the past year, tensions related to the war in Gaza have been high in Amsterdam, a city with a large Muslim population angered by Israel’s conduct in the conflict, which was set off by the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel. While most of the hundreds of Gaza-related protests in Amsterdam have been peaceful, some have turned turbulent. One disrupted the opening ceremony for the city’s new Holocaust museum.”

• Two chemists, writing for The Conversation, report that another human-caused factor could be altering the weather—microplastics: “Clouds form when water vapor—an invisible gas in the atmosphere—sticks to tiny floating particles, such as dust, and turns into liquid water droplets or ice crystals. In a newly published study, we show that microplastic particles can have the same effects, producing ice crystals at temperatures 5 to 10 degrees Celsius (9 to 18 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than droplets without microplastics. This suggests that microplastics in the air may affect weather and climate by producing clouds in conditions where they would not form otherwise.”

‹ And finally … today’s recall news involves … Costco butter! But before you head to the fridge to check your the lot numbers, let me assure you that you have nothing to worry about. We’ll let the New York Post (via AOL, because, hey, who knew that was still a thing?) explain this in their unique way: “Costco was forced to recall nearly 80,000 pounds of butter because the label failed to mention that the kitchen staple contains milk—and many social media users are rolling their eyes at the dairy dilemma. The FDA sent out an initial recall for 79,200 pounds of Kirkland Signature butter due to the undeclared allergen in October. Packages for both the salted and unsalted Kirkland Signature Sweet Cream Butter list cream as an ingredient, but do not include an allergy warning that the butter ‘Contains Milk.’ The bizarre recall has left many internet users scratching their heads. The most common comment: ‘It’s butter.’”

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