Meta, led by Mark Zuckerberg (left), and Amazon, led by Jeff Bezos, gave $1m each. Photograph: Getty Images
Donations, not restricted by campaign finance laws, come as industries seek favor with incoming administration
US business leaders are spending big on Donald Trump’s second inaugural fund, which is predicted to exceed even the record-setting $107m raised in 2017.
The donations, which are not restricted by campaign finance laws, come as industries and business leaders seek to curry favor with the incoming administration after the president-elect decisively won a second, non-consecutive term in November.
Some of the planned donationsreportedly include $1m each from Jeff Bezos’s Amazon, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Facebook parent company Meta, led by Mark Zuckerberg.
Hedge-fund manager Ken Griffin has said he plans to donate $1m, Bloomberg reported; Uber and its CEO Dara Khosrowshahi are reported to be chipping in $1m each; and Toyota, Ford and General Motors are each peeling off $1m. Ford is also reportedly coupling its donation with a fleet of vehicles.
“EVERYBODY WANTS TO BE MY FRIEND!!!” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social on Thursday.
Many senior executives in US industries and finance have already made the trip to Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s transition team headquarters, or are planning to, according to reports, as they seek to gain influence and access to the incoming administration that’s threatening to shake up international trading norms.
A diplomat at the United States’ State Department has resigned over the White House’s policy towards Israel’s ongoing war on the Gaza Strip, in the latest such resignation by an American official over the genocide.
According to The Guardian newspaper this week, Mike Casey – a US army veteran who served in Iraq and who was until recently the US State Department’s deputy political counsellor on Gaza – told the paper that he had handed in his resignation to the government back in July, ending four years at the State Department.
Casey’s decision to resign was rooted in a growing disillusionment with US policy – or the lack thereof – towards Israel and Palestine, and particularly with Washington’s clear bias toward Tel Aviv in all matters relating to its oppression of the Palestinians.
“We don’t have a policy on Palestine. We just do what the Israelis want us to do”, the former diplomat said. “I was too embarrassed to continue being an American diplomat. I knew I couldn’t go to another assignment and function.”
Now reportedly working at a local bank in Michigan, Casey recalled that he and his colleagues “would write daily updates on Gaza”, which government officials and the president Joe Biden himself would seemingly ignore, leading the diplomat’s team to joke that no one would read the reports even if cash were attached to them.
One such incident he cited was when Biden publicly questioned and denied in October last year the enormous death toll in Gaza at the hands of Israel’s occupation forces, which Casey had personally documented in a report. “I was the one writing the reports”, he said. “What’s the point of me writing this stuff if you’re just going to disregard it?”
The former diplomat added that “I got so tired of writing about dead kids”, expressing his frustration at “constantly having to prove to Washington that these children actually died and then watching nothing happen.”
Casey and his colleagues were also reportedly frustrated at the Biden administration’s repeated rejections of their strategies they proposed for Gaza’s reconstruction – another issue that the Israelis dictated the Americans on. “Every idea we came up with, [the Biden administration] would just say: ‘Well, the Israelis have another idea’”, he said.
An Israeli counter-proposal which Casey cited included letting local clans run the Strip after the war, an idea that American diplomats explained in “numerous reports and cables” why it wouldn’t work as it is “not in our interest to have warlords running Gaza”.
Over half a million Cubans filled the Malecón on Friday December 20 in a massive march against the US blockade. Photo: Presidencia Cuba
Hundreds of thousands of Cuban people participated in the mass demonstration against the six-decade US blockade of Cuba and the inclusion of Cuba on the US state sponsors of terrorism list.
“President Biden, take Cuba off the infamous list!” exclaimed the over half a million Cubans who marched on Havana’s malecón to the US Embassy. The mass march was called for by Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel earlier this week to demonstrate the absolute and total rejection of the Cuban people to the six-decade US-imposed blockade on the island as well as the inclusion of Cuba to the US State Sponsors of Terrorism list (SSoT) which together have wreaked havoc on the island’s economy.
The march was led by Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel and General Raúl Castro who were flanked by over half a million Cubans from all sectors of life including students, doctors, construction workers, artists, and more. Cuban youth and students who participated in the massive mobilization carried banners reading “the youth will not fail!” and “this is the revolution!”
“The youth will not fail!” Photo: UJC
The mass mobilization began at the Anti-Imperialist Tribunal José Martí on the malecón, which is located directly in front of the US Embassy. There, the Cuban president delivered an address wherein he condemned the inaction of Joe Biden in reversing the policies of his predecessor Donald Trump which have tightened the economic and financial stranglehold on Cuba. Biden, he said, “has done nothing to move away from the line of reinforced blockade and economic asphyxiation of Cuba left as a legacy by the Republican administration that returns to the Oval Office in January.”
He also highlighted that people from across the US and the world have in the recent period called attention to the inhumane US policy that goes against international law, “In recent weeks and days there have been numerous pronouncements from US leaders and from other parts of the world demanding that Biden make use of his authority to at least remove the name of a nation that should never have been on this spurious list.”
He emphasized that, “When our international trade is persecuted and financial transactions are impeded, the people of Cuba are being denied food, medicine, fuel, goods, supplies and merchandise essential for their survival.”
In addition to condemning the illegal blockade, Díaz-Canel also alerted the Cuban people that there are currently paramilitary groups training in the south of Florida with the intention of carrying out terrorist attacks against Cuba. “They are based in South Florida and do not hide to train. They do it publicly, in plain sight and with the protection of local authorities, even violating their own laws and international treaties.”
The president’s announcement was both a warning and an attempt to expose the deep hypocrisy of calling Cuba a sponsor of terrorism, whilst in plain view of US authorities, these groups, “organize, promote and finance terrorist actions against social and economic structures in Cuba.” This phenomenon is not new and he reminded the people of how the US sheltered “self-confessed terrorists” and CIA agent Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch who were the architects of numerous criminal attacks against the Cuban people, the worst one being the 1976 bombing of a Cuban aircraft which resulted in the death of 73 people. “Knowing such antecedents,” Díaz-Canel stated, “no US ruler can classify Cuba as a terrorist state.”
Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel and General Raúl Castro marching on the malecón. Photo: Presidencia Cuba
The demand to end the over 60-year US blockade on Cuba and remove the country from the SSoT list has become even more urgent in light of the energy crisis on the island. In recent months, Cuba has suffered a series of blackouts due to its major challenge in accessing fuel to keep its power plants operating.
The election of far-right leader Donald Trump as president has also awoken fears that he may intensify existing unilateral coercive measures against Cuba.
However, as manifested in the mass mobilization, the Cuban people have vowed to remain firm in the face of any threat lodged at them by the US government and maintain that they are open to dialogue with any US administration based on mutual respect and equality.
In concluding his address, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel declared, “If the United States persists in its determination to undermine our sovereignty, our independence, our socialism, it will only find rebellion and intransigence! Every administration that has tried has been outlived by the Cuban Revolution, and it will continue to be so. This is a march, yes, a very anti-imperialist march! Against US imperialism and its pretension to impose itself in Cuba by force or seduction, we will march now and always!”
AN IDYLL THAT MAY NOT LAST: View of Puerto Ayora, Galapagos in 2020Photo: David C.S./CC
THE national government of Daniel Noboa approved a resolution that enables US ships and crews to use the Galapagos Islands for control and patrol activities in the area.
On February 15 2024, Noboa signed a series of military co-operation treaties with the US government, allowing ships, military personnel, armament, equipment, and submarines to be installed in the natural reserve, which Unesco declared a World Natural Heritage Site in 1978.
In doing so, Noboa ratified the Washington Agreement, signed by former president Guillermo Lasso. The agreement grants US soldiers and their contractors several privileges, exemptions, and immunity in Ecuadorian territory, similar to those enjoyed by members of diplomatic missions as agreed on in the Vienna Convention.
According to Resolution No. 23-CGREG-10-12-2024 adopted by the Governing Council of the Galapagos Provincial Regime, the execution of the so-called Integral Security Project in the Insular Region was approved, which empowers US troops to operate in the Ecuadorian islands without paying the administrative taxes that other entities have to pay.
The official document states that the arrival of US troops seeks to diminish the agency of local drug traffickers, which, in alliance with transnational cartels, have caused a serious security crisis in the country.
On the first day of the hearing at The International Court of Justice aka ICJ, which has been asked by South Africa to consider whether Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza, an advertising van drives around Westminster displaying the definition of genocide on 11th of January 2024 in London, United Kingdom. [Kristian Buus/In Pictures via Getty Images]
It was bound to happen. With continuing operations in Gaza and increasingly violent acts against Palestinians in the occupied territories, human rights organisations are making progressively severe assessments of Israel’s warring cause. While the world awaits the findings of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on whether Israel’s campaign, as argued by South Africa, amounts to genocide, Amnesty International has already reached its conclusions.
In a 296-page report sporting the ominous title “You Feel Like You Are Subhuman”, the human rights body, after considering the events in Gaza between October 2023 and July 2024, identified a “pattern of conduct” indicating genocidal intent. These included, among other things, persistent direct attacks on civilians and objects; “deliberately indiscriminate strikes over the nine-month period, wiping out entire families repeatedly launched at times when these strikes would result in high numbers of casualties”; the nature of the weapons used; the speed and scale of destruction to civilian objects and infrastructure (homes, shelters, health facilities, water and sanitation infrastructure, agricultural land); the use of bulldozing and controlled demolitions and the use of incomprehensible, misleading and arbitrary evacuation orders.
The report does much to focus on statements from the highest officials to the common soldiery to reveal the mental state necessary to reveal genocide. One hundred two statements made by members of the Knesset, government officials and high-ranking commanders: “Dehumanised Palestinians, or called for, or justified genocidal acts or other crimes under international law against them.” The report also examined 62 videos, audio recordings and photographs posted online featuring gleeful Israeli soldiers rejoicing in the: “Destruction of Gaza or the denial of essential services to people in Gaza, or celebrated the destruction of Palestinian homes, mosques, schools and universities, including through controlled demolitions, in some cases without apparent military necessity.”
From its alternative universe, the Israeli public relations machine drew from its own agitprop specialists, working on mangling the language of the report. The formula is familiar: attack the authors first, not their premises. “The deplorable and fanatical organisation Amnesty International has once again produced a fabricated response that is entirely based on lies,” came the howl from Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesperson Oren Marmorstein.
Other methods of repudiation involve detaching Hamas and its war with Israel from any historical continuum, not least the fact that it was aided, supported and backed by Israel for years as a counter to Fatah in the West Bank. Isolating Hamas as a terrorist aberration also serves to treat it as alien, artificially foreign and not part of any resistance movement against suffocating Israeli occupation and strangulation. They, so goes this argument, are genocidal, and countering such a body can never be, by any stretch, genocidal. The pro-Israeli group NGO Monitor abides by this line of reasoning, calling allegations of genocide against Israel: “A reversal of the actual and clearly established intent of Hamas and its allies (including its patron, Iran) to wipe Israel off the map.”
Israel’s closest ally and sponsor, the US, proved predictable in rejecting the findings while still claiming to respect the humanitarian line. The US State Department’s principal deputy spokesperson, Vedant Patel, expressed disagreement with: “The conclusions of such a report. We had said previously and continue to find that the allegations of genocide are unfounded.” Patel did, however, pay lip service to the: “Vital role that civil society organisations like Amnesty International and human rights groups and NGOs play in providing information and analysis as it relates to Gaza and what’s going on.” Vital, but only up to a point.
Far less guarded assessments can be found in the US pro-Israeli chatter sphere. These follow the usual pattern. Orde Kittrie, senior fellow of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a name that can only imply that crimes committed in such a cause are bound to be justifiable, offers a neat illustration. Amnesty, he argues: “Systematically and repeatedly mischaracterises both the facts and the law.” Kittrie suggests his own mischaracterisation by parroting the Israel Defense Forces’ line that Hamas had: “Increased casualty counts by illegally using Palestinian civilian shields and by hiding weapons and war fighters in and below homes, hospitals, mosques, and other buildings.” This conveniently ignores the point that the numbers are not necessarily proof of genocidal intent, though it helps.
The report also notes that, even in the face of such tactics by Hamas, Israel was still: “Obligated to take all feasible precautions to spare civilians and avoid attacks that would be indiscriminate or disproportionate.”
Amnesty International’s report is yet another addition to the gloomy literature on the subject. Human Rights Watch, in November, pointed to violations of the laws of war, crimes against humanity and the provisional measures of the ICJ issued urging Israel to abide by the obligations imposed by the United Nations Genocide Convention of 1948. The Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem stated in no uncertain terms in October that: “Israel intends to forcibly displace northern Gaza’s residents by committing some of the gravest crimes under the laws of war.”
Battling over the designation of whether a campaign is genocidal can act as a distraction, a field of quibbles for paper-pushing pedants. The “specific intent” in proof must be unequivocally demonstrated and beyond any other reasonable inference. A smokescreen is thereby deployed that risks masking the broader ambit of war crimes and crimes against humanity. But no amount of pedantry and disagreement can arrest the sense that Israel’s lethal conduct, whatever threshold it may reach in international law, is directed at destroying not merely Palestinian life but any worthwhile sense of viable sovereignty. Amnesty Israel, while rejecting the central claim of the parent organisation’s report, did make one concession: the country’s brutal response following 7 October, 2023: “May amount to crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing.”
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