- The Guardian
- Issue #2130
“LA 2028 will be the Olympic version of the Hunger Games,” says Dr Tom Heenan, who lectures in sport, global and Australian studies at Monash University’s Intercultural Lab.
“Even without the wildfires, the Games will cost Angelenos dearly, especially the poor and homeless, and prove to be another IOC-orchestrated budgetary blowout, if not a Montreal Olympics-type black hole. The additional infrastructure requirements will strain an already stretched public purse and shift labour from the much needed rebuild in the hills.
“For a city built on property speculation, 2028 could be a repeat of the 1932 games, which was a real estate agent’s dream.
“The winners will be property developers and the head of LA’s organising committee, Casey Wasserman, and his sport-entertainment empire.
“The losers may well be LA residents who will bear the expense of the Olympics and a costly yet questionable rebuild in fire-prone hills.”
PARASITE(S) OF THE WEEK: are Musk and Thiel. There is a common origin story to the new far-right billionaire backers of Donald Trump: apartheid South Africa.
Both Elon Musk and Peter Thiel – the biggest tech billionaires backing Trump – grew up there, where their fathers grew rich, respectively, mining diamonds and uranium – sectors at the core of the apartheid economy.
It can hardly be a coincidence that these two billionaires, alongside others with South African links, such as Trump fundraiser David Sacks, are now in the vanguard of a new global far-right elite pushing the world toward fascism and a civilisational war.
The billionaires of the capitalist class have been raking in trillions of dollars at the expense of ordinary people for decades, a process that accelerated with both the COVID-19 crisis and the Ukraine war.
As the recent killing of a US health industry executive exposed, the super-rich increasingly fear that ordinary people will start to hate those who are exploiting them and causing millions to suffer and die prematurely.
Speaking of which, nuclear proliferation is something of a close family interest. Thiel’s father was involved in the clandestine drive of apartheid South Africa to acquire nuclear-grade uranium in Namibia.
His own firm’s technology is bringing that apocalypse ever closer. Palantir is a major investor and creator of AI technologies. For over a decade, it has received major contracts from agencies across the US government – including the Department of Defence, Department of Homeland Security, and the FBI.
In the incoming Trump administration, at least 13 billionaires have been appointed to government posts. In the past, billionaires were donors and influencers, and politicians deferred to them because they wanted their “investment”: under Trump they will be running the government.
While Musk is very big on the “threat” scare campaign against Muslims, spreading inflammatory lies on his platform X, Thiel is big on the threat of “one world government” – the right-wing’s pet bogyman.
Musk is a key figure in Trump’s new administration, in which his role will be to slash and burn the US government, in a manner similar to the chainsaw-wielding far-right president of Argentina, Javier Milei.
