Gaza Occupies Toledo City Council

by Mike Ferner / February 2nd, 2024

After tabling a citizen-drafted resolution for a ceasefire in Gaza, Toledo City Council agreed to have a second hearing on the measure, January 30.

 At that hearing, Toledoans testified about grandparents who had lost homes and property during the 1948 Nakba; others told of having been displaced multiple times; several people passionately described members of their families who have been killed in Gaza since October 7; and some held back tears as they talked of family they just haven’t heard from.  Following is my statement to the Council.

It’s been 50 years since I was a Navy corpsman at a stateside hospital, taking care of wounded GIs returned from Vietnam, and then on an aircraft carrier. I’ve seen what war does to human beings, but what I saw in the modern, well-equipped hospital wards back then was nothing compared to the human suffering and death shrouding Gaza today.

In addition to the tragic stories of loss you’ve heard tonight, here are other things we should consider.

First, VFP partners with an organization in the Middle East called Combatants for Peace. It is composed of former Israeli and Palestinian soldiers who once fought each other and now work for peace, always in pairs, one Palestinian and one Israeli. Both our organizations have called for a ceasefire because we know what war does to everyone it touches. No matter which side.

For example, Israeli press reports stated in early December that some 5,000 Israeli soldiers have been wounded in Gaza since October 7. Israeli officials warned at that time that cases of PTSD and other trauma-related issues will skyrocket in the next few months. At least 2,000 Israeli soldiers had been declared disabled, with health officials in a hurry to release the wounded so they can admit new patients.

A ceasefire is desperately needed now.

Second, our news media typically gets disturbed about wars only when U.S. military are killed. They may soon have a lot to be disturbed about if a ceasefire isn’t declared. You’ve already heard news of U.S. military killed and wounded as this war spreads beyond Palestine. But we haven’t seen anything yet, if the madmen get their way and go to war with Iran. We have three carrier battle groups within range of Iran’s missiles. Those carriers will be sitting ducks and there are over 3,000 sailors on each one of them. War with Iran could very likely be the match to set off the war that really does end all wars.

A ceasefire is desperately needed now.

Third, there is no military solution to what’s happening in Palestine. There never was and there never will be. Even our Congresswoman recognized during the U.S. occupation of Iraq that we were creating more anti-U.S. fighters every day we were there. How do you think that will play out in Gaza?

A ceasefire is desperately needed now.

Fourth, to those who say our city council has no business passing a ceasefire resolution, I can tell you as someone who once sat where you do tonight, that argument is nonsense.

Think back to all the resolutions routinely passed honoring sports teams and corporations and festivals… what did any of those have to do with the business of running Toledo?

You have no business passing a ceasefire resolution? Really? It’s only hundreds of billions of our tax dollars that could go to schools, streets, health clinics and parks; it’s only our young men and women who will be killed and wounded; and it’s only a rare opportunity to exhibit political courage for the sake of humanity.

A ceasefire is desperately needed now.

NOTE: On January 31, Toledo City Council decided it was too controversial to condemn genocide and again tabled the ceasefire resolution.

Mike Ferner is National Director of Veterans For Peace and a former member of Toledo City Council. He can be reached at mike@veteransforpeace.org. Read other articles by Mike.

The Only Right That Palestinians Have Not Been Denied Is the Right to Dream

by Vijay Prashad / February 2nd, 2024

Malak Mattar (Palestine), Gaza, 2024.

On 26 January, the judges at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) found that it is ‘plausible’ that Israel is committing a genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. The ICJ called upon Israel to ‘take all measures within its power to prevent the commission of all acts’ that violate the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948). Although the ICJ did not call explicitly for a ceasefire (as it did in 2022 when it ordered Russia to ‘suspend [its] military operation’ in Ukraine), even a casual reading of this order shows that to comply with the court’s ruling, Israel must end its assault on Gaza. As part of its ‘provisional measures’, the ICJ called upon Israel to respond to the court within a month and outline how it has implemented the order.

Though Israel has already rejected the ICJ’s findings, international pressure on Tel Aviv is mounting. Algeria has asked the UN Security Council to enforce the ICJ’s order while Indonesia and Slovenia have initiated separate proceedings at the ICJ that will begin on 19 February to seek an advisory opinion on Israel’s control of and policies on occupied Palestinian territories, pursuant to a UN General Assembly resolution adopted in December 2022. In addition, Chile and Mexico have called upon the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate crimes committed in Gaza.

Israel’s reaction to the ICJ’s order was characteristically dismissive. The country’s national security minister, Itamar Ben Gvir, called the ICJ an ‘antisemitic court’ and claimed that it ‘does not seek justice, but rather the persecution of Jewish people’. Strangely, Ben Gvir accused the ICJ of being ‘silent during the Holocaust’. The Holocaust conducted by the Nazi German regime and its allies against European Jews, the Romani, homosexuals, and communists took place between late 1941 and May 1945, when the Soviet Red Army liberated prisoners from Ravensbrück, Sachsenhausen, and Stutthof. However, the ICJ was established in June 1945, one month after the Holocaust ended, and began its work in April 1946. Israel’s attempt to delegitimise the ICJ by saying that it remained ‘silent during the Holocaust’ when it was, in fact, not yet in existence, and then to use that false statement to call the ICJ an ‘antisemitic court’ shows that Israel has no answer to the merits of the ICJ order.

Malak Mattar (Palestine), Gaza (detail), 2024.

Meanwhile, the bombardment of Palestinians in Gaza continues. My friend Na’eem Jeenah, director of the Afro-Middle East Centre in Johannesburg, South Africa, has been reviewing the data from various government ministries in Gaza as well as media reports to circulate a daily information card on the situation. The card from 26 January, the date of the ICJ order and the 112th day of the genocide, details that over 26,000 Palestinians, at least 11,000 of them children, have been killed since 7 October; 8,000 are missing; close to 69,000 have been injured; and almost all of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents have been displaced. The numbers are bewildering. During this period, Israel has damaged 394 schools and colleges, destroying 99 of them as well as 30 hospitals and killing at least 337 medical personnel. This is the reality that occasioned the genocide case at the ICJ and the court’s provisional measures, with one judge, Dalveer Bhandari of India, going further to say plainly that ‘all fighting and hostilities [must] come to an immediate halt’.

Amongst the dead are many of Palestine’s painters, poets, writers, and sculptors. One of the striking features of Palestinian life over the past 76 years since the Nakba (‘Catastrophe’) of 1948 has been the ongoing richness of Palestinian cultural production. A brisk walk down any of the streets of Jenin or Gaza City reveals the ubiquity of studios and galleries, places where Palestinians insist upon their right to dream. In late 1974, the South African militant and artist Barry Vincent Feinberg published an article in the Afro-Asian journal Lotus that opens with an interaction in London between Feinberg and a ‘young Palestinian poet’. Feinberg was curious why, in Lotus, ‘an unusually large number of poems stem from Palestinian poets’. The young poet, amused by Feinberg’s observation, replied: ‘The only thing my people have never been denied is the right to dream’.

Malak Mattar (Palestine), Gaza (detail), 2024.

Malak Mattar, born in December 1999, is a young Palestinian artist who refuses to stop dreaming. Malak was fourteen when Israel conducted its Operation Protective Edge (2014) in Gaza, killing over two thousand Palestinian civilians in just over one month – a ghastly toll that built upon the bombardment of the Occupied Palestinian Territory that has been ongoing for more than a generation. Malak’s mother urged her to paint as an antidote to the trauma of the occupation. Malak’s parents are both refugees: her father is from al-Jorah (now called Ashkelon) and her mother is from al-Batani al-Sharqi, one of the Palestinian villages along the edge of what is now called the Gaza Strip. On 25 November 1948, the newly formed Israeli government passed Order Number 40, which authorised Israeli troops to expel Palestinians from villages such as al-Batani al-Sharqi. ‘Your role is to expel the Arab refugees from these villages and prevent their return by destroying the villages… Burn the villages and demolish the stone houses’, wrote the Israeli commanders.

Malak’s parents carry these memories, but despite the ongoing occupation and war, they try to endow their children with dreams and hope. Malak picked up a paint brush and began to envision a luminous world of bright colours and Palestinian imagery, including the symbol of sumud (‘steadfastness’): the olive tree. Since she was a teenager, Malak has painted young girls and women, often with babies and doves, though, as she told the writer Indlieb Farazi Saber, the women’s heads are often titled to the side. That is because, she said, ‘If you stand straight, upright, it shows you are stable, but with a head tilted to one side, it evokes a feeling of being broken, a weakness. We are humans, living through wars, through brutal moments… the endurance sometimes slips’.

Malak Mattar (Palestine), Two Gazan Girls Dreaming of Peace, 2020.

Malak and I have corresponded throughout this violence, her fears manifest, her strength remarkable. In January, she wrote, ‘I’m working on a massive painting depicting many aspects of the genocide’. On a five-metre canvas, Malak created a work of art that began to resemble Pablo Picasso’s celebrated Guernica (1937), which he painted to commemorate a massacre by fascist Spain against a town in the Basque region. In 2022, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) published a profile on Malak, calling her ‘Palestine’s Picasso’. In the article, Malak said, ‘I was so inspired by Picasso that, in the beginning of my art journey, I tried to paint like him’. This new painting by Malak reflects the heartbreak and steadfastness of the Palestinian people. It is an indictment of Israel’s genocide and an affirmation of Palestinians’ right to dream. If you look at it closely, you will see the victims of the genocide: the medical workers, the journalists, and the poets; the mosques and the churches; the unburied bodies, the naked prisoners, and the corpses of small children; the bombed cars and the fleeing refugees. There is a kite flying in the sky, a symbol from Refaat Alareer’s poem ‘If I Must Die’ (‘you must live to tell my story… so that a child, somewhere in Gaza while looking heaven in the eye… sees the kite, my kite you made, flying up above and thinks there is an angel there bringing back love’).

Zulfa al-Sa’di (Palestine), King Faysal I of Iraq, 1931.

Malak’s work is rooted in Palestinian traditions of painting, inspired by a history that dates back to Arab Christian iconography (a tradition that was developed by Yusuf al-Halabi of Aleppo in the seventeenth century). That ‘Aleppo Style’, as the art critic Kamal Boullata wrote in Istihdar al-Makan, developed into the ‘Jerusalem Style’, which brightened the iconography by introducing flora and fauna from Islamic miniatures and embroidery. When I first saw Malak’s work, I thought of how fitting it was that she had redeemed the life of Zulfa al-Sa’di (1905–1988), one of the most important painters of her time, who painted Palestinian political and cultural heroes. Al-Sa’di stopped painting after she was forced to flee Jerusalem during the 1948 Nakba; her only paintings that remain are those that she carried with her on horseback. Sa’di spent the rest of her life teaching art to Palestinian children at an UNRWA school in Damascus. It was in one such UNRWA school that Malak learned to paint. Malak seemed to pick up al-Sa’di’s brushes and paint for her.

It is no surprise that Israel has targeted UNRWA, successfully encouraging several key Global North governments to stop funding the agency, which was established by United Nations General Assembly Resolution 302 in 1949 to ‘carry out direct relief and works programmes for Palestine refugees’. In any given year, half a million Palestinian children like Malak study at UNRWA schools. Raja Khalidi, director-general of the Palestine Economic Policy Research Institute (MAS), says of this funding suspension: ‘Given the long-standing precarious nature of UNRWA’s finances… and in light of its essential role in providing vital services to Palestine refugees and some 1.8 million displaced persons in Gaza, cutting its funding at such a moment heightens the threat to life against Palestinians already at risk of genocide’.

I encourage you to circulate Malak’s mural, to recreate it on walls and public spaces across the world. Let it penetrate into the souls of those who refuse to see the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people.

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian and journalist. Prashad is the author of twenty-five books, including The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World and The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South. Read other articles by Vijay, or visit Vijay's website.

How to Interpret Washington’s New Version of “Hacker Script”

by Global Times / February 2nd, 2024

Illustration: Liu Rui/GT

The director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Christopher Wray, made sensational remarks on Wednesday in Congress, elevating the “China threat theory” to a new level. He claimed that hackers associated with the Chinese government are “positioning on American infrastructure in preparation to wreak havoc and cause real-world harm to American citizens and communities.” Targets include water treatment plants, electrical infrastructure and oil and natural gas pipelines, he said. In response, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Wang Wenbin explicitly stated that China firmly opposes and cracks down on all forms of cyberattacks in accordance with law. Without valid evident, the US jumped to an unwarranted conclusion and made groundless accusations against China. It is extremely irresponsible and is a complete distortion of facts.

On the same day, the US government added more than a dozen Chinese companies to a list created by the Defense Department to highlight firms it says are allegedly working with China’s military. US Secretary of Commerce, Gina Raimondo, exaggerated the potential national security risks posed by Chinese electric vehicles entering European market in talks with EU officials. From public opinion manipulation to actual actions, the US’ measures containing China were both intensive and frequent in recent days. The US once again unleashed a cold wind, at a time when communication and exchanges between high-level officials of China and the US have rapidly resumed since the beginning of 2024, and signs of stabilization in China-US relations have increased.

This has become an increasingly common phenomenon in China-US relations, reflecting the high complexity and uncertainty of US policy toward China and the depth of distortions in the US understanding of China. However, we also notice that Jake Sullivan, the national security advisor to the US president, in his latest remarks on China-US relations on January 30, while emphasizing the need for the US to strengthen its “competitive position,” also highlighted the importance of building stability, managing differences, and stressed the significance of maintaining communication and intensive diplomacy.

Taking a comprehensive view, US policy toward China is increasingly resembling a tightrope walk, with the key technique lying in maintaining balance. The US government is currently managing this with difficulty, and the challenge of maintaining balance is rapidly intensifying. The US clearly recognizes the serious consequences if balance cannot be upheld, but without timely adjustments, it is only a matter of time before it falls off the tightrope.

This year is the US presidential election year, and negative topics concerning China will be further magnified and intensified. However, aside from the election factors, people can see at a glance that the two ends of the “balance pole” between the US and China are gradually shifting, with the rational end toward China becoming shorter and the irrational end toward China becoming longer. One major manifestation is the continuous innovation and upgrading of the “China threat theory,” which has contaminated the decision-making atmosphere and environment toward China, resulting in an increasingly imbalanced US policy toward China, even to the extent of losing control. This poses a significant risk for the US, the Asia-Pacific region, and the world.

Why do American officials and politicians like Christopher Wray work so hard to create and spread the “China threat theory”? The reasons are multifaceted. For example, the most common occasions are often in the US Congress, both because Congress has become a gathering place for anti-China politicians and because Congress controls the purse strings. Using the “China threat” as a gimmick is the best way to secure funding. Additionally, some individuals project their inner world onto China. There are also those who have developed a delusion about China, where anything related to the word “China” becomes a “terrifying monster” that must be guarded against. This is a result of extreme lack of confidence, anxiety, and even delusion in the face of China’s rapid development.

Also on January 31, the Senate Judiciary Committee hosted a hearing titled “Big Tech and the Online Child Sexual Exploitation Crisis.” The chief executives of five major social media giants, including TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew attended to testify. Although the meeting had a predetermined theme and many attendees, Chew once again became the focus. Many senators bypassed the main topic and questioned Chew about his relationship with China. Republican Senator Tom Cotton even aggressively questioned Chew’s citizenship with eight questions. It is well known that Chew is from Singapore. Even netizens on X platform couldn’t stand it and condemned Cotton for his “xenophobia” and “blatant racism.” Isn’t this a microcosm of Washington politicians?

It is evident that the US authorities have the intention to use anti-China rhetoric and need a strategic imaginary enemy or scapegoat in Washington politics. However, this is feeding a monster with malice and hostility toward China. The monster is growing day by day, with an increasing appetite and becoming more cunning. In the past, stories about “Chinese hackers” could satisfy it for a while, but now the story has to be escalated to the level of threatening all Americans. When this monster breaks free, its first target will be the US itself.

Global Times, where this article was first published, takes great pains to present facts and views that could help the readers better understand China. Read other articles by Global Times, or visit Global Times's website.

When Much is Too Much: Elon Musk’s Compensation Package

by Binoy Kampmark / February 2nd, 2024

When is the acquisitive nature of open frontier capitalism too much?  When Elon Musk is told that US$56 billion as a pay package is unfair.  This, at least, was the finding by Delaware Court of Chancery by Judge Kathaleen McCormick regarding the spellbinding 2018 compensation package for the planet’s wealthiest human being.

McCormick and Musk already have inked some judicial history.  The same judge presided over the Twitter suit against Musk that eventually resulted in him parting with US$44 billion to acquire the company that is now sliding into merry decay as the platform X.

In her sharp ruling, daring to “boldly go where no man has gone before”, let alone a Delaware court, McCormick observed that Tesla, a company of Musk’s own creation, “bore the burden of proving that the compensation plan was fair, and they failed to meet their burden.”  The question of fairness first arose in 2019, when Tesla shareholder Richard Tornetta filed a suit challenging the validity of the 2018 performance-based equity compensation plan, the largest of its type in the history of public markets.

Tornetta’s primary contention was that Musk was hardly showing much devotion to the carmaker, his duties and interests spread, as it were, across a number of other corporate entities: SpaceX, OpenAI, Neuralink and the Boring Company.  Tornetta’s legal team argued that the 2018 package did nothing to focus the billionaire’s interest on Tesla and, it followed, the interests of its shareholders.  The agreement, for instance, made no mention of any such requirements as time allocation.  “Indeed,” reads the lawsuit, “Musk testified that since the Grant’s approval, he has spent a little more than half his time on Tesla matters and has dedicated substantial time and attention to various other endeavours.”

The judgment acknowledges that any decision by the board of directors on what to pay a company CEO “is the quintessential business determination subject to great judicial deference.”  Delaware law, however, recognised “unique risks inherent in a corporation’s transactions with its controlling stockholder.”  When it came to dealing with “conflicted-controller transactions,” the “presumptive standard review … is entire fairness.”

Here, the defendants proved “unable to prove that the stockholder vote was fully informed because the proxy statement inaccurately described key directors as independent and misleadingly omitted details about the process.”  Even by the judge’s own reasoning, the task left to the defendants was an “unenviable” one, and “too tall an order.”

For the court, there were critical problems with the process leading to the approval of the compensation plan.  The judgment paints a picture of Musk essentially negotiating with himself through devotees, flunkeys and friends.  The adversarial atmosphere was never present; the “controlled mindset” all powerful.

The theme of the entrepreneurial God King holding his courtiers in thrall streaks McCormick’s observations.  Musk, for instance, maintained “extensive ties with the persons tasked with negotiating on Tesla’s behalf.”  The chair of the compensation committee, Ira Ehrenpreis, had known Musk well for 15 years.  Another member of the same committee, Antonio Gracias, had an enduring two-decade business relationship with Musk “as well as the sort of personal relationship that had him vacationing with Musk’s family on a regular basis.”

The entanglements do not stop there.  There is General Counsel Todd Maron, the main negotiating link between the committee and Musk.  Maron had acted as divorce attorney for Musk and admired him so much he was “moved … to tears during his deposition.”

With a flawed process, things did not get much better with the negotiated price.  Again, the defendants argued that, for Tesla to continue to grow, Musk’s continued leadership was indispensable.  Keeping Musk as the main helmsman meant a rise in stockholder value.  In one estimate, offering Musk a chance to increase his ownership of Tesla from 21.9% to 28.3% would mean “6% for (US)$600 billion of growth in stockholder value.”

Such arguments did not convince McCormick.  Musk already owned 21.9% of the company when the plan was approved.  He had every incentive to push the company “to levels of transformative growth” seeing what he stood to gain from it: “(US)$10 billion for every (US)$50 billion in market capitalization increase.”  The arrangements also came with no conditions on how much time Musk would devote to Tesla.  “Swept up by the rhetoric of ‘all upside,’ or perhaps starry eyed by Musk’s superstar appeal, the board never asked the (US)$55.8 billion question: Was the plan even necessary to retain Musk and achieve its goals?”  The answer: plainly not.

Such observations would have stung and made good the judge’s promise to go where no previous Delaware court had dared tread.  Here was a punchy assessment about the comfortable, clique-ridden tribalism of corporate non-governance.  Musk, riled and ruffled, took to the platform X (formerly Twitter) to vent.  “Never incorporate your company in the state of Delaware,” were his words of advice.

By no means does this end matter.  Musk is hardly going to be out of pocket, nor is he going to leave the company from which he continues to handsomely profit from via stocks he owns.  Fairness operates in otherworldly dimensions here.  A new compensation package, according to the judge, will have to be worked out with Tornetta.  An appeal is also possible.  “The judge’s ruling should be a wakeup call (for Tesla shareholders) that things have gotten out of hand,” remarks Andrew Poreda, who also invests in Tesla through exchange-traded funds.  In this overgrown corporate jungle, it is questionable whether things were ever really in hand.

Ahead of election, Pakistan seals plan to sell national airline

Thu, February 1, 2024 

View of a Pakistan International Airlines passengers plane, taken through a glass panel, at the Allama Iqbal International Airpor in Lahore

By Asif Shahzad

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Ahead of elections next week, Pakistan's caretaker administration is making binding plans for a new government to sell loss-making Pakistan International Airlines, according to the minister in charge of the process and other officials.

In the past, elected governments have shied away from undertaking unpopular reforms, including the sale of the flag carrier. But Pakistan, in deep economic crisis, agreed in June to overhaul loss-making state-owned enterprises under a deal with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a $3 billion bailout.

The government decided to privatise PIA just weeks after signing the IMF agreement.

The caretaker administration, which took office in August to oversee the Feb. 8 election, was empowered by the outgoing parliament to take any steps needed to meet the budgetary targets agreed with the IMF.

"Our job is 98% done," Privatisation Minister Fawad Hasan Fawad told Reuters when asked about the plan to sell the airline. "The remaining 2% is just to bring it on an excel sheet after the cabinet approves it."

Fawad said the plan, drawn up by transaction adviser Ernst & Young, will be presented to the cabinet for approval before the tenure of the administration ends following the election. The cabinet will also decide whether to sell the stake by tender or through a government-to-government deal, Fawad said.

"What we have done in just four months is what past governments have been trying to do for over a decade," Fawad said. "There is no looking back."

Details of the privatisation process have not been previously reported.

PIA had liabilities of 785 billion Pakistani rupees ($2.81 billion) and accumulated losses of 713 billion rupees as of June last year. Its CEO has said losses in 2023 were likely to be 112 billion rupees.

Progress on the privatisation will be a key issue if the incoming government goes back to the IMF once the current bailout programme expires in March. Caretaker Finance Minister Shamshad Akhtar told reporters last year that Pakistan would have to remain in IMF programmes after the expiry.

Two sources close to the process told Reuters that a 51% stake with full management control would be offered to buyers after parking the airline's debts in a separate entity, under the 1,100 page report from Ernst & Young.

Reuters could not independently confirm the contents of the report. Fawad did not give specific details of the size of the stake to be sold, but confirmed the plan involved the carrier's debts being spun off into a separate entity.

Ernst & Young did not respond to requests for comment.

PIA spokesman Abdullah Hafeez Khan said the airline was assisting the privatisation process, extending "full cooperation" to the transaction adviser.

FAST-TRACKED

Besides operational and technical measures for PIA's divestment, the caretaker government has also amended a 2016 law that had blocked selling off its majority shares, according to a draft posted on the Pakistan parliament's website.

The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz party of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is tipped by analysts to win the election with support from the powerful military. Its main political rival has been decimated by the arrest of its leader Imran Khan and a crackdown on its members.

Sharif's close aide Ishaq Dar, who has been his finance minister previously and has been named by the party to retain the portfolio if it forms the next government, told Reuters that the sale of PIA will be fast-tracked.

"It will, God willing, move ahead with fast speed," he said.

In a report in mid-January, the IMF expressed satisfaction over the measures initiated by the caretaker government to accelerate reforms of state-owned enterprises, specifically mentioning the amendment of the PIA privatisation law.

Under the privatisation plan submitted by Ernst & Young to the government on Dec. 27, government-guaranteed legacy debt and payables - which are held by a consortium of seven domestic banks - will be parked in a holding company, Fawad and two sources involved in the process said.

Fawad said the government and the consortium had an agreement in place regarding the settlement of the legacy debt, which includes negative equity of 825 billions rupees in loans, creditors' money and the losses. He provided no further details.

The sources had earlier said the banks wanted a five-year bond issued against the debt with a 16.5% coupon on the paper, while the finance ministry was offering only 10%.

The banks have not commented on the deal.

Besides its losses and debt, PIA's governance and safety standards have been questioned by global aviation authorities for some years.

In early 2020, Czech and Hungarian air force jets were scrambled to intercept a PIA flight with 300 people on board as it went astray due to an "avoidable human error" by its pilot, according to a previously unreported confidential report by a PIA inquiry board, which was reviewed by Reuters.

In May that year, the crash of a PIA plane in Karachi killed nearly 100 people and a fake pilot licence scandal erupted later in 2020.

The scandal led to the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) banning the airline from flying to its most lucrative routes in Europe and the UK.

The 2020 ban is still in place and has cost the airline nearly 40 billion rupees in revenue annually, according to government records presented in parliament.

The airline has been pleading with EASA to lift the ban even provisionally, but to no avail, according to correspondence between it and PIA reviewed by Reuters.

Pakistan's financial crisis has also led to seizure of PIA aircraft by creditors in recent months, according to the airline. One aircraft was taken at Kuala Lumpur airport for non-payment of lease fees, and another in Toronto for non-payment of ground handling, PIA said.

While the airline awaits the government's decision on a sale, it continues to need financial support: 23.7 billion rupees are required to keep it afloat for another five to six months before control is given to a new buyer, three government and PIA sources said.

CHALLENGING SALE

Not everyone agrees with pressing ahead speedily with the sale.

Three senior airline officials who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity said a fast sale could devalue the airline's worth, and that it would not be a transparent transaction without due diligence.

"We are not against its privatisation, and all we want is that you don't just throw it away," said one of the officials.

But Singapore-based aviation analyst Brendan Sobie said PIA is in dire straits: the plan submitted to the government was "essentially the only option to save the airline".

"The privatisation will be challenging and a sale is likely not possible unless it first undergoes a deep restructuring and the debts are cleared," he said.

PIA's assets include key slots at the world's busiest airports and air routes to top European destinations, the Middle East and North America.

PIA has air service agreements with more than 150 countries and generates about 280 billion rupees annually in revenues despite the EU ban, airline records show.

It has 10 slots at Heathrow, which, according to two PIA officials, are currently worth 70 billion rupees annually. It has a further nine slots at Manchester and four at Birmingham.

Turkish and Kuwaiti airlines have been operating 70% of the slots under a business arrangement with PIA that also allows the airline to retain them, the PIA officials said.

Separately, PIA's physical assets, which include aircraft, hotels in Paris and New York and other properties, are worth 105.6 billion rupees ($375 million) as per book value, according to the airline's annual report for 2023.

PIA officials, however, said the market value of the assets could be above $1 billion. In any case, the hotels and other properties would not be up for sale, they said.

($1 = 280.0000 Pakistani rupees)

(Reporting by Asif Shahzad; Writing by Asif Shahzad and Gibran Peshimam; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)

Trader’s Guide to Pakistan Elections Ahead of Vital IMF Deal

Abhishek Vishnoi and Ismail Dilawar
Thu, February 1, 2024 





 

(Bloomberg) -- Pakistan is gearing up for two key events in quick succession: a general election and the expiry of an International Monetary Fund bailout program. The election winner will be tasked with striking a new deal with the IMF, which investors say is crucial to the nation’s outlook.

The country heads to the polls to elect a new premier Feb. 8, while the IMF’s current rescue package ends in March, just before $1 billion in dollar bonds come due the following month. Pakistan’s finances will collapse without a new funding agreement, according to all 12 respondents to a Bloomberg survey.

On the flip-side, if the new government is able to agree on a fresh IMF program then Pakistan’s assets can extend their world-beating rallies, according to money managers including NBP Fund Management Ltd. and Asia Frontier Capital Ltd.

“Investors will watch how soon the new government can negotiate a longer-and-larger loan program with the IMF,” said Ruchir Desai, a fund manager at Asia Frontier Capital in Hong Kong. “Very discounted valuations, interest rates peaking out and the prospects for an earnings recovery will add to the optimism surrounding greater political stability.”

Gaining access to a new round of IMF funding is critical to reviving Pakistan’s economy and may help the country secure financing from other creditors such as Saudi Arabia. The cash-strapped nation’s external financing requirements will average about $27 billion every fiscal year from 2025 through 2028, the IMF has said.

The main contenders in the election are three-time former premier Nawaz Sharif, 35-year old previous foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari and sugar magnate Jahangir Tareen. The most popular candidate Imran Khan is effectively disqualified, being held in jail since last year on corruption charges.

Pakistan’s benchmark KSE-100 Index has jumped about 50% since the nation reached an initial bailout deal with the IMF at the end of June, the best performer of more than 90 equity indexes tracked by Bloomberg. The rupee has strengthened about 2% over the same period, beating all its Asian peers, while the price of the nation’s dollar bonds due 2024 has almost doubled from its low in June.

Even after the KSE-100 Index’s rally, the gauge is still trading at a price-to-earnings ratio of just 3.8, which is a discount of 45% to its 10-year average. That’s even lower than some countries that have defaulted on their external debt.

“If the new government comes in and successfully negotiates a new IMF program, we may see the Pakistan rupee appreciating, interest rates will come down, and the Pakistan stock exchange will surge back to 10-to-12 times P/E,” said Adnan Sami Sheikh, an analyst at Pakistan Kuwait Investment Co. in Karachi.

While the government is now in a better negotiating position than it was before last year’s IMF deal, the Washington-based fund has said Pakistan needs a market-determined exchange rate, larger foreign reserves to help limit external shocks, and a tighter monetary stance to contain inflation.

Pakistan has largely remained committed to those goals. The central bank kept its benchmark interest rate at 22% for a fifth meeting on Jan. 29 in an effort to curb the region’s fastest inflation rate, which has been propelled by rising energy costs and the weakness of the currency in early 2023.

“No matter who wins and who loses the election, our policies going forward will mostly be IMF-dictated,” said Amjad Waheed, chief executive officer in Karachi at NBP Fund Management, which oversees about $820 million. “We can see some upside in equities. Inflation and interest rates will move downward going forward, which should be good for the bond market as well.”

Any steps taken by the next government to narrow the fiscal deficit will help utilities and oil-and-gas businesses, while initiatives to improve tax collection will boost the overall appeal of Pakistani assets. Potential future cuts in central bank interest rates once the economy returns to a surer footing can aid cyclical sectors such as materials.

Analysts are divided on which of the potential new premiers would be best placed to oversee much-needed economic reforms.

Given Sharif and his party have previously performed relatively well at managing the economy, investors are probably placing bets on his comeback, according to an analysis by Bloomberg Intelligence. Meanwhile, Gallup polls show former Prime Minister and cricket star Khan remains the country’s most popular politician.

History Lesson

History shows no matter who wins, putting money into Pakistan stocks before an election has reaped dividends. Those who bought the KSE-100 Index the day before a national vote gained an average 7% over the following month, while the mean advance over a three-month period was 19%, according to data from the past six elections compiled by Bloomberg.

Any such gain this time round will depend on whether the next leader can negotiate a bigger-and-better program with the IMF.

“We believe the IMF will consider sitting with the elected government for a longer-tenor program,” said Amreen Soorani, head of research at JS Global Capital Ltd. in Karachi. “Higher confidence levels would increase the prospects of removing negative sentiment” that is causing the current low multiples in the stock market, she said.

--With assistance from Chiranjivi Chakraborty, Ankur Shukla (Economist) and Faseeh Mangi.

(Updates to add new story in read more box. An earlier version of this story was corrected to amend the spelling of a name in the sixth paragraph.)

Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek

MAGA VS. TAYLOR SWIFT INC.

Why Taylor Swift is an antihero to the GOP − but Democrats should know all too well that her endorsement won’t mean it’s all over now

Matt Harris, Park University
Thu, February 1, 2024 

THE CONVERSATION

Travis Kelce celebrates with Taylor Swift on Jan. 28, 2024, after the Kansas City Chiefs defeated the Baltimore Ravens in the AFC championship game.

Patrick Smith/Getty Images

A pop icon falling for one of the NFL’s preeminent superstars may seem like a slice of Americana – a scene from a small-town high school magnified by a factor of 10 million.

But this is America in 2024 so, of course, nothing magical stays that way.

To be clear, public opinion data suggests that most Americans think Taylor Swift is good for the NFL. But with her beau Travis Kelce’s Kansas City Chiefs heading to a fourth Super Bowl in five years, and with Swift herself reportedly preparing for a journey across the globe to cheer him on in the big game, the right-wing talk machine has gone into overdrive.

Fox News host Jesse Watters suggested that Swift may be a Pentagon asset used to combat online misinformation. Former GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy tweeted that he thinks Swift and Kelce are being artificially propped up by the media pending an upcoming Swift endorsement of Joe Biden. OAN referred to the couple as a “Massive Super Bowl Psy-op,” a brainwashing campaign designed to indoctrinate citizens to an elite agenda and away from religion.

The idea that the Swift-Kelce romance is some sort of deep-state plot is perhaps gaining some traction in far-right circles because it lines up with other right-wing conspiracy theories and the right’s broader agenda.

Swift’s NFL fandom

Swift has endorsed Democrats in the past, including Joe Biden in 2020. Kelce, while not politically outspoken, was featured in a Pfizer ad touting the COVID-19 vaccine.

Republicans are more likely than Democrats to believe, without evidence, that a secret group of rulers is controlling the world, as well as that vaccines cause autism. While there isn’t public opinion data yet on the theories from Fox News and the right-wing echo chamber that the Swift-Kelce romance is an elaborate left-wing scheme, it contains elements of similar conspiracies for which partisan splits exist.

And opinions on Swift herself are similarly polarized. The singer is viewed favorably among virtually all groups in America, although Republicans are the only group in which as many members dislike Swift as like her.

Taylor Swift has brought a unique element to NFL fandom. I haven’t seen fans of my hometown Buffalo Bills make signs denigrating a pop star since they thought Jon Bon Jovi wanted to buy the team and move it to Toronto in 2014.

Yet, as a political scientist, I know it’s an open question whether any of this matters politically.

Fox News host Jesse Watters has speculated, without evidence, that Swift may be a Pentagon asset. 

Roy Rochlin/Getty Images

Oprah, Obama and celebrity endorsements

In the background of these conspiracy theories is the possibility that Taylor Swift could endorse Joe Biden. The Trump campaign is reportedly thinking about such a possibility, with allies talking behind the scenes about a “holy war” against Swift, brainstorming ways of painting her as a left-wing celebrity advancing an elite Democratic agenda.

But how much would such an endorsement matter?

In political science literature, a hallmark case of the power of celebrity endorsements is Oprah Winfrey’s 2008 backing of Barack Obama. Winfrey’s endorsement occurred during a primary in which he was taking on a more well-known opponent, Hillary Clinton.

Winfrey’s endorsement, wrote the authors of a prominent study of the case, led participants in the study “to see Obama as more likely to win the nomination and to say that they would be more likely to vote for him.” In other words, it helped advance public perceptions of Obama’s viability as a candidate.

A Swift endorsement of Biden would be different.

Swifties are largely suburban and young. Almost half are millennials, and over 10% belong to Gen Z. They represent a slice of the youth vote that candidates have attempted to court for decades, and the suburbs are increasingly a battleground in the country’s urban-rural divide. A Swift Instagram post in 2023 helped lead to 35,000 new voter registrations – and her ability to generate funds could also be invaluable to Biden.

But an Oprah-like effect is less likely for a Swift endorsement of Biden, who is running as an incumbent without a serious primary challenger and his status as the Democratic nominee is certain.

Further, polling demonstrates that the effect of a Swift endorsement could be essentially a net wash, with 18% of the public saying they’d be more likely to support a Swift-backed candidate and 17% saying they would be less likely to support Swift’s favored choice.

Even those numbers might be affected by partisan-motivated reasoning, where a person’s party identification colors their perceptions of information. Swift’s prior backing of Democrats and perceived liberalism might cause her supporters and detractors to use polling questions asking about a potential Swift endorsement to express support or disfavor of her, regardless of how her endorsement would actually influence their choice.

A Swift endorsement, if it comes, could be less important than Donald Trump’s response to that endorsement. 

David Becker/Getty Images

Not just a love story

Essentially, a Swift endorsement might matter at the margins, but there are many, many other factors at play in a general election. That’s especially true in an election between two men who have both served as commander in chief, a rarity in American politics.

A Swift endorsement, then, is perhaps less important in and of itself than Donald Trump’s response to a Swift endorsement of Biden.

Public opinion polling in the wake of Trump’s Access Hollywood remarks in 2016 showed that majorities of both women and men believed Trump had little or no respect for women. But Trump actually improved his numbers among women voters in 2020.

A Swift endorsement of Biden could bring out some of Trump’s worst impulses. Perhaps the effect of his response on how voters view him could be more important than her endorsement of Biden.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and analysis to help you make sense of our complex world.

It was written by: Matt Harris, Park University.

Read more:

Taylor Swift: Person of the year and political influencer

Trump-endorsed candidates would generally win even without his support – and that’s usually the case with all political endorsements


Seth Meyers on Fox News attacking Taylor Swift: ‘The conservative movement is so rotted’
Guardian staff
Thu, February 1, 2024 

Seth Meyers: ‘The conservative movement is so rotted, so intellectually bankrupt, that they have found themselves in a place where they are somehow enraged about a popular singer dating a football player.’

Late-night hosts continued to mock the right’s obsession with Taylor Swift on Wednesday evening, as several conservative commentators peddled baseless conspiracy theories about the pop star. “The conservative movement is so rotted, so intellectually bankrupt, that they have found themselves in a place where they are somehow enraged about a popular singer dating a football player,” explained Seth Meyers on Late Night.

The Fox News host Jesse Watters, for example, said Swift’s romance with the Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce was “cooked up in a lab”, while the ex-presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy called them an “artificially culturally propped up couple” staged for a Biden endorsement.

“Allow me to quote a Taylor Swift lyric when I say: you people are out of your fucking minds,” Meyers retorted. “I’m just kidding – that’s not a Taylor Swift lyric. It’s Seth’s version.

Related: Jimmy Kimmel on Taylor Swift NFL conspiracy theories: ‘They think football is fake and wrestling is real’

“Seriously, what is wrong with you?” he continued. “This is how much the Republican party has changed: there was a time when a famous singer dating a football player and spending quality time with his family would’ve been their dream.

“They used to elect politicians who were football players, or ones who look like footballs,” he added over a photo of Trump. “I don’t even know who you are any more, Republicans. Seriously, this is like such an innocent all-American thing. They’re kissing on the field after he wins the big game and she’s celebrating with his mom and dancing along with fans, how can you be mad at that?

“Without Taylor saying a word about the 2024 election, they have somehow spun themselves into an elaborate conspiracy theory where mysterious forces are manufacturing her fame in order to set up an endorsement of Joe Biden,” he concluded. “Because only a grand conspiracy would explain why she might prefer Joe Biden over a man who every day behaves worse than any man in a Taylor Swift song.”
Stephen Colbert

“With Trump’s nomination a near certainty, the Maga mob is now turning their focus to their leader’s last remaining political rival: Taylor Swift,” said Stephen Colbert on the Late Show.

According to several sources, Trump was “freaking out” over reports that Joe Biden is seeking an endorsement from the pop star. “C’mon Joe, seeking the endorsement of a pop star? Don’t you think that’s beneath the dignity of the office of Taylor Swift. She has to have standards!” Colbert joked.

Biden’s team has reportedly even considered sending the president to a stop on the Eras Tour. “Oh, that would be fun,” Colbert deadpanned. “I wonder what era he’d dress as. I’m gonna guess Mesozoic.

“Of course, we can’t even fantasize about Joe Biden screaming out the bridge to Cruel Summer without Donald Trump ruining it,” he added. “Because Trump is jealous now,” and privately claiming that he is “more popular” than Swift.

“What?! More popular than Taylor Swift? That is insane. Can you imagine Trump selling out stadiums in Tokyo?” Colbert reacted.

A jokingly self-described “Swiffer”, Colbert defended the pop star against the numerous far-right conspiracy theories attempting to discredit her. “Taylor is one of the few joyful things we have in this country and I’m not going to stand here and let Trump’s TV goons drag her into the hell slop of grievance and hair gel,” he said. “This country dumped Donald Trump and we are never, ever getting back together, like ever.”
Jimmy Kimmel

And in Los Angeles, Jimmy Kimmel relished the prospect of Trump being on the hook for as much as $300m in his civil fraud case in New York, on top of the $83.3m he now owes E Jean Carroll after a defamation trial. “Which means somebody is probably about to release a whole new batch of NFT trading cards,” Kimmel joked.

If penalized in the civil fraud trial, Trump could be barred from conducting business in his original home state of New York. “You think getting caught running a fake university would’ve triggered that penalty already,” Kimmel noted.

In a potential bid to distract from the former president’s many legal woes, “Trump’s campaign team has been working on ways to turn their culture warriors against Taylor Swift in the event she decides to endorse Joe Biden,” Kimmel said. “So if you’re a Republican, I guess enjoy her music while you still can before the Ayatollah Complain-y declares a fatwa on her.”

As for Trump’s claim that he was more popular than Swift, Kimmel did not mince words: “If Taylor Swift told her fans to storm the Capitol on January 6, they would’ve succeeded and they would be running the country right now.

“Who is he kidding?” he added. “If Donald Trump held a rally at SoFi stadium here in LA, they would still have enough empty seats to also hold a Taylor Swift concert that night.”


Why is the right obsessed with Taylor Swift?

Joel Mathis, The Week US
Wed, January 31, 2024 a

Taylor Swift performing on top of a red MAGA hat.


Any number of issues are at stake in the 2024 election: The future of democracy, immigration, America's role in helping Ukraine. It might be — again — the most important election of our lifetime.

This week, though, we're talking about Taylor Swift.

"Conservative media personalities are raging" over Swift, Axios reported, seeing the "pop megastar" — and onetime endorser of President Joe Biden — as a public figure whose fans "heed her calls to go out and vote." Right-wing figures like Fox News' Jesse Watters and Jeanine Pirro, former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, and Donald Trump lawyer Alina Habba have started speculating that Swift's relationship with football star Travis Kelce is part of "a deep state psyop orchestrated by the NFL and Democrats to work in President Biden's favor."

No. Really.

Swift's all-encompassing fame has even earned Trump's attention. Rolling Stone reported the former president has "privately claimed that he is 'more popular'" than the singer. Trump was even reportedly astounded when Swift beat him out for Time Magazine's 2023 "Person of the Year." (Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping were actually the other finalists.) And his team is trying to figure out how to respond if Swift endorses Biden again. "Another left-wing celebrity who is part of the Democrat elite telling you what to think," sniffed a member of Trump's campaign team. What is going on?
What did the commentators say?

"The online world's capacity for wild, untamed nonsense is endless," Jeffrey Blehar lamented at National Review, a conservative outlet. Right-wing conspiracy-mongering about Swift and Kelce reflects "thinly veiled bleats of fear about Trump's standing with women." And for many American women — "except your 85-year-old nana" — Swift has become a "cultural avatar." But if those women abandon Trump, it's more likely because of things like the $83 million judgment he must pay after E. Jean Carroll's defamation lawsuit. "It won't be because of anything Taylor Swift said or did."

Conservatism's Taylor Swift obsession reflects the right's "inability to just be normal itself, even for a minute," Ross Douthat, himself a conservative, argued at The New York Times. Hostility toward the singer has been growing since she endorsed Democratic candidates in 2018 and 2020. But her relationship with Kelce "has transformed a merely unfavorable impression into outright paranoia." Too bad: The Swift-Kelce romance offers the "romantic iconography that much of the online right supposedly wants to encourage and support."

"Maybe Republicans should wonder why all the attractive, likable people hate them?" Brian Beutler asked at his Off Message Substack. There's no conspiracy in the Swift-Kelce romance: "At the highest echelons of the cultural elite, attractive people like Swift and Kelce meet and fall in love" all the time. The Republican Party should focus less on the strange conspiracy theorizing and focus more on "trying to be decent and likable" if it wants to appeal to women voters.
What next?

There's a danger to Trump in the right's Swift obsession, E.J. Montini argued at The Arizona Republic. Turning against America's most-beloved pop star is "the dumbest thing the MAGA cult and its media enablers have done." Why? Because a Swift endorsement really "could alter the election's outcome." One poll showed that 53% of Americans are fans of the singer. She has more than 500 million social media followers. She has reach that would make any campaign envious. Why mess with that? All the online hostility "may be guaranteeing that Swift, at some point, will endorse President Joe Biden."

If so, Trump's allies are prepared. Biden might be counting on Swift to save him, "but voters are looking at these sky-high inflation rates and saying, 'We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,'" Jason Miller, a Trump adviser, wrote to Rolling Stone. At this point, though, the feeling might be entirely mutual.

Never mind all that election nonsense, though. Kelce's Kansas City team plays in the Super Bowl in less than two weeks. Swift, meanwhile, plays a concert in Tokyo the night before. Can she make it back to the United States in time to watch the big game? We'll find out. And bizarrely enough, the fate of the presidential election might ride on it.


Travis Kelce thanks Taylor Swift ‘for joining the team’
Lisa Respers France, CNN
Thu, February 1, 2024 


Welcome to the team, Taylor Swift.

With all her support for her boyfriend Travis Kelce, who is headed to the Super Bowl with the Kansas City Chiefs, Swift, of course, came up during Wednesday’s episode of Kelce’s podcast, “New Heights.”

His brother and co-host Jason Kelce, who plays for the Philadelphia Eagles, said, “Shout out to the newest members of the Chiefs Kingdom!”

“Taylor Swift, who has officially reached the Super Bowl in her rookie year,” Jason Kelce continued.

“Shout out to Tay!” Travis Kelce responded with a laugh. “Thanks for joining the team!”

He also confirmed the timeline of when he and Swift got together.

During an appearance on “The Pat McAfee Show,” Kelce said he and Swift had already been seeing each other by the time she appeared at one of his games in September to cheer him and the Chiefs on.

“Yeah, we had known each other close to a month up to that point,” Kelce said. “It wasn’t just an out of the blue, ‘Hey, come to the game.’”

In an interview with Time Magazine last year, Swift said the same, telling the publication, “By the time I went to that first game, we were a couple.”


MAGA World Is About to Meet Taylor Swift’s Fandom. It Won’t Go Well.
Catherine Kim
Thu, February 1, 2024 


Taylor Swift has many titles: cultural juggernaut; international pop star; billionaire businesswoman. She can now add MAGA conspiracy theory target to the list.

Far-right internet personalities and even a former Republican presidential candidate are spreading the notion that something is not quite right with Swift’s relationship with Kansas City Chiefs star player Travis Kelce — and that somehow the Super Bowl is rigged and it’s all leading up to a Swift presidential endorsement of Joe Biden.

Swift was once famously politics-averse, but she inched into the arena in 2018 when she endorsed Tennessee Democratic Senate candidate Phil Bredesen, and then she backed Biden in 2020. That may have first soured some conservatives on Swift, but in recent days, the right has seemingly launched a full-bore attack on her. It seems like incredibly foolish politics, particularly as the gender gap grows and Republican support with suburban women erodes.

To explore how Swift’s influence has grown and how the attacks could backfire on the GOP, POLITICO Magazine reached out to Brian Donovan, a University of Kansas professor who teaches a popular college course called “The Sociology of Taylor Swift.”

“The Swiftie fan is arguably the most immersive and intense fandom in the U.S. right now,” Donovan said. “And to anger them is just political folly. They are a political force that I don't think anyone really should mess with.”

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Why is Taylor Swift suddenly at the center of the political conversation?

I think there is a cyclical reaction happening where we saw with the Barbie movie and with the Eras Tour, a kind of woman-centered cultural aesthetic take hold of the American imagination. And I think there's a ton of backlash to that driven by real basic sexism and misogyny.

If you look at the history of Taylor Swift, if you go back 10 or 12 years, her main critics were actually coming from the left. There was a feminist discourse that argued that she was too heteronormative, that she is supporting the patriarchy by writing these love songs with a straightforward, boy-meets-girl, happily-ever-after kind of narrative. So you would think that the right would embrace that. And for a while, when Taylor was more quiet about her politics, they had this notion that she was secretly one of them. You saw this in around 2017, 2018 when literal Nazis like Andrew Anglin or folks from the GamerGate community like Milo Yiannopoulos, were posting these memes that were suggesting that Taylor was secretly a white supremacist.

And so the fact that she had this political coming out in 2018, and started to embrace leftist causes, that was the first moment when the right rejected her. And as she gained cultural power over the last year, I think that's made her an easy target. You would think that her dating a football star would be something that would be satisfying to cultural conservatives — she's playing out a standard conservative script of falling in love with a football star — but the fact that she's not on their team is especially irksome for a lot of folks. On the right, it's seen as a betrayal.

Sexism and a sense of betrayal — is there anything else that might be fueling this hate we’re seeing from the right?

The intensity is coming from different levels. Again, it's this basic sexism. She is unmarried. She is an extremely successful businesswoman. And I know that a lot of folks on the right probably do not aspire to be a pop star, but a lot of them aspire to be successful in business. And she has lapped them over and over. She has become a billionaire based on her own artistry. And so there's a jealousy factor as well.

Another part of this is that she is not easily consumable as a sex symbol. What makes Taylor Swift so unique is that her celebrity persona, unlike pop stars of the past few decades — think of Madonna or Britney Spears — is not centered on the male gaze. She's not denying or muting her sexuality, but her performances are not catering to men. Her persona is crafted around this kind of goofy, almost nerd-like relatability and I think that is also irksome because she is not playing out the standard, patriarchal playbook of being a consumable Barbie doll sex symbol.

There’s a growing gender divide in politics. Do you think the conservative attacks against Swift will further alienate women voters from the Republican Party?

Absolutely. What is fascinating to me about this whole spectacle is it seems like political suicide. She certainly has appeal among women, but she has such a broad demographic appeal — racially, in terms of age, in terms of socio-economic status. It just seems like attacking her, from a strategic political standpoint, makes no sense whatsoever.

And that's why I think some of these attacks, they will be short-lived. Because the folks that have the money, that are putting resources behind these political campaigns, are going to talk to people like Vivek Ramaswamy and say, “This is not a good strategy for you.”

And it will alienate women voters in the long term, for sure, because Taylor's politics, they're not that radical. She's not the kind of radical feminist figure that they are painting her to be, and I think a lot of women see themselves in Taylor. She is highly relatable. And she, through her songwriting, lets us feel like we have a bond with her. And so the rabid attacks against her are going to turn people away on a very deep level.

Tell me more about the demographics of Swift’s fan base. Are there any notable traits or political trends?

Morning Consult did a deep dive into her fan base demographics. And they found, not surprisingly, that her main fan base is primarily white, primarily women and primarily millennial.

What's unique about Taylor Swift is the intergenerational appeal that she has. And you saw that over the summer with parents taking their daughters to the Eras Tour. She's been a star for 17 years. There are folks that I'm interviewing for my book that have literally grown up with her. She was there for them through all the different turning points in their life. So she can draw younger listeners who are experiencing her music for the first time, listeners who are millennials that see themselves in Taylor Swift, and fans that are my age and older that see an element of nostalgia in Taylor. So what is really powerful and unique about her is that demographically she has this cross-generational appeal.

Based on the folks that I've interviewed, she has a way of writing that, coupled with her celebrity persona and media appearances, connects uniquely with the experiences of young women. The Swiftie fan is arguably the most immersive and intense fandom in the U.S. right now. And to anger them is just political folly. They are a political force that I don't think anyone really should mess with.

What makes Taylor Swift’s fandom such a political force?

It's both the sheer number and the intensity of their devotion to Taylor Swift.

A lot of Swifties take their cues from Taylor Swift. During the pandemic, when she released the album "Folklore," she changed her entire aesthetic from the multicolored "Lover"-era aesthetic — which was this psychedelic, 1960s vibe — to this cottage-core, flannel vibe. Swifties went right along with it and started buying flannel and started adopting that style. And so she is very influential on a cultural level.

But also Swifties listen to her statements about politics as well and absorb them and act on them. And so I think that the fear coming from the right that she could make an endorsement that will act as a political force and be consequential for elections — that's not inaccurate. There's some truth there.

Swift has resisted the political arena for so long. What are her politics? Does she even want to be in the political limelight?

Her politics are fairly mainstream. She wants reproductive rights. She has come out and supported the Violence Against Women Act — some very fairly mainstream things that are not terribly controversial among a wide swath of the American electorate.

She had a moment in 2018 when she had a political coming out. She started speaking out in particular in support of LGBTQ+ rights. And there was a period of time when she became more politically active. That was when she supported Phil Bredesen against Marsha Blackburn. That’s when [then-President Donald] Trump said he liked her music about 25 percent less now. And for a lot of Swifties, and even those who weren’t into Taylor Swift, that was an important moment because it showed she was one of us. That she was in the same political orbit as a lot of us.

She hasn't really continued with that. The pandemic hit, and other than a tweet about the Dobbs decision and a speech that she gave during one of her concerts during Pride Month, she's been very relatively politically silent. And that's frustrated a lot of the more social justice-oriented Swifties and Swifties who are further on the left. So it's interesting that she's receiving criticism from the right for being this avatar of the left wing. And at the same time, she's receiving criticism from the more far-left Swifties for not being vocal enough.

Do you foresee Swift becoming any more political after the recent MAGA meltdown?

I don't think so. I think she'll endorse Joe Biden. And she might even make a campaign appearance or two, but I don't see her throwing herself into politics in a really robust way. Part of that is due to the fact that I just don't think she speaks the language of politics and activism. She’s a great storyteller and is brilliant at so many things. But I don't think she sees that as one of her strengths.

The other reason I don't think she is going to be more vocal about politics is personal safety. The article that ran in Rolling Stone that right-wing operatives are declaring a “Holy War” on her honestly frightened me. We're living in a time of heightened political violence and deep political polarization. And she is out in public performing for tens of thousands of people. Just on a pure safety level, her getting more vocal about politics might not necessarily be a good thing.

Would a Swift endorsement give Biden a major boost in popularity?

I don’t think so. The people who are already big Taylor Swift supporters, most of them are going to vote for Biden anyway. And looking at what happened in 2018, when she supported Phil Bresson — he still lost to Marsha Blackburn. So her endorsements, as important as they are, can only go so far. Where I think she can have an impact and maybe a big political boost for Biden is in getting out the vote. She touted a Get Out the Vote website on her Instagram account, and it drew 35,000 new voters within hours.

What do you think about Donald Trump reportedly grumbling that he’s “more popular” than Taylor Swift?

We know he loves the trappings of celebrity. And so it must irk him that she is both more popular than he is and has more money than he does right now. And so I think that her mere existence is tapping into some deep insecurities in his psyche. And we're seeing that play out by his surrogates, as well.

Why do we demand political alliances from celebrities? What does that say about our political atmosphere right now?

Increasingly, it seems like every consumer and entertainment choice we make is somehow politically coded. What beer one consumes, or where one goes shopping, whether it's Target or Walmart — all of these micro-decisions have somehow become part of political discourse, and it's exhausting. But I feel like there's comfort in that too. It's part of that relatability aspect that is so important for celebrity culture. We want to know the people that we're spending time and money on share our broad value system.