Palestine Defenders Say Western Nations’ New Sanctions on Israeli Settlers ‘Not Enough’

“These are tiny and piecemeal steps which will not prevent Israel from continuing to act with impunity in its genocide and crimes against the Palestinian people,” said one group.


Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich holds a map of an area near the illegal settlement of Maale Adumim outside Jerusalem in the occupied West Bank, on August 14, 2025.
(Photo by Menahem Kahana/AFP via Getty Images)

Brett Wilkins
Jun 09, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

While some advocates for Palestinian rights welcomed Tuesday’s joint announcement by a group of Western nations of new sanctions targeting “extremist” Israeli settlers amid their escalating ethnic cleansing efforts in the illegally occupied West Bank, many others called the measures inadequate and urged stronger action against Israel’s government for enabling settler violence.

The foreign ministers of Australia, Canada, France, Norway, and the United Kingdom issued a joint statement announcing “coordinated action to introduce sanctions and other measures to hold extremist settlers accountable for the horrific levels of settler violence against Palestinian civilians.”

France joined the other four nations and New Zealand—which is coordinating sanctions with the group—in banning Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who seeks to annex the West Bank and Gaza and lives in the illegal settlement of Kedumim, from entering their countries. Members of the coalition also slapped an entry ban on four leaders of settler organizations and 21 individual settlers.

“We are today imposing new sanctions against those responsible for intensifying colonization and violence in the West Bank,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said on social media. “Smotrich actively promotes the annexation of the West Bank, which he openly claims, the creation of new settlements in the West Bank, the recolonization of Gaza, the economic collapse of the Palestinian Authority, and its deleterious consequences on the Palestinian population.”

British Foreign Minister Yvette Cooper said Tuesday during a speech in Parliament that “settler expansion and violence is illegal and a fundamental threat to the viability of a two-state solution, and to long-term peace and security for Palestinians and Israelis.”

“I have strengthened our business risk guidance to make it clear and unambiguous: If you are a British citizen or business, you should not conduct any economic and financial activities in illegal Israeli settlements,” Cooper added.

Coalition countries previously banned Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir from entry. The International Criminal Court in The Hague has reportedly requested arrest warrants for Smotrich and Ben-Gvir for the crime of apartheid related to their plans, backed by the Trump administration in the United States, to expand illegal settler colonies in the West Bank and annex the occupied territory. The ICC issued warrants in 2024 for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, his former defense minister, for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza.

“Extremist violent settlers, with the backing of their supporters, continue to attack Palestinians and abuse their human rights,” Tuesday’s announcement states. “They use violence to displace Palestinians, destroy property, and perpetuate the illegal settlement enterprise, undermining the viability of the state of Palestine and the prospects for peaceful coexistence.”

“For too long, violent settlers have been able to act with near impunity, and settlement expansion and creation of outposts continue with the support and facilitation of the government of Israel,” the ministers said. “In some cases, settler violence takes place under the protection of Israel’s security forces. We continue to urge the government of Israel to take action to ensure meaningful accountability for violence in the West Bank.”

The statement noted that the five countries “have all taken the historic decision to recognize the state of Palestine, reflecting the rights of the Palestinian people and as part of our common efforts to protect the viability of the two-state solution.”

“Today, we are acting together again in support of the same objectives,” the ministers asserted. “We stand ready to take more action if the government of Israel does not take urgent steps to address the situation on the ground.”

Many Palestinians and their advocates said the sanctions don’t go far enough.

“While this is a step in the right direction, it is woefully inadequate,” Palestinian Ambassador to the UK Husam Zomlot said on social media. “We are beyond words of condemnation. Israel has demonstrated, time and again, its disregard for international law.”



“Words without action are not diplomacy. It is abdicating responsibilities,” Zomlot continued. “What is needed now is clear: a ban on settlement products, comprehensive sanctions on those profiting from illegal settlements and the state sponsoring them, and guarantees that British companies, banks, and financial institutions are not contributing to Israel’s illegal occupation.”

“Justice cannot wait,” the ambassador added. “The time for meaningful action is now.”

Amnesty International UK crisis response manager Kristyan Benedict called the new sanctions “a step, but not enough.”

“If ministers are serious about sanctioning those ‘who support and sponsor violence against Palestinian communities in the West Bank’, they must act on the reality that settlements and settler violence are state policy—directed and funded from the top,” Benedict argued.

“Targeting settler financing networks while the ministers who run this campaign face no consequences is not meaningful accountability—it leaves the architects untouched,” he stressed, calling on the UK government to also sanction Netanyahu, Gallant, current Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz, and Settlement Minister Orit Strock.

“The legal obligation is clear, but the political will is still not strong enough,” Benedict added. “Successive UK governments have failed to take meaningful action to stop Israel’s crimes and those that enable them. That failure sends a dangerous message that Palestinian lives are not valued and that unlawful occupation and apartheid are acceptable. This must end now.”

The Palestine Solidarity Campaign said in a statement that “whilst any move towards additional sanctions is correct, these are tiny and piecemeal steps which will not prevent Israel from continuing to act with impunity in its genocide and crimes against the Palestinian people.”

“In addition to these limited sanctions, the government has announced that it will ‘firmly advise’ British businesses against illegal activity, sending the disgraceful message that acting according to international law is optional,” PSC added.

This week, around 140 Labour members of UK Parliament urged Cooper to take “urgent, concrete action to counter the escalation of violations against Palestinians” by “ending trade with illegal Israeli settlements.”

Adil Haque, executive editor at Just Security and distinguished professor at Rutgers Law School in New Jersey, said on X: “Better something than nothing, but if the aim is the removal of *all* illegal settlements, then targeted sanctions against a few groups and individuals will not do much.”

Iranian-Canadian journalist Samira Mohyeddin replied to a social media post from Canadian Foreign Minister Anita Anand saying her country’s government “continues to oppose the expansion of settlements,” asking, “How?”

“How do you oppose them? Sanction ISRAEL,” Mohyeddin asserted. “Those supporting the settlers are the Israeli state. Those who are arming them are the Israeli state. And it is Canadian Zionist charities that are funding them.”





Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the country’s government “firmly rejects the disgraceful measures adopted by foreign governments against Israeli citizens, entities, and a government minister,” accusing the six nations of attempting to “impose a political stance regarding the right of Jews to settle in the Land of Israel and concerning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—camouflaged as measures against violence.”

The ministry also blasted what it called the countries’ “resounding failure” to “combat the antisemitism that is rampant in their own countries,” adding that “anti-Israeli policies of the kind adopted today only serve to fuel that antisemitism.”

In July 2024, the International Court of Justice—where Israel is currently facing a genocide case related to the Gaza war, which has left more than 250,000 Palestinians dead or wounded—found the occupation of Palestine to be an illegal form of apartheid that must be ended as soon as possible. The ICJ also ruled that Israeli settler colonization of the West Bank amounts to annexation, also a crime under international law.

Efforts by the Israeli government, military, and settlers to expand West Bank settlement activity have accelerated dramatically since the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023. With the world’s attention focused on Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza, Israeli soldiers and settlers have ramped up the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the occupied territory.

Attacks on West Bank Palestinians, including pogroms carried out by mobs of settlers protected and sometimes joined by Israeli troops, have killed at least 1,098 Palestinians between October 7, 2023 and May 18, according to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees. At least 240 of the slain victims were children.

Israeli settlers frequently attack Palestinian homes, businesses, and farms, and other critical infrastructure. The attackers burn homes, destroy crops, kill or steal livestock, and sometimes forcibly expel residents. Journalists who document the assaults and international activists trying to protect locals from the rampaging assailants have also been attacked.

Israel Escalating Ethnic Cleansing in West Bank ‘Before the Eyes of the Entire World’: Amnesty

“This is not the work of rogue actors,” said the human rights group’s secretary general. “What we are witnessing is deliberate, state-led annexation.”


Palestinians attempt to extinguish a fire in an agricultural field set by Israeli settlers in the town of Huwara, near Nablus, West Bank, Palestine on June 6, 2026.
(Photo by Nedal Eshtayah/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Stephen Prager
Jun 10, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

The international community is allowing the Israeli government to carry out an explicit policy of “ethnic cleansing” against Palestinians in the West Bank that is rapidly accelerating, according to a report out Wednesday from Amnesty International.

The human rights group said the world must intervene to stop what it described as a campaign of forcible displacement, rampant state-backed violence by Israeli settlers, demolitions of Palestinian homes, and tightening restrictions on Palestinian access to land and water.

Using United Nations data, Amnesty determined that at least 117 predominantly Bedouin and herding communities faced full or partial displacement between January 2023 and April 2026, with about 45 communities totally depopulated.

Nearly 6,000 people were forced from their homes during that time, roughly 17% of the Palestinian population in the Israeli-controlled Area C’s Bedouin and herding communities.




Amnesty found that Israeli authorities demolished more than 3,400 Palestinian homes and structures in Area C during that time, displacing more than 3,000 Palestinians.

The group describes this systematic displacement as explicit Israeli state policy. The government advanced plans for more than 50,000 settler housing units from 2023-25 and authorized 102 new settlements by April 2026, the largest number ever approved by an Israeli government.

This has coincided with a dramatic increase in violence by armed Israeli settlers, who have set fire to homes and farmlands, vandalized schools and agricultural equipment, cut electricity lines and dumped water tanks, and beaten and killed Palestinian residents.

The UN’s Office on the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs calculated that four settler attacks have occurred per day on average in the roughly two years following October 7, 2023, and have only grown more frequent this year, particularly after Israel and the US’s joint attack on Iran, which was followed by an invasion of Lebanon that has also entailed mass destruction of homes and the forced displacement of over a million residents.

In several documented cases, armed settler attackers have been escorted or accompanied by Israeli soldiers, who have at times taken part in the destruction.

“Over the past three and a half years, Israeli authorities have accelerated a state-sponsored campaign of ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, uprooting, dispossessing, and forcibly transferring Palestinian communities,” said Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s secretary general.

“This is not the work of rogue actors or what the international community has repeatedly labeled as extremist settlers, organizations or one or two ministers,” she said. “What we are witnessing is deliberate, state-led annexation, in complete violation of international law unfolding before the eyes of the entire world.”

The report comes just a day after a group of Western nations—including the UK, Canada, France, Australia, New Zealand, and Norway—announced coordinated sanctions against Israeli individuals and organizations accused of financing and enabling settler violence in the West Bank.

However, Amnesty argued that these measures were too narrow.

“These limited measures are woefully insufficient to address the state campaign of ethnic cleansing and the systemic violations that have been rapidly increasing before the eyes of the international community,” Callamard said.

She said states, “particularly those with influence over Israel,” including the US, the UK, Germany, Italy, and other European Union and Arab States, needed to “ban all trade, investment, and any form of cooperation or financial assistance that contribute to Israel’s unlawful occupation, system of apartheid, and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.”

Callamard added that states “must impose targeted sanctions, including travel bans and asset freezes, against Israeli officials directly implicated in these acts.” She included Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and far-right settler politicians like Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, as well as settlers who have allegedly committed acts of murder, like Yinon Levi, who was filmed last year shooting and killing human rights activist Awda al-Hathaleen and was released from custody after a day.

Callamard said, “Without accountability, Palestinian communities across the West Bank will vanish before our eyes.”

World’s Richest Man Elon Musk Denounced for Stoking Violence After Knife Attack in Belfast

“Elon Musk is a national security threat,” said one London politician.


Anti-immigrant mobs set cars and buildings on fire on Lendrick Street in Belfast, Northern Ireland on June 9, 2026 following a stabbing by a refugee.
(Photo by PA/PA Images via Getty Images)

Julia Conley
Jun 10, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

Politicians in Northern Ireland and across the United Kingdom on Wednesday were denouncing mobs of masked rioters who had spent Tuesday night setting fire to properties, buses, and cars in Belfast and forcing immigrant families to flee their homes in fear, following a stabbing attack in which a Sudanese immigrant is the suspect.

But along with the groups of anti-immigration agitators in the Northern Ireland capital and elsewhere in the country, local leaders reserved particular condemnation for one man who was thousands of miles away from the violence and who, as one member of Parliament said, has likely “never been to and possibly never heard of North Belfast” before he began inciting the mobs there: tech billionaire and right-wing megadonor Elon Musk.

After a graphic video of Monday night’s attack on a Belfast man, Steven Ogilvy, circulated online Tuesday, Musk used his platform, X, to share a post by far-right, anti-immigrant activist Tommy Robinson in which Robinson had listed places where his supporters could gather to protest “yet another invader attack on our people.”

“Only by protesting REPEATEDLY and LOUDLY will there be any change!!” said Musk.

He also shared a post by MP Rupert Lowe of the far-right Restore Britain Party, which appeared to include a screenshot of the video of the knife attack and was captioned, “Millions must go.”

At Novara Media, investigative journalist Paul Holden said far-right politicians and their supporters were pushing the “central lie” that “immigrants are an ‘alien culture.’”

“'We’ve imported an alien culture that venerates bloodlust.’... That’s not true,” he said. “That fundamentally isn’t true.”



After Musk, the world’s richest person, broadcast the call to his 240 million followers in X, immigrant families in Belfast had to be escorted by emergency responders out of their homes as masked mobs set fire to their neighborhoods as well as creating roadblocks by moving garbage cans and setting them ablaze.

Sudanese business owners in central Belfast were forced to close their stores and lock them with steel shutters before 4:00 pm on Tuesday out of fear of being attacked. The Belfast Islamic Center canceled evening prayers.

“We are telling our congregation to go home, don’t go out, look after your children, don’t share rumors, and do listen to the authorities,” Ameer Ibrahim, a project manager, told The Guardian.

Anna Turley, a member of Parliament and chair of the Labour Party, suggested in an interview with Times Radio that Musk was one of many “bad faith actors who are sitting often many, many miles away. It’s easy for them to stoke these things up.”

Asked if she was referring to the Tesla CEO, Turley said, “He’s not living in the kind of communities where we’re seeing this kind of activity. He’s not at risk.”

“He has a responsibility, everyone in public and civil life has a responsibility to call for calm and not to stoke grievance or hatred or division or tension that puts vulnerable people and our communities at risk,” she added.

The suspect in Monday night’s knife attack has been named as Hadi Alodid, a 30-year-old man who claimed asylum when he entered Northern Ireland in 2023. Nearly 4 million people have been forced to flee Sudan since 2023, when fighting broke out between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary group Rapid Support Forces, exacerbating disease outbreaks and the country’s economic and political instability.

Alodid has authorization to stay in the UK until 2028. He was charged with attempted murder and possessing a knife in a public place. Authorities say there is no indication that the attack was related to terrorism. He appeared in a magistrate court Wednesday where a judge refused Alodid bail and adjourned the case until July 8.

The victim of the attack lost his left eye and sustained injuries on his face and back, according to The Guardian.

His family released a statement through Phillip Brett, who represents Belfast North in the Legislative Assembly, saying that they were “completely devastated by the horrific attack on our loved one” and emphasizing that the violence that rocked the city overnight Tuesday was “not welcome.”

“We have many migrants who make a deeply valuable contribution to our country, including in our healthcare system and hospitality sector, and we depend on them to make our country work,” said the family. “We do not want this terrible tragedy to be used to divide people or fuel hostility.”

John Finucane, a member of Parliament from North Belfast who represents Sinn Féin, told Sky News that Musk’s decision to urge anti-immigrant mobs to gather in response to the attack was “not fair for the victim. It’s not fair for the people of North Belfast who are trying to sew themselves back together after what they witnessed.”



“They need our support,” he said. “They do not need to be used for a wider political agenda.”

Turley told LBC Wednesday that Musk’s posts on the attack were “appalling.”

“Anyone that is seeking to drive and exploit a situation like this to drive their own political agenda is grievously wrong and doing damage,” she said. “We’ve seen children, families having to flee their homes on the streets of Belfast last night... We do not want to see this kind of disruption, damage, thuggery, violence on our streets, and anyone that is seeking to whip that up should be condemned.”

Rob Blackie, a former London mayoral candidate for the Liberal Democrats Party, called on the UK to take “government action” to hold Musk accountable, including by regulating X.

“Thugs burning out people in Belfast can’t be ignored,” said Blackie. “Elon Musk is a national security threat.”

‘A New Pinnacle of Oligarchy’: Elon Musk Poised to Become World’s First Trillionaire

“The new Gilded Age won’t end itself,” said Oxfam America. “This is a trillion-dollar alarm bell that should wake governments up to the need to take action.”



Demonstrators protest ahead of the initial public offering of Elon Musk’s SpaceX on June 5, 2026 in New York City.
(Photo by Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images)

Jake Johnson
Jun 11, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

With Elon Musk’s SpaceX set to go public on Friday, the world’s richest man could soon become the first-ever trillionaire—an achievement that one leading humanitarian group called “a new pinnacle of oligarchy and a dark day for democracy.”

Whether Musk reaches trillionaire status in the coming days will depend on the success of SpaceX’s initial public offering (IPO), which critics warn is a potentially massive threat to market stability and Americans’ retirement savings. The company plans to sell 555,555,555 shares at a price of $135 each, aiming for a staggering $1.75 trillion valuation. Musk, who is the company’s board chair and owns 42% of its common stock along with options, will see his net worth skyrocket if SpaceX achieves its IPO targets.

‘The IPO Is Being Engineered’: 12-Minute Video Details Growing Fears Over Elon Musk Plot to Become World’s First Trillionaire

Oxfam America noted in an analysis released Thursday that a $1 trillion net worth would mean that it would take Musk 2,740 years to spend $1 trillion if he spent $1 million per day. The group estimated that a 10% tax on $1 trillion “could end global extreme poverty for a year, lifting over 800 million people above the extreme poverty line.”

Nabil Ahmed, senior director of economic justice at Oxfam America, said in a statement that “this moment of dramatically concentrated wealth was not inevitable.”

“Musk will be a government-backed trillionaire whose fortune was fueled by an era of regressive public policy choices—decisions rigged by a tiny few to fuel their fortunes, and overwhelmingly supported by political leaders,” said Ahmed. “A trillion dollars in the hands of one man is incompatible not only with an affordable economy, but also with a healthy democracy. Economic inequality begets political inequality, and ordinary people bear the brunt while billionaires continue to write the rules for their own benefit.”

“The new Gilded Age won’t end itself,” he added. “This is a trillion-dollar alarm bell that should wake governments up to the need to take action. Never has it been more urgent to curb the accumulation of extreme wealth—overhauling the economic policies that have created not just trillionaires, but billionaires and the obscene inequality we see today.”

Oxfam highlighted Musk’s brief but immensely destructive tenure in the US federal government at the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, which took a sledgehammer to foreign aid programs and assailed the Social Security Administration, among other actions whose consequences are expected to reverberate for years to come. Oxfam has warned that the Musk-led decimation of the US Agency for International Development means that “a child under 5 could die every 40 seconds by 2030.”

Musk was given the role at DOGE after using a tiny fraction of his wealth to boost President Donald Trump and Republican candidates in the 2024 election. Musk is spending big again to boost the GOP in the 2026 midterms.

“Musk’s ability to pour money into elections allowed him to use his wealth and power in ways that embody the corrosive effects of billionaire control,” Oxfam said Thursday.

The group’s statement came amid mounting anxiety about the impact of SpaceX’s IPO, beyond potentially pushing Musk’s wealth past the trillion-dollar mark.

In a letter to the US Securities and Exchange Commission earlier this week, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) raised “extreme concern” about the possibility that the IPO could flop. Major stock index providers, she observed, are “rewriting their rules to fast-track SpaceX’s entry into their indexes—and into the investment funds that power millions of Americans’ retirement savings.”

“The net result could be disastrous,” Warren wrote, “a scenario where retirees’ and families’ investment accounts take a hit if SpaceX’s valuation falters, with little recourse for any corporate misconduct, while the wealthiest man on earth becomes even wealthier due to a lack of oversight.”

SpaceX’s historic IPO by the numbers

AFP
June 10, 2026 

SpaceX’s Starship 39 rocket launches from Starbase during the 12th test flight as seen from South Padre Island, Texas, on May 22, 2026 – Copyright AFP/File RONALDO SCHEMIDT

The stock market debut of SpaceX (Elon Musk’s rocket, satellite and company) expected Friday, could be the biggest in history. Here are the key numbers.

$75 billion

The amount SpaceX hopes to raise by selling new shares to investors. That target would be triple the all-time record, set by Saudi oil giant Saudi Aramco in 2019 ($25.6 billion).

$1.765 trillion

SpaceX’s estimated worth, or “valuation” — what the market thinks the entire company is worth if you added up all its shares.

That figure includes xAI, Musk’s AI startup and the X social network (formerly Twitter), which SpaceX absorbed in February.

It would make SpaceX the eighth most valuable company on Earth, right behind the biggest names in tech.

$18.6 billion

How much money SpaceX brought in during 2025 — its total sales before expenses. That was up a third from the year before, and most of it (61%) came from Starlink, the satellite service that beams internet to homes from orbit.

$4.9 billion

The amount SpaceX lost in 2025. Even with all that revenue, it spent far more than it earned, mostly because building AI is extremely expensive — nearly $10 billion last year alone.

A loss doesn’t mean the company is failing; it often means it is investing heavily in future growth.

$791 billion

Elon Musk’s personal fortune, according to Forbes. If the IPO goes well and SpaceX’s share price climbs, Musk could become the world’s first trillionaire — the first person in history to be worth more than $1,000,000,000,000.

82 percent

The share of SpaceX voting rights Musk will hold after the IPO. Even though new shareholders will own a slice of the company, Musk will keep almost all the decision-making power — a common setup in tech, where founders often hold special “super-voting” shares.

$28.5 trillion

SpaceX’s own estimate of the total value of all the markets it operates in — rockets, satellites, internet, AI, and more. To put that in perspective, the entire US economy produced about $30.36 trillion worth of goods and services in 2025.

All in on Musk, SpaceX’s self-declared ‘dream weaver’

Elon Musk will control more than 82 percent of SpaceX voting shares and there is no designated successor 

AFP
June 10, 2026 

– Copyright US Central Command (CENTCOM)/AFP/File –


When SpaceX lists on Wall Street, expected on Friday, Elon Musk will serve simultaneously as chief executive, chief technology officer and board chairman of the rocket and AI company.

He will control more than 82 percent of its voting shares. There is no designated successor, no deputy and no key-person life insurance written into its filings.

The world’s most valuable IPO depends entirely on one man.

“He’s completely upending the conventional conduct of running a publicly traded corporation by declaring himself an irreplaceable dream weaver and master engineer of the whole undertaking,” Quinn Slobodian, co-author with Ben Tarnoff of “Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed,” told AFP in an interview.

For Slobodian, a professor of international history at Boston University who has spent years studying Musk’s empire, that brazen concentration of personal power is not a flaw in the SpaceX offering — it is its defining feature.

SpaceX is targeting a valuation of approximately $1.8 trillion and aims to raise $75 billion when trading opens Friday under the ticker SPCX, in what will be the largest public offering in history.



– Jobs and Gates –



To understand how Musk positioned himself as literally irreplaceable, Slobodian pointed to the “prophetic founder” model exemplified by Steve Jobs and Bill Gates.

“Jobs and Gates are kind of the template,” Slobodian said, adding that Musk’s decision to give Walter Isaacson — the biographer who immortalized Jobs — access for his own biography was itself a tell.

What gave Musk’s version of that archetype genuine credibility, Slobodian argued, was a willingness to go against the grain of early 21st-century investment orthodoxy.

At a time when “design in California, assemble in China” was the way — with the iPhone as the example — Musk poured his early fortune from PayPal into a rocket company and an electric vehicle manufacturer, both requiring him to solve brutally hard engineering problems.

His distance from his tech-billionaire peers is now measurable in purely financial terms.

Musk’s fortune, expected to hit $1 trillion with the IPO, is approaching three times the size of that of the second richest person on the planet, currently Google co-founder Larry Page.

“He’s operating at a different scale, and with a scope of ambition that just makes him singular,” Slobodian said.



– Too big to fail –



Musk is often framed as a libertarian entrepreneur who built his empire outside the reach of government.

Slobodian argues that Musk has always depended on government as primary client or subsidy giver, from his earliest startup Zip2’s reliance on publicly funded GPS data to the billions SpaceX draws in federal contracts today.

He pointed in particular to what he described as SpaceX’s Golden Dome contracts, worth $4 billion, to supply satellite infrastructure for the Trump administration’s proposed national missile defense shield.

In his view, SpaceX is structurally too critical to national security interests for any administration to let it fail.

“If Trump gave a second thought to bailing out Spirit Airlines,” Slobodian said of the bankrupt low-cost carrier, “what about SpaceX?”



– After Henry Ford –



Slobodian situated Musk’s alignment with far-right movements in the United States and sovereigntist parties in Europe as serving commercial ends, not merely personal ones.

He argued that Musk sees compliant political partners both abroad and at home as essential to obtaining the regulatory approvals SpaceX needs: spectrum allocations, satellite launch rights and permission to operate Starlink in key markets.

That worldview, Slobodian and Tarnoff contend in their book, has roots in Musk’s upbringing in the suburbs of Pretoria under apartheid-era South Africa — a regime they argue deployed IBM mainframes and advanced technology to control the population through data collection and surveillance.

As for whether the Musk model outlasts the dream weaver himself, Slobodian pointed to Palantir — which, like SpaceX, first broke into government work by suing the US military for contracts — as one potential carrier of the torch.

But a true successor, he suggested, may be hard to find, “just as there was no Henry Ford after Henry Ford,” only imitations.

A glossary to help understand what happens in an initial public offering

By

The Associated Press

Opens in new window

Published: June 10, 2026 

A board above the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange with stock symbols is shown in this image, Tuesday, July 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

Anyone following SpaceX’s plans to sell shares to the public is likely to hear terms thrown around that describe steps and components of an initial public offering. Here’s a quick guide.

Initial public offering, or IPO

A company’s first offering of stock to the public. It is the first time a company’s value will be determined by a public market.

Prospectus

A formal offer to sell shares in the company. It also includes a business plan with details about the company’s finances and operations. Also known as an S-1, after the Securities and Exchange Commission form.

Listing

This describes the ticker symbol for the stock and the public exchange where it is being traded. For example, Apple is traded as “AAPL” on the Nasdaq and Macy’s is traded as “M” on the New York Stock Exchange. SpaceX plans to list on the Nasdaq under the symbol “SPCX.”

Underwriter

An underwriter is a bank or other financial institution that acts as the intermediary between the company and investors. They purchase the stock being issued by the company in the IPO and sell it to the public. There are often several underwriters involved to share the risk. The lead underwriters for the SpaceX IPO are Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley.

 

Roadshow

The name for the presentations given by company executives and underwriters to potential investors, typically institutional investors, before the company issues its shares.

Lockup

This is the period of time when executives, insiders and early investors are legally prohibited from selling their shares. It is typically 90 or 180 days and is meant to prevent insiders from quickly cashing out or dumping their shares. Elon Musk and other SpaceX executives have agreed to a lockup period of 366 days.

Over-allotment

This is a provision that allows underwriters of an IPO to sell more shares than initially planned. It is meant to meet unexpectedly high demand or to help stabilize the stock price.

 

Price range

This is an estimated range for the price of the shares the company is offering provided before the stock is publicly traded. Investors place bids within that range before the listing price is determined. SpaceX went against convention and set a price of $135 for shares in the offering.

Price discovery

This describes the broader process undertaken by the company and underwriters to determine the listing price for the stock. It attempts to balance demand for the stock with the potential supply of shares. The process typically takes longer when an IPO has high interest from potential investors.

Associated Press, The Associated Press

Lawsuit Aims to Halt Trump Giveaway of Wildlife Refuge to Appease Elon Musk’s SpaceX

“We’re not letting Trump and his political cronies lock the American people out of Texas’ cherished public lands just to give Elon Musk another payday.”


SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk speaks during an America PAC town hall on October 26, 2024 in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
(Photo by Samuel Corum/Getty Images)

Brad Reed
Jun 10, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

Several environmental organizations are suing the US Fish and Wildlife Service to stop the agency from handing over hundreds of acres of the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge to Elon Musk’s company SpaceX.

The complaint—which was filed by the Center for Biological Diversity, Save RGV, the Carrizo/Comecrudo Nation of Texas, and South Texas Environmental Justice Network—alleges that the government is violating federal law that requires any transfers of wildlife refuge lands to private ownership to result in net conservation benefits.

Instead, the complaint says the proposed deal with SpaceX would lead to a loss of more 715 acres of wildlife refuge land in exchange for 683 acres of private land.

Bekah Hinojosa, co-founder of the South Texas Environmental Justice Network, expressed particular concerns about SpaceX building facilities on the land given that the company’s rockets regularly cause environmental damage by exploding.

“Elon Musk has built his explosive SpaceX facility in the middle of a major wildlife corridor home to endangered and threatened species like ocelots and wetlands,” said Hinojosa. “There was never supposed to be space rockets blowing up here.”

Laiken Jordahl, national public lands advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity, accused President Donald Trump’s administration of handing over vital public lands to “the world’s richest man, who could trash them while playing with his exploding rockets.”

“We’re not letting Trump and his political cronies lock the American people out of Texas’ cherished public lands,” added Jordahl, “just to give Elon Musk another payday.”

Mary Angela Branch, board member at Save RGV, said that SpaceX’s presence in the area has already been an “unmitigated disaster” for the local environment, and she warned the land transfer plan would “permanently sever the very heart of the wildlife corridor established by Congress in 1979.”

“This corridor, running along the Rio Grande... is prime wildlife habitat, and nothing gained in this ‘swap’ will be equal,” Branch emphasized. “This will be a huge loss.”

In addition to opposition from the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, the proposed transfer to SpaceX has drawn significant opposition from some local residents. According to a report published last week by the San Antonio Express-News, more than 3,400 letters have been submitted to the US Fish and Wildlife Service expressing opposition to the transfer.

Musk, who on Wednesday was accused by politicians in the UK of stoking racial hatred that led to violent pogroms in the city of Belfast, is aiming to become the world’s first trillionaire ty making SpaceX a publicly traded company this month.

International Lawyers Decry US Aggression Against Cuba, Urge Solidarity With Its People

“Those who remain silent in the face of this growing unlawfulness and aggressiveness assume a grave responsibility,” said the head of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers.

People protest the internationally condemned US blockade of Cuba and the Trump administration's military threats against the socialist nation, in Brussels on February 7, 2026.
(Photo by Peter Mertens/X)

Brett Wilkins
Jun 10, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

An international group of leftist lawyers on Tuesday condemned the US blockade, sanctions, and war threats against Cuba, and the mounting repression of solidarity with the long-suffering Cuban people.

The International Association of Democratic Lawyers (IADL) held a virtual press conference “to condemn escalating United States measures against Cuba and to call for renewed international action in defense of international law, Cuban sovereignty, and the rights of the Cuban people.”

“The United States continues to threaten Cuba while imposing unilateral coercive economic measures designed to destabilize the country and facilitate regime change,” IADL noted. “In recent months, restrictions on fuel shipments have further intensified the hardships faced by the Cuban people, with severe consequences for daily life.”

“For more than three decades, the United Nations General Assembly has overwhelmingly called for an end to the US blockade of Cuba, with the United States and Israel consistently standing alone in opposition to the international consensus,” the group added. “While these annual resolutions represent a powerful condemnation of the blockade, symbolic measures alone are insufficient. International law imposes obligations on states to act in the face of ongoing violations.”

Speakers at the press conference warned that the Trump administration’s recent actions—including war threats and a deadly fuel blockade—are serious violations of international law that threaten the rights and well-being of millions of Cubans.

“The illegality of the blockade is not in doubt. What is at stake today is the impunity that allows it to continue,” IADL general secretary Micòl Savia said. “What is at stake is the complete disregard of the United States for international law and collective institutions and their contempt for the common values of humankind.”

“The actions of successive US administrations against Cuba make it very clear that they do not consider themselves bound by the principles of sovereign equality, peaceful coexistence, and self-determination that form the foundation of the international legal order,” she continued.

“Another dimension of the blockade and sanctions against Cuba is the pressure imposed on third countries,” Savia said. “The threat of punishment against institutions, banks, companies, and individuals that seek to establish commercial, financial, or diplomatic relations with Cuba is an intervention not only against Cuba, but also into the sovereign sphere of other countries.”

“This shows how broad and arbitrary the sanctions policy has become as a tool of coercion,” she added. “The threat of sanctions against companies from third countries that trade with Cuba violates their sovereignty.”

Speakers at the event excoriated the Trump administration’s escalating war threats and politically motivated indictment of former Cuban President Raúl Castro, a hero of his country’s successful revolution against a US-backed dictatorship.

“Cuba is now under the direct threat of [a] US imperialist war of aggression after a long period of economic and financial blockade,” said Filipino jurist Edwin De La Cruz of the Amistad Philippines-Cuba Friendship Association and National Union of People’s Lawyers.

“Serious transgressions on Cuba’s sovereignty, from failed efforts to foment unrest among the population, to the personal assault on the integrity of Comrade Raúl Castro by [President] Donald Trump intensified, with a threat of armed invasion tweeted by Donald Trump himself,” he continued.

“Cuba and the Philippines share a common history of US imperialist domination. We share a common enemy and a common struggle,” De La Cruz noted, pointing to the so-called Spanish-American War, in which the United States conquered both countries, along with Puerto Rico and Guam, from Spain under the false pretense of a Spanish attack on the battleship USS Maine. The US colonized the Philippines from 1898-1946, except for a brief period of Japanese occupation during World War II.

Deborah Jackson, president of the US group National Conference of Black Lawyers, called the Castro indictment “a transparently political prosecution that serves no legitimate law enforcement purpose.”

Castro—who served as Cuba’s president for a decade after his older brother, Fidel Castro, stepped down in 2008—was indicted by the US Department of Justice (DOJ) last month for his alleged role in the 1996 shoot-down of planes operated by Brothers to the Rescue, a counter-revolutionary group founded by a CIA-trained operative and Bay of Pigs veteran, after repeated warnings that they had violated Cuban airspace.

Critics noted Trump’s ongoing campaign of illegal boat bombings in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean, as well as the long history of US state terrorism against Cuba and support for the perpetrators of attacks carried out by right-wing Cuban exiles, including the 1976 bombing of a commercial flight with 73 people aboard.

Jackson said the charges against Castro “are clearly invalid... attempts to criminalize legitimate acts of self-defense by a sovereign nation” that “have been brought nearly three decades after the incident in question against a 94-year-old former head of state who will never be extradited to the United States.”

Kerry McLean, an international human rights attorney with the National Lawyers’ Guild in the United States, warned that “the indictment of Castro, a foreign leader and former head of state, threatens a repeat of the illegal abduction on January 3, 2026 of Venezuela’s president and his wife.”

Trump ordered the invasion and arrest of President Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Flores on dubious drug trafficking, illegal weapons possession, and narco-terrorism charges. The DOJ has since admitted that the cartel which Trump claimed was led by Maduro does not, in fact, exist.

McLean added that the US invasion of Venezuela—during which more than 75 people, including 32 Cuban members of Maduro’s security team, were killed—violated the UN Charter, a treaty that, under the US Constitution, is “the supreme law of the land.”

Speakers at the IADL event also decried US efforts to intimidate, investigate, and criminalize solidarity organizations.

“Like the designation of Cuba as a ‘state supporter of terror’ and the designations of many of the leading organizations and figures of the Cuba solidarity movement, these organizations and individuals are designated and targeted to impose state terror on the Palestine and Cuba solidarity movements, divide people from their homelands, and blunt the effectiveness of any opposition to US imperialism,” IADL deputy general secretary Charlotte Kates said.

“The aim of such designations is not only to prohibit financial transactions, but to isolate those organizations and individuals that the US views as key networks of solidarity against imperialism and to prevent meaningful action to bring its crimes to an end,” she contended.

Savia said, “Those who remain silent in the face of this growing unlawfulness and aggressiveness assume a grave responsibility, particularly when such conduct is carried out by one of the most powerful and heavily armed states in the world.”

“By letting these policies continue unabated,” she added, “and by applying double standards and selectivity while granting widespread impunity to rich and powerful states, they contribute to the erosion of the international legal order and pave the way for a world without the rule of law.”

8,000+ Italian Medical Professionals Sign Open Letter Decrying US Blockade of Cuba

“Italy is indebted to Cuba,” the letter states. “Every day of silence has a cost in human lives.”

Members of the Cuban medical mission to Calabria pose for a photo with their Italian colleagues in Cosenza, Italy on May 23, 2025.
(Photo: Misión Médica Cubana en Calabria/X)

Brett Wilkins
Jun 10, 2026

As of Wednesday, more than 8,000 Italian medical and scientific professionals have signed an open letter acknowledging their indebtedness to Cuban doctors and condemning the tightening of the 65-year US embargo on Cuba by President Donald Trump as he threatens “take” the island.

“Over the decades, Cuba has built a health system that was considered an international model, capable of guaranteeing universal access to care even in limited resource conditions. Since 1963, more than 600,000 Cuban health workers have served in more than 160 countries, including Italy,” states the letter addressed to Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Health Minister Orazio Schillaci.

“That system is currently in a state of collapse,” the letter continues. “Survival in childhood cancers has fallen from 80% to 65% due to the lack of first-line drugs.”

The publication notes that “96,000 people—almost 1% of the population—including 11,000 children are on the waiting list for surgery. If the situation does not change, the list could affect 160,000 patients by the end of 2026. Over 300 pediatric surgeries per week are compromised by shortages of drugs, oxygen, anesthetics, and consumables.”

“The crisis has its roots in a combination of factors that have progressively worsened,” the letter continues. “The tightening of the economic embargo during the first Trump administration, Covid-19, and, since January 2026, the near-total blockade of energy supplies following the Venezuelan crisis have deprived the island of fuel, electricity, and access to international drug and medical device markets.”

A report published in April by researchers at the Center for Economic Policy and Research confirmed an “unprecedented increase” in Cuba’s infant mortality rate, which soared 148% between 2018 and 2025.

Report co-author Joe Sammut said that “the blockade has had a particularly dire effect on Cuba’s healthcare infrastructure, with frequent power outages” exacerbated by the US oil blockade “interrupting the use of critical equipment for the treatment of patients, including incubators for premature babies, and ventilators to help sick newborns breathe.”

The United Nations General Assembly has overwhelmingly condemned the broader US embargo—which Cuba’s government says has cost the island’s economy more than $1 trillion over seven decades—33 times.

“The collapse of a health system is not just a local tragedy: It is a violation of fundamental human rights that requires a response from the global community, beyond any political assessment of the Cuban regime,” the Italian letter argues.

“Italy cannot remain indifferent or silent, also because it is indebted to Cuba for the help received during the Covid-19 pandemic and for the current work of Cuban doctors in the Calabria Region to guarantee the functioning of the local health service,” the publication adds.

The Trump administration has been pressuring Italy to curb its use of Cuban doctors, who are essential to Calabria’s healthcare system.

“It is the duty of the global health community—doctors, researchers, institutions, scientific journals—but also of the civil community to act without ambiguity, in compliance with the fundamental principles of humanitarian law,” the letter concludes. “Every day of silence has a cost in human lives.”