KPFA - Against the Grain

A vast circuit of tax payer dollars has flowed to the weapons industry, or directly to Israel, to pay for the bombs that have rained down on Gaza, ultimately enriching tech billionaires and private equity firms in the West. Similarly in Yemen, the Saudi war on that country has led to many hundreds of thousands killed and many more displaced, while generating enormous returns for arms manufacturers. Ruth Rohde and Jack Cinamon delve into the secretive, lucrative, and deadly business of arms.
Andrew Feinstein, Ruth Rohde, and Jack Cinamon, Making a Killing: How the West Profits From Slaughter in Gaza and Yemen Verso, 2026
Photo credit CC BY-SA 4.0
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The Trump administration has built a vast infrastructure of surveillance and prosecution against critics and protestors, justified and enabled by National Security Presidential Memorandum 7.  Shilpa Jindia and Nora Benavidez discuss how to put the breaks on what is likely the largest apparatus of repression in U.S. history.
Shilpa Jindia and Nora Benavidez, “Enemies of the State: NSPM-7 and the Trump Plan to Crush Dissent” Free Press, October 2026
Photo credit: Bill Scheer
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The allegations are explosive: that the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia set up a secret fund for Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, to finance proxy wars hidden from democratic oversight. Journalist Matthew Cole delineates his claims involving, among others, autocratic Gulf leaders, Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, and the disgraced mercenary Erik Prince.
Matthew Cole, Princes and Thieves: Jared Kushner and Mohamed bin Zayed’s Secret Plot to Remake the Middle East Atria/One Signal Publishers, 2026
Photo by Ryan Johnson CC BY-SA 2.0
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It’s no mystery that the fortunes of the very rich have soared under this administration, but the concentration of wealth in the hands of the very few is a hallmark of capitalism itself. Economist Rob Larson returns to discuss wealth and power in the United States, as well as the massive build out of AI data centers.
World Inequality Database
Photo by Jingming Pan on Unsplash
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This month marks the 100th anniversary of the arrest of the Italian Marxist thinker Antonio Gramsci and his incarceration in a fascist prison. Jordan Camp argues that Gramsci’s writing on the so-called southern question was the kernel for an alternate tradition of anti-authoritarianism and anti-fascism, reformulated by thinkers like C.L.R James and Ruth First, Walter Rodney and Stuart Hall, which can help illuminate the present.
Jordan T. Camp, The Southern Question: Anti-Fascism and the Global Conjuncture UC Press, 2027
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