Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

“In 1986 the Economist reported that recent scandals had “raised doubts abroad that the City of London is the most honest place to do business”. Lord Roskill, the senior judge Margaret Thatcher’s government appointed to examine the state of fraud in the UK, agreed. ‘While petty frauds, clumsily committed, are likely to be detected and punished, it is all too likely that the largest and most cleverly executed crimes escape unpunished’, his commission reported.” That is in line with a Czech proverb: the big thieves hang the small ones. “The harder and more complex the investigations it [the Serious Fraud Office] takes on, the more it is fulfilling its mission – and the likelier it is to fail.” “Having ruled that the agency mistreated the Trio’s corporate empire [ENRC/Eurasian Natural Resources Corporation], a judge will now decide how much UK taxpayers’ money should be paid to the oligarchs’ company in damages. The SFO has set aside a quarter of a billion pounds.” “On 24 August 2023, 10 ...

An Extinction Rebellion that cannot rebel. A Trade Union Congress that bows in front of class rule. An excellent article by Chris Hedges Related

Serving the global elite

Credit Suisse has asked hedge funds and other investors to destroy documents relating to its richest clients’ yachts and private jets, in an attempt to stop information leaking about a unit of the bank that has made loans to oligarchs who were later sanctioned.  Investors this week received letters from the Swiss bank requesting that they destroy the documents relating to a securitisation of loans backed by “jets, yachts, real estate and/or financial assets”, according to three people whose firm received the request. Financial Times Swiss banks are also infamous for protecting fat accounts of Tunisian and Egyptian family members of the former Ben Ali and Mubarak regimes, among others.

The best a analysis I have read so far. Straining under its own contradictions

  Biden may pave the way for a more competent autocrat [sic] Trump has never been an autocrat. I don’t see the author using the word metaphorically.

 The biggest threat to its independence is the corporation itself

"The killer clowns offer the oligarchs something else too: distraction and deflection. While the  kleptocrats fleece us , we are urged to look elsewhere. We are mesmerised by buffoons who encourage us to channel the anger that should be reserved for billionaires towards immigrants, women, Jews, Muslims, people of colour and other imaginary enemies and customary scapegoats. Just as it was in the 1930s, the new demagoguery is a con, a revolt against the impacts of capital, financed by capitalists." From Trump to Johnson: nationalists are on the rise — backed by billionaire oligarchs

"Because we cannot save ourselves without contesting oligarchic control, the fight for democracy and justice and the fight against environmental breakdown are  one and the same . Do not allow those who have caused this crisis to define the limits of political action. Do not allow those whose magical thinking got us into this mess to tell us what can and cannot be done." "The earth is in a death spiral" See also how Neoliberalism has conned us into fighting climate change as individuals