Just Stop Oil paint the Teslabot 12 March 2025. Image: Jamie Lowe
Two Just Stop Oil supporters have poured orange liquid latex over an Optimus robot at the Westfield Tesla store in London yesterday. They are demanding the UK government phase out fossil fuel burning by 2030.
At around 10:15am, the pair climbed onto a podium display and poured the liquid latex over the life sized humanoid robot. They unfurled a Just Stop Oil banner and spoke:
“Shut down the fascists! The government is failing to protect our democracy from fossil fuel companies and power hungry billionaires. I will not stand by and let the climate crisis cause global food destruction, mass starvation and the collapse of civil society. Shut down the fascists.
“While the rich dream of Nazi robots and swasti-cars, what the the rest of us need is warm housing, clean affordable energy and cheap public transport. Don’t let billionaires decide your future. Lets reclaim democracy. Join us this Spring in Parliament Square as we demand an emergency plan to Just Stop Oil by 2030. Shut down the fascists!”
One of those taking action yesterday was Catherine Rennie Nash, 74, a grandmother and retired teacher from Cumbria. She said:
“Billionaire Elon Musk likes to punch down. Instead of using his wealth to help solve the climate crisis, reduce world hunger or find a cure for cancer, he is throwing hundreds of thousands of people out of work, jeopardising climate science and denying healthcare to vulnerable people. He thinks empathy is a weakness and uses his social media platform to amplify climate denial, extreme prejudice and hate. He and his billionaire pals are looking to destroy democracy and he is bringing this to the UK. If you want to fight it you better learn how to resist. Sign up for action.”
Also taking action was Nigel Fleming, 63, a grandfather and retired tax adviser from London. He said:
“Even the actuaries are saying that immediate action is required to mitigate the risks of catastrophic climate impacts occuring well before 2050. We’re talking crop failure and starvation driving mass migration and civil unrest, the loss of whole nations beneath the waves, our homes, livelihoods and pensions at risk. We don’t have time to mess around with denial and delay. We need an emergency plan to get the economy off oil and gas by 2030. So frankly, fuck Musk. Join us in Parliament Square from April to demand that Kier Starmer gets on with the job.”
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.
[I previously published this article on 31 December 2023. It’s a little dated but still a good one.]
In the ‘coming soon’ notice announcing this article I said that “[t]here aren’t any real climate deniers anymore”. I was mistaken and there are a very few people like Jeremy Corbyn’s brother Piers Corbyn. I’ve only met and spoken with him once but I’m satisfied that he’s genuine in his beliefs despite them being misguided. He and others like him have the right to believe whatever they like and he’s harmless enough – while he may persuade a few people the vast majority will understand that he’s mistaken and wrong.
Image of UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak reads 1% RICHEST 100% CLIMATE DENIER
So apart from Piers Corbyn and a few similar people, there is no such thing as a climate denier nowadays. The Capitalists profiting from climate destruction have known for 60 years of more that they were profiting from destroying the planet and were forcing future generations to endure intolerable climate conditions, annihilating many thousands of species of plants and animals and generally totally fekking everything.
Governments are controlled, directed, owned by a very few extremely rich and powerful people, the very people that are profiting and maintaining their wealth, power and influence from destroying the planet. According to this perspective we do not exist in a democracy and it is instead a pretence hiding the influence of the rich and powerful. We exist in a plutocracy – we have a wealthy ruling class that politicians serve.
It cannot be accepted that politicians like UK’s Prime Minister Rishi Sunak or our expected next Prime Minister Keir Starmer and the like are mistaken true believers like Piers Corbyn believes. Rather they are climate deniers in the sense of the fossil fuel industries – Exxon, Shell and BP – who know fully well that they are destroying the planet but deceive and mislead to continue making a filthy profit. It’s obvious to see that these politician cnuts serve this rich elite’s interests – Tory and Labour UK governments have answered to media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, sucking up to him, grateful to accept his orders.
Image of InBedWithBigOil by Not Here To Be Liked + Hex Prints from Just Stop Oil’s You May Find Yourself… art auction. Featuring Rishi Sunak, Fossil Fuels and Rupert Murdoch.
Sunak, despite being fully aware of the climate crisis is continuing to destroy the planet. Announcing the go-ahead for the Rosebank oil field he said that he intends to get every last drop of North Sea oil.
President Trump is a climate science denier because he was supported financially by the fossil fuel industry during his re-election campaign. He explicitly called for financial support from the “liquid gold” fossil fuel industry.
Power-mad orange gasbag Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.Orcas comment on killer apes destroying the planet by continuing to burn fossil fuels.
Mahmoud Khalil was pictured speaking to the press during a briefing organized by pro-Palestinian protesters at Columbia University on June 1, 2024. (Photo: Selcuk Acar/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“Arresting and threatening to deport students because of their participation in political protest is the kind of action one ordinarily associates with the world’s most repressive regimes.”
Civil rights organizations, legal experts, and lawmakers were among the chorus voicing alarm Sunday and into Monday over the dire implications of the Trump administration’s brazen arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian rights organizer who helped lead Columbia University student protests against Israel’s assault on Gaza.
“The Trump administration’s outrageous detention of Mahmoud is designed to instill terror in students speaking out for Palestinian freedom and immigrant communities,” said Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), which has helped organize nationwide demonstrations against Israel’s catastrophic war on the Palestinian enclave.
“This is the fascist playbook,” the group added. “We all must fiercely reject it, and universities must start protecting its students.”
Khalil, a permanent U.S. resident with a green card, was arrested on Saturday by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents who stormed his university-owned apartment in Manhattan. Khalil’s attorney told The Associated Press that the ICE agents also threatened to arrest his pregnant wife, an American citizen.
As of Monday morning, Khalil—an Algerian citizen of Palestinian origin—was being held in an ICE facility in Louisiana, and the Trump administration is moving to revoke his green card.
While the State Department CAN revoke *visas* with very little legal process involved, stripping someone of a green card is done by DHS (not the State Department) and requires filing formal charges alleging a violation of immigration law and a removal hearing in front of an immigration judge.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees ICE, said Sunday that Khalil’s arrest was carried out “in support of President Trump’s executive orders prohibiting antisemitism.”
But JVP and other advocacy groups warned that the administration’s purported crackdown on antisemitism is a pretext for a dangerous assault on civil liberties, including those of Palestinian rights advocates.
“We are not fooled by the Trump administration’s claims that this blatantly unconstitutional and authoritarian attack is somehow in the name of Jewish safety,” said JVP. “Deporting anti-war students who are trying to end genocide and silencing political speech endangers all of us. We will not be divided.”
“The unlawful detention of Mr. Khalil reeks of McCarthyism. It’s clear that the Trump administration is selectively punishing Mr. Khalil for expressing views that aren’t MAGA-approved.”
Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, said in a statement that “arresting and threatening to deport students because of their participation in political protest is the kind of action one ordinarily associates with the world’s most repressive regimes.”
“It’s genuinely shocking that this appears to be what’s going on right here,” Jaffer added. “Universities must recognize that these actions pose an existential threat to academic life itself. They must make clear, through action, that they will not sit on the sidelines as the Trump administration terrorizes students and faculty alike and runs roughshod over individual rights and the rule of law.”
Khalil’s arrest came days after Trump threatened to imprison students engaged in what he described as “illegal protests.” AP reported that “Khalil’s arrest is the first publicly known deportation effort under Trump’s promised crackdown on students who joined protests against the war in Gaza that swept college campuses last spring.”
Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement Sunday that “the Trump administration’s detention of Mahmoud Khalil—a green card holder studying in this country legally—is targeted, retaliatory, and an extreme attack on his First Amendment rights.”
“The unlawful detention of Mr. Khalil reeks of McCarthyism. It’s clear that the Trump administration is selectively punishing Mr. Khalil for expressing views that aren’t MAGA-approved—which is a frightening escalation of Trump’s crackdown on pro-Palestine speech, and an aggressive abuse of immigration law,” Lieberman added. “Ripping a student from their home, challenging their immigration status, and detaining them solely based on political viewpoint will chill student speech and advocacy across campus. Political speech should never be a basis of punishment, or lead to deportation.”
Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Original article by Eleanor Rose republished from TBIJ under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
The White House’s latest move doesn’t just encourage financial crime in the US – it encourages the acceptance of it everywhere else
Another week, another startling development from Donald Trump’s White House. On Sunday, the US Treasury said it will halt enforcement of the Corporate Transparency Act (CTA), a federal law that requires certain companies to declare their owners’ identities.
Scott Bessent, secretary of the Treasury, described the move as “a victory for common sense” that would “unleash American prosperity by reining in burdensome regulations”.
Unleashing prosperity is a nice goal, but the White House’s chosen method will come as a bombshell for anyone who believes in transparency or accountability – both in the US and around the world.
Knowing who owns a company isn’t just a matter of corporate admin. It can serve as a vital tool against dictatorships, which build their power on global networks of financial secrecy. It’s key to tackling money-laundering and fraud. Trump’s actions pull the rug out from international efforts to reveal this hidden world. Autocrats and major criminals around the world will be celebrating.
The CTA was a key plank in Biden’s plans to counter corruption. Passed by Congress in 2021 and brought into force in 2024, it aimed to address the fact that businesses created in the US weren’t previously obliged to disclose the names of their shareholders or the people that ultimately control them.
Speaking in 2022, Himamauli Das of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network said the CTA would “play an important role in protecting American taxpayers and businesses who play by the rules”.
He added: “It has been far too easy for criminals, Russian oligarchs and other bad actors to fund their illicit activity by hiding and moving money through anonymous shell companies and other corporate structures right here in the United States.”
Since the CTA has been in force – and despite some challenges in district courts – that sort of anonymity has been a lot harder to come by. Beneficial ownership details have had to be filed by most domestic corporations and Limited Liability Companies (though not non-profits or publicly traded companies that meet certain criteria). Non-compliance has been punishable with a maximum fine of $10,000 and up to two years in prison.
That progress has now been undone. Once a leading champion of corporate transparency, the US is now basically saying that such measures are harmful red tape.
And the news could have implications beyond US shores. The UK is currently trying to impress the need for transparency requirements on its crown dependencies and overseas territories (CDOTs). Stephen Doughty MP last week said the UK government expects overseas territories to bring in publicly accessible registers this year.
But the recent calls for transparency have not been universally popular with the CDOTs. There’s been some disagreement about what exactly it means and how it should work, as well as some outright pushback.
The BVI, for instance, has proposed a registry that would grant access to a limited amount of information and to a limited number of parties. Which means it wouldn’t be all that transparent.
It’s in situations like this where the White House’s latest move feels especially pertinent. Corruption robs ordinary taxpayers and undermines global security. And the fight for financial transparency – to stop the world’s oligarchs, organised criminals and kleptocrats from stashing their wealth – is one that urgently needs international momentum.
Not only does Trump’s intervention encourage fraudsters and money-launderers to do their business on US turf – it also sends a message of apathy towards financial crime that will be heard around the world.
Reporter: Eleanor Rose Deputy editor: Katie Mark Editor: Franz Wild Fact checker: Ero Parksakoulaki Production editor: Alex Hess
TBIJ has a number of funders, a full list of which can be found here. None of our funders have any influence over editorial decisions or output.
Original article by Eleanor Rose republished from TBIJ under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Then President-elect Donald Trump and Elon Musk pose for a photo during the UFC 309 event at Madison Square Garden on November 16, 2024 in New York City. (Photo: Jeff Bottari/Zuffa LLC via Getty Images)
“If you think back at the last economic crashes… the rich were able to buy up assets on the cheap and emerged even wealthier and more powerful than before,” noted one progressive commentator.
Are U.S. President Donald Trump, top adviser Elon Musk, and allied oligarchs deliberately trying to tank the economy in order to line their own gilded pockets?
More and more observers from both sides of the political aisle are asking the question this week as the U.S. president implemented steep tariffs on some of the country’s biggest trade partners, threatened a global trade war, and is taking chainsaw to government spending and programs—policies that, while inflicting economic pain upon nearly everyone else, could dramatically boost their already stratospheric wealth.
Numerous observers have likened it to the ” disaster capitalism” examined in Naomi Klein’s seminal 2007 book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism—politicians and plutocrats exploit the chaos of natural or human-caused crises to push through unpopular policies like privatization and deregulation that harm the masses while boosting the wealth and power of the ruling class.
Economic alarm bells were already ringing before Trump’s 25% tariffs on most products from Canada and Mexico and an additional 10% on China—for a total of 20%—took effect on Tuesday, prompting retaliatory measures and threats of more to come.
Then, during his rambling joint address to Congress on Tuesday night, Trump threatened to impose reciprocal tariffs on every nation on Earth starting April 2 (because he “didn’t want to be accused of April Fools’ Day”) if those countries did not lower barriers to trade with the United States.
New York Times economic policy reporters Alan Rappeport and Ana Swanson called Trump’s sweeping tariffs “one of the biggest gambles of his presidency,” and a move “that risks undermining the United States economy.”
But what if that’s the whole point?
“I’ve been entertaining this theory a little bit more lately, because [Trump’s] economic moves seem so stupid and terrible and counterproductive without thinking that he is intentionally trying to cause harm,” progressive political commentator Krystal Ball—who also has a degree in economics and is a certified public accountant— said Tuesday on the social media site X.
Ball cited an X post by Saikat Chakrabarti, a progressive Democrat running for Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) House seat who worked on Wall Street for six years and helped found the online payment processing company Stripe, in which he accused Trump of “manufacturing a recession.”
“But it makes sense when you realize his goal is to create something like Russia where the economy is run by a few oligarchs loyal to him,” Chakrabarti added. “Creating that state is hard in a large, dynamic, powerful economy with too many actors who can oppose him. So he’s accelerating concentrating money and power into the hands of his loyalists while he crashes the rest out.”
It really is confusing why Trump would want to intentionally massively shrink the US economy. None of this is due to external circumstances – he is manufacturing a recession.
But it makes sense when you realize his goal is to create something like Russia where the economy is…
Responding to this, Ball asserted that “at this point, until proven otherwise, the primary actor in the government and the economy is actually Elon, so I think it makes sense to think of Elon’s incentives here and what he may actually want to accomplish.”
“If you think back at the last economic crashes—both in Covid and in the 2008 financial crash—while initially everyone suffered, including the rich, out of both, the rich were able to buy up assets on the cheap and emerged even wealthier and more powerful than before,” she noted.
“So in 2008, not only did they get their own custom bailout, but they were able to buy housing stock at absurdly low prices,” Ball recalled. “The rich got richer than ever, inequality skyrocketed, and the big banks got bigger than ever.”
“Same deal with the Covid-era recession,” she continued. “So, while again, everyone suffered initially, there was a huge bailout package which, yes, did benefit ordinary people, but if you look at who came out really on top… you could see people like Elon Musk, people like Jeff Bezos, people like Mark Zuckerberg getting far wealthier. Their net worths, which were already very high, skyrocketed beyond anyone’s wildest dreams.”
Indeed, as Common Dreams reported, 700 billionaires got $1.7 trillion richer during two years of pandemic. Between March 2020 and April 2022, Musk got 10 times richer, while Zuckerberg’s net worth more than tripled and Bezos’ grew by nearly $80 billion, according to Forbes.
“Here’s the other piece that’s worth thinking about as well,” Ball added. “Crash and crisis leads to governments and authoritarian leaders claiming more power for themselves. They can use the crisis and the emergency as a justification for taking on extraordinary powers and for taking extraordinary measures… measures that can be custom fit to primarily benefit oligarchs like Elon Musk.”
“So I don’t know guys, while we’re running around here going… ‘can’t they understand how this is going to be devastating for the economy,’ maybe they do understand,” she concluded, “and maybe that’s kind of the point.”
Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Would love the explainer on why they are pushing us into a (likely) recession
dizzy: While it is accepted that the filthy rich benefit from economic collapse I suspect that there might be a more deliberate action to benefit certain actors more directly.
I suggest that you compare to the experience of short-lived former Prime Minister Liz Truss in UK. She was also supported and followed the instruction of an established, influential think-tank. Powerful and wealthy Capitalists may have benefited directly from market reactions to their directed actions. I would look at hedge funds and similar actors associated with those respective think tanks. Is it the same actor dominating and directing both think-tanks? Was the Liz Truss experience an initial test run?
