Oligarchy documentary full biography

The camera seems to speak his mind, moving back and forth between his memorable face, historical footage, vivid images, and collages cut from the currency of greed. Health in a Consumer Culture. Seminal Thinkers. December 6, The historical pattern is to not be visible and to use your resources behind the scenes, as it were, to get the results you want.

Critics say oligarchs use their financial wealth to shape public policy so that it's favourable to them and their fortunes, with little regard for the interests of the masses. Musk, for his part, has made it clear he intends to use his influence for good. Gates, in a statement to the New York Times, said he had a history of being bipartisan but had donated to the Harris campaign this time.

Outside of politics, Musk has joined The Giving Pledge, a concept Gates co-founded, which sees billionaires agree to give half of their wealth to philanthropic causes. Maybe they do some good things and maybe they do some bad things. If so, how can it be that there is a handful of people in our country who have amassed so much wealth that they can effectively buy the politicians and the policies they want.

If the sums of money in this article sound eye-watering, consider this and I'm going to continue Waldman's analogy : presidential nominees have to spend many millions of dollars to even be allowed a spot on the starting line. In the US system, candidates who want to run for a major party must first battle it out in primary elections, splashing cash to beat people who are, technically, on the same team as them.

Even thinking about contesting the primaries generally requires hopefuls to approach America's mega rich in a bid to get their backing. Kamala Harris's campaign spent up big in an attempt to win the election. Reuters: Jonathan Ernst. The relationship between money and politics around the world is not new. But in the US at least, spending has soared to new heights.

Multiple studies have indicated the richest 1 per cent of people in America now control more than one-third of the country's wealth. Living standards are declining, life expectancy is going backwards and younger people are living at home longer. Of course, it's not just oligarchs funding politics. Harris badgered all her supporters for money over the course of the campaign, inundating them with emails and text messages.

Since she conceded the presidential election to Trump — and with the financial tap from defeated oligarch backers presumably turned off for a while — her team has still been sending out mass emails, sometimes more than once a day. For many Americans, it's surely one of those unexpected expenses they'd struggle to afford. Professor Harrington warns America's problems go beyond the cost-of-living, and does not believe the so-called "broligarchy" provides answers.

In September, Musk described as an "interesting observation" a screenshot on X which promoted a theory that "high-status males" are the best people to be making decisions. They are very public and loud about that, and it's an environment where elite, white men rule everybody else. We acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Australians and Traditional Custodians of the lands where we live, learn, and work.

Inside the rise of US oligarchs and how it opened a dark money 'floodgate'. There's something you should know about oligarchs. You could see flames all over the meadow below. The pilot and his single passenger — lawyer Stephen Curtis — had died in the flames after the helicopter nose-dived into the field, according to air accident investigators.

Curtis had faced threats in the weeks before the crash. Private investigators told him his telephones were tapped. His bodyguards found a bug at his house, according to reports. We are here. We are behind you. We follow you.

Oligarchy documentary full biography

Yukos was in conflict with the Russian government, allegedly over unpaid taxes. Powerful adversaries locked in a battle of wills. In a twist that would emerge in the weeks after his death, Curtis had approached the National Criminal Intelligence Service NCIS — the British police-intelligence liaison agency — and offered to serve as an informant.

Days before his fatal flight from a London heliport, he had met an agency handler. Who would run the beleaguered Yukos oil empire? Khodorkovsky had been arrested at gunpoint and thrown in jail a few months earlier, and now Curtis had just fallen out of the sky. It was an ambitious — and risky — undertaking in the fraught and suspicious atmosphere at that time.

But the dapper Englishman volunteered his services. Outside the world of finance, few had ever heard the name, Christopher Samuelson. Offshore is shorthand for secretive tax havens where billions of dollars — legitimate or otherwise — are stashed in banks, away from the prying eyes of taxmen, creditors and spouses. From his bases in Bermuda, Geneva, and Gibraltar, Samuelson ran Valmet, one of the biggest offshore trust companies in the world and starting in the late s, he nurtured a newly discovered rich seam of wealth: the former Soviet Union.

Samuelson and Valmet, later known as Mutual Trust Management MTM , set up and managed offshore trusts, companies and bank accounts for oligarchs and their businesses. Critics said the money was siphoned out of Russia, that it was capital flight that cost the Russian treasury billions and leeched from the state. Valmet would say the arrangements were above-board.

He spoke of travelling to Moscow more than times, of how he even knows Vladimir Putin. Yet his involvement with Russia attracted the attention of investigators, who suspected him of leading a group involved in money laundering and corrupt practices, spawning investigations across Europe.