Raj Thamotheram
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rajtham.bsky.social
Raj Thamotheram
@rajtham.bsky.social
3.3K followers 10K following 2.6K posts
Formerly a sustainable finance guy who's also not fond of pandemics or genocides or fascists.

On here for as long as it helps us organise a centre left response to the polycrisis.

If we have something in common, feel free to send me a DM.
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rajtham.bsky.social
Perhaps the UK & Israel's other allies are broadly ok with this strategy because Israel is doing their "dirty work"?

Merz is not diplomatic enough to keep quiet about this but I doubt it's just a German view.

The West also decided to eliminate the LTTE (Tamil Tigers). Another ignored genocide.
July 27, 2025 at 3:52 PM
rajtham.bsky.social
Interesting timeline!
July 8, 2025 at 6:47 PM
rajtham.bsky.social
Do you think the 'Hunger Games' is a good way to explain Gaza to low information voters?
Gaza isn’t Panem—but the parallels are chilling. Political Control Panem: Totalitarian Capitol rules 12 districts through fear and force. Gaza/West Bank: Israel imposes military occupation, siege, checkpoints, and airstrikes. Movement and life are tightly controlled. Spectacle and Dehumanization Panem: Children forced into televised death games to remind the poor who's in charge. Gaza: Civilian suffering is constant, broadcast globally—yet action is rare. Horror becomes background noise. Economic Exploitation Panem: Districts produce resources; Capitol enjoys luxury. Gaza: Blockade strangles the economy. Aid is restricted. Basic survival is a daily struggle. Violence as Discipline Panem: Peacekeepers punish dissent brutally. Gaza: Protests met with sniper fire. Cities bombed. Families displaced. Children killed. Survival Isn’t Rebellion Panem: Katniss defies the system by surviving. Gaza: Survival itself is resistance. And yet Palestinians keep organizing, speaking, enduring. Gaza isn’t fiction. It’s worse. And silence is complicity.
June 28, 2025 at 2:37 AM
rajtham.bsky.social
USA first
Israel second
Iran not in the top 3

Interesting?
June 26, 2025 at 6:32 PM
rajtham.bsky.social
Team Biden's complicity with war crimes.
Linkedin post from Josh Paul: "I've been asked a lot in the last 24 hours what I think of the recent revelations by a well-known former State Department Official that Israel has "without doubt" committed war crimes in Gaza, and that Israel's investigations, when they occur, are not credible. Since resigning I've made it a rule not to publicly comment on the actions of Executive Branch officials below the level of the Secretary - but in any event, I don't think there is anything new to say here, as Nixon's White House Counsel John Dean already said it in the wake of the Watergate scandal: "I was caught up in the web of loyalty and ambition, thinking I was serving the President’s interests by keeping things quiet. I had no sense of the larger consequences, no realization that what we were doing was wrong in any fundamental way. It was all about protecting the President, keeping the campaign on track, and maintaining the power structure of the White House. I told myself we were just managing a political problem, not breaking the law, and I let myself believe that the ends justified the means.” The Biden Administration’s wanton lawbreaking when it came to what was happening in Gaza - and the constant gaslighting that accompanied and facilitated it - was, in my mind, no less a scandal than Watergate, and in the context of its human impact, probably a greater one."
June 3, 2025 at 4:16 PM
rajtham.bsky.social
My poll (on Linkedin) sheds light on this.

64% of respondents say reputation management is the primary driver behind shifts in Western messaging on Palestinian suffering - elites are reacting to brand risk more than moral imperative. This underscores a crisis of conviction at the top.
Poll breakdown: • 64% say reputation management drives the shift • 19% credit youth, activists & Jewish allies • 10% point to geopolitics sidelining Palestine • 7% think militarized aid enables the status quo
May 27, 2025 at 7:19 PM
rajtham.bsky.social
My poll (on Linkedin) sheds light on this.

64% of respondents say reputation management is the primary driver behind shifts in Western messaging on Palestinian suffering - elites are reacting to brand risk more than moral imperative. This underscores a crisis of conviction at the top.
Poll breakdown: • 64% say reputation management drives the shift • 19% credit youth, activists & Jewish allies • 10% point to geopolitics sidelining Palestine • 7% think militarized aid enables the status quo
May 27, 2025 at 7:19 PM
rajtham.bsky.social
"Stop the Dutch hand-wringing over Gaza"

from a leading Dutch expert on the Middle East
May 8, 2025 at 9:10 PM
rajtham.bsky.social
The Germans have been learning from the Canadians ! 💪🏾
May 5, 2025 at 2:49 PM
rajtham.bsky.social
There are real costs to trying to censor criticism of Israel / US support for Israel.
May 2, 2025 at 4:42 AM
rajtham.bsky.social
Labelling folk who criticise genocide, ethnic cleansing and collective punishment as "anti semitic" because it's being done by Israel isn't very smart if you really care about antisemitism.
May 2, 2025 at 4:27 AM
rajtham.bsky.social
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

🤦🏽‍♂️🤷🏽‍♂️
"The sketch showed a beleaguered Johnson flanked by two female suitors. To his right stood a voluptuous seductress bedecked with jewels and a mink stole bearing the words "Vietnam War." To his left was a scrawny, disheveled waif labeled "U.S. Urban Needs." The Johnson figure reassured them, "There's money enough to support both of you," but readers could hardly fail to grasp the president's hesitation.... In a speech on March 31, 1968, he called for negotiations and stunned the world by announcing that he would not run for re-election. The latter decision may have resulted primarily from Johnson's concerns about his health, but it flowed as well from his failure, perhaps inevitable, to paper over the tensions between his foreign and domestic goals. He could not, as he put it after leaving the White House, have both "the woman I really loved — the Great Society" — and "that bitch of a war on the other side of the world".
May 1, 2025 at 9:57 AM
rajtham.bsky.social
Remember when we used to make jokes about Aeroflot ?

🤦🏽‍♂️🤷🏽‍♂️
April 25, 2025 at 10:51 PM
rajtham.bsky.social
And in Palestine (Gaza)

www.linkedin.com/posts/faisal...
April 21, 2025 at 4:58 PM
rajtham.bsky.social
There's been very little commentary on Linkedin (the primary professional platform) from EU corporate types, bankers or investors from any country.

Even about the very obvious market manipulation, let alone the more "political' developments.

www.linkedin.com/posts/rajtha...
When I scan the list of people who've reacted positively to this & other posts on this topic, I see many different professionals including several senior corporate types. But I see very few investment professionals or folk from the hashtag#corpgov or hashtag#ESG worlds. Is market manipulation not a material ESG / corporate governance issue? Or are these insiders keeping silent because they, too, are gaming the system? Or may be this is just coincidence and the huge 1 day gains made by billionaires is nothing to worry about? Whatever, if we can't trust investment professionals to be performing their core fiduciary duty, does the industry have much of a future? Obviously this goes even more for those who have said they are in favour of good governance and or investing responsibly. If you can't comment in public, send me a DM and I can anonymise. ***** My reshare of a post about Rep Steven Horsford grilling Jamieson Greer on Trump’s sudden tariff reversal.
April 14, 2025 at 6:48 PM
rajtham.bsky.social
The bottom line is that the Israel lobby (which also includes Christian Zionists) has *huge* influence in the USA.
April 10, 2025 at 11:33 AM
rajtham.bsky.social
62% of US citizens oppose the U.S. taking over Gaza – including 49% who strongly oppose it – while only 15% favor Trump’s proposal and 22% say they aren’t sure.

But these figures by themselves don't matter because the USA isn't a functioning democracy.

Check out @anatosaurus.bsky.social
April 10, 2025 at 11:32 AM
rajtham.bsky.social
There's now a *huge* disconnect between what the U.S. public think and how U.S. politics operates on Israel vs Palestine.

A recent poll shows a significant shift in public opinion regarding Israel. 53% of U.S. adults now hold an unfavorable opinion of Israel, up from 42% in March 2022.
April 10, 2025 at 11:28 AM
rajtham.bsky.social
Have Wall Street titans woken up yet?!
April 9, 2025 at 5:42 PM
rajtham.bsky.social
Who are the big US law firms who have shown themselves to be cowards?
From a Chief Legal Officer (Karen Klein) "Over the course of my career, I have probably hired, or worked with or across from, several dozen law firms, including a significant portion of the AmLaw 100 and multiple boutique firms. Today I scoured the list of firms who signed the amicus brief backing Perkins Coie, and found all but two of those dozens missing from the list. I wrote messages thanking those whose firms signed on. For those who chose not to use your voice to support the rule of law, I won't call you out. I will remember. #ruleoflaw #leadership #integrity."
April 7, 2025 at 12:41 AM
rajtham.bsky.social
Even David Lammy isn't pro Israel enough now!

www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
Bloomberg headline "UK Backtracks After Lammy Says Israel Broke International Law"
April 6, 2025 at 4:50 PM
rajtham.bsky.social
Folk in cults learn slowly
April 5, 2025 at 7:24 PM
rajtham.bsky.social
True!

And please don't forget abuse of non Americans.

And sadly this isn't exclusive to Republicans.

Josh Paul, an ex senior State Department official is worth following (on Linkedin) if you want more details.
The arms sale even Israel doesn't want: Yesterday the U.S. Senate voted 82-15 against Senator Bernie Sanders' Joint Resolutions of Disapproval (JRDs) to block the transfer of  over 35,000 2,000lb bombs to Israel. This is a travesty - these sales are illegal under U.S. and international law, and will stamp America's name once again on the murder of innocent children, by the thousand. Sanders has introduced 9 other JRDs to try to block 9 other major arms sales advanced in the past two months by the Trump Administration. Among these is S.J.Res.41, which seeks to block the export license notified to Congress as DDTC 23-077 authorizing the export of 20,000 Colt 5.56mm fully automatic rifles to M.R.D. Efram Investments Ltd for ultimate end use by the Israeli Police. 23-077 is a sale I am directly familiar with, as it is one of those the Administration tried to advance in October 2023 when I was still in government, and one of those that not only did I raise objections to, but to which the State Department's Human Rights Bureau also raised objections due to concerns that the units receiving these guns have a clear track record of human rights abuses including extrajudicial killings - i.e., murder. Also among those units are a number of new militia-like units being raised from settlers in the West Bank, and answering directly to extremist Israeli Minister Ben Gvir. A senior official at the State Department at the time heard me out, and reached out to Israel's Ambassador to the U.S. about this sale. He consulted with the Israeli Government, and the response came back to my surprise - no need to push this sale. As it turned out, even the Israeli Government was concerned, not at the potential loss of Palestinian life per se, but at the threat that this sale would create to the State of Israel itself, by placing thousands of firearms into the hands of Ben Gvir-aligned militias. The Biden Administration discussed the case with Congress, but then sat on it, in part because of the response from Israel, and in part in response to a plea from certain moderate Democratic House Members with whom I discussed the case shortly after my resignation, and who reached out to the White House in confidence. By advancing this sale, the Trump Administration is demonstrating its complete disregard for Palestinian life - and its dangerous support for self-described fascist elements in Israel's government. I hope Senator Sanders will move this JRD for a vote in the coming weeks, and, based upon the facts laid out above, hope that more U.S. Senators will see fit to vote in support of this Resolution than voted yesterday to block the 2,000lb bombs. Read Reuters' breaking coverage of this story: https://lnkd.in/eKU2bAPq Read the resolution: https://lnkd.in/em-DabUK Read the Reuters report on the Oct 2023 debate on these sales: https://lnkd.in/euZnUrt7
April 4, 2025 at 5:35 PM
rajtham.bsky.social
Barstool conservatism is a name for a variety of political conservatism in the United States, associated with Dave Portnoy, founder and CEO of the Barstool Sports digital media empire,[1] and his audience of "stoolies", made up primarily of younger men.[2] The term was coined by journalist Matthew Walther.[3] In general, it supports Donald Trump, and combines non-religious libertarian concerns, such as opposition to COVID-19 lockdowns and bans on abortion,[4][5] with an "unwillingness to accept liberal social norms",[1] such as "gender pronoun usage and diversity, equity and inclusion practices",[2] and embraces "sexual libertinism, anti-authoritarianism, ... and lots of f-bombs".[5
April 4, 2025 at 1:12 PM
rajtham.bsky.social
Interesting.

Is this opposition to arms exports new for him?

Is it evidence that AIPAC's influence is waning?
Tweet from AIPAC tracker "Andy Kim laid off the AIPAC money for his 2024 Senate campaign because he KNOWS how unpopular it is to support genocide and apartheid. But now that he's secured his seat, he's back to unabashedly kowtowing to the Israel lobby and ignoring the suffering of Palestinians. Image"
April 3, 2025 at 10:15 PM