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#UK internal politics

lhs3020b · 2 years

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Oh so we’re back here again, are we? Another Tory PM?

Californium-249 and radon-216 have half-lives of ~45 days; both of these radio-isotopes last longer than Liz Truss did. Yes, it’s been another surreal day in UK internal politics.

We really are the shitshow that just can’t stop shitting, aren’t we?

#I am so sick of Tories #I am so sick of the Tory Party #I am so fed up of its awful leaders #I am fed up of its awful MPs #I am fed up of its awful members #I want all of them to go the f*** away #UK internal politics

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mostlysignssomeportents · 8 months

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How the kleptocrats and oligarchs hunt civil society groups to the ends of the Earth

It's a great time to be an oligarch! If you have accumulated a great fortune and wish to put whatever great crime lies behind it behind you, there is an army of fixers, lickspittles, thugs, reputation-launderers, procurers, henchmen, and other enablers who have turnkey solutions for laundering your reputation and keeping the unwashed from building a guillotine outside the gates of your compound.

The field of International Relations has studied the enemies of the Klept in detail: the Transnational Activist Network is a well-documented phenomenon. But far more poorly understood is the Transnational Uncivil Society Network, who will polish any turd of sufficient wealth to a high, professional gloss.

These TUSNs are the subject of a new, timely scholarly paper by Alexander Cooley, John Heathershaw and Ricard Soares de Oliveira: "Transnational Uncivil Society Networks: kleptocracy’s global fightback against liberal activism," published in last month's European Journal of International Relations:

https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:5e5a3052-c693-4991-a7cc-bc2b47134467/download_file?file_format=application%2Fpdf&safe_filename=Cooley_et_al_2023_transnational_uncivil_society.pdf&type_of_work=Journal+article

The authors document how a collection of institutions – some coercive, others organized around good works – allow kleptocrats to take power, keep power, and use power. This includes "wealth managers, company providers, accounting firms, and international bankers" who create the complex financial structures that obscure the klept's wealth. It also includes "second citizenship managers and lawyers" that facilitate the klept's transnational nature, both to provide access to un-looted, prosperous places to visit, and boltholes to escape to in the face of coup or reform. It includes the real-estate brokers and other asset facilitators, who turn whole precincts of the world's greatest cities into empty safe-deposit boxes in the sky, while ensuring that footlose criminal elites always have a penthouse to perch in when they take a break from the desiccated husks they've drained dry back home.

Of course, it also includes the PR managers and philanthropic ventures that allow the klept to launder their reputation, to make themselves synonymous with good deeds rather than mass murder. Think here of how the Sacklers used charity to turn their family name into a synonym for culture and fine art, rather than death by opioid overdose:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/11/justice-delayed/#justice-redeemed

Beyond providing comfort to "Politically Exposed Persons" and "High Net-Worth Individuals," TUSNs are concerned with neutralizing TANs. Activists in these transnational networks play an inside-outside game: in-country activists will recruit peers abroad to bring attention to the crimes of their local kleptocrats. These overseas partners target the klept in the places they go to play and spend, spoiling their fun – and if they succeed in getting corrupt leaders censured abroad, then in-country activists can leverage that bad press to fight the klept at home.

To fight this "Boomerang Effect," TUSNs seek to burnish corrupt officials' reputations abroad, getting their names on humanitarian prizes, beloved sports teams, cultural institutions and great universities. They seek to capture international governance institutions that might wrong-foot kleptocrats, co-opting them to enable and even celebrate looters.

When it comes to elite philanthropy, TUSNs are necessarily selective. Kleptocrats' foundations don't fund anti-kleptocratic groups – they stick to "education, public health, the environment and the arts." These domains steer clear of human rights questions that might implicate their benefactors. Russian oligarchs love children's charities and disability rights – provided they don't target the Russian state.

If charitable giving is reputation laundering's carrot, then "reputation management" is the laundry's stick. Think of organized copyfraudsters who clone websites that have criticized their clients, then backdate the articles, then accuse the originals of infringing copyright in order to get them de-listed from Google or taken offline altogether:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/23/reputation-laundry/#dark-ops

Reputation managers also spend a lot of time in court. In the UK – the world's leader in libel tourism, thanks to a legal system designed to let posh monsters sue muckraking journalists into silence – Russian oligarchs have perfected the art of forcing their critics to shut up and go away:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/04/londongrad/#enablers

Indeed, London is a one-stop shop for the global klept, a place were forelock-tugging Renfields will buy you a Mayfair mansion under cover of a numbered company, sue your critics into silence, funnel your money into an anonymous Channel Islands account:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/01/07/the-klept/#pep

They'll sell you whole galleriesworth of "fine art" that you can have relocated to a climate-controlled container in a Swiss or Irish freeport:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/14/poesy-the-monster-slayer/#moneylab

They'll give your thick-as-pigshit progeny a PhD and never check to see whether he wrote his thesis himself:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LSE%E2%80%93Gaddafi_affair

Then they'll hook you up with a cyber-arms dealer to hunt your enemies by capturing their devices:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/27/gas-on-the-fire/#a-safe-place-for-dangerous-ideas

But don't let Brexit stop you from shopping for bargains on the continent. The Golden Passports of the EU – available in a variety of flavors, from Maltese to Cypriot to Portuguese – offer the discerning failson access to the luxury good shops and fleshpots of 27 advanced economies, making it a favorite of the Khmer Riche – the junior klept of Cambodia's ruling faction:

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/cambodia-hunsen-wealth/

But golden passports are for amateurs. Skilled klepts travel on diplomatic passports, which offer the twin benefits of free movement and consequence-free criminality, thanks to diplomatic immunity. The former Kazakh dictator's son-in-law enjoyed a freewheeling diplomatic life in Vienna; one daughters of the dictator of Tajikistan had a jolly time as an envoy to DC; another, to London (where else?).

All this globetrotting serves a second purpose: when rival elites seize power back home and force the old guard into exile, those ex-monsters can show up in the lands they called their second homes and apply for asylum. It turns out that even bomb-the-boats UK will welcome any asylum seeker who enters via the private jet terminal at City Airport (to be fair, these "refugees" have extensive properties in Zone 1 and country places in the Home Counties, so they won't need housing).

This stuff works. After Kazakh state goons murdered at least 14 protesters at a Zhanaozen oil facility in 2011, human rights groups around the world took up the cause. But they were effectively neutralized by TUSNs, with former UK PM Tony Blair writing on behalf of the Kazakh government to the EU condemning any kind of international investigation into the mass killings (add "former Prime Ministers" to the list of commodities for sale in the UK to sufficiently well-resourced murderer).

The authors close their paper with two case-studies. The first is of the daughters of Uzbek dictator Islam Karimov, Gulnara and Lola. And President Karimov was indeed a dictator: he trapped his population within his borders, forced them to use unconvertible scrip in place of money, and ordered the murder of hundreds of peaceful protesters, plunging the country into international isolation.

But while Uzbeks were sealed within their borders, Gulnara Karimov became an international player, running a complex network of businesses that mixed the products of the nation's oilfields with her family's fortune. She solicited – and received – bribes from Teliasonera, MTS and Vimpelcom, who were all vying for the contract to provide service in Uzbekistan. All told, she extracted more than $1b in bribes, laundering them through Latvia, Hong Kong and New York. She acquired real-estate in France and Switzerland, and her spree continued until her father collaborated with Uzbek security to seize her assets and place her under house-arrest.

Lola Karimova-Tillyaeva was Gulnara's estranged younger sister. She and her husband Timur Tillyaev ran the Dubai-based SecureTrade, which did extensive business with "opaque Scottish Limited Partnerships," laundering more than $127m in a single year to offshore accounts in the UAE and Switzerland. They acquired many luxe assets – a jet, a Californian villa, and an LA perfumier.

Lola styled herself as the face of the Karimovas abroad, a "philanthropist and cultural ambassador." She was a UNESCO ambassador and commissioned works of monumental art – and also sued the shit out of news outlets that reported factual matters about her family repressive activity at home. She organized AIDS charities in the name of Uzbekistan – even as her father was imprisoning a writer for publishing a book explaining how to have safer sex.

The second case-study is on Isabel dos Santos, "Africa's richest woman," daughter of Angolan dictator Jose Eduardo dos Santos. Isabel's vast fortune stemmed from her personal capture of vast swathes of the third-largest economy in Africa: "telecommunications, banking, diamonds, real estate and cement, among many others." Isabel enjoyed seemingly limitless access to state credit and co-investment, and was given first crack at newly deregulated industries. Foreign firms that invested in Angola were required to "partner" with Isabel's businesses.

Isabel claimed to be a "self-made woman" – a claim credulously parroted by the western press, including the FT. She used her homegrown fortune to become a major player abroad, especially in Portugal, where she was represented by the leading Portuguese law-firm PLMJ. Her enablers are who's who of corruption-loving lickspittles: McKinsey, Ernst and Young, Boston Consulting Group, and the Spanish BigLaw firm Uri Menendez.

Isabel cultivated a public facade of philanthropic giving and public spirited activism, serving as head of the Angolan Red Cross. She attended Davos and spoke at the LSE (she was also invited to Oxford, but her invitation was subsequently rescinded). On social media, she dismissed critics of her wealth and corruption as "colonialists," decrying their "racism" and "prejudice."

Isabel dos Santos's corrupt sources of wealth were finally, irrefutably exposed through the Luanda Leaks, in which the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists mapped the network of "top banks, management consultants and legal firms that were central to dos Santos’s operations."

Both case studies shed light on the network of brilliant, driven enablers and procurers without whom the world's greatest monsters would falter. It's a rare window on a secretive world, one that is poorly understood even by its inhabitants. As Michael Mechanic wrote in Jackpot, his 2021 book on vast, intergenerational fortunes, the winners of the lucky orifice lottery often lack any real understanding of how The Money is structured, grown and protected:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/13/public-interest-pharma/#affluenza

This point was reiterated by Abigail Disney, in a brave piece on what it's like to grow up subject to the oversight of these millionaires who babysit the children of billionaires:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/19/dynastic-wealth/#caste

This is an important contribution to the literature. We naturally focus on the ultrawealthy individuals whose reputations and fortunes are the subject of so much attention, but without the TUSNs, they would be largely helpless.

Going to Burning Man? Catch me on Tuesday at 2:40pm on the Center Camp Stage for a talk about enshittification and how to reverse it; on Wednesday at noon, I'm hosting Dr Patrick Ball at Liminal Labs (6:15/F) for a talk on using statistics to prove high-level culpability in the recruitment of child soldiers.

On September 6 at 7pm, I'll be hosting Naomi Klein at the LA Public Library for the launch of Doppelganger.

On September 12 at 7pm, I'll be at Toronto's Another Story Bookshop with my new book The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/24/launderers-enforcers-bagmen/#procurers

Image: Sam Valadi (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/132084522@N05/17086570218/

CC BY 2.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

Colin (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Palace_of_Westminster_from_the_dome_on_Methodist_Central_Hall_(cropped).jpg

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

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mysharona1987 · 4 months

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Totally normal day on Zionist social media.

#Palestine #news #international court of justice #israel #democrats #republicans #politics #uk #us #gaza

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workersolidarity · 28 days

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🇬🇧🇮🇱 🚨

BBC PIECE REFUSES TO ACKNOWLEDGE "ISRAEL" RESPONSIBLE FOR MURDER OF FOREIGN AID WORKERS

📹 Footage from a BBC piece covering the deaths of 7 foreign aid workers with the World Central Kitchen (WCK) in an Israeli airstrike refuses to mention "Israel" as the party responsible for the slaughter.

The piece dances around ever mentioning the party responsible for the airstrike, instead discussing the "deaths" of the 7 foreign aid workers in "an airstrike". Even though Palestinian resistance forces do not possess such capabilities.

The piece even mentions how WCK coordinated its movements with the "IDF" (Israeli occupation forces [IOF]) but fails to connect the coordination with the murderous airstrike itself, choosing to avoid any mention of Zionist responsibility for the murder of the aid workers, which included British, Australian and Polish nationals, along with a dual U.S.-Canadian citizen and one Palestinian.

#source

@WorkerSolidarityNews

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bourgeoisie-immorality · 3 months

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it actually really fucks me off to see people praising the ICJ’s decision when the Palestinians actually on the ground communicating with us are screaming to the rooftops that this isn’t enough. all the lib-brained cretins on this website crowing about ‘progress’ don’t seem to understand that incremental change means less than fucking nothing when you’re on the ground, watching your home and family and your people being bombed, systematically destroyed by israeli troops. it means nothing when you’re afraid for your life.

Palestinians don’t have the luxury of waiting, and we all know full well that Israel WILL NOT abide by this ruling. Unless greater intervention is made, the bombardment will continue; but the ICJ is a bourgeois, imperialist court, made to serve bourgeois, imperialist interests. While they have shown themselves to be more benevolent than I had expected by condemning israel and conceding that they are committing genocide, the fact that they couldn’t even ask for a ceasefire speaks volumes.

Whether it’s due to deliberate inaction or whether they simply lack the capacity to do so, the ‘international community’ is still failing Palestine. It is up to us to continue the pressure, continue the boycotts, continue the action; and to threaten greater disruptions if further progress is not made.

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yuveim · 4 months

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Support the ICJ case on genocide in Gaza by emailing your representative today

As the first hearing of South Africa's case in front of The International Court of Justice takes place on 11th January 2024, take action now to call on your government to support the case, and keep demanding an immediate ceasefire and end to the genocide.

UK residents

1. Use this PCS campaign page to email your MP demanding the UK's support of South Africa's ICJ case.

2. or Find your local MP by searching your postcode on the parliament.uk website here and contact them through their email address / phone number listed.

OTHER CAMPAIGNS

CJPME: https://www.cjpme.org/support_icj_case AUSTRALIA PALESTINE ADVOCACY NETWORK: https://apan.org.au/support-south-africas-icj-case/

Use this opportunity to amplify Palestinian voices on the national scale; wherever you live, make sure your politicians hear you.

Watch the first hearing on the UN website here.

#there are alarmingly few calls to action so far on social media on the day this should be making every headline #please take a moment today to go through your social media and share campaigns and calls to action #and then contact your local representatives #gaza #gaza genocide #uk #uk politics #icj #international court of justice #palestine #current events #australia #canada

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c-rowlesdraws · 3 months

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Jesus fuck can you stop endlessly posting e drama and politics it’s a pain in the arse when I cant block it

I didn’t tag the last two politics-related posts, the only political posts on this blog in years, because I thought keywords in them might be enough for a block filter to catch. I guess I was mistaken. I am sorry; I’ll tag those and any future political posts with “us politics”.

Also I am sorry to be a pain in the arse. But I wanted to write some of my personal thoughts about the state of the world and my country on my personal blog, because I feel like I’m living in a nightmare. I hope you understand.

#us politics #ask #also asker I can tell you’re from the uk. hello! it’s usually nice to meet international followers #but this time sucks actually #catie talks

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sueandpeaches · 2 years

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WHERE YOU CAN MAKE DONATIONS FOR ARMENIA

kooyrigs: They’ve been carrying out on-ground projects to help Syunik and Artsakh communities ever since the 2020 war in Armenia.

All for Armenia

Miaseen

Center for Truth and Justice : Established in November 2020 in response to the Nagorno-Karabakh war. Team of lawyers and legal professionals that preserve evidence and make it accessible for current or future proceedings, whether in Armenia or abroad.

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lhs3020b · 2 years

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It’s been a while. Ahem.

(As some of you know, I’ve been dealing with a proper pain-in-the-arse of a house move for the last few months, and it’s fair to say it’s been sapping every shred of my energy. I’m moved now, thankfully, though there are some remaining bureaucratic details left to deal with. Plus, world news has been utterly awful for months, which is enervating in its own way.)

Anyway.

BORIS IS A GONER, BORIS IS A GONER, BORIS IS A GONER!

Hahahaha!

It’s got to be one of the most self-inflicted career ends ever - all he needed to do was go five minutes without lying, and apparently that was impossible. Hahaha.

I might add that I’m under no illusions about what’s going to happen next. He’ll be replaced by some foul hyper-Rightwing Tory gargoyle, and it’s entirely possible that the party will find itself someone worse than him. And when the next general election arrives ... well, let’s just say that I have some doubts about St Starmer of the Immaculate Centre’s ability to appeal to the country. (He’s done well this year on “I’m not Boris”, but that card’s off the table now, and it’s worth remembering that his performance at elections last year was rather poor ... honestly my big fear with Starmer is that the next election will be “2017 in reverse”, where the more the voters see of him, the less they’ll like him. I hope I’m wrong about this, but we’ll find out :( )

But, but, but ... BORIS’S CAREER IS OVER!

Put that one up your Brexit, Floppy Hair!

#UK internal politics #Screw you Boris #No I really do not like him #funny that you should ask #good riddance to bad rubbish

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workersolidarity · 22 days

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🇾🇪⚔️🇮🇱 🚀⛴️ 🚨

ARMED FORCES OF YEMEN ANNOUNCE FIVE MILITARY OPERATIONS TARGETING SHIPS BELONGING TO BRITAIN, THE U.S. AND "ISRAEL"

📹 Spokesperson for the Armed Forces of Yemen, Brigadier General Yahya Sarea, belonging to the Ansarallah movement, announced five operations on Sunday targeting ships belonging to Britain and the United States, as well as vessels headed to port in the occupied Palestinian territories.

According to statement, Gen. Sarea said the Yemeni Armed Forces, as part of operations in the Red Sea, targeted with cruise missiles, the British vessel Hope Island in the Red Sea, successfully striking the ship.

Gen. Sarea said the armed forces had also targeted two Israeli ships headed to ports in the occupied territories, including the MS Grace F in the Indian Ocean, as well as the MSC Gina in the Arabian Sea. The armed forces spokesperson added that a number of ballistic missiles were used to target the ships, and had successfully achieved their goals.

According to Sarea, the Armed Forces of Yemen also carried out drone strikes against two American frigates operating in the Red Sea, which also successfully hit their targets.

Brig. Gen. Sarea stated that the Armed Forces of Yemen would continue to target ships belonging to the Zionist entity, and would also continue targeting any vessels of countries allied with the Israeli occupation currently operating in the Red Sea, along with vessels heading to or from the ports of the occupied Palestinian territories.

#source

@WorkerSolidarityNews

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zingaplanet · 2 years

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Y'all know what's most fucked up about the whole political chaos recently? It's that those who actually know how to run an efficient government and have studied politics in-depth will NEVER run for office. I know at least 5 senior staff members from my political science department who have become consultants and advisors for governments and International Organisations when they've hit the wall and are one step away from causing a global catastrophe but they would rather have really shit pay in academia than ever go into politics.

I personally know NO ONE in my cohort who wanted to run for office or at least be a civil servant. It truly says a lot that those who have researched and studied the most on the topic are the ones most reluctant to enter the field. NO ONE hates politicians more than a political science student. And frankly, this is because we are the ones who understand the most how fucked up, nasty, and inefficient the system really is.

This is also why it's not rare to see government cabinets run entirely by people who have never studied politics or at least government management (e.g., most UK politicians read english or philosophy in oxbridge and network their bloody way up to the top). We ended up with a bunch of people who are excellent public speakers and charismatic bullshitters, but very rarely one who knows how a public policy project should be designed. That's why there are so many demands for political consultants from national governments these days. MP offices recruit at least 3 INTERNS from our department per term just to do very basic ground research and policy-shaping for them.

They ain't got a clue guys. I would swallow a toad before I buy into any word that they feed you.

#it's all chirp and bullshit #trust no one people #AND I MEAN NO ONE #i bet you second year polsci students can do a better job than Boris Johnson #sorry for a little political ramblings #just gotta get it out #politics #uk politics #international relations #british politics #boris johnson

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