Sectionfive

bandwagon house
Not looking great in Downing Street these days to put it mildly but Sue Gray in a position of overtly deciding the PM's future is a bit of a grim harbinger all the same no? McCluskey saying recently too that the spooks are in charge of the Labour Party to go with it. The frontmen cannot be trusted any long it seems and Westminister now openly post-even-the-pretence-of-democratic-norm. In defence of the realm and all that.
 

version

Well-known member
Not looking great in Downing Street these days to put it mildly but Sue Gray in a position of overtly deciding the PM's future is a bit of a grim harbinger all the same no? McCluskey saying recently too that the spooks are in charge of the Labour Party to go with it. The frontmen cannot be trusted any long it seems and Westminister now openly post-even-the-pretence-of-democratic-norm. In defence of the realm and all that.
There were fears about this when Rory Stewart was running for the Tory leadership due to his background that even he concedes "gives the appearance" he was a spy.
 

Sectionfive

bandwagon house
It has been funny watching years of hand wringing about "a new low", "oh our ancient democracy", epitomised with like Stephen Fry going "weep for Britain" when the commons was prorogued there a few years ago. Complete nonsense but at the same time you don't know where where any of this ends, do the traditional 'checks' return once Boris is moved on or is this it? When stuff that would have been serious in only recent past is met in increasingly frequently with a shrug you don't know.

Obviously a collapse in confidence in whole edifice is welcome but the forces that might take advantage of this toward a positive outcome are not looking up to it and Mi5 are unlikely looking to return things to what they even were before. Britain is a grim fuckin experiment these days.
 

version

Well-known member

Lumumba’s remains – several teeth and finger bones – were kept in the possession of former Belgian Chief of Police Gérard Soete, who in 1999 admitted to assisting in Lumumba’s assassination, and dissolving his body in sulfuric acid.

At this moment in time, Soete also took several of Lumumba’s finger bones and multiple teeth, one of which was covered in gold, as “a type of hunting trophy.”
 

version

Well-known member
Someone's leaked a bunch of shit from Uber. I doubt there's anything too surprising in there, but it's still fucked.

  • Macron secretly aided Uber lobbying in France, texts reveal
  • Company used ‘kill switch’ during raids to stop police seeing data
  • Former Uber CEO told executives ‘violence guarantees success’

 

version

Well-known member
In one exchange, Kalanick dismissed concerns from other executives that sending Uber drivers to a protest in France put them at risk of violence from angry opponents in the taxi industry. “I think it’s worth it,” he shot back. “Violence guarantees success.”

The leak also contains texts between Kalanick and Emmanuel Macron, who secretly helped the company in France when he was economy minister, allowing Uber frequent and direct access to him and his staff. Macron, the French president, appears to have gone to extraordinary lengths to help Uber, even telling the company he had brokered a secret “deal” with its opponents in the French cabinet.

One senior executive wrote in an email: “We are not legal in many countries, we should avoid making antagonistic statements.” Commenting on the tactics the company was prepared to deploy to “avoid enforcement”, another executive wrote: “We have officially become pirates.”

Nairi Hourdajian, Uber’s head of global communications, put it even more bluntly in a message to a colleague in 2014, amid efforts to shut the company down in Thailand and India: “Sometimes we have problems because, well, we’re just fucking illegal.”

... Uber developed sophisticated methods to thwart law enforcement. One was known internally at Uber as a “kill switch”. When an Uber office was raided, executives at the company frantically sent out instructions to IT staff to cut off access to the company’s main data systems, preventing authorities from gathering evidence.
 

version

Well-known member
This is worth a watch. Just over an hour and absolutely infuriating.

The Spider's Web: Britain's Second Empire, is a documentary film that shows how Britain transformed from a colonial power into a global financial power. At the demise of empire, City of London financial interests created a web of offshore secrecy jurisdictions that captured wealth from across the globe and hid it behind obscure financial structures in a web of offshore islands. Today, up to half of global offshore wealth may be hidden in British offshore jurisdictions and Britain and its offshore jurisdictions are the largest global players in the world of international finance. How did this come about, and what impact does it have on the world today? This is what the Spider's Web sets out to investigate. With contributions from leading experts, academics, former insiders and campaigners for social justice, the use of stylized b-roll and archive footage, the Spider's Web reveals how in the world of international finance, corruption and secrecy have prevailed over regulation and transparency, and the UK is right at the heart of this.

 

version

Well-known member

Many Japanese have been surprised as revelations emerged this week of the ties between the church and Japan’s top leaders, which have their roots in shared anti-communism efforts during the Cold War. Analysts say it could lead people to examine more closely how powerfully the ruling party’s conservative worldviews have steered the policies of modern Japan.
 
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version

Well-known member
You get some people who dismiss the Gladio stuff as conspiracy theory then these guys are saying actually it was real and good and we should do it again / continue doing it.

😂


The United States, the Republic of Turkey, the Republic of Italy, and the United Kingdom are nations with some of the most developed experience in executing “stay-behind” operations both at home and abroad historically.

:cautious:
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
You get some people who dismiss the Gladio stuff as conspiracy theory then these guys are saying actually it was real and good and we should do it again / continue doing it.

😂




:cautious:
What does "stay-behind" mean in this context?
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Depends on the current state of those operations, I suppose. They either still have people dotted around that can be reactivated or they'd have to get people over to wherever they wanted them.
Oh right. I thought all powerful states or blocs of states did that sort of thing all the time anyway?
 

version

Well-known member
Oh right. I thought all powerful states or blocs of states did that sort of thing all the time anyway?

Wouldn't surprise me. That's why I said "do it again / continue doing it" in the initial post - can't take it for granted that they ever really stopped.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Wouldn't surprise me. That's why I said "do it again / continue doing it" in the initial post - can't take it for granted that they ever really stopped.
Oh right. The idea being that spy networks and so on might (but then again, might not) have been wound down after the end of the USSR, I suppose.

Padraig wrote a great post years ago about the 1990s as the "brief, true, Pax Americana", with the USSR gone and 9/11 still in the future, how this was the time that American paranoia turned inwards, towards its own government, in a way it hadn't before outside of some probably fairly fringe circles on the far left and far right*, and how this was all expressed so beautifully in The X-Files, which was the genesis of the idea of the "deep state" taken up much later by QAnon.

*in addition, no doubt, to legitimate activist groups such as the Black Panthers, who knew damn well that The Man really was out to get them
 
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