Three Point Failure: The Guardian’s racist campaign against “dirty Russian money”
Kit Knightly
Just a few of the buildings that, theoretically speaking, could be owned by Russians.
Since the initial press hysteria over the Skripal case, the major political parties of the UK have been clambering over each other in an effort to scale the highest peak of moral high ground. Every paper, pundit and career minded MP only too eager to denounce the inherent badness of Russia, and everything Russia-related.
RT was attacked again – despite having literally nothing to do with the Skripal case – and threatened with having its broadcasting license revoked, whilst the Tories and Labour argued over who appeared on the channel the most. The “liberal” press, and even some Labour MPs who should know better, went on the attack over “dirty Russian money” in the Tory party.
Just as in the US, with the ludicrous “Russia-gate” investigation, any kind of connection to Russia was treated as an automatic taint, and MPs and journalists alike rushed to wash themselves clean and make it clear they were the most anti-Russian.
The pro-Corbyn Left missed the mark to greatest degree, overly keen to smash their “soft on Putin” image, and get their kicks in on the Tories, they decided to take aim at Tory donors and their “dirty Russian money”.
This culminated in Owen Jones’ ridiculous video (above), tooling around the capital and pointing out what properties are (or might be) owned by Russians, and are therefore bad.
He also talks to Luke Harding quite a bit, which is never a good idea.
There’s a lot of problems with both this campaign in general, and this video in the specific. They can be boiled down to three categories.
1. Racism
Attacking something, or someone, simply because of their race or nationality is racism. Pure and simple. Chris Bryant MP talking about the problems with Russia, pointing out buildings in Kensington that might be owned by Russians as they play the Soviet national anthem is just Russophobic nonsense.
This video is racist, and the motivations behind it are racist, and everyone involved should be ashamed of themselves.
If you think this is an overstatement, then imagine a Labour MP and some journalists driving around London in a bus and pointing out every building owned by a Jewish millionaire, set to the Israeli national anthem. What would the press reaction to that be?
2. Stupidity
The video is stupid, outside of the racism – which is always based in stupidity – it simply has no idea how things work. It seems nobody involved in the making of it has the even the most basic understanding of human rights, the Russian political system, international finance or simple economics.
For starters – although the video claims to be a “tour of Russian linked properties”…we never get to see any. Instead people point at buildings and say Russians MIGHT own them, or Luke tells us that the properties are bought through secret brokers and off-shore accounts so we’ll never know exactly who owns what. All rather an anti-climax, after they played the Russian national anthem at the beginning.
I mean, certainly it’s true that some Russian people own some property in London, and – yes – that particular house COULD be one of the properties concerned….or it could not.
To redress the racism balance here – we should point out that it’s possible for a Russian person to own a house in London without being a crook, a sentiment noticeably absent from the video.
Further, there’s no analysis of WHY this “dirty money” is in London. Owen Jones, in his only cogent thought in 6 minutes of video, asks a Russian “anti-corruption campaigner” (translation: exiled banker):
Why do so many Russian oligarchs come to London?”
What follows is a couple of jokes about the climate and the scenery…and a frank admission that goes totally over Owen’s head:
There is a service industry of bankers, property estate agents, lawyers who can service you…”
Why do oligarchs prefer to London to Moscow?
It’s a simple question with a simple answer – Britain is soft on financial corruption. It is one of the money laundering centres of the WORLD. Because we don’t make millionaires pay taxes, we don’t charge people with embezzlement and we don’t ask inconvenient questions. We have a weak, soft economy that NEEDS money brought in from overseas – no matter how it was acquired – in order to limp along in any kind of vaguely functional way.
That’s a British problem, not a Russian problem.
Russian oligarchs are more comfortable in London than Moscow. The video never stops to ask what this means.
Luke Harding – always just a few heartbeats away from a total paranoid breakdown – talks about the oligarchs being “squeezed out or put in jail” by Putin’s government, but never makes the obvious point that maybe THAT is why they all live in London now, and do nothing but talk about how evil Putin is.
Two ex-bankers are interviewed – Roman Borisovich and Vladimir Ashurkov – they are credited as “anti-corruption” campaigners, with no reference to their personal wealth, how they acquired it, or why they left the country.
The oligarchs in London have been kicked out of Russia for corruption, and taken their ill-gotten fortunes with them. Most of them hate Putin, and would do anything to undermine his government. This very simple reality is never addressed in the video.
This leads us to the greatest stupidity – the idea that Russian money leaving London and going back Russia would somehow “punish” Putin’s “regime”. It would not. Capital flight is a problem for countries all over the world, retaining Russian wealth in Russian banks would BOOST the Russian economy through investment and taxation. That this very simple logic is apparently beyond Owen Jones and Luke Harding is not surprising.
…but that the two ex-bankers they interview don’t mention it either is very odd. It’s almost as if there’s an undeclared reasoning here.
Perhaps they believe that putting pressure on the ill-gotten assets of Russian oligarchs will result in greater support for a coup or color revolution back home. It’s hard to see that working out, but it’s also impossible to believe that two millionaire ex-bankers don’t know what capital flight is, or that it’s a bad thing.
3. Hypocrisy
As previously mentioned – London is FULL of “dirty money” from all over the world. Saudi Arabian princes, Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs, South American drug barons, Texan oil magnates, the Queen…there’s no end to the unsavoury types who keep their loot locked up in Kensington, Chelsea and SoHo.
Earlier this year the Guardian ran full-page ads praising the Saudi Arabian crown prince as a “reformer”. They were paid to do this, by a government with an almost cartoonishly bad human rights record. George Soros – who made his fortune tanking the pound – is regularly allowed column inches to spread his agenda.
Selective moral outrage has long been a problem for the “liberal” west, as is plainly demonstrated by the outrage over Salisbury, compared to the pin-drop silence as Israel gun down Palestinians in Gaza and Saudi Arabia drop bombs on buses full of school-children in Yemen.
(The bombs are made and sold by the UK and US. Theresa May’s husband has financial ties to arms companies, and therefore makes money every time a British bomb kills a Yemeni civilian. There are no videos about that on the Guardian.)
The more specific hypocrisy here belongs to Owen Jones, he made this video about “dirty Russian money”, and at the same time he wrote this article, headlined:
Hungary’s war on democracy is a war on democracy everywhere”
You see, Victor Orban – Hungary’s Prime Minister – is trying to chase billionaire backed NGOs out of Hungary, to stop billionaires influencing Hungarian elections. This is racist, because George Soros is jewish.
Britain needs to stamp down on Russian’s owning houses and going to school here, this is not racist because Russian’s are evil and we’re a democracy.
To the untrained eye, this campaign to take on “dirty Russian money”, could look like a racist exercise designed to punish people simply for being Russian. That’s the worst message you can take from this video – the best message we can take is that we need to object to billionaires influencing democracy…but only when they’re on the other side.
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“Pecunia non olet” said the Romans, but the Russian Money stinks for The Guardian.
“We have a weak, soft economy that NEEDS money brought in from overseas – no matter how it was acquired – in order to limp along in any kind of vaguely functional way.”
I’m sorry, but whatever the merits or otherwise if this article, the quote above is complete nonsense.
The UK Govt, via the BoE, is the monopoly creator of Sterling, the UK’s sovereign, non-convertible, fiat currency.
It creates its own currency every day, at a keystroke, simply by crediting the reserve accounts at the retail banks of the initial recipients of any public spending.
As such, it not only does not require any foreign currency whatsoever in order to function, but does not even need to issue Gilts (as a favour to private sector sterling savers), but simply chooses to do so after the event.
It doesn’t even require prior taxation to fund its expenditure (eg no emergency tax bills were ever issued, or paid, in order for HMG to spend hundreds of billions on bank bailouts, QE, Iraqi Wars, etc), but revenue will always automatically accrue the Exchequer in the normal way as taxes are imposed on all initial and subsequent transactions that result from government spending. The main function of taxation for a modern fiat currency is to a)enforce the use of that currency, and b) prevent the massive inflation that would inevitably occur if continual government spending remained untaxed.
This idea that the UK Govt has no money of its own, but depends entirely on what is lent to it by foreigners, or paid to it in taxes, is pure Thatcherite nonsense – has been used as a smokescreen to justify decades of catastrophically damaging underspending and austerity, and swallowed hook line and sinker by a compliant media, and an economically uneducated, gullible and incurious public.
Repeating the lie just plays into neoliberal hands.
Don’t fall for it; educate yourselves about Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), and how a nation with its own fiat currency can spend as much as it likes, subject not to the limit of how much tax it raises or how much private money it borrows, but by the capacity of its real economy (labour, materials, energy, land, etc) to absorb that govt spending without overheating, and causing inflation.
Why don’t the government make us all millionaires?
“Why don’t the government make us all millionaires?”
If you’re replying to me, it’s because that would be massively inflationary, unless we were all producing enough real resources to absorb that spending (which would be impossible in reality).
There is absolutely a limit to govt spending, but it’s not the number of currency units at its disposal, which is infinite, but the capacity of the nation’s real productive resources to absorb that spending without causing an inflationary boom.
To quote Stephanie Kelton: “The US Govt could buy every American a pony – IF there were enough ponies.”
It has something to do with the government imagining that it is some kind of ‘royalty’, and therefore above us.
Only people with a psychotic craving for money and power are to be found in today’s western governments, and this particular psychosis is always in direct proportion to the craving for stopping everybody else from being so rich and powerful.
Normal people are screened out at a very early stage – possibly in kindergarten.
MrShigemitsu: thank you for introducing some sense into this discussion.
Just spooks – they recruit them young give them training in being ‘radical’ and ‘cool’ – they get a year or so in a US university sometimes to learn ‘journalism’ , get induced into the ‘Mockingbird’ club and are injected into the MSM to do their masters bidding – from Langley.
Owen blew his cover when he was asked to turn on Corbyn after first being all momentumy about his election, when he wasn’t supposed to win and then refused to stand down.
Owen lost all credibility.
Now big spook daddy Harding is holding his hand and bringing him out as the reactionary – i was a idealist youth but am a woke anti socialist, anti russian, pro banker, pro war, realist.
See that starwars narrative about the dark side and the sith? That fits the media spooks. They live to disrupt genuine investigative journalism to protect their masters.
Off Guardian should start a trend of using The Guardian as toilet paper.
it won’t catch on, seriously: would you trust Luke Harding & Owen Jones to absorb and cleanse, hygienically , with 3 Ply ? Balky thinking on ‘Wet , Wet Whets’ chosen bed to lie in, ‘Diss-proportionate’ ..
Your plan sounds like a recipe for Haemorrhoids & rough justice , that would promote verbal diarrhoea and a massive out break of sewer like social discontent, leading to disease of the mind >> if nothing else, because of the Guardian’s utterly pathetic chosen style of toilet music, in their video >>
Balky recommends hitting the mute button & infusing a dose of some serious Fela Kuti Afro-Jazz, like ..
“Teacher Don’t Teach me Nonsense”
& a Bidet 🙂 😉
Whatever your chosen practice of Hygiene , be sure to rinse hands & wash your mind thoroughly, after coming into physical contact with the Guardian ..
Balky’s Eagles’-eye ‘Last Resort’ , never forgetting to flush profusely .. “Kiss it Goodbye..” &
N’joy d’Music >> Fela learnt himself, (the hard way), the cost of colonialism & the courage ..
** To Speak Out **
I should have added that the main reason Russians are in the UK is first that they do not trust the Americans. Secondly for the same reason when the handful of young men spotted the opportunities after the fall of the USSR they need money to purchase resource companies which could be bought for fractions of their value. They found it in London and bankers willing to lend it and share in the rewards. These young men became the oligarchs of today who have long established commercial roots in London who help to invest their exported funds in London and the UK to its benefit. They are no different from many of those in the UK today in their stately homes who have conveniently forgotten the dubious way their forbears made their fortunes.
The campaign is inherently ‘antisemitic’ (but what isn’t these days?). The ‘oligarchs’ who looted the Soviet Union were overwhelmingly Jewish. They did so, (once that fact was ceased being denied), because the ‘antisemitism’ in the Soviet had forced them to become adept at chicanery and theft, or so we were told as the Western fakestream media moved to idolising them as ‘entrepreneurs’. And the economic ‘shock therapy’ policies that pillaged the country and killed millions prematurely and caused social devastation, were organised by Jeffrey Sachs and a cabal of fellow (dare I say it?) Jewish ‘economists’ from Harvard. So ‘dirty Russian money’ is mostly controlled by you know who. To think that the Fraudian sewer would sink to such depths of ‘antisemitism’ is deeply distressing.
The City of London deals in money. It is in fact the money exchange centre of the world. If it was to ask or care where its money came from it would probably need close down. The Russians are no more or less to be accused of dirty money than any other investor. The subject is subjective. This has always been the case and if it were to change the UK would become a much poorer (moneywise) place.
It is important to bear in mind that the origins of the current Russophobia lie in the determination of the City, (which has, to put it mildly, enormous influence over its subsidiaries the Tory party, of both shades, and the media, which it owns-its media) to bring down the current Russian government and re-institute a Yeltsin style regime to loot Russia and to decimate its population.
It is no more complicated than that: the question that Russians have to ask themselves is whether capitalism is a viable alternative for them to pursue, given that its local logic is to reduce the country to that of a cornucopia of undefended resources, available for looting with the assistance of local comprador criminals.
The logical political step in Russia is to attack the source of this permanent war against it by taking all land and resources back into public ownership.
Were EU regulators coming too close to clipping the City of London Corporation’s wings? In that case: Brexit! The city to stay the off shore Caymans of Europe & many others – but not for Putin.
The ownership of prime real estate is hidden from the gaze of ordinary mortals and the tax collectors.
We know who owns MP$$$$$$$$$and journalist$$$$$$$$
The City Corporation of London – the (deepest)State in the state – spelled out in 2011 here: https://www.newstatesman.com/economy/2011/02/london-corporation-city
English, not Russian although foreign firms out vote the few UK citizens there. The majority will be American or Gulf oil probably.
Owen and Harding’s magical mystery tour of the Russian kleptocrats who have made their homes and parked their ill gotten gains in London [many appear to be on the bus!].
It’s hard to imagine a more pointless film. It is as Kit says pure racist based propaganda.
The theft that has taken place in Russia only mirrors what is institutionalised in western based kleptocracies. If anything Putin has tried to stem the flow of criminal money from Russia and tax the oligarchs. Whether he has been successful is rather like asking the same question in the west.
If we consider the UK scandals about Russia they are all based on criminals which have left Russia with their billions or Russians who were working for such criminals [Litvinenko, Berezovsky and more recently the Skripal affair of the more high profile stories].
Criminal monies which are from Ukraine are mysteriously lumped into the bag and transposed as Russian too. Harding did this with the “Laundromat” expose which fell flat when it became clear that the main culprits were Ukrainian kleptocrats. This is a convenient mistake for a racist media to make in a witch hunt frenzy!
One that is mysteriously never corrected afterwards, which really would then expose the lies that are all too conveniently being spun.
owen jones cementing his useful idiot status with customary lack of self-awareness and panache. every time i find myself liking jones i watch his car crash interview and flounce out of the studio at being asked to face reality. he’s like a small child
Wot’ ? You’ve found moments actually liking Jones’y , Yarkob ? WTF ? The precocious self-adulating & flagellating Oxbridge sycophant , with zero real world experience and a mindset not worthy of a small child and the general knowledge of a peanut .. !?
Riddle me this, Yarkob :- What do you call ‘Puke’ Harding & ‘Rowin’ Jones chained together , attached to a concrete block at the bottom of the Mariana Trench ?
A good start for the Guardianista .. ! ?
(in Balky’s book) 🙂
So glad you touched on his customary lack of self – awareness , mind you 😉
Lol, what was it Jung said ? :-
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate …”
Jones has problems still to face .. Not yet Man-kind !
Snap! Jones can occasionally write something pretty good. In this he’s like his more heavyweight colleague, George Monbiot. But their useful idiot de facto complicity with imperialism – and failure to call out the Graun on its no platforming of such counter voices as Pilger, Hersh, Beeley and Bartlett – ultimately count for more.
BTW, nice piece Kit.
Off topic but specially for local Israel hater & China lover Mulga Muble: China will operate Haifa port, near Israel’s alleged nuclear-armed submarines, and it seems no one in Israel thought about the strategic ramifications https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/.premium-israel-is-giving-china-the-keys-to-its-largest-port-and-the-u-s-navy-may-abandon-israel-1.6470527
Maybe they gave it a lot of thought _ _ _ _
and decided to back a winner.
The ‘old nag’ is ready to be put out to pasture.
I DO love how you Zionazis SO fear China’s rise. China is prepared to treat Israel like every other country on Earth, but not bow, grovel and prostrate themselves before the self-appointed ‘Gods Upon the Earth’, as your idol Begin described his people.
“The Queen…..there’s no end to the unsavoury types”. Not funny, please remove reference to our Sovereign from that comment. She, as you well know, has nothing to do with anything illegal or unsavoury. Haven’t you heard of lese majeste laws?
No such law in the U.K. Come to crappy Thailand for that.
The one reason the ridiculous institution still exists in U.K. is we can say what we like about the parasites
without fearing the knock on the door.
Come to Thailand and try criticising the royal parasites here, and you’ll get 25 years.
Very democratic…
Surely you jest?
There may be another reason why RT was threatened with the loss of its broadcasting licence by Ofcom – this news was just recently published:
“Serial numbers of missile that downed MH17 show it was produced in 1986, owned by Ukraine – Russia”
https://www.rt.com/news/438596-mh17-downing-russian-briefing/
Why this news may be significant, is that everything the Russian armed forces now use, including ammunition, has to have been made since 2010. All other military materiel with a date of manufacture before 2010 was decommissioned. In addition the Russian military traced the document trail attached to that missile’s serial numbers and found the missile had been delivered to Ukraine in late 1986 / early 1987.
And the Russians ‘didn’t know’ this until now? What else do the Russian’s ‘not know’? There is a high level diplomatic 3D-Chess game in motion that we mortals are not privy to: not even on a need to know basis. One can only hope the current world leadership know what they are doing. The common sense attitude and the lesson of history, however, is that they do not. Which is why I surmise a collective, rather than an elite autonomy, as the only possible solution.
London is the global hub for drug smuggling, sex trafficking, money laundering, and arms dealing. Owen Jones is a complete fool, who thinks his mix of working-class experience and Oxbridge education provides him with particular insight into, well, just about every political issue of the day. But one thing neither of those components provide is any first-hand experience of how governments, banks, and the super-rich actually function, which is why Jones retains a streak of idealism that appeals to the kids, but is nothing more than stunning naivete.
The fact that the City of London is where all the world’s dirty money is put through the car-wash is not exactly a secret. The Eurodollar market was also set up in London whereby US banks could operate outside of the laws and institutions overseeing their behaviour on the other side of the pond. Not for nothing was the City of London referred to as US Banking’s Guantanamo since they could do things in London that they would not have gotten away with in New York.
I am also reminded of the City’s rather sullied record and impropriety with regard to its nefarious practices. As follows:
Standard Charter Bank (UK)
Does the Standard Chartered settlement promote financial crime?
• 16 August 2012
On Tuesday, Benjamin Lawsky, superintendent of financial services for New York State, reached an out-of-court settlement with Standard Chartered. The Asia-focused bank agreed to a fine of $340m and to allow monitors and examiners of his choice reporting to the New York State department of financial services to be installed in its New York branch to ensure it is abiding by anti-money laundering legislation. This followed the August 6 order, in which Lawsky found the bank to have hidden an astonishing $250bn worth of illicit transactions for Iran and Iran-based clients
This is a fantastic deal for Standard Chartered but may not be such a good one for the financial system. Why should bankers and banks that commit crimes be offered get-out-of-jail arrangements along these lines? The list of recent out-of-court settlements involving banks and financial institutions in the United States is a long and ignoble one. Here are some edited highlights …
HSBC UK
With HSBC, Mexico’s involvement entailed providing money-laundering services to various drug cartels, including bulk movements of cash from the bank’s Mexican unit to the U.S., with little or no oversight of the transactions. It also conducted transactions with Iran, removing references to the country in an effort to conceal them.
HSBC Holdings’ (NYSE:HSBC) agreement to pay a $1.9 billion fine to regulators and enter into a deferred prosecution agreement points to lack of adequate control processes in compliance and anti-money laundering. Given the bank’s size, it appears that it and some of its peers are too big to jail because they are too big to fail. The agreement constitutes a warning to the bank to clean up its act and avoids revocation of its charter to operate in the United States. The action was taken by regulators in the belief that a failure of a large financial institution could imperil the world’s financial system.
In addition, HSBC is not alone in its indiscretion. Standard Chartered (OTC:SCBFF), ING (NYSE:ING), Credit Suisse (NYSE:CS), Royal Bank of Scotland (NYSE:RBS), Lloyds Banking Group (NYSE:LYG) and Barclays (NYSE:BCS), over the past several years, have had to stump up fines for facilitating transactions with rogue nations such as Iran, Libya, Sudan and Myanmar in violation of the Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) sanctions.
J.P.Morgan and the London Whale
JP Morgan has agreed to pay about $920m in penalties to US and UK regulators over the “unsafe and unsound (i.e., illegal) practices” that led to its $6.2bn London Whale losses last year.
The US’s biggest bank will pay $300m to the US office of the comptroller of the currency, $200m to Federal Reserve, $200m to the securities and exchange commission (SEC) and £137.6m ($219.74m) to the UK’s financial conduct authority.
JP Morgan admitted wrongdoing as part of the settlement, an unusual step for a finance firm in the crosshairs of multiple legal actions.
“JP Morgan failed to keep watch over its traders as they overvalued a very complex portfolio to hide massive losses,” co-director of the SEC’s division of enforcement, George Canellos, said.
“While grappling with how to fix its internal control breakdowns, JP Morgan’s senior management broke a cardinal rule of corporate governance and deprived its board of critical information it needed to fully assess the company’s problems and determine whether accurate and reliable information was being disclosed to investors and regulators.”
Barclays: The LIBOR Scandal
Libor, the London inter-bank lending rate, is considered to be one of the most crucial interest rates in finance.
It underpins trillions of pounds worth of loans and financial contracts.
So, when Barclays was fined £290m in June last year after some of its derivatives traders were found to have attempted to rig this key rate, already weak public confidence in banks was harmed further.
The scandal led to the resignation of both Barclays chief executive Bob Diamond and chairman Marcus Agius.
Here are some of the key dates in the scandal:
More to come I am sure …..
It ill behooves the UK to make an issue of Russian ‘dirty money’ measured by practices such as the above. But it is par for the course apparently.
“..have had to stump up fines for facilitating transactions with rogue nations such as Iran, Libya, Sudan and Myanmar in violation of the Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) sanctions.”
In other words they helped break US imposed sanctions designed to wreck these countries’ economies.
It will be a very good thing if London banks prevent the US from sanctioning Iran and North Korea in coming months.
” Lawsky found the bank to have hidden an astonishing $250bn worth of illicit transactions for Iran and Iran-based clients”
What the US government calls money laundering is often action taken to facilitate ways for states, refusing to kow tow to the US, to repatriate monies Washington wishes to steal.
As to Russia, subject to all manner of sanctions designed to cripple its economy in the hope of fostering discontent with its government,, well, suffice it to say that US courts have no credibility on these matters.
The BCCI had a head office in London too till it folded in 1991: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_of_Credit_and_Commerce_International
It was the go to place for Jihadis and the CIA…
When was this video released? The trees in London are bare of leaves so it must have been filmed at least 6 months ago.
The city of london is the most squalid offshore money laundering centre of the world – for anyone’s money from any country. And please, how can anyone take that plagiarising clown Harding at anything other than cartoon idiocy level. Shame on the Guardian. When you think that rag can go no lower, it does.
BTW, Russia released evidence claiming the infamous buk that downed the malaysian flight was definitely owned by Ukraine. Irrespective of the merits of this claim, the western msm have put a total blackout on this story. Is this too, subject to a D notice?
It was published back in April
‘Shame on the Guardian’? Impossible!
Needless to say we are being softened up – just as 19 hijackers were used to rationalise decades of blood-shed in the Middle East, so Russia has to be punished for preventing Britains corrupt elite from buying up even more fabulously wealthy property in places like Knightsbridge and Kensington.
The carnage that is bound to ensue if there is full blown conflict between the west and Russia is almost certainly worth it because no patriot will sleep well in his or her bed until Britains uber-wealthy can acquire an even bigger share of the country’s rapidly diminishing assets.
Hardings genuine concern for ordinary Russians is also deeply affecting – he wants them to be rid of Putin so they can have an extra glass of vodk not becuse he is a rabid apologist for US imperialism.
Well, I am certainly not contributing to Owen Jones’ pocket money…..
But I would suggest that if he goes on question time again he should be called ‘bum chum Owen’ or ‘Owen the poof’ as payback for being a two-faced jew-loving racist. Of course if he calls George Soros a nazi-appeasing, pound-hating sleaze bag; Ukraine a bankrupt US vassal for Cargill et al; and a few other unpalatable home truths come out, then calling him Mr Jones or Owen may become more likely.
Would be great fun putting him in the dock for 15 minutes.
London has Ukrainian billionaire properties too. Is Owen truly a believer that Ukrainian billionaires are honest?! Well tell us more Owen, dig your hole even deeper….
Does Owen really think Uk wealth was not founded on the opium trade in the orient and the slave trade going west? You know: East India Company, Jardine Mathieson et al, global narcotics traders?
Very easy to be selective about how money is made.
We Brits were not very ethical either…..
Horrific.
Spoke with a ‘centrist dad’ the other night and heard close up the propensity toward outright racism in the liberal mindset.
‘ Let us take, for example, so important a country in the capitalist world as the United States of America. There millions of people have been set into motion by the crisis. The program for the recovery of capitalism has collapsed. Vast masses are beginning to abandon the bourgeois parties and are at present at the crossroads.
Embryo American fascism is trying to direct the disillusionment and discontent of these masses into reactionary fascist channels. It is a peculiarity of the development of American fascism that at the present stage it comes forward principally in the guise of an opposition to fascism, which it accuses of being an “un-American” trend imported from abroad… American fascism tries to portray itself as the custodian of the Constitution and “American democracy.”</i>
Georgi Dimitrov in his 1935 text “The Fascist Offensive”
https://lorenzoae.wordpress.com/2017/10/11/on-russia-todays-liberals/
The Spiders Web film now free and doing the rounds, with some great interviews about the City of London.
‘The reality is not what you believe, that the prime minister has the power to decide on the future of your country. The power is hidden here.’
Eva Jolly – MEP, Vice chair of the Panama Papers Committee (European Parliament)
“The Spider’s Web: Britain’s Second Empire” is both an extremely important and timely documentary, along with being one of the very rare, brilliantly made films which people who watch will never, ever forget. It is not any surprise whatsoever the film has rocketed to over 170,000 views in two days since being posted on YouTube @ “Independent POV” channel.
Peace.
Excellent documentary covering not just the City of London but also various other topics on corporate tax evasion, the role of offshore tax havens, the role of trusts and how financialisation devastates economies, increases poverty and encourages corruption in politics.
Quite a lot of detail on some topics like trusts but there was hardly anything on transfer pricing as a tool of tax evasion. Companies with subsidiaries in different countries (including tax havens) can use transfer pricing to shift profits to low-tax jurisdictions and avoid paying tax. How this works is best explained at this link:
https://taxandsupernewsroom.com.au/transfer-pricing/
Refreshing! Everyone should be asked to consider why the oligarchs love London. They don’t like Moscow because they are held to account there. Now write that out 100X.
…yes but Putin has a master plan, the so called crypto rubble, bring ya money back pay13% no questions asked!
sounds like old Vlad wants to get into the off shore business, lets hope so and it implodes the uk ponzi economy built around City of London fraud
Isn’t the guardian’s own bankroller, HSBC, a launderer of terrorist and Mexican drug money? Or am I confusing it with some Russian bank?
Or at least a bank of a type developed by Russia…
Very good
The Guardian defines bad as Russian and good as Western. Behaviour does not factor into this equation. Try computing that!
the best message you can take from this video is the blokes who made it and presented it are daft shallow c***s, and the UK establishment is simply slipping and sliding in its own stench and vomit!
“daft shallow c***s” is putting it very kindly. It is much worse than that, they are conscious agents of an extremely evil Establishment.
You think Jones and Harding are actually coldly conscious of what Western-power-serving dickheads they are, B? I doubt that. Lost in their own dreamworld quasi-realities. Especially the paranoid schizo Harding. Daft, shallow cunts is true too, though, to boot. Sort of stiffs who do ‘well’ in the corpohack-and-pocketpol dreamworld within the M25-bounded delusion-bubble. Fit only for derisive laughter.
What has Oxbridge ever done for Guardian journos like that?