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Strongly recommend reading Kelptopeia: How Dirty Money is Conquering the World Covers the current situation in Khazakhstan. One of the most chilling chapters d

Strongly recommend reading Kelptopeia: How Dirty Money is Conquering the World Covers the current situation in Khazakhstan. One of the most chilling chapters deals with what can happen to protestors in Khazakhstan. Even more chilling, how the ruling elite manipulate the international press. If you don’t hate Tony Blair already, this will help you cross that line in a big way. https://www.amazon.com/Kleptopia-Dirty-Money-Conquering-World/dp/0062883658 https://www.amazon.com/Kleptopia-Dirty-Money-Conquering-Worl...

sofixa 5y ago
Thanks for the recommendation. I've just bought the book, but before diving in, out of curiosity, what's the link with Tony Blair?
- pyuser583 5y ago
  He was a highly paid advisor for the oligarch ruling Khazakhstan. Specifically, the Khazakh leader was giving a speech in the Uk at the same time he was suppressing protests with torture and rape. Blair wrote up talking points for him to help with damage control.
HatchedLake721 5y ago
I assume the Tony Blair hate is based on the Iraq War? I don’t get it. Prime Minister in the UK cannot go to war without parliament’s approval. Parliament approved invasion with 412 to 149 votes. Is Tony Blair the scapegoat? Can someone explain?
- rad_gruchalski 5y ago
  "On 6 July 2016, Sir John Chilcot announced the report's publication, more than seven years after the inquiry was announced.[3] Usually referred to as the Chilcot report by the news media,[4] the document stated that at the time of the invasion of Iraq in 2003, Saddam Hussein did not pose an urgent threat to British interests, that intelligence regarding weapons of mass destruction was presented with unwarranted certainty, that peaceful alternatives to war had not been exhausted, that the United Kingdom and the United States had undermined the authority of the United Nations Security Council, that the process of identifying the legal basis was "far from satisfactory", and that a war was unnecessary.[5][6][7] The report was made available under an Open Government Licence." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_Inquiry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_Inquiry
  - HatchedLake721 5y ago
    Yes, I still remember Colin Powell image showing "irrefutable evidence" in his hands to the United Nations, which ended up being a lie. But again, did Tony Blair know it was a lie and misled the Parliament? I remember the Chilcot report, but never read it. It's on my reading list now! But from your quote, I don't see anything related specifically to Tony Blair? Again, my point is, the executive power (Government/Prime Minister) came to the legislative power (The Parliament) with a motion to invade another country. Both powers were using the same intelligence that they believed were genuine at the time, debated it for days, and then decided with 412 to 149 votes to start the invasion. Why Tony Blair is singled out, for something in hindsight, and the other 411 people are given a pass?
    - GordonS 5y ago
      > Both powers were using the same intelligence that they believed were genuine at the time Didn't the US and UK both fabricate "evidence"? Even then, it was obvious to many observers that the evidence simply wasn't credible, and the only outcome was disaster.
      - iso1210 5y ago
        Certainly "Sexed up" the evidence, the entire Dodgy Dossier killed the BBC - Greg Dyke (the Director General / CEO, who was on holiday at the time) had to resign because of it. The Hutton Report claimed that the dossier was not sexed up (as the BBC claimed) and that it's all the BBCs fault. A few years later, Chilcott report basically said that the government did lie.
    - Quarrelsome 5y ago
      > But again, did Tony Blair know it was a lie and misled the Parliament? Yes. This is why the British troops were under-equipped because Tony Blair was intentionally holding back the knowledge that the choice to invade had already been made but he couldn't do this while also requesting parliament to fund war funding. He was holding two narratives open at the same time. The public one where everything was above board, following all approved channels, ratified by the UN and due to WMD that he used to gain approval from the UK and a private one where it was clear the UK would go to war with the US regardless of what transpired.
- danjac 5y ago
  Tony Blair was the head of government and leader of the ruling party. Had he decided not to take Britain to Iraq, then the UK would not have taken part in the war and there would not have been a vote in Parliament. At the end of the day, the buck stopped with him. Would lack of UK support have been sufficient to deter the US? Who knows, probably not given the neocon lunatics in the White House at the time. Harold Wilson's decision to keep the UK out of Vietnam was in retrospect a wise decision, and no doubt Blair would have had a better reputation had he made the same choice. That all said, Blair's post-PM career seems to involve toadying up to every dictator left on the planet (in marked contrast to his successor Gordon Brown's work supporting refugees and global vaccination) so maybe his reputation is well-deserved after all.
  - HatchedLake721 5y ago
    > Had he decided not to take Britain to Iraq, then the UK would not have taken part in the war and there would not have been a vote in Parliament. I don't get this. He cannot just "decide to take Britain to Iraq", since the UK Government cannot start a war without Parliament's approval. He came to the Parliament with the available intelligence at the time, and after days of debates, 412 people voted in favour of the invasion. I would understand the hate if he knew the "irrefutable evidence" shown to United Nation by the Secretary of State was a lie at the time of the vote in Parliament. But as far I know, he wasn't aware of that. Is this just a blind hate of a scapegoat? Why are the other 411 people given a pass?
    - ineedasername 5y ago
      UK Parliament does not get a binding vote on going to war. Their recourse, if they disagree, is to remove the PM altogether. Admittedly, I'm not sure there's much of a meaningful difference between the two. If an MP doesn't want to go to war, I'd think that a big enough difference if opinion to vote no-confidence. As such if a majority of Parliament didn't want to go to war, they may have taken that step.
    - danjac 5y ago
      > He cannot just "decide to take Britain to Iraq", since the UK Government cannot start a war without Parliament's approval. Had Blair decided not to go to war, there would not have been a vote. He was leader of the Labour Party and instructed his whips to ensure MPs voted for war. > He came to the Parliament with the available intelligence at the time, and after days of debates, 412 people voted in favour of the invasion. We now know, from the Chilcot inquiry, that Blair knew the intelligence was poor and either deliberately misled Parliament or allowed his belief to blind his judgement. Either conclusion is damning.
- tialaramex 5y ago
  Starting wars does not in fact require parliamentary approval. In 1999 Blair used "Queen's Consent" (the notional requirement that consent of the monarch must be sought in order to substantially alter their powers, but in practice these are government powers and so consent is sought from the government) to get rid of a Bill that would actually have required this, the "Military Action Against Iraq (Parliamentary Approval) Bill". This isn't because Blair couldn't have won a vote and disposed of the bill but because he knew it would be embarrassing and indeed the embarrassment anyway resulted in the (non-binding) Approval bill you cited which has 412 Aye votes. Even having a vote ("Division") is embarrassing. It forced Labour members who might have told their electorate over and over that they oppose war to choose, stick by their principles that war is abhorrent, and risk deselection for coming out against the stance of their government and many populist pro-war newspapers, or, bend over, vote for the government and hope voters forgive them when it inevitably all goes wrong. Now, ultimately Parliament is sovereign and so you can argue everything "requires parliamentary approval", but only in sense that silence signifies approval because as a sovereign entity it could intervene but it does not. If Parliament really didn't want the UK to go to war it can in principle get rid of the Prime Minister and install one who won't start a war. If the Speaker tries to stop them (e.g. by refusing to recognise a member who stands to propose "That This House Has No Confidence In Her Majesty's Government" so as to bring down the Prime Minister) the Commons can convene "The Committee of the Whole House" which is identical to the Commons except that they're picking who runs things, whereupon they can get rid of that Speaker, choose a new one, reconvene the Commons and call No confidence. But it isn't going to do that in fact. Even for Brexit, while there was majority opposition to the obviously disastrous "No deal" plan, there was no majority in support of any other definitive course of action, including replacing the Prime Minister, all that was done was more kicking of cans down the road, until there was no more road.
- freeflight 5y ago
  The UK parliament ain't the only relevant institution here. The invasion of Iraq was an open and blatant breach of the UN charter [0], it was an illegal war of aggression based on lies. Lies that were so blatant that the whole situation lead to the largest global protest event in human history [1]. And that doesn't even go into the direct consequences of that; Refugees all the way into Western Europe, among them many disgruntled people who felt wronged, serving as potential recruits for an AQ that had by then become world famous thanks to the US. What that lead to were the first major Islamic terror attacks in Western Europe [2], among them the 2005 London bombings by AQ, which were a direct response to the UK participation in invading Iraq, just like the 2004 AQ attack in Madrid, Spain. In that context it's not really difficult to see why Tony Blair is such a controversial personality. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/sep/16/iraq.iraq https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/sep/16/iraq.iraq [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15_February_2003_anti-war_protests https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15_February_2003_anti-war_prot... [2] https://www.datagraver.com/case/people-killed-by-terrorism-per-year-in-western-europe-1970-2015 https://www.datagraver.com/case/people-killed-by-terrorism-p...
- pyuser583 5y ago
  Reasons to hate Blair other than Iraq war: * Very poorly thought out creation of Scottish Parliament. While not a bad thing, he didn’t consider it to be all that important. Not like it could destroy the United Kingdom or anything. * Very poorly thought reform of House of Lords. Again not a bad thing, but it hasn’t really improved much. * Very poorly thought out creation of “Supreme Court.” It was presented as a simply a rebranding of the law lords, but now it’s much more powerful, which was never the intent. * Not terribly interested in privacy. * Unhealthy dependence on the EU. His motivation for the above was “the EU will take care of this so who cares.” This was a problem before Brexit. * Incompetence, and lack of care. Notice how many of these points say “not itself a bad thing.” He lots of “not bad itself” things in a bad manner. * Fucking Rupert Murdoch’s wife.
  - vanusa 5y ago
    Fucking Rupert Murdoch’s wife. Why should we hate him for this? Sounds like its own punishment.
    - pyuser583 5y ago
      I’m pretty sure Mr. Murdoch and Mrs. Blair are mad him. And the ex-Mrs Murdoch probably has a case of buyers remorse.
from 5y ago
I read stuff like this (not this book specifically) from the OCCRP or ICIJ occasionally and I'm beginning to have my doubts about all of it. It's always based on innuendo and insinuation. Like "the grandson of this Nigeria politician is one of the directors of some Delaware company that also has a director that was arrested for customs fraud in Morocco. He also didn't respond to our phone calls. Therefore he is a 'potentially corrupt shadowy official'". And the call to action at the end of course is always to increase financial surveillance despite the current already heavyhanded approach massively failing.
- Quarrelsome 5y ago
  maybe its failing because people who own money and thus influence resist the regulations.
- xwolfi 5y ago
  Yes, you know how it is when you start knowing something you start realizing journalist reporting of it, while not entirely false, is quite imprecise and simplifying ? I work in an investment bank, on the trading floor, and when I hear reports on how we're supposed to be and act, I feel it is so different from how people actually are and think. For instance, they ignore incompetence and always assign to malice, they think being legit is less important to us than robbing money, they always describe us as amoral, parasitic, conspiratorial. It's an enticing narrative each time, but except when they have actual email exchanges (like the Millenium emails during the Maddoff SEC investigation - that painted the right picture, professional, missing information, imperfect but not anti-blue collar conspiracy lol), I can't really trust it anymore. The FinCEN files by BuzzFeed were so trash, it was surreal to hear... We gave regulatory reports they leaked irresponsibly about suspicious activity by our fee-paying clients we are forbidden to tip off by refusing to talk to them, and we're now "hiding crime", maybe even "facilitating" it, tsk. They warned a lot of people that day, good job.
  - pyuser583 5y ago
    I strongly recommend reading the book. Kleptopeia. It’s focused on the UK, but portrays the US legal and regulatory as system pretty positive compared the UK/EU (early 2010s). When justice happens, it tends to happen in America. Organizations like the FBI, FDIC, and US Attorneys are very powerful compared to their European counterparts. Courts are much less corrupt as well.

sofixa 5y ago

Thanks for the recommendation. I've just bought the book, but before diving in, out of curiosity, what's the link with Tony Blair?

pyuser583 5y ago
He was a highly paid advisor for the oligarch ruling Khazakhstan. Specifically, the Khazakh leader was giving a speech in the Uk at the same time he was suppressing protests with torture and rape. Blair wrote up talking points for him to help with damage control.

HatchedLake721 5y ago

I assume the Tony Blair hate is based on the Iraq War? I don’t get it. Prime Minister in the UK cannot go to war without parliament’s approval. Parliament approved invasion with 412 to 149 votes. Is Tony Blair the scapegoat? Can someone explain?

rad_gruchalski 5y ago
"On 6 July 2016, Sir John Chilcot announced the report's publication, more than seven years after the inquiry was announced.[3] Usually referred to as the Chilcot report by the news media,[4] the document stated that at the time of the invasion of Iraq in 2003, Saddam Hussein did not pose an urgent threat to British interests, that intelligence regarding weapons of mass destruction was presented with unwarranted certainty, that peaceful alternatives to war had not been exhausted, that the United Kingdom and the United States had undermined the authority of the United Nations Security Council, that the process of identifying the legal basis was "far from satisfactory", and that a war was unnecessary.[5][6][7] The report was made available under an Open Government Licence." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_Inquiry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_Inquiry
- HatchedLake721 5y ago
  Yes, I still remember Colin Powell image showing "irrefutable evidence" in his hands to the United Nations, which ended up being a lie. But again, did Tony Blair know it was a lie and misled the Parliament? I remember the Chilcot report, but never read it. It's on my reading list now! But from your quote, I don't see anything related specifically to Tony Blair? Again, my point is, the executive power (Government/Prime Minister) came to the legislative power (The Parliament) with a motion to invade another country. Both powers were using the same intelligence that they believed were genuine at the time, debated it for days, and then decided with 412 to 149 votes to start the invasion. Why Tony Blair is singled out, for something in hindsight, and the other 411 people are given a pass?
  - GordonS 5y ago
    > Both powers were using the same intelligence that they believed were genuine at the time Didn't the US and UK both fabricate "evidence"? Even then, it was obvious to many observers that the evidence simply wasn't credible, and the only outcome was disaster.
    - iso1210 5y ago
      Certainly "Sexed up" the evidence, the entire Dodgy Dossier killed the BBC - Greg Dyke (the Director General / CEO, who was on holiday at the time) had to resign because of it. The Hutton Report claimed that the dossier was not sexed up (as the BBC claimed) and that it's all the BBCs fault. A few years later, Chilcott report basically said that the government did lie.
  - Quarrelsome 5y ago
    > But again, did Tony Blair know it was a lie and misled the Parliament? Yes. This is why the British troops were under-equipped because Tony Blair was intentionally holding back the knowledge that the choice to invade had already been made but he couldn't do this while also requesting parliament to fund war funding. He was holding two narratives open at the same time. The public one where everything was above board, following all approved channels, ratified by the UN and due to WMD that he used to gain approval from the UK and a private one where it was clear the UK would go to war with the US regardless of what transpired.
danjac 5y ago
Tony Blair was the head of government and leader of the ruling party. Had he decided not to take Britain to Iraq, then the UK would not have taken part in the war and there would not have been a vote in Parliament. At the end of the day, the buck stopped with him. Would lack of UK support have been sufficient to deter the US? Who knows, probably not given the neocon lunatics in the White House at the time. Harold Wilson's decision to keep the UK out of Vietnam was in retrospect a wise decision, and no doubt Blair would have had a better reputation had he made the same choice. That all said, Blair's post-PM career seems to involve toadying up to every dictator left on the planet (in marked contrast to his successor Gordon Brown's work supporting refugees and global vaccination) so maybe his reputation is well-deserved after all.
- HatchedLake721 5y ago
  > Had he decided not to take Britain to Iraq, then the UK would not have taken part in the war and there would not have been a vote in Parliament. I don't get this. He cannot just "decide to take Britain to Iraq", since the UK Government cannot start a war without Parliament's approval. He came to the Parliament with the available intelligence at the time, and after days of debates, 412 people voted in favour of the invasion. I would understand the hate if he knew the "irrefutable evidence" shown to United Nation by the Secretary of State was a lie at the time of the vote in Parliament. But as far I know, he wasn't aware of that. Is this just a blind hate of a scapegoat? Why are the other 411 people given a pass?
  - ineedasername 5y ago
    UK Parliament does not get a binding vote on going to war. Their recourse, if they disagree, is to remove the PM altogether. Admittedly, I'm not sure there's much of a meaningful difference between the two. If an MP doesn't want to go to war, I'd think that a big enough difference if opinion to vote no-confidence. As such if a majority of Parliament didn't want to go to war, they may have taken that step.
  - danjac 5y ago
    > He cannot just "decide to take Britain to Iraq", since the UK Government cannot start a war without Parliament's approval. Had Blair decided not to go to war, there would not have been a vote. He was leader of the Labour Party and instructed his whips to ensure MPs voted for war. > He came to the Parliament with the available intelligence at the time, and after days of debates, 412 people voted in favour of the invasion. We now know, from the Chilcot inquiry, that Blair knew the intelligence was poor and either deliberately misled Parliament or allowed his belief to blind his judgement. Either conclusion is damning.
tialaramex 5y ago
Starting wars does not in fact require parliamentary approval. In 1999 Blair used "Queen's Consent" (the notional requirement that consent of the monarch must be sought in order to substantially alter their powers, but in practice these are government powers and so consent is sought from the government) to get rid of a Bill that would actually have required this, the "Military Action Against Iraq (Parliamentary Approval) Bill". This isn't because Blair couldn't have won a vote and disposed of the bill but because he knew it would be embarrassing and indeed the embarrassment anyway resulted in the (non-binding) Approval bill you cited which has 412 Aye votes. Even having a vote ("Division") is embarrassing. It forced Labour members who might have told their electorate over and over that they oppose war to choose, stick by their principles that war is abhorrent, and risk deselection for coming out against the stance of their government and many populist pro-war newspapers, or, bend over, vote for the government and hope voters forgive them when it inevitably all goes wrong. Now, ultimately Parliament is sovereign and so you can argue everything "requires parliamentary approval", but only in sense that silence signifies approval because as a sovereign entity it could intervene but it does not. If Parliament really didn't want the UK to go to war it can in principle get rid of the Prime Minister and install one who won't start a war. If the Speaker tries to stop them (e.g. by refusing to recognise a member who stands to propose "That This House Has No Confidence In Her Majesty's Government" so as to bring down the Prime Minister) the Commons can convene "The Committee of the Whole House" which is identical to the Commons except that they're picking who runs things, whereupon they can get rid of that Speaker, choose a new one, reconvene the Commons and call No confidence. But it isn't going to do that in fact. Even for Brexit, while there was majority opposition to the obviously disastrous "No deal" plan, there was no majority in support of any other definitive course of action, including replacing the Prime Minister, all that was done was more kicking of cans down the road, until there was no more road.
freeflight 5y ago
The UK parliament ain't the only relevant institution here. The invasion of Iraq was an open and blatant breach of the UN charter [0], it was an illegal war of aggression based on lies. Lies that were so blatant that the whole situation lead to the largest global protest event in human history [1]. And that doesn't even go into the direct consequences of that; Refugees all the way into Western Europe, among them many disgruntled people who felt wronged, serving as potential recruits for an AQ that had by then become world famous thanks to the US. What that lead to were the first major Islamic terror attacks in Western Europe [2], among them the 2005 London bombings by AQ, which were a direct response to the UK participation in invading Iraq, just like the 2004 AQ attack in Madrid, Spain. In that context it's not really difficult to see why Tony Blair is such a controversial personality. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/sep/16/iraq.iraq https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/sep/16/iraq.iraq [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15_February_2003_anti-war_protests https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15_February_2003_anti-war_prot... [2] https://www.datagraver.com/case/people-killed-by-terrorism-per-year-in-western-europe-1970-2015 https://www.datagraver.com/case/people-killed-by-terrorism-p...
pyuser583 5y ago
Reasons to hate Blair other than Iraq war: * Very poorly thought out creation of Scottish Parliament. While not a bad thing, he didn’t consider it to be all that important. Not like it could destroy the United Kingdom or anything. * Very poorly thought reform of House of Lords. Again not a bad thing, but it hasn’t really improved much. * Very poorly thought out creation of “Supreme Court.” It was presented as a simply a rebranding of the law lords, but now it’s much more powerful, which was never the intent. * Not terribly interested in privacy. * Unhealthy dependence on the EU. His motivation for the above was “the EU will take care of this so who cares.” This was a problem before Brexit. * Incompetence, and lack of care. Notice how many of these points say “not itself a bad thing.” He lots of “not bad itself” things in a bad manner. * Fucking Rupert Murdoch’s wife.
- vanusa 5y ago
  Fucking Rupert Murdoch’s wife. Why should we hate him for this? Sounds like its own punishment.
  - pyuser583 5y ago
    I’m pretty sure Mr. Murdoch and Mrs. Blair are mad him. And the ex-Mrs Murdoch probably has a case of buyers remorse.

from 5y ago

I read stuff like this (not this book specifically) from the OCCRP or ICIJ occasionally and I'm beginning to have my doubts about all of it. It's always based on innuendo and insinuation. Like "the grandson of this Nigeria politician is one of the directors of some Delaware company that also has a director that was arrested for customs fraud in Morocco. He also didn't respond to our phone calls. Therefore he is a 'potentially corrupt shadowy official'". And the call to action at the end of course is always to increase financial surveillance despite the current already heavyhanded approach massively failing.

Quarrelsome 5y ago
maybe its failing because people who own money and thus influence resist the regulations.
xwolfi 5y ago
Yes, you know how it is when you start knowing something you start realizing journalist reporting of it, while not entirely false, is quite imprecise and simplifying ? I work in an investment bank, on the trading floor, and when I hear reports on how we're supposed to be and act, I feel it is so different from how people actually are and think. For instance, they ignore incompetence and always assign to malice, they think being legit is less important to us than robbing money, they always describe us as amoral, parasitic, conspiratorial. It's an enticing narrative each time, but except when they have actual email exchanges (like the Millenium emails during the Maddoff SEC investigation - that painted the right picture, professional, missing information, imperfect but not anti-blue collar conspiracy lol), I can't really trust it anymore. The FinCEN files by BuzzFeed were so trash, it was surreal to hear... We gave regulatory reports they leaked irresponsibly about suspicious activity by our fee-paying clients we are forbidden to tip off by refusing to talk to them, and we're now "hiding crime", maybe even "facilitating" it, tsk. They warned a lot of people that day, good job.
- pyuser583 5y ago
  I strongly recommend reading the book. Kleptopeia. It’s focused on the UK, but portrays the US legal and regulatory as system pretty positive compared the UK/EU (early 2010s). When justice happens, it tends to happen in America. Organizations like the FBI, FDIC, and US Attorneys are very powerful compared to their European counterparts. Courts are much less corrupt as well.