FRANCIS FUKUYAMA THINKS PUTIN IS DOOMED.
Polish, Czech, Slovenian PMs to visit Kyiv Tuesday in show of ‘unequivocal support’
Leaders of 3 NATO countries will meet Ukraine President Zelensky and PM Shmyhal on solidarity trip as 'representatives of the European Council,' as Russia continues to pound city
In this entertaining and informative video, Oliver Bullough, who has written a pair of books on money laundering (Moneylandand the forthcoming Butler to the World) takes us on a tour of London while telling us how “the most efficient scaled-up money laundering system in the world” has helped Russia’s oligarchs hide their billions and keep Putin in power. Bullough also wrote about the UK’s role in laundering oligarch money recently in The Guardian.
Russia is a mafia state, and its elite exists to enrich itself. Democracy is an existential threat to that theft, which is why Putin has crushed it at home and seeks to undermine it abroad. For decades, London has been the most important place not only for Russia’s criminal elite to launder its money, but also for it to stash its wealth. We have been the Kremlin’s bankers, and provided its elite with the financial skills it lacks. Its kleptocracy could not exist without our assistance. The best time to do something about this was 30 years ago — but the second best time is right now.
Putin’s Oligarchs and the London Laundromat
Over the past 10 years, ICIJ’s global network of
reporters has worked to expose the hidden wealth of Russia’s most powerful
people — including oligarchs, political leaders, and proxies close to Vladimir
Putin.
In one offshore leak after another, we’ve revealed how top figures critical to
the Russian regime have funneled billions into Western bank accounts, financial
instruments, lavish homes, yachts, art and other stores of value. By using a
secret financial system, these elites keep their assets out of sight and out of
reach from law enforcement, tax officials and international authorities.
Those massive money maneuvers are now the subject of unprecedented
international scrutiny as governments around the world respond
to Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine through targeted sanctions.
To highlight and advance what our investigations have uncovered about how the
offshore system bolsters networks of wealth behind Putin and his longtime
allies, ICIJ is launching the Russia Archive.
In the Russia Archive, you can explore past ICIJ exposés on the financial
secrets of Russian elites, insights on the professional enablers who’ve made it
possible for them to move and hide money offshore, and our ongoing coverage of
sanctions regimes, dirty money reforms and more.
Plus, ICIJ and our media partners around the globe are continuing to mine tens
of millions of leaked files from across multiple major leaks to
investigate secret money trails tied to more Russian figures and entities now
in the spotlight.
SADISTS NEVER BELIEVE THAT THE VICTIM CAN HAVE ENOUGH
How experts compile psychological profiles of world leaders - "Intelligence Matters"
Ernest Shackleton’s Ship Found After 106 Years
Ernest Shackleton’s ship, The Endurance, has been lost since it sank in the Antarctic in 1915. A team of explorers and researchers just found it in icy waters 10,000 feet beneath the surface.
How Did This Many Deaths Become Normal?
In his newest piece for The Atlantic, Ed Yong explores why, despite more than 6 million official deaths worldwide and almost a million official deaths in the US, the toll of the pandemic isn’t provoking a massive social reckoning. This is a hell of an opening paragraph
A new iron curtain is descending across Russia’s Internet
Washington Post: “Advocates of an open, globally connected Internet long have worried that a major country or region would break away from the Web amid geopolitical strife, dashing hopes of a seamless network capable of uniting a fractious world. Little more than a week into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the world is coming closer to that unsettling prophecy than ever before. Moscow’s censors on Friday banned Facebook and throttled other American social media services. Microsoft banned sales to Russians, following a similar move by Apple. And a leading American conduit of Internet data, Cogent Communications, severed ties with its Russian clients to prevent its networks from being used for propaganda or cyberattacks aimed at beleaguered Ukrainians. Taken together, these and other events likely will make it harder for Russians to track the horrors unfolding in Ukraine at a time when Russia’s own independent media has been almost completely shut down by President Vladimir Putin. On an even larger scale, these moves bring Russia closer to the day when its online networks face largely inward, their global connections weakened, if not cut off entirely…”
The Epidemic of Covid Complacency Eric Topol. Commentary