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.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.
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.
Cameron lobbied for them too.
Inevitable that cunts of a feather flock together.
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.
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.
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.
What does "stay-behind" mean in this context?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.
😂
GLADIO: An Insurance Policy to Keep NATO Free
With increased aggression from the Russian Federation and machinations via subsidiaries of the People’s Republic of China, the necessity of stay-behind operations has become clear once again.nationalinterest.org
What does "stay-behind" mean in this context?
Oh right. I thought all powerful states or blocs of states did that sort of thing all the time anyway?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?
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.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.