@david_chisnall @Fat_Farang @Natasha_Jay what you or I can contribute – what millions of us together can contribute – is not a tithe of what the #billionaire #kleptocrats can and do contribute. They will always outspend us and buy our politicians, until the receipt of any political donation is a criminal offence with mandatory exclusion from public life as a penalty.
@Npars01 @401matthall @GottaLaff This.
And, these same #Billionaire #Kleptocrats are funding every significant political party in every significant "democracy" in the world.
They don't just own #Trump. They own #Biden and #Harris and #Starmer and #Farage and #Polievre and #Macron and...
And that's the challenge we face. You cannot have a #Democracy in which a rich voter has more influence with the politicians than a poor voter, so we cannot allow **any** political donations **at all**.
"In early 1964, Jean Ziegler, a young Swiss politician, received a phone call from a man claiming to represent Ernesto Che Guevara, the Cuban revolutionary and minister of industry. Che would be in Geneva in March for a UN conference on trade policy, and some comrades had suggested Jean might be his chauffeur during his stay. Was Ziegler available for the gig?
Today, in his tenth decade of life, Ziegler is Switzerland's most notorious public intellectual. That's because over the course of writing about 30 books, serving for close to three decades in the Swiss parliament, and relentlessly crusading for left-wing causes in his free time, Ziegler has made a career of unsparing criticism of his home country, and its outsize influence on the rest of the world.”—Atossa Araxia Abrahamian
‘Here lives the Monster’s Brain’: the Man who Exposed Switzerland’s Dirty Secrets >
@MHowell @arrrg The problem is that other #billionaires (especially #foreign #government or #kleptocrats) will happily spend billions to prop up #Tesla in exchange for political favours from #SpaceKaren -- or to extort him by threatening to tank the stock and trigger a margin call, collapsing the house of cards.
@Bandersnatch @AssociatedPress @u-s-news-AssociatedPress
#fascists, #kleptocrats, #propertySupremacy
According to Buchanan's economic theory and to outmaneuver politicians, you have to destroy any and all social contracts and demolish the nation, so you can rebuild a new feudal system where property owners hold all power and the masses are locked in into wage slavery.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjev2j70v19o
Does this geriatric, diaper soiling, fat, McDonald's lard, piece of shit have no self-awareness? Calling literally any other world leader a 'dictator' is really rich coming from him. Especially, since he is so in love with all the REAL dictators.
Although, I'm sure his death cult of clapping #MAGAts will just take his word as gospel while he steals all their money to give to the #kleptocrats. Because we apparently live in a post-truth world.
The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, one of the world's most important resources when it comes to digging up information about #kleptocrats all over the world, lost 29% of its budget due to #ElonMusk's attacks on #USAID .
There are few better causes you could donate to where your money would go anywhere near as far as it would with OCCRP (journalists in Moldova are kinda cheap in the scheme of things).
Justice Department on Tuesday seized Viktor Perevalov, a #russianoligarch 's condo in Miami. I'm not surprised with the amount of #oligarchs and nefarious individuals in general that love to vacation in my native city. A sunny place for shady people indeed.
Some facts about Perevalov:
Perevalov was first sanctioned in 2018 following the Russian invasion of Crimea as his co-founded construction company was behind the construction of the Tavrida Highway in the Russian-occupied Crimea Region of Ukraine. VAD, AO is the St. Petersburg, Russia-based construction company responsible for the construction of the Tavrida Highway in Crimea. This federal highway is expected to provide transportation access and economic development to Crimea through a system of newly constructed roadways that serve as primary connection to the Kerch Bridge and to cities in Crimea.
#RussiaSanctions #sanctions #corruption #kleptocrats
https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2025/01/08/DOJ-seize-sanctioned-oligarch-condos/6841736320053/
Fantastic work from #OFAC with the latest Magnitsky sanction released against one of the chief cronies of Órban's government.
"Speaking at a news conference in Budapest on Tuesday, U.S. Ambassador to Hungary David Pressman said Rogán was “a primary architect, implementer and beneficiary” of systemic corruption in Hungary which he described as a “kleptocratic ecosystem.”https://apnews.com/article/viktor-orban-antal-rogan-hungary-sanctions-treasury-84f6db2ea5e4018bbac325f1c7a92349
Brad Smith and others at Treasury are trying to do the most good in the final weeks of the Biden administration before our American #kleptocrats seize control 
#sanctions #hungary #kleptocrats #magnitskyact
Below: Treasury's press release and AP article
@murdoc @ai6yr so let's break that link. After all, the billionaire #kleptocrats and the rentier (landlord) class have already broken it for themselves. Why should we work to support them?
@servelan also, it will drive salaries of American workers down. It's not that the #kleptocrats NEED to drive salaries down – they were able to steal enough to make themselves unimaginably wealthy even with wages at their present levels – it's just rapacious and insatiable #greed.
Pathological greed.
Edit:
"Angela #Merkel defends ties with #German #Oligarchs and #Kleptocrats that are blocking #Ukraine from [joining] #NATO"
UK cracks down on dirty money with fresh sanctions - https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-cracks-down-on-dirty-money-with-fresh-sanctions "UK sanctions #kleptocrats, firing starting gun on a new Foreign Secretary campaign against dirty money" let's hope so
@randahl it was literally a choice between a convicted felon with a pro-#fascist agenda, and an active #genocide enabler deep in the pockets of the ultra-rich.
Yes, #Harris was in many ways the better candidate, but that's 'better' in the sense that charcoal grey is paler than absolute black.
It's unlikely that there will be a free and fair election "next time." But if the #Democrats continue to take the #kleptocrats' money and offer the kleptocrats' policies, it wouldn't make any difference.
@hannu_ikonen the same #kleptocrats fund the #Democrat and the #Republican party. It's they who decide the policies and it's very largely they who pick the winners: but the main thing they do is so shape the policy agenda that whichever party wins, it's the kleptocrats' interests that are served.
The same is true in the UK, except for the names of the parties.
Is it plausible to suggest that the reason that the remaining candidates in the #Tory leadership race a vacuous egotistical neophytes is that the #kleptocrats who fund the party find them more malleable?
@rbreich in this piece you write: "Kamala Harris is waging a strong campaign, but it could be stronger if her closing argument in the remaining weeks of the campaign alerted Americans to the growing dangers of concentrated wealth and power at the top"
She can't and won't do this, because she is every bit as beholden to the #kleptocrats as every other mainstream political actor. The entire political class is bought and paid for.
That is what we must fight.
@lyndamerry484 @GeofCox Have long since done.
All of the political parties in the English speaking world which have any real chance of power have long since sold their souls to #billionaire "donors".
Those political donations are not made out of "philanthropy" or disinterested generosity. The #Kleptocrats demand a return on their investment.
Democracy, as Zaphod Beeblebrox didn't say, is an illusion.
Resistance 
Ben Haube 
) 