Apologies again, but selling books is my job, so please, pre-order it, buy it for your MP. Shout and scream.
Thank you
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It's at your local bookshop.
It's on bookshop: uk.bookshop.org/books/butler-t
It's on Amazon: amazon.co.uk/Butler-World-B
And Waterstone's:
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Oliver Bullough
@OliverBullough
Journalist; author of Butler to the World and Moneyland
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Oliver Bullough’s Tweets
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From a libel lawyer: “Why are costs so high for defamation? Because the cases go to the High Court and are treated as grand opera. In France and Germany they go to district/local courts and cost a fraction. No one ever suggests that reputation is not properly protected in Europe
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Idea: could Russians arrange a "Goodbye, Lenin" style life for Putin, where he keeps talking to people by zoom under the impression he's running the country, while other people stop the war and try to repair the damage he's done?
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Президент России Владимир Путин провел оперативное совещание с членами Совета безопасности РФ, в ходе которого предложил обсудить борьбу с терроризмом. Совещание прошло в режиме видеоконференции, трансляция велась на телеканале «Россия 24».
vedomosti.ru/politics/news/
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If you think offshore shell companies are hard to deal with, just wait till you try tackling offshore shell people?
theguardian.com/commentisfree/
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Gah, I'm not sure I'm ever going to think quite the same way about the kids being online again.
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Do you know what your child is doing online? Are we doing enough to protect them? I’ve made this mini drama because I don’t know the answer to these questions and we urgently need to. ‘Capture’ - who’s looking after the children? youtube.com/watch?v=6UY2HO
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It's a tough question for the rest of the world (and, perhaps, for the White House): it's pretty easy to bully small countries out of being tax havens and stop them sucking up all the capital in the world, but how do you bully South Dakota?
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One thing that all the traditional Caribbean tax havens have in common is anger that the US has imposed tough regulations on them, while some of its own states have built offshore industries more opaque and more predatory than anything they ever dreamed of.
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When I wrote this article in 2019, I was pretty shocked by predictions the total being squirrelled away tax-free in perpetuity in the Mount Rushmore State would breach $300 billion. That looks as quaint as Little House on the Prairie these days.
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Everywhere I look at the moment, it seems like everything's falling apart, so it is heartening to see that -- in this bleak picture -- the South Dakotan trust industry at least is booming.
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Dusted off yee-ole trust story from yesterday. Whole #sdleg Senate passed it today. Added some new figures.
Since 2018, assets sitting in SD trust companies has grown by about $100 billion annually. As of Dec. 31, 2021, there are $607 billion in trusts.
listen.sdpb.org/politics/2023-
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Not a surprise, I suppose, but FFS.
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Replying to @EliotHiggins @FADCLDN and 2 others
It also detailed their expectation that I wouldn't be able to recover costs if I won, which proved to be correct, as it turns out recovering costs from a sanctioned individual is a lot harder than getting sued by one.
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Butler to the World by is Blackwell's Book of the Month for February!
In his bestselling exposé, Bullough reveals how the UK took up its position at the elbow of oligarchs, kleptocrats and gangsters.
Order your copy: blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/produ
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ALT
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"A hard case should not be allowed to undermine these fundamental principles" lol
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It is an established principle of British legal practice that anything that might prevent lawyers getting paid top whack is an affront to justice.
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Famous barrister Lord Pannick KC argues that lawyers should take on work for Russian warlords like Yevgeny Prigozhin, pretty much regardless of its intent and effect on society.
Totally ignores the financial (and other) repercussions for people who get sued.
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One's a declining basket case dominated by oligarchs, which the EU wouldn't accept without major and possibly impossible reforms, and the other's got a good chance if it can just defeat the Russian invaders.
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I have a dream.
Ukraine & Britain joining the EU in the next 5 years. Who's in? 
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TI recognises the CPI is fatally flawed as a description of corruption, yet publishes it anyway. Why? My concern is that the CPI is too valuable as an annual advert to sacrifice. If that is indeed the case, TI needs to ask what business it's actually in.
transparency.org/en/news/cpi-20
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This is a disgrace. I agree with everything says. If you're calling him out, and not me as well, you need to have a long hard look at yourself.
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Do @DalrympleWill or @OliverBullough etc have to deal with this shit when they make similar points about the commercial legacy of empire?
Most days I just blank it out but people should know that this is price Black academics pay for daring to enter the public sphere.
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Ironic that it should coincide with the first two genuinely useful UK anti-corruption legislative initiatives (in the register of offshore ownership and the new powers for companies house) in years though, eh? It's almost like it doesn't mean anything.
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The U.K. has received its *lowest ever* score in the influential Corruption Perceptions Index from @anticorruption .
This is a direct consequence of Tory patronage and sleaze.
cityam.com/uk-recieves-lo
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"If you want a picture of the future, imagine me -- every January -- tweeting to an indifferent world that the Corruption Perceptions Index is misleading, victim-blaming drivel for ever."
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I'm not sure why they bother with the fieldwork for the CPI, they could just rank the countries by GDP-per-capita, then jiggle it around a bit to disguise what they'd done and press publish.
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If only Ukraine could get into the top 30, then it could be alongside utterly non-corrupt places like the UK, the US, the UAE, Switzerland, Hong Kong, Singapore, Luxembourg and Austria.
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Ukraine has risen in Transparency International's Corruption Perception Index rating.
Even so, it remains among the hundred most corrupt countries, ranking 116 out of 180 countries.
More news here 
english.nv.ua
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It's not too late not to publish it at all.
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Discussing @anticorruption’s global Corruption Perceptions Index UK results @TransparencyUK – the #CPI2022 goes live first thing tomorrow morning - stay tuned for news and analysis on the UK’s global ranking #anticorruption #corruption #UKPolitics
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At every meeting I've had with UK officials about this, lawyers have consistently argued that, if they're cut out of the process, that will hurt justice. Too often lawyers think that justice equal lawyers, but with SLAPPs, it is too many lawyers that cause the injustice.
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I have been helped with my legal fees by and , which is amazing and I am VERY grateful, but no charity could or should cover millions in costs. If we could keep costs down, they could help in UK cases too, freeing journalists to write more about oligarchs.
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As an example of the difference a reasonably-priced process makes: I am currently being sued by the former vice-president of Angola in a Portuguese court. I'm not enjoying it (obvs), but my legal fees so far are in four figures. In the UK, I would have had to fold long ago.
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This is the perfect solution to SLAPPs from . Too often, the proposed solutions to a problem caused by too many, too expensive lawyers involve yet more, equally expensive lawyers.
thetimes.co.uk/article/the-na
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Defamation law is often used to silence those who have, but cannot afford to tell, the truth. The law must not allow itself to become a weapon whereby dishonest haves compel honest have-nots.
If anyone received such a letter and would like to work with us, do let me know.
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Editor: "we still don't have a lead story for the front page."
Reporter: "well, I do have this photo of two people with photos stuck to their faces in a bath showing that two people can't fit in a bath, but I'm still not sure it quite checks out"
Editor: "no time, run it."
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As I understand it, this photo of two people in that bath is intended to prove two people couldn't fit in that bath.
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TELEGRAPH: The photo that ‘clears Duke’ over bath sex #TomorrowsPapersToday
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So you're telling me there's a chance?
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So they'll be sending jets in about 10 days then, right?
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German Defense Minister rules out supplying Ukraine with fighter jets.
Germany's Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said that sending fighter jets to Ukraine is "out of the question." 1/2Show this thread
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I for one can't wait to hear how corrupt poor countries that get looted are, compared to the non-corrupt rich countries where the loot ends up.
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NEXT WEEK: Last year the UK scored 78 out of 100 in the @anticorruption Corruption Perceptions Index.
The latest scores will be released on January 31.
#CPI2022 #corruption
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Just realised I can choose "following" at the top instead of having to have this "for you" thing. Thank God.
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I think I might end up with "unmissable, deeply depressing" on my gravestone...
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This month’s best paperbacks: Oliver Bullough, Saba Sams and more theguardian.com/books/ng-inter
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.: "Those I speak with tell me that the leader of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, who previously had a direct line to Mr. Putin, now reports to Mr. Prigozhin."
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While the headlines today are about western battle tanks to Ukraine, here’s an important development from inside Russia: a Moscow court has ordered the shutting down of Moscow Helsinki Group, Russia’s oldest human rights organisation.
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Shorter version of the same argument.
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Replying to @OliverBullough
I really would like to know what exactly happened and why, then we know what needs to be fixed.
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I've written this about the scandal around Prigozhin suing , and why we need an enquiry -- for the sake of public trust in the government -- into why the Treasury decided to let the case go ahead.
opendemocracy.net/en/yevgeny-pri
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Wouldn't it be great if a politician could just once say (about this, or many other issues) "yes, this is a problem, solving it is hard, it requires hiring and training thousands of people, which will take years, but we're committed to it, and we'll get started"?
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