Emrys
Emrys's JournalMichelle Mone's businessman husband faces jail if found guilty of Spanish tax charge
...
Businessman Doug Barrowman, 57, has been charged with crimes that include corporate tax evasion and could be jailed for more than five-and-a-half years if convicted.
Prosecutors in Spain confirmed they were seeking custodial sentences for seven British businessmen, including Mr Barrowman, ahead of their trial. All seven deny the charges.
...
The indictment relates to claims Barrowman and his co-accused benefitted from a “fraudulent” invoice.
Prosecutors allege it was created to evade tax and take millions of pounds out of a Spanish company to put in their pockets. The company went bankrupt four years later, costing 200 workers at a cable factory near Santander their jobs.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/michelle-mones-businessman-husband-faces-28752717
The case is now due to be heard next May. It's separate to the legal issues discussed in the earlier OPs below, but who knows what dots may be joined and whether Barrowman will be at liberty to attend the Spanish case in person if legal action is pursued against him in the UK?
Revealed: Tory peer Michelle Mone secretly received 29m from 'VIP lane' PPE firm
https://www.democraticunderground.com/108822177
Revealed: Second firm pushed by Michelle Mone was secret entity of husband's office
https://www.democraticunderground.com/108822191
I could handle reading less *about* Twitter and more based on the *information* it carries.
That includes people moaning about Twitter and those of us who continue to use it.
I understand that some think it important to keep up with Musk's latest meltdowns. I see far more about Musk here than I do on Twitter itself, but nobody forces me to read more than the post titles.
Twitter's at least two-edged, like most things in life (even DU). It's an unbelievable international resource, and it's long been deeply flawed, like anything that involves a large number of people.
Some people seem to think its problems began when Musk took over. They must forget how long it took for Jack Dorsey's team to take action on hate speech like antisemitism and ban Trump, for instance, and revolting content has been a constant irritant which you can largely avoid if you use the filtering tools provided and don't go looking for the worst of it.
Musk has deepened many of those problems, but they've always been something you have to find ways to step around if you want to make Twitter useful. At the moment, you can still do that.
Foodbank saved by Tripe Marketing Board
The UK’s biggest food bank has been saved by an amateur writing group who cashed in on Amazon Black Friday loophole
If you could print your own money, what would you do with it? This Black Friday, a group of hobby writers discovered themselves in that position, at Amazon’s expense – and decided to save a food bank.
The We Care food bank in south London was facing permanent closure in November after a £33,000 energy bill. Its founders feared what would happen to the thousands of vulnerable people it helped.
Now it will be able to open for another year as a result of a Robin Hood-esque fundraising odyssey which includes a former prime minister, a group of friends calling themselves the Tripe Marketing Board, and an accidental goldmine found in the world’s fifth-biggest company.
This is the almost-unbelievable story of how the UK’s biggest food bank was saved.
https://www.bigissue.com/news/activism/this-food-bank-was-going-under-then-a-group-of-hobby-writers-found-an-amazon-infinite-money-glitch/
For those who've never been introduced to the joys of tripe, brace yourselves: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tripe
For some reason the Big Issue article doesn't link to the Tripe Marketing Board's excellent Twitter feed - https://twitter.com/TripeUK - nor its highly educational website at https://tripemarketingboard.co.uk/
A few samples from its "About" page:
Author Tom Nichols on how liberals can survive on Twitter and make the most of it
There is no doubt at all that Elon Musk buying this platform was a bad thing, and his ownership makes it worse. Creepy freaks and bargain basement ads. Musk himself has become a giant adolescent troll. So stipulated. /2
But many of you seem absolutely determined to find every one of these creepy freaks, and to engage Musk, and to wallow in the mud with every terrible account. This is childish. Ignore those accounts. /3
Set your notifications to Latest, not Home. Block a lot. Set notifications so that you don’t see tweets from people who don’t follow you. Refuse to engage with five-follower accounts that went active last week. /4
But if you really hate it here that much, leave. Stop posting constantly about how much hatred you see and how terrible it is. If it’s that painful to you, go. But stop posting what amounts to “I wanna leave, but come with me.” Be a grownup. Stay or go. /5
I have all of those settings in place, I block with the flick of a finger, and my Twitter experience really hasn’t changed that much since Musk arrived. Yours needn’t either, but many of you seem almost eager for it. /6
If you really want to piss off Musk, stay here and ignore him and the trolls. Make some popcorn and get comfortable as he burns down billions of dollars in value and drives off advertisers. The rest of the time, just talk to the people you always talked to. /7
But if your Twitter existence is going to be nothing but arguing with teenage dumbasees and Musk fanboys, and then bitching about how terrible Twitter is, better for you and for all of us that you just leave. /8
Because right now, the only people that are really polluting my timeline are clueless people who keep dragging trolls into my timeline so they can argue with them. This is inane. Musk is going to do many more terrible things before this is over. But it will end. /9
Until then, in the name of creating a more copacetic Twitter environment for myself, I really am going to start blocking people who do nothing but argue with trolls or bitch about Twitter. Be adults. Stay or go. But stop whining to me and yelling at every mook you find./10x
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1602492422688309249.html
This evening, I used Twitter to learn about events happening in my home country, Scotland, that aren't covered by other media, found a link to an overview of Talking Points Memo's article "A Plot To Overturn An American Election" that I posted in Latest Breaking News, tried to keep pace with events in Ukraine that I can't find coverage of elsewhere, and found an interesting article, "Russian propaganda media and ex-President guilty of direct incitement to genocide in Ukraine, report finds", which I posted in Editorials & Other Articles, that links into the excellent video coverage of Russian MSM propaganda provided by Julia Davis's Russian Media Monitor: https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews.
In between all that, I did check up on some of the more ridiculous goings on around Musk and Tesla and a few other loons, then slapped myself upside the head and reminded myself of the main reasons I visit Twitter, which are not to pay more attention to Musk and the other RW trolls that I can't change and don't want to interact with than is absolutely necessary.
Oh, and I also found this Twitter thread by Tom Nichols and posted it here.
Russian propaganda media and ex-President guilty of direct incitement to genocide in Ukraine
Article from the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group about a report by the Russian independent journalism outlet Verstka Media
The study has concentrated on the first six months after Russia’s full-scale invasion on 24 February 2022 when, Chikishev notes, the propaganda discourse changed noticeably. It is, however, worth pointing out that the essential features of this discourse and the same dehumanizing hate speech were also evident in 2014, after Russia’s invasion of Crimea and military aggression in Donbas. This is important to remember as former employees of those state media have disclosed the degree to which the very terms used, the arguments, etc. were agreed between Kremlin officials and the channels’ management. Then too it was evident that the same lies and manipulation, for example, about Donbas, about the tragic fire in Odesa on 2 May 2014, and the MH17 disaster, were being pedalled by top Russian officials and by the state media. The latter also modified their presentation, for example, by removing words like ‘junta’ and ‘fascists’ or avoiding certain subjects if Moscow was attempting a more conciliatory approach before an important meeting, or decision on sanctions. It is quite possible that the Kremlin is coordinating such virulent hate propaganda now. In fact, even without direct instructions, the chief propagandists in the state media hear the messages pushed by Russian leader Vladimir Putin, the deputy head of the Council of the Federation (and one-time nominal ‘President’) Dmitry Medvedev and others and doubtless understand that this reflects the narrative expected from them.
The scale of aggression and the clear genocidal elements in Russia’s war against Ukraine did become much more evident after 24 February 2022. It is specifically the role that propaganda media have played in this, and whether this constitutes incitement to genocide that Nikolai Chikishev and Verstka Media decided to investigate,
The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide [the Convention] punishes not only for direct genocide but for “direct and public incitement to commit genocide” (Article III). Such incitement shall be punishable, whether or not genocide follows.
https://khpg.org/en/1608811523
A Plot To Overturn An American Election
Source: Talking Points Memo
The messages you are about to read are the definitive, real-time record of a plot to overturn an American election.
TPM has obtained the 2,319 text messages that Mark Meadows, who was President Trump’s last White House chief of staff, turned over to the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack. Today, we are publishing The Meadows Texts, a series based on an in-depth analysis of these extraordinary — and disturbing — communications.
The vast majority of Meadows’ texts described in this series are being made public for the very first time. They show the senior-most official in the Trump White House communicating with members of Congress, state-level politicians, and far-right activists as they work feverishly to overturn Trump’s loss in the 2020 election. The Meadows texts illustrate in moment-to-moment detail an authoritarian effort to undermine the will of the people and upend the American democratic system as we know it.
The text messages, obtained from multiple sources, offer new insights into how the assault on the election was rooted in deranged internet paranoia and undemocratic ideology. They show Meadows and other high-level Trump allies reveling in wild conspiracy theories, violent rhetoric, and crackpot legal strategies for refusing to certify Joe Biden’s victory. They expose the previously unknown roles of some members of Congress, local politicians, activists and others in the plot to overturn the election. Now, for the first time, many of those figures will be named and their roles will be described — in their own words.
Read more: https://talkingpointsmemo.com/feature/a-plot-to-overturn-an-american-election
ETA: More details in this earlier General Discussion post by kpete: https://www.democraticunderground.com/100217457983
I've seen little change in my Twitter use since Musk took over.
I've always been very selective and quite trigger-happy in muting timewasters and trolls, and I have my own lists and bookmarks that mean I'm not reliant on Twitter timeline features. I'm a strictly read-only user who's never tweeted. I was quite surprised to read recently that a lot of people use it more or less as I do.
I see a lot more about Musk, Trump and various other reprobates on DU than I do on Twitter because I don't seek them out there. There are more interesting and pressing things going on in the world, and I get more than my fill of them in a half-hour here and there on General Discussion.
Your comments in the OP about "such posts act as an echo-chamber amplifier" could apply to any number of posts on DU that focus on rightwingers and whose sources have nothing at all to do with Twitter. Day after day of MTG's antics, for example, get a bit tired after a while, but each to their own and nobody forces me to read them.
You also said "IMHO twitter was always entirely about impulsive mob behavior". That's a gross misrepresentation and has not been my experience of the platform, otherwise I wouldn't make so much use of it. Many very erudite and conscientious people and organizations have Twitter feeds. It's a hell of a resource, literally life-changing if not life-saving for some people, and I'm extremely pissed off that Musk has no fucking idea about what its importance is and what might need to be done to sustain it.
I don't feel like I'm being driven off Twitter yet. If that time comes, I'll re-evaluate. What I don't enjoy is some of the scolds on DU who pop up from time to time to criticize those of us who still choose to use Twitter, often from a position of unfamiliarity with the platform. If you think it's a cesspit, then you're not using it to its optimum for your needs, and maybe it's not for you. Peer pressure is not going to make me change how I choose to spend my time.
Officials: Lockerbie bomb suspect is in US custody
Scotland’s Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service said in a statement that “the families of those killed in the Lockerbie bombing have been told that the suspect Abu Agela Mas’ud Kheir Al-Marimi is in U.S. custody.”
...
A breakthrough in the investigation came when U.S. officials in 2017 received a copy of an interview that Mas’ud, a longtime explosives expert for Libya’s intelligence service, had given to Libyan law enforcement in 2012 after being taken into custody following the collapse of the regime of the country’s leader, Col. Moammar Gadhafi.
In that interview, U.S. officials said, Mas’ud admitted building the bomb in the Pan Am attack and working with two other conspirators to carry it out. He also said the operation was ordered by Libyan intelligence and that Gadhafi thanked him and other members of the team after the attack, according to an FBI affidavit filed in the case.
https://apnews.com/article/london-scotland-united-kingdom-government-states-libya-e195e6bf1c18be0ff102a54219ac9d1f
The long-running saga of efforts to unravel who was responsible for the Lockerbie bombing continues.
Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, who'd served as head of security for Libyan Arab Airlines and was suspected of working for the Libyan intelligence services, was convicted of planting the bomb in 2001 and was imprisoned in Scotland, then after a series of appeals had run their course and he abandoned his final appeal, he was released to Tripoli in 2009 on compassionate grounds because he was suffering with terminal cancer. He finally died in 2012.
There's a strong feeling among some of those familiar with the case, along with some of the bereaved families, that Megrahi was wrongly convicted and the true perpetrators have never been brought to justice. Those suspicions have included the theory that Libya was not responsible. Efforts to clear his name have continued even after his death.
Much of the evidence on which Megrahi was convicted was unreliable, and some of it was fabricated:
Professor Robert Black, an expert in Scots law who devised the non-jury trial that saw the Lockerbie case heard in 2000, has called Megrahi's murder conviction "the most disgraceful miscarriage of justice in Scotland for 100 years". Prof Black said he felt "a measure of personal responsibility" for persuading Libya to allow Megrahi and his co-accused, Al-Amin Khalifa Fhima, who was acquitted, to stand trial under Scots law.
I have written about this and nobody is interested. Every lawyer who has ... read the judgment says "this is nonsense". It is nonsense. It really distresses me; I won't let it go.
The non-profit religious think tank Ekklesia noted that "all of the Crown's witnesses in the 36-week trial, which took place at a specially convened Scottish Court in the Netherlands, have subsequently been discredited. In the latest revelation, a prosecution expert misled judges about key evidence, according to a classified police memo published by the Sunday Herald on 17 July [2011]", cautioning that
Dr Swire, other UK relatives of the victims, and a range of legal campaigners, including Professor Black, say that the May 2000 trial of two Libyan suspects, the other of whom was not convicted, amounts to a cover up and a serious miscarriage of justice. Their concern is that the truth has not come out, and that the guilty have not been brought to justice.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdelbaset_al-Megrahi
We'll have to wait and see whether Al-Marimi's trial, due to be held in Washington, DC, sheds any more light on these issues or adds even more confusion.
Worst. Christmas. Party. Ever. [Twitter video]
https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1600847388242894848@wartranslated
Drunk putin explains why strikes against Ukrainian infrastructure will continue because "they started first by attacking the Crimean bridge"
[Twitter video with subtitles]
Revealed: Second firm pushed by Michelle Mone was secret entity of husband's office
[This is a follow-up to the earlier post a couple of weeks ago here: Revealed: Tory peer Michelle Mone secretly received 29m from 'VIP lane' PPE firm ]
...
Lady Mone’s lobbying on behalf of the company, LFI Diagnostics, which she tried to help secure government contracts for Covid lateral flow tests, prompted a formal rebuke from a health minister who reminded her of “the need for propriety”.
A departmental source told the Guardian that Mone was “in a class of her own in terms of the sheer aggression of her advocacy” on behalf of LFI Diagnostics.
However, it is the revelation that the company was a secret entity of the office that manages the wealth of her husband, Douglas Barrowman, that will deepen the controversy over the Tory peer and her access to ministers.
On Tuesday, Mone’s spokesperson said that she was taking a leave of absence from the House of Lords with immediate effect, adding she was doing so “in order to clear her name of the allegations that have been unjustly levelled against her”.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/dec/06/revealed-second-firm-pushed-by-michelle-mone-was-secret-entity-of-husbands-office
Mone's absence from the Lords won't be much of a loss (as if it ever was) since she's only attended about twice this year.
Profile Information
Gender: Do not displayCurrent location: Scotland
Member since: Mon Sep 7, 2009, 12:57 AM
Number of posts: 7,227
