YunoBlog

Blog

  • Showcase your science and win!

  • South Sudan: Funding gaps threaten nearly 2 million displaced people

    Funding shortfalls are putting the lives of more than 1.9 million displaced people in South Sudan at risk amid rising humanitarian needs, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said on Wednesday. 

  • World News in Brief: Arab economies rise, rights experts call for police reform in India, Ukraine school closures, Myanmar airstrikes

    A new UN report forecasts that the Arab region is seeing a gradual economic recovery despite continuing geopolitical uncertainties.

  • Pluralistic: The whole economy pays the Amazon tax (25 Feb 2026)

    Today’s links


    A giant pile of money bags; climbing out of it is the bear from the California state flag. The background is an Amazon box, with the smile logo pointing in the opposite direction to the bear's motion.

    The whole economy pays the Amazon tax (permalink)

    Selling on Amazon is a tough business. Sure, you can reach a lot of customers, but this comes at a very high price: the junk fees that Amazon extracts from its sellers amount to 50-60% of the price you pay.

    That’s a hell of a lot of money to hand over to a middleman, but it’s not like vendors have much choice. The vast majority of America’s affluent households are Prime subscribers (depending on how you define “affluent household” it’s north of 90%). Prime households prepay for a year’s worth of shipping, so it’s only natural that they start their shopping on Amazon, where they’ve already paid the delivery costs. And because Amazon reliably meets or beats the prices you’d pay elsewhere, Prime subscribers who find a product on Amazon overwhelmingly stop their shopping at Amazon, too.

    At this point you might be thinking a couple things:

    I. Why not try to sell the non-affluent households, who are far less likely to subscribe to Prime? and

    II. If Amazon has the lowest prices, what’s the problem if everyone shops there?

    The answers to these two questions are intimately related, as it happens.

    Let’s start with selling to non-affluent households – basically, the bottom 90% of American earners. The problem here is that everyone who isn’t in that top 10% is pretty goddamned broke. It’s not just decades of wage stagnation and hyperinflation in health, housing and education costs. It’s also that every economic crisis of this century has resulted in a “K-shaped” recovery, in which “economic recovery” means that rich people are doing fine, while everyone else is worse off than they were before the crisis.

    For decades, America papered over the K-shaped hole in its economy with debt. First it was credit cards. Then it was gimmicky mortgages – home equity lines of credit, second mortgages and reverse mortgages. Then it was payday lenders. Then it was “buy-now/pay-later” services that let you buy lunch at Chipotle on an installment plan that is nominally interest-free, but is designed to trap the unwary and unlucky with massive penalties if you miss a single payment.

    This produced a median American who isn’t just cash-poor – they are cash-negative, drowning in debt. And – with the exception of a brief Biden intercession – every presidential administration of the 21st century has enacted policies that favor creditors over debtors. Bankruptcy is harder to declare, and creditors can hit you with effectively unlimited penalties and confiscation of your property and wages once your cash is gone. Trump has erased all the small mercies of the Biden years – for example, he just forced 8,000,000 student borrowers back into repayment:

    https://prospect.org/2025/12/16/gop-forcing-eight-million-student-loan-borrowers-into-repayment/

    The average American worker has $955 saved for retirement:

    https://finance.yahoo.com/news/955-saved-for-retirement-millions-are-in-that-boat-150003868.html

    There’s plenty to worry about in a K-shaped economy – big things like “political instability” and “cultural chaos” (the fact that most people are broke has a lot to do with the surging fortunes of gambling platforms). But from a seller’s perspective, the most important impact of the K-shaped economy is that only rich people buy stuff. Selling to the bottom 90% is a losing proposition because they’re increasingly too broke to buy anything:

    https://pluralistic.net/2025/12/16/k-shaped-recovery/#disenshittification-nations

    Combine the fact that the richest 10% of Americans all start their shopping on Amazon with the fact that no one else can afford to buy anything, and it’s easy to see why merchants would stay on Amazon, even when junk fees hit 60%.

    Which brings us to the second question: if Amazon has the best prices, what’s the problem with everyone shopping there?

    The answer is to be found in the California Attorney General’s price-fixing lawsuit against Amazon:

    https://oag.ca.gov/news/press-releases/attorney-general-bonta-exposes-amazon-price-fixing-scheme-driving-costs

    The suit’s been running for a long time, but the AG’s office just celebrated a milestone – they’ve finished analyzing the internal memos they forced Amazon to disgorge through civil law’s “discovery” process. These internal docs verify an open – and very dirty – secret about Amazon: the company uses its power to push up prices across the entire economy.

    Here’s how that works: sellers have to sell on Amazon, and that means they’re losing $0.50-$0.60 on every dollar. The obvious way to handle this is by raising prices. But Amazon knows that its power comes from offering buyers prices that are as low or lower than the prices at all its competitors.

    Amazon could ban its sellers from raising prices, but if they did that, they’d have to accept a smaller share of every sale (otherwise most of their sellers would go broke from selling at a loss on Amazon). So instead, Amazon imposes a business practice called “most favored nation” (MFN) pricing on its sellers.

    Under an MFN arrangement, sellers are allowed to raise their prices on Amazon, but when they do, they must raise their prices everywhere else, too: at Walmart, at Target, at mom and pop indie stores, and at their own factory outlet store. Remember: Amazon doesn’t have to have low prices to win, it just needs to have the same prices as everyone else. So long as prices rise throughout the economy, Amazon is fine, and it can continue to hike its junk fees on sellers, knowing that they will pay those fees by raising prices on Amazon and everywhere else their products are sold.

    Like I say, this isn’t really a secret. MFN terms were the basis of DC Attorney General Ken Racine’s case against Amazon, five years ago:

    https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/01/you-are-here/#prime-facie

    Amazon’s not the only company that does this. Under the Biden administration, the FTC brought a lawsuit against Pepsi because Pepsi and Walmart had rigged the market so that when Walmart raised its prices, Pepsi would force everyone else who carried Pepsi products to raise their prices even more. Walmart still had the lowest prices, but everything everywhere got more expensive, both at Walmart and everywhere else:

    https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/secret-documents-show-pepsi-and-walmart

    Trump’s FTC dropped the Pepsi/Walmart case, and Amazon wriggled out of the DC case, but the California AG’s office has a lot more resources than DC can muster. This is a timely reminder that America’s antitrust laws can be enforced at the state level as well as by the federal authorities. Trump might be happy to let Amazon steal from Americans so long as Jeff Bezos neuters the Washington Post, writes a check for $1m to sit on the inaugural dais, and makes a garbage movie about Melania; but that doesn’t stop California AG Rob Bonta from going after Amazon for ripping off Californians (and, in so doing, develop the evidentiary record and precedent that will allow every other state AG to go after Amazon).

    The fact that Amazon’s monopoly lets it control prices across the economy highlights the futility of trying to fix the Amazon problem by shopping elsewhere. A “boycott” isn’t you shopping really hard, it’s an organized movement with articulated demands, a theory of change, and a backbone of solidarity. “Conscious consumption” is a dead-end:

    https://jacobin.com/2026/02/individual-boycotts-collective-action-ice/

    Obviously, Californians have more to worry about than getting ripped off by Amazon (like getting murdered or kidnapped by ICE agents who want to send us all to a slave labor camp in El Salvador), but the billions that Amazon steals from American buyers and sellers are the source of the millions that Bezos uses to support Trump’s fascist takeover of America. Without billionaires who would happily support concentration camps in their back yards if it means saving a dollar on their taxes, fascism would still be a fringe movement.

    That’s why, when we hold new Nuremberg trials for Trump and his collaborators, we should also unwind every merger that was approved under Trump:

    https://pluralistic.net/2026/02/10/miller-in-the-dock/#denazification

    The material support for Trump’s ideology of hate, violence and terror comes from Trump’s program of unregulated corporate banditry. A promise to claw back every stolen dime might cool the ardor of Trump’s corporate supporters, and even if it doesn’t, zeroing out their bank-balances after Trump is gone will be an important lesson for future would-be billionaire collaborators.

    Hey look at this (permalink)


    A shelf of leatherbound history books with a gilt-stamped series title, 'The World's Famous Events.'

    Object permanence (permalink)

    #20yrsago Princeton prof explains watermarks’ failures https://blog.citp.princeton.edu/2006/02/24/how-watermarks-fail/

    #20yrsago Palm Beach County voting machines generated 100K anomalies in 2004 https://web.archive.org/web/20060225172632/https://www.bbvforums.org/cgi-bin/forums/board-auth.cgi?file=/1954/19421.html

    #15yrsago Sharing the power in Tahrir Square https://www.flickr.com/photos/47421217@N08/5423296010/

    #15yrsago 17-year-old Tim Burton’s rejection from Walt Disney Productions https://web.archive.org/web/20110226083118/http://www.lettersofnote.com/2011/02/giant-zlig.html

    #15yrsago Rare Alan Turing papers bought by Bletchley Park Trust https://web.archive.org/web/20110225145556/https://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/news/docview.rhtm/635610

    #15yrsago Sony considered harmful to makers, innovators and hackers https://web.archive.org/web/20151013140820/http://makezine.com/2011/02/24/sonys-war-on-makers-hackers-and-innovators/

    #15yrsago MPAA: record-breaking box-office year is proof that piracy is killing movies https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/02/piracy-once-again-fails-to-get-in-way-of-record-box-office/

    #15yrsago Super-wealthy clothes horses and their sartorial habits https://web.archive.org/web/20110217045201/http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704409004576146420210142748.html

    #15yrsago Visualizing the wealth of America’s super-rich ruling class https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/income-inequality-in-america-chart-graph/

    #10yrsago Obama’s new Librarian of Congress nominee is a rip-snortin’, copyfightin’, surveillance-hatin’ no-foolin’ LIBRARIAN https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iU8vXDoBB5s

    #10yrsago Math denialism: crypto backdoors and DRM are the alternative medicine of computer science https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/24/the-fbi-wants-a-backdoor-only-it-can-use-but-wanting-it-doesnt-make-it-possible

    #10yrsago Uganda’s corrupt president just stole another election, but he couldn’t steal the Internet https://web.archive.org/web/20160225095947/https://motherboard.vice.com/read/uganda-election-day-social-media-blackout-backlash-mobile-payments

    #10yrsago Archbishop of St Louis says Girl Scout Cookies encourage sin https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/feb/23/girl-scouts-cookies-missouri-catholics-st-louis-archbishop

    #10yrsago After appointed city manager illegally jacked up prices, Flint paid the highest water rates in America https://eu.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/flint-water-crisis/2016/02/16/study-flint-paid-highest-rate-us-water/80461288/

    #10yrsago Baidu browser isn’t just a surveillance tool, it’s a remarkably sloppy one https://citizenlab.ca/research/privacy-security-issues-baidu-browser/

    #5yrsago Why Brits can no longer order signed copies of my books https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/24/gwb-rumsfeld-monsters/#brexit-books

    #5yrsago Court rejects TSA qualified immunity https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/24/gwb-rumsfeld-monsters/#junk-touching

    #5yrsago The Mauritanian https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/24/gwb-rumsfeld-monsters/#gwb-and-gitmo

    #5yrsago EVs as distributed storage grid https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/24/gwb-rumsfeld-monsters/#mobile-batteries

    #5yrsago Bossware and the shitty tech adoption curve https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/24/gwb-rumsfeld-monsters/#bossware

    #1yrsago How an obscure advisory board lets utilities steal $50b/year from ratepayers https://pluralistic.net/2025/02/24/surfa/#mark-ellis

    Upcoming appearances (permalink)

    A photo of me onstage, giving a speech, pounding the podium.


    A screenshot of me at my desk, doing a livecast.

    Recent appearances (permalink)


    A grid of my books with Will Stahle covers..

    Latest books (permalink)


    A cardboard book box with the Macmillan logo.

    Upcoming books (permalink)

    • “The Reverse-Centaur’s Guide to AI,” a short book about being a better AI critic, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, June 2026

    • “Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It” (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2026

    • “The Post-American Internet,” a geopolitical sequel of sorts to Enshittification, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2027

    • “Unauthorized Bread”: a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2027

    • “The Memex Method,” Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2027


    Colophon (permalink)

    Today’s top sources:

    Currently writing: “The Post-American Internet,” a sequel to “Enshittification,” about the better world the rest of us get to have now that Trump has torched America (1020 words today, 37190 total)

    • “The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to AI,” a short book for Farrar, Straus and Giroux about being an effective AI critic. LEGAL REVIEW AND COPYEDIT COMPLETE.

    • “The Post-American Internet,” a short book about internet policy in the age of Trumpism. PLANNING.

    • A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

    This work – excluding any serialized fiction – is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net.

    https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

    Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution.

    How to get Pluralistic:

    Blog (no ads, tracking, or data-collection):

    Pluralistic.net

    Newsletter (no ads, tracking, or data-collection):

    https://pluralistic.net/plura-list

    Mastodon (no ads, tracking, or data-collection):

    https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic

    Medium (no ads, paywalled):

    https://doctorow.medium.com/

    Twitter (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising):

    https://twitter.com/doctorow

    Tumblr (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising):

    https://mostlysignssomeportents.tumblr.com/tagged/pluralistic

    “When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla” -Joey “Accordion Guy” DeVilla

    READ CAREFULLY: By reading this, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies (“BOGUS AGREEMENTS”) that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges. You further represent that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer.

    ISSN: 3066-764X

  • Make 2026 a turning point for cancer in Scotland and Wales

  • Tech Companies Shouldn’t Be Bullied Into Doing Surveillance

    The Secretary of Defense has given an ultimatum to the artificial intelligence company Anthropic in an attempt to bully them into making their technology available to the U.S. military without any restrictions for their use. Anthropic should stick by their principles and refuse to allow their technology to be used in the two ways they have publicly stated they would not support: autonomous weapons systems and surveillance. The Department of Defense has reportedly threatened to label Anthropic a “supply chain risk,” in retribution for not lifting restrictions on how their technology is used. According to WIRED, that label would be, “a scarlet letter usually reserved for companies that do business with countries scrutinized by federal agencies, like China, which means the Pentagon would not do business with firms using Anthropic’s AI in their defense work.”

    Anthropic should stick by their principles and refuse to allow their technology to be used in the two ways they have publicly stated they would not support: autonomous weapons systems and surveillance.

    In 2025, reportedly Anthropic became the first AI company cleared for use in relation to classified operations and to handle classified information. This current controversy, however, began in January 2026 when, through a partnership with defense contractor Palantir, Anthropic came to suspect their AI had been used during the January 3 attack on Venezuela. In January 2026, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei wrote to reiterate that surveillance against US persons and autonomous weapons systems were two “bright red lines” not to be crossed, or at least topics that needed to be handled with “extreme care and scrutiny combined with guardrails to prevent abuses.” You can also read Anthropic’s self-proclaimed core views on AI safety here, as well as their LLM, Claude’s, constitution here. 

    Now, the U.S. government is threatening to terminate the government’s contract with the company if it doesn’t switch gears and voluntarily jump right across those lines.  

    Companies, especially technology companies, often fail to live up to their public statements and internal policies related to human rights and civil liberties for all sorts of reasons, including profit. Government pressure shouldn’t be one of those reasons. 

    Whatever the U.S. government does to threaten Anthropic, the AI company should know that their corporate customers, the public, and the engineers who make their products are expecting them not to cave. They, and all other technology companies, would do best to refuse to become yet another tool of surveillance.

  • What Hospitals Do After Tragedy—And Police Should Too

    What Hospitals Do After Tragedy—And Police Should Too

    When the family of Jabez Chakraborty called 911 in Queens on January 26, they asked for an ambulance. Jabez, a young man who has lived with schizophrenia for many years, was in crisis. What arrived instead were police officers. Within minutes, Jabez had been shot four times in front of his family. After four surgeries to try to save his life, several days on a ventilator, and now a long road to physical recovery as he remains hospitalized, Jabez has been charged—despite the pleas and objections of Mayor Zohran Mamdani—with attempted assault for his reaction to the NYPD’s incursion into his home.

  • Mickey Tunes In: 1930 Comics and Cultural Production

    Mickey Tunes In: 1930 Comics and Cultural Production

    How Mickey’s 1930 comic strip turned borrowed hit songs into the foundation of Disney’s musical legacy.

    On January 13, 1930, Mickey Mouse began starring in daily comic strips. This new endeavor “functioned as many fans’ most readily available source of Mickey Mouse entertainment.”1 Despite being a print medium, these works heavily featured musical motifs of popular songs—a staple of his contemporary cartoons. Unlike the concurrent animated shorts, which could incorporate synchronized sound, the comic strip relied on musical shorthand: fragments of lyrics, song titles, and musical notes that invited readers to “hear” the music. These musical moments are not incidental but intentional—Mickey participates within a popular cultural soundscape.

    Early strips utilize the cultural cache of these already popular songs to reinforce Mickey’s own cultural relevance. Through subsequent references Mickey becomes associated with music that audiences recognize and consider culturally valuable. Ultimately, the Disney company utilizes this association—Mickey and music as culturally significant—to lend legitimacy to their own musical works. Through this technique the 1930 comics move from borrowing musical culture to manufacturing it.

    The first instance of Mickey Mouse referencing a song is “Singin’ in the Bathtub”, a hit song from Warner Brothers’ The Show of Shows (1929).

    March 10, 1930

    A single panel—essentially a brief throwaway—the reference establishes the musical borrowing technique that the strip would employ throughout 1930. The song he borrows is a parody of The Hollywood Revue’s “Singin’ in the Rain”, thus itself working within a cultural borrowing technique.

    The borrowing strategy is repeated when Mickey and Minnie “sing” the parody’s inspiration, “Singin’ in the Rain” while camping out during a rainstorm.

    May 20, 1930

    The song’s optimistic tone mirrors the scene’s mood, and its inclusion requires no explanation for contemporary readers. The inclusion feels natural and of the moment: another instance of deft cultural association. Viewers of the time might have been reminded of the dazzling two-strip Technicolor sequence of the song in The Hollywood Revue.

    Going further back than just the prior year, Disney pulls reference to the popular 1926 song “(Looking At The World Thru) Rose Colored Glasses”

    July 10, 1930

    First published in 1926, “Rose Colored Glasses” is the oldest song referenced. This distance from initial publication emphasizes durability rather than novelty suggesting cultural staying power. Mickey is aligned not merely with recent hits but with songs that have proven lasting appeal. Mickey Mouse plus familiar music equals cultural relevance. At this point, Disney has established a framework that can be leveraged.

    Throughout all of these references, Disney leans on the popularity and legitimacy of other musical works to establish the “sound” of their comic strip. Each song that Mickey references circulated as sheet music, 78rpm records, or in popular films of the time like The Hollywood Revue. These avenues established each song’s cultural value. By repeatedly placing Mickey alongside them, the strip transfers that value onto the character himself. Thus, it is significant when the appearance of Disney’s own original song, “Minnie’s Yoo Hoo,” appears in the strip.

    October 28, 1930

    First introduced in 1929’s Mickey’s Follies, “Minnie’s Yoo Hoo” utilized the new synchronized sound technology that contributed to Mickey Mouse’s popularity. In March 1930, Variety noted the song’s presence as such remarking that the “Mickey Mouse cartoons have come to the front with a theme song.” This song quickly became a marketing anthem for Mickey.

    Cover design includes a drawing of Mickey Mouse playing an upright piano on top of which sits Minnie Mouse.
    Sheet music cover of “Minnie’s Yoo Hoo”
    (source: Library of Congress)

    While the other musical numbers referenced by Mickey in the comic were also commercial properties Mickey’s presentation of them is not an attempt to sell those works. Rather, Disney and Mickey seek to benefit from their cultural value. By including “Minnie’s Yoo Hoo” in the strip it moves from a commercial song to a cultural work—referenced casually and without promotional framing. Its appearance signals that it belongs among the other recognizable tunes. As with the borrowed songs before it, sheet music and recordings were available for purchase, reinforcing its circulation beyond the page.

    Today it is easy to assume that Disney songs have always held cultural significance. Yet, the 1930 comic strips exhibit the work required to achieve the earliest efforts of this. Through casual references to culturally popular musical works of the time, the Disney company established their own songs as culturally significant. Mickey’s work as the referential intermediary gave the in-house songs credibility that has grown since. The comics remind us that cultural dominance is rarely instantaneous; it is built, quietly and cumulatively. If you want to see how this happened go and read the 1930 comics in our collections.

    1.  David Gerstein and J. B. Kaufman, Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse: The Ultimate History, 40th Anniversary ed. (Koln: Taschen, 2020), 121. ↩︎

  • Cocaine Prices Fall in France Amid Surging Supply and Digital Trafficking

    French ports have moved to the “forefront of cocaine trafficking,” with supply routes evolving and production steadily increasing, the French Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (OFDT) said in its latest annual report.

    In 2024, cocaine seizures in France reached a record 53.5 tonnes, with the vast majority, 41.8 tonnes, or 78 percent of the total volume, occurring at sea ports. The port of Le Havre serves as the primary gateway; in 2024 alone, authorities intercepted 14.4 tonnes at the port, nearly tripling the 5.3 tonnes seized in 2023.

    Despite the surge in drug volumes, the seizures underscore heightened “enforcement activity against cocaine trafficking,” Yasmine Salhi, an economist at the OFDT, told OCCRP. “The volumes intercepted depend in part on the intensity of controls and the operational capabilities of law enforcement agencies,” she said.

    Salhi added that while record seizures may point to a steady flow of narcotics, the trend likely reflects a combination of “strengthening interception activities and an increase in available supply.”

    Traffickers are also increasingly relying on online marketplaces and digital channels to access a wider pool of consumers, “allowing traffickers to interact more and more easily with all consumers,” according to OFDT.

    The watchdog noted that cocaine is becoming cheaper and more accessible in line with the surge in supply. Between 2023 and 2024, the wholesale price of cocaine fell 9 percent to 29,800 euro per kilogram, while the retail price per gram dropped by an “unprecedented 12 percent” to 58 euro, according to 2025 data from France’s anti-narcotics office, OFAST.

    “When supply increases —for example in the event of overproduction or easier transportation— prices tend to fall, which is currently the case for cocaine, both at the wholesale and retail levels,” Salhi explained. She cited Colombia as a producer country witnessing “increased cultivation and production.”

    Even more alarmingly, alongside the increased accessibility of the drug due to growing supply and falling prices, its potency has also increased. The monitoring authority noted that the content of the active ingredient in cocaine has risen “sharply” in recent years, with the price of the pure product having declined.

  • UK Sanctions Georgian TV Channels Over Ukraine Disinformation

    The U.K. has sanctioned two Georgian television channels, accusing them of spreading “deliberately misleading information” about Russia’s war in Ukraine.

    Tuesday’s measures against Imedi TV and PosTV were included in a wider package that targets hundreds of individuals and entities. The U.K. Foreign Office said the “landmark” package focuses on Russia’s oil exports and military suppliers, while the two Georgian broadcasters appeared in a separate sanctions notice.

    That notice accused the stations of promoting claims “that the Ukrainian Government and President Zelensky are illegitimate, Ukraine is a ‘puppet’ of the West, Ukraine is a corrupt country and that Ukraine and the West are seeking to destabilise Georgia.”

    In a statement, Imedi TV dismissed the sanctions as having “no value,” accusing authorities in London of supporting Georgia’s “criminal” previous government. It said it would continue to “serve Georgia and freedom of speech.”

    The sanctions come shortly after a change of ownership at Imedi TV. A share agreement dated January 30 shows Georgian company Prime Media Global LLC acquiring the broadcaster for a “symbolic price” of 1,000 Georgian lari (about $374).

    Among Prime Media Global’s shareholders is a local businessperson as well as Imedi TV management personnel, according to Georgian corporate records.

    Past financial statements listed Imedi TV’s previous owners as Irakli Rukhadze, Benjamin Marson, and Igor Alexeyev, partners at the private equity group Hunnewell Partners.

    Rukhadze, a U.S. citizen, previously maintained close business ties to Bidzina Ivanishvili, the billionaire founder and honorary chairman of the ruling Georgian Dream party. The U.S. sanctioned Ivanishvili in December 2024, accusing him of “undermining the democratic and Euro-Atlantic future of Georgia for the benefit of the Russian Federation.”

    Earlier this month, Rukhadze said owning Imedi TV was “not of economic interest” and “damages our main business — making investments in the Georgian economy.” He also said the channel had “avoided meddling in political processes,” and helped diminish “the danger of Georgia’s involvement in the war.”

    A spokesperson for Hunnewell Partners said that the firm “has had no involvement in the channel and has fully exited the business” since the announcement of the sale on February 6.

    Corporate records indicate that PosTV is majority-owned by Georgian MP Viktor Japaridze. Minority shares are held by the channel’s founder and host, Shalva Ramishvili.

    In February 2025, Ramishvili drew controversy after comments about Ukraine, including saying “Ukraine’s defeat is our victory,” calling Kyiv “the mother of Russian cities,” and describing President Zelensky as “a gathering of crybabies.”

    Contacted by Monitori, OCCRP’s Georgia member center, Ramishvili called the U.K. allegations “nonsense.” 

    “We truly serve Georgia, and Britain has rewarded us with these sanctions for truly serving our country’s sovereignty,” he said.