Corrupt

Corrupt (pronounced kuh-ruhpt)

(1) Guilty of dishonest practices, as bribery; lacking integrity; crooked; willing to act dishonestly for personal gain; willing to make or take bribes; morally degenerate.

(2) Debased in character; depraved; perverted; wicked; evil.

(3) Of a text, made inferior by errors or alterations.

(4) Something infected or tainted; decayed; putrid; contaminated.

(5) In digital storage (1) stored data that contains errors related to the format or file integrity; a storage device with such errors.

(6) To destroy the integrity of; cause to be dishonest, disloyal, etc, especially by coercion, bribery or other forms of inducement.

(7) Morally to lower in standard; to debase or pervert.

(8) To alter a language, text, etc for the worse (depending on context either by the tone of the content or to render it non-original); to debase.

To mar or spoil something; to infect, contaminate or taint.

To make putrid or putrescent (technically an archaic use but there’s much overlap of meaning in the way terms are used).

(11) In digital storage, introduce errors in stored data when saving, transmitting, or retrieving (technically possible also in dynamic data such as memory).

(12) In English Law, to subject (an attainted person) to corruption of blood (historic use only).

(13) In law (in some jurisdictions) a finding which courts or tribunals can hand down describing certain conduct.

1300–1350: From the Middle English verb corrupten (debased in character), from the Middle French corrupt, from the Old French corropt (unhealthy, corrupt; uncouth (of language)) from the Latin corruptus (rotten, spoiled, decayed, corrupted (and the past participle of corrumpō & corrumpere (to destroy, ruin, injure, spoil (figuratively “corrupt, seduce, bribe” (and literally “break to pieces”)), the construct being cor- (assimilated here as an intensive prefix) + rup- (a variant stem of rumpere (to break into pieces), from a nasalized form of the primitive Indo-European runp- (to break), source also of the Sanskrit rupya- (to suffer from a stomach-ache) and the Old English reofan (to break, tear)) + -tus (the past participle suffix).  The alternative spellings corrumpt, corrump & corroupt are effectively all extinct although dictionaries sometimes list them variously as obsolete, archaic or rare.  Corrupt and corrupted are verbs & adjectives (both used informally by IT nerds as a noun, sometimes with a choice adjective), corruptedness, corruption, corruptible, corruptness, corrupter & corruptor are nouns, corruptest is a verb & adjective, corruptive is an adjective, corrupting is a verb and corruptedly, corruptively & corruptly are adverbs; the most common noun plural is corruptions.  Forms (hyphenated and not) such as incorruptible, non-corrupt, over-corrupt, non-corrupt, pre-corrupt & un-corrupt etc are created as needed.

The verb corrupt in the mid-fourteenth century existed in the sense of “deprave morally, pervert from good to bad which later in the 1300s extended to “contaminate, impair the purity of; seduce or violate (a woman); debase or render impure (a language) by alterations or innovations; influence by a bribe or other wrong motive", reflecting generally the senses of the Latin corruptus.  The meanings “decomposing, putrid, spoiled”, “changed for the worse, debased by admixture or alteration (of texts, language etc) and “guilty of dishonesty involving bribery" all emerged in the late fourteenth century.  The noun corruption was from the mid-fourteenth century corrupcioun which was used of material things, especially dead bodies (human & animal) to convey “act of becoming putrid, dissolution; decay”.  It was applied also to matter of the soul and morality, it being an era when the Church was much concerned with “spiritual contamination, depravity & wickedness”.  The form was from the Latin corruptionem (nominative corruptio) (a corruption, spoiling, seducing; a corrupt condition), the noun of action from the past-participle stem of corrumpere (to destroy; spoil (and figuratively “corrupt, seduce, bribe”.  The use as a synonym for “putrid matter” dates from the late 1300s while as applied to those holding public office being tainted by “bribery or other depraving influence” it was first noted in the early 1400.  The specific technical definition of “a corrupt form of a word” came into use in the 1690s.  The adjective corruptible (subject to decay or putrefaction, perishable) was from either the Old French corroptible or directly from Late Latin corruptibilis (liable to decay, corruptible), from the past-participle stem of corrumpere (to destroy; spoil (and figuratively “corrupt, seduce, bribe”.  In fourteenth century English, it applied first to objects and by the mid fifteenth to those “susceptible of being changed for the worse, tending to moral corruption.  The more blatant sense of “open to bribery” appears in the 1670s.

Boris Johnson, hair by Ms Kelly Jo Dodge MBE.

Corruption is probably a permanent part of politics although it does ebb and flow and exists in different forms in different places.  In the UK, the honors system with its intricate hierarchy and consequent determination on one’s place in the pecking order on the Order of Precedence has real world consequences such as determining whether one sits at dinners with the eldest son of a duke or finds one’s self relegated to a table with the surviving wife of a deceased baronet.  Under some prime-ministers the system was famously corrupt and while things improved in the nineteenth century, under David Lloyd George (1863–1945; UK prime-minister 1916-1922) honors were effectively for sale in a truly scandalous way.  None of his successors were anywhere near as bad although Harold Wilson’s (1916–1995; UK prime minister 1964-1970 & 1974-1976) resignation honors list attracted much comment and did his reputation no good but in recent years it’s been relatively quiet on the honors front.  That was until the resignation list of Boris Johnson (b 1964; UK prime-minister 2019-2022) was published.  It included some names which were unknown to all but a handful of political insiders and many others which were controversial for their own reasons but at the bottom of the list was one entry which all agreed was well deserved: Ms Kelly Jo Dodge, for 27 years the parliamentary hairdresser, was created a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE) for parliamentary service.  In those decades, she can have faced few challenges more onerous than Boris Johnson’s hair yet never once failed to make it an extraordinary example in the (actually technically difficult) “not one hair in place” style.

A corrupted fattie

Corrupt, a drug addict and a failure: The Führer and the Reichsmarschall at Carinhall, next to a stature of a beast of the field.  Hitler once told a visitor; “You should visit Göring at Carinhall, a sight worth seeing.”

Hermann Göring (1893–1946; leading Nazi 1922-1945 and Reichsmarschall 1940-1945) was under few illusions about the sentence he would receive from the International Military Tribunal (IMT) at the first Nuremberg Trial (1945-1946) and resented only the method of execution prescribed was to be "hanged by the neck until dead".  Göring thought that fit only for common criminals and as Germany's highest ranked soldier, he deserved the honor of a firing squad; the death of a gentleman.  In the end, he found his own way to elude the noose but history has anyway judged him harshly as richly deserving the gallows.  He heard many bad things said of him at the trial, most of it true and much of it said by his fellow defendants but the statement which most disappointed him was that Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) had condemned him as “corrupt, a drug addict and a failure”.  Once that was publicized, he knew there would be no romantic legend to grow after his execution and his hope that in fifty years there would be statutes of him all over Germany was futile.  In fairness, even in that he’d been a realist, telling the prison psychologist the statutes might be “…small ones maybe, but one in every home”.  Hitler had of course been right; Göring was corrupt, a drug addict and a failure but that could have been said of many of his paladins and countless others in the lower layers of what was essentially a corrupted, gangster-run state.

Corruption is of course though something bad and corrosive to the state but other people's corruption in other states can be helpful.  In 1940, after the fall of France, the British were genuinely alarmed Spain might enter the war on the side of the Axis, tempted by the return of the Rock of Gibraltar and the acquisition of colonial territory in North Africa.  London was right to be concerned because the loss of Gibraltar would have threatened not only the Royal Navy's ability to operate in the Mediterranean but also the very presence of the British in North African and even the supply of oil from the Middle East, vital to the conduct of the war.  Indeed, the "Mediterranean strategy" was supported strongly by German naval strategists and had it successfully been executed, it would have become much more difficult for the British to continue the war.  Contrary to the assertions of some, Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) did understand the enormous strategic advantage which would be achieved by the taking of Gibraltar which would have been a relatively simple undertaking but to do so was possible only with Spanish cooperation, the Germans lacking the naval forces to effect a seaborne invasion.  Hitler did in 1940 meet with the Spanish leader Generalissimo Francisco Franco (1892-1975; Caudillo of Spain 1939-1975) in an attempt to entice his entry into the conflict and even after the Battle of Britain, Hitler would still have preferred peace with the British rather than their defeat, the ongoing existence of the British Empire better suited to his post-war (ie after victory over the USSR) visions. 

The Führer and the Caudillo at the French railway station in Hendaye, near the Spanish–French border, 23 October 1940.

Franco however was a professional soldier and knew Britain remained an undefeated, dangerous foe and one able to draw on the resources both of her empire and (increasingly) assistance from the US and regarded a victory by the Axis as by no means guaranteed.  Additionally, after a bloody civil war which had waged for four years, the Spanish economy was in no state to wage war and better than most, Franco knew his military was antiquated and unable to sustain operations against a well equipped enemy for even days.  Like many with combat experience, the generalissimo also thought war a ghastly, hateful business best avoided and Hitler left the long meeting after being unable to meet the extraordinary list of conditions demanded to secure Spanish support, declaring he'd "sooner have three teeth pulled than go through that again".  Franco was a practical man who had kept his options open and probably, like the Duce (Benito Mussolini (1883-1945; Duce (leader) & prime-minister of Italy 1922-1943)) would have committed Spain to the cause had a German victory seemed assured.  British spies in Madrid and Lisbon soon understood that and to be sure, the diplomatic arsenal of the UK's ambassador to Madrid, Sir Samuel Hoare (1880-1959), was strengthened with money, the exchequer's investment applied to bribing Spanish generals, admirals and other notables to ensure the forces of peace prevailed.  Surprising neither his friends or enemies, "slippery Sam" proved adept at the dark arts of disinformation, bribery and back-channel deals required to corrupt and although his engaging (if unreliable) memoirs were vague about the details, documents provided by his staff suggest he made payments in the millions at a time a million sterling was a lot of money.  By 1944, the state of the war made it obvious any threat of Spanish belligerency was gone and he returned to London.

The dreaded corrupted FAT

Dating from the mid-1970s, the file allocation table (FAT) is a data structure used by a number of file systems to index and manage the files on storage devices.  First associated with 8 inch (200 mm) floppy diskettes, it became familiar to users when introduced by Microsoft in the early days of PC (personal computer) operating systems (OS) and was used on the precursors to the PC-DOS & MS-DOS OSs which dominated the market during the 1980s.  Over the years there have been a number of implementations, the best known of which are FAT12, FAT16 & FAT32, the evolution essentially to handle the increasing storage capacity of media and the need to interact with enhancements to OSs to accommodate increasing complexities such as longer file names, additional file attributes and special files like sub-directories (now familiar as folders which technically are files which can store other files).

A FAT is almost always stored on the host device itself and is an index in the form of a database which consists of a table with records of information about each file and directory in the file system.  What a FAT does is provide a mapping between the logical file system and the physical location of data on the storage medium so it can be thought of as an address book.  Technically, the FAT keeps track of which clusters (the mechanism by which the data is stored) on the device are linked to each file and directory and this includes unused clusters so a user can determine what free space remains available.  Ultimately, it’s the FAT which maintains a record of the links between the clusters which form a file's data chain and the metadata associated with each file, such as its attributes, creation & modification timestamps, file size etc.  In the same way that when reading a database a user is actually interacting primarily with the index, it’s the FAT which locates the clusters associated with a request to load (or view, delete etc) a file and determine their sequence, enabling efficient read and write operations.  The size, structure and complexity of FATs grew as the capacity of floppy diskettes and then hard disks expanded but the limitations of the approach were well-understood and modern operating systems have increasingly adopted more advanced file systems like NTFS (New Technology File System) or exFAT (Extended File Allocation Table) although FAT remains widely used especially on lower capacity and removable devices (USB drives, memory cards et al), the main attraction being the wide cross-platform compatibility.

A corrupted image (JPEG) of Lindsay Lohan.  Files can be corrupted yet appear as correct entries in the FAT and conversely, a corrupted fat will usually contain may uncorrupted files; the files are content and the FAT an index.

The ominous sounding corrupted FAT is a generalized term which references errors in a FAT’s data structure.  There are DBAs (database administrators) who insist all databases are in a constant state of corruption to some degree and when a FAT becomes corrupted, it means that the data has become inconsistent or damaged and this can be induced by system crashes, improper shutdowns, power failures, malware or physical damage to the media.  The consequences can be minor and quickly rectified with no loss of data or varying degrees of the catastrophic (a highly nuanced word among IT nerds) which may result in the loss of one or more files or folders or be indicative of the unrecoverable failure of the storage media.  Modern OSs include tools which can be used to attempt to fix corrupted FATs and when these prove ineffective, there are more intricate third-party products which can operate at a lower level but where the reported corruption is a symptom of hardware failure, such errors often prove terminal, thus the importance of data (and system) backups.

The grey area between corruption and "just politics"

As an adjective, corrupt is used somewhat casually to refer to individuals or institutions thought to have engaged in practices leading to personal gain of some sort (not necessarily financial) which are either morally dubious or actually unlawful and a corrupt politician is the usual example, a corrupted politician presumably one who was once honest but tempted.  The synonyms of corrupt are notoriously difficult to isolate within set parameters, perhaps because politicians have been so involved in framing the definitions in a way which seems rarely to encompass anything they do, however corrupt it may to many appear.  The word dishonest for example obviously includes those who steal stuff but is also used of those who merely lie and there are circumstances in which both might be unlawful but wouldn’t generally to thought corrupt conduct except by the most morally fastidious.  The way politicians have structured the boundaries of acceptable conduct is that it’s possible to be venal in the sense of selling patronage as long as the consideration doesn’t literally end up as the equivalent of cash in the pocket although such benefits can be gained as long as there’s some degree of abstraction between the steps.

Once were happy: Gladys Berejiklian and Daryl Maguire, smiling.

In Australia, news the New South Wales (NSW) Independent Commission against Corruption (ICAC) had handed down a finding that former premier Gladys Berejiklian (b 1970; NSW Premier (Liberal) 2017-2021) had acted corruptly was of course interesting but mystifying to many was that despite that, the commission made no recommendation that criminal charges be considered.  It transpired that was because the evidence Ms Berejiklian was required to provide to the ICAC wouldn’t be admissible in a court because there, the rules of evidence are different and a defendant can’t be compelled to provide an answer which might be self-incriminating.  In other words a politician can be forced to tell the truth when before the ICAC but not before a court when charged.  That’s an aspect of the common law’s adversarial system which has been much criticized but it’s one of the doctrines which underpins Western law where there is a presumption of innocence and the onus of proof of guilt beyond reasonable doubt lies with the prosecution.  Still, what unfolded before the ICAC revealed that Ms Berejiklian seems at the least to have engaged in acts of Billigung (looking the other way to establish a defense of “plausible deniability”).  How corrupt that will be regarded by people will depend on this and that and the reaction of many politicians was to focus on the ICAC’s statement that criminal charges would not be pursed because of a lack of admissible evidence as proof that if there’s no conviction, then there’s no corruption.  Politicians have little interest in the bar being raised.  They were less forgiving of her former boyfriend (with whom she may or not have been in a "relationship" and if one did exist it may or may not have been "serious"), former fellow parliamentarian Daryl Maguire (b 1959, MLA (Liberal) for Wagga Wagga 1999-2018).  Despite legal proceedings against Mr Maguire being afoot, none of his former colleagues seemed reluctant to suggest he was anything but guilty as sin so for those who note such things the comparative is “more corrupt” and the superlative “most corrupt”, both preferable to the clumsy alternatives “corrupter” & “corruptest”.

The release of the ICAC’s findings came a couple of days before the newly created federal equivalent (the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC)) commenced operation.  Although the need for such a body had be discussed for decades, it was during the time the government was headed by Scott Morrison (b 1968; Australian prime-minister 2018-2022) that even many doubters were persuaded one would be a good idea.  Mr Morrison’s background was in marketing, three word slogans and other vulgarities so it surprised few a vulgarian government emerged but what was so shocking was that the pork-barreling and partisan allocation of resources became so blatant with only the most perfunctory attempts to hide the trail.  Such conduct was of course not new but it’s doubtful if before it had been attempted at such scale and within Mr Morrison’s world-view the internal logic was perfect.  His intellectual horizons defined by fundamentalist Christianity and mercantilism, his view appeared to be that only those who voted (or might be induced to vote) for the Liberal & National Parties were those who deserved to be part of the customer loyalty scheme that was government spending.  This tied in nicely with the idea those who accept Jesus Christ as the savior getting to go to Heaven, all others condemned to an eternity in Hell.  Not all simplicities are elegant.

As things stand, such an attitude to public finance (ie treating as much spending as possible as party re-election funds) is not unlawful and to most politicians (at least any with some reasonable prospect of sitting on the treasury benches) should not be thought “corrupt”; it’s just “politics” and in NSW, in 1992 it was confirmed that what is “just politics” has quite a vista.  Then the ICAC handed down findings against then premier Nick Greiner (b 1947; NSW (Liberal) premier 1988-1992) over the matter of him using the offer of a taxpayer funded position to an independent member of parliament as an inducement to resign, the advantage being the seat might be won by the Liberal party in the consequent by-election.  As the ICAC noted, Mr Greiner had not acted unlawfully nor considered himself to be acting corruptly but that had been the result.  Indeed, none doubted it would never have occurred to Mr Greiner that doing something that was “just politics” and had been thus for centuries could be considered corrupt although remarkably, he did subsequently concede he was “technically corrupt” (not an admission which seems to have appealed to Ms Berejiklian).  The ICAC’s finding against Mr Greiner was subsequently overturned by the NSW Court of Appeal.

So the essence of the problem is just what corruption is.  What the public see as corrupt, politicians regard as “just politics” which, in a practical sense, can be reduced to “what you can get away with” and was rationalized by Ms Berejiklian in an answer to a question by the ICAC about pork-barrelling: "Everybody does it".  Of course that's correct and the differences between politicians are of extent and the ability to conceal but her tu quoque (translated literally as "thou also" and latterly as "you also"; translation in the vernacular is something like "you did it too") defense could be cited by all.  The mechanism of a NACC has potential and already both sides of politics are indicating they intend to use it against their political enemies so it should be amusing for those who enjoy politics as theatre although, unfortunately, the politicians who framed the legislation made sure public hearings would be rare.  One might suspect they want it to be successful but not too successful.  Still, the revelations of the last ten years have provided some scope for the NACC to try to make the accepted understanding of corruption something more aligned with the public’s perception.  Anomalies like a minister’s “partner” being a “partner” for purposes of qualifying for free overseas travel (business class air travel, luxury hotels, lavish dinners etc) yet not be defined a “partner” for purposes of disclosing things which might give rise to a possible conflict of interest for the minister is an example of the sort of thing where standardization might improve confidence.  It probably should be conceded that corruption can’t be codified in the way the speed limits for a nation’s highways can but it’s one of those things that one knows when one sees it and if the NACC can nudge the politicians’ behavior a bit in the direction of public expectation, it’ll be a worthy institution.  On a happier note, Mr Greiner went on to enjoy a lucrative corporate career and Ms Berejiklian (currently with telco Optus) is predicted to follow in his tracks although suggestions posted on social media she'd been offered a partnership at PwC (PricewaterhouseCoopers International Limited) on the basis of her experience making her a "perfect fit for the company" are thought mischievous rather than malicious.

Oligarch

Oligarch (pronounced ol-i-gahrk)

(1) In political science, one of the rulers in an oligarchy (a system of government characterized by the institutional or constructive rule of a few and the literal or effective exclusion of the many); a member of an oligarchy.

(2) A very rich person involved in business in a manner which interacts intimately with the organs of government, the nature of the relationship varying between systems but usually with the implication of mutually beneficial corrupt or improper (if sometimes technically lawful) conduct.

(3) In cosmogony, a proto-planet formed during oligarchic accretion.

1600-1610: From the French oligarque & olygarche, from the Late Latin oligarcha, from the Ancient Greek ὀλιγάρχης (oligárkhēs) and related to oligarkhia (government by the few), the construct being olig- (few) (from stem of oligos (few, small, little) (a word of uncertain origin)) +‎ -arch (ruler, leader) (from arkhein (to rule)).  The noun plural was oligarchs.  In English, an earlier form of oligarchy was the circa 1500 oligracie, a borrowing from the Old French.  Oligarch & oligarchy are nouns, oligarchal, oligarchical & oligarchic are adjectives, and oligarchically is an adverb; the noun plural is oligarchs.  The playful minigarch (the offspring of an oligarch) and oligarchette (a female oligarch or an aspiring oligarch not yet rich enough to be so described are both non-standard while oligarchie & oligarchisch are sometimes used to convey a deliberate sense of the foreign.  Oligarch is now almost never used in its classical sense to refer to rulers of a political entity but instead to describe the small numbers of those who have become exceedingly rich, usually in some improper (even if technically lawful) way with the corrupt and surreptitious cooperation of those in government, the implication being they too have benefited.  Words like plutocrat, potentate and tycoonocrat are sometimes used as synonyms but don’t covey the sense of gains improperly and corruptly achieved.

Oligarchs are sometimes described in the press as "colorful characters", something a bit misleading because many seek a low profile, something often advisable in Mr Putin's Russia.  In a movie about oligarchs Netflix presumably would focus on some of the more colorful.

In modern use, an oligarch is one of the select few people who have become very rich by virtue of their close connections to rule or influence leaders in an oligarchy (a government in which power is held by a select few individuals or a small class of powerful people).  Unlike the relationship between “monarch” & “monarchy”, “oligarch” & “oligarchy” are not used in the literature of political science in quite the same way.  A monarch’s relationship to their monarchy is a thing defined by the constitutional system under which they reign and that may be absolute, despotic or theocratic but is inherently directly linked.  However, even in a political system which is blatantly and obviously an oligarchy, the members of the ruling clique are not referred to as oligarchs by virtue of their place in the administration, the more common descriptors being autocrat, despot, fascist, tyrant, dictator, totalitarian, authoritarian, kleptocrat or other terms that to varying degrees hint at unsavoriness.  Instead, the word oligarch has come to be used as a kind of encapsulated critique of corruption and economic distortion and the individual oligarch a personification of that.  The modern oligarch is one who has massively profited, usually by gaining in some corrupt way either the resources which once belonged to the state or trading rights within the state which tend towards monopolistic or oligopolistic arrangements.  Inherent in the critique is the assumption that the corrupt relationship is a symbiotic one between oligarch and those in government, the details of which can vary: oligarchs may be involved in the political process or entirely excluded but a common feature to all such arrangements is that there is a mutual enrichment at the expense of the sate (ie the citizens).  The word oligarch has thus become divorced from oligarchy and attached only to oligopoly.

The word oligopoly dates from 1887, from the Medieval Latin oligopolium, the construct being the Ancient Greek ὀλίγος (olígos) (few) + πωλεῖν (poleîn) (to sell) from the primitive Indo-European root pel (to sell) and describes a market in which an industry is dominated by a small number of large-scale sellers called oligopolists (the adjectival form oligopolistic from a surprisingly recent 1939).  Oligopolies, which inherently reduce competition and impose higher prices on consumers do not of necessity form as a result of improper or corrupt collusion and may be entirely organic, the classic example of which is two competitors in a once broad market becoming increasingly efficient, both achieving such critical mass that others are unable to compete.  At that point, there is often a tendency for the two to collude to divide the market between them, agreeing not to compete in certain fields or geographical regions, effectively creating sectoral or regional monopolies.  If competitors do emerge, the oligopolists have sufficient economic advantage to be able temporarily to reduce their selling prices to below the cost of production & distribution, forcing the completion from the market, after which the profitable price levels are re-imposed.

A classic game theory model of oligopolistic behavior.

Although not thought desirable by economists, they’ve long attracted interest interest because they create interesting market structures, especially when they interact with instruments of government designed to prevent their emergence or at least ameliorate the consequences of their operation.  The most obvious restriction governments attempt to impose is to prevent collusion between oligopolists in an attempt to deny them the opportunity to set prices of particular goods.  Even if successful, this can only ever partially be done because most prices quickly become public knowledge and with so few sellers in a market, most of which tend to operate with similar input, production & distribution costs, each oligopolist can in most cases predict the actions of the others. This has been of interest in game theory because the decisions of one player are not only in reaction to that of the others but also influences their behavior.

Dartz Prombron: The Prombron is now typical of the preferred transport for an oligarch, the traditional limousine not able to be configured to offer the same level of protection against attacks with military-grade weapons.  Prombrons were originally trimmed with leather from the foreskins of whale penises but the feature was dropped after protests from the environmental lobby.

Oligarchs in the modern sense operate differently and the Russian model under Mr Putin has become the exemplar although some on a smaller scale (notably Lebanon since 1990) are probably even more extreme.  The Russian oligarchs emerged in the 1990s in the chaos which prevailed after the dissolution of the old Soviet Union.  They were men, sometime outside government but often apparatchiks within, well-skilled in the corruption and the operations of the black market which constituted an increasingly large chunk of the economy in the last decade of the USSR and these skills they parlayed into their suddenly capitalistic world.  Capitalism however depends on there being private property and because the USSR was constructed on the basis of Marxist theory which demanded it was the state which owned and controlled the means of production and distribution, there was little of that.  So there was privatization, some of it officially and much of it anything but, the classic examples being a back-channel deal between the oligarch and someone in government purporting to be vested with the authority to sell the assets of the state.  Few in government did this without a cut (often under the guise of a equity mechanism called “loans for shares”) and indeed, some apparatchiks sold the assets to themselves and those assets could be nice little earners like oil & gas concessions or producers, electricity generators, transport networks or financial institutions.  One of the reasons the assets were able to be sold at unbelievably bargain prices was a product of Soviet accounting: because the book value of assets had so little meaning in communist accounting, in many cases recorded asset values hadn’t be updated in decades and were in any case sometimes only nominal.  There were therefore sales which, prima facie, might have appeared to verge on the legitimate.

2021 Aurus Senat, now the official presidential car of the Russian state.

Few were and in any event, even if the aspiring oligarch didn’t have the cash, somewhere in government there would be found an official able to arrange the state to loan the necessary fund from the resources of the state, if need be creating (effectively printing) the money.  From that point, newly acquitted assets could be leveraged, sold to foreign investors at huge profit or even operated in the novelty of the free market, an attractive proposition for many given the asset obtained from the state might be a natural monopoly, competition therefore of no immediate concern.  Thus was modern Russian capitalism born of what were economic crimes on a scale unimaginable to the legions condemned to death or years in the Gulag under comrade Stalin.  Even before becoming prime-minister in 1999, Mr Putin was well aware of what had happened, being acquainted with some of the players in the process but shortly after assuming office, he had small a team of lawyers, accountants and economists undertake a forensic analysis to try more accurately to quantify who did what and who got how much.  Although the paperwork his investigative project produced has never been made public, it was reputed to have been reduced to a modestly-sized file but the contents were dynamic and put to good use.

In either 2003 or 2004, Mr Putin, assisted by officers of the FSB (successor to the alphabet-soup of similar agencies (Cheka, GPU, OGPU, NKGB, NKVD, SMERSH, MGB & (most famously) KGB)) experts in such things, “arranged” a series of interviews with the oligarchs whose conduct in the privatizations of 1990s had been most impressive (or egregious depending on one’s view).  Well aware of the relationship between wealth and political influence, Mr Putin’s explained that the oligarchs had to decide whether they wished to be involved in business or politics; they couldn’t do both.  Mr Putin then explained the extent of their theft from the state, how much was involved, who else facilitated and profited from the transactions and what would be the consequences for all concerned were the matters to come to trial.  Then to sweeten the deal, Mr Putin pointed out that although the oligarchs had stolen their wealth on the grandest scale, “they had stolen it fair and square” and could keep it if they agreed to refrain from involvement in politics.  The Russian oligarchy understood his language, the lucidity of his explanation perhaps enhanced by oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky (b 1963; then listed as the richest man in Russia and in the top-twenty worldwide) being arrested on charges of fraud and tax evasion, shortly before the meetings were convened (he was convicted in 2005 and sentenced to nine years in prison and while serving his sentence was charged with and found guilty of embezzlement and money laundering.  Mr Putin later pardoned Khodorkovsky and he was released to self-imposed exile in late 2013).  Few failed to note the significance of Mr Khodorkovsky having been "meddling in politics". 

Mr Putin being taken for a drive by George W Bush (b 1946; George XLIII, US president 2001-2009) in the Russian president's GAZ M21 Volga and admiring his 2009 Lada Niva.

In a sign the oligarchs were wise to comply, it was estimated by Bill Browder (b 1964; CEO and co-founder of the once Moscow-linked Hermitage Capital Management) during his testimony to the US Senate Judiciary Committee in 2017 that the biggest single increase in Mr Putin’s personal wealth happened immediately after Mr Khodorkovsky was jailed.  Given the history, Mr Browder is perhaps not an entirely impartial viewer but the pact between the autocrat and the oligarchy has been well-understood for years but what has always attracted speculation is the possibility that attached to it was a secret protocol whereby Mr Putin received transactional fees, imposing essentially a license to operate in Russia, alleged by some to be a cut of as much as 50%, based apparently on assessed profits rather than turnover.  Even if a half-share is too high and his cut is a more traditional 10%, the amount payable over the years would have been a very big number so there’s been much speculation about Mr Putin’s money, some estimates suggesting he may have a net wealth in the US$ billions.  That would seem truly impressive, given the Kremlin each year publishes a disclosure of their head of state’s income and assets and the last return disclosed Mr Putin enjoys an annual salary of US$140,000 and owns an 800-square-foot (74 m²) apartment, his other notable assets being three cars: a 1960 (first series) GAZ M21 Volga, a 1965 (second series) GAZ M21P Volga and a 2009 Lada Niva 4x4.  Keen on the outdoors, he also owns a camping trailer.

A country cottage on the Black Sea coast alleged to be owned by Mr Putin.  The large grounds surrounding the cottage are an indication why Mr Putin needs his 2009 Lada 4x4 & camping trailer.

On the basis of that, income and net wealth seem not at all out of alignment but intriguingly, he’s been photographed with some high-end watches on his wrist, including an A. Lange & Söhne 1815 Tourbograph which sells for around US$500,000.  He is rumored to be the owner of a 190,000 square-foot (17,650 m²) mansion which sits atop a cliff overlooking the Black Sea (reputedly Russia’s largest private residence and known, in a nod to the understated manner of the rich, as “Putin’s country cottage”) which has an ice hockey rink, a casino, a nightclub with stripper poles, an extravagantly stocked wine cellar and the finest furniture in Louis XIV style, the toilet-roll holders apparently at US$1,250 apiece (although, given the scale of the place, he may have received a bulk-purchase discount).  It demands a full-time staff of forty to maintain the estate, the annual running costs estimated at US$2-3 million.  Designed by Italian architect Lanfranco Cirillo (b 1959), and officially owned (though alleged to be held under a secret trust of which Mr Putin is the sole beneficiary) by oligarch Alexander Ponomarenko (b 1964), the construction cost was estimated to be somewhere around a US$ billion which seems expensive but a yacht currently moored in Italy and alleged also to belong to Mr Putin is said to have cost not much less to launch so either or both may actually represent good value and to assure privacy, the Russian military enforces a no-fly zone around the property.  Like many well-connected chaps around the world, a few of Mr Putin’s billions figured in the release of the Panama Papers in 2016.

1962 GAZ-M21 (rebuilt to KGB (V8) specifications).

Apart from the Black Sea palace, there are unverified reports Mr Putin is the owner of 19 other houses, 58 aircraft & helicopters and 700 cars (although it’s not clear if that number includes his two Volgas and the Lada).  No verified breakdown of the 700 cars has ever been published but given Mr Putin’s apparent fondness for Volgas, it may be his collection includes the special-variant of the GAZ-M21 Volga, 603 (as the GAZ-M23) of which were produced between 1962-1970 for the exclusive use of the KGB and other Soviet “special services”.  Equipped with the 5.53 litre (337 cubic inch) V8 engine from the big GAZ-13 Chaika (Gull) (1959-1981 and in the Soviet hierarchy, second only to the even bigger ZIL limousines (1936-2012)), the car was said to be a not entirely successful piece of engineering but it was certainly faster than the four-cylinder model on which it was based.  It’s never been clear just what was the top speed because the speedometer was calibrated only to 180 km/h (112 mph) but one intrepid KGB apparatchik claimed to have achieved that and reported the Volga was “still accelerating”.  Known to be nostalgic for the old ways of the KGB, it’s hoped Mr Putin has preserved at least one.

Mr Putin agitprop.

Mr Putin has admitted: "I am the wealthiest man, not just in Europe but in the whole world: I collect emotions. I am wealthy in that the people of Russia have twice entrusted me with the leadership of a great nation such as Russia. I believe that is my greatest wealth."  Quite how rich Mr Putin might be is such a swirl of estimates, rumors, supposition and doubtlessly invention (lies) that it's unlikely anyone except those disinclined to discuss the matter really know and after all, if he's rich as his detractors claim, he probably isn't exactly sure himself.  Given that, his statement seemed intended to clear up any misunderstandings.

Evil

Evil (pronounced ee-vuhl)

(1) Morally wrong or bad; immoral; wicked; morally corrupt.

(2) Harmful; injurious (now rare).

(3) Marked or accompanied by misfortune (now rare; mostly historic).

(4) Having harmful qualities; not good; worthless or deleterious (obsolete).

Pre 900: From the Middle English evel, ivel & uvel (evil) from the Old English yfel, (bad, vicious, ill, wicked) from the Proto-Germanic ubilaz.  Related were the Saterland Frisian eeuwel, the Dutch euvel, the Low German övel & the German übel; it was cognate with the Gothic ubils, the Old High German ubil, the German übel and the Middle Dutch evel and the Irish variation abdal (excessive).  Root has long been thought the primitive Indo-European hupélos (diminutive of hwep) (treat badly) which produced also the Hittite huwappi (to mistreat, harass) and huwappa (evil, badness) but an alternative view is a descent from upélos (evil; (literally "going over or beyond (acceptable limits)")) from the primitive Indo-European upo, up & eup (down, up, over).  Evil is a noun & adjective (some do treat it as a verb), evilness is a noun and evilly an adverb; the noun plural is evils.

Evil (the word) arrived early in English and endured.  In Old English and all the early Teutonic languages except the Scandinavian, it quickly became the most comprehensive adjectival expression of disapproval, dislike or disparagement.  Evil was the word Anglo-Saxons used to convey some sense of the bad, cruel, unskillful, defective, harm, crime, misfortune or disease.  The meaning with which we’re most familiar, "extreme moral wickedness" existed since Old English but did not assume predominance until the eighteenth century.  The Latin phrase oculus malus was known in Old English as eage yfel and survives in Modern English as “evil eye”.  Evilchild is attested as an English surname from the thirteenth century and Australian-born Air Chief Marshall Sir Douglas Evill (1892-1971) was head of the Royal Air Force (RAF) delegation to Washington during World War II (1939-1945).  Despite its utility, there’s probably no word in English with as many words of in the same vein without any being actually synonymous.  Consider: destructive, hateful, vile, malicious, vicious, heinous, ugly, bad, nefarious, villainous, corrupt, malefic, malevolent, hideous, wicked, harm, pain, catastrophe, calamity, ill, sinful, iniquitous, depraved, vicious, corrupt, base, iniquity & unrighteousness; all tend in the direction yet none quite matches the darkness of evil although malefic probably come close.  

Hannah Arendt and the banality of evil

The word evil served English unambiguously and well for centuries and most, secular and spiritual, knew that some people are just evil.  It was in the later twentieth century, with the sudden proliferation of psychologists, interior decorators, sociologists, criminologists, social workers and basket weavers that an industry developed exploring alternative explanations and causations for what had long been encapsulated in the word evil.  The output was uneven but among the best remembered, certainly for its most evocative phrase, was in the work of German-American philosopher and political theorist Hannah Arendt (1906–1975).  Arendt’s concern, given the scale of the holocaust was: "Can one do evil without being evil?"

Whether the leading Nazis were unusually (or even uniquely) evil or merely individuals who, through a combination of circumstances, came to do awful things has been a question which has for decades interested psychiatrists, political scientists and historians.  Arendt attended the 1961 trial of Adolph Eichmann (1906-1962), the bureaucrat responsible for transportation of millions of Jews and others to the death camps built to allow the Nazis to commit the industrial-scale mass-murder of the final solution.  Arendt thought Eichmann ordinary and bland, “neither perverted nor sadistic” but instead “terrifyingly normal”, acting only as a diligent civil servant interested in career advancement, his evil deeds done apparently without ever an evil thought in his mind.  Her work was published as Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (1963).  The work attracted controversy and perhaps that memorable phrase didn’t help.  It captured the popular imagination and even academic critics seemed seduced.  Arendt’s point, inter alia, was that nothing in Eichmann’s life or character suggested that had it not been for the Nazis and the notion of normality they constructed, he’d never have murdered even one person.  The view has its flaws in that there’s much documentation from the era to prove many Nazis, including Eichmann, knew what they were doing was a monstrous crime so a discussion of whether Eichmann was immoral or amoral and whether one implies evil while the other does not does, after Auschwitz, seems a sterile argument.

Evil is where it’s found.

Hannah Arendt's relationship with Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) began when she was a nineteen year old student of philosophy and he her professor, married and aged thirty-six.  Influential still in his contributions to phenomenology and existentialism, he will forever be controversial because of his brief flirtation with the Nazis, joining the party and taking an academic appointment under Nazi favor.  He resigned from the post within a year and distanced himself from the party but, despite expressing regrets in private, never publicly repented.  His affair with the Jewish Arendt is perhaps unremarkable because it pre-dated the Third Reich but what has always attracted interest is that their friendship lasted the rest of their lives, documented in their own words in a collection of their correspondence (Letters: 1925-1975, Hannah Arendt & Martin Heidegger (2003), Ursula Ludz (Editor), Andrew Shields (Translator)).  Cited sometimes as proof that feelings can transcend politics (as if ever there was doubt), the half-century of letters which track the course of a relationship which began as one of lovers and evolved first into friendship and then intellectual congress.  For those who wish to explore contradiction and complexity in human affairs, it's a scintillating read.  Arendt died in 1975, Heidegger surviving her by some six months.

New York Post, November 1999.

In 1999, Rupert Murdoch’s (b 1931) tabloid the New York Post ran one of their on-line polls, providing a list of the usual suspects, asking readers to rate the evil to most evil, so to determine “The 25 most evil people of the last millennium”.  The poll received 19184 responses which revealed some “recency bias” (a cognitive bias that favors recent events over historic ones) in that some US mass-murderers were rated worse than some with more blood on their hands but most commented on was the stellar performance of the two “write-ins”: Bill Clinton (b 1946; US president 1993-2001) & crooked Hillary Clinton (b 1947; US secretary of state 2009-2013), the POTUS coming second and the FLOTUS an impressive sixth, Mr Murdoch’s loyal readers rating both more evil than Saddam Hussein (1937–2006; president of Iraq 1979-2003), Vlad the Impaler (Vlad Dracula or Prince Vlad III of Wallachia (circa 1430-circa 1477); thrice Voivode of Wallachia 1448-circa 1477 or Ivan the Terrible (Ivan IV Vasilyevich (1530–1584; Grand Prince of Moscow and all Russia 1533-1584 & Tsar of all Russia 1547-1584).

Lindsay Lohan and her lawyer in court, Los Angeles, December 2011.

While fun and presumably an indication of something, on-line polls should not be compared with the opinion polls run by reputable universities or polling organizations, their attraction for editors looking for click-bait being they’re essentially free and provide a result, sometimes within a day, unlike conventional polls which can cost thousands or even millions depending on the sample size and duration of research.  The central problem with on-line polls is that responders are self-selected rather than coming from a cohort determined by a statistical method developed in the wake of the disastrously inaccurate results of a poll “predicting” national voting intentions in the 1936 presidential election.  The 1936 catchment had been skewered towards the upper-income quartile by being restricted to those who answered domestic telephone connections, the devices then rarely installed in lower-income households.  A similar phenomenon of bias is evident in the difference on-line responses to the familiar question: “Who won the presidential debate?”, the divergent results revealing more about the demographic profiles of the audiences of CBS, MSNBC, CNN, ABC & FoxNews than on-stage dynamics on-stage.

Especially among academics in the social sciences, there are many who object to the frequent, almost casual, use of “evil”, applied to figures as diverse as serial killers and those who use the “wrong” pronoun.  Rightly on not, academics can find “complexity” in what appears simple to most and don’t like “evil” because of the simple moral absolutism it implies, the suggestion certain actions or individuals are inherently or objectively wrong.  Academics call this “an over-simplification of complex ethical situations” and they prefer the nuances of moral relativism, which holds that moral judgments can depend on cultural, situational, or personal contexts.  The structuralist-behaviorists (a field still more inhabited than a first glance may suggest) avoid the word because it so lends itself to being a “label” and the argument is that labeling individuals as “evil” can be both an act of dehumanizing and something which reinforces a behavioral predilection, thereby justifying punitive punishment rather than attempting rehabilitation.  Politically, it’s argued, the “evil” label permits authorities to ignore or even deny allegedly causative factors of behavior such as poverty, mental illness, discrimination or prior trauma.

There are also the associative traditions of the word, the linkages to religion and the supernatural an important part of the West’s cultural and literary inheritance but not one universally treated as “intellectually respectable”.  Nihilists of course usually ignore the notion of evil and to the post-modernists it was just another of those “lazy” words which ascribed values of right & wrong which they knew were something wholly subjective, evil as context-dependent as anything else.  Interestingly, in the language of the polarized world of US politics, while the notional “right” (conservatives, MAGA, some of what’s left of the Republican Party) tends to label the notional “left” (liberals, progressives, the radical factions of the Democratic Party) as evil, the left seems to depict their enemies (they’re no longer “opponents”) less as “evil” and more as “stupid”.

The POTUS & the Pope: Francis & Donald Trump (aka the lesser of two evils), the Vatican, May 2017.

Between the pontificates of Pius XI (1857–1939; pope 1922-1939) and  Francis (b 1936; pope since 2013), all that seems to have changed in the Holy See’s world view is that civilization has moved from being threatened by communism, homosexuality and Freemasony to being menaced by Islam, homosexuality and Freemasony.  It therefore piqued the interest of journalists accompanying the pope on his recent 12-day journey across Southeast Asia when they were told by a Vatican press secretary his Holiness would, during the scheduled press conference, discuss the upcoming US presidential election: duly, the scribes assembled in their places on the papal plane. The pope didn’t explicitly tell people for whom they should vote nor even make his preference obvious as Taylor Swift (b 1989) would in her endorsement mobilizing the childless cat lady vote but he did speak in an oracular way, critiquing both Kamala Harris (b 1964; US vice president since 2021) and Donald Trump (b 1946; US president 2017-2021) as “against life”, urging Catholic voters to choose the “lesser of two evils.”  That would have been a good prelude had he gone further but there he stopped: “One must choose the lesser of two evils. Who is the lesser of two evils?  That lady or that gentleman? I don’t know.”

Socks (1989-2009; FCOTUS (First Cat of the United States 1993-2001)) was Chelsea Clinton's (b 1980; FDOTUS (First Daughter of the United States)) cat.  Cartoon by Pat Oliphant, 1996.

The lesser of two evils: Australian-born US political cartoonist Pat Oliphant’s (b 1935) take on the campaign tactics of Bill Clinton (b 1946; US president 1993-2001) who was the Democratic Party nominee in the 1996 US presidential election against Republican Bob Dole (1923–2021).  President Clinton won by a wide margin which would have been more handsome still, had there not been a third-party candidate.  Oliphant’s cartoons are now held in the collection of the National Library of Congress.  It’s not unusual for the task presented to voters in US presidential elections to be reduced to finding “the lesser of two evils”.  In 1964 when the Democrats nominated Lyndon Johnson (LBJ, 1908–1973; US president 1963-1969) to run against the Republican's Barry Goldwater (1909–1998), the conclusion of many was it was either “a crook or a kook”.  On the day, the lesser of the two evils proved to be crooked old Lyndon who won in a landslide over crazy old Barry.

Francis has some history in criticizing Mr Trump’s handling of immigration but the tone of his language has tended to suggest he’s more disturbed by politicians who support the provision of abortion services although he did make clear he sees both issues in stark moral terms: “To send migrants away, to leave them wherever you want, to leave them… it’s something terrible, there is evil there. To send away a child from the womb of the mother is an assassination, because there is life. We must speak about these things clearly.”  Francis has in the past labelled abortion a “plague” and a “crime” akin to “mafia” behavior, although he did resist suggestions the US bishops should deny Holy Communion to “pro-choice” politicians (which would have included Joe Biden (b 1942; US president 2021-2025), conscious no doubt that accusations of being an “agent of foreign interference” in the US electoral process would be of no benefit.  Despite that, he didn’t seek to prevent the bishops calling abortion is “our preeminent priority” in Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship, the 2024 edition of their quadrennial document on voting.  Some 20% of the US electorate describe themselves as Catholics, their vote in 2020 splitting 52/47% Biden/Trump but that was during the Roe v Wade (1973) era and abortion wasn’t quite the issue it's since become and a majority of the faith in the believe it should be available with only around 10% absolutist right-to-lifers.  Analysts concluded Francis regards Mr Trump as less evil than Ms Harris and will be pleased if his flock votes accordingly; while he refrained from being explicit, he did conclude: “Not voting is ugly.  It is not good.  You must vote.”