Time Ghost does a transparancy video explaining where the money goes. This is far more instructive than many, including the host Indy, think.
Note that no one at Time Ghost is, in any way, a dissident against Empire. That is not why I bring this to your attention.
I note this because, in the interest of upholding trust with their audience and supporters, Time Ghost showed the logistics supporting the operation to the public at-large.
Dissidents should take note of this video, and others like it, even by people they otherwise do not support because logistics doesn't give a shit about your politics anymore than gravity does. A successful operation OF ANY KIND has its logistics locked down tight.
Empire--specifically, the elite Thralls at the top of various agencies comprising its private and government arms across all the imperial spheres--know this. This is explicit in military, law enforcement, and intelligence operations and implicit elsewhere but the lesson is the same: cut off logistics, and resistance becomes impossible.
Time Ghost, being no threat to the Thralls of Empire running Globohomo, may operate as it does without fear. Dissidents do not.
This shows dissidents two things. First is what it takes to run a successful threat to Empire is just as much a matter of logistics--and, with that, organization and discipline--as it is to run Globohomo. Second is that the key difference is the capacity to interference with the enemy's logistics.
In the matter of logistics, as Time Ghost's video shows, there is a single chokepoint for Empire to employ: banking access.
Time Ghost cannot maintain operations if they are unable to purchase goods or pay for services, either direct (those needed to do specific things) or indirect (those needed to sustain those who do things). As dissidents have seen, being severed from access to the banking system is--to date--an effective counter to dissidents that present a viable threat.
Further complicating matters is that lesser Thralls, such as the rainbow-haired Death Cultists acting as disposable grunts for Empire's Globohomo wing or the womanly-natured petty bureaucrats of the Chinese Communist Party (male and female alike), use this mechanism to settle petty scores and massage the necessarily weak ego that being such a figure requires. This accounts for many of the uses outside of any legitimate state or national security interest (i.e. against actual predators such as traffickers and child predators) on lower-profile targets, regardless of alignment with Empire's dominant Regime in that sphere.
Before I return to the financial aspect, I will--for the observant--make the following note: when it is viable, cultivate and maintain logistics capacities outside of the banking system- and it is viable more often than you may think. All successful dissident movements and insuregencies do this.
Far-seeing dissidents, such as Andrew Torba, have known of this for years and are at work on alternatives. Right now, this is focused on the current point of contention: payment processing. What needs to come next, and soon after Torba or some other party succeeds, is alternative routing to the banks themselves and a bank that will deal with dissidents.
This is where big picture geopolitics comes into the picture.
As a matter of necessity, dissidents--especially those focused on the affairs of their specific nation and homeland--must keep the global picture in mind. This is because events half the world away directly impact upon their capacity to act, for good or ill.
The three imperial Spheres--Russia, China, Globohomo--are vying for who is Empire's Goodest Boy. Dissidents, out of necessity, should take advantage of this fact.
At the least, all dissidents regardless of their purpose should seek out a satellite office in a liminal space between the Imperial Powers; this, in fact, is the value of a place such as Dubai in the United Arab Emirates (and the UAE knows it, proven by its own efforts to stay in that liminal space). Those too weak to do so on their own should seek out partners to collaborate with on this purpose. The reason to do this is to secure access to banking outside one's home state.
All of this means that a dissident that is disorganized or undisciplined--unserious--must become both (become serious) to become able to pursue such a strategy and succeed. With this access to the core of logistics secured and locked down, the specific details of ensuring the flow of financial resources from that liminal space office to the field location that requires it can be worked out and erected.
In time, this means taking the reality of the corporate structures exposed by The Panama Papers (and its fellow exposure pieces) for the end of securing logistics. This is not optional; accept that is is required and get it done.
But that is for another post, as it means looking at what a successful dissident operation must be out of necessity: an intelligence network.
Regardless of the politics, or the means, operations that succeed are operations that locked down the ability to pay and get paid- and that, despite alternatives, ends up meaning banking access at all levels. This is what it takes to see Empire fall. Get on with it, or get crushed by it.
