Panama Papers
As many of you are probably aware, there was a huge data dump/leak/sharing extracted from one of the largest law firms in Panama, which inculcates a huge number of politicians/children-of-rich/rich/divine rulers of world for money laundering. Here's the link.
Some of the not surprising people there:
1. Malaysian Prime Minister's Razak's son. Recently the Malaysian Prime Minister was found to have something like 600 million USD, which he said he received as a 'gift'. Of course, there was more than 600 million USD missing from the Malaysian treasury. He claims to have received it from the Saudi's. He must have given Salman a really nice, long blow job.
2. High ranking Communist Party of China officials.
3. US puppet leader of Iraq during the Bush regime, Ayad Allawi. It's not surprising because anyone the US puts into power is usually a corrupt scumbag, reflecting the best of American ideals.
4. The Kirchner power-family of Argentina. Long accused of massive corruption, this is indisputable proof. Oh, and that's not Argentina's only contestant for evil: the current sitting Prime Minister, Mauricio Marci, is there as well.
5. A long list of African politicians and intelligence people. A large number with strong ties to the US.
6. Vladmir Putin and friends.
The list is quite long, I highly recommend checking it out for yourself.
Some of the not surprising people there:
1. Malaysian Prime Minister's Razak's son. Recently the Malaysian Prime Minister was found to have something like 600 million USD, which he said he received as a 'gift'. Of course, there was more than 600 million USD missing from the Malaysian treasury. He claims to have received it from the Saudi's. He must have given Salman a really nice, long blow job.
2. High ranking Communist Party of China officials.
3. US puppet leader of Iraq during the Bush regime, Ayad Allawi. It's not surprising because anyone the US puts into power is usually a corrupt scumbag, reflecting the best of American ideals.
4. The Kirchner power-family of Argentina. Long accused of massive corruption, this is indisputable proof. Oh, and that's not Argentina's only contestant for evil: the current sitting Prime Minister, Mauricio Marci, is there as well.
5. A long list of African politicians and intelligence people. A large number with strong ties to the US.
6. Vladmir Putin and friends.
The list is quite long, I highly recommend checking it out for yourself.
Comments (47)
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/04/03/panama-papers-biggest-leak-history-exposes-global-web-corruption
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2016/04/corporate-media-gatekeepers-protect-western-1-from-panama-leak/
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Quote:
Whoever leaked the Mossack Fonseca papers appears motivated by a genuine desire to expose the system that enables the ultra wealthy to hide their massive stashes, often corruptly obtained and all involved in tax avoidance. These Panamanian lawyers hide the wealth of a significant proportion of the 1%, and the massive leak of their documents ought to be a wonderful thing
......."What do you expect? The leak is being managed by the grandly but laughably named “International Consortium of Investigative Journalists”, which is funded and organised entirely by the USA’s Center for Public Integrity. Their funders include
Ford Foundation
Carnegie Endowment
Rockefeller Family Fund
W K Kellogg Foundation
Open Society Foundation (Soros)"
I think the impact to the US, when that part of the data is released, will probably be huge. It could bring down Hillary Clinton, (we already know they have shell companies), and Donald Trump, (many friends and people he admires are on the current list). This is just one legal company, but with history going back 40 years. Already released are some contributions to different sides of the Syrian Civil War, whose funds ended up with Al Qaeda and ISIS.
It will be interesting to watch. Having a shell company isn't necessarily illegal, although in some countries it is more serious, (India, for example, doesn't allow locals to invest in foreign companies -- but some of the most famous names in the country are seen starting shell companies from which they can invest, earn profits on their investments and avoid taxes). The effect would be more on public perception. Remember the "Arab Spring" revolution was brought about by the revelation about corruption concerning the leaders there.
NPR covered it. Did you check out CBS, ABC, NBC? PBS? Newspapers?
Things were just unfolding, so they wouldn't be in the newspapers yet. Local news lead story was about a chihuahua that got out onto the Oakland Bay Bridge being chased by police. The next day, all the news media reported on it, but I noticed many stories were titled "What you need to know about the Panama Papers". As expected, many news sources implied it was just a silly European thing leading people in Iceland to throw yogurt at politicians, and it was all more about Putin. It seems like only a few news outlets mentioned how hard Obama and Clinton had pushed for the Panama Trade Agreement, despite complaints it would just create tax havens and a channel for money laundering.
When I got into my work, (at a subsidiary of a European bank), they are assigning us all etchics courses. I saw that another subsidiary was mentioned in helping someone in Morocco hide funds.
Thanks for bringing this text and sub-text to the fore.
The text -- how the oligarchic pigs are protecting their piles of plunder -- is important. There are also several sub-texts here of some importance. I do not expect that congress will hold hearings on any of these matters.
1. Who all is involved in "The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists" and why did the NYT know nothing about this? If the "first paper" (newspaper of record, newspaper serving the heart of the beast on the Island of Manhattan, etc.) didn't know about this, what else do they not know about?
2. The story should be generating more heat here in the US than it is. Tax sheltering is a critical piece of how the 1% gets by. Of course, some tax shelters, like inversions, are done in broad daylight. The companies even hold press conferences to announce them (like when Pfizer becomes a corporate citizen of Ireland, say, to avoid taxes in the U.S.).
3. Did the U.S. government know about this, how much, and when, and if they knew about it, did they consider doing anything to stop it? Or, was the USG, like the NYT, not privy to the good works of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists? Were any prominent Americans involved in the tax evasion operation? (And if not, what better tax evasion schemes are they using?)
The icij has hq in Washington DC and a number of US journalists in its membership: https://www.icij.org/index.html
Acting within the law ? doing what is right.
I guess that makes it all okay, then.
It's a small world.
Well, at least the Icelandic prime minister had to go. The financial crisis hurt Iceland so bad that this was an especially bad wound. Latinos and africans etc. know their leaders are corrupt.
Keep in mind that Mossack Fonseca is the fourth-largest offshoring law firm. The three others are likely to contain a majority of the world's elite. It isn't surprising to me that law firms specializing in shell companies, offshoring, tax evasion, and various forms of subtle (questionably legal according to the state) large-stakes money laundering would be effected by the same rules of the economy that said elites organize, namely monopolization. When it comes to information containment, this is perhaps a weakness of theirs, and we see this weakness playing out on our screens. It also happens to be a structural weakness of the system (as evidenced by 2008 and 'too big to fail').
Quoting Cavacava
The conspicuous lack of exposure to Americans (high level or otherwise) could be due to a number of different reasons, some of which are relatively innocuous and uninteresting, like most elite Americans might simply employ such financial services with firms within the US (gotta stay competitive in the tax evasion market, after all). But we should consider the importance of what you bring up. The UK is MF's largest country of origin for clients (second to Hong Kong), yet only represents a fraction of the spotlighted figures in the reports. Additionally, there are over 3,000 US companies that are clients for MF. These facts, combined with the observation that these reporters (who are responsible to their funders) poured over these papers for some time now, means that they made a conscious and deliberate effort to censor or withhold information that might be damaging to Americans.
The Guardian (one of the outlets privy to the leaks) launched the story framed primarily as an expose on Putin, despite the fact that Putin himself wasn't even named in the documents.
Out of 11.5 million documents, only 149 were released. There is then, a meta-story here of corruption and intrigue, that is groups with certain ideological agendas releasing attacks veiled as journalism and shocking exposes of the truth (and, how did the Australian government get ahold of these leaks?). I'm not fan of Putin or these (mosty) E.European and Arab oligarchs (Western ones are called 'business tycoons', sounds nicer doesn't it?), and would like to see them go down burning as much as the next guy, but the point is that there seems to be an obvious effort by someone to make the double-edged sword of transparency and information one-edged.
Nobody knows who the leaker was (and MF claims that it wasn't a leak from the inside of their firm, but from an outside attacker who gained access to their systems). Short of conspiratorial conjecture on who he/she/they were, they were at least incredibly stupid (or naive) when it came to choosing their journalists if total transparency and exposure were their aims.
But unless the sources deleted all traces of the information in their possession, there is nothing holding them back from leaking the data to Wikileaks or The Intercept.
TL;DR: Americans aren't law-abiding angels or less corrupt than others, it's just shitty and highly compromised journalism.
True. It's a natural act, and self-interest is present within human nature, so if they can exploit the situation for the sake of themselves - even if it's at the expense of others, then they will do so.
[quote=Zizek]Owners of the wealth who moved it to offshore accounts and tax havens are not greedy monsters, but individuals who simply act like rational subjects trying to safeguard their wealth.[/quote]
I think that it's a bit of both. Why else would anyone want to safeguard their wealth to begin with? More for me, less for society. And these aren't small sums of money that we're talking about. Greed is the motive, reason is the method.
Quoting discoii
I don't buy this. That people close to him were involved I agree. But there is no clear evidence that Putin himself was involved in any way.
This is where your political affiliation becomes a hindrance. Conservativism and liberalism are hardly the best tools at our disposal for rooting out such corruption. On the contrary, they got us into this mess to begin with. The clue is in the name. The corruption occurred under the current system, so conservation would not resolve the problem, but only see to it that the problem persists. And those listed were at liberty to do as they did, so they need less of it.
I don't think the liberty of people should be affected, but rather that real justice ought to exist, and people who do such things be punished for it. The problem in the West is that we live in a society which no longer punishes breaking the law properly. Or it punishes the wrong people for the wrong reasons. It punishes the guy who steals a chicken with years in jail, while it leaves the one who steals millions of dollars and causes thousands of people to lose their jobs unpunished.
I'm a conservative on social issues first and foremost, not on economic issues (on economic issue I'm quite centrist). I find conservatism on social issue to be the correct moral position to adopt. One other problem which facilitates this behavior is that there no longer exists a code of honor, and social structures do not exist to properly enforce it. That's why we end up with such weak leaders who are unworthy and immoral people.
We have a growing middle class who wants to be just like the rich - have a few cars, date a new girl every night, etc. The problem with this is that they end up treating people (women for example) as means to an end, instead of ends in themselves, and my whole point is that people are ends in themselves and ought to be treated as such. That is why I put so much emphasis on the social side. I believe the source of all this evil is moral ignorance. People just think that being immoral is equivalent or necessary to being successful, and that immoral people end up happier than moral people. We have the image of the old religious man starving himself to death and navel-gazing... that's our image of the moral man, and so a profound moral ignorance settles over people. I think religion, especially Christian religion, and its emphasis on the moral man as a suffering man has harmed our culture. Instead of picturing the virtuous man as ultimately triumphant both in life and in death (pace Socrates: "the good man has nothing to fear, either in life or in death", or Jesus: "Seek ye first the Kingdom of Heaven, and ALL things shall be added unto you") we have created this false image which has deceived people.
Second of all, our culture does not appreciate politics (Trump is right on this point - there just is no respect for politicians anymore). We have treated and pictured all politicians as lying snakes, and to a certain extent this has made it a self-fulfilling prophecy, because it has made people believe they simply have to be like this to be successful in politics. These are issues that can be resolved by returning to traditional Western virtues. What is happening instead though, is that comedians and the media find examples of priests, and other people who are supposed to be virtuous, and show that these people are also immoral. For example, they show priests having sex with children, or priests engaging in promiscuous sex, or laundering money, etc. So this further makes people think that morality is fake, and to be happy, you must be immoral - because look, even those people who are supposed to be moral examples are immoral.
If society is no longer properly punishing people who break the law (and by this I mean the right people with the right kind of punishment) it is probably because the justice system and the criminals are cronies. For instance, major crimes are occurring in the financial sector, but few trials are being initiated. Why? Because there is a revolving door between regulatory agency personnel and financial business personnel.
Quoting Agustino
Possibly, but this is limited to certain areas within the various layers of society. If it was generally present, then society would have fallen apart already. It hasn't, but there are definitely pockets of corruption.
Quoting Agustino
The middle class is shrinking, not growing; this is a significant problem contributing to the collective problems of society. People lose faith in a society which seems to be facilitating their downward economic and social mobility -- as well they should. When modest dreams of advancement are frustrated (because you couldn't afford to date a new girl twice a month, let alone every night) people
begin to withdraw their loyalty--again, as well they should.
Quoting Agustino
I agree that people are ends and not means and should be treated as such; the master narrative in the degraded capitalist culture is quite the opposite: "If you can't help me get ahead, what good are you?"
Quoting Agustino
Politicians getting no respect is a problem that he has compounded several times over. ,,,
Quoting Agustino
Maybe, but it depends on which Western virtues one wants to return to. Before the present moment profit became a traditional virtue. Solidarity of the masses is another western virtue. Freedom of speech, even for corporations, is a virtue. Marriage is a virtue, in a sense, whether it has become a nightmarish experience or whether it is blesséd.
I'm all for virtue, but I think that as we go about reclaiming our traditional virtues, we need to clarify just what, exactly, is virtuous and what isn't.
Whatever brings about the most nostalgia... ;)
I agree.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Growing pockets of corruption, and also a culture which makes corruption seem cool and smart.
Quoting Bitter Crank
I don't think so. More and more people consider themselves middle class, even though in truth they are not. This middle class deception is part of the tricks that a consumerist society employs to propagate itself. And I disagree that dating a new girl twice a month is a worthy or modest dream for example. People should just look for the right person instead of endlessly date for no real, serious reason. They should be more concerned in growing in intimacy with a person rather than looking for new prospects. That way, there would be a lot more social harmony. And social structures should exist to facilitate this. Right now many people are promiscuous because they simply cannot trust that their partners will be loyal to them, and so they're afraid to make such a commitment.
Quoting Bitter Crank
I agree with this criticism of capitalism.
Quoting Bitter Crank
I don't think profit is a virtue.
Then we're on the same page in that respect.
Quoting Agustino
In the 'Political Affiliation' thread, you described yourself as a Classical Conservative liberal.
I do believe in moral equality of all people (in religious terms that we're all equal before God). That may come close to social liberalism. Economic liberalism not really - I think the core value should be taking care of and respecting people, and this value should come prior to one's own individual freedom.
To use something like 'human nature' (qua 'natural law', perhaps biologically coded) to explain the current situation of tax evasion I think is mystifying. That is, mystification in the sense that it confuses something social, transient, and materially/historically contextual for some ontological essential nature of the universe. Thus the mystification happens on the metaphysical level, for even the biological (as Darwin has shown) is always in a state of flux, and transition, adapting dialectically with the environment (as the sum of material, historical circumstances which construct the 'situation').
The speed an ease at which the ruling classes of society can transfer mass sums of accumulated capital across the globe, and the particular mapping of the globe into tiered sectors regulated by international monetary and regional/inter-national governing institutions, the transfer of sovereignty mostly to international institutions, and predominantly to the economic sphere in the hands of a small minority of mostly international capital: all of these things go into why the practices revealed in the PP are common place among the capitalist and political classes.
Quoting Sapientia
Again, we can talk about greed and various motives, only as a description of ideology in reference to the concrete historical situation.
In my world travels, I found that what passes for traditional and conservative values is just a paper thin illusion. When I lived in a conservative Muslim country, where 80-90% of women in government offices and schools wear headscarves. But then I came across old movies, newspapers and magazines and there hardly any women wore headscarves. I did some research and found that it was a movement pushed by a few self-righteous wealthy people trying to place themselves at a higher moral level than the rest of the country, then either pressured people to go along with them, or they jump on the bandwagon to gain a wealthy aura by association. It seemed more obvious looking in from the outside at a foreign culture, but eventually I realized the same thing was happening back home. All these conservative, religious or traditional values are actually very recent innovations. A reaction against some perceived threat to authority. The Taliban are actually very similar to American evangelicals behind all the superficial differences. They actually hate and love the same things, but they draw their authority against a different backstory. In reality, the things they have "always traditionally opposed" are concepts that didn't exist until recently. The "golden age" they seem to think they are trying to resurrect never existed outside of fairytales. The Taliban, ("the students" in Arabic), started as a revolt to Soviet occupation in the 70's and 80's. Before then, Afghans were fairly liberal and cosmopolitan. The current wave of American Christian fundamentalism is a fairly recent invention. If you went back a century, the Christians of that era had completely different values.
I think you've missed the mark there. Natural? Yes. Law? No. It's about human nature, not the nature of the universe. And I'm not ruling out the highly unlikely possibility that human nature can change to such an extent that the selfish aspect disappears. What I'm saying is not at all mystical; it is in fact a common sense observation.
Also, to suggest that this aspect of human nature is transient or has only been present in certain phases throughout history or in certain historical contexts is very misleading. I can assure you, no perfectly altruistic and cooperative utopia can be found in human history. There has always been those who are selfish, and that doesn't seem likely to change anytime soon. You'd have to have your head in the clouds to believe otherwise.
That's all for now, because I'm on a lunch break, and I don't have much time.
And what a shitty IT unit at MF. How can you not notice a transfer of 2.6 TB of data?
It's mystifying when it serves as a reductionist explanation for something like contemporary practices of tax evasion. Why the practices revealed in the PP are so common-place and widespread among the elites (enjoying a state of exception not afforded others who can't purchase such services) is a historical, economic, and political matter. Greed doesn't need to enter into play anywhere here: you could be the most ethically conflicted and altruistic individual but recognize that it is the most rational decision to make to stay competitive, within the logic of how the modern global capitalist economy is concretely organized. Concretely, that is, as a contingent matter of decisions being made, laws and treaties being written, a state of the political balance between power structures, and so on. It is mystifying when such matters are 'explained away' by some ontological or natural necessity, whether it be the divine right of kings or 'human nature'. As it tells us that, 'well what do we expect, it's just human nature, nothing we can do about it'.
Quoting Sapientia
Greed is nothing new, we can find it in the ancient literature. This is not my point. My point is however, that greed takes on a particular precedence and form within whatever historical and social situation you find yourself in. There are no perfectly altruistic and cooperative utopias that we know of in history, but there are endless examples of societies that heavily constricted the socially acceptable ways in which greed could be manifested (if at all). Who cares if there are no examples of perfect anything? It's entirely meaningless when it comes to things like societies, and doesn't add anything here.
I would actually argue that greed isn't natural at all, but is entirely socialized. But I don't really need to say that to argue what I'm arguing. All I really need to say is that whatever 'natural drives' may be there, they're completely transformed and given meaning, value, and normative character when interpreted through language, culture, and ideology. And what's more, there's a reality to the material circumstances that don't give a damn about how virtuous you are, you're forced to do 'greedy' things just to survive.
It shouldn't be mystifying to point out two simple truths behind the Panama Papers:
1. These people had selfish motives.
2. The political and legal system allowed it occur.
Nor should it be mystifying to point out the simple and self-evident truth that selfishness is a part of human nature, and has been from the beginning.
The reason that you and Zizek are wrong to think that this can rightly be characterised as a purely rational act without the selfish motive, is that, firstly, as Hume rightly said, reason is the slave of the passions, and secondly, these people weren't naive enough to be unaware of what they were doing and the consequences of their actions. What makes it selfish is that they did so in spite of the consequences. You're guilty of selfishness the moment you knowingly jump on the band wagon. To argue otherwise is not only mistaken, it actually plays right into their hands and feeds the apologist narrative, precisely at a time when we need to speak out against these fiends and display unity in the face of adversity.
Your last sentence riled me up the most, as it couldn't be further from the truth. It doesn't tell us that there is nothing that we can do. On the contrary, we don't need to drastically alter human nature in order to better prevent this sort of injustice from occurring. We aren't powerless to act; that's just what they want us to believe.
Quoting Shevek
You don't need to rely on historical literature to know that. You just need to know a thing or two about human nature. The historical literature just tells us how this aspect of human nature manifested.
Quoting Shevek
Well, I agree with your point, then... although that last qualification in the brackets gives the highly misleading impression that there has ever been a society in which there was not a single way in which greed manifested itself in a form that was socially acceptable. But the word I used was "selfishness", i.e. self-interest at the expense of others, and looking back through history right up to contemporary times, countless examples can easily be found. It can be found in slavery, serfdom, and in the capitalism of today.
Quoting Shevek
Pah!
Quoting Shevek
That's pretty vague, but I think I agree. I don't see this as detracting from my point.
Quoting Shevek
In some cases that is true, but it'd be preposterous to claim that to be true of the case under discussion. As if these vastly wealthy individuals were forced into avoiding tax! No, that'd be ridiculous, so I hope that that's not what you're suggesting.
Usually it's places like Switzerland, Cyprus or places that aren't favoured by Anglo-American money where "outrageous" tax havens are.