Panama Papers: Revealing details live in the gaps between the lines
Kit Knightly
Certain species of lizard – when threatened, cornered or in danger of being eaten – have the ability to “drop” their tail. This process, “Autotomy” (from the Greek, auto=self, tome=severing), enables the lizard to flee whilst the predator gets a brief distraction and small meal. The lizard survives. Tails grow back.
A simple, efficient survival method. The body ejects a replaceable part in protection of the vital whole. Easily adapted for the “Grand Chess Board”. Pinochet, the Shah of Iran, Saddam Hussein. All have played their part, only to be dropped when it became convenient. Despots and puppets grow back, too.
The Panama Papers broke, yesterday. Dozens of MSM outlets joined together in echoing this startling piece of investigative journalism: Rich people avoid paying their taxes. I know, I was shocked too.
Most of the BIG HEADLINES and threatening looking diagrams were reserved for Vladimir Putin (The Guardian) and Bashar al-Assad (The Independent), despite the fact that (as we covered last night) neither are named in any of the leaked documents.
The names that ARE mentioned? A who’s who of disposable despots, monsters of the week and inconveniently uncooperative politicians…with a few minor British political figures to add some verisimilutude.
Petro Poroshenko, a slow, stupid, politically inept post-Soviet fossil thrown into the least appealing Presidency on the planet.
Pavlo Lazarenko – convicted criminal and former Ukrainian PM.
Bidzina Ivanishvili – former PM of Georgia under the bufoon Saakashvili.
Sheikh Khalifa, President of the UAE and Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber bin Mohammed bin Thani Al Thani former PM of Qatar, both magnets for acceptable criticism.
The King of Saudi Arbia, the perrenial boogeyman of “alternative” thinkers, and reposit of all mainstream criticism of any Western foreign policy – a sock puppet with a scary face, that we’re all encouraged to boo and hiss at so we can feel we have made a stand.
Ten-a-penny climbers, idiots and monsters. Lizard tails all. Cut them off and grow a new one.
No American citizens were named. No American companies were implicated. In espionage terms this is what they call a “limited hangout”: a vaguely worded and dishonestly presented partial truth, used to add credence to a backstory and increase the believability of the source.
In more coloquial, and honest, terminology: It is agenda-driven bullshit.
The cooperative of intelligence-backed hacks who “broke” this “story” all hail from The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) a “special project” (their website tells us) of the not-at-all-Orwellian-sounding “Center for Public Integrity”.
Now, we’ve been here before – see our work on The New East Network – let’s just take a stroll down the About page of the Center for Public Integrity, and find out where they get their money from:
- The Goldman-Sonnenfeldt Foundation – they don’t have a website, but their President does. He’s a “philanthropist and entrepeneur”. In case you’re wondering…yes, that is “Goldman” as in “Goldman Sachs”.
- The Ford Foundation – yes, as in Henry Ford. Business magnate and Nazi collaborator.
- Open Society Foundation – we’ve tangled with these fine folks before. The OSF are an NGO set up by billionaire George Soros. Because billionaires love justice and freedom.
- The Rockefeller Brothers Fund and Rockefeller Family Fund – how exactly these two things differ I’m not sure, however they do both exist, and they both give money to the CfPI, because the Rockefellers are all about that integrity.
- The Carnegie Corporation of New York – As in Andrew Carnegie, the billionaire. As in the Carnegie Endowment for American Hegemony…sorry, I mean International Peace.
So – to sum up:
George Soros, David Rockefeller, the Carnegie Corporation, the Ford Foundation, Goldman-Sachs et al. – who are all rabidly anti-corruption and always pay their taxes – all pooled their resources to fund the “International Consortium of Investigative Journalists” and tasked them with investigating shady international financial practices.
The result is this “leak”, a list of geo-political nobodies, has-beens, easy targets and dead ancestors. The tenuous and absurd connections to “enemies” of the West are exaggerated and plastered all over the headlines, whilst the names of allies and relatives are sidelined and barely mentioned – the majority of the information will “never be made public” according to the Guardian.
This is what “investigative journalism” has come to, printing billionaires’ enemy lists under the guise of “leaks”.
Maybe this is a sign they feel cornered or threatened – because all they offer us here is a brief distraction and a small meal.
SUPPORT OFFGUARDIAN
If you enjoy OffG's content, please help us make our monthly fund-raising goal and keep the site alive.
For other ways to donate, including direct-transfer bank details click HERE.
I see you don’t monetize your page, don’t waste your traffic,
you can earn additional bucks every month because you’ve
got hi quality content. If you want to know how to make extra bucks, search for: Mrdalekjd methods for $$$
Really interesting
Reblogged this on Humano Buenos Aires.
The ‘most significant leak ever’ disappears from the western MSM news cycle just as news of Israel’s involvement comes out. This invovlement is not reported in the western MSM, but in Israel itself.
Haaretz reports “Israeli Diamond Tycoons Listed in Leaked Panama Papers”
“Diamond and mining magnate Dan Gertler is mentioned more than 200 times in the leaked documents of Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, a leader in establishing shell companies that often serve to conceal the ownership of assets.”
http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.713130
This just confirms that as far as the west goes, the leak was not an investigation into corruption per se and that the western MSM self-censor to maintain Israel’s propaganda-based image in the west.
I’m looking for facts. Another poster, in another discussion (Kit’s first article on the Panama Papers I believe), mentioned the involvement of USAID with ICIJ. I don’t know much about ICIJ, but I now Know that it is corrupt. Sadly, I see that some good journos belong to it. Maybe they can be encouraged to give up their membership.
Considering that Soros and USAID are the same sort of evil, and have funded the very same US great game projects, it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that USAID was a funder of ICIJ also. Is that the case? Anyone?
I suggest you check this article out, by a source outside the Western MSM. It will answer many questions.
http://katehon.com/article/panama-papers-soros-against-rothschilds
‘ … a few minor British political figures to add some verisimilutude.’ David Cameron ‘minor’? Weeks before Cameron chairs an anti-corruption summit, which was presumably planned as a smokescreen behind which tax evasion could continue as before? Two months before the EU referendum when Cameron’s damaged reputation threatens to deliver a BREXIT vote to which TPTB are strongly opposed? As you said, ‘Revealing details live in the gaps between the lines’ of your article.
It’s an interesting moment to target obedient puppet Cameron with Brexit on the line. The question might be what replacement they have in mind.
All one has to ask is “does it expose Israel, UK Royalty, Soros, Rothschilds and the Monsantos”?
No. Move on and know who it serves and who it represents. Furthers the British Israel SAYANIM cartel. Period
“Bidzina Ivanishvili ā former PM of Georgia under the bufoon Saakashvili.” Actually Ivanishvili was one of Saakashvili’s biggest political opponents, and his Georgian Dream party has launched several legal campaigns against Saakashvili’s party (and Saakashvili personally). “No American citizens were named. No American companies were implicated.” A) Not actually true. B) The comparative lack of American names is more likely due to the fact that states like Delaware and Nevada function as effective ‘onshore offshore’ tax havens, due to America’s lax financial regulations. “The cooperative of intelligence-backed hacks who ābrokeā this āstoryā all hail from The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ)” Ken Silverstein trailed the story in Vice well over a year ago, and apparently offered it to Glenn Greenwald and Pierre Omidyar at the Intercept – https://twitter.com/KenSilverstein1/status/716803985915703297 In other words, if you’re going to create these puerile alternate realities to make yourselves feel special, you might want to… Read more Ā»
a) I made a statement of fact regarding Mr Ivanishvili. He was Prime Minister under President Saakashvili, he has since retired and is currently a political irrelevence. I don’t know why you have taken issue with this undisputed fact. b) At the time of publishing ZERO American citizens had been named. A handful of minor celebrities have since been connected, but if anything this only accentuates my point: they had REAL names, and chose to focus on strained connections to designated “villains”. c) Every mainstream news outlet has credited the work of the ICIJ, it has been their story from the get-go. The ICIJ receives its funding from numerous suspect sources. If this is a “demonstrable falsehood”…feel free to demonstrate it. In other words, if you’re going to try and engage in a conversation on this topic, you might want to bring more to the table than childish ad hominem… Read more Ā»
You need to bring some real facts, instead of your own useless opinion. Mainstream media quoting or claiming ANYTHING only represents THEIR corporate elite sponsor’s interests and proves zero. Learn some logic.
On a linear timeline. Silverstein covered this first- and for honest reason, not as a weapon to be used against the expose’s targets.
Learn some classics. Cui bono or even a contemporary idiom: “show us the Iraq WMDs”. Fake NGOs sponsored by the same Elite that sponsor the MSM- posing as ostensible watchdogs on the MSM- is just more agitprop rubbish.
http://themillenniumreport.com/2016/04/mossack-fonseca-the-nazi-cia-and-nevada-connections-and-why-its-now-rothschilds-turn/
Reblogged this on Taking Sides.
Reblogged this on farneyman.
Very few billionaires are funding anything on the anti-global-warming side (and the only two that are prominent are Jeremy Grantham and Tom Steyer). But their expenditures are dwarfed by those of the Koch brothers on the pro-global-warming side, and there are many other billionaires that are likewise spending heavily on the pro-global-warming side. Here’s just the Koch brothers:
http://kochcash.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Embargo_Report.pdf
Furthermore, there is no reasonable doubt that the planet is burning up from excess carbon gases and the “greenhouse effect” they produce. See:
http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/8/2/024024;jsessionid=369242C04A3D974B1C6E8AD114F9EE2C.c4
You’re on the wrong side of the biggest public-policy issue in the entire history of humanity — and the world.
Perhaps it’s all a smoke screen to divert attention from this:
http://www.theage.com.au/interactive/2016/the-bribe-factory/
Trickmeister,
I agree with you one hundred per cent in the smoke screen theory.
The breaking news and exclusive of The Age is HUGE. !!!!
They (The Age) have worked on that exclusive very thoroughly. It is earth shattering as stories go!
It is being overshadowed, deliberately, by the The Panama Papers.
Journalists are being fooled, and cannot smell a real story in front of them!
So yes one hundred per cent in agreement with you!
Frickin awesome, man! Very well-written piece, and a great analogy. You have put into words that which has been swirling through my mind since I heard of this nonsense. Good work!
…the majority of the information will ānever be made publicā… You bet, Wikileaks has started to make it available. The tax-dodging implication of US corporations is making Obama have the jitters, and it is splashing Hillary Clinton as on Tuesday, candidate Sanders blasted Clinton, saying that she “helped push the Panama Free Trade Agreement through Congress as Secretary of State and the results have been a disaster.” Don’t dismiss what the Papers will bring about, for the moment a small lizard tail has fallen in Iceland, but Macri, the recently annointed by Obama himself Argentina president, and the friend of the financial vultures, is in hot water. Further revelations are coming, and the sponsors of such a monumental release did a patchy work, as it always happens when you open Pandora’s box. Did they want to incriminate Putin and Assad? They did a bad job, as they weren’t even named,… Read more Ā»
Where is the revelations on Netanyahu, Ariel Sharon, Meir Dagon, Russian jew Oligarchs, Sheldon Adelson, SOROS, Rothschild rot…? Missing in Action.
Sheeple too stupid to see anything beyond where they are led by the nose via the ZIoElite. Even Wikiwash crap- after it was revealed about THEM- that they’d made deals w/ fellow Tribe jew Assange, to withhold ugly dirt on Israel? The sheeple STILL consider this limited hangout to be a reputable source. WTFU
Reblogged this on Eurasia News Online.
Meanwhile, while the world and the Guardian focuses on who has bought what Mayfair property through an offshore company and who is “in” and “out” in Langley’s version of Cosmo, in Syria comes the news that has been buried by all this.
Al Quaida/Al Nusra now has surface to air missiles (and no one bothers to ask what type and who supplied them) and has downed a Syrian plane (pity the poor pilot who has allegedly been captured by the “moderate” Syrian rebels).
It has also started a major offensive in Latakia.
The Empire of Chaos strikes back. Stupid move though given the number of “coalition of the willing (and uninvited)” planes in the skies over Syria and the potential for untold problems for commercial airliners.
I have noticed Cameron being involved someway only by englisch newspapers. German “Quality media” (SZ, Spiegel) didn’t cover that at all.
But, as I see, no one of you mentions it here as well. Can someone of you tell me plz, whether this is because it is obvious that David Cameron is no way involved, or any other reason?
Slightly confusing me, because, as said, german media do not issue it at all.
Dankeschƶn in advance
It’s true. Cameron’s dead father made an offshore and I suppose Cameron benefitted. Revealing this is obviously some sort of warning to Cameron from the PTB.
UK libel laws are pretty strong. David Cameron’s father is dead; he won’t sue the newspapers for defamation. Writing about someone who is alive – now that’s risky.
The information leak was about 2.6 terabytes – probably too much for many MSM newsrooms to handle these days as they have suffered cost-cutting and loss of staff over the years. It seems that different journalists took different pieces away from it according to their nationality.
There are 350 Canadian individuals and organisations, and 800 Australian individuals and organisations named in the Panama Papers, but you would not know unless you read Canadian and Australian mainstream news media.
The British media have certainly noted David Cameron’s link through his stockbroker father but this link is not as important to them as the possibility of linking Vladimir Putin and Bashar al Assad to tax havens in Panama and the Caribbean, however laughably non-existent those links ended up being.
Reblogged this on wgrovedotnet.
“Pictured: NATO Heads of State and their ally, the King of Saudi Arabia”
BTW, the photo-caption looks wrong.
Totally agree with Kit: this is 90% psy-op.
One interesting point regarding Saudi Arabia, UAE and Qatar: monarchs can’t be taxed, so one has to wonder why they bothered setting up secret, off-shore accounts and founding dummy corporations? To finance terrorism maybe?
Monarchs can’t be taxed but they can be dethroned š
So their off shores are most likely a kind of insurance. Just in case.
That wicked Andrew Carnegie, causing havoc from beyond the grave. The wicked Robber Baron who gave his workforce half the proceeds from the sale of his Steel Empire to JP Morgan. What a crooked tight-wad Andrew was he should have gioven all of it to the workforce! and not wasted it on Libraries and University Endowments… SHAME!
I suggest you read up on the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and other Carnegie sponsored projects.
What ever kind of man Andrew Carnegie was, his name and money have been used to spread American political influence around the world, often at the expense of democracy and civilian well-being.
In the Soviet Union, people realized news could not be trusted and huddled around short-wave receivers to find out what was really happening. Today we browse the internet for the same reason.
The problem is that democracy does not work without unbiased reporting. You can’t cast a meaningful vote if you’re not informed. When newspapers are degraded to psyops, elections become a match to see which candidate has the best marketing professionals.
Worse, the candidates are more or less actors handpicked by the so-called. elite
Just a short step now to out and out fabrication. Will the Guardian become the new Forger’s Gazette?
Robert Parry article quoting you: https://consortiumnews.com/2016/04/04/corruption-as-a-propaganda-weapon/
When I saw that only 11 political figures were leaked, and of them Poroshenko and not Kolmoisky….
All this is spin doctorng! The idea is to lie ..lie..and lie….the british media is feral and not worth its reporting nowadays.
The Clinton Foundation provides a laundering service in a similar sense of the term.
Reblogged this on TheFlippinTruth.
Since Senator Bernie Sanders has been the only major-party candidate for President of the United States who’s mentioned “offshore tax havens”, it’ll be very interesting to see the responses of Clinton, Trump. Cruz and Kasich (if any, or “no comment, until everyone releases their comments…”) to the “Panama Papers”. The Tax Justice Network has been all over this huge global scandal for years; persons interested in learning all about the $trillion-dollar/year tax evasion industry, facilitated by the “Big Four” accounting firms, the most powerful legal firms, and the largest Wall Street/London banks can visit taxjustice.net along with the group’s YouTube channel “Tax Justice Network”. If this immeasurably important issue doesn’t immediately become an integral part of debates/discussions in the 2016 election for President of the United States, then only the Creator-God can help humanity.
Reblogged this on leruscino.
You’ve been a ll over this story from the beginning. Good.
I have a feeling that it will be some time before we find out why these ‘papers’ were released just now, after being sat upon for more than a year.
It’s Rockefeller, by the way, just the two ‘r’s.
It takes attaention away from the fact that Russia revealed to the UN that Turkey, a peace-loving member of NATO, that global force-for-peace, is the main source of arms for the ‘carefully vetted’ headchoppers aka ISIS. There is no way Turkey has been doing this without the knowledge and assistance of ISIS
edit – the final sentence should end ‘knowledge and assistance of NATO’ – doh!
Exactly my thoughts ! This is an attention deviation card that the West has played.
Distraction. What else is going on besides Turkey / Russia?
Well, at least temporarily, it’s gotten us all to stop talking about Assange and Snowden, hasn’t it?
That’s a terrific summary of the ‘Panama Papers’ analysis of a leaked data-dump that was produced by a large team of, it seems, propagandists for the U.S. aristocracy, a.k.a.: ‘investigative journalists.’ They’ll probably win a Pulitzer Prize for — their propaganda. The only bone I have to pick with Kit’s article about it is that there’s just a bit of propaganda in his summary of it, too. For examples: at least a few of the major funders of the Center for Public Integrity are decent, no real scam-operation. For example, Jeremy Grantham’s foundation, the Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment, has funded some of the most important empirical analyses of global warming, and the only flaws that I can find in their work consist of underlying falsehoods in microeconomic theory itself, where there is an assumption that people who live in the future should be assumed to be… Read more Ā»
The elephant in the room – how was this 2.6 TB of data acquired and by whom? Did someone steal or copy a backup disk? Intercept (presumably) secure client-server communications? Intercept at an ISP?
That gets to the issue of the ‘investigative team’s’ honesty and fairness in representing these data, data they fail to provide readers any convenient and quickly usable access to. Furthermore, this is just one of the several companies that provide such wealth-hiding services. Consequently, even if the interpretation by the ‘journalists’ is fair (which Kit argues well that it probably is not), the data might not be fairly representative of the elite’s scamming operations. All told, I think that the “Panama Papers” ‘revelations’ are of minor significance, in any case — other than their propaganda-significance, which the ‘news’ media seem to be doing their best to magnify as much and as big as they can.
I said this over at the Kremlin Stooge comment forums, so I think it worth repeating here: It would seem that whoever hacked and leaked the email information from Mossack Fonsecaās database must have been a pretty sophisticated hacker ā because I imagine that Mossack Fonsecaās client database must have strong or complicated Chinese walls to stop most hackers from trying to see whoās there ā and that person must be a government-paid hacker, perhaps a freelancer on contract to a security agency (as Ed Snowden was once upon a time: not a hacker but someone employed on contract). That might explain why as yet no US, EU, IMF or World Bank officials appear in the leaks: the hackerās employer has told him or her to leave off those people while it busies itself preparing to contact governments that the hacker has dirt on politicians and civil servants in the… Read more Ā»
Absolutely. The same seems possible in re. the recent spate of pedophile shaming done in the British media. Those implicated were mostly dead or relatively unimportant, but it might have been a timely warning to others in the Establishment of what might happen should they fail to toe the line.
Hope you don’t mind me ‘sharing’ your comment.
If Soros and his kind are funding the Center for Public Integrity then they will want to see return on that investment. And that will not include large amounts of truth-telling and public good. This is just common sense.
So, rather than saying “well, they’re not all bad – look at the work on global warming” we should be asking the more astute and cynical question – “why are so many billionaires funding studies into climate change?”
These days no agenda should be beyond questioning.
I had tried before to answer you but it instead entered as a response to this article, so here goes again:
Very few billionaires are funding anything on the anti-global-warming side (and the only two that are prominent are Jeremy Grantham and Tom Steyer). But their expenditures are dwarfed by those of the Koch brothers on the pro-global-warming side, and there are many other billionaires that are likewise spending heavily on the pro-global-warming side. Hereās just the Koch brothers:
http://kochcash.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Embargo_Report.pdf
Furthermore, there is no reasonable doubt that the planet is burning up from excess carbon gases and the āgreenhouse effectā they produce. See:
http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/8/2/024024;jsessionid=369242C04A3D974B1C6E8AD114F9EE2C.c4
Youāre on the wrong side of the biggest public-policy issue in the entire history of humanity ā and the world
Actually, Eric, if you can calm down for a moment, numerous Wall St banks and other financial organisations have been pushing for regulation on carbon emissions for some time. Among them Goldman Sachs… https://quidsapio.wordpress.com/2012/06/06/how-goldman-sachs-invented-cap-and-trade/. You don’t have to be a “denier” in order to feel a twinge of concern when climate change becomes the cause du jour for such people. In fact I’m a longtime Green, but I’m far from convinced the present climate change campaign is being waged solely – or even at all – for the good of the planet. I can’t help asking myself why “climate change” – unlike any other environmental issue – receives the devout endorsement of rags like the Guardian and the BBC, and indeed the entire so-called “liberal” establishment. These organs serve only one master, and it’s not Gaia. So, why are they being told to promote just one side of this debate,… Read more Ā»
That was an excellent comment, Catte. It contains just the sort of obvious commonsense observations that routinely get comments censored at CIF.
Global warming/climate change may or may not be a significant or a dangerous or a catastrophic phenomenon for future generations, and that’s a perfectly valid issue for discussion elsewhere – the “science” is far from settled. But that there are various scams being pushed in order to benefit the scamming classes at the expense of the rest of us is indisputable.
“Climate change” gets devout endorsement from The Guardian and its ilk because the way the discussion is framed puts the responsibility for refraining from activities likely to increase carbon emissions on individuals and households, not on corporations or governments. It’s easy to tell people not to travel on planes or to stop driving cars and take up public transport instead, as one first step among others to get the public to accept more spartan life-styles (and thus accept austerity policies), and this deflects attention away from those corporations and governments or government agencies who are biggest emitters of carbon emissions. Surely the greatest polluter and the largest emitter of carbon emissions is the US government through the Department of Defense? http://www.projectcensored.org/2-us-department-of-defense-is-the-worst-polluter-on-the-planet/ And who supplies arms, equipment and ordnance to the Department of Defense? – could those suppliers not be the very companies who promote a pro-global warming agenda and who… Read more Ā»
I absolutely agree the nuclear lobby is -at very best – seizing an opportunity here. The global warming question is such a dense tangle it’s hard to know where to begin dissecting out the facts from the matrix of hysteria, simplistic reductionism, and cynical manipulation. Maybe OffG should consider a rational and completely open discussion, in which both sides of the argument could be presented on equal terms. Hopefully without the polarisation and rabble rousing that too often attends the issue.
Hi Catte, Here is an interesting (and hopefully relevant) piece by Richard Courtney, titled: “Global Warming: How It All Began” (You can read it here should you want to: http://www.john-daly.com/history.htm) It’s reasonably short and to my mind very readable and, I also thought, rather compelling. It also has this fascinating flowchart depicting the mutually reinforcing influences of the institutional interests that Courtney believes to be originally responsible for raising the issue of CO2 emissions to the status of the single greatest threat to the existence of mankind today. I’d like to paste it here for your viewing pleasure, but all of my attempts have failed. I guess you will have to follow up the link to Courtney’s piece if you want to see the chart. Apologies to all. Another interesting read, I thought, is a piece by Zbigniew Jaworowski, M.D., Ph.D., D.Sc., titled āThe Sun, Not Man, Still Rules Our… Read more Ā»
Hi Norman, thanks for that link which looks worth reading. I think we all need to be wary and concerned of any situation in which one side of an argument is suppressed to extinction in the name of “consensus.” Truth – scientific or otherwise – doesn’t need to be backed by censorship.
“a grim pseudo-religious danse-macabre” Indeed. ‘Scientism’- the treatment of science as a religion -is a widely used tool of the ‘cabal.’ This is particularly apparent on Establishment debunking websites, like ‘Wikirational’ and ‘Metabunk’ (where it’s never a conspiracy.) I’ve read apparently unironic posts on sites like these, along the lines of; “Isn’t it terrible how so many people have such a poor understanding of science. Surely it’s obvious that…” followed by a huge equation with undefined terms. A recent(ish) Guardian article by the head of the Royal Society on the tired old subject of “why don’t the general public get science” got a response by one Ciffer along the lines of “If people understood science, we wouldn’t have all these dangerous anti-vaxxers and climate change deniers.” In reality, the science isn’t necessarily hard to understand; it’s a case of whether you trust the organisation doing the research. Also, science is… Read more Ā»