US Domestic Politics and internal affairs

Wake me up when they use Gatling guns on the migrants.

The migrants know full well the chances they are taking.

Brazen fraud in the Arizona 2020 Presidential election electronic ballots. But that's "democracy".

Hole wrote:In the audit they were recounting fraudulent votes. It´s not about the numbers but if the ballots are from real people living in that state.

The US electoral system is a giant ballot stuffing farce.

Dunno where to post this, but given Biden's promise in promoting measures to strengthen transparency in world financial affairs, hopefully this news will spearhead further follow-on investigations.
Investigative reporters publish "Pandora's dossier"

Published data on the involvement of former and current heads of state in offshore operations.

MOSCOW, October 3 - RIA Novosti. The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), funded, in particular, by one of the funds of George Soros , published "Pandora's dossier" on the possible involvement of some world leaders in offshore schemes.

The authors called this investigation their largest ever exposure of financial secrets. The ICIJ noted that the stories featured more than 600 journalists from 117 countries and more than 11.9 million leaked data.

According to The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), the investigation affected more than 35 current and former national leaders, as well as 400 officials from about a hundred countries.

Among them, in particular, the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky , who is credited with buying luxury real estate in London through companies in the British Isles, Cyprus and Belize. The family of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev is also mentioned.

In 2016, the consortium released the Panama Papers of the law firm Mossack Fonseca . The company itself did not confirm the authenticity of the papers and called the actions of the journalists a crime.

https://ria.ru/20211003/rassledovanie-1752894887.html

In 2016, the consortium released the Panama Papers of the law firm Mossack Fonseca . The company itself did not confirm the authenticity of the papers and called the actions of the journalists a crime.

The crime of revealing thousands of crimes is an acceptable crime... to everyone except the criminals...

Which is why Manning and Snowden and Assange are considered Criminals by the establishment instead of heroes because the establishment are complicit in the crimes they revealed...

'Pandora papers’: New leaks reveal how world leaders use offshore companies to dodge millions of dollars in taxes

Leaked papers appear to show how some of the world’s elites accumulate property empires while avoiding millions in taxes, with reports focusing on European, Middle Eastern and South American leaders, and world-famous celebrities.

Obtained from 14 offshore banking institutions and analyzed by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), the ‘Pandora Papers’ reveal the financial chicanery of more than 100 billionaires, 35 current and former world leaders, and 300 public officials. The first round of information, handed to a select list of international outlets and studied by “600 journalists,” was published on Sunday.

According to the ICIJ, King Abdullah II of Jordan is a prolific user of shell corporations to manage his global property empire. The monarch reportedly used 36 of these companies from 1995 to 2017 to purchase 14 luxury properties in the US and UK worth more than $106 million. The king’s lawyers say he used these stand-in companies to maintain his privacy rather than to dodge any taxes.

Azerbaijan’s ruling Aliyev family has traded almost $500 million worth of British property in recent years, according to the leaks. One of these properties was sold by an Aliyev-owned front company to the Queen’s crown estate for a sizable $90 million.

Two EU leaders are named in the leaks: Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš, who used an offshore investment company to acquire a $22 million château in the South of France, and President Nicos Anastasiades of Cyprus, who founded a law firm accused of hiding a Russian billionaire’s wealth.

Former British prime minister Tony Blair and his wife Cherie are mentioned, with the pair allegedly having dodged $422,603 in property taxes when they purchased an $8.8 million London office partially owned by the family of a prominent Bahraini lawmaker. The Blairs were apparently able to circumvent these taxes by purchasing the foreign holding company that owned the office.

The list of leaders is extensive, and also includes Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta, Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati, and Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the prime minister of Dubai and vice president of the United Arab Emirates.

Despite featuring an image of Vladimir Putin front and center on their introductory piece, and mentioning Putin nearly 50 times in a spin-off article about the “hidden riches of Putin’s inner circle,” The Guardian had to admit in its reporting that the Russian president “does not appear in the files by name.” Instead, the paper focused on Putin’s “friends,” including billionaire businessman Gennady Timchenko, and Putin’s rumored past “girlfriend.”

A number of celebrities are mentioned in the leaks, including pop star Shakira and former cricket superstar Sachin Tendulkar of India. Lawyers for both stress that their offshore holdings were legitimate and declared to the tax authorities.

Offshore banking is not illegal, and is often used by the wealthy to avoid taxes, while shell companies are frequently used to distance the rich from their holdings for political reasons or reasons of public image. However, such mechanisms make it easier to hide ill-gotten gains from the eyes of law enforcement or regulators.

“There’s never been anything on this scale and it shows the reality of what offshore companies can offer to help people hide dodgy cash or avoid tax,” Fergus Shiel of the ICIJ told the BBC. “They are using those offshore accounts, those offshore trusts, to buy hundreds of millions of dollars of property in other countries, and to enrich their own families at the expense of their citizens.”

However, the leaks reveal a status quo that few would find surprising, especially since the 2016 Panama Papers and 2017 Paradise Papers offered readers a look into the world of offshore banking.

Despite the major names listed in the latest document trove, the journalists behind the leaks don’t expect anything to change. “When you have world leaders, when you have politicians, when you have public officials, all using the secrecy and all using this world, then I don’t think we’re going to see an end to it,” ICIJ Director Gerard Ryle told The Guardian.

https://www.rt.com/news/536490-pandora-papers-offshore-tax-leaders/

Pandora Papers: Biden promises to tax super-rich in tax havens to fund his investment program

The revelation that the super-rich hide resources in tax havens to avoid paying taxes, provoked immediate reaction from the White House. In two tweets, the White House reported that tax havens and billionaires will be taxed to fund the Build Back Better Future program, which provides for large infrastructure investments in the United States and aligned countries.

https://www.brasil247.com/mundo/pandora-papers-biden-promete-taxar-super-ricos-em-paraisos-fiscais-para-financiar-seu-programa-de-investimentos?amp

How Pandora Files Can Help Russia, by Gevorg Mirzayan, Associate Professor, Financial University. 04/10/2021.

Political scientists all over the world are at a loss as to who and why threw out the "offshore information tsunami", a gigantic set of records exposing thousands of politicians and businessmen. Who was most affected by this scandal, who is behind this series of revelations - and why is Russia only benefiting from what is happening?

"Offshore Information Tsunami". This is exactly what the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) called its publication of almost 12 million 2.94 terabytes of financial records that were leaked from 14 companies that provide the powerful of this world with the opportunity to take their accounts offshore. That is, in other words, to divert them from taxes and help launder funds obtained illegally.

Pandora's list

In society, these documents have already received the name "Pandora's files", since they opened a real Pandora's box, from which modern "diseases and death" came to the world information space in the form of image problems for those whose names were in the published documents. And we are talking not only about show business figures (Shakira, Claudia Schiffer), musicians (Elton John), athletes (PSG footballer Angel di Maria), bandits and representatives of the business community - there are more than 300 political figures from 90 countries of the world among the defendants.

And since the bulk of the documents related to offshore transactions committed between 1996 and 2020, most of these politicians and statesmen still run their countries. Among them, for example, King Abdullah II of Jordan, Czech Prime Minister Andrei Babis, presidents of Kenya, Ukraine, Gabon, Ecuador, etc. Of those who have already resigned, the most famous person is the former British Prime Minister Tony Blair - according to leak, the politician with the help of offshore companies was able to deceive the state for almost 400 thousand dollars (which Mr. Blair had to pay in taxes for the purchase of a house worth more than 8 million dollars).

Unsurprisingly, the publication of the documents sparked a string of scandals. The defendants mentioned in the files vying with each other to deny their guilt (with arguments from the series “this is all lies” or “it was all legal”). Their positions are understandable, because in a number of Western countries it is quite possible to sit down for tax crimes, there are numerous examples.

The positions of the governments were divided. For example, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan (whose name was not mentioned in the leak) said that his country will start an investigation against each of its citizens mentioned in the "Pandora files". US President Joseph Biden said that his administration will analyze the content of the files (as if it did not know about this content before publication) and only then draw a conclusion. The Russian authorities (and a number of domestic oligarchs appeared in the "Pandora files") explained that they have no reason to trust the data presented in these files.

Attention, rating boost - or just money?

One can, of course, be indignant at Moscow's answer - but if you think carefully, it is difficult to disagree with it. After all, you need to trust published documents only when there is a clear understanding of where they came from, why they were published, and who needed it. And today there is no such understanding.

It is difficult to doubt the altruism of the source (who sent the documents to the ICIJ). Apparently, it was a hacker or a hacker group, which, within the framework of their ideology - or even religion - consider themselves fighters for goodness, justice and truth. Actually, WikiLeaks was based on this concept. However, what was the interest of ICIJ (whose activities, for a minute, are financed by George Soros) to take these documents, process them together with journalists from leading Western publications, and then publish?

There are several versions. The first is information noise, the purpose of which is to distract the attention of the engaged public from truly serious and dangerous processes.

“The United States disgraced itself in Afghanistan. They are now forming a number of military alliances in the Pacific. They need a red herring, noise elsewhere. This is the expectation that everyone will be engaged in discussing and savoring such news. Behind this noise, Washington will try to hide important events for the world community. For example, the destruction of the United Nations Institute, replacing it with the so-called Summit of democracy and the formation of coalitions of war as something opposed to an international organization established to maintain and strengthen international peace and security ", - assured the director of the Center for Political Information Alexei Mukhin. For the sake of this, apparently, it is not a sin to merge former and current politicians from third countries, even allied ones.

At the same time, American politicians - especially those on whom the American system is based -, at first glance, are not in the "Pandora's files". According to preliminary data, there is no mention of the family companies of Joseph Biden, or the business of the Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Palosi, or the family projects of other respected US statesmen.

Option two is the conditional strategy of Al-Jazeera. Recall that this TV channel was created by the Emir of Qatar and for a number of years has built a reputation for itself as the most professional and unbiased media outlet in the Middle East. This reputation growth cost the emir a lot of money (super-professionals worked in Al-Jazeera), as well as quarrels and scandals with neighbors (who did not like the fact that Al-Jazeera journalists dared to criticize their regimes), but in the end the investments paid off handsomely. During the Arab Spring, Al-Jazeera journalists fabricated data (for example, regarding the pogroms in Egypt or the storming of Tripoli in Libya) and thereby controlled the global information environment - after all, the audience, accustomed to the channel's professionalism, believed by default in these data.

In the same way, and now "Pandora's files" can be a certain sacrifice aimed at creating an atmosphere of absolute trust in relation to any information product that ICIJ publishes after it (including, possibly, a sequel to these files). A product that will be built on lies - but on the shoulders of "Pandora's files" will be able to reach the hearts and minds of the world's population.

Option three is simply Mr. Soros's business.

With access to the names to be published, Soros could either negotiate with the right people to remove names or reduce the amount of stolen funds, or make money on predictable events (recall that Mr. Soros is known for his ability to extract money from controlled chaos). So, the Czech Prime Minister Andrei Babis (who, according to "Pandora's files", stole $ 22 million through offshores) will have parliamentary elections in a few days. The opposition is already saying that the politician has been accepted into the “narrow circle of Czech feudal lords,” and it is possible that the newly made feudal lord will eventually lose the election.

Expulsion from paradise

However, it is possible that the "Pandora files" will be of some benefit to the whole world. And the point here is not only in exposing tax evaders, but also in exposing the vicious system as such. Experts say that, according to some sources , up to 10% of the entire world economy is now located offshore. “It's a whole world, a shadow economy that we don't know about and that enriches people who are already rich,” says ICIJ Director Gerard Ryle. In fact, a paradise for criminals of all stripes.

Yes, this was not always the case. Previously, offshores were not only legal, but also a useful tool for the development of a number of countries. “Offshore is a jurisdiction where registered companies have two advantages: minimum taxation and confidentiality of information about the owners of the company. This is done to attract capital for the development of a certain territory. The money held in the offshore-providing country gives jobs to local residents. As a rule, the amounts are deposited in local banks, which receive a fee for this. Offshore banks accumulate funds and lend them to banks that deal with loans, ” says Russian economist Nikita Krichevsky.

The problem is that now not only small countries that need a source of income are doing this, but also very rich states. Great Britain (like a vacuum cleaner pulling in billions of dollars from various oligarchs and criminal organizations), as well as the United States, where offshore zones are created in a number of states (not even islands, namely states). “Probably the only thing that really catches the eye (in the“ Pandora's files ”- approx. LOOK) is still a demonstration of which state is the world's largest offshore and tax gap. This is, of course, the United States. This is not at all correlated with declarations of intent to fight corruption and tax evasion and so on, money laundering. But the reality is this, ” said the press secretary of the Russian President Dmitry Peskov.

Russia - like a number of other states - is consistently striving to carry out a campaign to deoffshorize the economy. It is extremely difficult to do this - not only because of the resistance of domestic oligarchs, but also because of the reluctance of the countries where the offshore companies are located to lose their profitable business (see Great Britain and the USA). Accordingly, the publication of "Pandora's files" adds arguments to Moscow in its struggle, and also helps to create the information background necessary for this struggle.

This is the nature of any tsunami. It demolishes not only what its initiators need, but everything that it can reach. In this case, the initiators themselves.

https://m.vz.ru/world/2021/10/4/1122391.html

The US moving back to its degenerate roots. Self-declared bastion of human rights.

The de-dollarization process has begun, by Anna Shafran, TV and radio presenter for Russian RT News. 06/10/2021.

US President Joe Biden accused the Republicans in Congress of "playing Russian roulette with the US economy." The fact is that Biden is calling on Congress to agree on an increase in the maximum size of the US government debt to new heights, and the Republican Party refuses to do this because of the tax reform planned by the Democrats. Biden threatens that the refusal to increase the government debt limit "will undermine the reliability of Treasury securities, and will also threaten the dollar's status as the world's reserve currency."

Well, it's hard to disagree with the American president. If an agreement fails, then it will indeed be another blow to the hegemony of the dollar. It is symptomatic that the Americans themselves, through the lips of their own president, voice such things. The world has indeed entered an era of great changes and serious tectonic shifts in both politics and economics.

It should be understood that the volume of the US national debt has long become so astronomical that it is no longer a matter of economics, but only a matter of faith in the United States as the center of world finance. It is a matter of state prestige and the prospects for America's existence as it stands. Therefore, there is little doubt that sooner or later the national debt limit will be increased by another $ 1.5-2 trillion, but the Republicans will win back in Congress in full.

It is obvious that, in addition to the officially announced economic reason - disagreement with the planned tax reform, there is also an equally important political one. Republicans are blocking an increase in the US Treasury's (US Treasury) debt limit, because a debt default will leave an indelible stain on the Democrats. Once again, the whole world is becoming a hostage to domestic American political games.

Raising the national debt limit by the aforementioned $ 1.5-2 trillion is enough to hold out until the new congressional elections on November 8, 2022, in which Republicans hope to significantly increase their representation in the American parliament. This means that in the coming year their motto is “the worse the better”. Biden and his administration are objectively poorly handling the situation, and, of course, political opponents do not intend to help them in anything.

There is no doubt that by such actions American politicians will very soon undermine the Faith in the Dollar. What will happen when this, comparable to the religious, faith disappears? Nothing really new. The dollar will simply become the national currency of the United States. It will face the same fate as the British pound, which was also the main world currency from the middle of the 19th century until World War II. And nothing, somehow the British survived it.

Of course, the dollar will not quickly surrender its positions, no matter how much many of us would like. The American and world financial systems are too closely intertwined.

The US dollar now accounts for 85% of all external payments in the world. In the structure of gold and foreign exchange reserves of the central banks of the world, the dollar occupies 62%.

More than half of the world's debt is denominated in dollars, and half of the world's cash is also in dollars.

But the process of de-dollarization has already begun, and it could accelerate if the United States continues the same economic policy as now.

In addition, according to many experts, another world economic crisis will soon occur - this is exactly what we are heading towards. And the higher the ceiling of the American national debt at that time, the more painful it will fall for those who invested in it.

It looks like a very interesting and promising game is being played on the world chessboard. Domestic economic and political crises are engulfing Americans more and more. The weakening of their foreign policy grip in these conditions is inevitable. Like any other empire, the United States, having existed for a number of years as the only superpower, is now entering an increasingly rapid peak. Their further weakening is absolutely inevitable. The only question is how exactly, with what speed and with what consequences America will gradually withdraw from the leading role in the world arena.

And, unfortunately, there is no need to relax here. The United States leaves, and the old Britain enters the arena again, gradually becoming more active, gaining momentum and seizing the palm from its former colony.

So the show continues. Living in an era of change is, of course, not the very first pleasure, but how exciting it is. The main thing is to remember that everyone, without exception, will storm with the departure of the world hegemon. In this situation, we, as a country, need to focus on ourselves and engage in our own internal development. Fortunately, we have something to do. The resources of Siberia and the Far East, the Arctic are waiting in the wings. Enough to export raw materials, we need to deal with processing in order to trade products with high added value. We need to get away from fixation on relations with the European Union - it is high time for us to realize that we are not the east of Europe, but the north of a large continent - Eurasia. The time of Russia is coming, but, as always, we will have to fight for our place.

https://russian.rt.com/opinion/914721-shafran-baiden-ssha-dollar

And, unfortunately, there is no need to relax here. The United States leaves, and the old Britain enters the arena again, gradually becoming more active, gaining momentum and seizing the palm from its former colony.

No chance. Economically and militarily they are no longer relevant.

What will happen when this, comparable to the religious, faith disappears? Nothing really new. The dollar will simply become the national currency of the United States. It will face the same fate as the British pound, which was also the main world currency from the middle of the 19th century until World War II. And nothing, somehow the British survived it.

I don't agree... without the world using its currency and creating demand for said currency the US will have to earn its money rather than getting a cut of every international transaction by selling US dollars for those transactions.

Equally when the UK went tits up at the end of WWII there was the US to loan them money and resources and they had been abusing colonies fleecing them for centuries so they didn't have the eye watering foreign debt that the US currently has and without having the standard international currency they will have to start paying back that debt... so the military budget will need to be slashed and alot of those US bases around the world will need to be closed and forces withdrawn to the US and for many other bases the locals will have to pay cash money for the protection they provide... which might not sit well with countries that already think of them as an occupying force...

We need to get away from fixation on relations with the European Union - it is high time for us to realize that we are not the east of Europe, but the north of a large continent - Eurasia. The time of Russia is coming, but, as always, we will have to fight for our place.

Not just Asia, there is Africa and central and south america there as well that are screaming out for fair trade with countries wanting to hold them down in third world stasis for eternity...

Diluting the vote of the "deplorables" is what the Demonrat Party and the Biden regime (unelected) are all about.

Note the full bore corruption of the Biden family and the Demonrat Party.

So 75% of Demonrat Party supporters favour social media censorship. Interesting mentality they have. Safe space babies
who can't stand opposing views and want big daddy to make them go away.

Vaccine mandates are creeping totalitarianism. This covid farce will establish precedents that will be used to take away what
shred of freedoms are left in the future. There is always some "good" for the "people" that justifies suppression of the individual.