Written on 12 April 2016.

Hint: the answer is way more than you think.

   Of all these, there is one war that matters most. It has nothing to do with terrorism. It is a war for the soul of America and the world.

   It is a class war and it is the most serious war of them all - bar none. Trans-national corporations are ascendant and they are coming at us with everything they've got, including boatloads of cash, an army of corrupt and compromised politicians and the TPP.

You ignore this class war at your own peril !

   Speaking of the class war in America, Bill Moyers said:

The Plutocrats Are Winning. Don’t Let Them!

   Dear Readers:

In the fall of 2001, in the aftermath of 9/11, as families grieved and the nation mourned, Washington swarmed with locusts of the human kind: wartime opportunists, lobbyists, lawyers, ex-members of Congress, bagmen for big donors: all of them determined to grab what they could for their corporate clients and rich donors while no one was looking.

Across the land, the faces of Americans of every stripe were stained with tears. Here in New York, we still were attending memorial services for our firemen and police. But in the nation’s capital, within sight of a smoldering Pentagon that had been struck by one of the hijacked planes, the predator class was hard at work pursuing private plunder at public expense, gold-diggers in the ashes of tragedy exploiting our fear, sorrow, and loss.

What did they want? The usual: tax cuts for the wealthy and big breaks for corporations. They even made an effort to repeal the alternative minimum tax that for fifteen years had prevented companies from taking so many credits and deductions that they owed little if any taxes. And it wasn’t only repeal the mercenaries sought; they wanted those corporations to get back all the minimum tax they had ever been assessed.

They sought a special tax break for mighty General Electric, although you would never have heard about it if you were watching GE’s news divisions — NBC News, CNBC, or MSNBC, all made sure to look the other way.

They wanted to give coal producers more freedom to pollute, open the Alaskan wilderness to drilling, empower the president to keep trade favors for corporations a secret while enabling many of those same corporations to run roughshod over local communities trying the protect the environment and their citizens’ health.

It was a disgusting bipartisan spectacle. With words reminding us of Harry Truman’s description of the GOP as “guardians of privilege,” the Republican majority leader of the House dared to declare that “it wouldn’t be commensurate with the American spirit” to provide unemployment and other benefits to laid-off airline workers. As for post 9/11 Democrats, their national committee used the crisis to call for widening the soft-money loophole in our election laws.

Bill Moyers

(emphasis added)

Locusts of the human kind. The predator class. That says it all.

Jimmy Carter has also been harshly critical of Hillary as Secretary of State.

“In this occasion, when Secretary Clinton was Secretary of State, she took very little action to bring about peace.”

Jimmy Carter

   This is why business as usual is no longer good enough. The oligarchy means to continue their domination by any means necessary. Nevertheless, it's on us to stop them. We cannot afford to let them win.

   This is for all the marbles.

   This election will determine whether corporate domination of government will reign supreme or the people will once again become their government. The 99% has to win this.

   Corporate interests, if allowed to dominate, will delay our transition from fossil fuels, and relegate climate change, human rights and social justice to the ash heap while ushering in an era of supersized corporate plunder spearheaded by the TPP and fueled by war crimes.

   The 1% mean to crush us.

   The American people have lost all control of their government. Bernie is our ticket back to power over our own lives and our own destiny. This is not about politics as usual. This is about fighting back.

   The billionaire class started this war, not us. But the people have to win it.

   There is a class war in America and it’s time to fight back!

"There is a secret to being a supporter of Bernie Sanders. It is something that totally escapes the thinking of most Democrats and Republicans. It is the mental understanding that Sanders is fighting a war that most people are not. It is the war between corporations and the people. Unless you are fighting this war as well, you cannot possibly understand how important it is to vote for Bernie over Hillary. This is not about Hillary or Bernie, it is about fighting your real enemies, the multi-national corporations who are trying to control this nation and the world. You ignore this war at your own peril." - Randolph Greer

   Bernie has been a long shot from the beginning. Virtually no one thought he'd make it this far. This was never a sure thing. It's an opportunity. That's all it is. It will only work if we make it. It's only an opportunity if we seize it. If we want change, we need to make it happen now.

   Enough is enough!

   It's time for a change of direction, a reordering of priorities, a reckoning with past wrongs. It's time for just and reality-based governance, it's time for dignity, equality and justice for all people. We have work to do. We need to quit fooling around. This is our shot at a new day in America, and a new, more honest window on the challenges we face. This is our moment. We need to seize it.

   Here's to peace, justice and progress for all.

   And here's to government of, by and for the people. May it never vanish from the face of the earth.

By One Pissed Off Liberal -- DAILY KOS

Written on 11 April 2016.

   The facts and figures are in many ways startling. Yet in some ways the real revelations of the ‘Panama Papers’ published this week – at least so far – are a bit disappointing; at least to the jaded and cynical eye.

   The stats of this immense effort by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) are admittedly mind-boggling. Some 11.5 millions records, dating back nearly 40 years, of Mossack Fonseca – a global law firm based in Panama – contain details on more than 214 000 offshore entities connected to people in more than 200 countries and territories.

   Company owners include billionaires; sports stars, like Lionel Messi; entertainers, like Jackie Chan; drug smugglers and fraudsters. The offshore holdings of 140 politicians and public officials around the world – including 12 current and former world leaders, are exposed. These include the prime ministers of Iceland and Pakistan, the president of Ukraine, and the king of Saudi Arabia.

   The papers document some US$2 billion in transactions secretly shuffled through banks and shadow companies by associates of Russian President Vladimir Putin. The papers include the names of at least 33 people and companies blacklisted by the United States (US) government because of evidence that they’d been involved in wrongdoing, such as doing business with Mexican drug lords, terrorist organisations like Hezbollah or rogue nations like North Korea and Iran.

   They show how major banks have driven the creation of hard-to-trace companies in offshore havens. More than 500 banks and their subsidiaries and their branches – including HSBC, UBS and Société Générale – created more than 15 000 offshore companies for their customers through Mossack Fonseca.

   Hundreds of journalists of the ICIJ, comprising over one hundred media organisations worldwide – including several in Africa – mined this ore of information for eight months, we are told. That was investigative reporting on a truly industrial scale.

   But was it worth it? Did all this sifting of ore produce any really worthwhile gems of scandal? Or, to shift the metaphor, did the trawling land any really big fish? Not really, it seems ­– or not many scaly creatures we didn’t already know were a bit off. 

   Anyone expecting revelations on the scale, for instance, of a disclosure that the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi had buried his fabled billions in a bank account owned by South African President Jacob Zuma, would have been disappointed.

   To Icelanders, the revelation that their boyish-looking former prime minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson and his wife owned a company in the British Virgin Islands which held £2.8m of investments in the country's collapsed banks – which he helped bail out – was no doubt volcanic, and protestors clamouring at his door forced his resignation this week.

   But for much of the rest of us, there are no truly explosive revelations. Or not yet.

   In Africa, the public figures who have so far been revealed as using the services of Mossack Fonseca to hide their wealth offshore are either rather obscure and uninteresting, or we knew they were fishy anyway.

   Many of these people had already been fingered for dodgy deals or, conversely, might have parked their money offshore for perfectly legitimate reasons (as the ICIJ is at pains to point out).

   Khulubuse Zuma’s controversial acquisition of two huge oil fields in the DRC in 2010 – allegedly through his uncle’s influence on Kabila – has already been reported at length. The Panama Papers add some detail about Caprikat, the company that Mossack Fonseca registered offshore in the British Virgin Islands, a notorious tax haven, through which Zuma acquired the oil assets, supposedly worth R100 billion.

   As Heather Lowe, the Director of Government Affairs for Global Financial Integrity, a Washington DC-based consultancy, told Time magazine, despite the immensity of all these leaks, ‘the tricks Mossack Fonseca has allegedly used for its clients are neither new nor surprising.

   ‘Anonymous shell companies and the failure of governments to require lawyers, corporate service companies, or banks to collect beneficial ownership information on clients leave the door wide open for dirty money to flow around the globe virtually unhindered.’

   Her organisation has estimated that developing economies lost US$7.8 trillion between 2004 and 2013 because of such practices. Last year, former South African president Thabo Mbeki, who heads a task force appointed by the African Union and the United Nations to probe such ‘illicit financial flows’, found that they cost Africa alone at least US$50 billion a year.

   Yet that is beginning to change at last, though not as fast as it should. In 2013, the G20 and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) launched an initiative to stop what it called ‘base erosion and profit shifting,’ – the fancy accounting which multinational companies use to avoid or evade taxes, such as moving profits into low, or no, taxation jurisdictions.

   One of the less-noticed, and more encouraging, revelations of the Panama Papers is how in 2010, Mossack Fonseca ended its relationship with Caprikat as published reports raised questions about the company’s acquisition of the DRC oil fields. This came after British Virgin Islands authorities ordered it to provide background information on Zuma, which the law firm had not previously obtained.

   Alex Hogg, editor of BizNews.com has quipped that ‘Mossack Fonseca has no problem representing Ponzi scheme operators, drug lords, tax evaders and even a jailed paedophile. But it found Khulubuse too hot to handle…’ Witty – but not quite accurate. The Panama Papers reveal that Mossack Fonseca has been closing down or pulling out of many companies after being compelled to do due diligence on them.

   At its peak in 2005, Mossack Fonseca was setting up 12 287 companies a year and deactivating 6 339. In 2015, by contrast, it set up just 4 341 and deactivated 8 864.

   OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría said this week the Panama Papers had shone the light on Panama as ‘the last major holdout that continues to allow funds to be hidden offshore from tax and law enforcement authorities.’

   While revealing nefarious activities, the papers also showed a decline in the use of offshore shell companies, ‘which is a testament to the incredible transformation effected in the last seven years to establish robust international standards on tax transparency,’ he said. The OECD’s efforts include the ‘Tax Inspectors Without Borders’ initiative for developed countries to help developing countries increase tax control and boost revenues.

   Many activists would surely disagree with Gurría that Panama is the last tax haven in the world. Tax Justice Network, for example, believes that many countries, including ‘respectable’ ones like the US and United Kingdom, are still guilty of helping corporations hide profits and avoid taxation.

   Either way, the real achievement of the Panama Papers should be to give tremendous new impetus to these international efforts to shine harsh light on multinationals; and force them to pay their taxes where they make their profits.

   The investigation has confirmed, in stark, undeniable detail, what everyone suspected – the rottenness of the international tax system. It has also itself presented governments of the more than 200 countries and territories implicated with a potential treasure trove in taxes.

   Several governments have already launched probes, or have said they will, into the companies and individuals named. Many more are sure to follow.

   South Africa’s Minister of Finance Pravin Gordhan rather gleefully announced this week the South African Revenue Services will be investigating all the South Africans mentioned, for possible tax evasion. ‘Of course, I am not the commissioner of revenue,’ he added, as an afterthought and possibly a sly dig at his arch-enemy Tom Moyane, who does occupy that position, and who might not relish the prospect of looking too closely into the tax arrangements of the nephew of his patron, Jacob Zuma, for instance.

   And so to lament the lack of many truly big fish landed would be to miss the point of the Panama Papers. What counts is not how many big fish are caught in the net, but the size of the total haul.

Peter Fabricius, ISS Consultant  --  Institute for Security Studies

An American Reading of the Panama Papers:

The Sham of Austerity and the Storms to Come     

   It was recently revealed by way of a massive document leak that the wealthiest of the global wealthy have taken trillions of dollars and, through the services of a secretive Panamanian law firm, squirrelled that money away inside virtual coffee cans in tax havens all over the world. The "Panama Papers" scandal, as it has come to be called, has ensnared a large number of world leaders, and cost Iceland's prime minister his job.

   Those 11 million pages contain the names of hundreds of Americans who also used the services of that Panamanian firm to hide their money. They are the focus of my rage, because they did what they did to avoid paying taxes. Taxes, which pay for the school my daughter will attend, the textbooks she will read, the teachers who will guide her, the roads that will carry her there, the police and fire departments that protect her, the public servants who will help her register to vote someday and who clear the roads when the storms turn white.

   Meanwhile, the paid lackeys of these thieves run up and down the halls of Congress, and all over the media, shouting about how broke we are as a nation. Austerity, they cry, budget cuts, no food for poor children or assistance for poor families. Social Security and Medicare must be cut because that's the responsible thing to do. No support for wounded and traumatized veterans, but of course we can afford more war. We need education budget cuts, no infrastructure repair, no health care reform, because look, see, we're broke.

   No, we aren't. We were robbed, and we can get that money back if we choose to act. This is a fiction we live in, cunningly crafted to cover the tracks of those who care only for themselves. Between the bloated "defense" budget and all that untaxed money lying offshore, we have the revenue required to address these pressing issues and chase the "austerity" argument off like a diseased cur.

   But will we? There is a distinct possibility that the leading candidates for the highest office in the land, their friends and top donors, are hidden in the pages of the Panama Papers. We may never know, because according to the Guardian, much of the content will remain secret, sealed off, buried. Will whoever is chosen have the courage to chase down the truth for the rest of us, for my daughter and yours, or is the robbery already complete?

   There is another storm coming, rumbling the deep thunder of discontent just over the horizon. Those who stole from our present and future would do well to heed that noise. If and when that storm does come, it will not be my little girl who is afraid. It will be them.

Written on 12 April 2016.

Written on 11 April 2016.

    In einem Interview mit der italienischen Zeitung La Repubblica erklärte der nationale Anti-Mafia-Staatsanwalt Franco Roberti , dass "der Islamische Staat wirklich eine Mafia ist", und dass Italien bei jungen Muslimen einschreiten müsse, "denn sonst werden wir uns in fünf bis zehn Jahren in der gleichen Situation wie in Brüssel oder den Pariser Vororten finden".

   Die Hälfte aller eingesperrten Jugendlichen seien Moslems. Wie ihre Gleichaltrigen hätten sie Zugang zu den Radikalisierungsmaterialien im Internet.  Der Leiter der Antimafia-Direktion DNA in Rom schlägt vor, die Behandlung der illegalen Einwanderung als Straftat abzuschaffen,  fordert Beschleunigung der Asylverfahren und wirft auch die Frage  der Legalisierung von leichten Drogen auf.