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Limited hangout operation: Panama leaks part of West's hybrid war against Russia

Dr Tatiana Yugay
Russia Insider
Wed, 06 Apr 2016 15:46 UTC
mossack fonseca

A limited hangout operation
The other day the leading Munich daily 'Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ)' published a "sensational" article titled: "Panama Papers: The secrets of dirty money". The on-line version is presented in the best traditions of the yellow press. .

The article begins like a fairy tale:
"Over a year ago, an anonymous source contacted the Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) with encrypted documents from Mossack Fonseca, a Panamanian law firm that sells anonymous offshore companies around the world".
The mysterious messenger delivered megatons of compromising information while seeking no financial compensation. He simply "wanted to make these crimes public". Frankly speaking, I'm willing to bet that behind this modern Robin Hood are special services. In order to make the story more credible, the SZ added a video with a sort of "script" of the messenger's call.

Then it describes how journalists worked for 12 months with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).
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Snakes in Suits

UK cuts programs for the poor while increasing tax breaks for the rich


RT
Wed, 06 Apr 2016 15:34 UTC
Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne
© Toby Melville / Reuters
Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne
Welfare programs for the long-term unemployed in Britain will have funding slashed this Parliament, while top earners will see their take-home pay increase thanks to generous tax breaks.

A new work program for the long-term unemployed next year will be significantly less well funded than its predecessor.

More than £2 billion (US$2.8 billion) was paid out to work program providers in the four years from 2011. The new program guarantees that spending will fall to just £130 million a year by 2020.

The government's drastic cut risks sparking a fresh battle with disability campaigners, who last month forced Chancellor George Osborne to backtrack on planned cuts to disability payments.
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Light Sabers

Kofi Annan's son linked to offshore property deal in Panama Papers


RT
Wed, 06 Apr 2016 15:22 UTC
Kojo Annan
© Reuters / AFP
Former UN Secretary-General Koffi Annan (L) and his son Kojo Annan
The son of former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan is among hundreds of high-profile figures named as having links to offshore firms in the largest ever document dump in journalistic history.

The so-called Panama Papers, 11.5 million internal files leaked from the secretive Panama law firm Mossack Fonseca, revealed that 42-year-old Kojo Annan purchased an apartment in central London for £400,000 (about US$560,000 at current rates) in 2004 through an offshore company headquartered in the South Pacific nation of Samoa.

The property is now listed as being worth nearly £1.5 million. Documents show that correspondence continued between the Chelsea address and Mossack Fonseca into 2015.

In addition to being listed as the sole director of the Samoan firm Sapphire Holding Ltd, Kojo is also registered as a director of two other companies, based in the British Virgin Islands in the Caribbean.

Comment: This is another "limited hangout" by Western intelligence to try and make it look like the the leak is going after anyone who has acted criminally. The reality is that not only are the real criminals being left out of the Panama Papers leak, but the claims against Kojo Annan are extremely tame in comparison to what the real Western criminals are doing on a daily basis.

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Heart - Black

Ex-Abu Ghraib interrogator regrets 'horrible mistakes' of US torture policy


Sputnik
Wed, 06 Apr 2016 11:10 UTC
torture
© Flickr/ Ray
A number of Bush-era officials continue to defend the so-called enhanced interrogation techniques that occurred at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. But in a new interview, former interrogator Eric Fair confesses that the US military was unequivocally engaged in torture.

"We hurt people, and not just physically," Fair told NPR's Terry Gross. "We destroyed them emotionally, and...I think at the very least it's a just punishment for us that we suffer some of those consequences, too."

Employed by a private contractor, Fair was an interrogator in Abu Ghraib and Fallujah, another detention facility managed by US forces in Iraq. While his actions were deemed legal according to the US government, he has no illusions that what he did was, in fact, torture. Years later, what happened at the prisons still weighs heavily on Fair.

"It was not the way I should've behaved. There are long discussions about why those things happened...and how difficult it was to sort of break from those expectations of being a soldier - but none of that matters. I made horrible mistakes," he said. "I have a responsibility to confess those things openly."
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Info

Head of Austrian General Staff: 'Russia closer to Austria than other major world powers'


RT
Wed, 06 Apr 2016 12:52 UTC
Austrian General Staff Lieutenant-General Othmar Commenda
© Leonhard Foeger / Reuters
Austrian General Staff Lieutenant-General Othmar Commenda.
Austrian armed forces are ready to cooperate with Moscow as "Russia is much closer to Austria than other major world powers," chief of the Austrian General Staff said in Moscow, where he joined his president at the invitation of President Vladimir Putin.

Vienna's top military figure noted that one of the reasons for his visit to the Russian capital was to disobey others' orders.

"I'm not going to carry out instructions and follow orders on who's worth talking to and who's not. That's exactly the reason why I decided to pay you a visit," Austrian General Staff Lieutenant-General Othmar Commenda said at a meeting with the chief of Russia's General Staff, First Deputy Defense Minister Valery Gerasimov.
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Chess

US Intelligence's attempt to smear Putin in 'Panama Papers' backfires on Clinton, Cameron


Sputnik
Wed, 06 Apr 2016 08:16 UTC
soros funding
© The Free Thought Project
The Soros-funded framing of the document release aimed to smear Putin, but did more to expose the collusion of Hillary Clinton, David Cameron, and other Western scam artists.

On Sunday, the "Panama Papers" were released to the world, in the single greatest incriminating document leak in world history. The documents, all from a single Panamanian law firm specializing in tax sheltering, Mossack Fonseca, were released to a German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung.

The documents were reviewed and maintained by a shadowy network including George Soros and several CIA funded organizations, including the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project. Unsurprisingly, headlines relating to this group focused on Russian President Vladimir Putin, a world leader not even named within the Panama Papers.

Comment: Further reading:

Even without a smoking gun, a case can be made this alleged most massive leak ever was obtained by — what else — U.S. intel. This is the kind of stuff the NSA excels at. The NSA is able to break into virtually any database and/or archives everywhere; they steal "secrets"; and then selectively destroy/blackmail/protect assets and "enemies", according to USG interests.

Pepe Escobar: Panama leaks a 'limited hangout' psy-op set up by US intelligence

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Bad Guys

Kiev, George Soros team up to convince Dutch to vote 'yes' on Ukraine's EU association deal


Sputnik
Wed, 06 Apr 2016 07:54 UTC
george soros looking evil
Residents of the Netherlands have mixed attitudes towards the April 6 referendum being held on the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement, according to RIA Novosti.

It seems that Kiev has failed to win over the Dutch with its pre-referendum campaign in the Netherlands, and the country's residents await the event with mingled feelings, RIA Novosti reported.

On April 6, voters in the Netherlands are scheduled to back or reject the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement. A turnout of 30 percent is required for the result to be accepted by the government.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavel Klimkin was at the helm of his country's delegation in Amsterdam, where he rather awkwardly tried to promote the upcoming referendum late last week, RIA Novosti said.

Many users were quick to single out the top Ukrainian diplomat's efforts to entice the Dutch to back his country in the referendum.

Comment: It seems only technocrats like European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker, George Soros, and the snakes in the State Department want Ukraine to join the EU. People with common sense have mixed feelings, since they're not blinded by a pathological compulsion to continue policies of aggression towards Russia - the same policies which have left Ukraine a sinking ship. Commission chief Juncker went so far as to say that rejection of the association agreement would lead to a 'continental crisis'. Well Juncker, the real continental crises have all been thanks to NATO's and the EU's psychopathic greed and incompetence.

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Bad Guys

Armenia vs Azerbaijan, East vs West: Nagorno-Karabakh crisis and the NATO-Israeli connection

Corey Schink & Mike Tutundjian
Sott.net
Wed, 06 Apr 2016 12:22 UTC
Nuland in Azerbaijan

What was Nuland up to in Azerbaijan?
Victoria 'F**K the EU' Nuland's visit to Azerbaijan last year had analysts wondering whether something was afoot. While Nuland surely wouldn't visit a country in order to oversee destabilization along Russia's border (she's never done than that before, right?), a heated conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan would do just that. The sudden and violent eruption of this 'frozen conflict' at a time of vastly improving Iranian-Azeri-Russian economic and military cooperation provides both the means and motive for NATO/Israeli forces - an opportunity to destabilize Russia and Iran in one blow.

Historical background

Armenia and Azerbaijan have been at war two times over the Nagorno-Karabakh region - once in 1918 and the second time in 1988, in the last years of the Soviet Union. Azeris began massacring Armenians in Azerbaijan, causing a large number of people to flee. Then they attacked the ethnically Armenian Nagorno-Karabakh in Azerbaijan with a modernized military, attacking people trying to defend themselves with hunting rifles or whatever they could get hold of. The Azeris blockaded Nagorno-Karabakh and all transport and shipments into Armenia proper. Turkey joined the blockade, while Georgia was having its own civil war with Abkhazia, making border crossing there very difficult. So the only border Armenia had that wasn't blockaded (or impaired) was its Iranian one. That blockade is still in place today, although the Georgian border has generally calmed down.

Azerbaijan Armenia Nagorno Karabakh
© Twitter / RFE/RL
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Bell

Armenian-Azeri tensions: Why they're happening, and who benefits

Andrew Korybko
Oriental Review
Mon, 04 Apr 2016 19:18 UTC
nagorno karabakh
The unprecedented upsurge in violence along the Line of Contact between Armenia and Azerbaijan in Nagorno-Karabakh has raised universal concern that a larger conflict might be brewing, with some analysts seeing it as an outgrowth of Turkey's destabilizing anti-Russian policies over the past couple of months.

As attractive as it may be to believe such that Azerbaijan is behaving as a total puppet of the West, such an explanation is only a superficial description of what is happening and importantly neglects to factor in Baku's recent foreign policy pivot over the past year. It's not to necessarily suggest that Russia's CSTO ally Armenia is to blame for the latest ceasefire violations, but rather to raise the point that this unfolding series of militantly destabilizing events is actually a lot more complex than initially meets the eye, although the general conclusion that the US is reaping an intrinsic strategic benefit from all of this is clearly indisputable.

Comment: South Front International Military Review - Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict



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Megaphone

US Congressman Dana Rohrabacher: US politicians still view Russia through lens of Cold War paradigm


RT
Tue, 05 Apr 2016 20:09 UTC
politicians meeting
© sf_press / Flickr
Congressman Dana Rohrabacher has expressed his gratitude for Russia's positive role in world affairs - and the Syrian crisis in particular - at an inter-parliamentary meeting in Moscow, where he noted the ignorance of some of his colleagues' opinions and statements.

"Thank you for what you are doing in Syria. From me!" Rohrabacher said in front of Russian and US parliamentary delegations. "I've been talking to ordinary Americans and I say: It's great they have Russia down there killing the terrorists that want to kill us. And they thank you too."

Konstantin Kosachev, the head of the Upper House Committee for International Relations, in his stead thanked the Congressman for his effort in trying to revive the inter-parliamentary discussions between the countries, highlighting that over the last few years, these contacts have been "practically frozen."

"This with all certainty was not a result of the Russian initiative. We have always committed to the most open wide and open dialogue," Kosachev said. "We consider it a very important source for solving common problems and search for joint solutions."
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