Welcome to Sott.net
Wed, 27 Oct 2021
The World for People who Think

Puppet Masters
Map

Lemon

Hillary Clinton says she's afraid of 'minority rule,' claims Republicans are the threat to US democracy

Hillary
© Reuters/Gonzalo Fuentes
Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
The real problem with the US is the conspiracy-mongering by Republicans, whose hopes of winning elections endanger democracy itself... at least that's according to former first lady and failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

Clinton has struggled to remain in the political limelight after her 2016 wipeout to Donald Trump in the presidential election the corporate media overwhelmingly favored her to win. Even as a special counsel indicted a partner in the law firm representing her campaign for one of the 'Russiagate' conspiracy theories, she offered her take on the current political situation in the US on the pages of the Atlantic.

Comment: Hillary keeps proving she is far beyond redemption and repair.


NPC

Yawn: Every US state-funded exposé on the lavish lives of elites is about Russia & Putin, even when he's not mentioned

pandora papers putin
© LOIC VENANCE / AFP; Reuters
The Pandora Papers; (inset) Russian President Vladimir Putin
The powerful are wealthy, and the wealthy are powerful. They'll also often go to great lengths to avoid paying taxes. Those are the conclusions from some 12 million financial files leaked to reporters last week and covered widely.

Known as the Pandora Papers, the revelations were handed to the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and then picked up on Sunday by the BBC and The Guardian newspaper. The secret documents reveal how some 400 former and current world leaders, government officials and billionaires have funnelled their money through offshore accounts to buy property incognito and avoid paying taxes.

Comment: We've seen this before:


Dollars

Move over Panama Papers, there's more off-shore shenanigans: The Pandora Papers

Pandora papers investigative website
© OCCRP
What are the Pandora Papers?

The Pandora Papers are nearly 12 million files — totalling close to 2.94 terabytes — leaked from 14 companies that provide corporate services in offshore jurisdictions. The documents offer the most comprehensive look to date at how such service providers help the rich and famous — including celebrities, the ultra-wealthy, politicians, and criminals — to hide their money in financial secrecy jurisdictions.

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) received the leaked files and coordinated a worldwide investigation into their contents. The project involves more than 600 journalists from 117 countries.

Comment: Naturally, such of trove of information will send true investigators of many countries into overdrive; Some results from different countries:

No surprise that The Ukraine has found itself prominently featured. Excerpts from Donbass Insider's report:
The Pandora papers reveal that Volodymyr Zelensky and his entourage own offshore companies in the British Virgin Islands, Belize, and Cyprus, three flats in London worth $7.4 million, and that the Ukrainian president potentially received dividends from a company he no longer officially owns. The documents also reveal the Ukrainian President's potential involvement in the laundering of $40 million belonging to Igor Kolomoysky, for which the oligarch has been placed under sanctions by the US.

But the offshore scheme does not end there. The Pandora papers reveal that another close associate of Zelensky, SBU chief Ivan Bakanov, used a tax haven for his company Davegra Limited, registered in Belize. This company is the main owner of Maltex Multicapital Corp, and is said to be hiding details of the real owners, namely Zelensky, his wife and friends, says the Pandora papers investigation. In 2019, Bakanov sold the company to Yakovlev.

While this first part of the Pandora papers concerning Zelensky would in itself be enough to trigger impeachment proceedings against him in Ukraine, it is not the most scandalous part.

Indeed, the Pandora papers reveal that Zelensky is allegedly involved in Igor Kolomoysky's financial shenanigans, for which the oligarch has been placed under sanctions by the US.

The documents indicate that in 2012, the Kvartal 95 group of associates registered more than a dozen companies in the British Virgin Islands, Belize and Cyprus, with Maltex Multicapital Corp at the centre of the network.

The Pandora papers reveal that 40 million dollars were transferred via the Cypriot branch of Privatbank (then owned by Igor Kolomoysky) to this network of companies as a "capital contribution" in a totally non-transparent manner. Moreover, one of the companies that headed Kvartal 95 had an account in this bank. The Cypriot branch of Privatbank was used by Igor Kolomoysky to launder millions of dollars.

This information from the Pandora papers would confirm the information published after the Ukrainian presidential election, which indicated that Igor Kolomoysky had withdrawn more than 41 million dollars from offshore accounts at Kvartal 95.

Zelensky, with his law on oligarchs, which is just a pretty facade with nothing behind it, tried to fool Soros and the United States, who were counting on this law to bring down the Ukrainian oligarchs and take back their assets. A monumental mistake that could cost him and his mentor Kolomoysky a lot.
Times of Israel makes its report:
Some 565 Israelis are listed in the Pandora Papers, published by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, according to Shomrim, an Israeli investigative journalism nonprofit organization that took part in the investigation.

Former Labor Party Justice Minister Haim Ramon is among the high-profile Israelis named in the report. Ramon's name comes up in connection to a dubious tourism real estate deal in Montenegro with Austrian casino magnate Martin Schlaff.

Also named in the papers is secretive Israeli diamond magnate Beny Steinmetz, who was convicted this year of bribery in a Geneva court.

Steinmetz was accused of having set up a complex financial web, including a system of front companies, in order to pay bribes — partly through Swiss accounts — so that Beny Steinmetz Group Resources (BSGR) could obtain mining permits in Guinea's southeastern Simandou region.

Another prominent Israeli named is Likud MK Nir Barkat.

According to the report, the eToro company that Barkat has holdings in is registered in the Virgin Islands, despite the majority of its offices being located in Israel. While having a company registered in a tax haven is not always illegal per se, it may violate the Knesset Ethics Committee's guidelines.
Pakistani government officials make an appearance. From The New Arab:
Prime Minister Imran Khan promised Sunday to "investigate" Pakistani citizens connected to a massive probe into the hidden wealth of politicians worldwide, after members of his inner circle were implicated in the report.

One of Khan's predecessors, Nawaz Sharif, was ousted by the country's Supreme Court in 2017 over allegations made in the Panama Papers.

In total, the ICIJ found links between almost 1,000 companies in offshore havens and 336 high-level politicians and public officials, including country leaders, cabinet ministers, ambassadors and others.
But are the Pandora Papers another U.S. intelligence limited hangout? A word of warning from RT:
Though they may be embarrassing to certain individuals and companies, the Pandora Papers' revelations of offshore assets are not a challenge to the US government or the Western system of corporate power, sceptics say.

But despite those and similar examples, sceptics believe that the Pandora Papers won't do much good in tackling the worst kinds of corruption. Unlike what was revealed by the transparency website WikiLeaks or NSA leaker Edwards Snowden, "few - if any - important [players] in the West will be exposed," predicted journalist Alan MacLeod, who writes at the independent outlet Mint Press. Corporate media's hyping of the leak is a good indicator of how unthreatening it is to the Western establishment, he said.

The ICIJ compiled a bunch of graphs detailing the statistics of the new leak. One map, titled 'Where are the 336 politicians in the Pandora Papers from?' shows exactly zero such individuals for the US. The US is a major destination for people interested in offshore arrangements for their riches, the investigators pointed out, thanks to trust-friendly jurisdictions like South Dakota, Florida, and Delaware.

The Grayzone's Ben Norton sarcastically touted the absence of American politicians as evidence that they are "all pure and free from corruption." Journalist Mark Ames joked that "honest incorruptible oligarchs" like George Soros and Pierre Omidyar are likewise nowhere to be seen in the new ICIJ disclosure - just like in the previous ones.

American super-billionaires may have been somehow screened out from the disclosure - or simply don't need to utilize services to optimize their wealth and dodge taxes. Wondering whether the recurring peculiarities of the leaks indicate Washington's hand behind them is hardly conspiracy thinking.

The Trump administration gave the CIA extra powers to engage in disruptive cyberoperations, and the agency "wasted no time in exercising the new freedoms," according to a 2020 Yahoo! News report. The operations included not only cyber sabotage, but "also public dissemination of data: leaking or things that look like leaking," an intelligence source told the outlet.

That angle does not necessarily apply to the ICIJ investigations, and even if it did, it would be irrelevant to facts that the investigators established, as long as the underlying materials are authentic. At least, that was the long-held standard for journalism before Western media decided that some leaks are more equal than others, and if one exposes potential corruption of presidential candidate Joe Biden, it can be ignored and suppressed.

Snowden, one of the biggest leakers of our time, found the story "very serious" - but he also found humor in the fact that, even after two previous leaks, offshore operators "are still compiling vast databases of ruin, and still secure them with a Post-It Note marked 'do not leak.'"
The Pandora Papers: A nothing burger really


Black Magic

Francis Collins, NIH Director, resigns after gain-of-function lie exposed

francis collins NIH covid gain of function lies
© Saul Loeb-Pool/Getty Images
Francis Collins, former director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH)
Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), announced his resignation on Tuesday, just weeks after documents exposed that he made "untruthful" comments about U.S. federal funding of gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

"It has been an incredible privilege to lead this great agency for more than a decade," Collins said in a statement posted at the NIH website.
I love this agency and its people so deeply that the decision to step down was a difficult one, done in close counsel with my wife, Diane Baker, and my family. I am proud of all we've accomplished. I fundamentally believe, however, that no single person should serve in the position too long, and that it's time to bring in a new scientist to lead the NIH into the future. I'm most grateful and proud of the NIH staff and the scientific community, whose extraordinary commitment to lifesaving research delivers hope to the American people and the world every day.

Comment: The National Pulse provides more on Collins' dodgy history:
Appointed by President Obama in 2009, Collins issued a statement this week saying: "I fundamentally believe ... that no single person should serve in the position too long, and that it's time to bring in a new scientist to lead the NIH into the future."

But it is unlikely Collins's belief in a revolving door at the NIH that has prompted the move. Rather, with pressure mounting on key public figures such as his minion Anthony Fauci and arms-length brother-in-arms Peter Daszak, it is worth looking at what the media won't be saying about Collins this week.

The National Pulse has reported:

1. Francis Collins Advises Chinese Military Proxy-Linked Group Working Alongside COVID-19 Gene Storage Firm.

National Institutes of Health director Dr. Francis Collins serves on the advisory board of a conference sponsored by a Chinese military-linked genomics firm. The D.C.-based, health industry big-wig and boss to Anthony Fauci has even referred to the controversial company's founder as a "friend".

BGI Genomics has been flagged by U.S. intelligence officials for its robust efforts to "collect, store and exploit biometric information" on American citizens through COVID-19 test kits. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the firm has deep ties to both the Chinese Communist Party and its military.

2. Collins Admits Funding Wuhan Lab: 'We Had No Control Over What They Were Doing.'

Dr. Francis Collins, the director of the National Institute for Health (NIH), appears to have directly contradicted his underling Dr. Anthony Fauci in a bombshell moment from an interview with Hugh Hewitt.

The revelations further implicate those who approved U.S. grants to the lab, and the EcoHealth Alliance run by the British-born Peter Dazcak - who The National Pulse first reported on back in February.

3. EVIDENCE: Fauci's Bosses Signed Research Deals With Chinese Communist Military Front.

Under the leadership of Dr. Francis Collins - who recently admitted the U.S. had "no control" over the Wuhan lab despite funding it - the U.S. National Institutes of Health signed a memorandum of understanding to boost collaboration with a Chinese Communist Party-run scientific organization funding the People's Liberation Army.

The National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) has also funded several studies conducted by the Wuhan Institute of Virology, including research focused on bat coronaviruses alongside U.S.-based research groups such as the Anthony Fauci-funded EcoHealth Alliance.

4. INVESTIGATION: U.S. Has Funded Over 250 Studies for Chinese Communist Military Researchers.

Various National Institutes of Health agencies - including Anthony Fauci's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases - have funded over 250 studies authored by researchers at institutions controlled by China's People's Liberation Army.

Following a unique investigation into the origins of scientific research papers, the whopping level of collaboration with the Chinese military will further concerns in the United States that the political class has surrendered to the Chinese Communist Party. Last week it emerged that the ranking General in the U.S. Armed Forces agreed to tip off China in advance of a U.S.-led attack.

5. America Has Given Millions for 'Research' At Chinese Communist-Run Facilities Since COVID Outbreak.

The U.S. National Institutes of Health has continued to funnel millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars to fund scientific research in conjunction with Communist China since the beginning of the COVID pandemic, including to military-controlled organizations.

Over half of the grants sent since early 2020 came from Anthony Fauci's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

6. U.S. National Institutes of Health Fires 54 Researchers As Ongoing Investigation Reveals 93% Failed to Disclose Links to Chinese Communist Party

The National Institutes of Health, the foremost research institute under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, has investigated 189 researchers for undisclosed ties to foreign countries, 93 percent of which were linked to China.

The fresh round of terminations resulted from an ongoing investigation at the taxpayer-funded National Institutes of Health (NIH) into the failure of grant recipients to disclose financial ties to foreign governments.

In reality, accountability in a post-COVID era is what likely shuffled Francis Collins off from his otherwise immortal coil at the top of the NIH. Not that the corporate media would ever tell you any of that.



Dollars

The Pandora Papers: A nothing burger really

The MSM is trying to trick people into thinking they're still journalists, by telling us things we already know.

Leaders
© The Daily Sabah
THE "LEAKS"

So let's get right down to it...what do the "leaks" say? Well, according to The Guardian...
The files reveal how wealthy individuals can shield their income and their assets from taxation and scrutiny by hiding them in offshore jurisdictions, more commonly known as "tax havens".
Mind. Blown.

Rich people don't pay tax! WHAT?!

It's groundbreaking stuff. But that's the kind of world-changing expos's you get when you read the work of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).

Attention

The American police state's reign of terror continues ... With help from the Supreme Court

Rights aren't rights if someone can take them away. They're privileges. — George Carlin
SWAT Police
© A Government of Wolves.com/
You think you've got rights? Think again.

All of those freedoms we cherish — the ones enshrined in the Constitution, the ones that affirm our right to free speech and assembly, due process, privacy, bodily integrity, the right to not have police seize our property without a warrant, or search and detain us without probable cause — amount to nothing when the government and its agents are allowed to disregard those prohibitions on government overreach at will.

This is the grim reality of life in the American police state.

In fact, in the face of the government's ongoing power grabs, our so-called rights have been reduced to mere technicalities, privileges that can be granted and taken away, all with the general blessing of the courts.

This is what one would call a slow death by a thousand cuts, only it's the Constitution being inexorably bled to death by the very institution (the judicial branch of government) that is supposed to be protecting it (and us) from government abuse.

Court pundits, fixated on a handful of politically charged cases before the U.S. Supreme Court this term dealing with abortion, gun rights and COVID-19 mandates, have failed to recognize that the Supreme Court — and the courts in general — sold us out long ago.

With each passing day, it becomes increasingly clear that Americans can no longer rely on the courts to "take the government off the backs of the people," in the words of Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas. When presented with an opportunity to loosen the government's noose that keeps getting cinched tighter and tighter around the necks of the American people, what does our current Supreme Court usually do?

It ducks. Prevaricates. Remains silent. Speaks to the narrowest possible concern.

More often than not, it gives the government and its corporate sponsors the benefit of the doubt, seemingly more concerned with establishing order and protecting government interests than with upholding the rights of the people enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.

Rarely do the concerns of the populace prevail.

Every so often, the justices toss a bone to those who fear they have abdicated their allegiance to the Constitution. Too often, however, the Supreme Court tends to march in lockstep with the police state.

As a result, the police and other government agents have been generally empowered to probe, poke, pinch, taser, search, seize, strip and generally manhandle anyone they see fit in almost any circumstance.

Newspaper

Iran says 'strategic patience' with terrorist groups in Iraqi Kurdistan region is over, calls for their disarmament

Khatibzadeh

Saeed Khatibzadeh, Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman
The Iranian Foreign Ministry warns that the country's "strategic patience" with terrorist groups operating on the Iran-Iraq border has come to an end, calling on authorities in Iraq's Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and Baghdad to disarm the counterrevolutionary outfits.

Saeed Khatibzadeh, Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman, said in a news conference on Monday that Tehran has lost patience with terrorist groups in Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdistan region and will not allow their acts of terror to continue against the Islamic Republic.
"In the face of some terrorist acts by [anti-Iran] groups in the Iraqi Kurdistan region, we exercised strategic patience coupled with tact to resolve this issue in its own way. Iran's message to the region and Baghdad is that this approach can no longer continue," Khatibzadeh told reporters at the presser.

Comment: See also: And check out SOTT radio's: Behind the Headlines: Kurdistan and Catalonia: The Politics of Self-Determination


Snakes in Suits

Biden adds $3.5 trillion BBB agenda onto US debt limit increase, urges GOP to 'just get out of the way'

Biden
© Jonathan Ernst | Reuters
U.S. President Joe Biden delivers remarks on the U.S. debt ceiling from the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington, U.S. October 4, 2021.
President Joe Biden on Monday blamed Republicans for blocking efforts to raise or suspend the U.S. borrowing limit and avert a dangerous first-ever default on the national debt.

The president slammed the GOP for what he described as hypocritical behavior: adding nearly $8 trillion to the U.S. debt during the Trump administration and later refusing to pay for already-approved tax cuts and spending.


Comment: This same charade occurred during the Obama administration. The limit is always raised but in the meantime the 'crisis' is used for all manner of nefarious maneuvering, political point scoring as well as to distract from other issues.


Biden said that Republican leaders rejected a White House request that they forgo a filibuster and allow Democrats to pass legislation to raise the ceiling with a simple majority instead with a 60-vote margin.

Comment: See also: The real B3W-NATO agenda

And check out SOTT radio's: NewsReal: Climate Disaster Plans and Vaccine War Games: Government to the Rescue!




Syringe

Fauci says people "have to give up what you consider your individual right of making your own decision" on vaccines

fauci whitehouse
© MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images
Pushing vaccine mandates again this weekend, Anthony Fauci brazenly declared that people are going to have to abandon the notion that they have a right to say no to the jabs.

The comments came during an online lecture to Canadian students at McGill University, as Fauci argued that giving up control of what is injected into one's body is 'for the greater good of society'.

"I think what people have to appreciate is that indeed you do have personal liberties for yourself, and you should be in control of them, but you are a member of society," Fauci decreed.

Comment: See also:


Binoculars

Nikkei Asia reports China PCR test orders soared before first reported COVID case

Xi Jinping
© Xinhua/Kyodo
Chinese President Xi Jinping inspects facilities in Wuhan in March 2020. Purchases of PCR tests from animal testing bureaus and universities in the region soared starting in May 2019.
Purchases of PCR tests in China's Hubei Province surged months before the first official reports of a novel coronavirus case there, according to a report from researchers in the U.S., the U.K. and Australia.

About 67.4 million yuan ($10.5 million at current rates) was spent on PCR tests in Hubei during 2019, nearly double the 2018 total, with the upswing starting in May. The report, released by a research team that includes former intelligence officers, is based on records from a website aggregating information on bids for public sector procurement contracts.


Comment: A word to the wise: note that this information is an intelligence product.


The report casts further doubt on China's official line about the origins of the virus, a topic that has fueled tensions between Beijing and Washington.

PCR, or polymerase chain reaction, tests are used to detect the presence of a particular genetic sequence in a sample, and they have applications beyond COVID-19 testing. But the report alleges the unusual uptick likely signals awareness of a new disease spreading in and around Wuhan, the capital of Hubei Province.

Orders doubled from universities, jumped fivefold from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention and surged tenfold from animal testing bureaus. Purchases from hospitals declined by more than 10%.

Monthly procurement data shows a spike in orders in May, especially from CDC buyers and the People's Liberation Army.

"We believe the increased spending in May suggests this as the earliest start date for possible infection," the report said.