The Vanity Fair magazine published last year an investigative article alleging that the American Turkish Council (ATC) and the Assembly of Turkish American Associations (ATAA) had conspired, among other things, to make illegal campaign contributions to the Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert, in return for blocking a congressional resolution on the Armenian Genocide. The article also mentioned that Turkish agents had infiltrated the highest echelons of the U.S. government.

The main source for some of the Vanity Fair revelations was Sibel Edmonds who had worked as a Turkish translator for the FBI. Unfortunately, she could not disclose most of what she knew on this sensitive subject, as she is legally prohibited from making public the confidential FBI documents that she had translated in the course of her work. All attempts by U.S. courts or Members of Congress to get out the full facts have been quashed by the Bush Administration, using the cover of protecting national security.

Umberto Eco in his last book, Numero Zero, in describing the reality of the manipulating and manipulated western media, has a newspaper editor say, "let's just stick to spreading suspicion. Someone is involved in fishy business, and though we don't know who it is, we can give him a scare. That's enough for our purposes. Then we'll cash in, our proprietor can cash in, when the time is right."

And that is exactly what is happening with the appearance simultaneously in all the western media, on Sunday, April 3 of a story about what are called the Panama Papers. The story attributed to a shadowy organisation called the International Coalition of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) has all the hallmarks of an operation by western secret services to attempt to subvert targeted governments. The primary target is of course President Putin in order to influence the coming elections and to further attempt to portray him in the eyes of the peoples of the west as a criminal.

But the targets also include FIFA directors, continuing the harassment of FIFA by the United States government, in order to keep Russia out of the next world cup football games, Lionel Messi one of the world's best football players, perhaps because he refused a request by President Obama's daughters to meet him when Obama visited Argentina, Jackie Chan, no doubt punishment for supporting the Communist Party of China, and various people blacklisted by the United States for dealing with North Korea, Iran, Hezbollah, Syria and other American designated enemies.

They include President Poroshenko of Ukraine, perhaps signaling they are tired of him, the prime minister of Iceland, since forced to resign, no doubt for jailing bankers, seizing their banks and giving the people some compensation for their losses in the financial crisis of 2008, Hosni Mubarak who has accused the United States of trying to overthrow him, the murdered Gadhafi, and Xi Jinping, president of China. No Americans or NATO leaders are named though David Cameron's father is named, perhaps a slap at Cameron for allowing a referendum to take place on whether Britain should leave the European Union, which would reduce US influence in Europe.

Essentially these people are all considered by the United States government to be enemies or critics of the United States in one way or another, or no longer reliable partners.

Underneath the visitors' center in the United States Capitol is a secure room where the House Intelligence Committee stores highly classified files. In that room is a file titled "Finding, Discussion and Narrative Regarding Certain Sensitive National Security Matters." It is twenty-eight pages long and it contains apparently damning information on the events leading up to the attacks on 9/11.

"Those twenty-eight pages tell a story that has been completely removed from the 9/11 Report," said Democratic Congressman Stephen Lynch back in 2014.

It has been well-known by informed Americans that Lynch, read the "stunning" documents, and claimed they "offer[ed] direct evidence of complicity on the part of certain Saudi individuals and entities."

One of the epicenters of the global financial crisis that started during the second half of last year is Japan, and it looks like the markets in the land of the rising sun are entering yet another period of great turmoil. The Nikkei was down another 390 points last night, and it is now down more than 1,300 points since a week ago. Why this is so important for U.S. investors is because the Nikkei is often an early warning indicator of where the rest of the global markets are heading. For example, the Nikkei started crashing early last December about a month before U.S. markets started crashing really hard in early January. So the fact that the Nikkei has been falling very rapidly in recent days should be a huge red flag for investors in this country.

I want you to study the chart below very carefully. It shows the performance of the Nikkei over the past 12 months. As you can see, it kind of resembles a giant leaning "W". You can see the stock crash that started last August, you can see the second wave of the crash that began last December, and now a third leg of the crash is currently forming...

And of course the economic fundamentals in Japan continue to deteriorate as well. GDP growth has been negative for two out of the last three quarters, Japanese industrial production just experienced the largest one month decline that we have seen since the tsunami of 2011, and business sentiment has sunk to a three year low.

The diplomatic correspondence of the Embassy of Saudi Arabia in Sanaa, obtained by Sputnik, revealed that Riyadh could have been aware of the preparation of the 2011 assassination attempt on former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

As several marked "top secret" telegrams of the diplomatic mission claimed that Lt. Gen. Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar, the former commander of the Yemeni army's 1st Armored Division, was heading the conspiracy against the ex-president. The first data about the assassination attempt was sent to Riyadh on May 28, 2011, just a week before it was committed.

Officials in Europe and Turkey are hailing the apparent success of the first week of the implementation of the EU-Turkey refugee deal. The number of migrants arriving in Greece from Turkey is down to hundreds per day, rather than thousands.

Also this week, two boatloads of refugees from Greece have been shipped back to Turkey — 54 on Monday, 120 on Friday.

However, some analysts are saying that this is all symbolic, a meaningless show. The reason is technical, but dispositive. All 54 of the migrants returned to Turkey on Monday were Pakistani. Most of the migrants sent on Friday were Pakistani, and others were from Egypt, Afghanistan, and Iraq. None of these migrants had applied for asylum in Greece because their intention was to continue their journey north to Germany or Sweden, an objective that is now denied to them because the "Balkan Route" has been closed.

Now, the problem with this situation is that it was already perfectly legal for Greece to deport these 174 "illegal migrants," even without the EU-Turkey deal. Under a previous 2002 deal, Greece could have returned them to Turkey. Even without that deal, Greece could have deported them to their home countries. As things stand, Turkey will now deport the 174 to their home countries, the countries that they had already fled from at risk of their lives.

Obama admitted that the biggest misstep of his presidency was failing to plan the aftermath of the intervention in Libya.

US President Barack Obama admitted that the biggest misstep of his presidency was failing to plan the aftermath of the NATO-led intervention in the crisis-torn Libya.

"Probably failing to plan for the day after what I think was the right thing to do in intervening in Libya," Obama told the Fox News channel in an interview broadcast on Sunday, commenting on his worst mistake during two presidential terms.

Exposing tax dodgers is a worthy endeavor, but the "limited hangout" of the Panama Papers may have less noble ends, dovetailing with the War on Cash and the imminent threat of massive bail-ins of depositor funds.

The bombshell publication of the "Panama Papers," leaked from a Panama law firm specializing in shell companies, has triggered both outrage and skepticism. In an April 3 article titled "Corporate Media Gatekeepers Protect Western 1% From Panama Leak," UK blogger Craig Murray writes that the whistleblower no doubt had good intentions; but he made the mistake of leaking his 11.5 million documents to the corporate-controlled Western media, which released only those few documents incriminating opponents of Western financial interests. Murray writes:

Do not expect a genuine expose of western capitalism. The dirty secrets of western corporations will remain unpublished.

Expect hits at Russia, Iran and Syria and some tiny "balancing" western country like Iceland.

Iceland, of course, was the only country to refuse to bail out its banks, instead throwing its offending bankers in jail.

Pepe Escobar calls the released Panama Papers a "limited hangout." The leak dovetails with the attempt of Transparency International to create a Global Public Beneficial Ownership Registry, which can collect ownership information from governments around the world; and with UK Prime Minister David Cameron's global anti-corruption summit next month. According to The Economist, "The Panama papers give him just the platform he needs to persuade other governments, and his own, to turn their tough talk of recent years into action."

The Daily Bell suspects a coordinated global effort linked to the push to go cashless. It's all about knowing where the money is and who owns it, in order to tax it, regulate it, "sanction" it, or confiscate it:

Without privacy, authoritarianism flourishes because it is impossible to build and expand private networks that would act as a deterrent . . . . A worldwide transparency regime virtually guarantees abuses and corruption from those in power.

This is a reason why the "cashless society" idea is such a bad one. When no one is able to use cash, financial histories will be easily available via electronic bank records

Michael Snyder of InvestmentWatchBlog.com also links the Panama Papers with the push to go cashless:

. . . [W]ith this Panama Paper leak and all its pre-conditioning against tax havens, people aren't realizing yet that very soon, once Negative Interest Rates and Bail-Ins are being openly discussed and prepared for implementation, the whole tax haven or tax dodger discussion in the media will quickly switch from talking about corrupt billionaires and shell companies half way around the world, and instead will be talking about something much closer to home . . . .

In my strong opinion this whole thing is all part of the coming capital control war, which ties directly in with the coming transition to a biometric digital currency, the implementation of Negative Interest Rates, the rollout of large scale systemic bail-ins, and the demonization and eventual criminalization of physical assets that are outside of direct taxation control (which again would be done using the pre-conditioned guise of "tax havens", with physical precious metals and physical cash being the main targets).

In the early morning hours of April 1-2 Azerbaijan launched a major military offensive into the disputed region Nagorno-Karabakh (NK) that's been controlled and defended by NK Armenian forces since the Russian brokered truce ended a bloody three year war in 1994. While Azeri President Ilham Aliyev was flying back to Baku after meeting 24 hours earlier with John Kerry in Washington who claimed "an ultimate resolution" had been reached, Azerbaijan was already once again at war with the NK Armenians.

The surprise element combined with the full scale major military operation spearheading a three pronged attack on Nagorno-Karabakh contact line from the southern, southeastern and northeastern directions resulted in the Aziri army seizing at least five Armenian villages and several strategic elevated heights inside the disputed territory with heavy loss of life reported on both sides including Armenian civilians whose home were shelled by Aziri artillery mortars and rockets. Though a ceasefire three days into the heavy fighting was brokered by Russia, repeated ceasefire breaches and continued combat operations have been observed.

Evidence that you'll never see in Western MSM coverage is now surfacing from Armenian press documenting not only is the Azeri military still daily violating Tuesday's ceasefire but far more significant and alarming is that the Azeris have been attacking villages inside the Republic of Armenia, not just in the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave. On Friday April 8 the press secretary of the Armenian Republic Ministry of Defense Artsrun Hovhannisyan disclosed that Azeri forces have been shelling civilian settlements with 120mm mortar fire in the villages of Karmir, Ttujur and Baghanisin within the Armenian provinces of Tavush and Gegharkunet. Fortunately there has been no reported casualties as yet. But when the first victims do get reported, the consequences for Azerbaijan could become far reaching.

By committing an act of war killing Armenian civilians on a second warfront by shelling civilian targets within the Republic of Armenia, the Azeri government is showing that its unilateral aggression remains unfazed, attacking an allied nation holding a mutual defense pact with Russia that stipulates if Armenia is attacked, Russia is compelled to come to Armenia's aid and defense. Azerbaijan's artillery shelling may force Russia to shift from acting as prime mediator in the Azeri-Armenian conflict to being drawn into the escalating war against Azerbaijan. The implications of such an expanding war are so serious it could destabilize not just the immediate region but trigger a rippling effect globally. This potentially grave development of course feeds right into the sinister hegemonic plan that the neocons behind US Empire have been fiendishly hoping and working towards for some time, to tie up Russia directly involving Putin in fighting yet another war on his doorstep that could quickly unravel to ignite World War III.

A new Tax Justice Network (TJN) USA report reveals an estimated $21 - $32 trillion of hidden and stolen wealth stashed largely tax-free secretly.

Titled "The Price of Offshore Revisited," it explains what finance insiders know but won't discuss because many of them have their own hidden wealth.

TJN describes a "subterranean" and systemic "economic equivalent of an astrophysical black hole." The higher estimate above exceeds US GDP twofold.

It's mind-boggling. It's hard imagining that a tiny percent of privileged elites control this much wealth secretly. It's worse knowing that it's largely tax free, and it's appalling that governments let them get away with it.