Month: April 2016

by William Skink

It is tempting to celebrate the release of the Panama Papers as a win for those of us who don’t benefit from offshore tax havens, but is it a win?

One of the first alternative theories that caught my attention was from Brookings, speculating that perhaps Putin was behind this release. Since Putin was an initial target of these leaks, this theory may seem counterintuitive, but read the whole piece first and then tell me it isn’t at least plausible. Here’s the money shot:

As many have already pointed out, it’s curious that the Panama Papers mention no Americans. But it’s possible that they do and that the ICIJ hasn’t revealed that information. Perhaps, since the ICIJ is funded by Americans, they’re not going to bite the hand that feeds them. But suppose the ICIJ actually doesn’t have information on Americans—that calls into question the original data, which if actually real and uncensored would most probably include something on Americans. There are undoubtedly many American individuals and companies that have done business with the Mossack Fonseco crew, and it wouldn’t make sense for a collection of 11.5 million documents involving offshore finances to omit Americans entirely. Perhaps, then, someone purged those references before the documents were handed over to the German newspaper. The “someone” would, following my hypothesis, be the Russians—and the absence of incriminating information about Americans is an important hint of what I think to be the real purpose of this leak.

The Panama Papers contain secret corporate financial information, some of which—by far not all—reveals criminal activity. In the hands of law enforcement, such information can be used to prosecute companies and individuals; in the hands of a third party, it is a weapon for blackmail. For information to be effective as a blackmail weapon, it must be kept secret. Once revealed, as in the Panama Papers case, it is useless for blackmail. Its value is destroyed.

Therefore, I suggest that the purpose of the Panama Papers operation may be this: It is a message directed at the Americans and other Western political leaders who could be mentioned but are not. The message is: “We have information on your financial misdeeds, too. You know we do. We can keep them secret if you work with us.” In other words, the individuals mentioned in the documents are not the targets. The ones who are not mentioned are the targets. (original emphasis)

At Moon of Alabama, b was quick to unpack the selectivity of the leaks with this post from April 4th. After reading MoA for nearly a decade, I have learned it’s smart to include b’s perspective when trying to understand issues that the American-centric mainstream news media here is incapable of covering.

Counterpunch is another quality source of information, and it’s from there that another aspect of this massive data dump starts taking shape. For those already familiar with the disturbing financial trends of negative interest rates, bail-ins and the push to go cashless, the Panama Papers start looking like a different gambit altogether. From the link:

What we may be witnessing here is the 1% going after the 10% of people who, according to German researcher Margrit Kennedy, do not need to borrow but are “net savers.” Today the remaining 90% are “all borrowed up.” Either they are unwilling to borrow more or the banks are unwilling to lend to them, since they are poor credit risks. Who, then, is left to feed the debt machine that feeds the 1%, and more specifically the 0.001%? The power brokers at the top seem to want it all, and today that means going after those just below them on the financial food chain. The challenge is in squeezing money from people who don’t need to borrow. How to legally confiscate their savings?

Enter bail-ins, negative interest, all-digital currencies, and the elimination of “tax havens.”

Bail-ins allow the largest banks to gamble with impunity with their depositors’ money. If the banks make bad bets and become insolvent, they can legally confiscate the deposits to balance their books, through an “orderly resolution” scheme of the sort mandated in the Dodd-Frank Act.

Negative interest is a fee or private tax on holding funds in the bank.

Eliminating cash prevents the bank runs that these assaults on people’s savings would otherwise trigger. Money that exists only as digital entries cannot be withdrawn and stored under a mattress.

Exposing tax havens shows the predators where the money is and who has title to it, facilitating its confiscation and preventing the funding of massive rebellions against confiscation.

If true, the coming moves against upper-income tax brackets will be tough for them to comprehend, since I would presume a prevailing sentiment among this class is that they have accumulated enough to wealth to insulate themselves from the broader class war already being waged against the majority of people on this planet.

But here’s the harsh reality, 10%ers. If you’re not one of the 62 people who possess half the world’s wealth (and the few hundred mega-wealthy under this glided apex of capital accumulation) then you may be seen as just as expendable as the rest of us.

by William Skink

The Missoulian today is recognizing Patty Kent’s tenure building affordable housing for those suffering from mental illness. In 23 years of doing the job, the Missoulian reports, Patty Kent is responsible for adding 208 beds of various kinds of housing capacity at an estimated cost of 21 million dollars. If you pencil out this “affordable” housing that means each bed cost roughly $100,000 dollars. From the link:

Where other people sit around and talk about building massive projects, Kent would go out and put up six or eight units at a time, he said. She has not only the the heart and passion for the center’s clients, she has the skills to make hard projects work financially.

“You have to be a savvy business person. These units are businesses, and you have to make the cash flow,” Morton said.

Kent said she’s been able to do the work because of the support far and wide: “It’s been my pleasure – completely – and privilege. Everywhere you go, it takes the entire community to say we need this, we want this. I just help move it along.”

Hopefully some of that housing will be available to deal with the consequences of closing down the Montana Development Center in Boulder, a seriously flawed move enacted by our legislature. Why was the process flawed? Because the investigation was compromised from the beginning due to a conflict of interest that should have been a flag for legislators:

The motives of the lead investigator behind a state-backed probe into alleged mistreatment of patients at the Montana Developmental Center are being questioned amid calls for the Legislature to reconsider its decision to close the facility.

Dana Toole — a Montana Department of Justice investigator and the top sleuth charged with vetting reports of abuse, neglect and mistreatment at the soon-to-be shuttered center — is married to Jeff Folsom, chief operating officer at Aware Inc., an Anaconda-based company that provides services for the mentally ill and developmentally disabled.

That company is expected to see a bump in business as a direct result of the Boulder-based center’s closure, a controversial move that won legislative approval two months after the release of a January 2015 report that featured 15 accounts of physical, verbal and sexual abuse substantiated by Toole.

A year later, the decision to mothball the center — which is expected to spell the loss of 250 jobs — remains divisive.

Six of the 15 appointees to a committee tasked with overseeing the center’s phase-out signed a March letter to the Independent Record that called reports of abuse at the center “drastically overblown” and urged the Legislature to repeal the law mandating its closure.

This information was known at the time this legislation was moving through the sausage factory in Helena, but apparently didn’t cause too much concern at the time. Also, the investigator wasn’t the only person who risked the appearance of a conflict of interest, the Democrat co-sponsor of the legislation was on the hot seat last year:

Ethics questions surrounding her investigation aren’t the first to be raised in the wake of the center’s planned closure.

This time last year, state Sen. Mary Caferro, D-Helena, caught some heat for her sponsorship of the still-controversial bill to shutter the center.

The Independent Record reported then that Caferro worked for an organization financially supported by Aware.

A business disclosure statement filed with political regulators 14 months earlier listed the company as Caferro’s sole source of salary and retirement benefits.

She told the newspaper her sponsorship of the bill did not qualify as a conflict of interest, a stance she stood by on Monday.

If this wasn’t messy enough, there’s more problematic actions occurring surrounding the use of this facility, or, more accurately, the non-use of MDC to help with overcrowding at Warm Springs, and at least one legislator is raising concerns about a state lease:

Many Montana lawmakers and state officials agreed facilities to house the state’s criminally convicted mental health patients were overcrowded.

Not as many agreed on how to pay to fix it.

Such was the conundrum Gov. Steve Bullock looked to resolve with September’s sudden announcement that the state would move those patients, and some state mental health workers, to a privately owned building in Galen, a stone’s throw from developmentally disabled patients at the soon-be-shuttered Montana Developmental Center in Boulder.

Weeks later, Montana officials signed a 19-year lease at the 38,000-square-foot former federal juvenile placement facility in Galen – terms that squeaked just under square footage and lease term requirements that would have triggered mandatory legislative review of the deal.

There was no competitive bidding process to award the Galen lease. In fact, officials said Wednesday they didn’t even look at potential alternatives to the $1.2 million annual agreement.

That’s how the state’s newest landlord became Community Counseling and Correctional Services – a Butte-based nonprofit that employs Brandie Villa, a top company accountant and the wife of Governor’s Office Budget Director Dan Villa.

With all the conflict of interest and self-serving going on, I have a question for everyone involved: does anyone actually give a shit about the people and their families caught up in this clusterfuck?

I expect more problems will arise as this situation gets sorted out. And I expect Montana to continue it’s deplorable track record of serving those with serious mental health problems.

by William Skink

There has been an interesting cluster of William Shakespeare stories in the news recently worth noting, especially considering April is National poetry month.

Usually for poetry month I compile the poetry posts I’ve written (last year the list was over 160 links long), but since getting kicked off 4&20 Blackbirds, I haven’t been all that interested in keeping up with the poetry posts because there’s just too much delightful political bullshit to tackle 😉

But the Shakespeare stories definitely merit some attention, considering Shakespeare is one of the most important writers in terms of bestowing our western literary tradition’s boasting rights over those non-western wannabe literary snobs.

The first story comes from the Isle of Bute, where a very rare First Folio was found and recently authenticated. This rare folio, published in 1623 (seven years after the alleged death of Shakespeare) is the only reason we have Macbeth, The Tempest and a few other plays that would otherwise have been lost if not for this collection.

The second story I came across oddly came from Consortium News, an alternative news site that sticks mostly to geopolitics. This article takes a look at The Mystery of Shakespeare’s Tomb:

The 400th-anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare — to be observed in late April — was supposed to be a moment for global celebration of the literary genius long believed to have been from Stratford-on-Avon. But, in a classic case of “unintended consequences,” a reluctant decision by Anglican Church officials to permit scientists to use modern technology to study his presumed grave inside the local church has backfired because the inconclusive results of this investigation — the apparent failure to confirm conclusively the presence of any human remains in the tomb — is casting a shadow over the celebration.

Indeed, the fiasco may cause more people to doubt – or even reject – the longstanding claim that the man with this famous name from a market town in the British Midlands was the true author of the Shakespearean works.

The reason this may fuel speculation is because there has been a debate going on for just a couple of centuries now about whether or not Shakespeare wrote his famous plays. The idea is the real Shakespeare was too low on the social totem pole to be able to write about court and things like hunting, a theory taken up four years ago with a movie, titled Anonymous. According to that article, this speculation has been taken up by other literary figures:

The great minds who have asked these questions are legion.

Mark Twain, one of the most famous doubters, author of the essay “Is Shakespeare Dead?” wrote: “So far as anybody actually knows and can prove, Shakespeare of Stratford-on-Avon never wrote a play in his life.”

“I am ‘sort of’ haunted by the conviction,” wrote novelist Henry James, “that the divine William is the biggest and most successful fraud ever practiced on a patient world.”

Sigmund Freud, whose own work is often equated with Shakespeare’s in its cultural impact and who drew heavily on Hamlet for some of his own theories, also believed that someone other than the actor from Stratford wrote the plays. “It is undeniably painful to all of us,” he said, “that even now we do not know who was the author of the Comedies, Tragedies and Sonnets of Shakespeare.”

“I can hardly think it was the Stratford boy,” wrote Charlie Chaplin of the plays. “Whoever wrote them had an aristocratic attitude.”

Such famous doubters have been joined by everyone from Orson Welles to Helen Keller.

Even Malcolm X became “intrigued over the Shakespearean dilemma,” as he referred to it in his Autobiography. “If Shakespeare existed, he was then the top poet around,” the modern revolutionary leader wondered, asking why he didn’t work on the King James Bible. “If he existed, why didn’t King James use him?”

Now that you are thoroughly intrigued about the questionable provenance of Shakespeare’s literary output, you will be happy to know that next month the rare First Folio will be on display at the University of Montana:

The University of Montana has been named as Montana’s host for the “First Folio! The Book that Gave Us Shakespeare.” The Folio is on national tour from the Folger Shakespeare Library. The display in Missoula is sponsored by the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Library and the Montana Museum of Art & Culture (MMAC).

The Folger Shakespeare Library, in association with the Cincinnati Museum Center and the American Library Association, is touring the exhibition to all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico in 2016. The MMAC will be the only location in Montana to display the Folio during its tour around the country.

The First Folio exhibition will be on display in MMAC and open to the public May 9-31, 2016.

Full schedule of events.

More information: 406-243-2019

So, while the University leadership is busy slashing the humanities at UM, consider visiting UM’s campus next month to check out a document that could represent one of the biggest literary frauds in human history.

by William Skink

What we as humans claim to know about history is not nearly as important as what we still don’t know. Even more important, some theories aren’t given due consideration because doing so could upend scholarly consensus.

Last month it was reported that a new research group is forming to give researches better networking and support in the field of ancient history.  From the link:

Is the orthodox view of the rise of civilisation wrong? For many years, a number of ‘alternative’ historians have put forward the view that there is enough evidence to suggest that an advanced civilisation existed in prehistory, but through some cataclysm disappeared in the mists of time. And, in recent years, archaeological discoveries such as the truly ancient megalithic site of Göbekli Tepe have continued to add substance to that view.

Geologist Robert Schoch – famous for his ‘redating’ of the Great Sphinx of Egypt, based on evidence of water eroision – is now, with a number of colleagues, aiming to take research into this idea to the next level. He has just announced the formation of ‘ORACUL’ (‘Organization for the Research of Ancient Cultures’), a non-profit 501c devoted to investigation and discussion of these ‘forbidden history’ ideas.

As new technology leads to potential new discoveries with the pyramids in Egypt, I think the mysteries of ancient history are more important now than ever. Why? Because if scholars aren’t bringing their rigorous scientific objectiveness to this subject, then others will interpret ancient history in a manner that fits their own subjective notions of race and religious exclusivity, and that is potentially dangerous.

I’m not going to get too deep into this today because it’s the subject of the book I’m working on, but I would like to throw a few ideas out there on this beautiful spring day.

The possible existence of a highly advanced pre-flood civilization is not a new idea. I suspect that most readers here have heard of the myth of Atlantis. Other alternative history ideas continue to seep into the mainstream, through television series like Ancient Aliens on the History channel.

These ancient mysteries can be dangerously seductive in the sense that they fuel ideologies that, historically, have been used to justify atrocities like the holocaust. Esoteric Nazism is a thing and it didn’t just go away with the defeat of Nazi Germany. There is also a fascinating connection between the occult knowledge Hitler’s minions were pursuing and the post-war origins of the New Age Movement.

The most pervasive forms of anti-semitisim find their origins in skewed historical interpretations of biblical times and pre-flood theories of an Aryan master race. It doesn’t help that there have been long-standing efforts to suppress certain types of heretical knowledge, going back to the persecution of the early Christian Gnostics.

Many scholars will be hesitant to engage with this topic because there is little funding and career advancement for doing so. Instead, there is the risk of becoming professionally ostracized. As someone who has been labeled and ridiculed as a conspiracy theorist, I get why people would be hesitant.

But failing to grapple with these big questions cedes this historical terrain to those who do claim to have the answers, answers that just so happen to include racial superiority and theories that put forward the inherent evil of adherents to the Judaic faith.

I think it’s pretty clear how dangerous it would be to let those interpretations dominate the discourse. I’ll leave it there, for now.

by William Skink

It’s been twenty years since Ted Kaczynski was arrested on April 3rd in Lincoln, Montana for the lethal bombings that earned Ted the title of Unabomber. While Ted will die in prison, the entity that helped create him by first breaking him–the CIA–continues to wreak havoc across the globe.

The Agency isn’t supposed to be operating on American soil, but when has that ever stopped this out-of-control branch of the American security state?

That issue came up recently when the CIA “accidentally” left some plastic explosives on a school bus. Yes, you read that correctly. Here’s how NPR reported it:

The CIA “inadvertently left” explosive material on a school bus after a training exercise with local law enforcement in Loudoun County, Va., the agency and the country sheriff’s office say.

The bus then remained in service for two days, transporting students to a high school and two elementary schools, before the explosive material was found during routine maintenance, the sheriff’s office says in a statement.

According to a statement from the school district, the bus carrying the material “made eight runs totaling 145 miles carrying 26 students attending Rock Ridge High School, Buffalo Trail Elementary School and Pinebrook Elementary School.”

The CIA put the material in the bus as part of a regular joint exercise to train explosives-sniffing dogs at Briar Woods High School on March 21-24, during spring break, the sheriff’s office says. The Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office and Fire Marshal’s Office took part in the drill.

Um, ok. Does this smell like a fortuitously thwarted false flag attack to anyone else?  Here is Dave Lindorff with a piece at Counterpunch (a source I often quote):

There is plenty of evidence that over the past two decades, the US government and its intelligence and law-enforcement agencies have engaged in a number of so-called “false flag” operations, usually portrayed as “tests” gone wrong, or as “stings” designed to lure out alleged terrorists — though these latter operations usually turn out on investigation to have been wholly government-created incidents where low-wattage victims are talked into participating in a terrorism action either for pay, or under the belief that they are working for the government. There are just too many occasions when some crazy terror plot either gets prominently “uncovered” and “prevented,” or actually is attempted right when the government could use some increased public sense of panic to help pass some new law diminishing Constitutionally-protected freedoms, or higher spending on war and government intelligence agencies.

As one CIA veteran offers, “The only ‘innocent’ explanation as to why the agency was training locals on this is that the agency has more money than it knows what to do with, whereas others are not that flush,” but this source adds, “There are a host of other, more sinister possible explanations. This needs to be looked into.”

There are certainly enough bozos in the US government’s intelligence and law-enforcement agencies, including the CIA, for me to believe that this school explosives “testing exercise” was just a really stupid idea gone wrong. But I’m also suspicious enough to believe that it could have been something much more insidious that didn’t go as planned only because of the alertness of one school district mechanic.

I’m probably just being a paranoid conspiracy theorist, right?