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Panama Papers Reveal Scandalous Hypocrisy

Panama Papers Reveal Scandalous Hypocrisy

It’s always educational to observe the behavior of wildlife in their natural habitat. For example, we learn that there’s nothing more vicious than a wild animal that’s cornered. I would add that there’s nothing more devious than a top political or corporate official caught in a scandalous hypocrisy.

We’re now bearing witness to this latter phenomenon, for a whole menagerie of political critters have recently been screeching and scrambling after being backed into a corner by the “Panama Papers.” This is a trove of thousands of internet documents leaked to global media outlets, revealing that assorted billionaires, rich celebrities, corporate chieftains, and — yes — pious public officials have been hiding their wealth and dodging the taxes they owe by stashing their cash in foreign tax havens. Of course, we’ve known for a while that tax dodging is a common plutocratic scam, but the details from the leaked files of an obscure Panamanian law firm named Mossack Fonseca now gives us names to shame.

One is David Cameron, the ardently conservative prime minister of Britain, who has loudly declaimed tax sneaks in public. But — oops! — Now we learn that his own super-wealthy father was a Mossack Fonseca client, and that David himself has profited from the stealth wealth he inherited from the elder Cameron’s secret stash.

Trapped by the facts, the snarling, privileged prime minister used middle-class commoners as his shield, asserting that critics of his secluded wealth are trying to “tax anyone who [wants] to pass on their home… to their children.” Uh-uh, David – we merely want to tax those who try to pass-off tax frauds on the public.

One of Cameron’s partisans even claimed that critics “hate anybody who has a hint of wealth in them.” No, it’s the gross, self-serving hypocrisy of the elites that people hate. Yet now, doubling down on their hypocrisy, Cameron & Company have announced that they’ll host an anticorruption summit meeting to address the problem of offshore tax evaders!

The global web of corruption involving thousands of superrich tax dodgers and money launderers that the Panama Paper reveal is an explosive scandal — yet, interestingly, very few names of the moneyed elite in our country have surfaced as players in Mossack Fonseca’s Panamanian shell game. Perhaps US billionaires and corporations are just more honest than those elsewhere.

Ha-ha-ha, just kidding! Not more honest, just luckier. You see, America’s conniving richies don’t have to go to Panama to set up an offshore flim flam — they have the convenience of hiding their money and wrongdoings in secret accounts created right here in states like Delaware and Nevada.

The “New York Times” notes that it’s easier in some states to form a dummy money corporation than it is to get a fishing license. Indeed, the ease of doing it, and the state laws that provide strict secrecy for those hiding money, have made the U.S.A. a global magnet for international elites wanting to conceal billions of dollars from their own tax collectors, prosecutors… and general public.

State officials in Delaware even travel to Brazil, Israel, Spain and other nations to tell “the Delaware story,” inviting rich foreign interests to stash their cash in corporate hideaways that the state sets up, no questions asked. Likewise, Nevada flashes a dazzling neon sign inviting the global rich to incorporate their very own shell corporations there, promising — shhhh — “minimal reporting and disclosing requirements.” The money-hiding industry is so hot in Nevada that it attracted none other than Mossack Fonseca to get in the action by opening a branch office there.

The law firm is being branded as a criminal enterprise for the rich. OK, but it shares that shameful brand with our own state governments.

To find out more about Jim Hightower, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2016 CREATORS.COM

Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

Castro, Obama Shake Hands In Panama, Set Meeting For Saturday In U.S.-Cuba Thaw

Castro, Obama Shake Hands In Panama, Set Meeting For Saturday In U.S.-Cuba Thaw

By Tim Johnson, McClatchy Foreign Staff (TNS)

PANAMA CITY — The thaw in the lengthy diplomatic freeze between the United States and Cuba quickened Friday, with President Barack Obama and Cuban leader Raul Castro shaking hands at an evening reception ahead of a more substantive face-to-face meeting set for Saturday.

The two leaders’ greeting included no other significant interaction or substantive conversation, a White House official said. But it was closely watched as the first time Obama and Castro have encountered one another since they announced in December that their two countries were working to re-establish diplomatic relations severed in 1961.

U.S. National Security Council spokeswoman Bernadette Meehan said in a one-sentence statement that the two leaders “greeted each other and shook hands.” Photos showed Obama facing Castro, who was accompanied by Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez.

The handshake capped what Ben Rhodes, the White House deputy national security adviser, had described earlier as a ratcheting up of contacts between the two countries’ officials that would have been “unimaginable a year ago.”

Rhodes said Obama and Castro had talked earlier in the week by phone, disclosing a previously unannounced conversation. In addition, Secretary of State John Kerry and Foreign Minister Rodriguez held a lengthy meeting late Thursday night that was billed as the highest-level meeting between U.S. and Cuban officials in nearly six decades — a distinction it will lose when Obama and Castro hold their one-on-one discussion “on the margins” of the Summit of the Americas on Saturday.

“We’ve already had the first interaction, the first meeting, between our foreign ministers since 1958. That happened last night. We’ve had the first phone calls between the president of the United States and the president of Cuba that I’m aware of since a similar time frame,” Rhodes said.

“We’re in new territory here.”

Rhodes said Kerry and Rodriguez discussed “very practical, specific, and sometimes technical issues” related to restoring embassies in their respective countries.

Asked if Washington wants the government of Cuba, ruled by either Fidel Castro or his brother Raul since 1959, to be toppled, Rhodes dismissed the suggestion.

“We’re not focused on overthrowing the Cuban government. We’re not focused on changing the existing regime at a time when we’re engaging that government,” he said.

The phone conversation between Obama and Raul Castro on Wednesday was not particularly long, Rhodes said, while Kerry’s contact with his counterpart was broader and deeper.

The United States severed diplomatic ties with Cuba in 1961 following the Cuban Revolution, which sent hundreds of thousands of Cubans into exile, setting off a tense relationship that has become a major factor in both U.S. domestic politics and international tensions. Cuban-Americans are an influential voting bloc in battle-state Florida, and the U.S.-Cuba rivalry has had repercussions for decades, from the Western Hemisphere to Africa.

Obama and Castro have shaken hands before, in 2013 at the memorial service for the late South African leader Nelson Mandela. But while that one was the first such courteous gesture in half a century between the country’s leaders, Friday night’s hand clasping of hands seemed to portend even more momentous changes in a relationship that has split not just the two countries, but the Western Hemisphere. Until this year, no Cuban leader had been invited to a Summit of the Americas, a gathering of all the Western Hemisphere nations, since the event was initiated in 1994.

Vestiges of the strained relationship were on display in the early afternoon as Cuban dissidents and their supporters clashed with backers of the Castro government outside a Panama City hotel in a second day of violence.

Protesters pushed, shoved and shouted at one another outside the Hotel Panama, a luxury hotel in the city’s banking district where a forum was being held to bring together civil society leaders from across the Americas. Many waved Cuban flags. Panama’s main television network called for police to restore order.

Cuba was not the only source of tension. Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro arrived in Panama in the afternoon and headed directly to the working-class neighborhood of El Chorrillo, where he laid a wreath at a monument in honor of Panamanians who died resisting the 1989 U.S. invasion that toppled then-dictator Manuel Noriega. Bombing during the invasion heavily damaged high-rises in El Chorrillo.

At midmorning, with temperatures already soaring to the high 80s, Obama toured the Miraflores Locks on the Pacific side of the Panama Canal, itself a reminder of the United States’ long, sometimes acrimonious relationship with Latin America. Wearing sunglasses, Obama climbed the control tower that oversees movement of vessels, then walked along a narrow pedestrian walkway that traverses the locks chambers.
Secret Service agents were aboard vessels nearby as Obama crossed the canal.

Between 12,000 and 14,000 ships transit each year between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans through the canal, which was controlled by the United States until the 1970s, when a treaty surrendered jurisdiction to Panama.

Later, Obama said he “saw the extraordinary progress that is being made” on a $5.2 billion project to expand the canal, scheduled to conclude early next year.

“It really is a symbol of human ingenuity but also Panama’s central role in bridging two continents and bringing the hemisphere together,” Obama said.

Panama held out hope that the summit, which concludes late Saturday afternoon, would not only showcase the rapprochement between Cuba and the United States but help mend tense U.S. relations with Venezuela.

“Where there are differences, let us create bridges,” said Martin Torrijos, a leftist former president of Panama.

Torrijos recalled Panama’s history as a facilitator of peace talks in the 1980s aimed at ending wars in Central America and said, “I hope this can repeat itself.”

(c)2015 McClatchy Washington Bureau, Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC

Photo: Day Donaldson via Flickr

Panama Vice President — An Opposition Candidate — Is Elected President

Panama Vice President — An Opposition Candidate — Is Elected President

By Cesar Cardenas and Tracy Wilkinson, Los Angeles Times

PANAMA CITY — An opposition candidate was headed to victory Sunday in Panama as the region’s fastest-growing economy voted for president in an unusually tight race.

Almost complete results showed Vice President Juan Carlos Varela of a center-right party winning the presidency. “The trend is irreversible,” elections bureau president Erasmo Pinilla said in a news conference.

Later, he telephoned Varela and said: “You are the next president of the republic.”

Varela’s victory dashes the hopes of outgoing President Ricardo Martinelli to keep some hold on power.

The next president is expected to continue the current government’s free-market policies and will oversee the ambitious expansion of the vital Panama Canal, a project plagued by cost overruns, delays and strikes.

More than 2 million eligible voters were choosing among seven candidates — with only three of them seen as having a reasonable shot at victory — in an election season during which Martinelli fought mightily, and some say improperly, to sustain his influence.

His hand-picked candidate, Jose Domingo Arias, was neck and neck with Varela and another opposition candidate heading into Sunday’s election.

Martinelli was widely criticized for attempting to pull off the same type of constitutional change that some of his leftist counterparts in the region had used successfully to remain in power for successive terms.

A right-wing business entrepreneur, Martinelli was ultimately blocked from running for re-election. Instead he worked to try to make sure that his candidate would replace him. In addition, Arias’ vice presidential candidate was Martinelli’s wife.

Although serving as vice president, Varela had a falling out with Martinelli and was not his man in this race. Martinelli took to publicly insulting Varela.

Panamanians often vote against the established candidate.

“He made a big mistake,” former President Aristides Royo told CNN’s Spanish-language service, referring to Martinelli’s efforts to hold on to power. “The people tend to go with the opposition.”

Trained at Georgia Tech and local Jesuit schools, Varela is expected to stick to Martinelli’s pro-business economic policies, but he promised to run a cleaner and less corrupt government. One of the several scandals plaguing the Martinelli administration involves possible bribes paid to officials by an Italian defense company.

Yet Varela too has had his share of troubles. He reportedly is under investigation for money laundering, in a country where such illegal practice is rampant.

His Panamanist Party is an iteration of a party that emerged in the wake of the 1989 U.S. invasion of Panama that ousted military dictator Gen. Manuel Noriega and ushered in democracy. Noriega is in a Panamanian prison after serving two decades in U.S. and French jails.

Some in Panama saw this election as an important test of the country’s nascent democracy. Under Martinelli, Panama has seen a huge real estate boom, the construction of Central America’s first subway and numerous other public works projects. But there were persistent questions about whether Martinelli’s cronies were the real beneficiaries and whether such growth was sustainable.

Matthew Straubmuller via Flickr

Labor, Human Rights Groups Skeptical Of New Free Trade Agreements

With Tuesday’s passage of free trade agreements with Panama, Colombia, and South Korea, most Americans were too busy reeling from the shock that Congress could actually give bipartisan support for anything to critically evaluate the possible implications of the FTAs.

But some groups worry that the free trade agreements will have dire consequences for already marginalized peoples. The Washington Office On Latin America, a human rights group based in D.C., said the U.S.-Colombia FTA could hurt poorer people in an already tumultuous economic climate. Executive Director Joy Olson released a statement preceding the vote:

“With every trade agreement there are winners and losers. WOLA opposed this agreement because the experience with similar agreements has taught us who the losers will be, those least able to bear the cost: small agricultural producers, including Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities, many of them already at risk because of Colombia’s ongoing armed conflict. Furthermore, while there has been much attention on labor rights issues in the lead up to this vote, past experience also tells us that once the agreement is signed no one pays attention to what happens to the workers. Let’s be honest, this agreement will devastate some people who are already poor. If approved, supporters of this agreement can’t just say hooray and move on. They will have to deal with the consequences of this vote in Colombia, including continued labor violations and assassinations, people moving into the illicit drug trade, greater internal displacement, and out-migration.”

Additionally, protesters and the Democratic Party in South Korea have called for more provisions in the agreement that would prevent “the U.S. abusing the system.” Demonstrators have been rallying against the new FTA in front of the Seoul City Hall in recent days, concerned that the agreement will hurt South Korean workers.

The official reaction from politicians in South Korea, Colombia, and Panama was favorable toward the FTAs, but labor activists in these three countries worry that they are opening themselves up to new economic struggles by allowing more competition with the United States.

Although U.S. politicians are congratulating themselves on passing these FTAs after a years-long process, Americans should seriously consider how these policies will impact both domestic and foreign economies.