Editor's note: Nina-Bytes is a weekday blogging series that features short analysis and commentary on articles from around the web. This post is archival and originally appeared on October 3rd, 2021 over on our Facebook page.
The Pandora Papers
Over the next few weeks, you're likely going to be hearing a lot about a series of global financial leaks called "the Pandora Papers" - and if the history of the Panama Papers, and the Paradise Papers is any indication, the reporting on this subject will be equal parts atrocious and complicit.
These leaks are a part of a gigantic (2.94 terabyte) data trove that exposes the secret offshore financial manipulations and tax evasions schemes of the uber wealthy; including individuals from over 200 countries and territories. Perhaps most importantly, these leaks include records of financial skullduggery from more than 330 politicians and 130 Forbes billionaires; these aren't just the machinations of the ruling classes, but also of their in-pocket muppets in what is very loosely defined as "public service."
This project, from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, involved processing more than 11.9 million individual records, and represents the work of over 600 individual journalists, from roughly 150 separate news outlets around the world. In other words, this is the mother lode of dirt on rich guys and their schemes to accumulate and hide wealth, without having to return anything whatsoever to society.
Unfortunately, and despite the gravity of these leaks, this story will likely receive very little attention (long term) in for-profit Western media for two primary reasons.
The first reason is that due to the absolutely absurd way American tax law works to protect the wealthy from any form of taxation, there are very few Americans listed in these leaks because American billionaires already get to keep all their money; and as anyone who has ever worked in American media can tell you, the world ends for our news on the near shores of either ocean that surrounds Turtle Island.
The second reason is that despite the (rightful) moral outrage these leaks would produce in any person who actually understood them, the vast majority of financial activity depicted within is perfectly legal. Oh sure, there may be some question of ethics violations by the various political puppets who used offshoring and secret banking instruments to enrich themselves while on the public dime, but the reality is that rich people all over the globe have spent the past forty years making this type of bald faced corruption not only legal, but the expected reasonable behavior for the rich.
Of course, rigging the laws to make your wholly unethical behavior "strictly legal" is nothing new; I'm reminded of the time when Martin Luther King Jr told a captivated audience that "everything Hitler did in Germany, was legal." Nor should it be particularly surprising that a media owned (and increasingly staffed) by the wealthy, would hand wave away corruption and malfeasance like this; it's a big club, and you aren't in it lads.
What's surprising here more than anything, is the crassness with which the ruling classes will respond to this; shrugging their shoulders and in their best Joe Manchin asking "you got a problem?" And even worse is the realization, even before the news has grown cold, that at the end of the day they're all going to get away with it.
nina illingworth
Anarcho-syndicalist writer, critic, and analyst.
You can find my work at NIDC, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog
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“It’s ok Willie; swing heil, swing heil…”
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