Pandora, Panama, Pegasus Redux

The Guardian's role in camouflage

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Oct, 6 2021

In “How the Leopard Got His Spots,” Rudyard Kipling recounts how the feline acquired camouflage — not a great revelation but it’s all in the telling.

So with The Guardian’s revelations of Panama, Pegasus and Pandora. If you had not spotted the pattern before, you do now.

The best writers have the knack of making the complex simple. Kipling was a white, patriarchal, sublime master. His gained insights from broad travel across multiple cultures. He was as critical of his own race as he was of anyone else’s. He laid it out for us, while appropriating nothing except a journalist’s salary and a century-long reputation.

Let us examine The Guardian’s provenance. For, to be equitable, The Guardian is no less white and patriarchal than Kipling and, like him, it presumes to tack its morality to the telegraph pole. Though without Kipling’s self-reflection and honesty.

As with leopard the spots are functional. The Guardian wears camouflage, too.

Great reporting in The Epoch Times — an unmentionable paper in Guardian circles because of its anti-CCP stance — though all newspapers engage in influence activities. [1]

The Guardian accepts money from Bill Gates and George Soros and has a transparent reputation with British intelligence agencies. I will not make a distinction between the two newspapers but merely take their funding and allegiances into account, as any responsible reader should.

Ken Silva writes in The E.T. that unlike the Panama papers that came exclusively from a law firm, Mossack Fonseca in the first instance, “and the offshore service provider Appleby in the second case… this time, the data undergirding the Pandora Papers reportedly comes from 14 major financial service providers across numerous jurisdictions.”

How, he asks, did data from 14 separate institutions land in the lap of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), source of The Guardian’s story?

The ICIJ has failed to answer questions about the mechanics of its scoop or allegations that one or more intelligence agencies, or government regulators, could have provided such diverse information.

The E.T. quotes British Virgin Islands attorney Martin Kenney asking “where’s the beef” — for these revelations are underwhelming compared with the Panama Papers. Though even they were suspicious for their lack of American names.

As I wrote in The Press: Gorgon or Victim? — The Strange Rebirth of the NSO Pegasus Cell Phone Saga the revelations were notable by their absence.

“Strange because you’d think the richest country on earth would have some billionaires hiding cash. And Panama is an American client state. But few people questioned these gaps in the narrative of The Washington Post or its consortium.”

I compared this apparently strident journalism with the total absence of journalism during the pandemic. In the absence of significant revelation or material content, what is the purpose of Panama, Pegasus and Pandora?

“In the first year of Event Covid, the only critical reporting in the UK state-corporatist media came from the Daily Mail and The Sun. It was probably an opportunistic attempt to bolster their own credibility. It gets boring, if not suspicious, if all the media pushes the same line, all the time.

The consortium of WaPo, Guardian and Spiegel have published a story that might just buy them some sympathy from the people — along with some breathing space from Covid to coincide with the temporary summer suspension of lockdown.

Look at the message, however: it reminds people they are being watched — even journalists and politicians are being surveilled — we’re all in this together.”

Ben Norton, an assistant editor at The Grayzone shared my opinion, saying of the ICIJ: “What a coincidence that there are zero U.S. politicians included in the Pandora Papers list of offshore bank accounts. I guess they’re all pure and free from corruption!”

So who is the ICIJ? It has a long list of funders — the familiar suspects, though not not in this instance Bill Gates. That would destroy any semblance of independence since he already funds many of the leading newspapers while being a major financial investor and shareholder.

Ford Foundation is probably the key influence on this list, identified 70 years ago by Norman Dodd as one of the main postwar vehicles for The Investors currently Resetting the Globe. (It was the Obama-Soetoro-Dunham family employer along with Standard Oil) and one of the routes through which CIA-Rockefeller controls the old media. [2]

Dodd’s quote is notorious: [3]

“Alan Gaither was, at that time, President of the Ford Foundation.  Mr. Gaither had sent for me when I found it convenient to be in New York, asked me to call upon him at his office, which I did.  On arrival, after a few amenities, Mr. Gaither said, "Mr. Dodd, we have asked you to come up here today because we thought that, possibly, off the record, you would tell us why the Congress is interested in the activities of foundations such as ourselves."

Before I could think of how I would reply to that statement, Mr. Gaither then went on to say, "Mr. Dodd, all of us who have a hand in the making of policies here, have had experience operating under directives, the substance of which is, that we use our grant-making power so as to alter life in the United States that it can be comfortably merged with the Soviet Union."

This is no mere snark on Dodd’s part nor mine. You may criticise Dodd’s recollection or my interpretation but never since the mid-1950s Reece Committee have the tax-evading foundations ever been subject of investigation nor been held accountable.

I explain the role of the tax-evading foundations and Norman Dodd’s remarkable story here: Spies, Dupes and Charities — Rivals for Power, Part Four. The Tax-Exempt Foundations.

Today it is forgotten that J. D. Rockefeller Jr. was formative power in the news media. Of the same generation of William Randoph Hearst, the patriarch’s son was no less influential. He was landlord, perhaps owner, of RCA (later NBC) which may indicate a connection with the hugely influential Serco, which was founded in 1929 as RCA Services Limited, a United Kingdom division of the Radio Corporation of America, and that would make the family an enduring power in the media and the government bureaucracy upon which it reports.

Other unverified connections include Sinclair Oil Company housed in Rockefeller Center that may have connections to the Sinclair Broadcast Group — though I hasten to add this is pure speculation. According to the LA Times, Rockefeller sold its broadcast interests in 1986 but that was only the Outlet Company, a small nest of stations acquired three years before. It leaves the aftertaste of dissimulation.

The author Myron C Fagan alleged that Rockefeller financed the publishing empire of the missionary son Henry Luce, including Time magazine, Life and Sports Illustrated, and the broadcast newsreels, The March of Time.

Remember that the supposed break up of Standard Oil in 1911 proved hugely profitable for Rockefeller since the parts were worth more than the sum — a common feature of corporate splits.

Control of the media is no optional extra. When you seek, as J.D. Rockefeller did, to reshape medicine (extinguishing natural or traditional medicine in favour of something wholly new) and education, while reshaping the policy of war and peace (as Norman Dodd exposed through the Reece Committee of 1954) you could not carry off such a project without silencing criticism and positively influencing the press. Control would logically be a necessity.

In later years Rockefeller would establish the Trilateral Commission and patronize the Council On Foreign Relations and, in Britain, Chatham House, also known as the Royal Institute of International Affairs.

We see, during Event Covid, the old media, the state-corporatist organs, in a strange uniformity that comports fully with this analysis.

In recent years new generations of Oxbridge graduates and Yalies have decided to forsake the far more profitable businesses of banking and lawyering to flood newspapers, television and social media, and immediately have adopted an attitude in lockstep with each other.

If you believe that was a sensible career choice in a dying industry, something that reversed the trend of the previous 30 years during which the elite universities had abandoned the media, then you are misinformed. For you are presented with the practical evidence of a takeover, of a premeditated and strategic preparation.

FinCEN Files

The ICIJ was also the prominent publicist of the FinCEN Files in autumn 2020. These were largely overlooked during the burgeoning Covid pandemic.

Yet in contrast to the Panama Papers which led to the recovery of $1.2 billion, the FinCEN files concerned $2 trillion of suspicious transactions. [4]

Wikipedia accords the Panama Papers 8,700 words on the main page — yet Wiki gives FinCEN Files only 2,400 words in total.

Despite the very different attention that the two scandals attracted, neither identified Americans nor led to the prosecution of allies. They identified 61 family members and associates of prime ministers, presidents and king. There were few Americans identified and only a couple of U.S. accountants prosecuted.

The convenient explanation was that U.S. Treasury, Commerce Department and IRS are so diligent that no American dares evade tax. If you believe that, ask Google, Amazon and Facebook.

The real reason is that the US isn't a signatory to the Common Reporting Standard set up by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. It does not use bilateral agreements to track tax evasion but handles tax as a tool of internal political pressure — rather like the old Soviet Union would target citizens for political repression or persecution. It has become clear in the past five years that the FBI operates in the same way — more Cheka than checks and balances.

In the FinCEN Files, ICIJ and Deutsche Welle report that Germany's Deutsche Bank accounted for 62 per cent of the leaked SARs — suspicious transactions flagged to authorities.

In a rare departure from compliant reporting, The Guardian gave a platform to financial analyst and author Tom Burgis who pointed out the inconsistencies in the newspaper’s own reporting. [5]

A report by the BBC suggests that the FinCEN Files show the UK bank HSBC was involved in numerous illegal money transfers — at the same time that HSBC was subject to a deferred prosecution agreement for laundering $881 million on behalf of the Sinaloa and Norte del Valle cartels, Wiki records.

No financial scandal is complete without the International Association of Athletics Federations and the International Olympic Committee — and sure enough $370,000 was paid to Papa Massata Diack, son of a sports official to help secure the Tokyo Olympics.

The FinCEN revelations included $174 million of possibly dirty money that flowed throughout Australian banks — but that is peanuts in modern banking.

Do you begin to see how your outrage is managed. How your attention is diverted?

By now you should have a clear picture that these newspaper revelations are partial and deceptive. This is yellow journalism to match the 1920s. It only works because the audience is ignorant. The wrongdoing is real, as is the money, but it is so tied to specific groups while blatantly ignoring much larger financial flows that would implicate much more influential centers of wealth and power.

[1] Epoch Times, Oct 5, 2021 — Rumors Swirl About Source of Pandora Papers

[2] International Consortium of Investigative Journalists sources of finance.

[3] “Transcript of Norman Dodd Interview” with G. Edward Griffin. 1982

[4] ICIJ, Sep 2020 — Global banks defy U.S. crackdowns by serving oligarchs, criminals and terrorists

[5] Tom Burgis, The Guardian, Sep 2020 — hat $2tn in possible corrupt activity reveals about Kleptopia