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In reply to the discussion: The Real News (April 11): Americans Named in Panama Papers Leak [View all]Peace Patriot
(24,010 posts)...George Soros. The McClatchy reporter defends McClatchy's participation (which was large scale) and scoffs at any ulterior motives.
One item that stood out (to me) in this report was Blue Valley Agro Investment, involving the heirs to the Hyatt and Campbell's Soup fortunes. Blue Valley Agro runs palm oil plantations in Colombia. They defend this investment as "green" and as a job creator. But I happen to know that palm oil plantations are horrendously destructive of soils and of small farmer food production. I know someone who owns farm land in her native Honduras and she says she will NEVER give in to palm oil industry pressure because palm oil plantings are so destructive. And I have experience myself of the "green" bullshit of destructive industries which is a whole industry in itself ("green-washing" big corporations' activities).
The McClatchy reporter is just reporting what Blue Valley Agro told him. He seems to believe their "green" P.R. and doesn't seem to have investigated that claim. He also goes to great pains to say that not everyone mentioned in this enormous document dump is a crook.
The U.S./Colombia war machine has driven 50 million small farmers off their land--the biggest human displacement crisis on earth prior to the U.S. destabilization of Iraq, Libya and Syria. The purposes of this brutal displacement, in my opinion, were to rid the countryside of small farmers so big agricultural and extractive industries could move in, and to create a slave labor force of displaced people--an army of poor, desperate, inexperienced and often poorly educated people ripe for exploitation by the U.S./Colombia "free trade for the rich" corporations (including palm oil and other corporations--oil, gas, minerals--in rural areas, and manufacturers of retail goods, tourist and other corporations in urban areas).
Which brings me to Hillary Clinton--a major player, as Secretary of State, in the corrupt, murderous, failed U.S. "war on drugs" in Colombia (and here, and in other countries, notably Honduras) and in the U.S./Colombia "free trade for the rich" agreement. If I had investigative capabilities, I would look for Blue Valley Agro, and the names of the Hyatt and Campbell Soup heirs behind it, in Clinton Foundation and Clinton campaign donor lists.
The heirs' names: Liesel Pritzker Simmons (Hyatt heir) who is related to current Commerce secretary Penny Pritzger. The other heir is John Thompson Durant IV (Campbell Soup heir).
Clinton was pretty clearly involved in pay-to-play as Sec of State. This may be the reason she set up a private email server. Many corporations and foreign governments with deals before the Sec of State were contributing large amounts of money to the Clinton Foundation, an enormous Clinton slush parading as a charity.
Two other standout items in the report: Big pharma in Mexico and extractive corporations in the Congo.
One other item in this report was about yachts. One owned by former Citigroup chair Sanford Weill, a 200 ft yacht named "April Fool." And another owned by David Geffen (the Hollywood magnate), a yacht named "Pelorus" worth $214 million, in the Cayman Islands.
The second vid in the OP is blocked. I can't play it. And, as the McClatchy reporter mentions, the document leak is truly enormous--46 times bigger than Wikileaks', he says. So the above items scarcely scratch the surface of the Panama tax scofflaw scandal. And it's really impossible to tell, at this point, if anyone mentioned in this brief report is a tax scofflaw or crooked in some other way.
All I know for certain is that palm oil production is one the biggest "green" scams in the world, and the jobs that it creates (by displacing small family food farms) are low wage, brutal jobs with no labor union. (And in Colombia it is extremely dangerous to be a union leader--many have been murdered by rightwing death squads in the employ of U.S. corporations such as Chiquita and Drummond Coal). I don't know for sure that Blue Valley Agro is destroying soils and food farms and exploiting workers, but it's a fairly good bet that they are. (It would be unusual if they weren't--environmental destruction and worker exploitation is the clear pattern of U.S. corps in Colombia and other places.)