This might be the giddiest podcast episode @NateSibley, @apmassaro3 and I ever record—not least because the last few weeks have been what many counter-klepto folks have long been waiting for.
But seriously: Been an incredible few weeks on the fight against financial secrecy and trans-national corruption. Thousands of issues remain—not least implementation—but the tide feels like it's finally, maybe, perhaps turning.
And much of it driven by the U.S.!
'One profitable sphere might be to fund some academics to research a more accurate assessment of the cost of corruption to the world economy, so we can find out whether it truly is between 2-5% percent of GDP.' codastory.com/newsletters/ol…
(The fact that so much of the U.S.'s surge to counter-kleptocracy leadership has been driven by the first president from *Delaware* is... not a twist I think anyone could have predicted!)
'The best way for the democratic world to win our struggle with authoritarianism is to deny these thieves who are looting their countries access to our financial systems and to stand with the victims of kleptocracy everywhere.' csce.gov/international-…
In just the first 10 days of June 2021, we've had:
—Biden elevating corruption to a core national security threat (and specifically citing "strategic corruption")
—US Congress launching the world's first counter-kleptocracy caucus
—G7 agreement on global corporate minimum tax
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Robert E. Lee led forces that slaughtered thousands upon thousands of American soldiers, in pursuit of shattering the U.S., all in order to extend the enslavement of millions.
He’s one of the greatest traitors this country has ever produced.
If a person like Robert E. Lee—who helped oversee the most devastating slaughter of American troops in U.S. history, all in order to disintegrate the country—isn’t a “traitor,” then the word is meaningless.
Good summation of why the Republic of Texas should be viewed as a precursor to the Confederacy:
“The bloody lynchings and murders of Mexicans, Tejanos, and Mexican-Americans [in Texas in the 1910s] are some of the most egregious instances of state-sanctioned violence in not just Texas history but US history.”
This is an exceptionally dumb analogy, not least because there is, and was, effectively zero Spanish-speaking secessionist sentiment in this territory—a complete difference from the Ukrainian SSR.
A *better* analogy to Ukraine demanding independence from the USSR would be those in Hawaii rising up against Washington, not some... random swath of the American Southwest that has no sense of distinct nationhood.