Teddy Roosevelt: First president to host a Black man at the White House, yet someone who thought the 15th Amendment was a “mistake” and that 90% of Jim Crow was justified, with Black Americans “altogether inferior to the whites.”
Still strange the US’s crushing of Filipino independence efforts doesn’t have more resonance in 21st century America—everything from widespread use of water-boarding, to efforts to cover up torture reports by Roosevelt’s administration.
William Howard Taft, then overseeing the US’s imperial project in the Philippines, describing Filipinos in terms completely at odds with his jovial public reputation:
One underrated element of TR’s foreign policy: avoiding war over Venezuela with Germany, which had been planning out a possible invasion of the US(!!):
Teddy Roosevelt’s Sec of State on Russia: “Dealing with a government with whom mendacity is a science is an extremely difficult matter.” cc @seansrussiablog
One clear theme in Teddy Roosevelt’s willingness to interfere in Latin American affairs (Panama, Roosevelt Corollary): protection/expansion of “civilization,” and the responsibility of “civilized nations.”
Here’s Teddy Roosevelt laying the groundwork for progressive taxation “on all fortunes,” either as income/wealth tax or estate tax (cc @gabriel_zucman):
US-Japanese relations nearly collapsed (into potential war?) during Roosevelt’s tenure on account of racist, segregationist policy on the US West Coast aimed at Japanese Americans:
Teddy Roosevelt said the 15th Amendment was “very unjust and bad policy,” and that Black Americans were “two hundred thousand years behind”
NEW: The Tom Barrack charges show how wildly successful foreign dictatorships were at secretly swaying the Trump administration—and why so many illicit foreign agents targeted the White House. nbcnews.com/think/opinion/…
Just look at what Tom Barrack—Trump’s close friend, advisor, fundraiser—allegedly did secretly on behalf of the UAE dictatorship:
—Change Trump’s speeches
—Lobby for pro-UAE staffing/policy
—Funnel internal White House discussions to the UAE
—Publicly whitewash the UAE regime
One question: What did Tom Barrack get in return for flipping into a secret foreign agent for the UAE, whispering in Trump’s ear?
One potential answer: Look how much money—$1.5 billion—his private equity firm received from UAE (and Saudi) sources.
Yet another high-level Trump official charged with secretly acting as a foreign lobbyist: justice.gov/opa/pr/former-…
Said it before, but absolutely amazing how the Trump campaign(s) breathed new life into FARA.
Legislation effectively dormant for 75 years—and then Trump came into the picture, and all of his sycophants couldn’t stop themselves whenever a foreign government came knocking.
It's not just price (and passport) that makes the U.S. "golden visa" program so appealing for kleptocrats.
Kleptocrats can provide whatever information they want about the source of their money, knowing they'll rarely, if ever, be turned down by American authorities.
Real estate and lawyers play an outsized role—a familiar playbook.
The Canadian government's claims that Canada has a "robust and comprehensive anti-money laundering and anti-terrorist financing regime" are "simply not credible."
In Canada, "relatively simple strategies like [using lawyers and real estate] probably work as well today as they did 20 years ago... From a launderer's point of view, why try harder when old strategies still work perfectly well?"
One of the (many) things we discuss on the klepto reputation-laundering front in this week's episode: universities.
Specifically, how kleptos have turned to Western universities to whitewash their reputation, impact future scholars, and gain access to Western policy-makers.
On the topic of oligarchs, kleptocrats, and the like using American and British universities to launder their reputations, can't recommend enough this paper: