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Casey Michel 🇰🇿 Profile picture
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3 Oct, 8 tweets, 4 min read
‘The US emerges from the leak as a leading tax haven. The files suggest the state of South Dakota, in particular, is sheltering billions of dollars in wealth linked to individuals previously accused of serious financial crimes.’ theguardian.com/news/2021/oct/…
Want to know how the US transformed into the world’s biggest offshore haven? Or why Delaware, South Dakota, and other states became the go-to for anyone looking to hide dirty money?

Pre-order AMERICAN KLEPTOCRACY (out next month!) here: read.macmillan.com/lp/american-kl…

#pandorapapers
‘The #PandoraPapers expose how foreign political and corporate leaders or their relatives moved money and other assets in recent years from international tax havens to even more secretive American trust companies, including those in South Dakota.’ washingtonpost.com/business/2021/…
What’s remarkable about the #PandoraPapers is that it’s an absolutely unprecedented look at who’s hiding behind South Dakota anonymous trusts—and yet it’s only a tiny sliver of the hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars hidden in South Dakota trusts. icij.org/investigations…
But you don't need details of all of the South Dakota trusts. All you need is proof that these South Dakota trusts aren't perfectly anonymous. That their secrets can be revealed. That we can learn who's behind them.

Which is what we got today.

Like, this is a fraction of a fraction of all the anonymous wealth stored in South Dakota trusts—and yet it’s already an unprecedented look.

How much of a dent will this put in South Dakota’s promises of perpetual anonymity for anyone who wants it?

icij.org/investigations…
American states ‘have adopted financial secrecy laws that “rival those of offshore jurisdictions” and demonstrate America’s “expanding complicity in the offshore economy”’: fortune.com/2021/10/04/sou…
Great line from @JoshRudes on the US transformation into a global offshore haven: 'We fortify thugs and crooks, fail to uphold our values and fuel popular resentment against America.' washingtonpost.com/business/inter…

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More from @cjcmichel

Casey Michel 🇰🇿 Profile picture
25 Sep
This is nuts: Here’s former US VP Mike Pence shaking hands with Milorad Dodik, a figure directly sanctioned by the US for his ongoing efforts to break up Bosnia. ht @UrbanAchievr
This is either a monumental blunder by @VP45’s team—or a sign (or confirmation) that the GOP has completely given up on US policy in the Balkans. Either way, an awful, awful look.
Some background on how much Dodik has been trying to grow close to pro-Trump figures in recent years:
Read 7 tweets
Casey Michel 🇰🇿 Profile picture
25 Sep
Mapping out Confederate imperialism in the American West, with “Confederate Arizona Territory”:
(This is from: simonandschuster.com/books/The-Thre…)
The Confederate conquest of “Arizona Territory” was “the first successful invasion of Union territory in the Civil War.”
Read 6 tweets
Casey Michel 🇰🇿 Profile picture
22 Sep
NEW: For @TheAtlantic, I looked at how the US art and auction worlds have exploded into havens for dirty money—and why Hunter Biden is the worst thing to happen to the art world in years. theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
The U.S. art and auction industries have become key vectors in trans-national money laundering networks—and dodged (most) money laundering regulations.

Instead, we're supposed to just take them at their word that they're on the lookout for dirty money.

theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
(One of the most depressing bits of writing this piece: Remembering just how shady Jimmy Carter's family was, and how much they helped despotic regimes during Carter's presidency.)

theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
Read 6 tweets
Casey Michel 🇰🇿 Profile picture
13 Sep
NEW: For a century, Teapot Dome stood as the greatest presidential corruption scandal in American history. No more.

In my first(!) piece with @BulwarkOnline, here’s how the Trump years set a new bar for presidential corruption—and replaced Teapot Dome: thebulwark.com/trump-era-corr…
Trump was the first leader to emerge from a "pro-kleptocracy" industry (luxury real estate)—which shows just how much corruption has changed in the past century.

And now, US presidential corruption is something for all kleptocrats of the world to enjoy.

thebulwark.com/trump-era-corr…
What’s remarkable is that Teapot Dome is *way* worse than you probably remember.

Jailed cabinet members. Senate offices ransacked. Physical threats against families. High-level bribery linked directly to the White House.
Read 5 tweets
Casey Michel 🇰🇿 Profile picture
6 Sep
NEW: I wrote about one of the greatest traitors the US has ever produced, a man who deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as Benedict Arnold: Robert E. Lee.

newrepublic.com/article/163557…
Robert E. Lee was a quisling who:

—Disavowed his oath of loyalty to the US
—Led a movement that slaughtered hundreds of thousands of US troops
—All so that he could no longer be American
—All so that he and other insurrections could continue/expand enslavement of Black Americans
Robert E. Lee's treason is there for all of us to see.

As Ulysses S. Grant wrote, Lee chose to lead a movement that was “one of the worst [causes] for which a people ever fought, and one for which there was the least excuse.”

And all of it fought to shatter the U.S.
Read 7 tweets
Casey Michel 🇰🇿 Profile picture
25 Aug
'Ideally, she says, the world would not see the Soviet Union first and foremost as an ideological project that “fell apart” due to economic woe, but also as a colonial empire that many peoples fought to topple' calvertjournal.com/features/show/…
Wanted: Survey of how the Soviet collapse has (slowly, fitfully) been increasingly understood in the West as an outcome of colonization out of Moscow, rather than just economic failures.

(And how this colonial model continues.)
There's still a strange/giant gap in Western discourse on legacies of European colonization, which shunts Central Asia or the Caucasus to the side. Or, hell, places like Chechnya or Tuva.
Read 4 tweets

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