🇬🇧UK folks: AMERICAN KLEPTOCRACY is out TODAY! Read all about how:
—The US challenged the UK for the offshoring crown
—Oligarchs have begun targeting the American heartland
—Kleptocracy has begun upending both American politics and the US-UK alliance
Look at any data point, and the story is the same. Collapsing audits. Collapsing investigations. Collapsing resources. Hell, the IRS now has fewer auditors than any time since *World War II*.
The IRS is a shell of its former self. All while the offshoring world has exploded.
But the IRS didn't wilt on its own.
It was slowly gutted by congressional Republicans over the past quarter-century—even while the U.S. blossomed into a gargantuan offshore haven of its own.
Those who fought in the Texas Revolution (or Texas Revolt) fought “to form what became the single most militant slave nation in history.”
This passage is maybe the clearest distillation I’ve ever seen of how central slavery—and the protection, expansion, and entrenchment of slavery—was to the Texas Revolt:
NEW: Franklin Graham had a one-on-one meeting with a sanctioned Russian official in Moscow earlier this year—and the only reason we know about it is the Russian government. thebulwark.com/franklin-graha…
Franklin Graham didn't post, share, or announce anything about his meeting with a sanctioned Russian official. We only know about it from a Duma readout.
In a new statement, Graham said the meeting with his sanctioned counterpart was "excellent."
Franklin Graham has now become the highest-profile American meeting with a Russian official directly sanctioned by the U.S.—and he's done so multiple times the past few years.
NEW: The Pandora Papers confirmed what we've long suspected—US law firms have transformed into one-stop shops for kleptocrats around the world to launder their money, entrench their power, and so much more.
Look at all the services US law firms now provide kleptocrats:
—PR and lobbying
—Pushing pro-offshoring policies
—Overseeing shell companies and trusts
—Overseeing real estate purchases
—Navigating anti-money laundering exemptions
—Allowing access to law firm accounts
All of this in addition to the ability to argue for cloaking everything behind attorney-client privilege. (And intimidating journalists who are trying to disentangle these kleptocratic networks.)
'On November 19, 1493, during his second voyage, Christopher Columbus arrived in Puerto Rico. The indigenous Taíno culture dominated the island... By 1520 the Taíno presence had almost vanished.' gsp.yale.edu/case-studies/c…
Lotta folks for some reason think Columbus never landed in what would become the US, ie:
The 1680 Pueblo Revolt should absolutely be more widely remembered in the US—greatest anti-colonial victory on the eventual territory of the US until the American Revolution:
Bit on how the Lakota in particular quashed French dreams of continent-wide empire in North America: