[Peace-discuss] Pandora Papers, Frances Haugen are suspicious establishment put-ups

[J.B. Nicholson]

C. G. Estabrook posted a report from (I'm guessing) Heather Cox Richardson who wrote:
> First is the story of money laundering, which seems suddenly to be all over the
> news. Today we learned that federal prosecutors in Detroit have broken into a
> massive money-laundering operation between the United States and the United Arab
> Emirates called “The Shadow Exchange.” They confiscated $12 million and suggest
> this is the tip of the iceberg.
> 
> This story comes just weeks after the release of the Pandora Papers, which
> detailed the ways in which the world’s wealthy hide money. The United States is
> one of the money-laundering capitals of the world, and the consequences of our lax
> financial legislation are coming home to roost. Experts say that because of the
> lack of transparency required in our financial transactions, hundreds of billions
> of dollars are laundered in the U.S. every year.

While it's true that the US has plenty of money laundering going on (the entirety of 
the ongoing Afghan war, for example, moves money from the tax bases of the US and EU 
to the international security elite as Julian Assange pointed out in 
https://yewtu.be/watch?v=_IGU_7alJ80 ), $12 million had better be the start of 
something much larger because outside of an individual's bank account, $12 million is 
chump change for any government (let alone one of the world's richest) to deal with.

Also, the Pandora Papers tax avoidance documents suspiciously lack any reports from 
the US and from Vladimir Putin (despite Pandora Papers reports showing Putin's face 
on the cover art).

See the Grayzone piece https://yewtu.be/watch?v=3x9jvABotrg -- "Are US spies behind 
Pandora Papers? And shady Facebook 'whistleblower' wants more censorship" -- for more 
on why the Pandora Papers are suspicious.

> The second story that caught my attention today is the continuing news dropping
> from Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen. Today we learned that a Facebook
> researcher created a profile that appeared to be of a political conservative North
> Carolina mother and that within five days, Facebook’s algorithm was steering the
> profile toward QAnon, a conspiracy theory touting then-president Trump as a secret
> warrior against a widespread pedophilia ring in the highest levels of government.

This point starts wrong and misses the more important points from there. Haugen is 
not a whistleblower. You can tell by what she's saying (she wants censorship of 
things she disagrees with; everyone on both sides of that panel agree that censorship 
is fine but they might differ on precisely what to censor) and you can tell by how 
she's treated (Julian Assange, Daniel Hale, and John Kiriakou were imprisoned for 
telling us the truth but Haugen was given the red carpet treatment).

See the following reports for more on this:

RT: https://youtube.com/watch?v=DOxekB_3W0o -- "'Coached' Facebook whistleblower 
revealed to have questionable backing"

Grayzone: 
https://thegrayzone.com/2021/10/21/facebook-whistleblower-frances-haugen-us-intelligence/ 
-- "Facebook ‘whistleblower’ Frances Haugen represented by US intelligence insiders"

What's being pointed to here also strikes me as small stakes -- this fake Facebook 
account being "steered toward QAnon" is hardly of consequence. The real issue is that 
people shouldn't be on Facebook in the first place (anyone who complains about it but 
maintains a Facebook account is contributing to the very thing they're complaining 
about) and this kerfuffle overlooks that real fake news of consequence comes from the 
US government and establishment media (such as Iraqi WMDs; taking babies out of 
incubators and leaving them on the floor as "Nayirah", actually the daughter of Saud 
Al-Sabah, told us in a rehearsed fiction from Hill & Knowlton; Juan Guaidó, backed by 
the US government, called himself Venezuelan president in his part to foment coup 
attempts against that government; the list goes on and on).