Guerrilla History - Dispatch: The Pandora Papers w/ Branko Marcetic

Episode Date: October 22, 2021

In this episode of Guerrilla History, we host a crash course and discussion on the recently leaked Pandora Papers, the political impact of them, and their provenance!  We are calling this a "Dispatch" as it's a shorter, more "in the moment" episode to ground us for current events.  Our guest is Branko Marcetic, writer at Jacobin Magazine and author of the new article CIA Op or Not, the Pandora Papers Are a Big Deal. Branko Marcetic is a staff writer at Jacobin Magazine and the author of the book Yesterday's Man: The Case Against Joe Biden (Verso Books).  You can read his work for Jacobin, which is compiled here: https://www.jacobinmag.com/author/branko-marcetic?__cf_chl_managed_tk__=pmd_lI6_GpQJFtFB4rr09QEWFBODkM1bLZd4qFjYo7Mp8sA-1634881856-0-gqNtZGzNAzujcnBszQd9.  You can follow Branko on twitter @BMarchetich.  Also look for his podcast about New Zealand and international politics, 1/200 Podcast (on twitter @1of200podcast, and wherever you get your pods). Guerrilla History is the podcast that acts as a reconnaissance report of global proletarian history, and aims to use the lessons of history to analyze the present.  If you have any questions or guest/topic suggestions, email them to us at [e-mail]. Your hosts are immunobiologist Henry Hakamaki, Professor Adnan Husain, historian and Director of the School of Religion at Queens University, and Revolutionary Left Radio's Breht O'Shea.   Follow us on social media!  Our podcast can be found on twitter @guerrilla_pod, and can be supported on patreon at https://www.patreon.com/guerrillahistory.  Your contributions will make the show possible to continue and succeed! To follow the hosts, Henry can be found on twitter @huck1995, and also has a patreon to help support himself through the pandemic where he breaks down science and public health research and news at https://www.patreon.com/huck1995.  Adnan can be followed on twitter @adnanahusain, and also runs The Majlis Podcast, which can be found at https://anchor.fm/the-majlis, and the Muslim Societies-Global Perspectives group at Queens University, https://www.facebook.com/MSGPQU/.   Breht is the host of Revolutionary Left Radio, which can be followed on twitter @RevLeftRadio and cohost of The Red Menace Podcast, which can be followed on twitter @Red_Menace_Pod.  Follow and support these shows on patreon, and find them at https://www.revolutionaryleftradio.com/.     Thanks to Ryan Hakamaki, who designed and created the podcast's artwork, and Kevin MacLeod, who creates royalty-free music.

You remember Den Bamboo? No! The same thing happened in Algeria, in Africa. They didn't have anything but a rank. The French had all these highly mechanized instruments of warfare. But they put some guerrilla action on. Hello and welcome to a guerrilla history dispatch. Guerrilla history is the podcast that acts as a reconnaissance report of global proletarian history

and aims to use the lessons of history to analyze the present. I'm your host, Henry Huckimacki, and I'm joined by only one of my co-hosts, unfortunately today, Professor Adnan Hussein, historian and director of the School of Religion at Queen's University in Ontario, Canada. Hello, Adnan. How are you doing today? I'm doing well, Henry. It's great to be here with you. Absolutely. And just to remind the listeners briefly about what dispatches are, because I believe this is only our second one, dispatches are going to be shorter, more informal episodes that take a look at more recent events and try to situate them historically, rather than taking a

deep dive into history like we do with our full episodes. So unfortunately, we're not joined by our other co-host, Brett O'Shea, today, but we do have an excellent guest lined up for us. We have Bronco Marcheach, who is a writer at Jacobin and who recently wrote an article that Adnan, you and I both independently found when we were trying to find, you know, some information about the Pandora Papers. Bronco's piece is titled CIA Op or Not. The Pandora Papers are a big deal. And again, that was in Jacobin. Adnan, why don't I turn it over to you briefly before we open up for Bronco to give your opening thoughts on why we were looking at the Pandora papers?

And, you know, I think it was a little bit funny that we both ended up with this exact same piece independently of one another. Yeah, well, thanks so much, Henry, and it's really great to have Bronco here to talk about this article and the larger issues. But the reason why I came across it was, I think, because I was trying to situate some kind of comparison in the history of different major leaks that we've become used to of, you know, the operative. operations of the global financial system and how tax havens are used to hide and move money, and how whether what we were learning from the Pandora papers was in line with or different from previous such leaks like the Paradise Papers, the Panama Papers. And even more broadly, as a historian, you know, I'm interested in the question of sources, source materials, evidence, how you use it to interpret and understand and create these narratives of the past. And these seem like

extraordinary evidence evidentiary resources and so how we respond to them and interpret them and use them is going to be very important you know in figuring out how we can really track and understand global capitalism during this period how it's operating so I was interested in somewhat the politics also of these releases and that's how we came across bronco's article so let me welcome you in Bronco. Thanks for joining us today to talk a little bit about it. Hey, thank you very much for having me. Well, I wondered if maybe you could just start with any kind of overview that you want to give about this latest leak, the Pandora Papers, its scope and what you've been noticing about what it seems to reveal. Sure. The Pandora papers, as compared to the Panora papers, as compared to

the Panama Papers, which were based on leaks from one particular tax dodging firm, essentially. In this case, it's a leak that encompasses several different offshore services firms. And so it's, I think, a lot broader. And the people or the countries implicated here are billionaires and public officials, elected officials, across a whole swath of different countries. I believe Ukraine has the most number of politicians implicated. And then you've got Russia, which has the most number of nationals implicated, so billionaires and the like.

And you've also got a few different other things. Brazil is in there quite a bit. Some other South American countries, I believe Argentina is named in there. you've also got notably the Czech Prime Minister was implicated. Maybe we can talk about that a little more, or at least go into some of the implications of that later. And I believe there was one Chinese official that was named, at least the last time I checked. What is interesting, what I noticed about it, and that prompted me to write this piece,

partly, is that there were very few American officials. In fact, I think the only major American names in there was a pretty obscure billionaire, and that's it, which is interesting. At the same time, it's not that the U.S. was completely excluded, so there was revelations about how states like South Dakota essentially were or are operating as tax havens. But, crucially, there's no big embarrassment for U.S. officials or some of the really famous, you know, American oligarchs that we might expect. And that kind of, you know, I suspect that there may be a reason for that, but we can't be sure. But it is a very interesting thing because when you think about a lot of the corruption that is reported on in Washington,

you would expect that some of these firms, or at least that there would be a firm included that would service some of these individuals. So that's very interesting. Yeah, that is interesting. I wonder if it's a matter of these particular firms, we're not ones that worked with U.S. billionaires and politicians, or if it's a matter of, I mean, it's hard to know without some real forensic, you know, examination, but or whether this, you know, this leak was somehow a curated leak, you know, like not all the documents and not all the clients who worked

with these 14, I think it was firms, you know, was released. I mean, this is hard to know, but I'm wondering, you know, what's the thinking about why there's such a disparity? Because that is a striking disparity that you pointed out. I'm going to jump in and piggyback there for one quick second. That was also the first thing that struck me, of course, when the papers came out is that there was so few American officials. And, you know, the first two things that came to my mind is, well, we know that American billionaires and oligarchs and business leaders and politicians are funneling money into tax havens. We know that they're doing all types of shady business practices. We know that they're hiding their assets all over the place. But, you know,

there was two things that came to my mind is maybe there's just some places in the U.S. that are such tax havens themselves that, you know, you don't have to use these 14, these 14 firms that these foreign individuals are using because the United States has so many tax havens within the borders anyway. Or, you know, the curation issue that you raised was, you know, of course, the other thing that immediately jumped to my mind is we know that American politicians and billionaires, oligarchs, business people, we know that they're corrupt. So how could it possibly be that we don't see their names there other than the fact that they were intentionally excluded from these lists? It's a very good question.

And as you say, yes, there's definitely an alternative explanation in the sense that exactly it's very easy to dodge your taxes if you're a U.S. billionaire or you're a multi-millionaire. We found that out with the IRS leaks earlier in the year, which, showed that the people like Jeff Bezos essentially were completely legally getting away with paying basically nothing in federal taxes. And in some cases, actually getting money back from the government, which is incredibly outrageous. So in that sense, you'd think to yourself, what would be the reason to use an offshore services firm?

At the same time, obviously, the fact that there is one billionaire named in there, one U.S. billionaire, it suggests that there are some people using this. And, you know, also another expectation people have voted is, well, maybe the particular firms that are being used by Americans are not in this particular leak. But, you know, to me, I mean, it's very convenient. And you ask yourself, okay, then how is it that those firms go excluded or why? Perhaps there's some sort of logistical or practical reason for that. Or maybe there's another reason. And, you know, I thought about some of the comments in 2016 when the Panama papers were leaked from a former financial whistleblower, Bradley Birkenfeld.

And he said, he didn't know, again, this is all speculation, but he said that it's very interesting that there are no Americans named in the Panama papers. Yet at the same time, who was embarrassed by those leaks? but Putin, or at least a lot of Putin's in a circle, rather than Putin himself, Brazilian officials, the PT party at the time going through this massive corruption scandal that would ultimately lead to its toppling from power and the rise of the far-right Jayette Bolsonaro, who is in power now. At the time, the U.S. was, had embarked in the sort of anti-corruption campaign in Brazil. We now know. know and other countries. So very much sort of in keeping with that campaign. And also

Chinese officials, kind of members of Xi Jinping's inner circle family, that kind of thing. And certainly people like David Cameron also was embarrassed, although he was not really directly implicated, at least in terms of while he was in power. But it was embarrassing for him. And Bradley Birkenfeld, he sort of proposed this idea. that, well, he might have just been collateral damage, you know, if this was a hacking hack and dump attempt, he was collateral damage. And in fact, there were two journalists who made this case later, I think in 2017 or so, that even if we don't have evidence for it, directly, Putin himself did believe that the Panama Papers were a U.S. operation and that may have,

that may have played into the motivation for him to do what he did in 2016, allegedly, but, you know, almost certainly, to, you know, hack the DNC emails, hack Clinton's emails, and leak those as a sort of retaliatory effort. The other thing that I would point out, the second thing that kind of raised alarm bells in my mind is there was a piece of reporting in, I believe, 2019 by Yahoo News, that talked about the fact that Trump, quite apart from this whole narrative that Trump is taking on the deep state and there's this war between Trump and the CIA and the like. I mean, you know, there's truth to that for sure. But Trump very much gave gift after gift after gift to the CIA and what they wanted to do.

And one of those gifts, this report revealed was that in 2018, he had loosened the rules around basically how the CIA could do exactly. kinds of hack and dump operations, not always dumping, you know, sometimes just hacking, sometimes, you know, if they wanted to wreak havoc on our country's energy systems, you know, for instance, after Iran's nuclear program, but also they mentioned that it was to do these exact kind of things where they hack into government services, leak information about it, that's very embarrassing or damaging, and, you know, kind of cause some trouble for the country, whether in practical terms or whether in terms of its public image. And when you look at some of the stuff that has come out with this,

recall that Ukraine, which I said had the most amount of politicians named, including the president, the Biden administration has been pressuring Ukraine to tackle corruption, which has sort of been dragging its heels on. It's caused a bit of friction between the two countries. And then you look at the fact that Putin was directly, very directly embarrassed by these leaks. it's not far-fetched. It's not confirmed. It's speculation, but it's not far-fetched to believe that this could be part of a U.S. effort to kind of embarrass these various countries or push them into certain directions.

Well, we hit a lot of different things in that answer, and I know that we're going to want to get back to the political ramifications in a second. And, Adnan, I know that you have some things that you want to say on that as well. But before we dive into the political ramifications, because, I think that'll be just about the majority of the conversation that we have here. I just want to make sure that we mentioned how these leaks were portrayed in the media. So maybe let's take a comparative look of the Panama Papers versus the Pandora papers versus, as you mentioned, before we hit record, the DNC leaked papers. I haven't been following the story as closely as you have, obviously, but, you know, I have been following it a fair amount. and I can feel a different, a different portrayal of each of these leaks from one another,

not just like this one is distinct from the other two, but all of them I've kind of been distinct from one another in more ways than one. Can I just kick that back over to you, Bronco, and see what, again, you've been looking at this far more than I have. What is your assessment of the portrayal of each of these leaks? I would say the thing that stuck out to me the most is that in Washington, when there is a leak of some kind that's damaging whether to public or private interests, there is usually a kind of howls of outrage from elected officials.

There's calls for investigations for prosecutions. This is certainly what happened when the IRS leaker, whoever they may be, they revealed all this tax dodging by billionaires. Very embarrassing. Immediately there were calls for to find who had done it to prosecute in the throat of jail. That's been the pattern, you know, since Bush, but really escalate under Obama. It's been continued by every president since this war on whistleblowers.

If people remember the FinCEN files, which were basically revealed that banks, multinational banks, US banks were involved in enabling money laundering, drug trafficking, all sorts and nefarious things. That whistleblower, she was this year sentenced to a prison term, even though this was, by all accounts, is one of the major leaks and leak investigations in recent history, it won prizes, you know, journalism prizes. Strangely, none of that in this case, even though some of that, the stuff that was in the Pandora papers was damaging to the United States.

If you think about, you know, the case I mentioned before, those states acting like tax havens. And the other thing that's really different in this case is that since the 2016 leaks, the DNC and Clinton emails, which a lot of journalists and a lot of people in general, I think, believe shifted the race and led Donald Trump to win the election in 2016. There's been this, in my mind, very disturbing narrative among the press that basically maybe journalists should not have reported on this stuff. And maybe in the past, people need to, working in journalism,

need to kind of rethink how they report on these things. Perhaps it's not really important to report on damaging information that's revealed by whistleblowers because that could do more damage or not, which I think should be completely contrary to how any journalist does his or her job or, you know, thinks about reporting. But this has been the prevailing narrative. The idea that you might cause political damage by reporting on it. Now, there's been no concern about any sort of political damage,

as there shouldn't be from these leaks, even though, for instance, the former Czech Prime Minister, he was directly implicated in these leaks, and he lost an election almost certainly because of the embarrassing details that were named. Strangely, no one seems to be talking about, you know, the responsibility that was all, or that journalists have to report on these leaks and how they should be careful because of, you know, wider ramifications, which, again, I want to say, I want to reiterate, that's exactly how people should think about it. And to me, it's kind of a reflection of this pre-nationalist mindset that's infected the press since 2016, and this idea that that American journalists should be thinking about U.S. first and not about, you know, things like holding power to account, you know, achieving

justice, reporting the truth, that kind of thing. So those are really the things that stuck out to me when I look at the reaction to this league compared to others. Well, you mentioned since 2016, but in some ways one could also suggest that that attitude goes back before when it comes to national security leaks and reporting. Certainly, of course, with the original WikiLeaks, you know, Iraq war logs and, you know, the very famous video and so on, you know, at that time, the intelligence agencies characterized WikiLeaks as a foreign intelligence service, you know, and wanted to characterize it not as a journalistic enterprise in any shape or form. And all of the portrayal that you've mentioned of these particular different periods of leaks and hack and down. and or just hacking sort of cyber war and information war. There's clearly a pattern going on here

in which journalism is being implicated in one way or the other, but not in a very consistent way, as you've pointed out. So I think that's something to really think a little bit about. You know, what is the proper approach to this? These may be damaging, you know, pieces of information to, you know, U.S., you know, U.S. rivals and so on, but nonetheless, this is important information. So how do you think journalists should, you've mentioned a bit, but, you know, how do you think journalists and activists, maybe even more than journalists, since activists don't have

quite the same constraints or interests that journalism has? You know, journalism, you're pointing out they should be pursuing the truth and it doesn't really matter who it, you know, aids or harms. But, you know, for left activists and activists globally, there's been some caution about, well, are we participating in some kind of, you know, CIA operation? Are we, you know, achieving goals of U.S. intelligence services if, in fact, that's the provenance of it? What do you have to say to this? What guidance should we look to for this? I mean, I think that in the sense that any of these leaks can help us to take on tax dodging,

to call back the wealth that is constantly being hidden and grown around the world, that really should be recycled back into national economies, I think that's important. And, you know, I think it is important for people to be aware that, that perhaps their political leaders are involved in this. And, you know, to have that in mind, perhaps, when they're voting, I think where for activists, because I think for journalists, you know, none of this stuff should really, really plan to their minds. Perhaps it's something that they might want to note the context of.

You know, that's certainly an argument that people in the US press have made since 2016, that whenever a leak is reported, you've got to have, you've got to sort of note that this could have, what geopolitical implications it will have and which countries it might help and who might be behind it. Not really saying that they've stuck consistently too, but okay, that's an argument that's been made. But I think for activists, what I think we should be wary of is how, for instance, in Brazil, I mentioned with the Panama Papers, this really fed into this kind of anti-corruption zealotry in Brazil that ultimately put the far right in power. And that's not because, you know, we should be completely, we should completely ignore corruption

or dismiss it, dismiss its importance. But in that case, in the Brazil case, this is a very selective use of anti-corruption for political partisan ends that ultimately was used to, you know, whatever faults it might have had to destroy the PT and take it out of power and basically create the conditions for the far right to come there. So I think in that sense, activists need to be cognizant of that context and, you know, not necessarily take a ignore corruption or take a lighter stance of tax dodging, but, you know, be careful not to turn this into some sort of moral crusade

that ends up helping kind of, you know, U.S. imperialism or, you know, far-right campaigns yeah interesting thoughts there um one other thought i had about um the previous issue about the kind of politics of the release and provenance you know of the pandora papers um being leaked um is that while it also may um assist uh in embarrassing and undermining um political rivals geopolitical rivals uh of the u s for example around the world It also is a pretty good advertisement at the same time, you know, the fact that there weren't any, you know, from, we may have identified that South Dakota is a place where you, but it's almost an advertisement that, you know, the U.S., just as Henry mentioned, has plenty of tax shelters in Haven, so keep your money, you know? I mean, your ill-gotten gains will be kept, you know, safer in the U.S. hands than going to Bermuda and these other, you know, offshore Switzerland and so on. That's just sort of a perverse thought that occurred to me, is that, you know, there may be some economic, you know, reasons as well for the slanted demonstration effect, you might say,

of this leak. You know, it's not something that came into my mind, but it is a good point, I think. It honestly will depend on whether the Biden administration actually does what it's saying, you know, about cracking down on tax dodging. So far that, I don't know, those efforts are looking pretty wishy-washy. If they follow up on it, then you could say that if this is a CIA operation, perhaps it was in the aid of Biden's domestic agenda. And if they don't end up doing anything or do very little and kind of just do a surface effort that kind of lets them say to the public that they've tackled the issue without really doing it, then I think, you know, you could say what you're saying, that, you know, maybe this is just the way to say, hey, don't put your money over here. come to South Dakota, come to, you know, these other Midwestern states.

Yeah, it's an interesting point. And something else that maybe isn't super well connected to that previous point, but something that is just kind of sticking in the back of my mind is that it's very interesting that we have these leaks like this that are exclusively financial documents, right? We have really nothing that's connected to like actual government going on rather than financial things. And I find that to be very interesting because we know that, you know, if you were a hacker who was looking to embarrass the United States, you might want to just

look at the government itself rather than, you know, this one random billionaire in the United States. But of course, we have to remember that the Espionage Act is weaponized against whistleblowers that try to do anything that questions U.S. governmental, you know, goings on, as it were. So, I mean, I'm not really quite sure where I'm going with this thought. It was just something that was in the back of my head is that, you know, we have all of these, all of these papers coming out exclusively on financial things. And to the benefit of the United States, as we've been kind of kicking around by

enlarge. But, you know, if somebody was a hacker that wanted to embarrass the United States or embarrassed another government, you'd probably just look at what the government itself is. doing. And that's not something that we really see outside of the WikiLeaks, the WikiLeaks cables and whatnot. And look what's happened to Julian Assange since then. It's kind of the silencing of any sort of systemic opposition to government goings on so that we really only get this kind of veneer of shedding light on ill doings financially from these random billionaires and oligarchs from other countries around the world.

You know, that makes me think, to add to my previous answer about how exactly we should think about these things and to not get caught up in kind of, you know, one or another country's intelligence operations and geopolitical goals, I think a good way to think about this and to think about how to calibrate some sort of political response is rather than doing the kind of Brazil-style selective anti-corruption crusade that really is just about top one particular government and then just putting in something completely different that's still corrupt. We should look at these leaks, whether it's FinCEN-SIN files, whether it's the Pandora

papers or the Panama Papers or, you know, every other leak about tax dodging and all this kind of thing as a, it's revealing a system and it's a global system. It's not just a national system. and obviously there are going to be national responses within the country's borders that have to happen to tackle that, but there also has to be a coordinated global effort. Similar to what the countries of the world are doing right now, led by the US to create a global corporate tax rate. And it's a similar thing.

I think this has to be tackled. You have to curb this global system of tax. rather than just saying, you know, as happened in the Czech Republic, well, we'll throw this crook out and we'll put some others in. That's not necessarily going to solve the problem. It just sort of punishes one bad actor out of the, you know, an entire ocean of them. So I think that would be a good way for us to think about how do we act in this. Because, you know, the stuff that's revealed in this, whether or not it, you know, plays into some country's hands or not, it is scandalous. And we should be scandalized by it.

the sheer amount of wealth that really is being stolen from societies. And also the fact that so many people that are in the political system are just completely, if not complicit, directly a part of it. There's one other brief thing that I want to say before I let a non-transitionist to a different topic, which is you just mentioned that these are convenient that we can kind of look at these individuals without looking at the systems that are in place. And one country that immediately comes to mind here is Ukraine, which, as you mentioned, is one of the biggest countries in these leaks that came out right now.

And what people have to look at is over the past, well, ever since the fall of the Soviet Union, really, Ukraine has had essentially the highest levels of corruption of any country in the world consistently on a year-by-year basis. But we've never had a reckoning with that, as it were. We have individual politicians, generally the president, who will get thrown out and corruption will be weaponized against them. So, you know, we had Yanukovych. This happened with him. Poroshenko, the same thing happened with him. Now, the current president Zelensky, he won in large part because he wasn't a politician, didn't have this kind of background that would make people think

that he was corrupt and he ran on a platform of anti-corruption and he swept into office pretty handily. And since then, what have we seen? The systems that were in place in Ukraine continue to chug along unimpeded. We see continual corruption going on in the country still under this anti-corruption campaigner. We see him being implicated. We see many, many people around him being implicated, but these papers do allow for a rather useful way to superficially, you know, just acts the one person at the top and say, ah, okay, corruption's gone, no more problem, but without really ever examining the root causes of corruption within these countries. And Ukraine is just a very illustrative example, in my mind.

Bronco, if you have anything you want to say on that, otherwise, if not, I know you have something that you want to transition to. I mean, I completely agree with you. And as you say, looking at this is just a matter of getting rid of one person at the top and then replacing someone else is clearly not going to do the trick. It has to be saying much more systemic and board ranging. I guess one thing I would add before we transition is I think the other thing to consider is along with the fact that we know the CIA, whether it was involved in this leak or not,

We know the CIA does similar kind of hack and dump operations. That's easier for it to do it now. And I think the, you know, you mentioned Julian Assange. One of the ironies of this whole thing is that the U.S. government maintains a kind of, I guess, a stable of hackers, people who are informants and assets in the world of hacking, who it then uses to do this exact kind of thing. And in fact, even at the same time as it's kind of going after Assange, there's a very threatening thing to press freedoms here in the United States and globally on the basis that, well, he's not a publisher or a journalist, he's a hacker and that's criminal. Well, you know, the US is the one, the US government is the one doing hacking on a much

more prolific scale. Not that Assange did any hacking. He simply publishes the things that people leak to him. But it's the US government that does the hacking. And not only that, but we found out earlier this year from a report in Icelandic paper that, in fact, part of the operation against Assange by the U.S. government, by the Obama administration, was that the FBI used one of these hackers that they used as an informant. They had him hack the Icelandic government to create the pretext for the FBI to come in to then arrest Assange because they couldn't actually go after Assange in the country until they were given permission to enter the country. So there's, I mean, there's such a, there's so many layers of hypocrisy going on here and not just hypocrisy, but really, really deceit because people are told to fear hackers. and how bad they are, and they're using this as a way to clamp down on press freedoms.

Yet at the same time, who are the most prolific hackers in the world? It's Washington and other intelligence agencies of different governments around the world. Absolutely. Well, just on a slightly earlier part of this same thread of conversation is just to point out that the large scale of these leaks and the multiple leaks since the Panama Papers, the Paradise Papers and now Pandora Papers, I think underscores the point you were making, Bronco, about how this is a systemic question or a problem.

It's not related to just a particular case of corruption in one country or this country or that that can be solved immediately by removing, you know, the ruler or, you know, getting back the funds owed taxes from the particular billionaire. I mean, my first reaction to it before all of these other discussions about the slanted or biased characterization of the results was just that this shows, as it's been increasingly evident, you know, that this is a systemic, you know, problem. The problem is capitalism as it operates globally. It's not a question of corruption.

The corruption, it's not that the system has been corrupted. It is a corrupt system endemically. And so I think recognizing that is very important, particularly because of the responses and reactions that you were pointing out, is that the anti-corruption discourse is one that is narrowly cast in such a way that it often feeds right-wing populism. And, you know, it's really on the left, globally speaking, we have to be able to articulate and organize a broader, more systemic confrontation with what's really endemic about how this global capitalist system is. is working and not just targeting, you know, particular nefarious actors that we might identify through these, which is why the work needs to be done. You alluded to something that sounded kind of interesting about, you know, global, you know, corporate tax rates, but something that requires solidarity and organization on a more global scale. It seems to me that's what we've

been missing the last couple generations or two, you know, corporation with neoliberalism and globalization and the corporations and capital has been able to move pretty easily globally, but we've not found the ways in which we can organize against it on a similarly global basis. So I'm wondering if maybe we might turn to thinking about, well, what do the Pandora papers allow us to see and what might be some of the consequences that we could look forward to and work towards in terms of the kind of accountability. and justice that we want to see. Well, as you say, this attempt to pass a global tax rate, I think, is a potentially

a model for something that should be done on a whole host of other issues. I mean, there's so many things that I think because of the hangover from, you know, the nationalist movements of centuries ago that kind of organized us into these self-contained little groups that we call countries, we still think of everything as a national problem. We don't think of our society, our global society, as one thing that's, you know, interdependent and, you know, that requires working together. Maybe we're starting to see a change in that. You know, I mean, this global tax rate thing really is a different idea. And if it succeeds, it could be a model, it could spur momentum for more movements in this

direction. You know, climate change, obviously, is the absolute number one biggest issue that we are facing as a society across the world. It will be great to have cooperation on that. And as you say, you know, countries around the world right now are working to close their borders, to shut more people out at exactly the time that people are moving, migrating all over the world, they're being pushed around by climate disasters and all manner of other things. And people are working to narrow their path to get in. Yeah, at the same time, money is just able to flow around completely freely. I think that's completely topsy-turvy. I think you should let people move and you should, you know, if we're going to sustain this system, this system

of, you know, distinct countries, then, you know, wealth should stay in the countries where it's produced and, you know, go to the benefit of the people that produce it. And if, you know, so it should be, it should be the opposite way. But okay, if we're, if we, if that's the way it's going to be, if governments are going to continue to keep their borders tight and to, to shut people out, then it's fair to say at the very least, then why aren't we doing the same with this wealth that's being generated? Why is there not a global push to, to put a squeeze on these offshore services firms and to make it impossible for people. Because this is what you talked about with the North Dakota example, that, you know, if this is some sort of kind of covert advertisement,

like, hey, actually dump your money here, you can hide it here pretty safely. Well, that's exactly what a considered global effort would prevent from happening. Same as a global tax rate. by making sure that no country can undercut the other, you are essentially eliminating the incentive and the ability for people to essentially really steal wealth and hide it and accrue it for their own personal gain. So, yeah, hopefully that's where the conversation goes in the next months and years, I guess we'll see.

last question bronco before we wrap up so basically all i'm going to do here is just take the title from the article and phrase it into a question for you so again listeners you can find this article on jacobin's website it's cia op or not the pandora papers are a big deal and we've spent most of this you know 40 minutes or so talking about you know probably a cia op uh you know and it's almost certainly slanted in a way that benefits the United States. We've been talking about this this entire time, but I think it's worth reiterating the point that this is still a big deal. So why don't I just let you have the floor for as long as you want to talk about why this is a big deal, what activists can do with this information, et cetera, however you want to take it. Sure, I won't be very long because

I think I've mentioned a lot of it. And, you know, actually having this conversation, I wish that I'd made this point in the piece, but there you go. Maybe next time somebody hacks some financial services firm, I can write that piece. Yeah, I think rather than just, you know, looking at this as we throw some of the bums out, maybe we put some people in jail, and then we just continue, you know, this horrible system that's really leading people to make these kinds of decisions. We should look at this as a big deal because it's one more revelation of. just how corrupt this entire system is and shows that we need to start taking steps to keep

wealth within our borders, at the very least keep wealth within the places that, or within the communities that produce it. And that's going to take global action. It's not going to be, you know, throwing out the Czech prime minister or throwing out the Ukrainian president is not going to do it. That's sort of just punishing one bad actor who got caught with a hand in a cookie jar. You're really going to have to take aim at this entire system that we have that allows people to just squirrel away massive amounts of wealth. Wealth that, by the way, could be utilized for the most urgent crisis that's facing humanity, which is climate change, which is going to take a massive amount of investment. And if countries are not willing to run

big short-term deficits to do it. Well, guess what? All this money is sitting around there that's being hidden in these offshore firms. Maybe it's time for us to claw back and use it to, you know, save humanity, save this planet and hopefully build a more prosperous future. You know, we've clearly that's been able to be done for these build back better plans in response to the pandemic, the pandemic of anything, you know, as a flawed, but an important kind of model for how countries, the world can actually take considered global action to fight against something that threatens all of us on this planet. And, you know, we should take that model. We should fix the flaws and avoid some of the worst things about it and adapt that to not just climate change, but tax evasion, you know, global tax rates, everything, everything that affects all of us on this planet.

excellent again listeners our guest was bronco march a teach uh bronco thanks for coming on the show can you tell the listeners how they can find you on social media find your your recent writings and whatever you want to direct the listeners too sure uh you can find me on jacoa magazine jacoban mag dot com and you can also find me on twitter at b marchi teach a little a little bit of weird spelling but there's not many people with my name so i think you'll you'll find me pretty And I also host a podcast where we talk about New Zealand politics. I'm from New Zealand originally and as well as global politics. It's called 1 of 200.

So 1 of 200.nz. So give that a go, see if you like it. I think that's probably about it. Excellent. I will spell your last name for you. So the listeners do know it's M-A-R-C-E-T-I-C. Adnan, how can the listeners find you on social media? and your other podcast that you run?

You can follow me on Twitter at Adnan-A-Husain-1-S-A-I-N and check out the Mudgellis podcast about the Middle East, Islamic World, Muslim Diasporic Affairs. If you're interested, and I just want to thank Bronco very much for coming on. Terrific conversation. And, you know,

if you write that article with extending the points you made right at the end, hopefully we can have you come back on and talk more about that as well. very much appreciate it. Thanks, guys. And listeners, just since we're on the topic of strange spellings, M-A-J-L-I-S, Adnan, so listeners can find that. Listeners, you can find me on Twitter at Huck 1995. And you can find Gorilla History on Twitter at Gorilla underscore Pod. That's G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A underscore pod. You can also support the show on Patreon, Patreon.com forward slash guerrilla history. Again, G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A. Until next time, Solidarity. I'm going to be able to be.