http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/may/12/crony-capitalist-corruption-david-cameron-british-tax-havens-avoidance

... The essence of a corrupt state is “crony-capitalism”. It is the deployment of covert influence to subvert the disciplines of the market and revenue. It is bribery, tender-fixing, lobbying, tax-evading and otherwise abusing political power to secure individual or corporate gain. This week’s Economist carries a survey of the state of play in world crony-capitalism. It publishes a league table showing Britain’s record as appalling. It is the worst country in Europe, and 14th worst in the world – worse than France, Germany, America and Japan.

Nor does the index cover Britain’s role in oiling the wheels of crony-capitalism, through its supply of homes and tax havens to the global rich. It appears that the British establishment, Labour and Conservative, has sincerely believed that Britain is squeaky clean, as if in the same camp as Scandinavia, Germany and North America, rather than down with Switzerland, Luxembourg and Brazil.

Since the 1987 big bang, when Margaret Thatcher and Nigel Lawson boldly smashed the old City cartels, London’s bankers, lawyers, accountants and consultants simply booked the same comfy seats on the gravy train. They gained privileged access to Westminster and Whitehall. Privatised utilities and transport oligopolies ran rings round regulators – as did BHS round the pensions police. Party financiers bought seats in the House of Lords, making Britain the only assembly anywhere whose membership is auctioned annually. There is no need to bribe the British establishment, as was once said of its press, “seeing what unbribed (it) will do”.

As with crony-capitalism so with tax avoidance and tax havens. For decades British governments have maintained offshore vehicles for rich people and corporations to evade their obligations to whatever they call society... Some $20-30 trillion is now estimated to be lurking in tax havens round the world, of which £9 trillion is from poor countries.... The loss of money from the world’s welfare states is astounding. Offshore finance is way beyond a minimal blip on the world economy. According to an Economist survey, 30% of global foreign investment is now channelled through havens, mostly British...

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/may/12/crony-capitalist-corruption-david-cameron-british-tax-havens-avoidance

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-36253518

... Committee chairman and Labour MP Harriet Harman ... called for the UK government to lead the way internationally by defining a clear legal basis for action, and to make sure those who made decisions were held accountable.

"As the world faces the grey area between terrorism and war, there needs to be a new international consensus on when it is acceptable for a state to take a life outside of armed conflict," she said.

"Our government has said they're going to be targeting people in other parts of the world, but there's no independent scrutiny afterwards," she told BBC Radio 4's Today programme...

... Clarification on drones was needed because the UK should abide by the rule of law, said Ms Harman, adding that those who killed people in strikes could later be open to a murder charge...

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-36253518

... General Suharto and his deputies made it fairly obvious that they wanted the territory but not the people. They came horribly close to succeeding in this foul design. Ever since, there has been an argument over the precise extent of US complicity with the 1975 aggression. It was known that President Gerald Ford and his Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, were in Jakarta on December 6 of that year, the day before Indonesian air, land and naval forces launched the assault. Scholars and journalists have solemnly debated whether there was a "green light" from Washington.

Kissinger, who does not find room to mention East Timor even in the index of his three-volume memoir, has more than once stated that the invasion came to him as a surprise, and that he barely knew of the existence of the Timorese question. He was obviously lying. But the breathtaking extent of his mendacity has only just become fully apparent, with the declassification of a secret State Department telegram. The document, which has been made public by the National Security Archive at George Washington University, contains a verbatim record of the conversation among Suharto, Ford and Kissinger. "We want your understanding if we deem it necessary to take rapid or drastic action," Suharto opened bluntly. "We will understand and will not press you on the issue," Ford responded. "We understand the problem you have and the intentions you have." Kissinger was even more emphatic, but had an awareness of the possible "spin" problems back home. "It is important that whatever you do succeeds quickly," he instructed the despot. "We would be able to influence the reaction if whatever happens, happens after we return…. If you have made plans, we will do our best to keep everyone quiet until the President returns home." Micromanaging things for Suharto, he added: "The President will be back on Monday at 2 pm Jakarta time. We understand your problem and the need to move quickly but I am only saying that it would be better if it were done after we returned." As ever, deniability supersedes accountability.

There came then the awkward question of weaponry. Indonesia’s armed forces, which had never yet lost a battle against civilians, were equipped with US-supplied matériel. But the Foreign Assistance Act forbade the use of such armaments except in self-defense. "It depends on how we construe it; whether it is in self-defense or is a foreign operation," Kissinger mused. (At a later meeting back at the State Department on December 18, the minutes of which have also been declassified, he was blunt about knowingly violating the statute. For a transcript of the minutes, see Mark Hertsgaard, "The Secret Life of Henry Kissinger," October 29, 1990.)

An even more sinister note was struck later in the conversation, when Kissinger asked Suharto if he expected "a long guerrilla war." The dictator replied that there "will probably be a small guerrilla war," while making no promise about its duration. Bear in mind that Kissinger has already urged speed and dispatch upon Suharto. Adam Malik, Indonesia’s foreign minister at the time, later conceded in public that between 50,000 and 80,000 Timorese civilians were killed in the first eighteen months of the occupation. These civilians were killed with American weapons, which Kissinger contrived to supply over Congressional protests, and their murders were covered up by American diplomacy, and the rapid rate of their murder was something that had been urged in so many words by an American Secretary of State. How is one to live with the shame of this? How is one to tolerate the continued easy and profiteering existence of such a man, who had no sooner left office than he went into business partnership with the same genocidal dictatorship he had helped arm and encourage? - http://www.thenation.com/article/kissingers-green-light-suharto/

With less than a week until the Brazilian senate votes on the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff, the question facing the nation is no longer whether the Workers’ party government will fall, but how far to the right the political pendulum will swing once it has fallen.

For Marco Feliciano – an ultra-conservative preacher-politician from the evangelical caucus – it cannot go far enough in reversing what he sees as the malign policies introduced since the left came to power in 2003. “For 13 years we have been anaesthetised. Now we will see the renaissance of hope in Brazil,” he told the Guardian. “I don’t just want the Workers’ party to go, I want it to disappear from history, to fall into extinction.”

Speaking in his parliamentary office in Brasília, the controversial Social Christian congressman said impeachment opens the door for a resurgent right – an alarming prospect for anyone on the left or in the centre who is worried about the polarisation of Brazilian politics. His comments reflect the growing influence of the “bullets, beef and Bible” (BBB) caucus, which aims to strengthen the military, expand agriculture and tighten restrictions on abortion, gay marriage and secular education. 

There is still a long way to go before that happens. In the short term, Vice-President Michel Temer is expected to form a centre-right administration for the 180 days of the senate’s deliberations on Rousseff’s impeachment. But longer term, conservatives like Feliciano feel they are well placed to expand their influence...


http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/05/brazil-far-right-dilma-rousseff-impeachment

With less than a week until the Brazilian senate votes on the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff, the question facing the nation is no longer whether the Workers’ party government will fall, but how far to the right the political pendulum will swing once it has fallen.

For Marco Feliciano – an ultra-conservative preacher-politician from the evangelical caucus – it cannot go far enough in reversing what he sees as the malign policies introduced since the left came to power in 2003. “For 13 years we have been anaesthetised. Now we will see the renaissance of hope in Brazil,” he told the Guardian. “I don’t just want the Workers’ party to go, I want it to disappear from history, to fall into extinction.”

Speaking in his parliamentary office in Brasília, the controversial Social Christian congressman said impeachment opens the door for a resurgent right – an alarming prospect for anyone on the left or in the centre who is worried about the polarisation of Brazilian politics. His comments reflect the growing influence of the “bullets, beef and Bible” (BBB) caucus, which aims to strengthen the military, expand agriculture and tighten restrictions on abortion, gay marriage and secular education. 

There is still a long way to go before that happens. In the short term, Vice-President Michel Temer is expected to form a centre-right administration for the 180 days of the senate’s deliberations on Rousseff’s impeachment. But longer term, conservatives like Feliciano feel they are well placed to expand their influence...


http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/05/brazil-far-right-dilma-rousseff-impeachment

Emails show oil firm questioned complex structure of Blair’s company, and reveal his closeness to Chinese leadership

Revealed: Blair courted Chinese leaders for Saudi prince’s oil firm

Randeep Ramesh
Thursday 28 April 2016 22.00 BST

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/apr/28/petrosaudi-tony-blair-emails-oil-company-chinese

When Jonathan Powell, the gatekeeper to the corporate empire of Tony Blair, sat down to lunch with the former Saudi intelligence chief Prince Faisal Al Turki in June 2010 he could not have known how lucrative it would turn out to be for the former British prime minister.

As the high-profile mediator of the stuttering peace process in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Blair had to be careful not to mix business with pleasure. However, one of those lunching with Powell at the annual “global mediator’s retreat”, organised by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was looking to make a deal.

Nawaf Obaid, a security analyst who accompanied Prince Faisal, emailed Powell a week later, according to documents seen by the Guardian, with a suggestion to work with his brother Tarek’s company, PetroSaudi, which he “co-founded and co-owns with Prince Turki bin Abdullah, son of King Abdullah”.

“They have several projects that [they] are working [on] and I think it would [give] a very interesting perspective to see if we could establish a strategic partnership with former PM Tony Blair and yourself,” he wrote...

... Blair’s team sold the former prime minister as someone who could help “unlock situations which might otherwise be blocked by political factors” in places such as China and Africa. PetroSaudi was interested in Beijing’s appetite for oil and how Blair’s firm could help...





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... Italy is resuming its historic role as a source of Europe’s best ideas and leadership in politics, and also, most surprisingly, in economics. Draghi’s transformation of the ECB into the world’s most creative and proactive central bank is the clearest example of this. The enormous programme of quantitative easing that Draghi pushed through, against German opposition, has saved the euro by circumventing the Maastricht Treaty’s rules against monetising or mutualising government debts.

Last month, Draghi became the first central banker to take seriously the idea of helicopter money – the direct distribution of newly created money from the central bank to eurozone residents. Germany’s leaders have reacted furiously and are now subjecting Draghi to nationalistic personal attacks. Less visibly, Italy has also led a quiet rebellion against the pre-Keynesian economics of the German government and the European commission. In EU councilsand again at this month’s International Monetary Fund meeting in Washington, DC, Pier Carlo Padoan, Italy’s finance minister, presented the case for fiscal stimulus more strongly and coherently than any other EU leader.

More important, Padoan has started to implement fiscal stimulus by cutting taxes and maintaining public spending plans, in defiance of German and EU commission demands to tighten his budget. As a result, consumer and business confidence in Italy have rebounded to the highest level in 15 years, credit conditions have improved, and Italy is the only G7 country expected by the IMF to grow faster in 2016 than 2015 (albeit still at an inadequate 1% rate).

Padoan has more recently created an imaginative public-private partnership to finance a desperately needed recapitalization of Italy’s banks. And he has launched his initiative without waiting for approval from ECB and EU officials, who blocked an earlier “bad bank” plan under German pressure. Financial markets immediately rewarded Italy for its defiance, with the share price of the country’s biggest bank, Unicredit, jumping by 25% in three days.

Italy’s increasingly assertive resistance to German economic dogmas may not be surprising: The country has suffered from almost continuous recession since joining the euro. Moreover, Padoan, who was formerly the OECD’s chief economist, is the only G-7 finance minister with professional economics training. He understands better than anyone that misguided fiscal and monetary policies have been the underlying cause of Europe’s economic underperformance, and are largely responsible for the political tensions threatening to destroy the EU...

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/apr/29/could-italy-be-the-unlikely-saviour-of-project-europe