By Eric MARGOLIS
The really rich, vexed by tax collectors, pesky family members, ex-wives and simply plain burglars, long ago found out the wisdom of concealing their money and property. This is two times true for politicians.
An investigation by a worldwide consortium of journalists just examined a huge leakage of 11.9 million records of overseas financial firms that have been evading taxes and monetary disclosure for their numerous customers. The result of what is known as The Pandora Documents has actually been a cascade of scandals.
This column has long preserved that the US has been deeply associated with enormous worldwide corruption. Chief tawdry examples are the largest recipients of US ‘help,’ Israel, Afghanistan and Jordan. Washington spent over two trillion dollars on the now lost, 20-year Afghan conflict.
All that money has actually vanished. Among the largest receivers was the Afghan Communist Party and the drug mafias that made US-run Afghanistan the world’s biggest manufacturer of unlawful heroin and morphine.
The 3rd recipient of United States largess, Jordan, has gotten $22 billion from the United States since the 1950’s. Last year it received $1 billion alone from Washington, primarily to support the Trump administration’s unrefined attempts to buy, threaten and encourage Arab dictatorships into a security pact with Israel that seriously screws the Palestinians. In addition, the United States has actually also given $ 1.7 billion to Jordan to take care of the large numbers of Syrian refugees it shelters. However they were the result of a war gazed by the US to topple Syria’s Assad routine, among the last independent Arab countries.
In addition, Jordan’s royal household got 10s of millions in secret funding from Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and, supposedly, from Israel. Jordan and Oman have long been referred to as preferred dependencies of Britain’s MI6 intelligence service and the CIA.
All this money for a small, barren country of only 10 million is remarkable. Yet one need to understand that it is a key piece of the United States Mideast Empire’s architecture. Interestingly, 60% of Jordan’s population is believed to be made up of Palestinian refugees from the production of Israel in May, 1948. Today, 20% of Israel’s population is Palestinian.
Britain and after that the United States kept Jordan’s ruling Hashemite dynasty in power. It ended up being one of the region’s more civilized and effective rulers though it too often depend on the US-trained secret police to crush unrest. My mother talked to the late King Hussein in the 1950’s and at that time discovered that one million Palestinian refugees were surviving in tents. Many still do today.
Jordan is a very poor country that lives on the edge. So why was King Abdullah II secretly buying more than $100 countless prime home in Malibu, London and the French Riviera? All through a web of intricate business created to camouflage the ownership?
Palace representatives declare it was just to ensure security. Saudi and other Gulf royalty make the very same claim for their essential holdings in Spain and France. So does Spain’s just recently deposed king, King Juan Carlos.
Much of the Mideast’s monarchs and dictators got secret US money and property. This has been a truth because the days of Egypt’s Anwar Sadat, who was on the CIA’s payroll considering that 1952. France supervises of rewards to North African and black African leaders. It’s difficult to discover an African leader who does not own luxury buildings on the French Riviera or elegant Alpine ski resorts. Why not? These strongmen risk being toppled daily. Make hay while the sun shines.
Interestingly, some of the Third World leaders most damned by the west have been relatively truthful rulers. Fine examples are Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt, Khomeini and Ahmadinejad in Iran, and Arafat of Palestine. But it was the criminals and cleptos like Iran’s late Shah, or Afghanistan’s Ashraf Ghani who got all the great press in the West.