The Paradise Papers are not as devious as the notorious Panama Papers; the fifth meeting between Shinzo Abe and Trump promises to “make alliance great again”; and Mohammad bin Salman is set on the path to an absolute monarchy.
A not so nefarious spectacle
The ICIJ always promises a spectacular show. But the latest cache of pilfered files dubbed the “Paradise Papers”, writes The Economist, are “a far cry from what could be found on the darkest pages of the Panama Papers, which contained details of serious money-laundering lapses and secret accounts held by corrupt politicians and public officials, stuffed with money whose provenance took some explaining.”
“Thousands of private-equity and hedge funds are registered in tax-free or low-tax offshore centres. This typically has more to do with avoiding an extra layer of taxation in the country where the fund is based than with dodging tax owed in the investor’s home country, which still has to be paid. Moreover, such funds are hardly the preserve of the rich only: many pension funds invest through them.”
“Plenty of nefarious things happen offshore. A recent example is the giant, globe-spanning corruption scandal around 1MDB, a Malaysian state-investment fund from which investigators in several countries believe more than $4bn was misappropriated, much of it through offshore shell companies. But the first lot of Paradise Papers revelations seem to contain nothing so damning. Moreover, the focus on Bermuda risks reinforcing the stereotype that the real culprits are small, palm-fringed islands, when it is in fact the much larger, onshore financial centres, such as London and New York, that offer the most attractive combination of respectability and secrecy—making them magnets of unparalleled power for the world’s tainted money.”
Get out of his way
Mohammad bin Salman is a moderniser who thinks the path forward is an absolute monarchy. “The message from the palace is clear: get on board or pay the price. That message applies not only to commoners, but to the entire royal family,” writes Elliot Abrams in The New York Times.
“It was possible to pass the post of king from brother to brother in order of age when there were only 36 brothers who lived to adulthood, and that is what the Saudis have been doing since 1953 until King Salman’s accession to the throne in 2015. It will not be possible to govern that way in Crown Prince Mohammed’s generation, where there are literally hundreds of eligible princes. He may wish to establish a single line of succession, including only the descendants of his father, King Salman. To do that will require raw power.”
“Is this centralization of power a good thing for the United States, or even for Saudi Arabia? That question will best be answered retrospectively, in about a decade. What’s clear now, though, is that Crown Prince Mohammed has announced ambitious economic and social changes, from allowing women to drive and mix with men in sports stadiums, to selling off a part of the kingdom’s key asset, the Aramco oil company, to challenging the ideology of the Wahhabi clerics. He appears to believe that such moves require sheer power, both to overcome resistance and to move the kingdom’s poorly educated and youthful population (roughly half are under the age of 25) of 33 million into the 21st century.”
The presidential art of incompetence
Are Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin two “incompetents who could manage to screw up the simplest of tasks”? Going by Roger Cohen’s piece in The Washington Post, they might just be. And even though it has been said over and over again, it’s one of the things that always begs reiteration: the two have a lot in common.
“Trump and Putin are authoritarians, vaunted strongmen who are revered by people who have little patience for process or consultations. Putin is the stronger of the two, admired as such by Trump. But the Russian leader has leaped into a no-win war in Syria, retaining his cherished warm-water port at Tartus but burdening an economy that is heavily dependent on the price of oil.”
“Trump and Putin are a two-faced Janus with the same face. They ran on the same platform — make (America/Russia) great again. They both are conspiracy buffs — Putin because he once toiled for the KGB, Trump because reality is too complicated for him. Both men are captives of a recent past they loathe and consider shameful.”
United against North Korea
As Trump and Shinzo Abe met for the fifth time, they agreed on the biggest issues staring the countries (read North Korea). On trade, though, reservations remained, argues The Japan Times.
“They confirmed the shared strategy of maximizing international pressures on North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs. It will likely take more than that, however, to defuse regional tensions raised by Pyongyang’s repeated provocations. During his Asian tour, Trump is urged to also enlist the cooperation of China and Russia in exploring a diplomatic solution to the crisis.”
“Abe apparently believes that deepening personal ties with the U.S. president contributes to beefing up the bilateral security alliance that serves as a check against the North Korean threat as well as China’s assertive maritime behavior. Trump, who called Japan a ‘treasured partner and crucial ally’of the United States as he spoke before American troops at Yokota Air Base, said after his talks with Abe on Monday that ‘don’t think we’ve ever been closer to Japan than we are right now’.”
“According to officials, Trump did not take up the issue of a bilateral free trade deal with Japan — toward which Tokyo remains guarded — in his talks with Abe, although the president urged Japan to correct its large trade surplus with the U.S. In a meeting with Japanese and American business leaders Monday morning, Trump reportedly charged that Japan is not conducting ‘fair and open’ trade with the U.S., and said he believes that Tokyo and Washington “will be able to come up with trade deals … that are going to be fair to both countries” and that he had no ‘it will be done in a quick and a very friendly manner’.
Abe said Tokyo will seek to produce results on economic issues between Japan and the U.S. in the framework of bilateral dialogue led by Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso and Vice U.S. President Mike Pence. It’s time for Tokyo to devise a strategy in dealing with such U.S. demands.”
According to officials, Trump did not take up the issue of a bilateral free trade deal with Japan — toward which Tokyo remains guarded — in his talks with Abe, although the president urged Japan to correct its large trade surplus with the U.S. In a meeting with Japanese and American business leaders Monday morning, Trump reportedly charged that Japan is not conducting “fair and open” trade with the U.S., and said he believes that Tokyo and Washington “will be able to come up with trade deals … that are going to be fair to both countries” and that he had no doubt “it will be done in a quick and a very friendly manner.”
The blood on American hands
Columns mourning the abrupt, pointless deaths of Americans to gun violence are more common than one would want them to be. However, “I’ll keep writing it because we cannot become inured to this horrific gun violence. We cannot allow mass killings to become normalized, even though they happen with increasing and numbing frequency,” writes Eugene Robinson in The Washington Post.
“The United States is alone among advanced countries in having gun policies that facilitate, rather than obstruct, deadly rampages such as Kelley’s. The Supreme Court has made clear in its rulings that the Second Amendment permits reasonable gun-control measures. This crisis is political, not constitutional.
You and I have the power to elect leaders who will reduce gun violence. The blood of innocents is on our hands,” he writes.
The sophistry from apologists for the gun lobby or “complicit enablers of horrific violence” must no longer be entertained, he argues. “First they will feign outrage that anyone would ‘politicise’ such a tragedy by seeking ways to prevent such a thing from happening again. Then the National Rifle Association’s water carriers will choose some gun- control proposal and crow about how that specific measure could not have prevented this specific massacre. Therefore, they will argue, we must do nothing at all.”