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This week on CounterSpin: Media are talking about the Panama Papers—the prodigious database leak from Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, that specializes in shell companies popular with those looking to hide money from the law. But to the extent that they treat it as Shocking Transgressions of the Rich and Powerful, the press are missing the point. Mossack Fonseca is not a unique operation; there’s nothing special about Panama; and most of what’s going on is—if not “perfectly legal”—legal, anyway. We talk about using the Panama Papers to push for real change with investigative economist James Henry, author of The Blood Bankers: Tales from the Global Underground Economy.
Transcript: ‘A Global Industry Is Raiding Treasuries All Over the Planet’
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Also on the show: “No US apology for Hiroshima” was many media’s thumbnail of Secretary of State John Kerry’s recent visit to one of the Japanese cities—along with, of course, Nagasaki—where the US killed more than 200,000 people with atomic bombs dropped in 1945. The dominant Hiroshima “narrative”—lamentable but necessary, ultimately saved more than it killed—has remained remarkably unchanged, in good part because of US media’s defense and preservation of it. We discussed that narrative years ago with military and diplomatic historian Sanho Tree, now director of the Drug Policy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies.
Transcript: ‘The Japanese Were Already Defeated and Were Seeking Peace’
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First we take a quick look back at recent press, including Democracy Spring, North Carolina’s “Bathroom Law” and “responsibility” in the 2016 elections.
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What a great criminal indifference did the American public have in 1945, with alternate media and alternate voices of those rich and powerful who condemned our A-bomb crimes against humanity.
Surely, to A-bomb two cities knowing that no military would be present, knowing that Japan was begging for surrender, surely cold blooded murder by a corrupt government that had reduced the Indian population by 95% using the same criminal mindset of attacking Indian villages by an order of the President to slaughter every man, woman, child and dog,
Allowed by heaven only to prove the harm in it, to establish before all the heavenly realms how totally corrupt an Empire becomes when it reaches the ultimate conclusion of evil.