Politics

A whistleblower working at the UBS bank in Switzerland has claimed that the Panama Papers leak was a CIA operation designed to embarrass countries such as Russia as part of a political propaganda campaign. Bradley Birkenfeld says the 11 million documents stolen from a Panamanian law firm should not be considered genuine. Cnbc.com reports: Instead, he said, the hacking of the Panama City-based firm, called Mossack Fonseca, could have been done by a U.S. intelligence agency. “The CIA I’m sure is behind this, in my opinion,” Birkenfeld said.

Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,

This is an English translation of an article that I wrote for the German magazine, Compact. I was encouraged by the high level of intelligent discourse that Compact brings to its readers. If only the US had more people capable of reaching beyond entertainment to comprehending the forces that affect them, there might be some hope for America.

 

U.S. Senator Bob Graham has confirmed that he has received a telephone call from the White House who say they will declassify 28 pages of the 9/11 documents that clarify Saudi Arabia’s role on the September 11 attacks. Graham said that Brett Holmgren, a senior policy adviser to the assistant to the president for Homeland Security, told him that the declassification review of the withheld 9/11 report will “soon be completed”.

Monsanto has been exploiting cotton farmers in India, and now the country is vowing to continue regulating the GMO seed prices as well as protect its farmers.  RT reports: Monsanto is being pushed by the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to accept the dictated government price, as India expects to develop its own genetically modified (GM) cotton varieties early next year. In a move to break away from a dependency on American technological know-how in the genetic seed market, India has cut royalties paid by local firms for Monsanto’s seeds by more than 70 percent.

"They're pretty bad," said Democratic strategist Brad Bannon, who connected the poor poll numbers to separate findings that show a broad number of Americans don’t trust Clinton. As The Hill reports, only 40.2% of people view Hillary favorably (drastically lower than Obama's 62% at this point in the presidential-cycle and Bush's 63%). As one commentator noted "the political impression that I think she leaves strikes a lot of people as inauthentic, as something they can’t quite trust."