Da Boss wrote: That's pretty ridiculous but I guess it is state controlled. Still, does the credibility of the paper no good.
Even more than most news channels, it has always been a mistake to read things into what RT doesn't say. If they say something it's probably the truth (unlike Fox News, who are infamous for fabricating evidence to support their agenda), but they are perfectly happy to ignore the elephant in the room.
It's long been discussed that Putin has many millions hidden away with various people and businesses to hide his assets.
Apparently the PM of Iceland is up to his neck in this, there must be quite a few people in governments all around the world with money in these 'arrangements'.
The article I read had mostly Russian and South American people listed. I'm wondering how many and which people from the USA are going to start having their names popping up.
chaos0xomega wrote: Im curious if Donald Trump or Hillary Clintons name is going to pop up in the docs. It would be *wonderful*.
I don't think Donald Trump's name is going to come up. Trump's an egotist, and I honestly think that is his primary motivation. What's the point in hiding his wealth in some Panama shell company, if he can't plaster his name on it and use it as evidence of how much of an awesome businessman he is?
Just to be clear, any person named in these papers can't be assumed to be doing something illegal. There is nothing illegal in setting up shell companies or even in moving money to tax havens. And in some cases there are even legitimate uses for shell companies, but it's just that in many cases they are used to conceal illegal activities, such as moving money to tax havens that can't legally be moved without being taxed first.
So there'll be a week or so of fun naming names and the like, but the real meaningful stuff to come out of this, penalty taxes and possible jail time, will take years.
sebster wrote: There is nothing illegal in setting up shell companies or even in moving money to tax havens.
No, but if you're a politician who's touting an anti-corruption or trying to convince people of tax increases, having your name appear could sink your career.
sebster wrote: Just to be clear, any person named in these papers can't be assumed to be doing something illegal. There is nothing illegal in setting up shell companies or even in moving money to tax havens. And in some cases there are even legitimate uses for shell companies...
That is true. I think it's changed since then, but at first it was impossible to run a Kickstarter if you weren't based in the US, so a few manufacturers set up US-based shell companies to qualify.
sebster wrote: There is nothing illegal in setting up shell companies or even in moving money to tax havens.
No, but if you're a politician who's touting an anti-corruption or trying to convince people of tax increases, having your name appear could sink your career.
Aye, like that Icelandic Prime Minister. His tax haven company had large investments in the Icelandic banks that went down a few years back and tried all it could to get the money out. At the same time the guy got elected PM, largely because he wanted to be tough on the banks. He had secret investments and ran on forcing the failed banks to pay out as much as they could. Looks good. ;-)
Breotan wrote: No, but if you're a politician who's touting an anti-corruption or trying to convince people of tax increases, having your name appear could sink your career.
It's likely to sink a lot of politicians, whether they're in favour of greater taxes or not. But outside of politicians, mud won't be enough, there will have to be substance to each claim.
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AlexHolker wrote: That is true. I think it's changed since then, but at first it was impossible to run a Kickstarter if you weren't based in the US, so a few manufacturers set up US-based shell companies to qualify.
Yeah. And while in most cases it's unlikely that Mossack Fonseca are doing that kind of work, you never know.
ulgurstasta wrote: Thats how it works, like how none of the American papers mention the 441 American clients the company had and slap Putin and Assad on every frontpage
That is incorrect. From the sound of it, they're saving the Americans for the next round of names.
I have to ask how did these papers leak in the first place and why? Also 11 million documents?! Holy crap that's a ton. It's definitely not something you can read in one sitting so much as have like 1,000 people read it over and see what you can get out of it. We may need a pretty big team of people to figure out all of this. This is one of the most insane information leaks in a while. Big news indeed.
ulgurstasta wrote: Thats how it works, like how none of the American papers mention the 441 American clients the company had and slap Putin and Assad on every frontpage
That is incorrect. From the sound of it, they're saving the Americans for the next round of names.
It might become incorrect in the future, but I have yet to see any big American names being implicated.
ulgurstasta wrote: Thats how it works, like how none of the American papers mention the 441 American clients the company had and slap Putin and Assad on every frontpage
That is incorrect. From the sound of it, they're saving the Americans for the next round of names.
It might become incorrect in the future, but I have yet to see any big American names being implicated.
Why have the climax in the beginning? There's no suspense then and everybody would just leave. Would make sense they can keep audiences reading their news longer that way.
Also on the subject of 11 million papers you may need a super computer or more than a few working at it to figure out all this mess and what can be gathered. Seriously it's like reading a code of DNA. Speaking of which how long do you think these 11 million documents would take for one person to read at normal reading speed.
Obviously these documents are in digital format, which means they are searchable, however it isn't just enough to highlight the (speculation: 231 mentions of Politician X) because having located them you have to read the documents and see how they string out into a rational narrative.
That will take some time.
However every country in the world will be interested in the names of their own people, so the work will be shared out.
ulgurstasta wrote: Thats how it works, like how none of the American papers mention the 441 American clients the company had and slap Putin and Assad on every frontpage
That is incorrect. From the sound of it, they're saving the Americans for the next round of names.
It might become incorrect in the future, but I have yet to see any big American names being implicated.
A German journalist tweeted something to the effect of "Just wait and see what's coming..." So American papers aren't not mentioning American clients to protect them, they're not mentioning American clients because they haven't been told who they are yet.
ulgurstasta wrote: Thats how it works, like how none of the American papers mention the 441 American clients the company had and slap Putin and Assad on every frontpage
That is incorrect. From the sound of it, they're saving the Americans for the next round of names.
It might become incorrect in the future, but I have yet to see any big American names being implicated.
A German journalist tweeted something to the effect of "Just wait and see what's coming..." So American papers aren't not mentioning American clients to protect them, they're not mentioning American clients because they haven't been told who they are yet.
Seems you draw big conclusions from a statement that could mean anything, but hopefully you are right!
Corporate Media Gatekeepers Protect Western 1% From Panama Leak
Whoever leaked the Mossack Fonseca papers appears motivated by a genuine desire to expose the system that enables the ultra wealthy to hide their massive stashes, often corruptly obtained and all involved in tax avoidance. These Panamanian lawyers hide the wealth of a significant proportion of the 1%, and the massive leak of their documents ought to be a wonderful thing.
Unfortunately the leaker has made the dreadful mistake of turning to the western corporate media to publicise the results. In consequence the first major story, published today by the Guardian, is all about Vladimir Putin and a cellist on the fiddle. As it happens I believe the story and have no doubt Putin is bent.
But why focus on Russia? Russian wealth is only a tiny minority of the money hidden away with the aid of Mossack Fonseca. In fact, it soon becomes obvious that the selective reporting is going to stink.
The Suddeutsche Zeitung, which received the leak, gives a detailed explanation of the methodology the corporate media used to search the files. The main search they have done is for names associated with breaking UN sanctions regimes. The Guardian reports this too and helpfully lists those countries as Zimbabwe, North Korea, Russia and Syria. The filtering of this Mossack Fonseca information by the corporate media follows a direct western governmental agenda. There is no mention at all of use of Mossack Fonseca by massive western corporations or western billionaires – the main customers. And the Guardian is quick to reassure that “much of the leaked material will remain private.”
What do you expect? The leak is being managed by the grandly but laughably named “International Consortium of Investigative Journalists”, which is funded and organised entirely by the USA’s Center for Public Integrity. Their funders include
Ford Foundation
Carnegie Endowment
Rockefeller Family Fund
W K Kellogg Foundation
Open Society Foundation (Soros)
among many others. Do not expect a genuine expose of western capitalism. The dirty secrets of western corporations will remain unpublished.
Expect hits at Russia, Iran and Syria and some tiny “balancing” western country like Iceland. A superannuated UK peer or two will be sacrificed – someone already with dementia.
The corporate media – the Guardian and BBC in the UK – have exclusive access to the database which you and I cannot see. They are protecting themselves from even seeing western corporations’ sensitive information by only looking at those documents which are brought up by specific searches such as UN sanctions busters. Never forget the Guardian smashed its copies of the Snowden files on the instruction of MI6.
What if they did Mossack Fonseca database searches on the owners of all the corporate media and their companies, and all the editors and senior corporate media journalists? What if they did Mossack Fonseca searches on all the most senior people at the BBC? What if they did Mossack Fonseca searches on every donor to the Center for Public Integrity and their companies?
What if they did Mossack Fonseca searches on every listed company in the western stock exchanges, and on every western millionaire they could trace?
That would be much more interesting. I know Russia and China are corrupt, you don’t have to tell me that. What if you look at things that we might, here in the west, be able to rise up and do something about?
And what if you corporate lapdogs let the people see the actual data?
Kilkrazy wrote: Obviously these documents are in digital format, which means they are searchable, however it isn't just enough to highlight the (speculation: 231 mentions of Politician X) because having located them you have to read the documents and see how they string out into a rational narrative.
That will take some time.
However every country in the world will be interested in the names of their own people, so the work will be shared out.
The data was leaked over a year ago and has been analysed by some kind of international investigative journalism 'guild'. The leak containz all kinds of data as well, from text messages to contracts.
Kilkrazy wrote: Obviously these documents are in digital format, which means they are searchable, however it isn't just enough to highlight the (speculation: 231 mentions of Politician X) because having located them you have to read the documents and see how they string out into a rational narrative.
That will take some time.
However every country in the world will be interested in the names of their own people, so the work will be shared out.
The data was leaked over a year ago and has been analysed by some kind of international investigative journalism 'guild'. The leak containz all kinds of data as well, from text messages to contracts.
Yeah, but as the article above points out - who are these gatekeepers?
I've been following the coverage in the Guardian, Telegraph, et al, and there is a clear anti-Putin agenda. Now, I couldn't give two hoots for Putin, but news of his corruption isn't exactly news to me, or anybody else for that matter.
Not having a go at you, but why aren't they shingling a spotlight on Western interests?
Corporate Media Gatekeepers Protect Western 1% From Panama Leak
Whoever leaked the Mossack Fonseca papers appears motivated by a genuine desire to expose the system that enables the ultra wealthy to hide their massive stashes, often corruptly obtained and all involved in tax avoidance. These Panamanian lawyers hide the wealth of a significant proportion of the 1%, and the massive leak of their documents ought to be a wonderful thing.
Unfortunately the leaker has made the dreadful mistake of turning to the western corporate media to publicise the results. In consequence the first major story, published today by the Guardian, is all about Vladimir Putin and a cellist on the fiddle. As it happens I believe the story and have no doubt Putin is bent.
But why focus on Russia? Russian wealth is only a tiny minority of the money hidden away with the aid of Mossack Fonseca. In fact, it soon becomes obvious that the selective reporting is going to stink.
The Suddeutsche Zeitung, which received the leak, gives a detailed explanation of the methodology the corporate media used to search the files. The main search they have done is for names associated with breaking UN sanctions regimes. The Guardian reports this too and helpfully lists those countries as Zimbabwe, North Korea, Russia and Syria. The filtering of this Mossack Fonseca information by the corporate media follows a direct western governmental agenda. There is no mention at all of use of Mossack Fonseca by massive western corporations or western billionaires – the main customers. And the Guardian is quick to reassure that “much of the leaked material will remain private.”
What do you expect? The leak is being managed by the grandly but laughably named “International Consortium of Investigative Journalists”, which is funded and organised entirely by the USA’s Center for Public Integrity. Their funders include
Ford Foundation
Carnegie Endowment
Rockefeller Family Fund
W K Kellogg Foundation
Open Society Foundation (Soros)
among many others. Do not expect a genuine expose of western capitalism. The dirty secrets of western corporations will remain unpublished.
Expect hits at Russia, Iran and Syria and some tiny “balancing” western country like Iceland. A superannuated UK peer or two will be sacrificed – someone already with dementia.
The corporate media – the Guardian and BBC in the UK – have exclusive access to the database which you and I cannot see. They are protecting themselves from even seeing western corporations’ sensitive information by only looking at those documents which are brought up by specific searches such as UN sanctions busters. Never forget the Guardian smashed its copies of the Snowden files on the instruction of MI6.
What if they did Mossack Fonseca database searches on the owners of all the corporate media and their companies, and all the editors and senior corporate media journalists? What if they did Mossack Fonseca searches on all the most senior people at the BBC? What if they did Mossack Fonseca searches on every donor to the Center for Public Integrity and their companies?
What if they did Mossack Fonseca searches on every listed company in the western stock exchanges, and on every western millionaire they could trace?
That would be much more interesting. I know Russia and China are corrupt, you don’t have to tell me that. What if you look at things that we might, here in the west, be able to rise up and do something about?
And what if you corporate lapdogs let the people see the actual data?
I think his agenda is quite clear. That reads like a conspiracy theorist. "Ah yes, but what are they hiding. Who are they protecting".
And honestly, companies using this for tax avoidance or evasion is a foot note compared to world leaders and people breching international sanctions.
News have been saying over 800 Australians are being investigated for tax evasion because of the leak. Im actually surprised there were that many Australians rich enough to potentially tax evade!
Our nobhead Prime Minister has been pushing for higher taxes of the lower and middle class and spouting a "live within your means" slogan as this all unfolded. I wouldnt be surprised if his name came up.
Corporate Media Gatekeepers Protect Western 1% From Panama Leak
Whoever leaked the Mossack Fonseca papers appears motivated by a genuine desire to expose the system that enables the ultra wealthy to hide their massive stashes, often corruptly obtained and all involved in tax avoidance. These Panamanian lawyers hide the wealth of a significant proportion of the 1%, and the massive leak of their documents ought to be a wonderful thing.
Unfortunately the leaker has made the dreadful mistake of turning to the western corporate media to publicise the results. In consequence the first major story, published today by the Guardian, is all about Vladimir Putin and a cellist on the fiddle. As it happens I believe the story and have no doubt Putin is bent.
But why focus on Russia? Russian wealth is only a tiny minority of the money hidden away with the aid of Mossack Fonseca. In fact, it soon becomes obvious that the selective reporting is going to stink.
The Suddeutsche Zeitung, which received the leak, gives a detailed explanation of the methodology the corporate media used to search the files. The main search they have done is for names associated with breaking UN sanctions regimes. The Guardian reports this too and helpfully lists those countries as Zimbabwe, North Korea, Russia and Syria. The filtering of this Mossack Fonseca information by the corporate media follows a direct western governmental agenda. There is no mention at all of use of Mossack Fonseca by massive western corporations or western billionaires – the main customers. And the Guardian is quick to reassure that “much of the leaked material will remain private.”
What do you expect? The leak is being managed by the grandly but laughably named “International Consortium of Investigative Journalists”, which is funded and organised entirely by the USA’s Center for Public Integrity. Their funders include
Ford Foundation
Carnegie Endowment
Rockefeller Family Fund
W K Kellogg Foundation
Open Society Foundation (Soros)
among many others. Do not expect a genuine expose of western capitalism. The dirty secrets of western corporations will remain unpublished.
Expect hits at Russia, Iran and Syria and some tiny “balancing” western country like Iceland. A superannuated UK peer or two will be sacrificed – someone already with dementia.
The corporate media – the Guardian and BBC in the UK – have exclusive access to the database which you and I cannot see. They are protecting themselves from even seeing western corporations’ sensitive information by only looking at those documents which are brought up by specific searches such as UN sanctions busters. Never forget the Guardian smashed its copies of the Snowden files on the instruction of MI6.
What if they did Mossack Fonseca database searches on the owners of all the corporate media and their companies, and all the editors and senior corporate media journalists? What if they did Mossack Fonseca searches on all the most senior people at the BBC? What if they did Mossack Fonseca searches on every donor to the Center for Public Integrity and their companies?
What if they did Mossack Fonseca searches on every listed company in the western stock exchanges, and on every western millionaire they could trace?
That would be much more interesting. I know Russia and China are corrupt, you don’t have to tell me that. What if you look at things that we might, here in the west, be able to rise up and do something about?
And what if you corporate lapdogs let the people see the actual data?
I think his agenda is quite clear. That reads like a conspiracy theorist. "Ah yes, but what are they hiding. Who are they protecting".
And honestly, companies using this for tax avoidance or evasion is a foot note compared to world leaders and people breching international sanctions.
Putin is a crook? Well, you can knock me over with a feather! I'm shocked, really shocked!
Point is, we know these rogue regimes are rogue, but the 'moral' guardians of the West need to be investigated as well. There are a number of former donors to the Tory party on this list, but is is getting half the coverage of Putin? No.
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Dropbear Victim wrote: News have been saying over 800 Australians are being investigated for tax evasion because of the leak. Im actually surprised there were that many Australians rich enough to potentially tax evade!
Our nobhead Prime Minister has been pushing for higher taxes of the lower and middle class and spouting a "live within your means" slogan as this all unfolded. I wouldnt be surprised if his name came up.
The guy that owns Fosters lager must be one of Australia's richest
Let's hope he's on the list for crimes against alcoholic beverages
Actually, this is old news in the UK, and sadly, the British people didn't give two hoots at the time, because they re-elected Dave.
Ignore the flag, I'm in the UK. And this is the first I've heard of Cameron Senior dodging tax with shady central American lawyers who also help out good ol' Vlad.
Actually, this is old news in the UK, and sadly, the British people didn't give two hoots at the time, because they re-elected Dave.
Ignore the flag, I'm in the UK. And this is the first I've heard of Cameron Senior dodging tax with shady central American lawyers who also help out good ol' Vlad.
But isn't Cameron's father dead? And in answer to your other point, there's been question marks over Cameron Snr's finances for years. Never done his son any harm, and is unlikely to now.
Ustrello wrote: RT's version is hilarious as it left dear leader and russia out of the names
As it should have been, because Putin is not in the papers at all. It is just a clear example of Western propaganda: Many people from across the entire world, including the prime minister of Iceland and President Poroshenko of Ukraine and many others. The list also includes two friends of Putin and suddenly the Western media is all over Putin, even though Putin is not on the list, is not responsible for and does not control the acts of his friends, and has no further link to this list at all. Meanwhile, they barely as much as mention the other people on the list.
The Western media's version is hilarious as it twists and distorts facts just to be able to take a shot at Putin. If Western media were truly independent and impartial, they would go after Poroshenko, Messi or someone else who is actually on the list. Now however they have shown themselves once more to be nothing but empty propaganda outlets, some more so than others.
Ustrello wrote: RT's version is hilarious as it left dear leader and russia out of the names
As it should have been, because Putin is not in the papers at all. It is just a clear example of Western propaganda: Many people from across the entire world, including the prime minister of Iceland and President Poroshenko of Ukraine and many others. The list also includes two friends of Putin and suddenly the Western media is all over Putin, even though Putin is not on the list, is not responsible for and does not control the acts of his friends, and has no further link to this list at all. Meanwhile, they barely as much as mention the other people on the list.
The Western media's version is hilarious as it twists and distorts facts just to be able to take a shot at Putin. If Western media were truly independent and impartial, they would go after Poroshenko, Messi or someone else who is actually on the list. Now however they have shown themselves once more to be nothing but empty propaganda outlets, some more so than others.
Implying that his friends who all of a sudden became super rich aren't laundering money for putin through a bank under sanctions
Yeah, we can see Putin and Assad hate everywhere on the internet now, however they aren't even on the list !
Are they responsible for what others people, friends or not, did ?
But Porochenko, elected after a Putsch against a democratically elected president, and helped by the EU, not even a mention...
godardc wrote: Yeah, we can see Putin and Assad hate everywhere on the internet now, however they aren't even on the list !
Are they responsible for what others people, friends or not, did ?
But Porochenko, elected after a Putsch against a democratically elected president, and helped by the EU, not even a mention...
Maybe because it was reported? Also putin and his country are under sanctions for a war in Ukraine and Crimea and we'll assad doesn't need explaining either.
Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet is covering Putin, al-Assad, the Prime Minister of Iceland, Jackie Chan, the King of Saudi Arabia, every major Swedish bank, Poroshenko, and many more. Could we please stop pretending that all western media is homogenous in order to justify RussiaToday as a news source? It's blatant Whataboutism and intellectually dishonest. There ought to be enough issues on which to criticise media for without pretending that one's political opponents are a homogenous blob.
Aye. The Irish Times is mostly focused on Irish aspects of the case with an overview on the main international players. They have not gone hell for leather after Putin.
The Grauniad has though, and it is pretty silly too. But what do we expect from them?
godardc wrote: Yeah, we can see Putin and Assad hate everywhere on the internet now, however they aren't even on the list !
Are they responsible for what others people, friends or not, did ?
But Porochenko, elected after a Putsch against a democratically elected president, and helped by the EU, not even a mention...
]
I've seen several mentions of Poroshenko.
I've also seen coverage of the Icelandic premier, an American author, the children of the premier of Azerbaijan, several Brazilian politicians, the Argentinian premier (apparently), President Xi Jinpings brother in law, and so on. I'm really not seeing where all the accusations of 'one sided reporting' are coming from. 11 million documents were leaked, it takes time to get through them all.
What's more, I daresay if there was any real coverup here, it would last about five minutes as whoever leaked them to begin with would be shooting a quick email over to Julian Assange or Snowden about five minutes later. For every newspaper owner who'll ignore the fact they have their fingers ina tax evasion pie, there's always an opposing paper with a grudge willing to publish. We've seen that with the likes of the Independent (hah!) and the Mail for years.
Implying that his friends who all of a sudden became super rich aren't laundering money for putin through a bank under sanctions
To be fair, there could be a number of reasons for those names being there, and not all of them are illegal. It seems people need reminding of what Sebster pointed out on page one; this tax evasion stuff is often sleazy as feth, but it's not automatically illegal. Putin and his friends have been accused of cronyism and nepotism, but having your names show up in 11 million documents doesn't actually amount to much. It's 11 million documents, and is apparently not limited to just official office memos and paper work. All kinds of names could be in those files that have nothing to do with anything. I think someone would have to actually make an effort not to mentioned every rich person on the planet in 11 million + pages.
AlmightyWalrus wrote: Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet is covering Putin, al-Assad, the Prime Minister of Iceland, Jackie Chan, the King of Saudi Arabia, every major Swedish bank, Poroshenko, and many more. Could we please stop pretending that all western media is homogenous in order to justify RussiaToday as a news source? It's blatant Whataboutism and intellectually dishonest. There ought to be enough issues on which to criticise media for without pretending that one's political opponents are a homogenous blob.
1. Why is Aftonbladet covering Putin? Putin isn't on the list nor does he have anything to do with it. Nor is Assad on the list, for that matter. The rest is about people who are actually on the list, so why throw in two people that aren't on there at all? That is pure propaganda. 2. Western media is homogeneous enough in order to be grouped together into a single group (or a couple of groups depending on political viewpoints if you want to be more detailed). 3. Why are you throwing RT into here? RT is not more or less valid than any other news source, why would it need justifying? 4. You should really stop throwing the word 'whataboutism' around needlessly. It seems like you are just using it as a tool to shut down criticism and valid discussion (which is the whole point of the term in the first place, so I think it shouldn't be used at all in a proper discussion). 5. Maybe you should start explaining what you mean with "homogenous", because you use that word a lot and I am not sure what you mean by it.
What we will shortly see is many politicians saying that what they are doing is legal. Which will be true. And then next week an aeroplane will crash, or Georger Osborne will have a photo taken of him eating a doughnut at a funny angle and nobody will care anymore, because we all knew they were at it anyway. There's a reason companies like KPMG which advise on how to evade tax conveniently advise the Government on how to close loopholes as well. 'We're all in it together' was ludicrous fiction from the word go.
The lower classes pay little tax because they have nothing to take, the middle classes get squeezed to the hilt as the most productive wealth generators, and the rich types hide all their money in Swiss bank accounts and trust funds. It's one of the reasons I was against Europe interfering in Ukraine to begin with, 'Oh look, a clique of corrupt rich people have ousted another clique of corrupt rich people. And oh look, now another country run by a clique of especially corrupt and rich people are interfering'. Nothing changes, here comes new boss, same as old boss, etc.
Meanwhile, the rest of us get on with our lives and hope that tomorrow goes on much the same as today, because things usually get worse instead of better on the governmental front. They might all be corrupt feckers, but at least we can pick which snout goes in the trough today.
He uses it so much because the only criticism anyone ever seems to be able to fall on for "western media" is that it is "western" and that somehow means they're all a massive conspiracy. Which of course ignores that's not even remotely true, and news sources from different countries are always reporting different things even about the same general story as a few members have pointed out in regards to these documents.
Of course, at the same time there's probably some justification for the belief that news sources will never publish a detailed analysis of the story, but rather than jump to cover up, I'd point out laziness. Shuffling through 11 million documents would take years. Hell, those kinds of things are Historians wet dream, because such a collection could provide data for hundreds of monographs for decades. Its too much information. Expecting some "ultimate reveal of the truth" is expecting far to much, especially when media sources generally drop a subject after it ceases to be a ratings machine.
Implying that his friends who all of a sudden became super rich aren't laundering money for putin through a bank under sanctions
To be fair, there could be a number of reasons for those names being there, and not all of them are illegal. It seems people need reminding of what Sebster pointed out on page one; this tax evasion stuff is often sleazy as feth, but it's not automatically illegal. Putin and his friends have been accused of cronyism and nepotism, but having your names show up in 11 million documents doesn't actually amount to much. It's 11 million documents, and is apparently not limited to just official office memos and paper work. All kinds of names could be in those files that have nothing to do with anything. I think someone would have to actually make an effort not to mentioned every rich person on the planet in 11 million + pages.
Sure it's not illegal. But it is illegal when dealing with sanctioned entities, which is what I was pointing out for the Russian side.
Ketara wrote: What we will shortly see is many politicians saying that what they are doing is legal. Which will be true. And then next week an aeroplane will crash, or Georger Osborne will have a photo taken of him eating a doughnut at a funny angle and nobody will care anymore, because we all knew they were at it anyway. There's a reason companies like KPMG which advise on how to evade tax conveniently advise the Government on how to close loopholes as well. 'We're all in it together' was ludicrous fiction from the word go.
The lower classes pay little tax because they have nothing to take, the middle classes get squeezed to the hilt as the most productive wealth generators, and the rich types hide all their money in Swiss bank accounts and trust funds. It's one of the reasons I was against Europe interfering in Ukraine to begin with, 'Oh look, a clique of corrupt rich people have ousted another clique of corrupt rich people. And oh look, now another country run by a clique of especially corrupt and rich people are interfering'. Nothing changes, here comes new boss, same as old boss, etc.
Meanwhile, the rest of us get on with our lives and hope that tomorrow goes on much the same as today, because things usually get worse instead of better on the governmental front. They might all be corrupt feckers, but at least we can pick which snout goes in the trough today.
Point of order, but you've a leader of the opposition who took less than a tenner in expenses last time anyone checked, and he's villified by your media. They're not ALL corrupt, but the ones that aren't sometimes seem to get a rough deal.
Ketara wrote: What we will shortly see is many politicians saying that what they are doing is legal. Which will be true. And then next week an aeroplane will crash, or Georger Osborne will have a photo taken of him eating a doughnut at a funny angle and nobody will care anymore, because we all knew they were at it anyway. There's a reason companies like KPMG which advise on how to evade tax conveniently advise the Government on how to close loopholes as well. 'We're all in it together' was ludicrous fiction from the word go.
The lower classes pay little tax because they have nothing to take, the middle classes get squeezed to the hilt as the most productive wealth generators, and the rich types hide all their money in Swiss bank accounts and trust funds. It's one of the reasons I was against Europe interfering in Ukraine to begin with, 'Oh look, a clique of corrupt rich people have ousted another clique of corrupt rich people. And oh look, now another country run by a clique of especially corrupt and rich people are interfering'. Nothing changes, here comes new boss, same as old boss, etc.
Meanwhile, the rest of us get on with our lives and hope that tomorrow goes on much the same as today, because things usually get worse instead of better on the governmental front. They might all be corrupt feckers, but at least we can pick which snout goes in the trough today.
Point of order, but you've a leader of the opposition who took less than a tenner in expenses last time anyone checked, and he's villified by your media. They're not ALL corrupt, but the ones that aren't sometimes seem to get a rough deal.
Corbyn is villified because he's a throwback to the 1970's (and not in a good way), but I concede the point. You do get the occasional good 'un (Vince Cable was a pretty fair bloke when all was said and done). But even if they're not corrupt in the financial sense, you tend to find they're as morally corrupt as the next politician. Mr Corbyn specifically shines no brighter than the rest of them in that regard.
Kilkrazy wrote: Obviously these documents are in digital format, which means they are searchable, however it isn't just enough to highlight the (speculation: 231 mentions of Politician X) because having located them you have to read the documents and see how they string out into a rational narrative.
That will take some time.
However every country in the world will be interested in the names of their own people, so the work will be shared out.
The data was leaked over a year ago and has been analysed by some kind of international investigative journalism 'guild'. The leak containz all kinds of data as well, from text messages to contracts.
Yeah, but as the article above points out - who are these gatekeepers?
I've been following the coverage in the Guardian, Telegraph, et al, and there is a clear anti-Putin agenda. Now, I couldn't give two hoots for Putin, but news of his corruption isn't exactly news to me, or anybody else for that matter.
Not having a go at you, but why aren't they shingling a spotlight on Western interests?
Word.
Putin doesn't give a feth about our opinion anyway, and Russian media is government censored so the Russians won't hear too much about this.
Who is going to be revealed from the UK, that's what I want to know?
First one up is Cameron's father, and he's dead; that knocks that on the head. So far it's going down the way that Craig Murray predicted.
I was talking to my wife earlier and said I would be surprised if there was a single prosecution out of all of this.
I've also seen coverage of the Icelandic premier, an American author, the children of the premier of Azerbaijan, several Brazilian politicians, the Argentinian premier (apparently), President Xi Jinpings brother in law, and so on. I'm really not seeing where all the accusations of 'one sided reporting' are coming from. 11 million documents were leaked, it takes time to get through them all.
Iceland is not a big concession at all and few authors, American or otherwise, are political and/or economic powerhouses. I'll wait for something more substantial than that.
Iceland is not a big concession at all and few authors, American or otherwise, are political and/or economic powerhouses. I'll wait for something more substantial than that.
'concession'? You make it sound like Western Politicians must be so financially wealthy and profligate that they HAVE to be in this particular leak.
Remember a few things:-
-This is one company. For all we know, the people you want 'revealed' do their banking at another one.
-There doesn't tend to be the same absurd levels of wealth thrown around in Western corruption as you get in Russia or Saudi Arabia, or Brazil. Individual politicians aren't usually able to siphon off literally hundreds of millions into private swiss bank accounts, so they have less of a need to move money around on that scale. The people who do (large companies) aren't going to be the big 'names' that are being dug for right now, and they tend to have in-house arrangements for that sort of thing instead of contracting it out (see Starbucks avoidance of corporate tax for a good example there).
Western corruption tends to be more along the lines of 'I pass a piece of legislation' or 'I bend a rule' and get a cushy job as a 'consulting director' within six months of leaving office which pays me £80,000 a year for no real work. And ultimately, that sort of corruption is generally far less visible or relevant to these sorts of leaks, which revolve around extremely high net worth individuals. Cameron is well off, but he's not in the, 'I'm stealing £200 million from Government and stashing it away' league. Russian oligarchs, and South American/African/Arabic politicians and dictators are.
Kilkrazy wrote: Obviously these documents are in digital format, which means they are searchable, however it isn't just enough to highlight the (speculation: 231 mentions of Politician X) because having located them you have to read the documents and see how they string out into a rational narrative.
That will take some time.
However every country in the world will be interested in the names of their own people, so the work will be shared out.
The data was leaked over a year ago and has been analysed by some kind of international investigative journalism 'guild'. The leak containz all kinds of data as well, from text messages to contracts.
Yeah, but as the article above points out - who are these gatekeepers?
I've been following the coverage in the Guardian, Telegraph, et al, and there is a clear anti-Putin agenda. Now, I couldn't give two hoots for Putin, but news of his corruption isn't exactly news to me, or anybody else for that matter.
Not having a go at you, but why aren't they shingling a spotlight on Western interests?
Word.
Putin doesn't give a feth about our opinion anyway, and Russian media is government censored so the Russians won't hear too much about this.
Who is going to be revealed from the UK, that's what I want to know?
First one up is Cameron's father, and he's dead; that knocks that on the head. So far it's going down the way that Craig Murray predicted.
I was talking to my wife earlier and said I would be surprised if there was a single prosecution out of all of this.
Totally agree. If anybody gets prosecuted from this, I'll change my name to dakka dakka, and you can quote me on that!
Craig Murray was spot on. So far on the British side, we have :
A dead man. (Cameron's late father)
a 30 year old bank robbery.
North Korea being bad. North Korea bad? Really??? We need a sarcasm orkmoticon!
2 dodgy peers. Well I never.
And some dodgy donors to the Tory party. What next, bears gakking in woods!
Hold the front page. The British press, in their infinite wisdom, have clearly decided this will be enough of a bone to throw the British public.
Call me Dave will mouth some mealy mouthed pledge about getting tough on Tax havens (even though most of them are British overseas territories) and as usual will ask for nothing and come back with half of that, before retiring from being the PM in 18 months time, and going to work for as a consultant for another tax dodging firm.
Nothing to see here, move along.
Meanwhile, the British press will crank out the anti-Putin stories in the hope it'll distract us from the real crooks robbing Britain blind.
Eh, that's nice if in your countries they spoke about everyone !
They spoke about the Iceland Prime minister in France, but, when I wrote my message, I didn't see any "Porochenko" title.
Now, it is more nuanced, I agree.
I should have waited some hours before posting.
This is a shame. I thought this would be less selective but it sounds like the whole 'grab your popcorn' ended up being for a movie that boasted too much and packed too little punch. Pretty sure we all hate those movies (and games).
Kilkrazy wrote: Obviously these documents are in digital format, which means they are searchable, however it isn't just enough to highlight the (speculation: 231 mentions of Politician X) because having located them you have to read the documents and see how they string out into a rational narrative.
That will take some time.
However every country in the world will be interested in the names of their own people, so the work will be shared out.
The data was leaked over a year ago and has been analysed by some kind of international investigative journalism 'guild'. The leak containz all kinds of data as well, from text messages to contracts.
Yeah, but as the article above points out - who are these gatekeepers?
I've been following the coverage in the Guardian, Telegraph, et al, and there is a clear anti-Putin agenda. Now, I couldn't give two hoots for Putin, but news of his corruption isn't exactly news to me, or anybody else for that matter.
Not having a go at you, but why aren't they shingling a spotlight on Western interests?
Word.
Putin doesn't give a feth about our opinion anyway, and Russian media is government censored so the Russians won't hear too much about this.
Only the state media is censored. And besides, Russians have access to the internet too, you know.
I was talking to my wife earlier and said I would be surprised if there was a single prosecution out of all of this.
Financial crime isn't 'real' crime after all. I expect there to be a handful of prosecutions, there should be enough evidence and there will certainly be enough public pressure, from this but not many.
Corbyn is villified because he's a throwback to the 1970's (and not in a good way), /quote]
While Cameron is a throwback to the 80s, again not in a good way, but he doesn't get anywhere near the vitriol that Corbyn does. While I will never trust a politician I do trust Corbyn a lot more than most.
AlmightyWalrus wrote: Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet is covering Putin, al-Assad, the Prime Minister of Iceland, Jackie Chan, the King of Saudi Arabia, every major Swedish bank, Poroshenko, and many more. Could we please stop pretending that all western media is homogenous in order to justify RussiaToday as a news source? It's blatant Whataboutism and intellectually dishonest. There ought to be enough issues on which to criticise media for without pretending that one's political opponents are a homogenous blob.
1. Why is Aftonbladet covering Putin? Putin isn't on the list nor does he have anything to do with it. Nor is Assad on the list, for that matter. The rest is about people who are actually on the list, so why throw in two people that aren't on there at all? That is pure propaganda.
They're presumably covering Putin because it's a bit shady for a world leader to have a bunch of friends laundering money in tax havens. It's the same reason there was a big brouhaha in Sweden a few years back about the shady business of some of the King(of Sweden)'s friends. Guilt by association is very much a thing in politics, no matter how much we may wish it was not so.
2. Western media is homogeneous enough in order to be grouped together into a single group (or a couple of groups depending on political viewpoints if you want to be more detailed).
I'm just going to go with "no" and leave it at that. You're making an outrageous claim, the onus to prove said claim is on you.
3. Why are you throwing RT into here? RT is not more or less valid than any other news source, why would it need justifying?
RT is getting thrown in because it's the official Russian megaphone, and because it isn't as valid as any other news source. It's under direct control of an authoritarian regime. You yourself agreed in this thread that Russian news are being censored. The BBC is at the time of me writing this reporting about the Icelandic PM and how there were companies under international sanctions implicated by the leak, while RT is spending its time attacking the West for being Russophobes under the headline "‘Goebbels had less-biased articles’". One is a political tool, the other is a news agency.
4. You should really stop throwing the word 'whataboutism' around needlessly. It seems like you are just using it as a tool to shut down criticism and valid discussion (which is the whole point of the term in the first place, so I think it shouldn't be used at all in a proper discussion).
People point out how Russia does something bad, all of a sudden someone's trying to steer the discussion in the direction of how the West totally does nasty things too. Calling that out isn't trying to shut discussion down, it's calling out people trying to change the subject. Take this quote for example:
godardc wrote: Yeah, we can see Putin and Assad hate everywhere on the internet now, however they aren't even on the list !
Are they responsible for what others people, friends or not, did ?
But Porochenko, elected after a Putsch against a democratically elected president, and helped by the EU, not even a mention...
Starts off fair enough: Putin and al-Assad are not on the list. That's a good point to make, furthering the discussion. What does Porochenko have to do with Putin not being on the list? Nothing. The discussion of what the released documents mean is thus shifted to one where attempts to discuss the implications of the documents are seen as being anti-Putin.
He uses it so much because the only criticism anyone ever seems to be able to fall on for "western media" is that it is "western" and that somehow means they're all a massive conspiracy. Which of course ignores that's not even remotely true, and news sources from different countries are always reporting different things even about the same general story as a few members have pointed out in regards to these documents.
Of course, at the same time there's probably some justification for the belief that news sources will never publish a detailed analysis of the story, but rather than jump to cover up, I'd point out laziness. Shuffling through 11 million documents would take years. Hell, those kinds of things are Historians wet dream, because such a collection could provide data for hundreds of monographs for decades. Its too much information. Expecting some "ultimate reveal of the truth" is expecting far to much, especially when media sources generally drop a subject after it ceases to be a ratings machine.
Why even defend Putin? His asshattery is obvious and commonly known.
I find it a bit suspect that the UK media seemed to zone in on him a bit at first, but they're trickling out other stuff now including about the father of their own prime minister. I think you can hardly say it's a pure hack job.
And like many other EU members are posting, UK/US media does not equal "The West".
Da Boss wrote: Why even defend Putin? His asshattery is obvious and commonly known.
In this particular case he seems to have been genuinely uninvolved. My money goes on Gazprom and some of the higher ups in Bank Rossiya being the actual minds behind the money laundering scheme, with Roldugin depending on his relationship with Putin to shield him.
Da Boss wrote: Why even defend Putin? His asshattery is obvious and commonly known.
I find it a bit suspect that the UK media seemed to zone in on him a bit at first, but they're trickling out other stuff now including about the father of their own prime minister. I think you can hardly say it's a pure hack job.
And like many other EU members are posting, UK/US media does not equal "The West".
You'll get no argument from me about Putin - the man's a crook and a tyrant.
However, don't you think it's odd that a lot of the blame and emphasis is being shifted onto a man who is beyond justice i.e David Cameron's late father?
For sure, it's embarrasing, but I doubt if anybody will ask awkward questions or try and make this stick. It'll be swept under the carpet.
I was watching the news earlier, and despite this being a massive story, the lead items were a speech by Kim Philby from 30 years ago, Port Talbot, the England cricket team, and way down the list, the Panama papers.
Given the known collusion between the British media and the British government, you can forgive people for being skeptical.
Da Boss wrote: Why even defend Putin? His asshattery is obvious and commonly known.
In this particular case he seems to have been genuinely uninvolved. My money goes on Gazprom and some of the higher ups in Bank Rossiya being the actual minds behind the money laundering scheme, with Roldugin depending on his relationship with Putin to shield him.
Decisions like this don't happen in Putin's Russia unless he knows about it.
As with all huge stacks of documents most news organisations won't actually have read much if anything of them,
instead they'll at best check what somebody else has already reported and put out their own version, at worst they'll just accept what's said and put out a basic copy,
as to why Cameron's dad has been a focus, somebody searched for everybody in the Cameron family (what a scoop it would have been if David or his wife had come up....), but sadly they only person who shows up is dear old (dead) dad and his bearer shares, something that David Cameron has already banned in the UK
So the news organisations have spent time and energy searching for something embarrassing that isn't really there, but need a story for today so they just ran with it no doubt the a few of genuinely left leaning will kind of hope it tarnished Cameron and the conservatives, but really it was just to fill the space
(I'm sure they're all trying Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and Jeremy Corbyn, and I'm sure if there's anybody vaguely connected to any of them we'll hear about it soon enough)
AlmightyWalrus wrote: Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet is covering Putin, al-Assad, the Prime Minister of Iceland, Jackie Chan, the King of Saudi Arabia, every major Swedish bank, Poroshenko, and many more. Could we please stop pretending that all western media is homogenous in order to justify RussiaToday as a news source? It's blatant Whataboutism and intellectually dishonest. There ought to be enough issues on which to criticise media for without pretending that one's political opponents are a homogenous blob.
1. Why is Aftonbladet covering Putin? Putin isn't on the list nor does he have anything to do with it. Nor is Assad on the list, for that matter. The rest is about people who are actually on the list, so why throw in two people that aren't on there at all? That is pure propaganda.
They're presumably covering Putin because it's a bit shady for a world leader to have a bunch of friends laundering money in tax havens. It's the same reason there was a big brouhaha in Sweden a few years back about the shady business of some of the King(of Sweden)'s friends. Guilt by association is very much a thing in politics, no matter how much we may wish it was not so.
It is nonsense. And it being a thing in politics is not an excuse to stop criticising it when it happens. If one of my friends does something illegal, that doesn't make me guilty nor does it mean I am doing something illegal as well. The same should apply to political leaders.
2. Western media is homogeneous enough in order to be grouped together into a single group (or a couple of groups depending on political viewpoints if you want to be more detailed).
I'm just going to go with "no" and leave it at that. You're making an outrageous claim, the onus to prove said claim is on you.
Most media get their news from press agencies. There aren't all that many good press agencies, so most major media end up getting much of their facts and news from the same few press agencies.
Combined with the above, there is the obvious fact that most Western media, at least in the case of international events, tend to run stories about and report on the same things. Different media usually all have exactly the same stories, differentiated only by their different styles and the different political ideas that are expressed. However, from a global perspective, Western ideologies and politics are all very similar as they all originated from the Enlightenment and French Revolution. They tend to hold the same values and ideals, only being different in relatively minor details such as the exact degree to which the state should involve itself in the daily life of citizens, details about how an economy should be run, immigration issues etc. On a global scale however, the differences between political ideologies, values and ideals are much larger. This is reflected in the global media. As proof, you could compare the largest newspaper of 5 or 10 different Western countries (such as the US, UK, Sweden, Netherlands, Austria etc.) with each other. Then compare these newspapers to the largest newspaper in non-Western countries (such as Russia, China, Iran, India, Malawi etc.) Then you see why the Western media form a relatively homogeneous blob.
3. Why are you throwing RT into here? RT is not more or less valid than any other news source, why would it need justifying?
RT is getting thrown in because it's the official Russian megaphone, and because it isn't as valid as any other news source. It's under direct control of an authoritarian regime. You yourself agreed in this thread that Russian news are being censored. The BBC is at the time of me writing this reporting about the Icelandic PM and how there were companies under international sanctions implicated by the leak, while RT is spending its time attacking the West for being Russophobes under the headline "‘Goebbels had less-biased articles’". One is a political tool, the other is a news agency.
Every news source is a political tool. There is no such thing as unbiased media, unbiased news or unbiased reporting. If you know the political ideology and loyalty of a news source, you can keep that in mind while reading it. Just the fact that a news source has a political goal or message doesn't mean that all of its information is not useful for learning things from or not worth reading. The trick is to get information from different sources with different viewpoints and ideologies. In that, RT is as useful as any other news source.
As a sidenote, RT is not the official Russian megaphone. RT is indirectly owned by the Russian state, but that does not mean that the Kremlin directs or dictates every article they write. For the official megaphone, you would need to go to the Kremlin's press office.
4. You should really stop throwing the word 'whataboutism' around needlessly. It seems like you are just using it as a tool to shut down criticism and valid discussion (which is the whole point of the term in the first place, so I think it shouldn't be used at all in a proper discussion).
People point out how Russia does something bad, all of a sudden someone's trying to steer the discussion in the direction of how the West totally does nasty things too. Calling that out isn't trying to shut discussion down, it's calling out people trying to change the subject.
Except Russia didn't do anything bad, and people are all of a sudden trying to steer the discussion in the direction of how bad Putin is, even though Putin isn't relevant at all to the discussion, deflecting attention away from people who are relevant to the discussion! Now that is a whataboutism!
Take this quote for example:
godardc wrote: Yeah, we can see Putin and Assad hate everywhere on the internet now, however they aren't even on the list !
Are they responsible for what others people, friends or not, did ?
But Porochenko, elected after a Putsch against a democratically elected president, and helped by the EU, not even a mention...
Starts off fair enough: Putin and al-Assad are not on the list. That's a good point to make, furthering the discussion. What does Porochenko have to do with Putin not being on the list? Nothing. The discussion of what the released documents mean is thus shifted to one where attempts to discuss the implications of the documents are seen as being anti-Putin.
I think you misunderstood Godardc. What I think he says is that people who are not on the list are being discussed, which is strange considering the fact that people who are actually on the list aren't. That is a relevant connection to make and not at all a whataboutism.
A 'whataboutism' is deflecting criticism by bringing up something completely irrelevant to the issue being discussed.
Like the classical example where the US criticises lack of freedom of expression in the Soviet Union, and the Soviet Union responds with "But in the US they lynch black people". A whataboutism is not pointing out that the Sovies are now talking about something unrelated (human rights in the US) while they rather should be talking about the lack of freedom of expression in the Soviet Union.
He uses it so much because the only criticism anyone ever seems to be able to fall on for "western media" is that it is "western" and that somehow means they're all a massive conspiracy. Which of course ignores that's not even remotely true, and news sources from different countries are always reporting different things even about the same general story as a few members have pointed out in regards to these documents.
Yes, but are those different things different enough to not make them homogeneous? If you compare news sources from Western countries with those from non-Western countries, then you have to conclude that even if Western media are not homogeneous, they are at the least very similar to one another.
Iron_Captain wrote: If you compare news sources from Western countries with those from non-Western countries, then you have to conclude that even if Western media are not homogeneous, they are at the least very similar to one another.
You're partly right about that, but Western media also has divides. This or that newspaper supports a certain party and always tries to spin their disasters into how the other politicians trapped them. Some have very leftist reporters, others quite conservative ones and so on. IIRC back in the old Soviet days this is what the KGB was most envious of. An article in Pravda was automatically a statement from the Communist party in some way and readers only wondered what the angle was. In the West newspapers might run very differently angled articles and readers might not know enough (or care enough) to determine who approved of it and why. There were more POVs and no one not deeply embedded in government knew which was the state-sponsored leak.
In Russia the people aren't surprised at seeing a secret leaked, they just wonder why it was leaked right now and who stands to gain. And ofc the Kremlin started damage control early. Even before the leak articles about how the journalist organisation that's been going through the documents is a CIA sponsored propaganda unit were published.
There seems to be a weird kind of defeatist vibe to much of this. People might not be aware but there's been a decade long process involving just about every developed country to shut down tax havens and international tax avoidance. The reason shell companies in the British Virgin Isles have exploded is because most of the other tax havens have been dragged in to line, or isolated from international tax arrangements. Tax avoidance through international shelters, and also money laundering through the same nations and processes, still remains a massive problem but it is a problem in which the international community has made significant progress in the last decade.
Rather than put up a kind of faux cynicism that's so popular on the internet, it should be recognised that this a great new win in the case towards shutting down tax havens.
ulgurstasta wrote: Thats how it works, like how none of the American papers mention the 441 American clients the company had and slap Putin and Assad on every frontpage
Coverage here is focused entirely on the Australians involved, with some side coverage of the world leaders and famous people caught up.
Let's hope he's on the list for crimes against alcoholic beverages
SAB Miller owns Foster's. It's a UK beer now
Automatically Appended Next Post:
godardc wrote: Yeah, we can see Putin and Assad hate everywhere on the internet now, however they aren't even on the list !
Are they responsible for what others people, friends or not, did ?
Are you actually pretending to believe that Putin and Assad's friends were laundering their own money, and that neither man was complicit or a beneficiary in the money laundering?
Because if you believe that then I've got a bridge to sell you.
Iron_Captain wrote: Yes, but are those different things different enough to not make them homogeneous?
That's an oxymoron. If they are different they are not homogeneous.
If you compare news sources from Western countries with those from non-Western countries, then you have to conclude that even if Western media are not homogeneous, they are at the least very similar to one another.
Depending on subject sure, you can totally see a lot of things that are shared by western news sources. Unfortunately, people who throw "western media" out as a slur tend to almost always be wrong about what they've chosen to criticize.
Dick Cheney was Vice President not that long ago, and he got lots of people bringing his name up with Halliburton and the Iraq war. The Clintons had Whitewater. Harry Reid wasn't even remotely connected to Cliven Bundy's ranch, but he still got brought up in a conspiracy theory about it. So generalization about western media; political leaders with connections to sleazy looking economics/dealings get their names brought up.
Someday, people might consider that every criticism of Putin is not the result of a personal vendetta, but the result of Putin just being the kind of guy who is going to get criticism, whether he deserves it or not.
LordofHats wrote: Unfortunately, people who throw "western media" out as a slur tend to almost always be wrong about what they've chosen to criticize.
I think we have the problem right here, some people take criticism of western media as a personal insult directed at them (just like some Pro-russians people take offence when russian media gets criticized I might add). It´s quite a strange attitude too have unless you actually work for western media
LordofHats wrote: Unfortunately, people who throw "western media" out as a slur tend to almost always be wrong about what they've chosen to criticize.
I think we have the problem right here, some people take criticism of western media as a personal insult directed at them (just like some Pro-russians people take offence when russian media gets criticized I might add). It´s quite a strange attitude too have unless you actually work for western media
Fox News and Süddeutsche Zeitung are both Western media. That's about where the similarities end. Trying to portray all of the West's media, issues with "the West" being nebulous and imprecise at best notwithstanding, is flat-out stupid. There isn't going to be a useful discussion about anything when one of the key assumptions in the debate is patently false.
All media being biased does not mean all media is equally biased. I'd trust RT over Fox News any day of the week, because Fox News has a track record of being insane.
LordofHats wrote: Unfortunately, people who throw "western media" out as a slur tend to almost always be wrong about what they've chosen to criticize.
I think we have the problem right here, some people take criticism of western media as a personal insult directed at them (just like some Pro-russians people take offence when russian media gets criticized I might add). It´s quite a strange attitude too have unless you actually work for western media
Fox News and Süddeutsche Zeitung are both Western media. That's about where the similarities end. Trying to portray all of the West's media, issues with "the West" being nebulous and imprecise at best notwithstanding, is flat-out stupid. There isn't going to be a useful discussion about anything when one of the key assumptions in the debate is patently false.
All media being biased does not mean all media is equally biased. I'd trust RT over Fox News any day of the week, because Fox News has a track record of being insane.
I´m no expert on Süddeutsche Zeitung but I would hazard to guess they both are neo-liberal and both work within the same paradigm. As insiders in the western world they might seem far apart, but western media has a big bias that can be hard to spot for us who are born and raised in it.
Süddeutsche Zeitung is centre-left social-liberal, while Fox News is... whatever Fox News is, conservative I suppose. You're not making the case that Western media is inherently flawed just because it is Western any favours by claiming that the two are the same.
sebster wrote: There seems to be a weird kind of defeatist vibe to much of this. People might not be aware but there's been a decade long process involving just about every developed country to shut down tax havens and international tax avoidance. The reason shell companies in the British Virgin Isles have exploded is because most of the other tax havens have been dragged in to line, or isolated from international tax arrangements. Tax avoidance through international shelters, and also money laundering through the same nations and processes, still remains a massive problem but it is a problem in which the international community has made significant progress in the last decade.
Rather than put up a kind of faux cynicism that's so popular on the internet, it should be recognised that this a great new win in the case towards shutting down tax havens.
ulgurstasta wrote: Thats how it works, like how none of the American papers mention the 441 American clients the company had and slap Putin and Assad on every frontpage
Coverage here is focused entirely on the Australians involved, with some side coverage of the world leaders and famous people caught up.
Let's hope he's on the list for crimes against alcoholic beverages
SAB Miller owns Foster's. It's a UK beer now
Automatically Appended Next Post:
godardc wrote: Yeah, we can see Putin and Assad hate everywhere on the internet now, however they aren't even on the list !
Are they responsible for what others people, friends or not, did ?
Are you actually pretending to believe that Putin and Assad's friends were laundering their own money, and that neither man was complicit or a beneficiary in the money laundering?
Because if you believe that then I've got a bridge to sell you.
I'm not surprised there's a defeatist vibe and a shrug of the shoulders. In the Western World, confidence in our leaders is at a record low, so when revelations break about our leaders filling their pockets with loot, must people expect it.
Hell, I suspect that's why people get into politics - because they want a share of that cash.
I know I'm cynical, and In an ideal world, these revelations would sweep these crooks out of power, but I think that a lot of politicians are banking on this indiference from the general population.
The only things I take offense to are hats that don't fully cover the top of your head (damn heretics ), and really bad arguments.
If people want to complain that Putin is getting unfairly bushwhacked, they can do that. It's a legitimate opinion even if I think it's wrong. I just listed three high profile American politicians who have been treated in exactly the same way, and this thread is full of people not named Putin or Assad, who have been named and shamed in this leak. It has nothing to do with Putin being Putin, or Russian. It's that he's a politician, and this is what happens to politicians in a lot of western news outlets, because there will always be ratings in saying "oh look what X did now." So unless we're going to take "points to politicians when their names come up in shady things" as a bias (which honesty, wtf?), this is a whole lot of words being spent pointing out a really vapid argument is vapid.
In short;
western media has a big bias that can be hard to spot for us who are born and raised in it.
You're throwing that phrase around, but you're using it in a way that is complete hogwash
AlmightyWalrus wrote: Süddeutsche Zeitung is centre-left social-liberal, while Fox News is... whatever Fox News is, conservative I suppose. You're not making the case that Western media is inherently flawed just because it is Western any favours by claiming that the two are the same.
I seem to have failed to make my point clear, I´m not saying western media has some inherent flaw thats unique to the west. All media is shaped by the the currently prevailing hegemony and in the west that means neo-liberalism currently, just like media in Russia is shaped by the current hegemony Putin has put in place, whatever that might be called. Centre-left parties in Europe right now are mostly neo-liberal, so if Süddeutsche Zeitung is centre-left I expect them to be so also, which isn´t that far of from fox news which is still economical liberal as far as I know. They both still work within the same framework, even though they might make big fuzz about some cultural issues.
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: I'm not surprised there's a defeatist vibe and a shrug of the shoulders. In the Western World, confidence in our leaders is at a record low, so when revelations break about our leaders filling their pockets with loot, must people expect it.
The focus purely on world leaders is weird. David Cameron's dad being involved is news, but stories about multi-nationals using this to avoid billions is a much more substantial thing.
It's also weird you'd say that confidence in Western leaders is low. Have you noticed the world leaders who've actually been caught money laundering? Ukraine, Argentina, Georgia, Iraq, Syria, Jordan... if anything we should be realising that our world leaders, for all their faults, aren't out and out crooks like you get elsewhere
Hell, I suspect that's why people get into politics - because they want a share of that cash.
That's some really lazy, really cheap cynicism. Here's a basic rule for you - in any first world country the private sector pays way better than the public sector. People who really want money don't pick public service.
Anyhow, my point was that the defeatist attitude was really strange because this issue is mostly about tax avoidance, and the world has taken massive strides in the last ten years. This comes out and it's a major win in moving even further to reducing tax avoidance, and people just act like everything is all terrible and well, read my sig I guess.
Da Boss wrote: I'm very skeptical that he is actually uninvolved.
I'm not.
He's a former KGB spook and managed to claw his way to the top in RU... we ought to assume that he'd know how to hide is wealth.
Totally agree, but your country and my country are up to their necks in this as well. Hell, most of these tax havens are British overseas territories.
We're in no position to take the moral high ground on this.
I don't know about that...
It's one thing to see private wealth, aka Walmart/Exxon/Bill Gates taking advantage of tax havens like this.
It's totally another thing when you see your elected officials amassing personal wealth during their "Head of the State" tenure.
Why though? Is the Western model of corporations "legally" siphoning vast sums of money off into tax havens and then using those huge sums to fund campaigns & lobby & run media-manipulating "PR campaigns"(or just outright buying media outlets) that lets them effectively(and in some cases literally) write the legislation that's supposed to govern and limit them, and all the politicians involved completely coincidentally ending up with well-paid but no-work Directorships for the same companies they championed while in office really that different in outcome than corporations and plutocrats just outright saying "here is a wad of money, do what we want"?
I mean sure, it's more convoluted and we accept it because we're told it's OK(by the media owned by the corporations doing it and the politicians paid by the people doing it...), but it's still corrupt and the result is still the erosion of democracy by money, for people with money.
What's there to convince? The western world is not neoliberal (assuming your using the modern conception of the term). If it were the Libertarian party would have won an election by now, and Western countries wouldn't be running deficits. You can throw around words and phrases all you want, but if they don't mean what you think they mean there's really nothing to do but point out they don't mean what you think they mean.
The focus purely on world leaders is weird. David Cameron's dad being involved is news, but stories about multi-nationals using this to avoid billions is a much more substantial thing.
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: I'm not surprised there's a defeatist vibe and a shrug of the shoulders. In the Western World, confidence in our leaders is at a record low, so when revelations break about our leaders filling their pockets with loot, must people expect it.
The focus purely on world leaders is weird. David Cameron's dad being involved is news, but stories about multi-nationals using this to avoid billions is a much more substantial thing.
It's also weird you'd say that confidence in Western leaders is low. Have you noticed the world leaders who've actually been caught money laundering? Ukraine, Argentina, Georgia, Iraq, Syria, Jordan... if anything we should be realising that our world leaders, for all their faults, aren't out and out crooks like you get elsewhere
Hell, I suspect that's why people get into politics - because they want a share of that cash.
That's some really lazy, really cheap cynicism. Here's a basic rule for you - in any first world country the private sector pays way better than the public sector. People who really want money don't pick public service.
Anyhow, my point was that the defeatist attitude was really strange because this issue is mostly about tax avoidance, and the world has taken massive strides in the last ten years. This comes out and it's a major win in moving even further to reducing tax avoidance, and people just act like everything is all terrible and well, read my sig I guess.
You're forgetting one VERY important point: private companies don't make laws, politicians do.
Here's an example: in Britain, our MPs were caught up in an expenses scandal. They were using taxpayers money to pay for things they weren't entitled too. So we had the crazy situation of millionaire MPs using taxpayers money to pay for toothbrushes, toilet cleaner, etc etc
This bill cost taxpayers millions and went on for years.
What happened when the lid was blown? A few wrists were slapped, and then the MPs awarded themselves a pay rise and destroyed records of all these misdemeaners.
Effectively, they got off scot-free and you wonder why people are cynical!
What's there to convince? The western world is not neoliberal (assuming your using the modern conception of the term). If it were the Libertarian party would have won an election by now, and Western countries wouldn't be running deficits. You can throw around words and phrases all you want, but if they don't mean what you think they mean there's really nothing to do but point out they don't mean what you think they mean.
We might use different definitions, but I think the waves of privatizations, austerity measures and free-trade agreements being forced on the third world are very neo-liberal policies. I dont see how having deficits somehow a counter against neo-liberalism
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: What happened when the lid was blown? A few wrists were slapped, and then the MPs awarded themselves a pay rise and destroyed records of all these misdemeaners.
I thought I read that MP expenses are now higher than they were pre-scandal too.
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: Here's an example: in Britain, our MPs were caught up in an expenses scandal.
I know about the expenses scandal. We've had our own too, mostly related to travel. They look bad, but you have to have some context to this. The worst instance was for about what, £100,000? Putin's work here has been uncovered at around $2 billion, and there's talk his total laundering could be in excess of $40 billion.
What happened when the lid was blown? A few wrists were slapped, and then the MPs awarded themselves a pay rise and destroyed records of all these misdemeaners.
Close to thirty people lost their jobs, many were ordered to repay. It's not nothing, but it's probably as much as you'd expect when the old system was such a shambles - self-policing is a nonsense. Anyhow, the most important thing to come out of the scandal was the establishment of clear rules and a formal watchdog to monitor future payments and claims.
But then that kind of thing just gets ignored, because practical institutions that can curb future bad behaviour aren't sexy or exciting. It's way more fun to think everyone is corrupt, everyone will always be corrupt and nothing ever gets done and no-one ever gets punished.
Yeah. That word doesn't mean what you think it means.
but I think the waves of privatizations, austerity measures and free-trade agreements being forced on the third world are very neo-liberal policies.
No. First off, they're not being forced on anyone. One, who is forcing anyone? Free trade agreements are generally net gains economically, they just happen to feth lots of people over on the way there which is why they tend to struggle to get popular support and that's as true of western countries as it is of third world countries.This trend would be part of what is called Neocolonialism. That is the continuing economic and cultural hegemony of the Western world in its former colonies. Of course, some countries like India and China have been rising up the past few decades to join the club, so it's not really just a Western thing anymore.
I dont see how having deficits somehow a counter against neo-liberalism
Because as an economic outlook, Neoliberalism (Americans call it Libertarianism*) advocates that government not run deficits. Which of course a vast many countries do including many western ones.. Neoliberalism was and is a powerful political force in many western countries since the 1980s and neoliberal policies adopted in that time contributed to the 2008 recession, but it's not something so encompassing you can slap the term on the entire western world which still tends to lean heavily towards social liberalism. Even in the US where we hate that word (we just call it "Liberal", or more specifically, "Progressive"*).
*Because America says feth you to dictionaries when it comes to political terminology.
Cameron has said he personally doesn't have shares in the offshore fund, but doesn't make statements beyond that. So his wife or other family may still do so, it seems like a dodge.
sebster wrote: The worst instance was for about what, £100,000? Putin's work here has been uncovered at around $2 billion, and there's talk his total laundering could be in excess of $40 billion.
So not only are they untrustworthy they also lack ambition.
Howard A Treesong wrote: Cameron has said he personally doesn't have shares in the offshore fund, but doesn't make statements beyond that. So his wife or other family may still do so, it seems like a dodge.
Morally wrong for Jimmy Carr to make use of a legal tax loophole but apparently not for the Camerons
Rich people hiding money that would make them richer? SHOCKER
Excuse me for thinking that this scandal will amount to less than nothing...especially if there are any US tycoons/ families/people involved.
I mean...look at who the US people are supporting in the elections:
1) the corporate friendly, rich from "speaking" , Clinton leads the economic equality espousing Sanders.
2) the cult of personality Trump, who made his name and claim to dame using his $$ and position to expose himself to the people through The Apprentice leads the...whatever you want to qualify crazy Cruz as.
The voters seem to be willing to keep their blinders on given who these front runners are!
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: What happened when the lid was blown? A few wrists were slapped, and then the MPs awarded themselves a pay rise and destroyed records of all these misdemeaners.
I thought I read that MP expenses are now higher than they were pre-scandal too.
They are!
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Close to thirty people lost their jobs, many were ordered to repay. It's not nothing, but it's probably as much as you'd expect when the old system was such a shambles - self-policing is a nonsense. Anyhow, the most important thing to come out of the scandal was the establishment of clear rules and a formal watchdog to monitor future payments and claims.
But then that kind of thing just gets ignored, because practical institutions that can curb future bad behaviour aren't sexy or exciting. It's way more fun to think everyone is corrupt, everyone will always be corrupt and nothing ever gets done and no-one ever gets punished.
Most of these watchdogs end up being de-fanged. In the UK, the serious fraud office was told to stop its investigation into criminality in one case, as it interfered with an arms sale by a British company to Saudi Arabia.
The arms company in question had very strong links to members of the government...
You can see where this is going
I'm not naïve enough to think the world is squeaky clean, nor am I stupid enough to think that everybody is corrupt, but track records speak for themselves and all I see is corruption and scandal swept under the carpet!
I complain about the focus on Putin, not because I'm pro-Putin ( I'm the very opposite) because we know Putin is bad.
We in the West on the other hand, are supposed to be the 'good' guys.
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TheMeanDM wrote: Rich people hiding money that would make them richer? SHOCKER
Excuse me for thinking that this scandal will amount to less than nothing...especially if there are any US tycoons/ families/people involved.
I mean...look at who the US people are supporting in the elections:
1) the corporate friendly, rich from "speaking" , Clinton leads the economic equality espousing Sanders.
2) the cult of personality Trump, who made his name and claim to dame using his $$ and position to expose himself to the people through The Apprentice leads the...whatever you want to qualify crazy Cruz as.
The voters seem to be willing to keep their blinders on given who these front runners are!
Totally agree.
Here's what I predict will happen: A fuss will be made for a few months. Politicians will promise to take action. Lessons will be learned blah blah blah. A few minor people in the food chain will be sacrificed to appease the people, and everything will go back to normal.
A few years down the line, we'll be right back here talking about it again
She's got a point but at the same time, what are British grass roots people suppsoed to do? We threw out a Conservative government for being corrupt, and got a Labour government that turned out just about as corrupt. We threw them out and were so disgusted with politics that we got a coalition government, then the Liberal element got busted and the Conservatives swept back into full power on 36% of the vote (only 24% of eligible electorate!) having achieved none of their stated aims in their first term. A government that witters on about tax avoidance while doing deals that allow Vodaphone, Google and Amazone to make billions of profits in the UK and pay almost no corporation tax.
British voters have got used to being unable to find a competent government, but the system continues to elect incompetent ones, because if even only one single person voted, his party would get elected. Because that is how the system is set up.
Are we supposed to riot and overthrow the government by force majeure? Would this actually do any good?
Have you seen the Daily Express front page today....
Spoiler:
Even The Sun devoted about 5% of it's front page to the issue.
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Kilkrazy wrote: British voters have got used to being unable to find a competent government, but the system continues to elect incompetent ones, because if even only one single person voted, his party would get elected. Because that is how the system is set up.
I'm not sure it's that simple. "Half" the problem is they get what they deserve for their own stupidity in voting like political parties are football teams. The other "half" is amount of media coverage for the different candidates/parties vs being too lazy to research candidates themselves. Feels much more like self-harm than being ambivalent about same old, same old.
Kilkrazy wrote: She's got a point but at the same time, what are British grass roots people suppsoed to do? We threw out a Conservative government for being corrupt, and got a Labour government that turned out just about as corrupt. We threw them out and were so disgusted with politics that we got a coalition government, then the Liberal element got busted and the Conservatives swept back into full power on 36% of the vote (only 24% of eligible electorate!) having achieved none of their stated aims in their first term. A government that witters on about tax avoidance while doing deals that allow Vodaphone, Google and Amazone to make billions of profits in the UK and pay almost no corporation tax.
British voters have got used to being unable to find a competent government, but the system continues to elect incompetent ones, because if even only one single person voted, his party would get elected. Because that is how the system is set up.
Are we supposed to riot and overthrow the government by force majeure? Would this actually do any good?
This is why I believe in, and campaign for, Scottish independence.
LordofHats wrote:
If people want to complain that Putin is getting unfairly bushwhacked, they can do that. It's a legitimate opinion even if I think it's wrong. I just listed three high profile American politicians who have been treated in exactly the same way, and this thread is full of people not named Putin or Assad, who have been named and shamed in this leak. It has nothing to do with Putin being Putin, or Russian. It's that he's a politician, and this is what happens to politicians in a lot of western news outlets, because there will always be ratings in saying "oh look what X did now." So unless we're going to take "points to politicians when their names come up in shady things" as a bias (which honesty, wtf?), this is a whole lot of words being spent pointing out a really vapid argument is vapid.
The point you don't seem to be getting is that Putin's name did not come up at all in this shady thing. Putin is completely unrelated and irrelevant to this Panama Papers scandal, yet somehow every single Western news source managed to get Putin on the front page, in many cases even mentioning it before people who are actually involved in this scandal. If you can't see how that is pure biased propaganda, you must be blind.
LordofHats wrote:
western media has a big bias that can be hard to spot for us who are born and raised in it.
You're throwing that phrase around, but you're using it in a way that is complete hogwash
Saying that something is hogwash without any arguments whatsoever is complete hogwash.
AlmightyWalrus wrote:Süddeutsche Zeitung is centre-left social-liberal, while Fox News is... whatever Fox News is, conservative I suppose. You're not making the case that Western media is inherently flawed just because it is Western any favours by claiming that the two are the same.
Iron_Captain wrote: Yes, but are those different things different enough to not make them homogeneous?
That's an oxymoron. If they are different they are not homogeneous.
Only if you define homogeneous to mean "exactly the same without any differences"
Depending on what dictionary you go by, the definition of homogeneous varies from "the same" to "similar" or "alike".
LordofHats wrote:
If you compare news sources from Western countries with those from non-Western countries, then you have to conclude that even if Western media are not homogeneous, they are at the least very similar to one another.
Depending on subject sure, you can totally see a lot of things that are shared by western news sources. Unfortunately, people who throw "western media" out as a slur tend to almost always be wrong about what they've chosen to criticize.
Maybe. But when I say "Western media" I am not using it as a slur, not any more than when I say "Russian media" or "Dutch media" or whatever. All I do when I say that is referring to a large group of different medias with broadly similar characteristics. They are grouped together because it would be way too much of a hassle to list each one seperately.
Iceland's Prime Minister has stepped down after the Panama Papers reportedly linked him to an offshore company.
The papers are said to show Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson and his wife owned a firm in the British Virgin Islands which held £2.8m of investments in the country's collapsed banks.
Thousands of demonstrators protested outside parliament in Reykjavik on Monday, throwing eggs, bananas and yoghurt and calling for him to stand down.
Mr Gunnlaugsson earlier requested the President dissolve Parliament and call new elections after the left-wing opposition called a vote of no confidence in the government.
But the President refused, saying he wanted to consult the main parties before making his decision.
Mr Gunnlaugsson is the first casualty of the papers, leaked to various media organisations from Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca.
Iron_Captain wrote: The point you don't seem to be getting is that Putin's name did not come up at all in this shady thing.
Putin has "friends" on the list. Yes, his name did come up. If I have a friend who gets arrested for murder, you really think no one I know is going to say something like "Oh you mean Hats' friend?" His name doesn't have to be literally in the papers to come up. The moment people saw names close to his in the paper they were thinking "lots of Putin's friends on here." That's not irrelevant or unrelated, especially not when we're talking about a guy whose been dogged by accusations of cronyism for as long as he's been a political figure.
There's really nothing more to be said about it. This victim complex that's been built up around Putin isn't real. People have been shamed in the press for way less than being friends with other people. David Cameron's name isn't in the papers either and he still gets brought up because his dad's is. There's a whole host of people who don't have to be literally named in the papers for their names to come up. That's just going to happen on its own as reporters dig through them. Everyone here takes this as a given, except a very specific clique.
Saying that something is hogwash without any arguments whatsoever is complete hogwash.
The argument was given in the post you just quoted. And honestly, why do I even bother? There's a nice little cadre of posters in OT now who seem to live for no reason other than to defend Putin whenever his name comes up ranting and raving about "bias" via a wall of false equivalencies and semantic nonsense. Arguing against it is like arguing with a brick wall. It's pointless and gets more pointless as time goes on. I might as well just respond to all of them as "hogwash" and save my own time.
I don't anyone is claiming that Süddeutsche Zeitung and Fox News are the same. Merely that they are pretty similar when compared to a lot of media from the non-Western world.
I´m no expert on Süddeutsche Zeitung but I would hazard to guess they both are neo-liberal and both work within the same paradigm.
AlmightyWalrus wrote:Süddeutsche Zeitung is centre-left social-liberal, while Fox News is... whatever Fox News is, conservative I suppose. You're not making the case that Western media is inherently flawed just because it is Western any favours by claiming that the two are the same.
About the only things I know about international Soccer is that people LOVE it, and that it's apparently dirty as feth. So I am shocked, shocked I tell you, to learn that yet another FIFA president has been implicated in unsavory business
Those articles are surprisingly real for something that does not exist. I'm sure there'd be more if I could be bothered to look.
And you won't be finding much from China.. Can't find any from Iran either, but none of the Iranian sites in my news feed have anything about the Panama Papers yet (I've noticed the English pages for Iranian news can have a bit of a delay though on when stories finally appear).
The guy is President of Russia. There's no way in hell his name wasn't going to be mentioned when his friends started showing up. That's just not how this works in places with free press (and even unfree press often). Really the only difference I'm noticing is that many non-Western sites only have one, maybe two articles discussing the papers at all on their English sites*, which probably owes more to their English readership being very limited than anything.
*Holy crap India has a lot of news websites that I've never noticed before @_@
617 US Firms are named in the documents according to ICIJ, but I suspect we won't be seeing any American politicians or big names come out. If Americans want to hide money, they don't generally go a firm that hides money in America (Wyoming* and New Jersey were both used as tax shelters according to the documents). Honestly it never occurred to me that non-Americans would use America to hide their money, but I guess it makes sense.
*Seriously though, who hides their money in Wyoming?
LordofHats wrote: 617 US Firms are named in the documents according to ICIJ, but I suspect we won't be seeing any American politicians or big names come out. If Americans want to hide money, they don't generally go a firm that hides money in America (Wyoming* and New Jersey were both used as tax shelters according to the documents). Honestly it never occurred to me that non-Americans would use America to hide their money, but I guess it makes sense.
*Seriously though, who hides their money in Wyoming?
Nevada is also popular I hear. No disclosure requirements.
By treaty, Panama is a bad choice for American tax evasion. You want something like the Dutch Antilles.
They're just not places I would expect to learn people were hiding money in. When I think of tax havens I think of islands in the Carribeann, and Switzerland. Not Wyoming XD
Iron_Captain wrote: The point you don't seem to be getting is that Putin's name did not come up at all in this shady thing.
Putin has "friends" on the list. Yes, his name did come up. If I have a friend who gets arrested for murder, you really think no one I know is going to say something like "Oh you mean Hats' friend?" His name doesn't have to be literally in the papers to come up. The moment people saw names close to his in the paper they were thinking "lots of Putin's friends on here." That's not irrelevant or unrelated, especially not when we're talking about a guy whose been dogged by accusations of cronyism for as long as he's been a political figure.
Oh, I do not think it is strange Putin is mentioned or being brought up at all. What I do find strange however is the amount of attention given to Putin. He is being given way more attention than anyone else. You can't deny that is undue bias.
It is like if your friend was arrested for murder, but instead of your friend people would treat you as the murderer.
LordofHats wrote:There's really nothing more to be said about it. This victim complex that's been built up around Putin isn't real. People have been shamed in the press for way less than being friends with other people. David Cameron's name isn't in the papers either and he still gets brought up because his dad's is. There's a whole host of people who don't have to be literally named in the papers for their names to come up. That's just going to happen on its own as reporters dig through them. Everyone here takes this as a given, except a very specific clique.
And he doesn't get brought up to nearly the same extent as Putin. Even though your dad on the list is much more damning than just one of your friends on the list. Again, it is not strange that Putin is being brought up in this. However, it is the extent to which Putin is brought up in this that is evidence of undue bias in Western media.
LordofHats wrote:
Saying that something is hogwash without any arguments whatsoever is complete hogwash.
The argument was given in the post you just quoted. And honestly, why do I even bother? There's a nice little cadre of posters in OT now who seem to live for no reason other than to defend Putin whenever his name comes up ranting and raving about "bias" via a wall of false equivalencies and semantic nonsense. Arguing against it is like arguing with a brick wall. It's pointless and gets more pointless as time goes on. I might as well just respond to all of them as "hogwash" and save my own time.
Then I would suggest either to stop responding at all in that case if you feel like wasting your time, or to go back to school and learn how to make proper arguments instead. It is just not possible to have a productive discussion with people who appeal to the stone rather than actually adressing what other people say.
Only if you define homogeneous to mean "exactly the same without any differences"
That's precisely what the word means and how the poster quoted was using it.
Except that is only one of the possible meanings of the word. Every dictionary I have seen so far also gives definitions like "essentially similar", "similar", "so much alike they are essentially be the same" etc. Similar is not the same as the same.
LordofHats wrote:
They are grouped together because it would be way too much of a hassle to list each one seperately.
Agreed. It is much easier to dismiss people who disagree with you when you lump them all together and ignore that they're not a swarm of drones.
Yes, you are right. Generalisations can be misused so very easily in order to dismiss people:
LordofHats wrote:There's a nice little cadre of posters in OT now who seem to live for no reason other than to defend Putin whenever his name comes up ranting and raving about "bias" via a wall of false equivalencies and semantic nonsense.
Thanks for also immediately providing a great example.
But in this specific case, I wasn't dismissing Western media at all. Generalisations in cases like this are necessary as they are the basis of all valid deductive interferences (no, I did not make that up myself ).
AlmightyWalrus wrote:Süddeutsche Zeitung is centre-left social-liberal, while Fox News is... whatever Fox News is, conservative I suppose. You're not making the case that Western media is inherently flawed just because it is Western any favours by claiming that the two are the same.
Those articles are surprisingly real for something that does not exist. I'm sure there'd be more if I could be bothered to look.
The first one is written by Westerners, not by Indians, and the second article does not pay nearly as much attention to Putin as the others do. Nonetheless, you win this one. I did not check every news site from India There are still plenty of other non-Western countries left though, India was just an example.
Iron_Captain wrote: The point you don't seem to be getting is that Putin's name did not come up at all in this shady thing.
Putin has "friends" on the list. Yes, his name did come up. If I have a friend who gets arrested for murder, you really think no one I know is going to say something like "Oh you mean Hats' friend?" His name doesn't have to be literally in the papers to come up. The moment people saw names close to his in the paper they were thinking "lots of Putin's friends on here." That's not irrelevant or unrelated, especially not when we're talking about a guy whose been dogged by accusations of cronyism for as long as he's been a political figure.
Oh, I do not think it is strange Putin is mentioned or being brought up at all. What I do find strange however is the amount of attention given to Putin. He is being given way more attention than anyone else. You can't deny that is undue bias.
It is like if your friend was arrested for murder, but instead of your friend people would treat you as the murderer.
To be fair, as a cult-of-personality leader of a nuclear armed state recently involved in...unpleasant interactions with a neighboring nation, he's a fair high profile target, especially since most of the other people involved nobody has any clue about. That said, the PM of Iceland's been getting at least as much attention, at least on media I've seen, and he's been forced to step down.
Iron_Captain wrote: . What I do find strange however is the amount of attention given to Putin.
I agree that the focus on Putin is misdirected. I think it would be better if the Western press, and the Russian press, to be honest, asked the question: Putin is quick to defend Russia from real or perceived enemies abroad, why is he so soft on this economic threat at home? Clearly all this wealth should be brought back into the Russian governments sphere of influence, rather than being hidden in the decadent west!
Iron_Captain wrote: What I do find strange however is the amount of attention given to Putin. He is being given way more attention than anyone else.
Part of the upsurge is reporting about Putin stemmed from the Krelim's statement that the papers are a smear campaign, which put more attention on him. That's not a bias. That's action, reaction, reaction (one might call this a deductive interference).
Since the Icelandic PM resigned, most reporting has switched to him cause damn, the leader of a country resigning over this is big news.
You can't deny that is undue bias.
Yes I can. Here's a google search for "Panama Papers." I click the first article. Putin is mentioned once, at the beginning of the article in a single paragraph. The rest of the article is about others. At the bottom of the page there are two articles about FIFA officials, one about David Cameron, one about the Iceland PM, one about UK land deals related to the papers, one is about Putin, one is about Assad, and the last is about talk of sanctions and doesn't mention Putin. The article about Putin is two days old. All the other articles were posted today. Going even further down to "Panama Papers" there are not articles about Putin. One about Obama's response to the leak, one David Cameron, another about the FIFA guy, and one about Iceland's PM. I checked the Obama one cause why not? Putin is mentioned once at the beginning of a list of people.
I go back to the google page and click the second article from NY Times. Putin is mentioned once after a general list of current and former world leaders and right before a paragraph about Gianni Infantino. He is mentioned again when the article talks about the Kremlin's response to the papers. Related coverage does not include articles that seem to be about Putin. Skip.
I skip Wikipedia and go to the third article from BBC. Putin is mentioned twice. Once when talking about the "suspected money laundering ring" of his friends, and again talking about the Kremlin's response. At the bottom of the page there is an article specifically about Putin, alongside articles specifically about family members of Chinese leaders, David Cameron, the Iceland PM, the president of Ukraine, a FIFA ethics lawyer, the son of Pakistan's PM defending offshore holdings, and Marianna Olszewski (an American author I've never heard of before who is in the papers).
Do I need to keep going?
It is like if your friend was arrested for murder, but instead of your friend people would treat you as the murderer.
Well, if I'd been previously suspected of murder in the 90s, it wouldn't surprising.
Iron_Captain wrote: There are still plenty of other non-Western countries left though, India was just an example.
And this is why it's pointless. Not only did you make an absurd generalization, but it was shown false, and you're still sticking to your generalization.
This is how claims systems work. When they're informal and subjective people you get fraud and manipulation, but you also get a lower level of actual claims. Most people aren't interested in pushing in to a legal grey area to claim a few extra bob.
When you formalise the system you remove a lot of the fraud and build a framework to properly punish the rest, but then you also make it clear to people how much they can now claim - and surprise surprise they take it. I support clearer, defined expense remuneration systems, but not as a cost savings measure, because that's not what they do.
Most of these watchdogs end up being de-fanged.
Proof of failure by prediction of future failure.
I'm not naïve enough to think the world is squeaky clean, nor am I stupid enough to think that everybody is corrupt, but track records speak for themselves and all I see is corruption and scandal swept under the carpet!
I complain about the focus on Putin, not because I'm pro-Putin ( I'm the very opposite) because we know Putin is bad.
We in the West on the other hand, are supposed to be the 'good' guys.
Sure, and I agree that Putin is an easy target, and we are better served looking inward. I'm simply arguing that any look inward is done with context and an understanding of the difference between minor corruption on the fringes, and systemic corruption like you see with the Putin's.
Its about not letting perfect be the enemy of good, yeah?
LordofHats wrote: They're just not places I would expect to learn people were hiding money in. When I think of tax havens I think of islands in the Carribeann, and Switzerland. Not Wyoming XD
I guess that makes it either a bad place to hide your money, or a really, really good place to hide your money.
Iron_Captain wrote: There are still plenty of other non-Western countries left though, India was just an example.
And this is why it's pointless. Not only did you make an absurd generalization, but it was shown false, and you're still sticking to your generalization.
This. The sound of those goalposts moving was loud enough to scare my dog.
Cameron and the Icelandic guy have been getting most of the front page coverage in the UK.
I don't see why American and European newspapers shouldn't publish about Putin, though. He's the head of the world's second superpower, etc. It makes a lot more difference to us if he's a tax cheat than some tin-pot dictator of a South American banana republic.
Kilkrazy wrote: Cameron and the Icelandic guy have been getting most of the front page coverage in the UK.
I don't see why American and European newspapers shouldn't publish about Putin, though. He's the head of the world's second superpower, etc. It makes a lot more difference to us if he's a tax cheat than some tin-pot dictator of a South American banana republic.
This is how claims systems work. When they're informal and subjective people you get fraud and manipulation, but you also get a lower level of actual claims. Most people aren't interested in pushing in to a legal grey area to claim a few extra bob.
When you formalise the system you remove a lot of the fraud and build a framework to properly punish the rest, but then you also make it clear to people how much they can now claim - and surprise surprise they take it. I support clearer, defined expense remuneration systems, but not as a cost savings measure, because that's not what they do.
Most of these watchdogs end up being de-fanged.
Proof of failure by prediction of future failure.
I'm not naïve enough to think the world is squeaky clean, nor am I stupid enough to think that everybody is corrupt, but track records speak for themselves and all I see is corruption and scandal swept under the carpet!
I complain about the focus on Putin, not because I'm pro-Putin ( I'm the very opposite) because we know Putin is bad.
We in the West on the other hand, are supposed to be the 'good' guys.
Sure, and I agree that Putin is an easy target, and we are better served looking inward. I'm simply arguing that any look inward is done with context and an understanding of the difference between minor corruption on the fringes, and systemic corruption like you see with the Putin's.
Its about not letting perfect be the enemy of good, yeah?
You completely overlooked the point I made about the serious fraud office having it's cases dropped due to political interference. If that isn't de-fanged, then I don't know what is.
More time has been spent debating Putin's depiction in the press in this thread than has actually been spent depicting Putin in the press. Irony.
Honestly the cool stuff won't happen until we get to may. Politicians of the world are easy targets because everyone already knows who they are, and no one needs to be told who David Cameron is and why they should care about him. The shell companies and all that though are going to get messy. They'll largely be linking to things most people in general have probably never heard of, and naming things that they won't see why they should care. The money trails will no doubt become host to a vast many conspiracy theories that will never make sense as people hunt for the guilty verdicts they really seem to want to find but aren't necessarily there.
LordofHats wrote: More time has been spent debating Putin's depiction in the press in this thread than has actually been spent depicting Putin in the press. Irony.
Honestly the cool stuff won't happen until we get to may. Politicians of the world are easy targets because everyone already knows who they are, and no one needs to be told who David Cameron is and why they should care about him. The shell companies and all that though are going to get messy. They'll largely be linking to things most people in general have probably never heard of, and naming things that they won't see why they should care. The money trails will no doubt become host to a vast many conspiracy theories that will never make sense as people hunt for the guilty verdicts they really seem to want to find but aren't necessarily there.
I know Putin, North Korea, and various tinpot dictators are up to no good. It's hardly as newsflash to me. They'll be telling me that grass is green next.
But Putin decision's don't have much of an effect on my life. I'm angry at the lack of coverage on things that do effect me.
For example, off-shore interests buying up thousands of houses in the UK, thus pushing up prices, thus making it harder for my friends and family to get a house. That effects me, not some modern day Tsar!
For example, off-shore interests buying up thousands of houses in the UK, thus pushing up prices, thus making it harder for my friends and family to get a house. That effects me, not some modern day Tsar!
I did find an article about that earlier. Linky. Honestly though this also reminds me of the US diplomatic cables leak. It was enlightening sure, but in many ways they revealed very little we didn't already know. It seems that people were already aware that lots of London property was owned by people overseas, and the reveal really is that there's much more than anyone suspected.
And I mean, none of it is illegal right? So really what is there to do but point out that 2008 was only eight years ago and already we have another real estate market inflating its prices in speculative trading
"Jeremy Corbyn says PM should come clean over family finances after Panama leak. Should Corbyn resign over this call?"
... ???
media doesn't know what to do.
... One can't help but wonder if this is, perhaps, due to the fact that so many of them -- Guardian included -- are eitehr owned by or use offshore accounts themselves.
Tax avoidance =/= tax evasion. Basically, if it works if you tell the government you're doing it, it's tax avoidance. If not, it's tax evasion. So you can avoid paying the excise taxes on cigarettes by not buying cigarettes, or you can evade the excise taxes on cigarettes by buying them on the black market.
Totally not the same thing. It irritates me when people mix these things up.
Using legal ways of reducing your tax liability is not the same as tax avoidance, which is not the same as tax evasion.
Putting money in to ISA's is not tax avoidance, nor is making sales of houses before tax changes. Those are not the same as tax avoidance, those are using tax regulations as intended. There is no problem at all with that. And not buying cigarettes is not the same thing at all.
People who put thousands of pounds in ISA's in the name of family members, with no intention of that money being for those family members, that is tax avoidance. Very difficult to prove, questionably legal and not at all what the law was intended for.
Just the same as companies:
If you are Mr Blogs the burger shop owner and pay franchise fees to McClowns Burgers, as you are a franchise owner, that is a cost of business. Perfectly legal and reduces the amount of tax you pay.
What large companies are doing is having "McClowns Burgers ltd" in the UK. They are owned by "McClowns Burgers Inc" in the US. "McClowns Burgers inc" also owns "McClowns Burgers LLC" in Liechtenstein. Because there is a better capital gains tax rate in Liechtenstein "McClowns Burgers ltd" claims that it makes zero profit in the UK because it has to pay £1million billion in franchise fees to "McClowns Burgers LLC". This reduces the tax bill from the UK rate to the Liechtenstein rate.
Is this legal? Yes, because many companies do pay these franchise fees quite legally and correctly. Is it appropriate for companies to abuse this tax rule? No. But how do you prove it? How do you put a number on the value of the use of Steve McClown, McClowns Burgers Incs happy mascot, or the use of the McClown name and the silver C logo? It is very difficult to value intellectual property, so these companies value it at whatever rate is best for them, when selling stuff to themselves.
No idea what the Express is doing, and I assume their thing on inheritance tax is all legal, but it is just amusing. Like the time one of the red tops had one of the "Peado horror" stories on the front page, right next to a picture of a 16 year old Charlotte Church with a headline along the lines of "Isn't she filling out well".
No idea what the Express is doing, and I assume their thing on inheritance tax is all legal, but it is just amusing. Like the time one of the red tops had one of the "Peado horror" stories on the front page, right next to a picture of a 16 year old Charlotte Church with a headline along the lines of "Isn't she filling out well".
They have to feed the outrage machine that is their readership.
The Daily Mail decries the exploitation of women, rants about scantily clad and skinny models whilst their website is filled with articles about how x went out of their house without make up and how y and z are going to seed (exposed via holiday snaps of them in bikinis).
I am fairly ambivalent to who avoided what and where. Our western society and sensibilities means that the richest know they can get away with literal murder. There is proper outrage but in the end change means running the risk of there being no hot running water, no food on the supermarket shelves and no reliable wi fi connection.
We cannot afford (nor will the majority abide) radical change.
Steve steveson wrote: Totally not the same thing. It irritates me when people mix these things up.
Using legal ways of reducing your tax liability is not the same as tax avoidance, which is not the same as tax evasion.
It was when many of the ways that are currently legal weren't - not everyone agrees with the way tax law has been loosened and undermined over the years, so why should they suddenly be OK with the results of those changes? Hell, many people think there shouldn't be any legal ways of "reducing your tax liability" at all - Joe Bloke doesn't get to "restructure" anything to avoid forking over his PAYE on every paycheque he earns, he pays the percentage he's told to pay like most people, so why should the law allow the wealthy to decide whether or not they want to pay their dues in-full?
The UK's combination of creaking ancient tax law rotten-through with Tory & KPMG-induced loopholes and legally ambiguous colonial territories is grotesque in the eyes of a lot of people who're watching their standard of living crushed and their public services eradicated -hell, even their disabled relatives dying for want of help- because it's "necessary" to reduce the deficit - telling folk they have to acknowledge some petty legal distinction(which largely exists because of the interference of tax evaders in the first place) between different forms of exactly the same thing is nonsense.
It was when many of the ways that are currently legal weren't - not everyone agrees with the way tax law has been loosened and undermined over the years, so why should they suddenly be OK with the results of those changes? Hell, many people think there shouldn't be any legal ways of "reducing your tax liability" at all - Joe Bloke doesn't get to "restructure" anything to avoid forking over his PAYE on every paycheque he earns, he pays the percentage he's told to pay like most people, so why should the law allow the wealthy to decide whether or not they want to pay their dues in-full?
I think you need to read my explanation of the difference between reducing your tax liability legally and tax avoidance. Using an ISA is reducing your tax liability legally that anyone can do. They are put in place to encourage saving. It becomes tax avoidance when Joe Bloke reaches his £15k limit for the year so decides to "loan" his parents, brother and sister £15k each to do with "whatever they want", but must be repaid with an interest rate that strangely exactly matches the ISA rate.
Then there is items like childcare vouchers or cycle to work that are taken pre tax and exempt from BIK. Those are legal ways of reducing your tax liability on PAYE. There are some gray areas that the general public take advantage of, such as selling fixtures and fittings separately to a house that is close to a stamp duty tax band. I'm afraid it is not as simple as you put it.
Iron_Captain wrote: There are still plenty of other non-Western countries left though, India was just an example.
And this is why it's pointless. Not only did you make an absurd generalization, but it was shown false, and you're still sticking to your generalization.
This. The sound of those goalposts moving was loud enough to scare my dog.
Not true. First of all, the generalisation is not absurd, it is a very common one and so far I have yet to see a convincing argument against it. Secondly, the generalisation was not shown false. I gave multiple arguments to support my position, only one of which was shown false. Refuting a single argument (when multiple arguments are given) and then presenting the entire position as false is a fallacy.
LordofHats wrote: More time has been spent debating Putin's depiction in the press in this thread than has actually been spent depicting Putin in the press. Irony.
With the Ukraine thread being so quiet now, what else am I to do? I am just really happy to finally have Putin come up again on Dakka. Need to earn my money, right
Kilkrazy wrote: Cameron and the Icelandic guy have been getting most of the front page coverage in the UK.
I don't see why American and European newspapers shouldn't publish about Putin, though. He's the head of the world's second superpower, etc. It makes a lot more difference to us if he's a tax cheat than some tin-pot dictator of a South American banana republic.
Yeah, and they should be getting the most coverage. But if you look back through the articles, Putin was the one everyone named and published about first. Then some news sites had entire articles dedicated to Putin even though his involvement (or rather, non-involvement) in this does not warrant such attention. And that was my entire point. Western media seem so obsessed with Putin that even when he doesn't do something it is front page news. Putin isn't the tax cheat, two of his friends were. A lot of media seems to have forgotten that and published as if Putin were actually on that list.
No, two of Putins friends were involved in money laundering. That is far more serious than tax issues, and is normally linked to far more serious crimes.
Iron_Captain wrote: There are still plenty of other non-Western countries left though, India was just an example.
And this is why it's pointless. Not only did you make an absurd generalization, but it was shown false, and you're still sticking to your generalization.
This. The sound of those goalposts moving was loud enough to scare my dog.
Not true. First of all, the generalisation is not absurd, it is a very common one and so far I have yet to see a convincing argument against it.
You haven't done anything to prove it other than to say that it is so and then be proven wrong when you tried to do so. There's no argument against it that's possible to make because it is patently untrue; we even provided you with non-Western news sources to prove the point.
Secondly, the generalisation was not shown false. I gave multiple arguments to support my position, only one of which was shown false. Refuting a single argument (when multiple arguments are given) and then presenting the entire position as false is a fallacy.
Ustrello wrote: RT's version is hilarious as it left dear leader and russia out of the names
As it should have been, because Putin is not in the papers at all. It is just a clear example of Western propaganda: Many people from across the entire world, including the prime minister of Iceland and President Poroshenko of Ukraine and many others. The list also includes two friends of Putin and suddenly the Western media is all over Putin, even though Putin is not on the list, is not responsible for and does not control the acts of his friends, and has no further link to this list at all. Meanwhile, they barely as much as mention the other people on the list.
The Western media's version is hilarious as it twists and distorts facts just to be able to take a shot at Putin. If Western media were truly independent and impartial, they would go after Poroshenko, Messi or someone else who is actually on the list. Now however they have shown themselves once more to be nothing but empty propaganda outlets, some more so than others.
was proven incorrect, as the Wicked Media of the West DID go after the Prime Minister of Iceland, Poroshenko, Messi, and a lot of others. That's you being wrong again. There's no arguments, there's just a long list of you being wrong repeatedly. You haven't proven that Western media is homogenous; you haven't even provided a definition of what "the West" IS for crying out loud!
It has been shown false. People even went to the trouble of showing it was false in numerous ways even though you never provided any evidence it existed in the first place. You just proclaimed it existed and demanded people prove to you it doesn't.
I gave multiple arguments to support my position, only one of which was shown false.
Saying bias over and over and over again isn't an argument. The one and only thing you ever put up as an actual debatable position was that we wouldn't find similar reporting in non-Western news and a poster found one (and I found more on other Indian news sites) almost as fast as you made the statement. It's easy to point to China and Iran and say "they aren't reporting it this way" because they're barely reporting it at all. There's seven articles total on the entire subject on Xinhua and even they reported about the Putin connection, just without mentioning Putin (or anyone for that matter, its a bizarrely vague article). They didn't even identify the bank by anything but an abbreviation. Meanwhile there isn't a single article I can find on the English sites for Fars, and only one on Islamic Republic, which doesn't list anyone from Russia who is named in the papers and still manages to repeat the Kremlin's response to the papers (which just seems weird when they don't name any of the Russian's named). It's actually a really shoddy article that looks like it was copy pasted from some other articles I've seen and thrown together in about ten minutes And of course, this is after Iranian firms were found in the Panama Papers in violation of sanctions.
Then some news sites had entire articles dedicated to Putin even though his involvement (or rather, non-involvement) in this does not warrant such attention. And that was my entire point. Western media seem so obsessed with Putin that even when he doesn't do something it is front page news.
I gave you three articles about the Panama Papers, and Putin was mentioned no more frequently than anyone else except to report that the Krelim had offered an official response at a time when virtually everyone is offering not response at all. David Cameron actually has more articles specifically about him than Putin does at this point, and his name isn't in the papers either. He's not even on related news articles for the Guardian article I linked before anymore. Even yesterday when I spelled it out for you the PM of Iceland and David Cameron were getting more press than Putin. But please. Go on an tell us how "unfair" it is that Putin has been mentioned, and how biased the "western media" is even as the press moves on to talk about starlets, and China.
Putin isn't the tax cheat, two of his friends were. A lot of media seems to have forgotten that and published as if Putin were actually on that list.
Technically, no one has been shown to be a tax cheat save the American scam artists who've been listed in the papers (and is that really tax cheating or money laundering?). Simply having money offshore isn't illegal on its face. It's just that people assume it's illegal and look poorly on it.
whembly wrote: Does anyone want to wager that Hillary Clinton's "The Clinton Foundation" would be embroiled in this?
No, because she's smarter than that. Like Putin, I'm sure her hidden money is buried deeper than this offshore company.
So... wait.
Are you actually admitting that she's corrupt?
o.O
I go by the general assumption that anyone of significant wealth and/or power has some hidden finances somewhere, or at the very least backers they wouldn't want everyone to know about. I'm not saying she is likely to be outright criminal with anything, but I would be surprised if she didn't have some wealth stashed away under-the-radar. The mention of Putin was to say that he isn't in this leak either because his hidden finances are better hidden. In Putin's case, however, I do believe those funds are likely engaged in various illegal (or at least amoral) activities.
This is very, very interesting:
https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/717459700367790080 Wikileaks is claiming the US government is responsible for the Panama Papers leak so they could get at Putin. That might also explain why Americans are suspiciously absent in the leaked papers...
Seems like the US will do anything to damage Putin's reputation.
I don't think Putin's reputation needs the Americans to try and damage it. It's pretty fething low already, what with the Ukraine, Litvinenko, Pussy Riot and other such items. He did himself some good with bombing Syria, IMO.
However all this is rather off the topic, which is all of the revelations, not just a supposed smear campaign against Putin.
Iron_Captain wrote: This is very, very interesting:
https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/717459700367790080 Wikileaks is claiming the US government is responsible for the Panama Papers leak so they could get at Putin. That might also explain why Americans are suspiciously absent in the leaked papers...
Seems like the US will do anything to damage Putin's reputation.
Co'tor Shas wrote: I may be missing something, but what does wikileaks have to do with this?
Ok, so an organization, that has nothing to do with the leaks themselves and receives aid from the US government via "USAID" and Swiss the government, as well as something called the "open society institute" reported on this, so that means it's all an elaborate conspiracy to attack Putin. Somehow? And wikileaks is mad at that?
Iron_Captain wrote: Wikileaks is claiming the US government is responsible for the Panama Papers leak so they could get at Putin.
And just like you, they don't prove it. They just state is as true. Further they don't say the US government is responsible. They said the US government "directly funded" the leaks, and that the funding damages the integrity of the leak. Which is a fair enough statement, but I have no idea to what they are referring. OCCRP is not directly funded by the US government, neither is ICIJ, or the Center for Public Integrity. This seems to be the tweet you actually want, which identifies that OCCRP gets funding from USAID. Given that Wikileaks is ever obsessed with a very specific ideal of Journalistic Integrity, I'm not surprised to see them bring this up, and it is fair. They also get money from Switzerland and Romania apparently.
Unfortunately that doesn't make it what you want it to be. Süddeutsche Zeitung recieved the documents, and doesn't get money from the US government and has been the primary mover behind the documents. Nor does ICIJ as far as I can tell. Pointing to a single group of journalists among the hundreds that those two news agencies brought in on the papers and showing it got money from the US government doesn't amount to a conspiracy and it sure as hell doesn't translate to "US government is behind it all."
You've moved on from just making things up to misrepresenting them. But then that's not surprising. It's basically your bread and butter on these kinds of thread.
That might also explain why Americans are suspiciously absent in the leaked papers...
Its like you don't even read the thread. Americans are in the papers (I've named one, and Baron listed several), and as has been pointed out multiple times by multiple posters, Panama isn't a good place for Americans to hide money. We have the US Virgin Islands for that kind of thing. No one doubts Americans do just as much (maybe even more) offshore banking than anyone else, but you do realize that there isn't just one tax haven in the world and people from different parts of it might use different places and firms to do their offshore banking?
Seems like the US will do anything to damage Putin's reputation.
I explained this earlier; the release of the Papers probably purposefully targeted world leaders because no one has to explain who David Cameron is or why you should care about him. It's a really easy way to make it know that the papers exist, what is inside them, and that they are potentially damaging. Ultimately though the real meat of the papers is going to be in the shell companies and firms, which will take much longer to investigate and probably won't be as headline worthy as "Putin and Friends" or "More Soccer Shadiness."
I presume they're one of over 100 news agencies brought in by the German Newspaper who first received the papers, and the ICIJ who the german newspaper called int o help sort them. Both papers have said they've been having secret meetings with other news agencies for the past year, organizing, investigating, and correlating the data from the files. US OCCRP is likely one of the agencies that was brought in. EDIT: Some investigating of my own. OCCRP seems to have a long standing working partnership with ICIJ, and with reporting on Off Shore Banking, and seems to have a particular interest in political corruption in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Bloc.
Iron_Captain is misrepresenting Wikileaks intent. They're not calling the papers fake or US government manufactured. They're pointing out that someone like will seek to dismiss/misrepresent them because US money was involved. Wikileaks has a very specific ideal of Journalistic Integrity, and taking money from government is a good way to get on their gak list. And Wikileaks is right. It just happened in this thread. EDIT: They're also probably a bit jealous that someone is raining on their parade. Wikileaks hasn't done much relevant since their reputation got mired in muck with the Chelsea Manning thing, and Julian Assange's legal troubles.
Iron_Captain wrote: There are still plenty of other non-Western countries left though, India was just an example.
And this is why it's pointless. Not only did you make an absurd generalization, but it was shown false, and you're still sticking to your generalization.
This. The sound of those goalposts moving was loud enough to scare my dog.
Not true. First of all, the generalisation is not absurd, it is a very common one and so far I have yet to see a convincing argument against it.
You haven't done anything to prove it other than to say that it is so and then be proven wrong when you tried to do so. There's no argument against it that's possible to make because it is patently untrue; we even provided you with non-Western news sources to prove the point.
Well, if you don't want to see I can't help you. Maybe you should read back through the thread.
I brought up as arguments for the existence of Western media as a group the following: Western nations (and thus Western media) all share a common historical, cultural and ideological background, based on the Enlightenment and French Revolution. Ideological and political differences that exist between Western groups and nations are relatively insignificant on a global scale. On a global scale, there is much more variety in ideological, historical and cultural backgrounds, thus giving rise to clear "groups" of nations that share similar backgrounds and clear gaps with nations that don't share that background:
Spoiler:
There has been a lot of scientific research and the existence of these "culture blocks" or "worlds" of nations with similar backgrounds is an accepted and well-established fact (altough there is debate on some small details). If you want to read some actually scientific work on this, I suggest starting with the Wikipedia article and its reference and 'further reading' list.
And just as these nations share common cultural and ideological background that makes them "Western", the media of these nations also shares common characteristics that makes them "Western". The Western media is thus, to put it very simply, the media of the aforementioned Western world. Again, there has been a lot of scientific research on Western media and on what it is that makes them part of a single group. The existance of "Western media" as a group is again a commonly accepted fact. Hell, just search news sites or Google Scholar and see how often this term is used.
Beside that, further evidence I gave is that all Western media take a lot of their facts and news from a very limited number of press agencies (AFP, Reuters, AP) and that most media is controlled by a very small group of people (90% of US media for example is controlled by just 6 companies). That this leads to similarity is common sense.
You claimed Süddeutsche Zeitung and Fox News were significantly different enough, so different that they can't both be grouped in the single group "Western media". I then gave you articles from the Zeitung and Fox News on the relevant issue, that were virtually identical in content (excepting language, style and minor details).
I then told you that other news sources from non-Western countries were reporting quite differently. I did not provide the links however, that is true.
I will also admit that I am too lazy to look everything up again and to post the links here. Suffice to say that I found that Iranian media barely reports on the Panama Papers at all (and only one mention of "associates of Putin" in all the media I searched), Chinese media also barely paid any attention to Putin (again only naming Putin's friends in passing and the fact that they were on the list) and Indian media was mostly the same as Chinese media in this, altough they tended to have better coverage of the Panama Papers than Chinese or Iranian media. Russia media had quite extensive coverage of the Panama Papers, but either completely ignored that Putin's friends were on the list or only mentioning them without linking them to Putin (an exception to this were some of the independent and opposition news sources, but even they did not slam Putin all over the front pages like much of the Western media did.)
To make up for the lack of those links however, I shall submit much better proof.
Here, I gave these two works a casual read. You should too if you really want to see proof of obvious facts. The second is also really interesting beyond that as it compares Western and non-Western medias. (I don't know if you have access to the full versions, but if you really are interested I might be able to send you a PDF copy)
Hardy, Jonathan. Western media systems. Routledge, 2010.
https://books.google.nl/books?hl=en&lr=&id=eMaNAgAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=western+media&ots=vfnVrQV3hZ&sig=8SHPA_jQTPvW4dikA0gM9-YC-4w#v=onepage&q=western%20media&f=false
Secondly, the generalisation was not shown false. I gave multiple arguments to support my position, only one of which was shown false. Refuting a single argument (when multiple arguments are given) and then presenting the entire position as false is a fallacy.
Ustrello wrote: RT's version is hilarious as it left dear leader and russia out of the names
As it should have been, because Putin is not in the papers at all. It is just a clear example of Western propaganda: Many people from across the entire world, including the prime minister of Iceland and President Poroshenko of Ukraine and many others. The list also includes two friends of Putin and suddenly the Western media is all over Putin, even though Putin is not on the list, is not responsible for and does not control the acts of his friends, and has no further link to this list at all. Meanwhile, they barely as much as mention the other people on the list.
The Western media's version is hilarious as it twists and distorts facts just to be able to take a shot at Putin. If Western media were truly independent and impartial, they would go after Poroshenko, Messi or someone else who is actually on the list. Now however they have shown themselves once more to be nothing but empty propaganda outlets, some more so than others.
was proven incorrect, as the Wicked Media of the West DID go after the Prime Minister of Iceland, Poroshenko, Messi, and a lot of others. That's you being wrong again. There's no arguments, there's just a long list of you being wrong repeatedly.
Nice reference To be fair, when I wrote that, it was true. Or at least I had barely read anything about anyone else except Putin at that point, except for short mentions. Putin meanwhile, was slapped all over every single front page I came across. And that was my point. It was not strange that Putin was mentioned, that was quite logical, it was that the attention Putin received was disproportionate to his actual role in the Panama Papers, to the point that Putin was given much more attention than people who actually did have an important role.
You are appealing to the stone again. When claiming something is absurd, proof of absurdity must be given.
LordofHats wrote:It has been shown false. People even went to the trouble of showing it was false in numerous ways even though you never provided any evidence it existed in the first place. You just proclaimed it existed and demanded people prove to you it doesn't.
Usually people don't ask for proof of commonly accepted facts.
LordofHats wrote:
I gave multiple arguments to support my position, only one of which was shown false.
It's easy to point to China and Iran and say "they aren't reporting it this way" because they're barely reporting it at all. There's seven articles total on the entire subject on Xinhua and even they reported about the Putin connection, just without mentioning Putin (or anyone for that matter, its a bizarrely vague article). They didn't even identify the bank by anything but an abbreviation. Meanwhile there isn't a single article I can find on the English sites for Fars, and only one on Islamic Republic, which doesn't list anyone from Russia who is named in the papers and still manages to repeat the Kremlin's response to the papers (which just seems weird when they don't name any of the Russian's named). It's actually a really shoddy article that looks like it was copy pasted from some other articles I've seen and thrown together in about ten minutes
Thank you kindly for helping me in finding practical examples of my point.
LordofHats wrote: David Cameron actually has more articles specifically about him than Putin does at this point, and his name isn't in the papers either.
Yay for the Guardian. And yay for you failing to notice that their "how to hide a billion dollars" video about the Panama Papers has a picture of Putin on front? Again thanks for providing a nice example.
LordofHats wrote:Technically, no one has been shown to be a tax cheat save the American scam artists who've been listed in the papers (and is that really tax cheating or money laundering?). Simply having money offshore isn't illegal on its face. It's just that people assume it's illegal and look poorly on it.
Okay, tax laws and such are not really something I know anything about
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Ustrello wrote: Putin barely has a unfavorable world view so I don't see how it can get much lower.
I think the highest approval rates are Lebanon and Vietnam
Don't forget Russia, which is really the only approval rating that really matters for Putin
It was a lot of work to say a whole lot of nothing.
The Western media's version is hilarious as it twists and distorts facts just to be able to take a shot at Putin.
It hasn't twisted or distorted facts. Nothing that's been reported has been false (as far as the papers are concerned). They're taking a shot at everyone.
If Western media were truly independent and impartial, they would go after Poroshenko, Messi or someone else who is actually on the list.
They have.
To be fair, when I wrote that, it was true
No it wasn't. Literally all of those names were named in initial reports right along with Putin's. The thing that changed (and this has been said before) is that the Kremlin made an official statement and was the only one at the time to do so. That put more reporting on Putin at the time, and had nothing to do with any bias on anyone. Reporting things that happen isn't a bias.
Putin meanwhile, was slapped all over every single front page I came across.
Then you must have only looked at one or two articles. There's hundreds of them.
When claiming something is absurd, proof of absurdity must be given.
You made the claim and offered no evidence to support it. Other posters have been more than generous with you by responding in faith, while you've simply done what you always do; post walls on nonsense, make claims, and demand to be proven wrong.
Usually people don't ask for proof of commonly accepted facts.
Your opinion isn't an accepted fact by anyone.
Thank you kindly for helping me in finding practical examples of my point.
Not reporting something doesn't support your argument even remotely. If anything, it supports the argument that state controlled media in China and Iran don't want to report the papers even though one of those is as deep in them as anyone else. And even then, China still reported in a bizarrely vague article the Putin connection, just without naming and names. The only thing pertaining to Russia to appear in Iran's news is that the Kremlin responded to the papers. Not mentioning any Russian names at all, even the ones who are listed, and that they are close friends of the President of Russia, is a more apparent bias than anything.
I hate to tell you this, but reporting things that happened isn't a bias. It's just reporting things that happened.
It was a lot of work to say a whole lot of nothing.
Maybe you'd like to make an actual argument for once? So far you have posted nothing but unsupported opinions and absolute nonsense, while ignoring and failing to adress any of the arguments I have made. Maybe you should marry that stone? You keep appealing to it...
LordofHats wrote: Nothing that's been reported has been false (as far as the papers are concerned). They're taking a shot at everyone.
I did not say it was false, I said it was distorted. On that note, I am also going to say now that there has been plenty of reporting that is outright false. Case in point: http://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/apr/03/panama-papers-money-hidden-offshore A "2bn trail" reported as leading to Putin that actually leads to friends of Putin rather than Putin himself.
No it wasn't. Literally all of those names were named in initial reports right along with Putin's. The thing that changed (and this has been said before) is that the Kremlin made an official statement and was the only one at the time to do so. That put more reporting on Putin at the time, and had nothing to do with any bias on anyone. Reporting things that happen isn't a bias.
It was. Those other names were only mentioned in passing. Putin was the one that in almost every article was mentioned first (often with picture, even) and who was most extensively reported on, even though most of the things they reported on had no connection to the actual content of the Panama Papers. The Kremlin statement hardly seems to be the cause of that, as again it was only mentioned in passing if at all, and the coverage slapping Putin on the front page already was going on before the Kremlin statement (the Kremlin statement being a reaction to this).
When claiming something is absurd, proof of absurdity must be given.
You made the claim and offered no evidence to support it. Other posters have been more than generous with you by responding in faith, while you've simply done what you always do; post walls on nonsense, make claims, and demand to be proven wrong.
You choosing to ignore evidence doesn't mean it isn't there. Maybe you'd like to start reading?
LordofHats wrote: quote]Usually people don't ask for proof of commonly accepted facts.
Your opinion isn't an accepted fact by anyone.
Well, go tell the scientific community, will ya? Tell them they should remove all mentions of "Western world" and "Western media" because it is not accepted fact and just the opinion of someone on DakkaDakka. Really, at the moment I am wondering why I even bother to reply to you, as it feels just like argueing with a very pedantic, deaf wall.
Iron_Captain wrote: while ignoring and failing to adress any of the arguments I have made.
You haven't made any arguments. Standing on a soap box and stating something is a "fact" over and over again isn't an argument.
And I highly doubt whether you even looked at a single one of them.
I must have linked over a dozen articles by now into this thread. Most of them don't even mention Putin at this point, and the rest only mention him in passing before moving on to someone else. You can say bias as many times as you want, but saying it doesn't prove it, and numerous articles have been linked by me and others detailing people not Putin from the day this began.
You choosing to ignore evidence doesn't mean it isn't there.
I can't ignore what you haven't provided. On the other hand I can look on my own, and find absolutely nothing to support your position.
Tell them they should remove all mentions of "Western world" and "Western media" because it is not accepted fact and just the opinion of someone on DakkaDakka.
Just because the western world exists and has media outlets doesn't mean you don't have to provide support for a claim of bias. Talking at length about shared values and common history doesn't support your position. It's a giant red herring.
The choice of what things to report on is a very important element that sets Western and non-Western medias apart.
So, your position is that reporting something that happened as having happened is a bias? You do know that what reporters do is report things that happen? That's kind of their job.
Iron_Captain wrote: There are still plenty of other non-Western countries left though, India was just an example.
And this is why it's pointless. Not only did you make an absurd generalization, but it was shown false, and you're still sticking to your generalization.
This. The sound of those goalposts moving was loud enough to scare my dog.
Not true. First of all, the generalisation is not absurd, it is a very common one and so far I have yet to see a convincing argument against it.
You haven't done anything to prove it other than to say that it is so and then be proven wrong when you tried to do so. There's no argument against it that's possible to make because it is patently untrue; we even provided you with non-Western news sources to prove the point.
Well, if you don't want to see I can't help you. Maybe you should read back through the thread.
I brought up as arguments for the existence of Western media as a group the following: Western nations (and thus Western media) all share a common historical, cultural and ideological background, based on the Enlightenment and French Revolution. Ideological and political differences that exist between Western groups and nations are relatively insignificant on a global scale. On a global scale, there is much more variety in ideological, historical and cultural backgrounds, thus giving rise to clear "groups" of nations that share similar backgrounds and clear gaps with nations that don't share that background:
Spoiler:
There has been a lot of scientific research and the existence of these "culture blocks" or "worlds" of nations with similar backgrounds is an accepted and well-established fact (altough there is debate on some small details). If you want to read some actually scientific work on this, I suggest starting with the Wikipedia article and its reference and 'further reading' list.
And just as these nations share common cultural and ideological background that makes them "Western", the media of these nations also shares common characteristics that makes them "Western". The Western media is thus, to put it very simply, the media of the aforementioned Western world. Again, there has been a lot of scientific research on Western media and on what it is that makes them part of a single group. The existance of "Western media" as a group is again a commonly accepted fact. Hell, just search news sites or Google Scholar and see how often this term is used.
Beside that, further evidence I gave is that all Western media take a lot of their facts and news from a very limited number of press agencies (AFP, Reuters, AP) and that most media is controlled by a very small group of people (90% of US media for example is controlled by just 6 companies). That this leads to similarity is common sense.
You claimed Süddeutsche Zeitung and Fox News were significantly different enough, so different that they can't both be grouped in the single group "Western media". I then gave you articles from the Zeitung and Fox News on the relevant issue, that were virtually identical in content (excepting language, style and minor details).
I then told you that other news sources from non-Western countries were reporting quite differently. I did not provide the links however, that is true.
I will also admit that I am too lazy to look everything up again and to post the links here. Suffice to say that I found that Iranian media barely reports on the Panama Papers at all (and only one mention of "associates of Putin" in all the media I searched), Chinese media also barely paid any attention to Putin (again only naming Putin's friends in passing and the fact that they were on the list) and Indian media was mostly the same as Chinese media in this, altough they tended to have better coverage of the Panama Papers than Chinese or Iranian media. Russia media had quite extensive coverage of the Panama Papers, but either completely ignored that Putin's friends were on the list or only mentioning them without linking them to Putin (an exception to this were some of the independent and opposition news sources, but even they did not slam Putin all over the front pages like much of the Western media did.)
To make up for the lack of those links however, I shall submit much better proof.
Here, I gave these two works a casual read. You should too if you really want to see proof of obvious facts. The second is also really interesting beyond that as it compares Western and non-Western medias. (I don't know if you have access to the full versions, but if you really are interested I might be able to send you a PDF copy)
Hardy, Jonathan. Western media systems. Routledge, 2010.
https://books.google.nl/books?hl=en&lr=&id=eMaNAgAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=western+media&ots=vfnVrQV3hZ&sig=8SHPA_jQTPvW4dikA0gM9-YC-4w#v=onepage&q=western%20media&f=false
Okay. That was a lot of work. Do I win the argument now? Please?
Your own source (Hardy) points out on friggin' page one the fact that "the West" is hopelessly vague. Similarly, Hallin and Mancini point out on page 11 that there is considerable variation between European media systems, and EXPLICITLY mention that "media systems are not homogeneous." (Hallin and Mancini 2004: 12). No win, try again.
Beside that, further evidence I gave is that all Western media take a lot of their facts and news from a very limited number of press agencies (AFP, Reuters, AP) and that most media is controlled by a very small group of people (90% of US media for example is controlled by just 6 companies). That this leads to similarity is common sense.
You claimed Süddeutsche Zeitung and Fox News were significantly different enough, so different that they can't both be grouped in the single group "Western media". I then gave you articles from the Zeitung and Fox News on the relevant issue, that were virtually identical in content (excepting language, style and minor details).
I then told you that other news sources from non-Western countries were reporting quite differently. I did not provide the links however, that is true.
And I proved that there's similar articles in non-Western news. You said they literally did not exist, they did. That makes you wrong, which means that your argument that Western media is significantly different to the rest of the world by virtue of being Western isn't backed up.
You're throwing a bunch of research at us that doesn't actually prove this supposed bias. You're essentially creating a reverse Orientalism by focussing strictly on what various countries in the West have in common and ignoring the differences in order to claim that they're homogeneous. We've already pointed out that there was a marked difference between different countries that are traditionally counted as part of "the West", in complete contradiction to your claim of homogenety. I can link to Google books to support my argument too.
"If you love it so much why don't you marry it" is primary school level arguing, and impolite to boot. Pick up your game or take a break from the keyboard
Guys, can we get back to the subject instead of arguing how homogeneous the other guy is? It's like listening to someone with a van and two loud speakers playing US and Russian Cold War propaganda simultaneously.
As has been pointed out, Putin is not named in this. Despite early Putin reports, they've pretty much fallen off the map in favor of facts.
The news has overtaken your argument.
Let's assume that everyone's press has a large amount of BS and move on.
Iron_Captain wrote: while ignoring and failing to adress any of the arguments I have made.
You haven't made any arguments. Standing on a soap box and stating something is a "fact" over and over again isn't an argument.
And I highly doubt whether you even looked at a single one of them.
I must have linked over a dozen articles by now into this thread. Most of them don't even mention Putin at this point, and the rest only mention him in passing before moving on to someone else. You can say bias as many times as you want, but saying it doesn't prove it, and numerous articles have been linked by me and others detailing people not Putin from the day this began.
You choosing to ignore evidence doesn't mean it isn't there.
I can't ignore what you haven't provided. On the other hand I can look on my own, and find absolutely nothing to support your position.
If you had scrolled just a few posts up, you would have seen this:
There. Peer-reviewed works on Western media. Better proof is not possible for me to give unless I were to do research myself (and even then it would probably still be of lesser quality).
Then there were plenty of the Dutch and German news sites that I frequent, that did the same thing. Not every media in the Western world participated in it (the BBC was a notable and welcome exception), but a significant amount did. That is where my observation of the Western media being biased against Putin came from (altough, it should be nuanced to say that some are more biased than others). Of course, this being an observation, the only evidence I can give is empirical.
I also want to note that since that initial moment, there has also been a lot of good, more diverse coverage, and later articles have much less or no anti-Putin bias at all. Some (like at the BBC) even were critical of the Putin-centered coverage. This shows that Western media is less biased then I originally thought, which makes me happy Even more on the positive side, CNN also had a lot about Putin and the Panama papers, but they wrote a really good article that was much more factual and well-informed than the wild Putin-bashing in many other media: http://edition.cnn.com/2016/04/06/europe/chance-putin-panama-papers/index.html
Tell them they should remove all mentions of "Western world" and "Western media" because it is not accepted fact and just the opinion of someone on DakkaDakka.
Just because the western world exists and has media outlets doesn't mean you don't have to provide support for a claim of bias. Talking at length about shared values and common history doesn't support your position. It's a giant red herring.
The choice of what things to report on is a very important element that sets Western and non-Western medias apart.
So, your position is that reporting something that happened as having happened is a bias? You do know that what reporters do is report things that happen? That's kind of their job.
I think you are getting things conflated here. That was in response to AlmightyWalrus (and later you too) argueing against the fact that "Western media" is similar enough to be grouped together. My position that the Western media is biased kinda relies on the presumption that the Western media exists in the first place, which is what AlmightyWalrus argued against.
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BaronIveagh wrote: Guys, can we get back to the subject instead of arguing how homogeneous the other guy is? It's like listening to someone with a van and two loud speakers playing US and Russian Cold War propaganda simultaneously.
As has been pointed out, Putin is not named in this. Despite early Putin reports, they've pretty much fallen off the map in favor of facts.
The news has overtaken your argument.
Let's assume that everyone's press has a large amount of BS and move on.
True. And probably the best post in this thread so far.
For those complaining about not enough American action, we're now serving hot humble pie. Seems that these guys were setting up over a thousand US corporations while-you-wait just outside the Las Vegas International Airport, which was run by a single employee.
An article about the Iceland PM followed that one by 2 minutes. So 2 minutes is the difference between being biased against Putin, and being biased against Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson?
As for the Daily Mail, it's the Daily Mail. I'm pretty sure I've mentioned to you before that they're terrible I actually got side tracked after noticing they have an entire Putin sub-domain (seriously wtf?) and this is the article at the top. Only the truly dedicated would ever put something like that on their "news" site. I'll give you this one Cap. The Daily Mail has an obsession. A creepy, disturbing obsession... EDIT: And for the record, when I made that joke in the other thread I was joking. I had no idea Putin was in league with the Greys!
Guys, can we get back to the subject instead of arguing how homogeneous the other guy is?
Some of us actually went to a bunch of different news sites and looked around (and read them), rather than just make unilateral declarations. That's a lot of googlefu.
As has been pointed out, Putin is not named in this.
And David Cameron? Does it really need to be explained yet again that Putin doesn't have to have his name in the papers to be relevant to them?
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: You completely overlooked the point I made about the serious fraud office having it's cases dropped due to political interference. If that isn't de-fanged, then I don't know what is.
I actually wrote out half an answer, but deleted it because it was so far away from anything that I've tried to explain here. The existence of some bad claims is never good, and nor is an investigative committee getting defanged by insider interests. But in both cases it's necessary to keep it in perspective - what corruption we're seeing right now is probably the least corrupt human institutions there have ever been. Giving up on that and thinking because a bad story hit the paper is extremely wrong headed.
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Mr. Burning wrote: I am fairly ambivalent to who avoided what and where. Our western society and sensibilities means that the richest know they can get away with literal murder. There is proper outrage but in the end change means running the risk of there being no hot running water, no food on the supermarket shelves and no reliable wi fi connection.
We cannot afford (nor will the majority abide) radical change.
What? How in the hell did you reduce the options to nothing or revolution, and remove every possible alternative in between?
I'll repeat what I posted earlier - there have been 10 years of reforms on tax havens, and many have actually reformed in the face of being shut out of the international community. We still have a long way to go, but there's no denying progress has been made.
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whembly wrote: @Iron_Captain: This isn't really about tax evasion... it's really about corruption.
The political class *wants* to talk about tax evasion, because then they don’t have to talk about how corrupt said political class is.
No, this is about ta evasion, because almost all of the money being moved the BVI and other havens is legally earned corporate dollars that relocated in order to reduce tax. That's just the reality of the situation.
Putin's $2bi and all the rest gets more healdines because corruption is sexier than tax evasion, but the reality is that the real impact to you, me and every other taxpayer is the bulk of money that should be collected from multinationals that is lost through these schemes.
Does anyone want to wager that Hillary Clinton's "The Clinton Foundation" would be embroiled in this?
I was also expecting it to be an inside job - and not just because I've read and watched John Grisham's The Firm. With over two terabytes of data lost, I would expect the sneakiest way to get it out of the firm to be by USB hard drive. But then, I might be underestimating how much bandwidth has increased in the past few decades.
FORBES discovered the firm ran a three-month old version of WordPress for its main site, known to contain some vulnerabilities, but more worrisome was that, according to Internet records, its portal used by customers to access sensitive data was most likely run on a three-year-old version of Drupal, 7.23. That platform has at least 25 known vulnerabilities at the time of writing, two of which could have been used by a hacker to upload their own code to the server and start hoovering up data. Back in 2014, Drupal warned of a swathe of attacks on websites based on its code, telling users that anyone running anything below version 7.32 within seven hours of its release should have assumed they’d been hacked.
That critical vulnerability may have been open for more than two-and-a-half years on Mossack Fonseca’s site, if it hadn’t been patched at the time without updating website logs. It remains a valid route for hackers to try to get more data from the firm and its customers. On its site, the company claims: “Your information has never been safer than with Mossack Fonseca’s secure Client Portal.” That boast now looks somewhat misguided.
LordofHats wrote: Apparently the firm informed customers on April 1st about the hack, and people are saying that their security was really bad.
Thus it ever is when a company is too big, or old, or greedy. The greybeards at the top haven't been keeping up with data security and might well have thought it a needless expense to have someone actually good at it have a look and fix things. Anyone from the IT department who makes noise about a vulnerability is seen as a troublemaker trying to make himself seem important and the company could do without such a person. In the end you're either a Yes-man who keeps your mouth shut or unemployed.
Iron_Captain wrote: . Hell, even the BBC (which itself is generally really good at objective reporting and being unbiased, I must say) noticed it about the Guardian:
The BBC is not unbiased. Its probably the least unbiased media source in the world (on most things at least) but it still has a definite bias both institutionally (communist countries will rarely, if ever, get anything good said about them) and individually (Nick Robinson's complete factual distortion of a statement made by Alec Salmond and the editorial staff of the Daily Politics programme attempting to influence the Shadow Cabinet reshuffle by actively seeking to have one of the cabinet members resign on air). There will be many more examples, these are just the ones that I am aware of
No news source is unbiased, its important to remember that.
Call it a gut feeling if you like but one suspects that "El Chapo" -- the mexican druglord -- wasn't storing his money offshore to cut down on his tax bill.
Reassuring to see that Mark Thatcher continues to be a generally worthless human being, still those coups don't organise themselves eh ?
As an example of when you shouldn't read too much into this: the Daily Mirror says Jackie Chan has owned at least six offshore companies, but we already knew he owned four: the film production and distribution companies based in his home city of Hong Kong. Given that Jackie Chan has a career spanning two continents, it would be practically impossible for him not to have offshore accounts from somebody's viewpoint.
Call it a gut feeling if you like but one suspects that "El Chapo" -- the mexican druglord -- wasn't storing his money offshore to cut down on his tax bill.
Reassuring to see that Mark Thatcher continues to be a generally worthless human being, still those coups don't organise themselves eh ?
Is it really front page news that Mark Thatcher, Simon Cowell and El fething Chapo have money in off shore accounts?
Fergie? C'mon.
Nick Faldo? who has had a raft of articles about his business dealings.
An article about the Iceland PM followed that one by 2 minutes. So 2 minutes is the difference between being biased against Putin, and being biased against Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson?
Yes. The difference is that Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson was actually on the list, and Putin wasn't, and they still put out Putin articles first.
LordofHats wrote: EDIT: And for the record, when I made that joke in the other thread I was joking. I had no idea Putin was in league with the Greys!
Haha! You found out too late... Now the plans have already been set in motion!
Iron_Captain wrote: [Yes. The difference is that Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson was actually on the list, and Putin wasn't, and they still put out Putin articles first.
Well, Putin is certainly a more important person than the PM of Iceland. And while he wasn't on the lists himself it's pretty odd that old friends of his are moving about billions of dollars when they don't exactly should have access to that sort of money. I mean, what does a cellist make? Even if he's really really good and employed by the best orchestra, like the Leningrad or Marinsky?
whembly wrote: @Iron_Captain: This isn't really about tax evasion... it's really about corruption.
The political class *wants* to talk about tax evasion, because then they don’t have to talk about how corrupt said political class is.
No, this is about ta evasion, because almost all of the money being moved the BVI and other havens is legally earned corporate dollars that relocated in order to reduce tax. That's just the reality of the situation.
Putin's $2bi and all the rest gets more healdines because corruption is sexier than tax evasion, but the reality is that the real impact to you, me and every other taxpayer is the bulk of money that should be collected from multinationals that is lost through these schemes.
No... what private people/companies do with their wealth is their business. The simple fact is that people *HATE* paying taxes will do what is feasible to mitigate their tax liabilities.
If a country is finding that their wealthy citizens are doing this enmassed, then said countries need to look at their own tax laws as to why.
Simply stated: A person's money belongs to them, not the government, just as their other freedoms.
The crux of the attention should be spent on politicians... politicians having off-shore accounts is strange and its not a stretch to assume that they're doing this to hide wrong-doings... not just to "evade taxes." 'Tis why attention on politicians like in Iceland is a good thing.
Does anyone want to wager that Hillary Clinton's "The Clinton Foundation" would be embroiled in this?
No... what private people/companies do with their wealth is their business. The simple fact is that people *HATE* paying taxes will do what is feasible to mitigate their tax liabilities.
If a country is finding that their wealthy citizens are doing this enmassed, then said countries need to look at their own tax laws as to why.
Simply stated: A person's money belongs to them, not the government, just as their other freedoms.
What? That makes no sense at all. If the tax is legally due then it's not their money, it's the governments.
Why do people do this? Because they can. No matter what your tax rate someone will not want to pay it, and try and avoid it.
Whembly wrote:
No... what private people/companies do with their wealth is their business. The simple fact is that people *HATE* paying taxes will do what is feasible to mitigate their tax liabilities.
If a country is finding that their wealthy citizens are doing this enmassed, then said countries need to look at their own tax laws as to why.
Simply stated: A person's money belongs to them, not the government, just as their other freedoms.
Right, because greed never factors in to this equation?
If you are a private company in a country doing business, you are expected to follow that countries laws on taxes. If not, then those wealthy companies could certainly afford to get the heck out and go somewhere else. Because we do not need any more rich leeches whining about needing help and bailouts.
If you live in a country, you follow their rules. End of discussion. Pay your taxes like an adult or get punished for it. Stop whining.
What? That makes no sense at all. If the tax is legally due then it's not their money, it's the governments.
Uhm...no. It always is your money. Taxes is forcing you to pay a certain amount of your money, but it's still yours.
Well, I have my rent money in my pocket. It is technically my money. But if I do not give it to my landlady, she may not be too happy with me. She may also do things in order to get that money, or just stop providing me with a place to live. So I mean, sure, I guess you are right?
No... what private people/companies do with their wealth is their business. The simple fact is that people *HATE* paying taxes will do what is feasible to mitigate their tax liabilities.
If a country is finding that their wealthy citizens are doing this enmassed, then said countries need to look at their own tax laws as to why.
Simply stated: A person's money belongs to them, not the government, just as their other freedoms.
What? That makes no sense at all. If the tax is legally due then it's not their money, it's the governments.
Why do people do this? Because they can. No matter what your tax rate someone will not want to pay it, and try and avoid it.
I'm rendering this as simplistically as possible to explain my previous statement you highlighted...
Lucky guy earned $100,000,000 in income.
Lucky guy pays his government 39.6% in taxes: $39,000,000 to US Treasury.
Lucky guy lives in State of NY and is tax at 8.82%: which is... $8,820,000 to NY Treasury.
Lucky guy is left with $52,180,000 after income tax.
At this point... didn't Lucky guy pay his taxes?
So... Lucky guy wants to mitigate FUTUREtax liabilities by moving it to an offshores account where the US government doesn't know how much he has or does't have....
whembly wrote: Lucky guy earned $100,000,000 in income.So... Lucky guy wants to mitigate FUTUREtax liabilities by moving it to an offshores account where the US government doesn't know how much he has or does't have.... That's legal.
Probably yes. But unless he got that money from a lottery he probably used something tax-sponsored to get it. 20,000 employees educated with tax money. Government-maintained roads? Government-guaranteed bank loans? Government-run ports?
He doesn't live on an island where all he ever earned wasn't in some fashion sponsored by someone else. If he does then tell him to stay off public roads and shoot him if he doesn't.
whembly wrote: Lucky guy earned $100,000,000 in income.So... Lucky guy wants to mitigate FUTUREtax liabilities by moving it to an offshores account where the US government doesn't know how much he has or does't have.... That's legal.
Probably yes. But unless he got that money from a lottery he probably used something tax-sponsored to get it. 20,000 employees educated with tax money. Government-maintained roads? Government-guaranteed bank loans? Government-run ports?
He doesn't live on an island where all he ever earned wasn't in some fashion sponsored by someone else. If he does then tell him to stay off public roads and shoot him if he doesn't.
What? That makes no sense at all. If the tax is legally due then it's not their money, it's the governments.
Uhm...no. It always is your money. Taxes is forcing you to pay a certain amount of your money, but it's still yours.
Uhm...no. The law in most places says otherwise. That's why non payment of tax is a criminal offence. The law in most places makes a clear distinction between payment of debt and payment of taxes and regards most debt as your money owed and tax debt as you holding government money, which is why non payment of debt is a civil offence and non payment of tax a criminal offence.
No... what private people/companies do with their wealth is their business. The simple fact is that people *HATE* paying taxes will do what is feasible to mitigate their tax liabilities.
If a country is finding that their wealthy citizens are doing this enmassed, then said countries need to look at their own tax laws as to why.
Simply stated: A person's money belongs to them, not the government, just as their other freedoms.
What? That makes no sense at all. If the tax is legally due then it's not their money, it's the governments.
Why do people do this? Because they can. No matter what your tax rate someone will not want to pay it, and try and avoid it.
I'm rendering this as simplistically as possible to explain my previous statement you highlighted...
Lucky guy earned $100,000,000 in income.
Lucky guy pays his government 39.6% in taxes: $39,000,000 to US Treasury.
Lucky guy lives in State of NY and is tax at 8.82%: which is... $8,820,000 to NY Treasury.
Lucky guy is left with $52,180,000 after income tax.
At this point... didn't Lucky guy pay his taxes?
So... Lucky guy wants to mitigate FUTUREtax liabilities by moving it to an offshores account where the US government doesn't know how much he has or does't have....
That's legal.
Appart from the fact that you have completely misrepresented the situation. This is not about people with wealth paying all taxes due then moving the money overseas to avoid the risk of wealth taxes or arbitrary government wealth seizure.
If you don't understand what people are doing I gave an explanation a few pages back about how the money is moved around to avoid tax.
Uhm...no. The law in most places says otherwise. That's why non payment of tax is a criminal offence.
It cannot be both not our own property and a criminal offence. It was not your money to begin with, then there's no ground to sue you on. You're getting sued because paying taxes is mandatory. It's ike a parking ticket. You gotta either dispute or straight-up pay up. Where I'd argue is stuff like the statuory healthcare in Germany - if you aren't wealthy, you have to pay a mandatory fee for statuory healthcare, whether you want it or not. You lose 15.5% of your wage and there's no chance to get it back or get around this, it's dedacted of your wage even before it hits your account. In that case, it isn't your money. Seeing that you can get around taxes, I'd argue differently.
Spetulhu wrote: He doesn't live on an island where all he ever earned wasn't in some fashion sponsored by someone else. If he does then tell him to stay off public roads and shoot him if he doesn't.
Not sure where you're going this...
Sure, don't ACTUALLY shoot him. That would be counterproductive and not really justified. But rich people acting like they never got anything from their country just because they themself had private schooling, daddy paid for their stuff and they then started a business is a good part of this mess. Where did their workers get their education? Is the business located where workers use public transport, or the business benefits from public roads, ports, airports? Do the workers use public health care?
Spetulhu wrote: He doesn't live on an island where all he ever earned wasn't in some fashion sponsored by someone else. If he does then tell him to stay off public roads and shoot him if he doesn't.
Not sure where you're going this...
Sure, don't ACTUALLY shoot him. That would be counterproductive and not really justified. But rich people acting like they never got anything from their country just because they themself had private schooling, daddy paid for their stuff and they then started a business is a good part of this mess. Where did their workers get their education? Is the business located where workers use public transport, or the business benefits from public roads, ports, airports? Do the workers use public health care?
Things don't exist in a vacuum after all.
Ah... now I understand.
He was trying to make a point that I wasn't arguing over...
Spetulhu wrote: He doesn't live on an island where all he ever earned wasn't in some fashion sponsored by someone else. If he does then tell him to stay off public roads and shoot him if he doesn't.
Not sure where you're going this...
Sure, don't ACTUALLY shoot him. That would be counterproductive and not really justified. But rich people acting like they never got anything from their country just because they themself had private schooling, daddy paid for their stuff and they then started a business is a good part of this mess. Where did their workers get their education? Is the business located where workers use public transport, or the business benefits from public roads, ports, airports? Do the workers use public health care?
Things don't exist in a vacuum after all.
Ah... now I understand.
He was trying to make a point that I wasn't arguing over...
*shrugs*
Now you understand how we feel about your post.....
Spetulhu wrote: He doesn't live on an island where all he ever earned wasn't in some fashion sponsored by someone else. If he does then tell him to stay off public roads and shoot him if he doesn't.
Not sure where you're going this...
Sure, don't ACTUALLY shoot him. That would be counterproductive and not really justified. But rich people acting like they never got anything from their country just because they themself had private schooling, daddy paid for their stuff and they then started a business is a good part of this mess. Where did their workers get their education? Is the business located where workers use public transport, or the business benefits from public roads, ports, airports? Do the workers use public health care?
Things don't exist in a vacuum after all.
Ah... now I understand.
He was trying to make a point that I wasn't arguing over...
*shrugs*
Now you understand how we feel about your post.....
Sure, don't ACTUALLY shoot him. That would be counterproductive and not really justified. But rich people acting like they never got anything from their country just because they themself had private schooling, daddy paid for their stuff and they then started a business is a good part of this mess. Where did their workers get their education? Is the business located where workers use public transport, or the business benefits from public roads, ports, airports? Do the workers use public health care?
Things don't exist in a vacuum after all.
Ye know, the problem with a lot of us isn't that we don't want to pay zero taxes at all (although we wouldn't mind...), it's that we pay a government that is absolutely incapable of dealing with my cash. The fitting equivalent is you going to a playground and giving a random kid 50$. That's how it feels to pay a lot of taxes. I'll always vouch for direct taxation, i.e. you not paying money to someone you know you cannot trust with a single cent, but rather the other person telling you "Hey, we need this school built!" and you directly invest in a project, still having full control of your money knowing that it doesn't drown in bureaucracy. Find the best person for the job, let said person handle it. Need to maintain a highway or build a new one? Let people with actual knowledge on it do it.
I will gladly pay a tax for stuff I can get behind. As long as that isn't the case, however, and I know that most of my taxes will be wasted, I will gladly try to save every single cent that I can.
I will gladly pay a tax for stuff I can get behind. As long as that isn't the case, however, and I know that most of my taxes will be wasted, I will gladly try to save every single cent that I can.
Rationality and democracy can go hand-in-hand very well. Until then...that's the deal you got with the government. They get to rob...eh...tax us, we give them the minimum amount.
11 months ago when the Tories won the election, I cautioned numerous times on this forum, that Cameron should savour victory as the honeymoon would be short and sweet.
Fast forward and we see a civil war in the Tory party over Europe, a budget shambles, Panama Papers, and Cameron squirming like a worm on a fishing hook.
whembly wrote: No... what private people/companies do with their wealth is their business. The simple fact is that people *HATE* paying taxes will do what is feasible to mitigate their tax liabilities.
Of course, it is expected and accepted that people will minimise their tax. But there's a difference between using legal and illegal means. Offshore accounts are in many cases plainly illegal
If a country is finding that their wealthy citizens are doing this enmassed, then said countries need to look at their own tax laws as to why.
You answered that yourself - because people hate paying taxes, and for many cases they hate it so much that they'll do illegal things. It seems pretty fething obvious to me that when you catch people doing illegal stuff you prosecute them. I am genuinely at a loss as to why you'd try to imagine an alternative argument.
Simply stated: A person's money belongs to them, not the government, just as their other freedoms.
There's no god given, absolute notion of ownership. If you think you own something good for you, but if you want to actually exert control over that thing then you need to establish your ownership in government courts, using government written laws, and if you win then government paid policemen will enforce your ownership claim. If you sign a contract with someone else, the only way that contract gets enforced is by going those same government courts, and using the government written laws to enforce your claims in the contract.
So if our government laws say 'you get $3, but then you have to give one $1 to government' then it's a total nonsense to say 'all $3 are mine, and government is taking what is rightfully mine' is total nonsense. THe only way in which the $3 are yours in the first place is through government laws, courts and police. You can't take all that for granted and then get annoyed that the same system is taking $1.
This doesn't mean we can't talk about what the right amount of taxes should be, and there's good arguments for lower taxes. But that debate needs to be based around arguments for economic growth and individual incentives. Arguing that all taxes are taking what is yours are about as useful as arguments that all property is theft.
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whembly wrote: So... Lucky guy wants to mitigate FUTUREtax liabilities by moving it to an offshores account where the US government doesn't know how much he has or does't have....
Not quite. Its more 'lucky guy earns $100m, but has his tax affairs established so that he isn't paid a cent, but instead has his $100m paid to an incorporated entity, which is wholly owned by another incorporated entity, which is listed in BVI with a single owner - the lucky guy. Because of this the guy pays 10% to move the money out of the USA and 1% tax to BVI, for 11% tax instead of paying 40% odd in NY. This is despite spending the whole year in NY, earning the money in NY, and having never visited the BVI in his life.
That's legal.
The point is that many of these arrangements are illegal, and involve paying little to no tax where he lives and earns money. When these things are exposed then investigation and possible prosecution is just obvious and natural.
The bigger debate is in closing down these tax havens, and making any corporate structures in these countries are made transparent to prevent these shenanigans in future.
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Sigvatr wrote: Ye know, the problem with a lot of us isn't that we don't want to pay zero taxes at all (although we wouldn't mind...), it's that we pay a government that is absolutely incapable of dealing with my cash. The fitting equivalent is you going to a playground and giving a random kid 50$. That's how it feels to pay a lot of taxes. I'll always vouch for direct taxation, i.e. you not paying money to someone you know you cannot trust with a single cent, but rather the other person telling you "Hey, we need this school built!" and you directly invest in a project, still having full control of your money knowing that it doesn't drown in bureaucracy. Find the best person for the job, let said person handle it. Need to maintain a highway or build a new one? Let people with actual knowledge on it do it.
Problematically, you're vouching for an unworkable mess.
Sure, don't ACTUALLY shoot him. That would be counterproductive and not really justified. But rich people acting like they never got anything from their country just because they themself had private schooling, daddy paid for their stuff and they then started a business is a good part of this mess. Where did their workers get their education? Is the business located where workers use public transport, or the business benefits from public roads, ports, airports? Do the workers use public health care?
Things don't exist in a vacuum after all.
Ye know, the problem with a lot of us isn't that we don't want to pay zero taxes at all (although we wouldn't mind...), it's that we pay a government that is absolutely incapable of dealing with my cash. The fitting equivalent is you going to a playground and giving a random kid 50$. That's how it feels to pay a lot of taxes. I'll always vouch for direct taxation, i.e. you not paying money to someone you know you cannot trust with a single cent, but rather the other person telling you "Hey, we need this school built!" and you directly invest in a project, still having full control of your money knowing that it doesn't drown in bureaucracy. Find the best person for the job, let said person handle it. Need to maintain a highway or build a new one? Let people with actual knowledge on it do it.
I will gladly pay a tax for stuff I can get behind. As long as that isn't the case, however, and I know that most of my taxes will be wasted, I will gladly try to save every single cent that I can.
You're conflating 'person who is best for the job' with 'person who can convince some others who are motivated enough to put their money in that they are best for the job whilst at the same time convincing sufficient others that even though incompetent, they are less incompetent than the alternatives'.
Tax evasion and tax avoidance are two completely different things. One is illegal one is not.
As separate as borrowing and theft, as separate as invitation and trespass, as separate as .... well you should get the idea.
This is embarassing for Cameron, but quite unfairly, first he did not set up the accounts he inherited them, and to his credit moved them onshore some years ago, BEFORE being forced to do so or exposed.
Orlanth wrote: and to his credit moved them onshore some years ago, BEFORE being forced to do so or exposed.
It only took him 13 years and tax evasion/tax avoidance is a very thin line, especially when the individual in question is the Prime Minister who supposedly taking such a hard line on "aggressive tax avoidance". Remember when Dave called Jimmy Carr "morally wrong" for avoiding paying tax?
He must have shat a kidney when news of this leak hit the papers
Problematically, you're vouching for an unworkable mess.
Nah, there's multiple plans proposing a solution, a lot of them suggesting the, very reasonable, idea to cut power from the government and give it to an economics "committee" with economic representatives deciding stuff. It's a simply money for direct power deal where everyone wins - the public finally gets stuff done for a proper price at a proper speed and proper quality, which satisfies voters (except leftists, but who cares for them anyway?) and thus satisfies politicians.
Orlanth wrote: and to his credit moved them onshore some years ago, BEFORE being forced to do so or exposed.
It only took him 13 years and tax evasion/tax avoidance is a very thin line, especially when the individual in question is the Prime Minister who supposedly taking such a hard line on "aggressive tax avoidance". Remember when Dave called Jimmy Carr "morally wrong" for avoiding paying tax?
He must have shat a kidney when news of this leak hit the papers
Yes the leak hurt because it has been badly spun and Labour are flogging this for all they can. i dont blamer them for that, though it is more dishonest of them than anything Cameron has done.
Let us break it down.
1. Cameron inherited the account from his late father. He did not set up a dodgy offshore account.
2. Cameron sold the account before moving into Number 10 as PM, sweeping his house before he took office. He should actually be commended for that as he was not culpable
3. Cameron did not declare the Blairmore holdings as they were under the financial ceiling by which one must do so. This is playing openly by the rules, just as the other MPs do.
Now if you want to find people with dodgy accounts and dodgy dealings, I would look no further than Alex Salmond, particularly what he was raking in while first minister. Second take a look at John Prescott who not only decided he was too important to pay council tax but the Labour government at the time insisted he get away with it when caught doing so.
Now the Tories are no economic angels but compared to those accusing them they damn well are. Yes there was the espenses scandal and bills of several thousand for a duck house, but those exposures were dwarfed by the amount of blatant direct tax evasion by Geoff Hoon. And don't get me started on cash for peerages.
cameron actually hasnt done anything illegal, or even wrong, he is on the bad end of a spin cycle. Wielded by a dishonest press which insists on relabelling what he has done as tax evasion, when in fact it isnt even tax avoidance. From what we are seeing he dealt with the tax avoidance situation he inherited and did so before he came to power. Yet the braying never stops from the mouths of those who will havbe no problems giving someone a peerrage if they give a couple of million to the labour party, and believe that unlike you and I members of their elite don't have to contribute to council tax contributions.
There is always a thin line between right and wrong, but Cameron wasnt even close to the line and a false perspective has been used against him by people evidently less honest than he is.
No, the leak hurt because it has shown that Cameron had been potentially avoiding tax, he may even be avoiding it still (at least until about a week or so ago ...) something that he himself has described as "immoral". It also took him 5 days to admit to the shares existence after a series of precisely worded denials.
No one needs to spin that to make it look bad because it is bad.
No, the leak hurt because it has shown that Cameron had been potentially avoiding tax, he may even be avoiding it still (at least until about a week or so ago ...) something that he himself has described as "immoral". It also took him 5 days to admit to the shares existence after a series of precisely worded denials.
No one needs to spin that to make it look bad because it is bad.
He said it was an non issue and a private matter, both those statements are true. MP's are expected to disclose finacial arrangement that fit certain criteria, Camerons holdings did not fit the criteria so the matter is a private matter between him and the Inland Revenue. it doesn't appear in any way that Cameron has attemtped to deny or failed to declare anything the Inland Revejue has right to know about. Which is entirely different from what the press have a right to know about. Even poltiicians are entitled to a measure of privacy. If Camerion denials in sums smaller than those he must declare to parliamentary standards he is doing no wrong.
It is also time the press acknowledge that the Blairmore account was not set up by him, and he disposed of the offshore assets lawfully prior to taking up office as Prime Minister even though those assets themselves were not illegal.
He has done nothing wrong, the story has been spun into something it is not.
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Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: Cameron overlooked one of the golden lessons of politics: the cover up is always worse than the crime.
What crime?
What cover up?
He has commited no crime, unlike some officials from the previous admin istration that have been airbrushed out of the parliamentary ethics story.
There is no cover up either. He publically declared precisely what needed to be publically delacred accourding to parliamentary rules, even if that weas nothing. There is no evidence that the Inland Revenue was not told the sums he must declare as a Uk citizen, which is private information between the tax payer and the Inland Revenue.
Come back whern there is a story and not a made up one. Corbyn is telling the people that Cameron has lost their trust, he has not asked them if they have. He and the left wing press have not being telling the truth to the people by which they can actually make that decision by themselves. And if the Guardian keeps on labeling Cameron a tax evader that lie will stick and no amount of facts will wash it out. The lack of integrity on this issue comes from Labour and their mouthpieces, and thuis is nothing less than a smear campaign based on deliberately mislabeled evidence. I am not suprised Cameron isn't handing over his full financial details to the press, it's not like his opponents will look at them wirth honest critique if they do; and on their track record it is entirely likely they wont.
Accusing Cameron of tax evasion isn't a typo from the Guardian, its a smear and a lie. Handing over more private financial information which an individual has a right to confidentiality over to a patently dishonest press entirely bent on willfully misreading it doesn't aid transparency in any way.
Hypocrisy should be exposed. Over the last few years he's been very vocal and condemning about the immorality of various people using offshore accounts and avoiding tax, see comments on Jimmy Carr. Yet after a week of hand waving has admitted his father ran such offshore accounts for decades and probably paid for his upbringing with them. This is the person who used to tell us 'we're all in it together', except he's long abandoned that.
Howard A Treesong wrote: Hypocrisy should be exposed. Over the last few years he's been very vocal and condemning about the immorality of various people using offshore accounts and avoiding tax, see comments on Jimmy Carr. Yet after a week of hand waving has admitted his father ran such offshore accounts for decades and probably paid for his upbringing with them. This is the person who used to tell us 'we're all in it together', except he's long abandoned that.
I quite agree. So far there is no indication Cameron doesn't.
He inherited an offshore fund, and closed it down before taking up office and moved the funds into onshore accounts.
the problem is?
Cameron cleaned up his family's act, he actually showed example not hypocrisy.
Yet instead of framing it as having cleaned up his act, he made it look like a dirty secret. He's actually taken something legal and made it look as shifty as possible. Maybe he can't help but be evasive and avoid answering a straight question for a week. Between that and his pro-EU leaflet he's not having a good week.
Howard A Treesong wrote: Yet instead of framing it as having cleaned up his act, he made it look like a dirty secret. He's actually taken something legal and made it look as shifty as possible. Maybe he can't help but be evasive and avoid answering a straight question for a week. Between that and his pro-EU leaflet he's not having a good week.
I think there is a position that anything that can be seen in a negative light should be drip fed. I think the PR department fethed up a bit with what is actually negative - Camerons position could have been spun as taking a stand etc.
Now I think about it wasn't Cameron involved with the Tory PR machine before moving up the greasy pole? Surely he must have seen the flak coming.
i noticed you didn't actually try and challenge the logic I presented to you.
If I could find some logic I would have.
The Prime Minister, who has been making all kinds of noises about "offshore tax havens" and "financial transparency", has now admitted to having owned undeclared shares in an offshore shell company. If that isn't in the public interest then nothing is. If he didn't want this to have blown up in his face he should have either made their existence known when he was elected to parliament, or at the very latest when his father's name surfaced with this lovely, lovely leak. This is a "non issue and private matter" that may yet see his resignation (depending on what else crawls out of the woodwork).
It was when many of the ways that are currently legal weren't - not everyone agrees with the way tax law has been loosened and undermined over the years, so why should they suddenly be OK with the results of those changes? Hell, many people think there shouldn't be any legal ways of "reducing your tax liability" at all - Joe Bloke doesn't get to "restructure" anything to avoid forking over his PAYE on every paycheque he earns, he pays the percentage he's told to pay like most people, so why should the law allow the wealthy to decide whether or not they want to pay their dues in-full?
I think you need to read my explanation of the difference between reducing your tax liability legally and tax avoidance. Using an ISA is reducing your tax liability legally that anyone can do. They are put in place to encourage saving. It becomes tax avoidance when Joe Bloke reaches his £15k limit for the year so decides to "loan" his parents, brother and sister £15k each to do with "whatever they want", but must be repaid with an interest rate that strangely exactly matches the ISA rate.
Then there is items like childcare vouchers or cycle to work that are taken pre tax and exempt from BIK. Those are legal ways of reducing your tax liability on PAYE. There are some gray areas that the general public take advantage of, such as selling fixtures and fittings separately to a house that is close to a stamp duty tax band. I'm afraid it is not as simple as you put it.
Really? You're going to pretend "guy who owns his own home valuable enough to worry about stamp duty bands and can afford to save £60K a year" is even remotely reflective of the reality of most people's lives? You sound like that Tory on TV earlier trying to play down Cameron's own little tax avoidance scheme by saying it only involved enough money to buy a car - a car worth £9K more than the average salary.
The only practical avenue normal people(ie, not upper-middle-class professionals that are devising cunning scams around ISAs for the nearly-3-times-the-average-annual-salary in savings they want to make every year) have for reducing their tax burden is the strictly illegal way - taking cash payment and not declaring it to HMRC. You can invite me to read your explanation again if you like, in most cases I see it as a distinction without a difference.
The Prime Minister, who has been making all kinds of noises about "offshore tax havens" and "financial transparency", has now admitted to having owned undeclared shares in an offshore shell company.
This is correct. You even placed it in the correct format. It was something from his past.
...now take it to his logical conclusion.
- Cameron had benefit of offshore funds set up by his father.
- He then closed down his offshore funds prior to becoming Prime Minister.
- Then he made noises about offshore tax havens and financial transparency.
Nothing remotely wrong with his ethical stance there. it is not a case of 'do as i say not as I do', it is a case of 'do you you would have others do'. Cameron didnt publicise his own cleaning up of offshores account in his family name. He did not need to and it wouldn't serve any good, instead he quietly closed them with no exposure. There is a maturity and integrity in that approach and the left wing press and their apologists are hell bent on twisting that into something it is not.
yet we are still waiting for the same media to deal with real issues of absolute transparent tax fiddling:
Did Prescott resign, was he even called to resign, was his crimes, and I do mean the word crime here get refered to the CPS. Hell no. You cant do that, he's Labour.
i know how was 'only' deputy Prime Minister, but come on. People are reacting to Camerons recorded actions of integrity and evidential non-hypocrisy as if he just shot the dog, raised it from the dead, run it over, raised it as a zombie and shot it again.
Perhaps Cameron's real financial 'crime' is being a member of the wrong party while having possession of a healthy bank account.
The Blairmore scandal? It makes more sense as the MoreBlair scandal.
This is a "non issue and private matter" that may yet see his resignation (depending on what else crawls out of the woodwork).
So because it's Cameron there must be some hidden undeclared dodgy fund somewhere? Where do you get the remotest idea that would be true? If anything Cameron is less likely to have dodgy funds as the leaks have revealed that he has the moral cohesion to set his house in order. Lots of things could crawl out of the woodwork, who is to say it will be Cameron's accounts that hit the press.
Your comment reads as 'no smoke without fire' which is a mental trap of injustice. You can hate Tories as much as you like and wish they will be caught red handed in wrongdoing but accusation doesn't infer guilt. Just because you want there to be dodgy hidden Cameron funds for the press to find doesn't mean there are any, or he is any more likely to actually haver them than anyone else in public office today.
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Howard A Treesong wrote: Yet instead of framing it as having cleaned up his act, he made it look like a dirty secret. He's actually taken something legal and made it look as shifty as possible. Maybe he can't help but be evasive and avoid answering a straight question for a week. Between that and his pro-EU leaflet he's not having a good week.
I can sort of understand this point of view.
However Cameron when cleaning up the account he himself did not set up, his father did. Could have spun it out as 'look at how moral I am, here are my dads dodgy accounts but I am moving it all onshore'. that sort of drumbeating doesnt work and is read in all the wrong ways, it isnt even seen as very moral. The moral methodology to doing something right in our culture is to do it on the quiet without fanfare, a good example is the widows mite analogy and charity. Britsih culture doesnt see fanfare supported cleanups, even on issues not instifgated by ther person doing the clean up as a sign of integrity. Cameron understood and did ehat he needed to do properly.
Cameron has not been able to frame his actions as a cleaning up for the above reasons. Also allowing for the extremes the lefgt wing press are prepared to go it would make no progress anyway. As Cameron's entirely legal actions have already been highlighted as tax evasion, which is thoroughly unfair, and calls have been made linking him to what happened with the Icelandic head of government, who was conducting different financial actions to Cameron via the same banking network. This is for all intent and purpose demanding Cameron resign for no other reason than because his father used the same bank as Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson.
This whole episode is a stitch up, and the rabid left insist on demanding that an inflated fabricated account of what is happening is the actual truth and demanding action on it. He is being bullseyed by Labour the same was Saddam Hussein was, with a dodgy dossier of lies, and any recourse to set the matter straight has from day one been shouted down. The hard left don't want 'straight questions' answered, and havern't asked any frankly. They want to control the narrative entirely and an enormous Labour spin machine is in full operation to get it. We haven't seen this in operation on this scale since the late 90's in the run up to the new honest transparent leadership promised by the new honest transparent Tony Blair. And we all know how that one panned out.
You can bleat about 'Labour spin' all you like but if it was all above board why didn't he simply say so when he was asked about his father's dubious company in 2012 or even more puzzlingly when the Panama papers were published? It may have generated a newspaper article or 2, maybe even a headline but that's about it.
Instead we have had a string of "no comment" which then mutated into "I own no shares in my father's company" until finally the truth (if it is the whole truth) finally oozes out.
If nothing else this episode shines a light on the PM's lack of judgement. If you have skeletons like these rattling around in the closest and were making all kinds of noises about financial transparency the prudent thing would be to get them properly buried.
A Yougov poll has now put Jeremy Corbyn's approval rating above Dave. Remember when Corbyn was elected as Labour leader and certain people were saying that there was literally no chance he would be PM? Yeah.....
A Yougov poll has now put Jeremy Corbyn's approval rating above Dave. Remember when Corbyn was elected as Labour leader and certain people were saying that there was literally no chance he would be PM? Yeah.....
You can rate above Fred West and Jimmy Saville and still not be seen as leadership material.
I still see this as a PR attempt back firing more than Cameron being hypocritical on tax avoidance. - I would seriously look at my advisors and ask what the fething feth!
Camerons Camelot has greater cracks to plaster over.
Cameron's credibility has been shot down in flames - he's a lame duck PM. The aftermath of the EU referendum (win or lose) was always going to be trouble for him, but the tax haven issue makes him look shifty and unreliable.
If he can't give a straight answer when he has nothing to hide, then people will rightfully wonder what other issues he hasn't been straightforward about.
Cameron didn't set up the accounts, his father did.
Cameron dealt with his association to them which was third party according to the rules for parliamentary standards and did so before taking office.
You can bleat about 'Labour spin' all you like but if it was all above board why didn't he simply say so when he was asked about his father's dubious company in 2012 or even more puzzlingly when the Panama papers were published? It may have generated a newspaper article or 2, maybe even a headline but that's about it.
First I do not bleat, I make reasoned comment.
Second, it is evident that this would not have resulted in a headline or two, as even with disclosure parts of the press have a vested interest in misreportage. If Camerons families legal tax situation is reported as tax evasion then the truth of the matter is not relevant as the truth is not what is being reported on.
Instead we have had a string of "no comment" which then mutated into "I own no shares in my father's company" until finally the truth (if it is the whole truth) finally oozes out.
Case in point. You misrecord what Cameron has actually said and done, wther our of ignorance or spite is not relevant.. He has not said 'no comment' he declared that he had declared to the tax authorities everything that was required by law, and to parliamentary standards everything that was declarable and had nothing to hide. That is not a 'no comment' or even remotely close to it.
Second 'I own no shares in my fathers company is not separate to the truth as you imply, unless to positively know otherwise from hard evidence it is the truth. Cameron like everyone else is entitled to the provision of assumed innocence without evidence of guilt.
A Yougov poll has now put Jeremy Corbyn's approval rating above Dave. Remember when Corbyn was elected as Labour leader and certain people were saying that there was literally no chance he would be PM? Yeah.....
It takers a lot of spin to get this far, and wont last long. Its a meeting of the tides. Personal financial accountability is Corbyns only strong suit, and I do acknowledge it of the man, and at the same time Camedron is being spun out of all proportion as a tax dodger who cant tell the truth, despite more level headed reportage elsewhere in the press. Even so in optimal circumstances Corbyns populartity can only touch over.
This might sound like good news for Corbyn but it isnt if you think about it.
f nothing else this episode shines a light on the PM's lack of judgement. If you have skeletons like these rattling around in the closest and were making all kinds of noises about financial transparency the prudent thing would be to get them properly buried.
The more level headed sections of the press have already past comment on this and tried to move on. It is evident that Cameron had done nothing wrong, so there is no error of judgement. He laso has made no cover up. He had benefit of funds set up by a third person in his own family and decided on his own conscience that he could not associate with that and be Prime Minister. That showed monetary integrity.
Now Tom Watson has changed Labours tune a little made rephrased this affair in wording that is less contradictory to the truth. He speaks of appearance without claim of wrongdoing or expectation of assumption that the Prime Minister has done wrong. He cleverly banks on the public perception that there is something dodgy going on (after having whipped that up of course) without making direct accusation by calling for reassurance.
This is how it is done:
I still see this as a PR attempt back firing more than Cameron being hypocritical on tax avoidance. - I would seriously look at my advisors and ask what the fething feth!
QFT. Though the Tories can't outspin New Labour, and this part of New Labour is definitely still in operation.
It will be a wake up call time on Millbank. The heavily distorted spin machine from the 90's is still at Labours exclusive call.
I am seeing this as Labour playing a hand of poker with two pair. They know they haven't got anything on Cameron on this deal, but they can play the hand, not fold, and continue to add chips. The logical press want to fold and move to the next draw, but the red press want this hand to play on and on and for stakes to rise.
Orlanth wrote: Second 'I own no shares in my fathers company is not separate to the truth as you imply
I never implied that, I'm sure it was the literal truth; its what was missed out that is vitally important. Its immaterial that these shares were valued less than the (rather high) bar required before they must legally be declared. Their very nature is incendiary and, while I am sure that Dave hoped that their existence would never be made public, it was always a big risk to not simply declare them publicity in some way. His father's shell company has been under journalistic investigation since at least 2012, he knew this yet did nothing. His lack of forethought and judgement is what has lead him to this extremely damaging situation.
Orlanth wrote: The more level headed sections of the press have already past comment on this and tried to move on.
Even the Torygraph are still running with this story.....
Orlanth wrote: Second 'I own no shares in my fathers company is not separate to the truth as you imply
I never implied that, I'm sure it was the literal truth; its what was missed out that is vitally important. Its immaterial that these shares were valued less than the (rather high) bar required before they must legally be declared. Their very nature is incendiary and, while I am sure that Dave hoped that their existence would never be made public, it was always a big risk to not simply declare them publicity in some way. His father's shell company has been under journalistic investigation since at least 2012, he knew this yet did nothing. His lack of forethought and judgement is what has lead him to this extremely damaging situation.
By 2012 Cameron had already divested himself of the assets legally two years prior. That was forethought and good judgement.
Orlanth wrote: The more level headed sections of the press have already past comment on this and tried to move on.
Even the Torygraph are still running with this story.....
Tried is the operative word.
Mirror and Guardian are trying to spin this out as a resignable offense, even though it wasn't even an offense or even an error, or even Camerons own actions but his fathers. That itself is the news story, not anything Cameron has allegedly done.
Cameron had decided today not to fight the spin machine but to get out of the problem the direct way. The hard left will howl for blood until their throats are hoarse because that is what they do.
Because having a dad, who is now dead, who set up an account, which is now closed, in a bank, that was exposed, to have been used by someone else, in another nations government, to hide money from taxmen, is a real 'error of judgement'.
Cameron should have just refused to pay council tax like Geoff Hoon and John Prescott, and bullied the departments concerned, as that appears to be the honest way to save money on tjhe side.
By 2012 Cameron had already divested himself of the assets legally two years prior.
Then why not say so at the time? He could easily have admitted to owning the shares when his father was named in the leak and avoided (most of) this yet he was deliberately vague until the truth (as it stands) was dragged out of him. If this was all perfectly legal and morally above board why not instantly admit it?
Is it any wonder why people think that politicians are dishonest?
By 2012 Cameron had already divested himself of the assets legally two years prior.
Then why not say so at the time?
Why should he? I legally divested himself of the portfolio two years prior, there was no story. Hence there was no story at the time.
This is just a spin filled witch hunt.
Ken Livingston is now saying Cameron should go to prison.
“Cameron’s government, for the last six years, has been about a small elite getting richer while the poorer get left behind," the former Mayor of London told Russian news channel RT. “He shouldn’t just resign, he should be sent to prison."
Because he is the Prime Minster and this sort of thing looks bad especially since he tried to hide it after making all those populist noises about financial transparency? Discounting for a moment the moral argument for doing everything in the open when you are in public office; modern politics are largely driven by appearances and headlines and as such this is a spectacular own goal of his own devising which he really should have seen coming.
No point in continuing this particular line with you as it is becoming circular.
I am very interested in what else is going to be beaten out of the bushes in the coming months.
Because he is the Prime Minster and this sort of thing looks bad especially since he tried to hide it after making all those populist noises about financial transparency? Discounting for a moment the moral argument for doing everything in the open when you are in public office; modern politics are largely driven by appearances and headlines and as such this is a spectacular own goal of his own devising which he really should have seen coming.
He couldn't have seen it coming just as Iceland and Russia didn't see it coming. Furthermore it was different he dealt with the issue PRIOR TO TAKING OFFICE. How many times must the actual facts be presented before they take precedence in your head over the spin.
As you say appearances matter, that rather than actual facts are what is driving the story, and it is evident that facts don't make the hype go away. Cameron has been caught in a trap that wasn't of his own making, of which he divested himself lawfully and ethically. Those are the facts. The appearance is what the mob are howling for, yet it is plain as day that they are howling because of who he is not what is alleged to have happened. The mob doesn't even care it wasn't Cameron who set up the account to begin with, his father did and passed him the assets, long before he was Prime Minister and being likely to become Prime Minister he divested himself of the funds lawfully.
Cameron will survive this, it is however interesting that Labour has set a precedent, there are a lot of skellies cupboards of politics, Cameron thankfully for himself did no actual wrong, if not wrongdoing is somehow a resignable matter, I wonder what actual wrongdoing is like. I find it interesting that the current Labour leadership are starting to backpeddle and leaving this to the mob. There were way too many fingers in pies in the Blair years, ( which was when Ian Cameron set up the funds) if stuff was suddenly to finally come out properly, well.....
Avoiding tax while refusing to close tax loopholes while telling the disabled, the homeless and the mentally ill that there's no tax money to help them while allowing london to be bought out by plutocrats, tyrants and mafiosos.
Is it a bit clearer why people might be a bit pissed off with Cameron? He's part of who gets to decide that this stuff is legal. A lot of us think it SHOULDN'T be "perfectly legal" and in past statements Cameron has tried to make out that he agrees with us while benefiting from this.
This would all stink less if his government didn't go after the vulnerable at every single opportunity.
Cameron is a scumbag. A scrounger. Thousands of pounds in taxpayer funded expenses for his suits and so on so that he can badmouth the man who claims less than 1% of that and buys his own, modest suits.
Da Boss wrote: Avoiding tax while refusing to close tax loopholes while telling the disabled, the homeless and the mentally ill that there's no tax money to help them while allowing london to be bought out by plutocrats, tyrants and mafiosos.
The big London buyouts were over ten years ago. That was when the Chelskis etc moved in. it wasn't just in London either.
It had happened - therefore it must be Camerons fault, shouldn't cut it.
Is it a bit clearer why people might be a bit pissed off with Cameron? He's part of who gets to decide that this stuff is legal. A lot of us think it SHOULDN'T be "perfectly legal" and in past statements Cameron has tried to make out that he agrees with us while benefiting from this.
The day it isnt perfectly legal is the day the money walks out of the nation never to return. Even Corbyn know this to be true.
Its economic hard reality, its why there is talk about closing the loopholes and there has been by both main parries for decades, but neither will do it.
Also passing monies to avoid inheritence tax is one of the things which is not only legal but shred wise and quite honourable. Your family member is dead, so hand it over, that's the nasty part, not the getting round it by deed of gift. Spreading money about the family to prevent this is mainstream you don't need to have had to been an Eton allumni to do this, most family owned homes are worth enough to be in the bracket..
Cameron is a scumbag. A scrounger. Thousands of pounds in taxpayer funded expenses for his suits and so on so that he can badmouth the man who claims less than 1% of that and buys his own, modest suits.
He isn't a scrounger, and we are still paying for the cosmic feth up which was Gordon Brown and will be for many decades to come.
I dont liike austerity, but it became necessary after the squanderfest that placed the UK into spiraling foreign debt.
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: Cameron overlooked one of the golden lessons of politics: the cover up is always worse than the crime.
What crime? What cover up? He has commited no crime. There is no cover up either.
With everyone getting exited you only need to imply a crime and point to silence as cover-up. Waiting days to say something has probably damaged him worse than having a non-active offshore company. Thus, the "cover-up" is worse than the "crime".
Nicola Sturgeon has joined Scotland's other party leaders in publishing her tax returns amid calls for transparency over politicians' personal finances.
Prime Minister David Cameron published a summary of his taxes after criticism in the wake of the Panama tax leak.
Scottish Labour's Kezia Dugdale released her returns on Saturday, and was followed by Tory Ruth Davidson.
SNP leader Ms Sturgeon and Willie Rennie of the Lib Dems then published their documents the following day.
Minus pension contributions, which are not taxable, each opposition leader was paid over £52,000 for their work as an MSP. Each paid just over £10,000 in tax.
For her role as First Minister, again minus pension contributions, Ms Sturgeon was paid more than £104,000, and paid over £31,000 in tax.
'Palpable anger'
Ms Dugdale was the first of the Scottish party leaders to publish her returns, saying she had "nothing to hide".
The figures showed Ms Dugdale had paid £734.40 in tax for earnings from her Daily Record newspaper column despite donating the full annual fee of £5450 to the Motor Neuron Disease Scotland charity.
Ms Dugdale said: "There is an obligation on all of us who seek to serve the public to be transparent.
"Not since the MPs expenses scandal has there been such palpable anger at the sense of unfairness at the heart of our society.
"Politicians need to not only play by the rules, they need to be seen to be playing by the rules."
Kezia speech
Image caption
Ms Dugdale said there was an obligation on public servants to be transparent
Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson, who published her returns shortly after Ms Dugdale, also made charitable donations from her income without claiming relief.
Ms Davidson has repeatedly defended Mr Cameron over his tax affairs, saying the prime minister has been "very clear" about his finances.
Scottish Lib Dem leader Mr Rennie, who published his returns on Sunday, noted: "Compared with certain other party leaders my tax returns are rather dull, but here they are anyway."
As Ms Sturgeon published her returns, the SNP said both she and her predecessor Alex Salmond had forgone over £20,000 in pay since 2009 through a system which sees minister put money from their own pay packets towards public spending.
Ms Sturgeon said: "There should be a presumption that if you earn money in this country, you should pay tax on that in this country.
"I'm going to continue to argue very strongly for reform of tax avoidance."
But why didnt she do this before!!!! WHAT DOES SHE HAVE TO HIDE PRIOR TO 2014!!!
She has a tax return to publish!!! What about those of us who pay no tax becuase we fall under the thresholds for paying PAYE!!!! Elitist fether!
Why did they have to wait for a scandal before publishing their returns!!!!
I reckon it should be common practice. In fact it'd be quite interesting if tax returns were public information.
I guess that might put richer people at risk of crime.
Corbyn was calling for all MPs to publish their tax and financial details. I'm pretty sure there'll be some pretty dodgy dealings on the Labour side too, but I know who I'd be betting will come out the worst out of the two parties.
Da Boss wrote: I reckon it should be common practice. In fact it'd be quite interesting if tax returns were public information.
I guess that might put richer people at risk of crime.
Corbyn was calling for all MPs to publish their tax and financial details. I'm pretty sure there'll be some pretty dodgy dealings on the Labour side too, but I know who I'd be betting will come out the worst out of the two parties.
Corbyn may have pushed but I reckon its honors even for sliminess out of dodgy dealings between red and blue. Tories have the better headline grabbing problems but labour are much more sinister in their back room dealings and brown envelopes of cash.
Mr. Burning wrote: Tories have the better headline grabbing problems but labour are much more sinister in their back room dealings and brown envelopes of cash.
Mr. Burning wrote: Tories have the better headline grabbing problems but labour are much more sinister in their back room dealings and brown envelopes of cash.
Good luck quantifying that.
Recent history shows us that Labour were rotten to the core. The current crop of Labour MP's are better but old habits die hard and their associations are still questionable. They don't have to show anything but it'll be close if both the cabinet and its shadow produce their tax returns and information about donations and financial dealings.
Da Boss wrote: I reckon it should be common practice. In fact it'd be quite interesting if tax returns were public information.
I guess that might put richer people at risk of crime.
Yeah...because it is a good idea to invade other people's privacy? What you're asking for is on the same level as making your wage, social security, health insurance etc. public. It's a private matter and there's no reason to make anything public bar leftist jealousy trying to bemire wealthier people.
Da Boss wrote: I reckon it should be common practice. In fact it'd be quite interesting if tax returns were public information.
I guess that might put richer people at risk of crime.
Yeah...because it is a good idea to invade other people's privacy? What you're asking for is on the same level as making your wage, social security, health insurance etc. public. It's a private matter and there's no reason to make anything public bar leftist jealousy trying to bemire wealthier people.
Well, that sounds just like something the fascist right would say!
But to be absolutely clear, I'm not really advocating for that. I'm not that interested in private individuals wealth. It would be mildly interesting, but I can see the downsides with opening people to harassment and crime. Not worth it, so private individuals should probably be able to keep their wealth a secret.
Go nuts.
Polticians, senior civil servants and political groups and lobby groups though? Total transperancy.
Well, that sounds just like something the fascist right would say!
Do you see how silly that looks?
No, actually. It's one of the things leftists usually ask for, and it ain't a secret either. What they don't understand is that this would backfire pretty darn hard at the middle class, not the upper tiers. Ask for a raise? See your employer check your financial background first. You're not in debt? Sorry, no raise. Want to get employed? Let's have a look at your health insurance info first. Oh wait, a cardiac arrest? Ah, no, thanks, we're not hiring at the moment.
Then again, what do you expect of leftists, reasonable thinking?
Sigvatr wrote: I'd agree there. If you hold a public position, then you should be able to hold reponsible for it as you are expected to represent the people.
Well, that sounds just like something the fascist right would say!
Do you see how silly that looks?
No, actually. It's one of the things leftists usually ask for, and it ain't a secret either. What they don't understand is that this would backfire pretty darn hard at the middle class, not the upper tiers. Ask for a raise? See your employer check your financial background first. You're not in debt? Sorry, no raise. Want to get employed? Let's have a look at your health insurance info first. Oh wait, a cardiac arrest? Ah, no, thanks, we're not hiring at the moment.
Then again, what do you expect of leftists, reasonable thinking?
Such illustrious and enlightened reasonable thinking as throwing invectives around when people disagree with you? I think I'll stay leftist, thankyouverymuch.
I dunno, I'm not sure that's a stated policy of any left wing group I know of.
Why should your health records be available in that level of detail though, theoretically? Surely just acknowledging your source of health insurance (public or private) would be enough.
With bosses and raises, I can't see how it would really effect things that much. I could be wrong though as I've never been in the posiiton to give someone a raise deny them! I'd probably base it on their worth to my organisation if I was in that situation, not their debt level?
But like I say, this is not something I really want to see because I think the benefit would be pretty limited and the downsides could be serious.
Such illustrious and enlightened reasonable thinking as throwing invectives around when people disagree with you? I think I'll stay leftist, thankyouverymuch.
No worries. People either start questioning things around them one day and apply critical thinking or pointlessly complain about anything they don't like / are jealous of and stay leftist.
Would you believe my left wing beliefs are not motivated by jealousy? I reckon I'm well paid for my enjoyable job and have lots of free time. I can afford the things I'd like to own and save money at the same time.
I'm left wing because I believe it's important to reduce inequality and give people a fair shake in life.
If you've worked hard at something to earn a pile of money, more power to you in my opinion. Progressive taxation might be a bit of a bear for you, but the benefits for the society you live in are huge.
Oh, I'm not talking about you as a person, in particular. It's not like all of our friends were conservative either, in the contrary, my sister is quite the left-leftist
I'm referring to the leftists that operate at the higher level, the ones I have to occasionally deal with; mostly politicians and the like. Their political opinion is a problem because they can't be reasoned with as they are public representatives...and if you gotta deal professionally with people that you know cannot budge an inch (in public), who want to make you change despite not knowing how the stuff they talk about works...then that's tiring; for all sides involved.
The general leftist mindset just isn't a reasonable one. Being leftist is totally okay, you can be a super nice person and do what you want, noone got a problem with dat. Problems start when said mindset suddenly tries to get in economics - where the fun ends and reality kicks in. Where rationality is in high demand and rationa thinking and leftism are mutually exclusive in economics.
Stuff like higher taxation for wealthy is one example, it's the #1 (and most often sole) means by leftists to finance anything they ask for. Introduce something the sheep want to believe (more child support, awesooooome!), tell them to raise taxes for the rich...etc. Yawn.
You know that a policy isn't feasible when people would immediately stop supporting it if they had to pay for it themselves. I.e. the whole refugee disaster - public opinion was "Hey, man, those poor people, let's help them!" at start and at the very moment when it was proclaimed that due to cover cost of taking in refugees, they'd have to raise taxes / step back from less taxes, boom, it all caved and people suddenly weren't so positive anymore. It's hilarious. The entire thing is a super ugly mess and it's getting even worse next election. The CDU lost major supporters from the economy, including very high profile companies that operate internationally. Next election will be the first one neither of us two will vote as there no longer is a party that represent conservatism in Germany - which is troubling to say the least.
The problem is that this isn't our problem, high tier companies operate on a different level than regular ones and know how to deal with pesky politicians. The problem is that everything gets back at the middle class which is taking hit after hit right now with no end in sight. We don't care, our pension will be higher than most people's wages nowadays, but with so many cuts to the middle class, as a regular employee working right now, you have to worry about how you gotta pay the bills when you're old. A lot.
Another great example is renewable energies. Leftists love them. A lot. Where can you find stuff like solar panels mostly? On houses owned by the government or by upper tier citizens - solar panels are expensive to buy. Now...they get subsidized...a lot. By the government aaaaaand (that's important): the energy producers. They increased their energy prices by a good amount to free up cash for solar panels. Now...who pays for those subsidies? You. And everyone else. Everyone pays for them in their energy bill. The upper tiers don't care. People with an already low income do.
Seems they've also used the name of the Red Cross to hide the true ownership of two foundations with noble-sounding names - the Faith Foundation and Brotherhood Foundation. Some 500 different customers have put their shares in off-shore companies these two foundations so they can hide behind an aura of do-good nobility with the Red Cross marked as "owner". Other charities might also have been used like this. I especially like this quote:
"Mossack Fonseca didn't immediately return an email seeking comment, but a leaked email cited by the publications appeared to lay out the firm's reasoning."
"Given that banks and financial institutions are today asked to obtain information about economic beneficiaries, it has become difficult for us not to divulge the identity of those of the Faith Foundation's," the email said, according to the papers. "That's why we've implemented this structure designating the 'International Red Cross.' It's easier that way."
Recent history shows us that Labour were rotten to the core.
More than the tories?
Hell yes.
Links were already given. And the New Labour spin machine at the time insisted that the story when in the press stayed for but one day and moved on BBS comlied as did most papers that knew what was good for them.
If George Osborne had refused to pay council tax and bullied inland revenue workers that tried to do their official duties, how long would that run in the press? And how much effort would be placed on removing him? There would be fething riots and you know it. but when Prescott did it he just 'paid it back' several yerars later. This was a crime you know, if you full on defraud the taxman you dint just pay it back, you go to court and are lucky if they demand it back at 4X rate, and are luckier yet if you escape prison.
When Labour do their dodgy doings, its the problem of those who know about it not those who do the deals.
Tax evasion and tax avoidance are two completely different things. One is illegal one is not.
As separate as borrowing and theft, as separate as invitation and trespass, as separate as .... well you should get the idea.
This is embarassing for Cameron, but quite unfairly, first he did not set up the accounts he inherited them, and to his credit moved them onshore some years ago, BEFORE being forced to do so or exposed.
What Cameron should have done in an ideal world is to have announced his inheritance, and moving it onshore, as part of his parliamentary declaration of interests, at the time when his government proposed to sort out tax avoidance several years ago.
The second best thing to do would have been to announce straight away when the Panama news came out that he used to have these accounts and moved them on shore several years ago, and that he doesn't have any more of them.
However what he actually has done is to say he won't profit from them in the future (i.e. he did profit from them in the past) and to say he's learned a lesson for the future. What does that mean? If he hasn't got any more offshore accounts, it's meaningless. If he has got some more offshore accounts, he's still dissembling.
The only positive thing you can say about it is that lots of people already thought Cameraon was a useless lying gak anyway, and having more proof doesn't make their opinion worse. However their may be some Conservative supporters, like my parents, whose opinion of Cameron actually has been damaged by the affair, which is what my parents were saying to me at the weekend.
Today's headline sare full of woe for Cameron and especially Osborne, since they have been fored by public opinion to publish their tax returns.
Osborne took nearly £45,000 out his family firm Osborne & Little last year, although the company hasn't paid any corporation tax since 2008 due to not making a profit and other tax avoidance measure deferring tax payments.) Also it's been found that Osborne will be £2,500 a year better off thanks to the tax changes he put into the recent budget.
This of course is tangential but it's fallout from the overall Panama revelations.
Some theories I heard (dont know how true) suggested that us firms named earlier in the thread, providing the same services as the ones in the panama papers leak funded the journalists who did the investigation, to drum up public preassure for increased regulations on overseastax havens, therefore regulating their compeditors out of the market. Forgive me if this was mentioned earlier haven't read through the full thread yet
I'm sure that if you worked your way through the money trails of corporate America, you'll certainlly find such firms with investments in various news agencies, but that's true of literally everything corporate.
Quantify it then, being sure to include all the brown envelopes that are doubtless getting passed around Westminster.
Puffin, stop trolling. I already quantified it with facts. You just don't like facts.
As for the brown envelopes 'doubtless' being pased around. Got any evidence of that? Notice the difference, you make flat assumptions and dont back them up, I gave supporting links highlighting known events.
Osborne took nearly £45,000 out his family firm Osborne & Little last year, although the company hasn't paid any corporation tax since 2008 due to not making a profit and other tax avoidance measure deferring tax payments.) Also it's been found that Osborne will be £2,500 a year better off thanks to the tax changes he put into the recent budget.
.
We should look at what that means. Is the company on hold while Osborne conducts his other career, or has he fethed up his business, which would be embarassing for a chancellor.
However what you are saying a company is not generating profit there is no ;tax avoidance' if they arent paying profit related tax. These measures are normal and common place and are not a dodge. A large number of businesses rely on not having to pay tax on non existant profits, I would conder that a default logical position. Conpanies can have earnings and have liabilities that need paying, and it might be enough for a company to break even for a while, in fact a number of companies do exactly that, especially small businesses. But this system has to be the same for all. A lot of LLC's rely on not being hit by the taxman if they break even, and the Treasury has long understood it is best not to tax break even companies because you will only possibly force them to fold, which means employees suffer and liabilities get unresolved further weakening the economy.
It is very likely Osborne and Little is on furlough due to George Osborne's primary job, the company could remain dormant this way for as long as necessary.
If you can prove that Osborne and Little had undeclared profits you would have a major scandal, becauyse that would be tax evasion. But if the comapny is just treading water it isnt even tax avaoidance, its just the system working normally for all.
Osborne is also still liable for personal tax on the £45K. As fro being £2.5K better off, that is ancilliary, as far as business is concerned its not even small change. It is a desperate stretch to imply that Osborne changed the tax system to personally profit by £2500.
Osbourne is a snake, but you need better evidence on him than this.
Well, we can't see how clean the Labour bench is - the shadow cabinet have said they will not release their returns.
The Tories have had their information publicised,scrutinised and debated now the narrative is moved to privacy and how much access the public should have - the poor dears.
Mr. Burning wrote: Well, we can't see how clean the Labour bench is - the shadow cabinet have said they will not release their returns.
The Tories have had their information publicised,scrutinised and debated now the narrative is moved to privacy and how much access the public should have - the poor dears.
Good job, people.
This is fairly clever, the principle here is to constantly be on the offensive, always attack, never defend. The spin machine works a bit like a net troll, constantly accusing highlighting only a portion of the responces to do so, and never responding to return questions. The populace shouldn't even think about Labour possibly having fingers in pies, scandals are for Tories. I spin methodology was VERY successful in the late 90's there was a lot of Labour sleaze, often in plain sight, but it wasn't worth reporting somehow, and if it was it stepped through the press back into the darkness, even when criminal culpability was concerned. We will have to see how much press control Labour actually have, which is likely to be a lot.
If the spin machine is working as intended only the Daily Mail and possible the Express will be talking about undisclosed Labour tax returns 48 hours after the story breaks, for everyone else especially the BBC it will be ex-news.
The wildcard here is the Sun, the grand policy on Labour spin worked because the Sun defected to Labour, they mighty do so again, but I don't see them backing Corbyn frankly.
SilverMK2 wrote: Finland has public tax records for all people working and paying tax in the country. I would be happy for such a system to exist in the UK.
As would I. I would also love to see the tax system massively simplified to eliminate tax avoidance.
As for the brown envelopes 'doubtless' being pased around. Got any evidence of that?
Nope but its a certainty that inappropriate behaviour has gone unreported and therefore its an impossiblity to say that 1 party is more corrupt than another.
Given prior experience, you seem to have an interesting relationship with 'facts'.
Ok, puffin I asked you nicely to stop trolling. If you disagree with what I post, and you are certainly free to do so, at least attempt to give reasons, especially when I back up what I say with LINKS to EVIDENCE.
I am yet to see you do anything remotely like that. The only thing you have a 'prior experience' of is posting opinion without any evidence and dismissing evidence actually reported without any counter-evidence. You evidently have NOTHING INTELLIGENT TO CONTRIBUTE, so give it up, and stop pestering those who do with baseless attacks on their credibility.
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