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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.
"Our crops will wither, our children will die piteous
deaths and the sun will be swept from the sky. But is it true?" - Tom Kirby, CEO, Games Workshop Ltd
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.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/04/04 20:22:42
For thirteen years I had a dog with fur the darkest black. For thirteen years he was my friend, oh how I want him back.
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.
Fate is in heaven, armor is on the chest, accomplishment is in the feet. - Nagao Kagetora
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.
"Our crops will wither, our children will die piteous
deaths and the sun will be swept from the sky. But is it true?" - Tom Kirby, CEO, Games Workshop Ltd
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.
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.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/04/04 21:01:27
"Our crops will wither, our children will die piteous
deaths and the sun will be swept from the sky. But is it true?" - Tom Kirby, CEO, Games Workshop Ltd
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.
This message was edited 4 times. Last update was at 2016/04/05 04:00:35
“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”
Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something.
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.
This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2016/04/05 04:47:35
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.
For thirteen years I had a dog with fur the darkest black. For thirteen years he was my friend, oh how I want him back.
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.
For thirteen years I had a dog with fur the darkest black. For thirteen years he was my friend, oh how I want him back.
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.
"Our crops will wither, our children will die piteous
deaths and the sun will be swept from the sky. But is it true?" - Tom Kirby, CEO, Games Workshop Ltd
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.
“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”
Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something.
), and really bad arguments.