Icelandic Prime Minister Resigns After Panama Data Leak (bloomberg.com) 228
Omar Valdimarsson, reporting for Bloomberg: The Panama secrecy leak claimed its first scalp after Icelandic Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson resigned following revelations about his personal finances. The decision was announced in parliament after the legislature had been the focus of street protests that attracted thousands of Icelanders angered by the alleged tax evasion of their leader. Gunnlaugsson, who will step down a year before his term was due to end, gave in to mounting pressure from the opposition and even from corners of his own party. The Panama documents leak, printed in newspapers around the world, showed that the 41-year-old premier and his wife had investments placed in the British Virgin Islands, which included debt in Iceland's three failed banks. An article on The Guardian sheds more light on this: The leaked documents from the Mossack Fonseca law firm show Gunnlaugsson and his wife, Anna Sigurlaug Palsdottir, bought a British Virgin Islands-based offshore company, Wintris Inc, in December 2007 to invest her share of the proceeds of the sale of her father's business, Iceland's only Toyota importer. Gunnlaugsson sold his 50% stake to his wife for a symbolic $1 at the end of 2009, eight months after he was elected to parliament as an MP for the centre-right Progressive party. He failed, however, to declare an interest in the company either then or when he became prime minister in 2013. His office has said his shareholding was an error due simply to the couple having a joint bank account and that it had "always been clear to both of them that the prime minister's wife owned the assets." The transfer of ownership was made as soon as this was pointed out, a spokesman said. The prime minister denies he was required to declare an interest.
wow, they have a real accountable democracy (Score:5, Interesting)
Or.. (Score:2)
It's an accusation of a conflict of interest tied to a banking collapse. Kind of a political hot potato that doesn't necessarily reflect a functioning democracy. If HRC had been tied to mortgage-backed securities or investing in sub-prime loans pre-2008, she would be polling much worse with independents here.
The parliamentary system's no-confidence system allows for political squabbles that come up *between* elections to remove a sitting PM. For us there's a delay... and we're a bit less responsive becau
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The notion of confidence is the chief reason Walter Bagehot, 150 years ago, observed the superiority of the Westminster system to the Presidential system. Short of a trial and conviction for impeachment, there's precious little Congress can do about an errant president.
Re:wow, they have a real accountable democracy (Score:5, Informative)
Keep in mind this is the same country that allowed banks to fail and threw the bankers responsible in jail during the 2008 crisis. Everyone predicted their economy would implode, but actually recovered more quickly than several other European countries.
I imagine the sting from that has made them more wary of even a hint of corruption, which is oddly starting to reverberate through the US after TARP, TPP, and now no real recovery in sight.
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It's because the people predicting that were rich assholes that did not want their fake investments to fizzle. All banks should have been allowed to collapse or better yet, given the corporate death penalty around the world.
But then I also thought that propping up GM was stupid.
Re:wow, they have a real accountable democracy (Score:5, Informative)
Pickled fish isn't widely eaten here. A commonly eaten thing you're not used to is harðfiskur, which is basically fish jerky. But most food here is pretty standard western fare...probably the most commonly eaten food here is pizza.
Now, if you want weird stuff, we've got no shortage of options! Want rotten ammonia-reeking poisonous shark? You can have it with some fermented whale and sheep head if you'd like....
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Want rotten ammonia-reeking poisonous shark? You can have it with some fermented whale and sheep head if you'd like....
Proof [wikipedia.org] that people in Iceland are descendants of vikings. Seriously what is wrong with my ancestors where they thought that would taste good. I still remember the smell every Christmas at my grandparent's house when my grandfather made that.
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It's not the 1990s, Slashdot; fix your unicode support. It's ridiculous that I can't type a thorn here.
harðfiskur
But you did type a thorn... right? Isn't that what "ð" is?
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No, that's an eth.
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harÃfiskur
How the heck did you get an eth in there? Did you threated whiplash with a large axe? When I qouted you I get junk.
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He likely uses the alt-ddd digit option in windows. That for reasons that I can't grasp work with /. while every "non latin" letter I enter on my Mac gets garbled.
And no: even the german umlauts don't work on a PC unless entered via alt-ddd. No idea what the difference is.
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Dunno, I just typed it. Still can't type a thorn, though.
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Dunno, I just typed it. Still can't type a thorn, though.
iiinteresting. I'm guessing it's a charset thing. All claims to be UTF8, but I suspect it lies. Surely there isn't a charset out there that has eth but not thorn.
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I think you can use certain html entities like ð = ð
Re:wow, they have a real accountable democracy (Score:4, Insightful)
The difference between a "joint checking" and separated accounts is merely a formality and not one of any real significance. Pretending it is enough separation is functionally idiotic.
Re:wow, they have a real accountable democracy (Score:5, Interesting)
Exactly. I can't think of any jurisdiction, at least in the West, where selling your holdings to your spouse for a dollar somehow means the conflict of interest goes away. This is the kind of idiotic scam someone about to go bankrupt would try, and with the same result. Handing it over to your spouse doesn't make the conflict go away.
Re:wow, they have a real accountable democracy (Score:4, Informative)
They did the transfer the day before a new law that would have required disclosure; the transfer didn't do anything to the conflict of interest, but it did prevent him from being required to disclose it, and kept it secret until this leak.
Nobody ever claimed the purpose was to remove the conflict of interest.
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I'd say deliberately trying to obscure a conflict of interest at the very least underscores the fact that they were well aware that there was a conflict.
Re:wow, they have a real accountable democracy (Score:5, Informative)
The funny part is him trying to dissolve Parliament preemptively before they could even take up his scandal, and the President's blocking of that action. That's the real reason he had to resign suddenly; his ass-covering maneuver failed spectacularly, and Parliament was going to be really, really pissed.
The cover-up attempt bit a lot quicker than the scandal.
Re:wow, they have a real accountable democracy (Score:5, Informative)
That is not in the slightest the issue.
First off, this government's popularity has gone totally down the drain because of their continued efforts to enrich themselves and their friends at the expense of the nation (selling off bank assets in no-bid auctions at a tiny fraction of their value to family members of government officials, fighting to get Iceland expanded fishing quotas and then just handing them off to the fishing barons, etc), their continuous attempts to stifle press freedom, and countless other things. The prime minister's, before this incident, was in polls the choice of only 12% of the electorate. This is just the latest outrage in a long string of them.
Now, for the actual issue. Simmi and his wealthy wife, back before the financial crash, set up an offshore shell company to secretly buy shares in the three large Icelandic banks that turned out, one year later, to go catastrophically belly-up. Now the two of them (50-50 owners in the company) were creditors, scrambling with the other creditors over the right to the remains of the banks. They were what we refer to as "vultures". But this was in secret.
Then Simmi ran for office as the head of Framsóknarflokkurinn (Progress Party), a right-populist party (some might call it the "Idiot Party", as they run every year on some variant of "We're going to give you TONS OF MONEY, and nobody's going to have to pay for it, not EVERS!"). His big thing was that he was part of a group fighting against the wicked vultures trying to pick Iceland dry. When in actuality, of course, he was a vulture.
We haven't gotten to the problem part yet.
Because then he was elected. And the regulations (beyond general conflict of interest) are that if you own more than a 25% stake in an investment company, you have to disclose it. He was prime minister for months before he did anything. And that "doing something" was not to disclose his secret holdings, but to sell them to his wife for $1 (which still didn't remove the conflict of interest).
Still not to the problem part.
Because as the head of the government, he then pursued policies to get 2B euro of money that otherwise would have gone to the state to instead go to the creditors. "The creditors" including his wife and other secret accounts owned by other members of the governing coalition.
Basically, he robbed the country to make up for his investment losses.
Furthermore, people, stop the whoop-di-doo about his resignation. Because he's just stepping back to running the party behind the scenes while one of his ministers is taking over. The governing coalition isn't leaving. Actually Simmi reportedly tried to break the coalition, but the president wouldn't let him. Now he says that the president is lying about that, that he never planned to break it.
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Then why did the peons even bother protesting? They can't do squat if push comes to shove.
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If you want to use american phrases like "Second Amendment", you should have in parentheses (what it means).
No one in Europe except law experts and history hobbyists knows what the second refinement of your constitution was about.
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Heh, Bernie is actually pretty popular here [grapevine.is]. (Yes, we do follow US politics :) ).
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That is not in the slightest the issue.
First off, this government's popularity has gone totally down the drain because of their continued efforts to enrich themselves and their friends at the expense of the nation (selling off bank assets in no-bid auctions at a tiny fraction of their value to family members of government officials, fighting to get Iceland expanded fishing quotas and then just handing them off to the fishing barons, etc), their continuous attempts to stifle press freedom, and countless other things. The prime minister's, before this incident, was in polls the choice of only 12% of the electorate. This is just the latest outrage in a long string of them.
Now, for the actual issue. Simmi and his wealthy wife, back before the financial crash, set up an offshore shell company to secretly buy shares in the three large Icelandic banks that turned out, one year later, to go catastrophically belly-up. Now the two of them (50-50 owners in the company) were creditors, scrambling with the other creditors over the right to the remains of the banks. They were what we refer to as "vultures". But this was in secret.
Then Simmi ran for office as the head of Framsóknarflokkurinn (Progress Party), a right-populist party (some might call it the "Idiot Party", as they run every year on some variant of "We're going to give you TONS OF MONEY, and nobody's going to have to pay for it, not EVERS!"). His big thing was that he was part of a group fighting against the wicked vultures trying to pick Iceland dry. When in actuality, of course, he was a vulture.
We haven't gotten to the problem part yet.
Because then he was elected. And the regulations (beyond general conflict of interest) are that if you own more than a 25% stake in an investment company, you have to disclose it. He was prime minister for months before he did anything. And that "doing something" was not to disclose his secret holdings, but to sell them to his wife for $1 (which still didn't remove the conflict of interest).
Still not to the problem part.
Because as the head of the government, he then pursued policies to get 2B euro of money that otherwise would have gone to the state to instead go to the creditors. "The creditors" including his wife and other secret accounts owned by other members of the governing coalition.
Basically, he robbed the country to make up for his investment losses.
Furthermore, people, stop the whoop-di-doo about his resignation. Because he's just stepping back to running the party behind the scenes while one of his ministers is taking over. The governing coalition isn't leaving. Actually Simmi reportedly tried to break the coalition, but the president wouldn't let him. Now he says that the president is lying about that, that he never planned to break it.
In other words, psychopaths attain power, and manage to keep it, even in Iceland. And that's terribly sad.
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Lóan er komin? [flowerwatch.net]
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Fram: Forward ("frahm") :)
Sókn: Attack ("soak")
Framsókn: Progress ("FRAHM-soak")
Framsóknar: Of progress ("FRAHM-soak-nar")
Flokkur: Political party (also group, class, category, etc) ("FLOCK-er")
Flokkurinn: The political party ("FLOCK-er-in")
Framsóknarflokkurinn: The political party of progress, AKA the Progress Party ("FRAHM-soak-nar-Flock-er-in")
Maybe a bottle of brennivín [wikipedia.org] and
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Describing an off shore account in a tax shelter as a "checking account" is like describing an industrial electromagnet as a "fridge magnet".
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Re:wow, they have a real accountable democracy (Score:4, Informative)
He sold the asset in question to his wife for one dollar, and the mere fact that his wife still held that asset as he was assuring that funds intended to shore up Icelandic banks was instead redirected to creditors pretty much makes this a case of out and out corruption. You can't just get rid of a conflict of interest by selling your assets to your spouse, particularly when the actual sale was for such a nominal fee that it raises the question as to whether it was even a legitimate transfer.
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Yes, it's not clear why he didn't set up a blind trust to hold his investments while he was in office, or simply to declare his holdings.
Something is rotten in the former dependency of Denmark.
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I can't speak for Iceland, but in many common law jurisdictions you cannot claim that you have divested yourself of an asset if you sell it to a spouse or other close family member, and even transactions between more distantly related people, or people not related by blood at all, can be called into question where the transfer involved a transaction whose amount was only a fraction of the possible value of the asset.
Even beyond that, however, is a critical notion in dealing with conflicts of interest, and t
Re:wow, they have a real accountable democracy (Score:5, Insightful)
Tax shelters have probably been around forever. They are more sophisticated these days simply because financial systems are more complex, and reporting requirements far greater than they were in the past. Like any scam, tax dodges have to invoke more and more misdirection as investigators gain better powers.
There is a case to be made, however, that these tax shelters are a symptom of the rule makers working in their own self-interest, and creating taxation rules that benefit them. And that's why leaks like this are so important, because in the case of systemic fraud, about the only way you close the holes is by generating a lot of outrage.
Look at Switzerland, whose banking industry was notorious for decades for helping everyone from despots to drug cartels hide cash. For chrissake, even the Nzis were stowing gold they'd stolen from the Jews they were marching off to the gas chambers in Swiss banks. It was only after sustained pressure from international agencies and governments like the US that Switzerland finally began to close the loopholes. And it wouldn't surprise if that's why these tax shelters have become more popular. As the older means of hiding your cash from the taxman (or in some cases, the police) dried up, more sophisticated rackets were formulated.
For me, as bad as it is that rich and powerful people are doing this, the real target here should be the bankers, lawyers and accountants of dozens of countries who set up these schemes. While it will doubtless please the mob that a few politicians and international types fall over this, I'd like to see murky investment scheme organizations like Mossack Fonseca & Co. torn wide open. Otherwise, the people that create these dodges and shelters will just regroup and build some new schemes.
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"Mob rule?" No. In the morning, he attempted to dissolve parliament and force early elections. The President asked him if he had support in Parliament from the governing coalition for that, and he didn't have any evidence of support. So the President said no, which is one of the functions of the President in their system. The Prime Minister resigned shortly thereafter, as Parliament was likely going to be really upset, and still had all their power.
Very, very far from "mob rule."
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This wasn't a "join checking account". I have no idea why you would think it was.
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That's exactly why straightforward democracy is almost always a bad idea
Yeah, sucks to have Trump as your figurehead, eh?
What are you talking about? We're not even through the primary process yet, and he doesn't have (and quite possibly will not get) enough of his party's votes to assure him that he will be the party's nominee. How a private organization like a political party runs its own affairs - with regard to putting forward a candidate in an actual general election - has nothing whatsoever to do with the charter of the country or one's position on pure democracy vs. constitutional republicanism etc. It's a private asso
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Trump won't get the nod. Even if they have to bring in Romney as an attempted at a controlled landing (as opposed to a complete crash), they won't let Trump on the ballot.
The GOP knows it won't win the White House in November. That ship has sailed with Cruz and Trump as the leading contenders. Now it's about preserving the party against the inevitable Trump/anti-Trump wars that will follow Trump's departure.
For fuck's sake, even Sanders would beat Trump.
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As much as I would like to believe he won't get the nod, the reality is that they will run Trump if he gets enough votes. He's got too many votes to ignore him. The only chance they have is if every single other delegate and important member of the party gets behind one already serious candidate (realistically, only Cruz meets the criteria) and try to upset the convention.
A candidate that comes out of the convention needs to be one of the three who are running. Otherwise, the candidate will have no legit
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The Republican base is already broken, and in reality has been broken since 2008. Trump may be the instrument of GOP Armageddon, but the Horsemen of the Apocalypse have been wreaking havoc for eight years now. Whether Trump wins the nomination or not, the party is in bad shape. If he loses the nomination and walks away with his supporters, the meltdown happens before the election. If Trump manages to get the nomination, then the party melts down after the election. Either way, there's a Democrat in the Whit
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As much as I would like to believe he won't get the nod, the reality is that they will run Trump if he gets enough votes. He's got too many votes to ignore him. The only chance they have is if every single other delegate and important member of the party gets behind one already serious candidate (realistically, only Cruz meets the criteria) and try to upset the convention.
Delegates are only bound on the first ballot, if Trump doesn't achieve a majority they're free to abandon him for another candidate.
Some will stick around but some are anything but Trump supporters who are bound by party rules to vote Trump on the first ballot.
If they're smart they could even manage the narrative because of how much Trump benefited from the split field.
If it comes down to Trump vs Alternative and there's very good evidence that Alternative would have won 60% of the votes in a 2 person race
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At least some of the delegates feel bound to vote for who their populations voted for, which is the candidate who sent them there.
You say that as if we have any precedent for what a contested convention would look like, but it hasn't happened since the parties adopted the current primary system in the 70s. Most of the delegates haven't even been selected yet, and the state parties have a lot of control over that process. They could easily (and likely will) choose delegates who are opposed to Trump.
If he loses the first ballot, don't be surprised if he loses the nomination altogether. Technically, the delegates could even unbind themse
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Trump won't get the nod. Even if they have to bring in Romney as an attempted at a controlled landing (as opposed to a complete crash), they won't let Trump on the ballot. /. says.
This is what everyone on
And probably some (most?) americans believe.
However the international press assumes a clear victory for Trump.
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Also, if you're going to get on your high horse, you might want to look at the gross asssumptions in your own posts, comrade. Clean hands and all that.
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I don't know what either of you are talking about, but in my State we elect professional legislators, but also use Direct Democracy. We've trained the legislature not to decide anything too controversial themselves; instead of voting on a controversial law, they vote on what language to refer to the People for direct vote. If the people don't like the language, which happens often, they can (and do) write their own version and get it on the ballot. It is not uncommon that we vote on two proposals at the sam
Pirate Party (Score:5, Interesting)
Of interest to Slashdotters is that the Pirate Party of Iceland currently has a generous lead in the polls if an early election is called.
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Iceland is big enough to successfully invade the Turks & Caicos. But just barely.
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Fuck that! Turks and Caicos are going to become the eleventh Canadian province! Time for Canada to actually have a nice little domestic tax shelter to counter the six or seven that Britain runs!
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As a province, full Canadian Federal taxes would apply plus whatever provincial taxes they have, so it wouldn't be any more of tax shelter then Alberta.
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I still think it's a great idea, and I don't know why some Canadian politicians have been so averse to it. I'm sure Britain would love to pass of the Turks and Caicos, considering the problems the dependency has had over the last ten years, and the people of the dependency would become part of Confederation, gaining access to the Canadian economy and a fairly strong political and economic system. Best of all, they wouldn't even have to change the head of state!
Re:Pirate Party (Score:4, Informative)
Trivia on the subject. The Icelandic name for the Pirate Party is "Píratapartýið" But that's not Icelandic for "Pirate Party" - pirate is "sjóræningur" and political party is "flokkur". "Pírati" is an Icelandification of "Pirate" as in the international Pirate Party movement (they wanted to differentiate themselves from literal pirates), while "partý" is a loanword for the type of party where you go out and have fun (not the political kind).
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In Iceland, what to they call copyright infringes?
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"Brot á höfundarrétti"
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Sounds like an sacrifice to Odin, hanging at his neck, uttering his final words :D
Re:Pirate Party (Score:5, Funny)
Upheaval (Score:3)
Iceland has had its fair share of political upheaval [voxeu.org] post 2008. Fantastic country though -- I highly recommend a visit.
These are a very stoic people. They live on a volcanic island that is essentially trying every day to kill them off. In Iceland you can actually see the effect that the environment has on a population. They have some of the most dangerous roads I have ever seen in the world and absolutely no guard rails or for that matter not even much in the way of signs. You can hike out to the West cost of the island (which is the Westernmost point of Europe) and look down to the sea -- which is more than half a kilometer straight down. No railing. No signs. Not even a small rope. Just a nice grassy pleasant stroll until you just walk off the edge and plunge to your death. It's completely fantastic there.
They take this same stoic (you fuck up, you pay the price) view of their politicians and their banks.
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Sorry, but westernmost point of Europe is in Portugal, as you can see for yourself here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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The map you linked is useless.
Two thirds right.
The point identified on the map is the westernmost mainland point; which is in Portugal. Correct.
However, Iceland is not mainland, it is an island; so we are interested in the westernmost point, including islands.
However, even then its not iceland, and westernmost island point of Europe still happens to be in Portugal, in the Azores islands.
Re:Upheaval (Score:4, Funny)
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Kebab, Falafel, Baklava, oriental wine, Karniyarik, Guellac, Rakki, oriental jewelry, and assuming you are a male idiot and not a girl idiot: the most sexy girls on the planet! But perhaps you are a girl and lesbian and missed that aspect so far ... which would prove the point: you are an complete idiot.
BTW: we are talking about The Icelands here. A Viking country. The Vikings have the longest history of peaceful trade with Arabia and other islamic countries than any other " western nation" of the world. On
Re:Upheaval (Score:4, Informative)
Iceland has a higher percentage immigrants than Europe on average - more than all the other Nordics except Sweden. The second to fourth (it varies) most common immigrant nationality in Iceland is filipino. Despite high church registration, Iceland consistently polls as one of the least religious countries in the world, with one recent poll finding that not a single young person in the hundred-something that they polled backed a creationist worldview over that of the Big Bang. Iceland has been far more welcoming to immigrants during the immigrant crisis than mainland Europe.
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Natural selection.
No, seriously, why should we cordon off everything that could hurt you? We'd be cordoning off the whole country....
That said, if tourists keep dying at Reynisfjara we might have to do something. Apparently the sign at the parking lot warning of rogue waves isn't enough to stop people from... well, getting swept out into rough, cold, shark-infested wa
Give Islanders credit (Score:5, Interesting)
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Even if it comes out that Putin has a couple of trillion bucks stashed away he just has to say that he's doing it to stick it to the USA & the EU while not wearing a shirt and his popularity will go *up*.
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Putin seems the brightest of the bunch. His friends and family have zillions of dollars, but somehow Putin, like a great black hole at the center of a galaxy of corruption, can't be seen at all.
But even if someone finds a way to directly implicate him, it will be irrelevant, because much of the Russian press is in Putin's pocket, so most Russians will hear little more than whispers, and what they do hear will be countered with "Evil Yankee pig-dogs trying to make our beloved leader look bad..."
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What this document dump reveals is that Putin is a lot smarter than the idiot former PM of Iceland. Putin makes sure no money ever touches his hands. It all ends up be a bizarre set of coincidences in which his close friends and family are all billionaires, but so far as anyone can tell, Putin is as poor as a pauper.
The same, by the way, seems to be the case for Chinese President Xi Jinping, who appears to have no money, but who seems oddly surrounded by friends and family who have vast sums.
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if the Panama Papers do reveal Putin used a shell to hide his money, Russia's citizens will not stand for it and force his hand.
I think that greatly depends on the why and how Putin and the media he controls spin it. Russian's are a proud people. That is one of the reasons they continue to support their strong man.
If Putin makes it appear the reason for the shell corps and money laundering was to evade international sanctions for example, a good portion of the population will cheer him for being clever. The only way this is a political problem for him is if claims he did it for tax evasion or something as a primary objective ca
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Russians support strong men because, for centuries, it's all they've ever known. Their brief experiments with democracy; the brief periods of government that approached actual democracy, the four months of the Lvov coalition in 1917 and the Yeltsin years after the collapse of the USSR were such incredible failures that I don't think a lot of Russians actually even want anything but nominal democracy.
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The Kremlin on the other hand has already called the Panama Papers a CIA plot, (big surprise there). Hopefully, if the Panama Papers do reveal Putin used a shell to hide his money, Russia's citizens will not stand for it and force his hand.
Not likely. Here's why. And I speak from personal experience. I speak Russian rather well and I've spent more time in the ex-USSR than most people who aren't from there. One of the problems with Russians in particular is that for centuries they've had this rather quaint idea that the guy at the top is a really great, caring guy and the greatest leader in the world and it's those evil underlings beneath him who are corrupt and not doing his will. There are stories of peasants in the old days of the Tsar
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In sheer number of deaths, Mao is the worst (nobody is certain how many Chinese died in the Great Leap Forward, but it's in the tens of millions). As to whether Stalin or Hitler are worse, I still say Hitler, and not just because of the Holocaust (Stalin's purges, forced relocations and forced famines killed more), but because Hitler's actions not only lead to the Second World War, but so thoroughly altered the world order that in many ways we still live under the shadow the Nazis. Without WWII, it seems li
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Well, I'm sure if the Kremlin continues to deny it, then the
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Falkland? Britten-Norman?
Which islanders are you talking about, you dickhead?
That's it? (Score:2)
He shouldn't have had to resign for this. That's ludicrous. The implications of corruption in government, this seems like.. it will be the smallest collusion amongst any of the implications from any country's gov't officials, and if this is truly the reason he had to resign (neglecting anything about policy or ability to perform in other ways that leads the country to stability and prosperity) that's a shame.
Surely there will be much larger heads to fall, and surely, if this type of leak continues, much mor
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He did run for election to stop this type of corruption. Iceland was probably the nation that suffered the worst from the bank meltdowns nearly a decade ago. So its a big thing on Iceland. In most other nations it would have been a blip on the radar and nothing would have happened. But on Iceland its an important issue.
Yesterday it was a "small" demonstration where little less then a tenth of all of icelanders was demonstrating. Ok, so it was like 25 000 people, but with a population of only 330 000 its a b
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I'd like to think that in just about any liberal democracy, having the head of government being caught trying to hide a significant conflict of interest and then rejigging a repayment scheme so that a large amount of money was directed at his or her spouse would at the very least raise an eyebrow.
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If he did nothing wrong then why the protests marching to the parliament buildings in Iceland? He resigned because he was caught funneling money to protect investors of the failed banks to which he was hiding his involvement with. If he could have not resigned he would not have resigned.
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He shouldn't have had to resign for this. That's ludicrous.
Funneling off $2B of state money in order to benefit "corporate creditors" of banks of which he just happens to be one himself in secret is kind of a big thing in a country with fewer inhabitants than a suburb in the U.S. In particular when you won your election basically on themes fighting corporate greed and corruption.
He probably needed to resign solely in order to be able to leave the country legally as fast as possible.
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Of course he should resign. He had an undeclared conflict of interest and clearly knew he had such a conflict, which is why he went out of his way to try to hide the conflict; including a transfer of the assets to his wife (which wouldn't in almost any jurisdiction clear him of conflict) and in a timely fashion to avoid ever having to report it. He's the head of the government, a government which negotiated to have payments redirected to creditors, of which he (despite his pretty flimsy attempt to hide it)
video of absolute guilt (Score:2)
Icelandic PM walks out of interview
Icelandic names (Score:3)
The Prime Minister is properly addressed by his first name, Sigmundur, not "Gunnlaugsson," which is not surname like we use in English but a patronymic (his father is named Gunnlaug). Icelandic name [wikipedia.org].
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How so? He did actually resign over a scandal, not try to shift the blame and stick to his seat like he's got super glue on his ass.
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He was? How? He rose to power way after Iceland told the banks that bailouts ain't gonna happen (which, btw, happened to actually allow them to get back on track by now while we're still struggling with a recession).
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Perhaps you should reread this /. article from top to bottom.
All your questions are answered.
He basically bough shares from an bankrupt islandic bank.
Then after being prime minister he rescued the bank with state money.
Billionaire ... over night.
Yes, I simplified.
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First off, his name is not "Gunnlaugsson". That's not a last name, it's a patronymic. It just means that his father's name is Gunnlaugur. The proper way to refer to him is Sigmundur, Sigmundur Davíð, or if you want to be "familiar", just Simmi.
Secondly, Simmi was absolutely not an "enemy of the bankster elite". That's the whole point of this incident - he actually is a part owner of the failed banks, despite having campaigned on fighting against them.
Re:Nordic honesty. (Score:4)
Well, at least their politicians still have the decency to resign when they get caught with the hand in the cookie jar instead of shrugging and basically saying "And what you're gonna do about it, plebs?"
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They are at an advantage in Iceland: if they threaten to drop someone in a volcano, they actually might do it.
Re:Nordic honesty. (Score:5, Interesting)
Well 22k citizens of a possible total of 330k showed up to protest... 6.6% of their entire population.
That would be the equivalent of about 22 Million people showing up outside the Whitehouse (or 2.3 Million in Ottawa) ... I'm pretty sure there would be no "And what you're gonna do about it, plebs?". More likely there were be a lot of awkward silence and a hasty departure.
I mean a lot of people made a big deal about the "million man march"... now do that 22 times bigger. Regardless of police or military, that would make a corrupt politician pretty damn nervous....
What is even crazier about the Iceland numbers is that 330k population includes things like babies, and the very elderly etc... Meaning that an even higher percentage of the able population showed up!
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Or in the case of Sigmundur Davíð, his hand on the cake ;) Delicious chocolate cake, with brazed pears and whipped cream.....mmmmmm.........
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Maybe you shouldn't have been simple enough to think that somehow Iceland or the US were above reproach. They just handle the news better.
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Right, because the US wants to get rid of the conservatives in Iceland and install the Pirates? Is that what you think is going on? The Pirates who want to give Snowden citizenship?
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Also a myth. The three largest banks went into receivership, but they weren't government backed; they were backed by a private fund, with the British and Dutch governments as the secondary insurers (they sued... it went to the EFTA court... the EFTA court affirmed this). But Iceland pumped tons of money into the banking system in general, raising our national debt from about 25% of GDP to around 100%. We got a stake in the banks that were in receivership due to the money we pumped in (akin to the US stak
Re: (Score:2)
Stop listening to yourself then. The notion that this is targeted is beyond bizarre, considering one of the targets has ended up being David Cameron, whose old man was hiding cash in a tax shelter.
Besides, many of the American names haven't been released yet, and that's expected to be rather juicy.
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The US will be implicated quite heavily in the 2.6 Tb of data. Not being singled out in the first wave is not a signifier of being free from guilt.
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This largely appears to be a defense being invoked by some of those caught up in this. "Why haven't the Americans been outed?" First of all, I do believe at least a couple of American names have already shown up, but as the release is being staged (much as other major leaks have been staged), the Americans on the list are coming.
Frankly, I'm more interested in any more revelations that show how regimes like North Korea and organized crime rings used tax shelters to hide and launder money, to breach sanction
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The American part of the list hasn't been released yet.
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You know, you can all stop this Iceland mythologizing [google.is] any day now. You should realize that people here make fun of people like you [youtube.com].
Would you even bother to check out our electoral history, you would realize that the parties governing Iceland right now are the same ones that ran the country into the ground in 2008. Yep, they got reelected!