- Offshore companies linked to the family of China's top leader, Xi Jinping, as well as Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, who has positioned himself as a reformer in a country shaken by corruption scandals
- 29 billionaires featured in Forbes Magazine's list of the world's 500 richest people
- Icelandic Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson and his wife secretly owned an offshore firm that held millions of dollars in Icelandic bank bonds during the country's financial crisis
- Associates of Russian President Vladimir Putin secretly shuffled as much as $2 billion through banks and shadow companies
- New details of offshore dealings by the late father of British Prime Minister David Cameron, a leader in the push for tax-haven reform
- Offshore companies controlled by the Prime Minister of Pakistan, the King of Saudi Arabia and the children of the President of Azerbaijan
- 33 people and companies blacklisted by the US Government because of evidence that they have done business with Mexican drug lords, terrorist organisations like Hezbollah or rogue nations like North Korea
- Customers including Ponzi schemers, drug kingpins, tax evaders and at least one jailed sex offender
- Movie star Jackie Chan, who had at least six companies managed through the law firm"
I'd replace wrongdoing with illegal. If you ask me, if you're a billionaire and you're not willing to pay taxes and spend 0.0001% of your wealth on the expertise to reduce your tax bill by 99%, in legal ways that 99.99% of the rest of the population doesn't engage in, then by all means that's wrongdoing to me and I think most would be with me on that.
Could not agree more. Our society is based on the foundation that everybody does her/his own fair share, if the leaders of the world think it is not the way then lets just stop paying taxes and see how fast things change.
One funny thing about humanity, we used to pay 1/10 of our income that was enough for the "state", I am paying 65% (that is right) of my income to the sate right now and it is not enough, I have to pay VAT on everything on the top of that so that the government can spend it the most ridiculous inefficient way on projects that are at least questionable, yet many of the politicians just avoid paying taxes through these offshore tax havens. Do they know something we should too? :)
Where do you live that has a >65% top income tax rate? Because I quite like the sound of it. Or are you conflating other taxes and presenting an overall figure?
Depending on your definition of income tax you check 2 numbers:
- the lower number that you as a person pay (strictly the personal income tax)
- the higher number, combining what the company pays + what you pay after your income.
I am a contractor so I get a breakdown how much was spent on taxes and if get 100 EUR from a company the tax deduction is 65 EUR. (Obviously, the % depends on your actual income).
Combine this with VAT and you see that your actual contribution to the government is in the 70%-80% range.
I still remember how bad I felt for the peasants in primary school when we learned that they had to give 1/10th of their income to the state, and later another 1/10th to the church.
Thanks for the explanation. Are you taking into account the lower rates, though? For example, where I am, there's a personal allowance meaning one can earn £10,000 and not pay a single penny in income tax. The basic rate (which ends at a value substantially above the average salary) is only 20%. I'm guessing you're not in the UK, so it's going to be harder for me to compare situations. I don't think it's fair to combine income tax with VAT since that (mostly) applies on goods you choose to buy, rather than a percentage of your earnings.
You can go to different countries for having lower tax rates, in my experience it is never going to be less than 35 - 50% for the amount of money I make.
I am not sure how is it not fair to combine VAT + income tax to understand how much you are actually paying to the government. Goods I "choose" to buy includes: food and clothing, I am not sure how much it is a choice or just a necessity. Buying a flashy car is a choice, buying bread or a medicine is not so much.
That's why I added the "(mostly)"; where I live, most food is exempt from VAT, which is as it should be. I agree that clothing is a necessity, so should also be exempt, but only up to a reasonable limit - and then things get a bit too complicated.
VAT is definitely a problematic tax because it tends to hit the poorer harder, but that doesn't affect the fact that it would be possible to pay almost none of your income as VAT, or you could pay millions in VAT; it's very different from actual income tax.
He isn’t “conflating”, he clearly said this is the total paid to the government — i.e. all sorts of taxes. That you like the sound of it is, frankly, horrible.
It's horrible that I like the sound of a high-ish top rate of income tax? We haven't even stated the terms of what income level that tax rate is applied at, so your finding it horrible is either a total misunderstanding, or you object to the progressive nature of variable income tax outright. I hope it's the former, because I find the latter truly objectionable.
I find the idea of people dressing up simple theft as something other than it is, and in the ill-fitting trappings of a global social good, despite the fact that the institutions being financed by this form of theft were the largest non natural cause of death in the preceding century truly objectionable, too.
Letalone moving onto a particularly egregious sort of theft involved in modern taxation rackets where the burden approaches three quarters of the total earnings of any given individual. If you're cool with this how about I extort you for 75% of your income and then use it to finance a private mercenary company that runs around the globe destroying lives and property for ill-defined "geopolitical objectives"?
But I guess "I find x truly objectionable" is somewhat of a content free statement, unless we're just trying to farm moral outrage from our respective in-groups.
Taxation is obviously not theft, any more than charging for goods is. "75% of your income" is a very different thing than "75% of your income beyond a certain figure"; I have no problem with basic levels of income being absolutely tax-free. I don't agree with many actions undertaken by my government, including launching illegal wars which I have protested on the street against. That doesn't mean I don't think everyone is entitled to a certain level of wellbeing, paid for by the general economy.
After taxation, what is your actual income? Is it not enough?
>Taxation is obviously not theft, any more than charging for goods is.
Pretty sure when you force or coerce someone to buy something they do not want, it is illegal and immoral. And if the value of the item is significantly less than the price paid, it is theft in all but the most pedantic ways.
> Taxation is obviously not theft, any more than charging for goods is.
The difference between charging for goods and services vs taxation is that you are unable to choose not to patronise the state. A mugger charging you 75% of your income for the privilege of leaving his dark alley with your throat unslit is providing the same choice to you as the state is with regards to taxation. You are not free to refuse to be a customer of the state, any more than you are free to refuse to be a customer of said mugger.
The only factual mathematically definable difference between theft and taxation is that taxation is legal, and hey presto, it's the agency that writes the laws which defines this difference. Nice trick if you can find idiots naive enough to fall for it, and they are fortunately not in short supply.
If taxation is not theft, then the holocaust, or any killing by any state in all of history, is by definition not murder, because the difference between the murder and state sanctioned killing is the same as the difference between theft and taxation, one is technically illegal, and that is all.
> 75% of your income" is a very different thing than "75% of your income beyond a certain figure"
It is indeed, and you appear to not have grasped what OP actually says, so let's put it here so you can reconsider your position;
>> I am paying 65% (that is right) of my income to the sate (sic) right now
Not "I touch the 65% tax bracket at the top of the progressive income tax schedule which the state I am resident in has declared", but "I am paying 65% (that is right) of my income" period.
So yes, it is nearly three quarters of this person's income, being taken against their will, to support an institution which is not just incompetent, but actually hugely, enormously viciously destructive and damaging to the world at large, to the extent that it is the largest non natural cause of death in the preceding century.
> I don't agree with many actions undertaken by my government, including launching illegal wars which I have protested on the street against.
And worse yet, you actually know just how terrible the actions of the state are, to the extent that you have taken to the street protesting it, and yet you still feel the need to speak up in a public forum about how the idea that these parasites forcibly rob people of nearly three quarters of their earnings makes you feel warm and fuzzy on the inside?
Think long and hard about this.
> That doesn't mean I don't think everyone is entitled to a certain level of wellbeing, paid for by the general economy.
Even if you granted that "everyone is entitled to a certain level of wellbeing" (and frankly, that's an enormous can of worms right there that I'm not even going to dip a toe into at this point in time) that is an end, not a means. Conflating the end of social welfare with the means of theft does not necessarily follow at all.
> After taxation, what is your actual income? Is it not enough?
After theft, without theft avoidance, my income is about 25% of the original also. Could I do more and live a better life with the other 75% that is instead being stolen from me to finance demonstrably ineffective local social programs coupled with heinously disgusting foreign policy objectives? Is that what you mean by "Is it not enough?" Because if so, no, it's not enough.
Frankly, I'd give up almost all of the rest of it to avoid having given any of it to those parasites to begin with, and this is a constant drain on my motivation for economic activity in general, knowing how much of my earnings will go to finance activities that make me violently ill if I think too hard about them.
I will comment on the Holocaust analogy say that yes, it was technically legal in the German state since it was sanctioned by the State. That does not mean it was right. The German state was misusing its authority, being hijacked by a dictator and his deranged coterie of supporters.
There has to be some arbitrator of Justice, to settle disputes and create laws and we decided to create institutions to do just that. These institutions are not perfect, and sometimes they may be hijacked. Like Hitler and the German state, or Stalin and the Soviet Union. These institutions are by no means perfect or efficient but there is a need for their existence.
> will comment on the Holocaust analogy say that yes, it was technically legal in the German state since it was sanctioned by the State. That does not mean it was right.
Quite, that was not my implication, you seem to have assumed that my equating the refusal to label taxation as theft with the refusal to label state sanctioned killing as murder means that I am in favour somehow of state sanctioned killing.
The opposite is in fact true, my equating the two is to show that I strongly disapprove of both, and view objecting to the characterisation of either as theft and murder respectively based purely upon legal sophistry as fundamentally useless hair splitting which does not change the nature of the subject under discussion one iota.
> There has to be some arbitrator of Justice, to settle disputes and create laws and we decided to create institutions to do just that.
Dispute resolution and law are certainly things for which there is a demand, I do not grant that the only means by which these things may be provided is via the modern westphalian nation state.
> These institutions are by no means perfect or efficient but there is a need for their existence.
Well, we certainly agree that they are enormously imperfect and inefficient, however on the second one we part ways, so I'll let you make your case; why is there a need for their existence? What is one good or service which the provision of has proven utterly intractable outside the infrastructure of a forcibly imposed land monopolising human farming modern westphalian nation state wielding political authority as defined in Michael Huemer's book on the subject, The problem of political authority?
> The difference between charging for goods and services vs taxation is that you are unable to choose not to patronise the state.
I agree with you on this for persons, that membership in the state should be voluntary and accessible. Currently people are forced into state membership and discriminated against when they seek alternative state memberships based on birthplace, parents, and other factors which would typically be considered bigotry.
However, this argument breaks down entirely when applied to corporations. Corporations do have voluntary membership in states; nobody is obligating a corporation to make use of the services of any state. Beyond a certain size, corporations basically have complete freedom to operate within whatever states they choose, making use of the services of that state. And when you consider that the vast majority of income for the rich comes from such corporations, and furthermore that one of the easiest ways to change which state(s) you are a member of is to operate through a corporation, the separation between corporations and rich individuals becomes unimportant. Maybe you are unable to choose not to patronize the state, but the very rich are not so limited. If anything this is a very strong argument for progressive taxation: the rich are patronizing the state more by choice than the poor and therefore it's fairer to charge them more taxes.
> So yes, it is nearly three quarters of this person's income, being taken against their will, to support an institution which is not just incompetent, but actually hugely, enormously viciously destructive and damaging to the world at large, to the extent that it is the largest non natural cause of death in the preceding century.
This would be a more persuasive argument if the governments to which this money was going were not run by the same people who are evading the taxes. Most, if not all, of the wars in the last 50 years have been caused by corporate interests. The difference between government and corporations is that at least in representative democracies, the governments must make enough pretense of doing good to keep getting elected (with plenty of help from corporate funding and other forms of corruption). Tax avoidance means that less money must go through this pretense; it's easier to justify spending less money on schools when the government has less money.
> Frankly, I'd give up almost all of the rest of it to avoid having given any of it to those parasites to begin with, and this is a constant drain on my motivation for economic activity in general, knowing how much of my earnings will go to finance activities that make me violently ill if I think too hard about them.
Okay, so why don't you act on your beliefs instead of stating them ineffectually? I doubt many people are enforcing the citizenship or taxation laws of Somalia right now. You can probably opt out of patronizing a state by moving there. If you really think that being forced to patronize a state whose actions you don't agree with is unfair to you, there are ways to stop patronizing states.
Not paying taxes is leaching. Tax dollars pay for the infrastructure that holds society together. If it wasn't for tax dollars, the society in which you derive your income wouldn't exist.
You are provided access under the condition that you put your fair share in when you profit from what is provided. We have a democratic process to determine who can and at what rate they should contribute back.
What right do you have to steal but not give back?
If you feel so strongly in regard to your opinions about tax, why haven't you left society to rely on your bootstraps alone?
Not paying at all and expecting society to still support me, yes that is leaching. But thinking I shouldn't be forced to pay to blow up innocent children or to subsidize the break down of traditional families... how is that leaching.
> But thinking I shouldn't be forced to pay to blow up innocent children or to subsidize the break down of traditional families...
We live in a republic, show your disapproval of these policies to your representatives. There are people with similar opinions, I am one of them, and hopefully the change will gain momentum.
> how is that leaching.
The same arguments are piggy-backed upon by people who are morally opposed to all taxes. Hijacking issues that many people are opposed to, such as funding unpopular wars, is a convenient way of promoting an ideology.
> Not paying taxes is leaching. Tax dollars pay for the infrastructure that holds society together. If it wasn't for tax dollars, the society in which you derive your income wouldn't exist.
This chain of reason justifies North Korean concentration camps. You are simply throwing out a bunch of justifications for terrible things because you state that the things which those terrible things encase are the infrastructure that holds society together, and grant no possible conceivable alternative for how that infrastructure may be provided, when in fact you simply neglect to acknowledge there is no infrastructure that exists at all that has not been provided with organisational structures outside the modern nation state, period.
> What right do you have to take from us but not give back?
What right do you have to take from us, the people who do not wish to be subject to your theft, and not give back? I want nothing from the state except its utter annihilation. By choice, I take nothing from the state, and never will.
That line of hyperbole also justifies ignoring any value or good the state can and has provided.
If that infrastructure can be provided without the state, why hasn't it?
You are positing a hypothetical system that exists without taxes against a real, concrete system that exists and you take part in everyday. That system right now is dependant on taxes and you're throwing it out for a nebulous ideal world that is stateless and exists only in your head.
> I want nothing from the state except its utter annihilation. By choice, I take nothing from the state, and never will.
Do you drive on public roads? Enjoy protection from crime by the police? Enter buildings and eat at establishments that are inspected for your safety? Ever have to use the state to uphold a private contract? Have you used a telephone, cellular or landline?
Do you use the internet?
How can you realistically say you take nothing from the state and never will?
If you are as serious as your rhetoric, there are virtually stateless places in the world where you can actually live out your dream of taking nothing from the state. Areas of Somalia are among them.
You can reasonably argue that the government is involved in issues that are not free rider problems, but I've never heard a reasonable alternative solution to the necessary problems that government does address. Do you have one to contribute?
Usually it'll go something like: sell product, pay VAT (easily 20% in many countries), take EBT and pay some form of corporate income taxes, then take those profits and pay them out as dividends and pay dividend taxes, or retain earnings and pay for cap gains tax. Or alternatively skip the first step and say you're paying VAT taxes which raises the costs of all your consumption. The end result can be quite high on paper. But then, there's lots of other factors that have nothing to do with Panamanian shady tax loopholes, that create a different reality from the top 'tax rate tables' people like to quote from wikipedia.
Anyway, for actual rates paid, just look at the tax revenues in a country in a given year, then look at GDP and take its percentage. It'll give you a pretty decent proxy for average effective tax rates, iirc in the US it's a little under 30%, on average. That's nothing to complain about. Of course some people pay more, and we call those people rich and some people filthy rich. Frankly, I couldn't care less about that but that's me.
In the UK where you are from, the top marginal rate is 13.8% employer NI (make no mistake, that money comes out of your pocket), 2% employee NI, and 45% income tax. Grand total = 60.8%.
I think what OP meant is that there are reasons for companies to be off-shore which are totally above board.
A common reason that investment funds are in off-shore tax-havens is because they have lots of international investors. If the fund was say in the US all the investors would have to file tax documents in the US even if they weren't US based, by being based in a tax haven it means investors only have to file local tax paperwork and not paperwork in a second country.
Is that really true? I am not a US citizen but I have an account with a US broker. I just need to file a single form once in a while declaring my foreign tax status and that's it. This can hardly be the reason why it is absolutely necessary to have offshore holdings.
(Of course, I have to pay taxes at home for any profits and there are supposed to be mechanisms that ensure I do...)
If you deal in volatile markets with questionable rule of the law and weak property rights (e.g. Russia or much of the Middle East), then the ownership and its transfer is often structured with offshore companies.
The leak however suggests the legit offshore cases are drop in the bucket in this overall money laundering business. Kind of like with file sharing, many would argue we need it primarily to get our latest Ubuntu ISOs and other legit uses, but we all know it's a lie.
I believe it depends on the nature of the investment and your relationship with the US. For example I believe in your situation you'd have to pay US taxes on dividends from US companies.
This x1000. It's the perfect opportunity for a startup: nation/globe sized potential, something people are willing to pay for, and accomplishes a public good: eliminating the inequality in taxation and making the effects of the tax code more readily transparent. (Though if you're too successful at that they'll rework tax systems to be more sane and less vulnerable to this kind of thing, which I would count as a victory.)
The opportunity will become more stark as taxes on high earners go up.
Eliminating inequality of taxation means flat tax instead of progressive tax. That would require either substantial reduction of the government expenses or substantial raise of the taxes for low incomes. That probably won't be very popular.
"Inequality" here is a weasel word, because it sounds bad without further argumentation.
The argument for progressive taxation is that the same tax rate is a far lesser burden on someone who makes more than on someone who makes less. If one agree with that, then progressive taxation would seem to be fairer. Of course "fair" is entirely subjective.
I agree it is a weasel word. If you argue for progressive taxation, you should not say it eliminates "inequality" - you should say inequality is awesome. You can't argue both for equality in taxation and progressive tax at the same time - they are contradictory by definition.
Buying a SUV -> You pay 10,000 USD in taxes.
Buying bread -> You pay 0.01 USD in taxes.
We could get rid off income tax at all and just increase the VAT to ~20 - 50% depending on the type of the product. This way it is almost impossible to cheat. Solving taxation for corporations still an issue though.
Now, define "luxury items", while considering e.g. that in the UK there's VAT on things like tampons (though at the reduced 5% rate), while e.g. imported luxury meat is zero-rated because its food.
It's an incredibly complicated tax to apply, because the rules tend to grow to deal with more and more corner cases.
For example: Are jaffa cakes cakes or biscuits? It took a lengthy court case to determine that they are in fact cakes for the purpose of UK VAT [1] [2].
The reason for this case was that cakes are exempt from VAT as food no matter what, while biscuits are zero-rated in the UK only if they are not covered in chocolate. In the latter case they are considered confectionery, which is standard rated. Here's more on the complexities of this classification [3].
I agree with you, when it comes to applying law to real life it is usually lengthy and pricey process. We should just use a better legal system where these things are not up in the air. You can complicate life with broken legislation, just to keep lawyers busy. You could also just ask: do we need a lawyer to determine that jaffa cakes are cakes or biscuits, or we can pick one and go with it.
On the other note on VAT categories: how about collecting data and letting machine learning decide what is a luxury item? We have excellent clustering algorithms that can find clusters in data human has no chance to find. Lets apply that to purchasing habits and figure out what sort of clusters we have out there, and lets decide how much VAT you pay based on that.
Laws are supposed to be somewhat stable though, so having to update tax systems based on evolving patterns of what rich people are doing kind of breaks that.
The classic UK example is dried fruit. If it's bought in the cake decoration department it's 0% VAT, from the home brewing department 20% VAT.
Also for some items such as gift baskets the food is 0 rated but the basket/bowl is rated at 20% and the VAT is proportionally allocated. (I can't remember if it's cost or sales price)
This is a dramatic over-simplification that ignores what is actually a cascade of exemptions that leads toward a similar tax-law morass that we already have.
Now, fend off the numerous attempts to have goods moved to a different category. We have enough trouble with "prepared food is taxed but raw food isn't".
For what it's worth, it's hard to see a Land Value Tax as being unfair, it's extremely hard to hide your taxable assets, and it works well for people as well as corporations.
Land Value tax can be extremely cruel if you happen to be poor living in a neighborhood that suddenly became popular. You are basically forced to sell your home (also not in the best of positions - you need to sell fast and can't wait out for the peak price) and move out because you can not afford to live next to some rich person. While income tax and VAT are proportional to what you earn and consume, and can vary easily with income/consumption level, changing housing is much harder, and can put people in very bad situations through no fault of their own.
I would say that this argument seems to imply that no neighborhood should ever grow (for its existing residents would be priced out.)
This, however, is a fallacy-- the higher valuation of the land implies a larger return on the land, consistent with increasing the amount of people who can live there. (i.e. replacing a small house with an apartment building.) This allows more people of modest means to live in this neighboorhood, instead of less.
Compare to the Palo Alto model, where land never appreciates in taxable value-- people are able to stay in their home, but only those who were lucky enough to buy at the right time. The overall capacity of the city does not grow, and people are priced away from buying into the city.
Land-value taxation has much better incentives. Income taxes provide an incentive to be "poor", while land-value taxes provide an incentive to not use valuable space.
+1 because you're right about the importance of distribution.
My family are inflation "refugees". It's bad in of itself.
I agree that the distribution of the money is the worse part of the printing press. Giving money to soup kitchens is not as bad giving it to upgrade your military equipment. But, lets not kid ourselves. The central bank is a very powerful instrument of control. The powerful are hardly going to relinquish it!
I agree in theory, but in practice, it's impossible unless the entire world agrees on the same VAT rules, otherwise shopping across country barriers is bound to happen.
The problem isn't (just) different rates for different incomes; it's how people of lesser means are less capable of setting the complicated structures that can make them technically owe less money under the definition of taxable income used by the tax code. A flat tax doesn't change that.
Probably wouldn't work. Tax "loopholes" are available for everyone - that is everyone who earns enough to use them. They aren't free, and if you need to spend $1000 to save $100 on your taxes (and have your money locked in several shells of corporations who knows where) that's not what you'd do. The reason not everybody does it is it just not worth it for most people except those having real lot of money (and usually not needing them right away but wanting to invest them long-term) or those who gotten their money by means other than legal.
Rest of the population doesn't engage in these ways because it's not worth it for them - they do not pay enough taxes to warrant it. Some people, however, pay lots of taxes - so much that it may make sense for them to spend money and go to great length to somewhat reduce their tax bills. They most probably still pay much more tax than average person - just not as much as they could be paying if they didn't use these ways. And there's nothing wrong with that. You could send extra money to your state anytime too, and you probably don't - so why should they?
> it's not worth it for them - they do not pay enough taxes to warrant it
Not only do they pay a larger portion of their fortune, that money makes a much bigger difference to them (us, why do I say them?) in our everyday lives.
> They most probably still pay much more tax than average person
They probably pay much less than what they should. They benefit from from an organized state much more than the average person.
This is not a smart example, since it assumes Somalia has no difference with developed countries except for low taxes. I'm sure if you try hard enough, you could find a better example of low tax countries and compare their business development with high tax countries. If, of course, your purpose is gain better understanding of the matter and not to try sounding witty for cheap without actually having any substance behind it.
As for actual Somalia tax rates, they are kind of hard to find, but we can go other way. Somalia's GDP [1] is estimated around $1 billion, while their state budget is around $200 mln. [2]. Which means in the country the government is about 20% of the economy. Which is pretty close to US figures, surprisingly. More over, if you look up in [2], you will find:
High tax burden with corruption and extortions exacerbates poverty and prevents economic recovery.
So would I believe you saying Somali has low taxes and low regulation, or Somalians who complain about high taxes and oppressive government? Who knows best? Please help me choose.
I don't think it is true. Large corp can afford their own security force and infrastructure (and if you study the history of colonial corporate conquests, that's exactly what they have been doing). Small business or average consumer can afford none of this. Big corp can build their own protected bubble amid a desolated and decaying country, but if you are outside the bubble, you are in trouble.
A villa in the jungle is not what I was talking about. Large corporations benefit from their customers being safe and secure, and from infrastructure to distribute their products. And the companies involved in "colonial corporate conquests" were huge, royally chartered monopolies, directly supported by their countries, and usually acting as their official representative; there was a symbiotic relationship between the monopoly and the state, quite the opposite from an independent existence.
Large, successful corporations virtually always get started only in well-run states, while fruit stands are set up everywhere.
>> Large corporations benefit from their customers being safe and secure
Same way as the small ones do. Maybe even more so - you can find a market for luxury cars even in most brutal dictatorships (in fact, many brutal dictators are known for their love of luxury goods, and so are their henchmen as soon as they are wealthy enough) but trying to establish a small business with stable clientele might be quite hard.
>> there was a symbiotic relationship between the monopoly and the state, quite the opposite from an independent existence.
If you look at the relationship between big banks or insurance companies or resource companies, and governments, "symbiotic relationship" is not a bad description of what is still happening. What is good for GM is still good for the country, and the country spending billions to fix the screwups of GM management is a living proof of it.
> you can find a market for luxury cars even in most brutal dictatorships
But you're unlikely to create a luxury car company in an unstable country.
> trying to establish a small business with stable clientele might be quite hard.
There are plenty of small businesses with stable clientele in Bangladesh, Haiti, Yemen, and pretty much every country in the world.
> "symbiotic relationship" is not a bad description of what is still happening.
I'm not saying it isn't. But you still can't have a large company in an unstable country, while you can easily have a fruit stand there. It is the large businesses that benefit disproportionately from the state.
> Startups - not so much.
Right, you probably need a stable country for startups, too. But most countries don't tax startups much anyway.
> They most probably still pay much more tax than average person - just not as much as they could be paying if they didn't use these ways.
It's about relative value vs absolute value. If you use 30% of your wages toward taxes but the next person use 12% of his to pay the same absolute amount, there is an issue that needs to be addressed.
In my experience, 30% would be extremely high and not at all common - if you look at full rate and not marginal rate. E.g. I am not 1%, but relatively well-paid employee, and my full federal tax rate has been around 13-15% (marginal, of course, quite higher). If I went to some lengths, I probably could shave off a percent or so off it, but that would require me to stash some money into places where they are not readily accessible, such as IRA or alike instruments. This is just not worth it for me. If I got much more money, to the point that I do not need any of the money for consumption and in fact can not consume them - e.g. if I were a billionaire - I would certainly use these and many other instruments, it would be stupid not to do so. But right now it is just not worth the trouble.
I'm not sure what you mean by "corruption of the government", but it is legal because your money belongs to you, not government, and you have full right to do with it whatever you please, including investing them in ways that generate less tax income from the government. Banning that would require implicit assumption that your money do belong to the government and you are restricted in using them only in ways that benefit the said government. That would be corruption to me.
My friend was/is engaged in tax evasion that HMRC have now declared as tax evasion and they'll be taking all that money for the last 5 years, thank you very much.
He/she said the same thing as you are saying now.
The difference between you and the billionaires is that they can afford to make an offer, a la google to the UK.
You are just going to be completely screwed when they come knocking on the door.
The cost isn't in setting them up. The cost is in defending the structures in court when some tax authority feels you're "cheating" the game. Tax authorities lose plenty of cases however, so as long as you didn't do anything illegal and you can afford great lawyers to see a case through, you're good.
That's what shits me. If it's smart, viable strategy, why not make it available by default for every citizen with a basic tax framework instead of something only available to the wealth to push further ahead?
It's an arms race. As corporate income tax receipts dry up countries change their policies. Very wealthy, naturally international companies not only have more resources to compete, they also have the ability to play hard ball and leave the country entirely (see tax inversions of pharmaceutical companies from America to Europe) bringing not just the lost corporate tax, but the income tax on salaries as well.
>by all means that's wrongdoing to me and I think most would be with me on that.
Well, for what it's worth, I don't agree with you.
People are obliged to pay the tax they are legally obliged to pay, and that's it. It doesn't matter how rich or poor you are. Billionaires are not obliged to voluntarily pay more than they are required to. And neither is anybody else. And it really is not a coherent position to claim otherwise, in my view.
There's a lot of noise being made over the number of documents, but I'm not seeing anything actually interesting about this. Offshore banking has been extremely common for a very long time and isn't illegal in and of itself. The hidden funds need to be provably originating from from an illicit source.
Ok, I'll bite. What do you think Vlad Putin's legit source is for his billions? His paycheck? Sometimes you don't have to know all the details. Somtimes the mere fact of a bank account with billions in it is enough to know, with certainty that a politician has his/her hand in the till and is a corrupt bastard.
I pick on Vlad, there's plenty more to choose from. Now the evidence exists to remove doubt from the accusation of corruption for, it would seem, a lot of politicians.
Jackie Chan - Wealthy movie star. Plenty of good explanations for why he'd engage in offshore banking with his very large, legitimately gained, fortune.
Really? I did not know that. I guess here the Vladimirs put up with the contraction to Vlad as they're among the barbarians. ;-) Good to know though, thanks.
Never heard that someone named Vladimir shortened their name as Vlad. Live in Russia for 30 years. Most of the times you can call Vladimir as Vova. If you tell that your name is Vlad, everyone will think that you are Vladislav.
I'm sure Putin's cash is ill-gained but I'm extremely doubtful it will be exposed in these docs. The NY Times has a story that he straight-up murdered a guy on American soil. That probably won't stick either.
it doesn't say anything even remotely like Putin straight-up murdered a guy (a scumbag who has spent his life associating with and/or making enemies of other scumbags) on American soil.
In fact it doesn't even straight-up say he was murdered at all, by anyone:
The police [in the US] continue to treat Mr.
Lesin’s as a natural death
and:
Neither the F.B.I. nor the Justice Department
has taken a role in the investigation [...]
suggesting that it was being investigated as
an untimely death but not a federal crime.
Alexander Litvinenko's death [1], on British soil, was definitely murder, though. According to the investigation, the Russian state was involved. Obviously, Putin didn't actually do the deed himself, but it seems more likely than not that he ordered it, or at least knew about the order.
Right -- No one disputes that Putin has been associated with all kinds of unseemly stuff. It's just that, at this juncture, there nothing beyond pure speculating tying him to Mikhail Lesin's untimely demise.
In other words: "He's a bad guy you know -- he's capable of anything" isn't, in my book, sufficient reason to believe that he was actually involved somehow.
Also, in some cases hiding money offshore is indeed illegal. One example that immediately comes to mind is for individuals holding public office in Iceland.
>Icelandic Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson and his wife secretly owned an offshore firm that held millions of dollars in Icelandic bank bonds during the country's financial crisis
Also, a quarter of Iceland's cabinet apparently holds offshore companies.
> British Prime Minister David Cameron, a leader in the push for tax-haven reform
There was a load of rhetoric in 2011 about offshore/tax reform, but very little in the way of action since then. As with tradition in Cameron's brand of "Compassionate Conservatism", it's a depressingly cynical slight of hand and nothing more.
As for Cameron being a leader in tax haven reform, I don't buy it for a second. Words are cheap, what action has his government taken to tackle the issue? If anything, they've been at work to increase legal loopholes and tax breaks for the rich. Not only that, but George Osbourne's family company has been proven to dodge tax. When you've got people at the top this morally bankrupt, do you really expect them to fix the regulations to serve the public?
Cameron will talk a good game in the press, do the exact opposite thing and by then the press has moved on and no-one seems to question it... It seems quite surreal that we all sleepwalk through these lies, but we do.
If you want a good primer on our influence/investment in the financial affairs of overseas dependencies and tax havens associated with Britain etc... then the book "Treasure Islands" by Nicholas Shaxson is a good place to start.
The company the data has leaked from is not even in the top 3 of its kind. Either way going from the (claimed) zero fortune to billions discovered on the spot is telling.
Except there's no proof it's his billions (Putin's name isn't in the leaks). Just that someone he knows may have been involved.
Everyone knows Putin will use the oligarchs when expedient, and crush them when he needs to. And he has cracked down on them over the years. Still no actual proof he's done anything to enrich himself.
Meanwhile, as the media turns that molehill into a mountain, there's an actual smoking gun in Poroshenko, and many western leaders. But in the media it's all about Putin.
Well, Poroshenko offshore turned out to be what, 3,400 usd? And it's a mountain compared to Putin's two billions? Sorry but no; also nobody generally gives a damn about Poroshenko given his temporary and marginal role in the world politics.
Exposing the western leaders is all good, it does happen regularly thanks to the free press of the Western world. Taking Putin's corruption virginity, however, is once in a lifetime event and is definitely more newsworthy than misdeeds of the Western temps in the office.
Natalie Jaresko is the finance minister (used to work for US State Dept), Poroshenko was a CIA informant and oligarch, Saakashvili (US stooge in Georgia who went to war with Russia, and now is wanted in Georgia for various crimes) is the governor of Odessa, the Canadian government admitted their embassy in Kyiv was used for logistics during the 'Maidan', and Yatseniuk was mentioned in a leaked phone call as a candidate to lead Ukraine before he became Prime Minister.
Yet there's no proof of an actual Russian invasion. Tell me, were Su-34s bombing Ukraine?
Do a new round of CIA leaks need to come out to see the obvious? Is all the coup d'états the US orchestrated over the years a conspiracy? Why are 4 American stooges leading Ukraine?
T-72B3s, Grads, BTR-82s were rolling into Donbas. Crimea was annexed by Russian troops, as admitted by Putin, and it takes quite an interesting mindset to deny it. Also interesting how the USA came to all those troubles with installing Poroshenko, but couldn't fake a poll or two.
But as I said, I understand perfectly your beef with the leaks. There is a huge swath of political left who seems to deny people their agency if they align with the Western interests in any way.
> Crimea was annexed by Russian troops, as admitted by Putin, and it takes quite an interesting mindset to deny it.
If you'd ever followed Ukrainian politics before the Orange Revolution, or since independence, you'd know Crimea has always been very pro-Russian, and always voted for the pro-Russian candidate going back decades. They also tried to separate from and then gain autonomy within Ukraine.
In the case of Crimea, it was undoubtedly the will of the people.
> T-72B3s, Grads, BTR-82s were rolling into Donbas.
Proof beyond shitty pictures on the side of a road, followed by a shitty picture of a road sign? Or pictures from inside a video game? Or shitty YouTube videos? Or videos from Georgia, or inside Russia itself?
If there was evidence that wasn't potato-quality YouTube videos and images of dubious quality and value, I'd be a little more impressed.
For such a large invasion, the proof is amazingly poor. Especially since it's in the west's interest to provide proof - you'd think there'd be detailed satellite images or something.
A US senator presenting images of the wrong war to his fellow senators. Do you not understand how this looks like a bad joke? A full-scale invasion, and the US government can't provide any real images of it.
> But as I said, I understand perfectly your beef with the leaks.
As everyone should. Most people are completely ignoring the western leaders who are named, instead focusing on Putin who isn't named.
I'm sure the Russian government is plenty corrupt. But excuse me for not believing 100% of what our news/propaganda tells us. What's amazing as well is their lack of consistency. They praise the Orange Revolution, then when it falls apart, nothing. Maybe the odd piece throwing Tymoshenko under the bus. Then she's a martyr when she's prosecuted for crimes she likely did commit. Then Maidan arrives and when the western media realizes she's unpopular, she's once again forgotten. She's in these leaks too BTW.
Seriously though, it's hard to look at history, at the news, to follow the news consistently for an extended time, and to believe that what we're told is 100% 'factual'.
Not Leo messi, but the company who operates his money. The recent case that Spanish tax office opened against him was in regards to a payment that has happened when he was 17 year old...I doubt that messi at 17 yo was the one who was dealing with his taxes
He was not 17 when he set up another shell company in Panama:
Mega Star Enterprises, the offshore company owned by Messi and his father at least as far back as 2013, is not mentioned in the Spanish government’s 2014 and 2015 indictments against the pair. The leaked records show Messi signed at least one document reflecting his ownership of Mega Star
Well, they could not have known in 2012. But, they did just re-air those episodes in the last few weeks as re-runs. So, that was either a big coincidence, or they knew it was coming.
Panama just passed compliance with FATF (February 2016) and it's a message that their political leader/law firm owner/world's largest money launderer (his name is in the OP's title) is no longer open for business after decades of being the go-to place for hidden $$$.
"The FATF recognised that Algeria, Angola and Panama have made significant progress in improving their regimes to combat money laundering and terrorist financing and will therefore no longer be subject to the FATF’s monitoring process."
tl;dr - This is a multi-state G20 planned leak and not the work of some moral insider or hacker, the money laundering world is becoming a difficult place for outsiders. Real leaks don't have fancy websites with responsive vectorized portraits and a full on content /social media structure.
Indeed the website looks very good - and analyzing and presenting such a huge amount of data deserves respect.
But I was also wondering why this leak had to be embargoed for a year. Why not release the complete raw data very quickly (with irrelevant, privacy-sensitive areas visibly redacted) and follow up with a detailed analysis later?
I'm not critiquing the website, it looks great to be honest. It's comes across a little odd when you target just a small amount of people, it almost seems like a sales pitch.
The journalists need to be more transparent about the data and why these individuals were picked first, and how the data release is going to work.
I hope for your sake you don't have to vectorize everyone mentioned in the data.
Worth pointing out: this is, in no way, done by a single media organization. This is a collaborative effort of ~107 news organizations from all over the world, and you can be sure that behind each of them there's a small dedicated tech team that worked tirelessly on making this thing look pretty.
Because this is such a huge collaborative effort involving over 300 journalists from god knows how many countries, we barely managed to set an embargo until 8 PM (CEST). An hour before that, there were literally less than 10 tweets using #panamapapers. Now, there's over half a million. And it's been just seven hours since I have started the tweet wall in our office!
From this point on, I believe that every media organization is going to focus on its own region, although I cannot guarantee that. After all, my job was to make the website look pretty. I had the honor of reading some of the stories before anyone else while I was preparing them for the website (and I will have the same honor again in ~5-6 hours), but that's about it.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding your comment, but if you have such an event ongoing and you manage to keep silence about it for over a year between ~300 people from half a dozen countries and 107 organisations - to such an extent that two hours before you have not more than ten tweets - then it looks to me that coordination works extremely well.
Honestly that is becoming more clear and I might have jumped the gun in my initial comment.
It went viral very fast, I think it would have been a great idea to say that each "regional' media representative would be disclosing more info within the next couple of weeks.. on the website!
And if some important info was not disclosed regionally there would also be a follow up, because right now you have to admit.. not many Western names are showing up if any ( don't mention Cameron and the others since this was already exposed pre-leak).
> Real leaks don't have fancy websites with responsive vectorized portraits and a full on content /social media structure.
I don't understand this. Don't newspapers always make stories that they can tell are important more engaging for the reader? Here's a cute Guardian flash interactive from Cablegate, [1] and another nice Washington Post interactive on the same story. [2] Here's a really fancy six-part interactive from the Guardian in the wake of the Snowden files. [3] Whenever the media publishes leaks they will make similar things, even when Western governments act strenuously to prevent publication, as in the case of Cablegate and Snowden.
How does a well-presented story indicate anything other than the media thought this was a story which was important and in the public interest?
They state at the very outset that they worked on the data for over a year, doing OCR, analyzing, digesting, cross-referencing, etc. No one is presenting a false front -- they aren't claiming that this is a bunch of files that they got yesterday, and instead are quite up front that they've done a lot of leg work on top of it.
So yes, the presentation was clearly "planned". That doesn't make the data any less real.
But you haven't produced any real evidence for this claim.
The ICIJ has co-ordinated the reporting on the leak, sure; but that's not the same as claiming the leak itself was in bad faith, part of some wider state-sponsored conspiracy from G20 nations, etc.
It would lose credibility if it was just a dump. Some would claim its false, others would alter it, to the point that enough confusion would be created to make it totally untrustworthy. Unfortunately thats how manipulation works.
Did you have this same position with the Snowden leaks? Dump it on the web and it lacks credibility. Filter it through journalists who can use their resellers to make sense of it and the public gets to hear the important repercussions of the leak instead of having to try and figure it all out themselves.
At least they were transparent to exactly why the information was filtered. Credibility is certainly a good point but 100 people are going to have issue with sifting through terabytes of data.
> This is a multi-state G20 planned leak and not the work of some moral insider or hacker, the money laundering world is becoming a difficult place and for good reason.
I agree
And of course those in the know are moving to hide their assets somewhere else
The heads up was given a long time ago, you won't find their names in the leak, it's kinda funny Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson is being outed, I guess he didn't get the memo on account of his recent actions.
Not in the UK. Leaks and "off the record briefings" are practically official government policy.
To me this looks like a rather stupid attempt to promote regime change in Russia. Putin was weakened by the low oil price, and now this has all the signs of a bizarre poli-sci undergraduate plot to push him over the edge.
I'll change my mind if a list of significant British and US pols with Panamanian accounts appears - because any suggestion that there aren't any is frankly risible.
> Six members of the House of Lords, three former Conservative MPs and dozens of donors to UK political parties have had offshore assets.
I expect we'll hear more about this in coming days and weeks.
I don't really understand this line of thinking. Big leak + "fancy website graphics" = vast Western conspiracy? Sounds less like insightful analysis and more like the kind of denial I'd expect from RT.
The reason I'm thinking "vast Western conspiracy" is that you would think, as a common sense point, that when something like this appears Western journalists would be more interested in Western politicians first.
But apparently not. I find that strange.
I also find it strange that more people don't find it strange - because it's always been obvious to me that Putin is a completely generic oligarch crook, and I really don't understand why anyone would be surprised that he acts like one.
But here's an interesting fact - public opinion management has a long history in the West, just as it does in all other big states. It's been tracked by journalists and academics, discussed in Senate committees, and explored in books. It's a long way from being either hostile state propaganda or weirdo conspiracy nonsense.
I'm quite prepared to believe that a lot of HN readers haven't taken the time to familiarise themselves with that history, but that doesn't change the historical record.
And if absolutely no US pols are implicated in this leak, I'll continue to find that curious and strange, no matter how many downvotes I get here.
As for UK pols - we'll see exactly what that means in practice. Most people here know that Cameron's father made his money as a tax consultant to the privileged, and that our beloved Chancellor's family business never pays tax.
It would certainly be interesting, timely, and welcome if other members of the government were outed as avoiding significant sums. But until more facts appear, it's too early to tell how this will play out.
> And if absolutely no US pols are implicated in this leak, I'll continue to find that curious and strange, no matter how many downvotes I get here.
Agreed. But I do fully expect to see those revealed as soon as the journalists have made sure that their case against them is watertight. Meanwhile, I'll be taking a look at the Mexican ones myself. Since there is still a difference between knowing that most of our politicians and corporate owners are corrupt in the abstract and knowing the details. In fact, I'll check that even if this turns out to be an actual geopolitical conspiracy, so long as the data is truthful (even if partial).
I would surmise that they are holding off on Western Pols because they want to keep eyes as long as possible on this. For these organizations, eyeballs are money.
If they released a huge set of people on day one and didn't have much to show on day two, this would fall off the news cycle really quickly. I think that with the US political climate, they'll focus there soon, but they want a lot of people paying attention first.
This is just a guess, but it seems logical. We've seen this kind of slow-drip journalism with big data dumps in the past.
That makes the government sound like single atomic entity - it is, of course, made up of politicians who spend a significant proportion of their time playing the game of politics.
Nick Robinson, the BBC Political Editor, has described how Number 10 typically can't see the diaries of cabinet ministers as this would allow them to work out which minister was lunching with which journalist and therefore where particular leaks came from. Of course, Number 10 also briefs for and against individual ministers.
When the first three leaders named are the top 3 enemies/adversaries of the US/Britain - Putin, Xi and Assad - my own little conspiracy canary started chirping.
And the Icelandic PM? The one who really annoyed Britain by defaulting on their debts?
When the first three leaders named are the top 3 enemies/adversaries
of the US/Britain - Putin, Xi and Assad - my own little conspiracy
canary started chirping.
Is the leak because they are adversaries, or are they adversaries (at least in part) because they are the sorts of people who would participate in the leaked behavior?
> In 2013, U.K. leader David Cameron urged his country’s overseas territories — including the British Virgin Islands — to work with him to “get our own houses in order” and join the fight against tax evasion and offshore secrecy.
> He could have looked no further than his late father to see how challenging that would be.
> Ian Cameron, a stockbroker and multimillionaire, was a Mossack Fonseca client who used the law firm to shield his investment fund, Blairmore Holdings, Inc., from U.K. taxes.
I doubt it was anyone related to David Cameron if that is what you are thinking. ;)
The information about Cameron's father pretty much came out already 4 years ago (already after his father was dead), so not like this personal link hurts Cameron a lot more with the current list of names.
Hilarious that BBC, a broadcaster paid for by British tax payers, has a subheading in that article titled "Russian connection" describing various dealings of Russian characters who are "close associates" of Putin and an equally sordid "Iceland connection" but not even a mention of David Cameron's father's tax evading schemes listed in the documents which the people of Great Britain should be vastly more interested in. Not to mention direct implications of various other western puppets (Saudi King, Ukrainian PM, Iraqi former PM) and other dubious "connections".
Is it remarkable, or is it completely expected for propaganda?
I've been visiting the US for 6 months now, and the only time I hear anything about the outside world is when (China/Russia/NorthKorea) are doing something bad, or their citizens lives suck, or rarely when a social program in a developed country (UK, Europe) goes a little wrong (over budget or whatever).
Interestingly, the fact that hundreds of millions of people living in developed countries have better health care, education, roads, etc. than Americans is never mentioned. It's also never mentioned that American politicians are for sale, and bribery is completely legal here.
I really feel like this is an unnecessarily melodramatic comment. I can't tell if you're being serious about American news only reporting things that make America look good but that's certainly not true in my experience. Mainstreams outlets (NYT/WSJ/etc.) have different biases on their editorial boards but they are more than willing to report negative news about the US and mundane current events from around the world.
Also, I think it's a little bit to early to call propaganda/controlled-opposition on this leak. Because the US has such a strict tax evasion regime, it's pretty reasonable to believe that Americans would be treated differently by firms selling tax evasion services. Or, it could be that American names will be released later. Hard to tell at this point.
> I can't tell if you're being serious about American news only reporting things that make America look good
I'm being serious.
Other countries I've lived in spend a lot of time in their media comparing their own country to other countries that are doing very well, or are doing something better than them, such that they can learn from that and make their own situation or system better.
When you only compare America to countries doing much worse, you never get that.
The American sentiment of "we are the best" has been seriously harmful in the last ~20 years because it means there is no drive to improve anything. In fact, I notice it's very "un-American" to even suggest changing/improving things.
Hypothetically, even if a given country were the best at something, that's not a reason not to improve it.
I don't believe the US is hung up on not improving. I think that's blatantly false and I think you're wrong about some of what you're claiming.
It's also a fascinating bit of hypocrisy, to say that the US is hung up on being right, and yet you feel free to bash the US while promoting the things others do right (you listed healthcare, education, roads). How does that work again?
The US does in fact improve. See: gay marriage legalization (something many of those supposed progressive nations you're referring to still lack). Body cams for police (a wide national interest in ending police brutality). Ending mass incarceration and the war on drugs (changes that are now supported by the majority of Americans). The ACA / Obamacare.
If you want to talk about roads, much of Europe for example has seen its spending on infrastructure plunge dramatically. The US is now spending more on its infrastructure than most of the countries you're likely to reference:
"Infrastructure spending in the euro zone has dropped to an average of 2.7 percent of gross domestic product, compared with 3.4 percent of GDP for the U.S. and 3.6 percent for Japan."
It's almost universally recognized within the US that there are significant problems in both education and healthcare. You can hardly get away from discussions on these topics. What is occurring, is a slow moving national debate on what to do about fixing them. The US has a healthcare system the size of all of Europe's healthcare systems combined in dollar terms, which employs directly or indirectly millions of people - there's no scenario under which you're going to radically remake something like that in short order.
The US is a relatively complex, massive representative system, with local + state + federal systems that all play an important role and a total government budget so large it would be the world's #3 economy by itself. It's difficult for a government system that large to move quickly on almost anything. Imagine trying to get most of the countries in Europe to agree on major changes to their education or healthcare systems simultaneously, it's approximately an equivalent feat to remake education or healthcare in the US - both of which are heavily managed at the state levels.
> It's also a fascinating bit of hypocrisy, to say that the US is hung up on being right, and yet you feel free to bash the US while promoting the things others do right (you listed healthcare, education, roads). How does that work again?
He's not bashing the US, but rather being realistic about the sorry state of American healthcare, education, and infrastructure. And it's perfectly valid to suggest that both American exceptionalism and a general lack of exposure to the ideas and experiences of foreign citizens, are partially to blame for America's failures domestically and abroad.
> The US does in fact improve. See: gay marriage legalization (something many of those supposed progressive nations you're referring to still lack). Body cams for police (a wide national interest in ending police brutality).
Gay marriage is a great step forward, but there are more pressing issues honestly, primary among them reigning in the military-industrial complex that has been steadily toppling democratically-elected governments for the past 60 years, stealing resources, fighting proxy wars, and selling weapons to one or both sides.
> Ending mass incarceration and the war on drugs (changes that are now supported by the majority of Americans). The ACA / Obamacare.
No way the majority of citizens of support ending the drug war. Legalization or decriminalization of marijuana are only small steps toward ending mass incarceration. How many people currently support heroin being legal, taxed, and available down the street? Not many, but until US society has that revelation, there will still be black market violence, and still be addicts ODing because their heroin is anything from 10% to 90% pure and potentially cut with other harmful substances, and because they hesitate to call an ambulance for fear of exiting the hospital in police custody.
I was wondering the same. Whenever I'm in the states, I don't find the media to be particularly different...read a NYT or a WSJ paper and you'll get a lot of international news, positive and negative. As always, if you want news, you have to go looking for it. It just isn't going to be hand fed into your mouth.
I do not for the life of me get CNN and the 24 hour news cycle, though. It just seems to be all noise for news on cable TV. Anyways, still better than what I can get in the country I currently live in (China), but there is always the Internet (even with the GFW in place).
Alright, well, most news is going to be negative, that's just how news works. You're not going to see the headline "Things at the NHS are going pretty well", because that's not news. Just like you won't see "Medicare has been pretty solid this month" or something. You will see that kind of analysis in editorials and magazines though.
So I can understand if you don't see much positive commentary about other countries, that's just the nature of the news. But if you're not seeing anything negative about America, then I can't believe you're actually reading any news.
I think the expected mindset for the reader is that things in other developed countries are usually going pretty well, and no news is good news. The media will report on ongoing stories, like Brazil's corruption scandal, the European migrant crisis, Israel/Palestine, etc., and on new newsworthy events, which unfortunately are usually negative. Something like "France passes great budget" is just not interesting enough for a general audience newspaper.
> I think the expected mindset for the reader is that things in other developed countries are usually going pretty well
You're expecting all too much of readers.
Of the hundreds of people I've hung out with in the last 6 months (in 4 different states) I would say less than 1% of them have any idea about the outside world.
They think healthcare in Canada is crap (which is very far from the truth)
They have no idea the murder rate in the US is so high compared to other developed countries.
They have no idea tertiary education is paid for with taxes in other countries, so students don't pay out of pocket.
etc.
In my experience, the majority of Americans don't know much about how the outside developed world functions, so they can't make meaningful comparisons for the purpose of improving things.
They can, however, compare America to Russia/China/NK all day long, and say "We're doing GREAT!"
Why would they, when Time Warner (owner of CNN), for instance, is a top 10 contributor to the Clinton campaign and is therefore legally bribing politicians?
It makes me wonder why an "associate" of a foreign head of state is a more relevant story than the father of the head of state, or of serving politicians with close links to the party of the head of state, from the same country's taxpayer-funded news service.
The story doesn't even mention the implication of Cameron's father in the scheme. Which is odd, because Cameron stood to gain from the inheritance. And if the allegations are true, then he would have benefited from the proceeds of tax evasion.
There are also several other heads of state directly implicated in this scheme, yet they were not even mentioned in the story: the current heads of state of UAE, Ukraine, Argentina, and Saudi Arabia for example.
And the figure who is apparently at the center of the Russian allegations is a concert cellist who has known Putin since they were teenagers. Yet the link and related BBC story convey the impression (at least to my mind) that Putin was somehow complicit in the scheme, without establishing any proof for this.
Nope. His wife is the only one mentioned in the data according to the reporters:
> The third Spaniard to appear in the giant leak is the wife of former Spanish Agriculture Minister Miguel Arias Cañete, Micaela Domecq Solís-Beaumont, who was "empowered to approve transactions of Rinconada Investments Group SA, a Panama company registered in 2005 which was in existence while her husband Miguel Arias Cañete held public positions in Spain and the European Union.
Which is why it's good that this massive pile of data is analyzed by a huge load of international newspapers.
This way, papers can selectively publish stuff that won't put themselves in too grave danger - just look what happened to The Guardian with the Snowden leak (visits from three-letter agency officials) or what happens in Turkey, Ukraine or Hungary with media that dares to publish stuff too offensive to the respective regimes.
The situation sucks, yes, but it's the only viable modus operandi for now.
I mean sure journalists and meme-makers will spin this however it suits them, but I thought here in the west we're assured that we have freedom of press. This type of obvious slant certainly doesn't make it seem that way.
There is no particularly strong legal basis for "freedom of press" in the UK. While recent history has had the press being largely unhindered by the government, our history is one of strict restrictions that have been gradually relaxed over the centuries.
You're probably confusing us with the US, which has some constitutional guarantees.
Thanks for clearing that up. US press seems curiously absent from even covering this story. As per @mathewi the only US media companies on the #panamapapers team are Miami Herald, Univision, Fusion and McLatchy.
I guess we'll see how active they'll become and what their spin will be, if any, in the coming days.
Apparently they split out all the documents relating to Americans and haven't released them yet. So nothing has "hit home" so to speak for American media.
The US press situation is a standard consolidation story. They are dependent on leaks and access to officials, and have little meaningful competition to drive risky behavior.
There's a reason Fox leans republican and CNN leans democrat -- they get to avoid competition.
In a market like NYC with 4-5 papers, the Post and Daily News always try to one up each other, posting off politicians in the process.
> I thought here in the west we're assured that we have freedom of press.
Freedom of press does not guarantee freedom from persecution (or prosecution), so the international consortium approach is a much better guarantee for all the information actually getting out.
The BBC does have freedom from persecution or prosecution (assuming it doesn't publish things that are e.g libelous). But, due to the particular way it is funded, it doesn't have freedom from government intervention.
In particular the BBC charter is reviewed every so often. This process involves the government and can affect things like the level of funding available to the BBC, and its remit in terms of the services it is allowed to offer. It's no secret that the current government are not big fans of the BBC, both for ideological reasons, and because of cozy relationships with certain commercial broadcasters. They are already waging a war in the press trying to convince the public that the BBC has an intrinsic left-wing bias, and are mooting ideas like preventing it from making programmes that are too popular and so may draw audiences away from commercial rivals. In this environment, and with funding already being cut, and jobs lost, it's not hard to see why you would think twice about running stories that could lead you open to allegations of an anti-government agenda.
Although the particular details of that situation are unique to the BBC, it's important to note that commercial broadcasters, and media outlets in general, also don't have freedom in the sense of freedom-from-consequences. For example there was a story last year about HSBC pulling adverts from media outlets which ran articles critical of its business practices. In an environment where, particularly for print media, margins are tight or non-existent, it's easy to see how this can give commercial interests hidden editorial control over a "free" press.
Not really, freedom of press is much narrower. What you're suggesting is an ideal world where journalists are protected from the egos and reputations of powerful people who might want to retaliate against them for their reporting. There are many forms of legal retaliation that freedom of press cannot protect against. In practice, this freedom is weighed against the consequences of publishing any single piece.
For example, not having to run all (or huge parts of) your stories through a censor before being allowed to publish them (e.g. China, Israel).
Or, like in Germany, various protections like e.g. the police not allowed without complex judiciary checks to monitor the phones and internet connections of a journalist, or to go into a newspaper office and seizing random data to uncover a source.
You can be prosecuted for reasons entirely unrelated to your publishing of a story, even if that is the true reason. Do you think people don't try to intimidate journalists?
> but I thought here in the west we're assured that we have freedom of press
Hell no. As long as crap like NSLs (or other secret gag orders, see UK), anti-whistleblower laws or (esp. USA) actually independent media with mass reach exist, there is no freedom of the press.
This is is of course an area of concern. It is sometimes referred to as cognitive capture, akin to regulatory capture. It occurs when a regulatee so strongly paints a picture of how they feel the world should work, that a regulator fails to fulfill their duties, because their lens on the world has become so distorted in favor of the regulatee's perspective.
It often flows private industry ----> govt, with private industry cognitively capturing the government.
But it can just as easily go the other way. Afterall, in the west the media/journalist industry has historically been seen as the regulator of the government, the fourth estate.
I believe they are withholding details regarding any British connections until the BBC Panorama show which airs tomorrow. As before, this leak is coordinated across different media organisations and the whole news cache is released iteratively.
Disagree. This way they can perhaps force anyone involved to comment, while blowing everything wide open in public would perhaps make the case revolve around a single case, and not the actual political aspects of the case. Or am I just making stuff up here? In my world this is a great tactic. Danish television will be covering this for a week. If politicians are involved it's probably best to let them comment and do their job first, instead of putting them in the spotlight where they will avoid commenting on the case.
Maybe, but "father of a PM" is not even close to the same thing as "PM". If Cameron's father has done something wrong, that doesn't (shouldn't) affect perceptions of his son. The days of punishing children for the crimes of their parents are long in the past.
Assuming the guy did anything wrong, of course. As these articles note, off shore companies are not illegal.
But Cameron directly benefited from his father's tax avoidance. He received several hundred thousand pounds as an inheritance from his father's estate. I'm sure he would have received less if his father had not saved money by avoiding taxes. He wasn't running the scheme, but he did directly benefit from it.
A child has no control over their parent's financial affairs when they were a minor. If they are involved after they reach majority that's very different.
No, I thought that was kind of dumb too, but I've got used to western media constantly dumping on Putin regardless of the merits of the case so I just ignore it now. Like, I just skip any part of the Economist that talks about Russia because their coverage of the topic is so hilariously unbalanced.
> Maybe, but "father of a PM" is not even close to the same thing as "PM". If Cameron's father has done something wrong, that doesn't (shouldn't) affect perceptions of his son. The days of punishing children for the crimes of their parents are long in the past.
That's still in the public's interest to know about this kind of thing, assuming it is actually illegal.
>The days of punishing children for the crimes of their parents are long in the past.
Except if the victims are white. Then so many people like to play the game of attempting to justify contemporary offence/injustice X, with historical event Y.
While there may be new information about Cameron's father, his tax schemes were thoroughly covered by the British press years ago. They're not in and of themselves news in the UK, so unless these documents reveal something significant that hasn't already been known, it's not strange they're not making a big deal over it.
But when channels like Al Jazeera do the same thing with issues pertaining to Qatar, which is unethical of course, everyone has their pitchforks ready. I mean come on - everyone knows that BBC is a "neutral" news source.
While that is mostly true, (it's the same people obviously) I'm pretty sure the BBC isn't funded by taxes. If they were, they would be under political control. Which would be silly.
It certainly is indistinguishable from a tax from the licensee's perspective, so I agree with the classification in that sense (e.g. for evaluating the tax pressure of UK citizens etc).
The important takeaway however is that unlike proper taxes the money isn't politically controlled.
That was my point. It might not sound like a difference from a tax, but the difference is pretty substantial when we are discussing the control of the company.
Both the British and (especially) German [0] media are virulently anti-Russian. They blame Russians for all of their ills. Societal problems? Blame Russians. Anything that happens in their countries, they manage to find an angle to blame it on Russians somehow. Norway [1] & Sweden are also under a constant paranoia that Russians are just days away from invading them.
But nothing compares to German media when it comes to paranoia about Russians. They're truly in the league of their own. They have tabloids like BILD that devote several pages of every issue on "evil russians". They even print special issues about evil Russians and new Hitler aka Putin.
When I visited Germany last year, I felt like they're in a second Cold War or something. In the US, we managed to stop being paranoid after 1990s but Germans are still paranoid about Russians. It was explained to me by a german friend of mine that this is because their biggest publisher, Axel Springer, was started with CIA money and that every journalist who works for any of the Axel Springer properties has to sign a contract that says that they have to foster the relationship with the US. Unsaid rule is that they have to disparage Russians. And sure enough, if you search for some of this stuff, you can find things like [2] and [3]
Edit #2 : I see my comment is controversial and is being heavily down/upvoted with downvotes winning.
Anyway, to add even more evidence to what I'm saying, see the Twitter feed [4] of Julian Röpcke, who's a 'political editor at BILD'. Go take a look for yourself and start scrolling. Everything that happens in the world, Russians are somehow behind it according to him. Millions of refugees from Syria in Europe? That's because of Russians and Putin (never mind the fact that millions arrived way before Russians started their deployment in Syria). I guess he cannot mention that unrest started after US implemented a policy of destabilizing Assad and funding of various islamic terror organization... because that would be against his pro-US "jounalistic" contract that he signed.
Being Russian citizen I find this critical position actually pro-Russian. It's in our interest to have a professional government and a president elected on transparent and free elections, to fight corruption and to work for the prosperity of our Homeland and for happiness of all our people. The government, the president, the courts and the deputees of parliament that do not satisfy these criteria can and shall be criticized by anyone who dares. And, by the way, these media do not criticize the Russian people. So, we are ok with that critics and sane people here are not humiliated by what others may call "lecturing from the West". In fact, we are proud that there's so much interest to the Russian politics, that we are treated as important part of the world and that we do matter. Moreover, such critics will not change anything in Russia, because Russian internal affairs are only our internal affairs. I'd say, they are for internal consumption in Germany and UK, and it's good - even western citizen enjoying the taste of democracy may fall to Putin's propaganda, so better keep fighting.
> In fact, we are proud that there's so much interest to the Russian politics, that we are treated as important part of the world and that we do matter.
The only reason Russia "matters" is that it's non-compliant to the Western interests. The only kind of "freely-elected" government that the West would approve of is one that would bend to its wishes. Take a look at Ukraine to see what happens to elected governments that don't.
There are plenty of reasons why Russia matters, and non-compliance is not the one of them. To name few: nuclear weapons, vast natural resources (including fresh water), great cultural heritage. And quite good representation in tech, btw. The West is not a Satan, like some ayatollas would say, and Russia is not the Last Fortress standing against his armies.
As for Ukraine, unfortunately it is the failed state, that is severely (almost deadly) damaged by corruption - it has nothing to do with Western or Russian interests, first of all it's the failure of Ukrainian people to get rid of crooks (just like the failure of Russian people to do the same), and only then there are the sides that would like to play with it.
I appreciate your perspective on your country and the world. I'm a USian but I agree with you and can't fault Russia for resisting the neoliberal/neoconservative Empire erected by the Western elites.
Russians (and the rest of us?) are supposed to fall meekly into line in the world created by the likes of GWB, Victoria Nuland, Hillary Clinton, Dick Cheney and Rumsfeld, David Cameron and Merkl? No thanks.
> It's in our interest to have a professional government and a president elected on transparent and free elections
I think everyone has been looking forward for this to happen for hundreds of years. Nothing has happened. It's still land of kleptocrazy (let's not start arguing that there are other equally bad players as well). And even to this day, Russians seem to be like: "there is nothing we can do". And Putin is more popular than ever. Take this as a critizism for Russian people. You have allowed such a bad leaders run to your country. Russians I have met, talk more about leaving the country.
Now that we have the leaks, look what is happening in Iceland and compare that to what is happening in Russia. In Iceland people are demanding their prime minister to resign. In Russia, people think that this is an attack from the west.
Do you really believe that western media care a single bit about free elections in Russia? The only reason they care about it is because The position of Russia government does not match the western narrative.
> Ohh, please stop, do you really believe that western media care a single bit about free elections in Russia?
I think any person in the "west" would be delighted to see free elections in Russia. Why wouldn't we? Since it would be a missive influence on our lives, of course western media should care!
A government elected by popular vote would be stabilizing to the region (and the world) since it wouldn't have the same need of maintaining poopularity by inventing an external enemy (and at regular intervals, creating one, if necessary).
> "does not match the western narrative"
What is the "western narrative" really?
I suppose one historical "western narrative" is that the Soviet Union was dissolved in the early 90's, and that the borders drawn then are those of sovereign states who each have a choice of trade/military alliance. I'm getting increasingly worried that this isn't the historical narrative tought in some schools in parts of the former union.
> I think any person in the "west" would be delighted to see free elections in Russia.
No, they will be delighted to see the candidate they (westerns) like more - win, they won't care who most people really voted and supported in Russia. Putin won on the recent elections and I did not notice any "delighted west media" after that, even thought as I said in a separate comment - vast majority of the people in Russia actually did support Putin vs other candidates. It's hard to see from the outside, but most people in Russia are actually supporting Putin, I think the reason is that those who were against Putin have a better reach to international media since they speak english and are more socially active thus from the outside it looks like most of the population dislikes Putin, which in reality is not true.
I don't doubt Putin has massive support, but in a country without free press or free elections popularity says nothing. Putin doesn't win elections, he arranges them.
North Koreas leaders have traditionally enjoyed a 100% support, and it might even be genuine support, but it doesn't mean anything.
The media climate in Russia isn't yet North Korean of course, but it's far from a climate in which elections would be called fair.
https://index.rsf.org/
(You really don't want to rank with Belarus and Congo on the freedom of press index).
To win a real election you make sure you have freedom of press, then you have an election overseen by internationally recognized observers such as the oecd.
The fact that Putin is popular despite rapidly growing deficits and receding standard of living (at the same time as massive military spending) is pretty telling.
> rapidly growing deficits and receding standard of living
Really? What is it based on? Compared to a period after the perestroika, level of life has greatly improved in Russia, the worst period of crime and absolute horrendous inability of police to prevent the growth of organized crime is not something most of the people of Russia want to experience again and that is why they want to go with stability which they think Putin gives them.
> in a country without free press or free elections
Throwing around big captions like this does not help a single bit, these words mean absolutely nothing to me, what do you mean by "free press" isn't most of the popular media in UK or US owned and heavily censored by corporate leaders or government parties? What makes this media "free" and media in Russia "not free".
The fact that the budget is balanced on a completely different oil price, and no sanctions. The russian reserve funds are falling pretty rapidly, while defense spending is still increasing and over 5%.
> Compared to a period after the perestroika, level of life has greatly improved in Russia
No doubt. The period after the union dissolved standard off living rapidly rose. The period of openness over the last decade meant great growth and together with rising oil prices it saw rising standards of living. This only changed in the last years with falling oil prices and sanctions which have seen prices rise at a faster rate than wages and pensions. This is also known as a "sinking standard of living". Russian price and wage indices aren't subjective or secret information so please let's not debate whether you can e.g. buy more or less food for a teachers' salary in 2016 than 2013. I'm talking about the very last years now, not the period since 1990.
> stability which they think Putin gives them.
I don't blame them. Putin saw great economic success in his early years. I do however consider it foolish to vote for an authoritarian if the cost of this stability is lack of opposition and lack of free press, which has been the result in recent years.
> what do you mean by "free press"
The methodology used by Reporters Without Borders is a pretty decent one:
"[The level of] pluralism, media independence, environment and self-censorship, legislative framework, transparency, and infrastructure. The questionnaire takes account of the legal framework for the media (including penalties for press offences, the existence of a state monopoly for certain kinds of media and how the media are regulated) and the level of independence of the public media."
As I posted earlier, Russia fares no better than Belarus in this matter (a totalitarian dictatorship!) and also little better than many third world failed states, which is just embarrassing for a mostly developed country like Russia.
> Isn't most of the popular media in UK or US owned and heavily censored by corporate leaders or government parties?
Yes, a lot of the press is owned by corporations, or non political organizations, or political parties, or individuals.
A lot of it has a party bias. That's entirely natural. Pluralism is the key -- e.g. are there media outlets representing all political parties etc? Is there excessive control of one type of media such as TV by a government entity? Self-censorship is a problem, but this problem is accounted for in the freedom-of-press index.
> What makes this media "free" and media in Russia "not free".
It's not black and white, it's a scale from completely unfree (North Korea) to completely free (Nowhere!). Somewhere along this scale we can argue that is are "free" and somewhere I'd argue they are not free.
Where one draws that line is entirely arbitrary. Out of pure interest - if you yourself were to use the freedom of press ranking to draw a line somewhere above north korea where you consider the press to be "free", which state is that? Since it is below Russia in the ranking, where is it? Belarus? Cuba? Saudi Arabia?
I do suspect this -- you will not be able to pick a state on that list as being below Russia but still enjoying press freedom.
What you will have to do instead is a) dismiss reporters without borders and their "freedom of press index" as a western invention deviced to make "western style media" look good, while painting the Russian media landscape as failed, or b) claim that no country on the rank has free press, even Finland at the top spot, since hey, all media in Finland are owned and self censored by individuals and corporations or parties or organizations...
If you are going to do a) or b) above, don't bother - you'd be better of not responding.
> The russian reserve funds are falling pretty rapidly
Any data to back up that claim? Looking at the national reserve fund data it does not look to be anywhere near "falling pretty rapidly" [1]
Also Russian national debt has decreased by quite a lot in recent years [2], and now is only about 25% of GDP, which is a very low figure compared to other countries.
The fund shrunk by 20% in the last two years (from 2014 to 2016) due to the sanctions and low oil prices. I'd say 10% on a per-year basis is pretty fast.
Why are you only cherry picking the data that fits your narrative? The link you included shows that since the time when Putin become a president in 2008 - reserve fund increased by more than 230% in USD and almost 10X in rubbles, the recent drop in reserve fund in USD is happening because of the oil prices decrease (same thing is happening with US national reserve [1]) , but even thought oil prices dropped by almost 400% in recent 2 years - the Russian reserve fund has only dropped by 20% in USD and it actually increased in rubbles. I am very far from Putin supporter, and I absolutely dislike what is happening in Russia, but I just don't like when people come up with "facts" by cherrypicking stuff, if you want to be objective - look at the combined data, do not ignore whatever does not fit your narrative.
I'm not cherry picking I'm just talking about the recent years and I'm completely aware that the economic situation is due in large part to low oil prices. There was no problem being popular when high oil prices and an open market meant steadily increasing standard of living.
What I'm discussing is how hard it is for any politician to be popular in the face of rapidly decreasing purchasing power and living standard such as when there is a budget deficit and inflation. So why isn't Putins popularity decreasing when the economy is? Is it because the people saw what he did in 2008-2014 and trust he can bring that back? Makes sense, but a diverse media would question that idea. It wouldn't be enough in any country with a working media and opposition. Leaders in working democracies don't have that high approval ratings even in good times.
The last couple of years have seen large inflation, and also stagnated salaries/pensions. This is a very recent phenomenon and started with falling oil prices and was worsened by the Crimea sanctions.
You could argue that discussing 2013-16 is cherry picking but those 3 years are pretty special -- they are the most recent 3!
With the sanctions in place 7+ percent inflation and oil prices looking to stay low for a long time, spending 5-6% on the military while the public can buy less every month for their salaries is only sustainable in one single way - make a story that the nation is in a conflict with an external enemy. That it's "us against them". It's simple nationalism and it has always worked. To support that story you cannot have an alternative narrative either so you must effectively control media and ensure there is no working opposition. This is exactly what the rest of the world believe has happened, which is why everyone is worried. It's becaus we fear that given enough time - the people of Ru wouldn't actually know they don't like Putin because there is no media that gives them any reason not to!
The point isn't that Putin is mismanaging the economy directly - it's that he is isolating Russia economically e.g by the Crimea story which will hurt the economy over time.
The same would happen in the US if Mr Trump was elected, but the difference there would be that media would eat him alive after that (e.g alienating Mexico or the entire Muslim world) and the opposition would win in a landslide come the next election.
> I think any person in the "west" would be delighted to see free elections in Russia. Why wouldn't we? Since it would be a missive influence on our lives, of course western media should care!
In practice, that's not true. Take Egypt as an example where the US government tried to keep Mubarak/Suleiman in place [1] until it was unfeasible during the Arab Spring. When it was time for elections, they pretended to be for them (And so did the western media and public) until the Muslim Brotherhood was elected. That was not well received because democracy is only good if people elect who we want them to elect.
The military coup [2] happened, probably with foreign intervention, and the US government couldn't be more pleased with it. Most of the western public either doesn't know, doesn't care or thinks it's better that way and the media will go along official US lines and not call them dictators like they don't call US aligned governments authoritarian or non-democratic. That's strictly reserved for our opponents.
> That was not well received because democracy is only good if people elect who we want them to elect.
Well, there is always the age-old question of whether democracy canbe abandoned with democratic means. (Note I don't know what the MB platform was in these elections, nor what the constiution looked like). Egypt has deep rooted issues with its military being entrenched in all parts of society and politics (A problem which in turn to a large part was created by western intervention /long time subsidies!). Reversing that will take a very long time, and there is always the risk that the people elect a populist government (be it religious populism or some other kind). There is little reason to believe the situation in Egypt will improve any quicker than it has in e.g. Burma. Which is to say, the west will try to meddle in semi-democratic elections for many decades yet.
When I say everyone in the west would be delighted to see free and fair elections in Russia it's because I believe that the Russian people are quite sensible and would elect a decent leadership if given the chance.
I did not say anything about my beliefs and it is not important WHY do they care about Russia. The only thing that is important, is the result - whether these critics are justified, whether they serve Russian interests or not. They do serve. If this was not someone's goal, shame on that guy, he failed. If it was, thanks to him, he did his job well.
> whether they serve Russian interests or not. They do serve.
You're assuming that free elections would benefit common Russians. They wouldn't. You're right about one thing, though: it wouldn't be Putin and his cronies siphoning all of Russia's wealth (resourceful citizens, natural resources, ...). It would be the western conglomerates.
The historical data does not support your theory. We all know that some of the countries now belonging to the "Western world", some time ago were neither democracies, nor successful free market economies. Now we all know about German, Korean and Japanese multinationals. Adopting the "Western" way does not mean surrendering and losing political and economical sovereignity. There were trade wars and political conflicts between Western powers, they all play their own games, they just have agreed on the way of conduct for them.
What makes you think that recent elections were not free? I am Russian and vast majority of people I know (like 90%) went to vote for Putin. I have one friend who was worried about elections not being free since he was voting for Prokhorov and really disliked Putin, so he signed up as an independent observer at one of the St.Petersburg voting booths, and he was shocked when he saw the amount of people that came to vote for Putin, he said it was like 9/10 people were voting for Putin after they counted vote papers, and he said there was no way to fake those votes at least at his booth.
For some reason individuals in Russia think that if the candidate they were voting for did not win the elections - it means the elections were not free and somehow fake, but you have to understand that there are a vast majority of people in Russia who thought that Putin is a better candidate compared to Prokhorov and others
For example, Moscow voted as two different cities:
https://github.com/alamar/elegraph/blob/master/moscow.png
Note the two obvious centers of blobs.
I'm yet to see any non-handwavy explanation of that phenomenon, and why it then disappeared for the next President elections.
Can you explain to me how this chart proves that "elections were DEFINITELY rigged"? I just don't understand what do you mean by "obvious centers of blobs" and how does it correlates with rigged elections?
Who cares if the elections are rigged in terms of vote counting, if oppositional politics or media is more or less non-existent? Without a healthy opposition and oppositional media elections aren't free, period.
You would imagine, if Moscow is a city comprised of similar election districts, that election results in that districts will form a continuity.
There would be a few outliers and a massive core of "typical" districts with similar results in them.
We're even bound to get Gauss distribution of results or something similar.
However, for Duma election, there's no continuity. There are two distinct profiles. There are a lot of districts with one kind of results, a lot of districts with different kind of results. As if it was two different cities, possibly in two different countries. Or if election results were rigged in a large subset of districts.
Moscow is a huge city (12 mln population). I don't think that different results in different parts of it give you any reason to call elections "DEFINITELY rigged", if you look at New York state (which has similar population size as Moscow) elections for 2012 [1], you will also see that each county has a pretty different kind of results, some counties were in full support of Obama, and some were in support of Romney, but that does not make it "definitely rigged" no?
Don't get me wrong - I definitely hope and wish you get them. I also hope and wish they won't be abused by the West. And I hope I'm wrong with my pessimism. But I fear I'm right...
As a regular reader of German news, this does not seem true to me. My impression is that the German media are more Russia-friendly than their British and American counterparts. After all, Russia and Germany could be natural allies from a geostrategic perspective.
British and American media are virulently anti-Russian so that doesn't mean much.
I did not know that Axel Springer actually has support for America, the EU and Israel literally written into its corporate constitution. That seems like a powerful source of bias for a media organisation.
Go on BILD, Die Welt and Der Spiegel and read articles in German. I'm semi-fluent in German (studied it for 5 years and lived there for a year) and from my experience everything I said is true. I've added some references.
The part about poor Russia being targeted by German media for no apparent reason. German media space has plenty of differing opinions in it altho I do understand that the vocal Russian minority in Germany would rather if any criticism of Russia stopped regardless of its veracity.
While you are being downvoted, I concur, of all the people mentioned in the Panama papers [1] Russians for one reason or another drew unproportionally much attention of the media. By looking at the source [0][2, for posterity] I can only infer that Putin is in the center of the web.
I don't know why you were downvoted, but I completely agree with you. It's great that the Panama Papers were leaked, but blaming it all on Putin seems very convenient.
Right, because at no time in its entire history has Russia actively supported organisations whose sole goal was "the overthrow of the international bourgeoisie and for the creation of an international Soviet republic as a transition stage to the complete abolition of the State."
However, curiously, at least over here (Finland), the old Communist sympathizers seem to still be friends of Russia. Or vice versa: if someone is uncritically repeating Russian propaganda (re Ukraine, Donbass etc) then if he's standing in the election he's most likely with one of fringe communist parties.
It somehow goes beyond just hating America and NATO which are good common enemies. It is weird of course, as some of these people are very wealthy and in a real communist revolution would clearly get a bullet in the back of the head.
Yeah, I've noticed that some Communist movements still seem to be fond of Russia, despite everything that made them like it being gone. It's certainly not something exclusive to Finland.
Hardly. Russia is a fascist dictatorship. Fascism is a version of Socialism. Which is why fascists such as Mussolini and Hitler were such huge fans of Socialism, universally hated Capitalism, and were early proponents of the global Socialist movement in the 20th century.
In Russia the State is nearly all powerful, and realistically directly controls the means of production by its whim. It can change ownership of or nationalize any means of production at will. The only way it could be more Socialist, is if they nationalized all food production and stopped pretending there is private ownership. The government of Russia already controls all aspects of the economy and all major businesses. Supposed private ownership without actual private control is a farce, they're Socialist in everything but pretending regarding who owns what.
I'd be a lot more sympathetic to the claims of anti-Russian "propaganda" if it weren't for, you know, the whole thing with illegally invading and annexing part of another country.
Why are you denying all those people in Crimea and Donbass (vast majority of whom are ethic Russians btw) the right of self-determination? Didn't they vote to leave Ukraine? Or do you think they should be a part of a 'nazified' Ukraine? [0]
US and Europe seems is extremely hypocritical. They deny self-determination to Russians, Serbs, Kurds etc yet they happily support it for their enemies.
"The ICIJ findings include evidence that:
- Offshore companies linked to the family of China's top leader, Xi Jinping, as well as Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, who has positioned himself as a reformer in a country shaken by corruption scandals
- 29 billionaires featured in Forbes Magazine's list of the world's 500 richest people
- Icelandic Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson and his wife secretly owned an offshore firm that held millions of dollars in Icelandic bank bonds during the country's financial crisis
- Associates of Russian President Vladimir Putin secretly shuffled as much as $2 billion through banks and shadow companies
- New details of offshore dealings by the late father of British Prime Minister David Cameron, a leader in the push for tax-haven reform
- Offshore companies controlled by the Prime Minister of Pakistan, the King of Saudi Arabia and the children of the President of Azerbaijan
- 33 people and companies blacklisted by the US Government because of evidence that they have done business with Mexican drug lords, terrorist organisations like Hezbollah or rogue nations like North Korea
- Customers including Ponzi schemers, drug kingpins, tax evaders and at least one jailed sex offender
- Movie star Jackie Chan, who had at least six companies managed through the law firm"