Huge leak regarding tax havens

"Intentionally"? You act like it was the intent of the Americans to deliberately kill doctors and patients.

Not Anti-American, my arse.

Well, they knew that the place they were bombing the shit out was a hospital filled with those people, so I'm not sure what else you'd call it but intentional.
"Anti-American" is a nonsense term used to shut down debate.

Even interpreted in an implausibly positive light, their knowledge of what they're doing is 1) that what they're doing is useless even if everything goes according to plan and 2) collateral civilian casualties are a price worth paying in order to bump a bunch of bad guys up the ladder and do their recruiting for them.

Terrorism is a systemic problem, not a problem susceptible to being solved by assassinating individuals. Real life is not a James Bond movie, in which taking out single masterminds is the solution to the problem of terrorism. Assassination simply isn't a thoughtful tool for combating terrorism, and assassination by bombing is nothing more than an act of terrorism that encourages terrorism in response.

First name the people who dropped the bombs on the hospital.

How will this effect game of thrones?

We're about to get a good idea if governments are actually going to do something about this.

HSBC has been caught illegally helping Syria.

The big news, however, is that the Panamanian firm helped North Korea move cash around and do weapons deals.

HSBC were (still are?) some dirty motherfuckers:
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2012/dec/11/hsbc-bank-us-money-laundering

It doesn't appear to have gotten him, but its possible it caused another Ukrainian official to resign suddenly. https://news.vice.com/article/ukraine-prime-minister-arseny-yatseniuk-resigns-political-crisis

I noticed the Yatsenyuk resignation this morning. I'm betting on Groysman as a replacement, even though he's part of the Poroshenko Bloc.

David Cameron is in fairly serious trouble in the UK, having misled people for a week about how he'd benefitted from these funds in the past before coming clean.

It's also emerged that he lobbied in the EU to prevent them being subject to transparency requirements. Right now his approval rating is below that of Jeremy Corbyn, the left-wing Labour leader, despite the latter being subject to non-stop media abuse.

That would also serve to counter the moronic assertion that the Ukrainian government is full of neo nazis, as Volodymyr Groysman is Jewish. Natalie Jaresko, the finance minister, is also a contender; she's American born of Ukrainian parents in Chicago.

Though part of that is also due to Cameron being subject to a non-stop case of being a hateful little cunt most of us wouldn't piss on if he was on fire. Instead, we'd toast marshmallows.

I'm assuming there have been lots of smug headlines about him telling porkies?

Well, this could be "interesting."

Well, he's in trouble right up until a lot of other people suddenly feel they may get their tax affairs made public, at which point things will change.

If Cameron wasn't just treading water, or had some balls, he'd suggest we follow the Norwegian model of publishing tax returns as one hell of a bluff. I'm all for it, but I suspect we'd have one very warm summer as lots of people went into meltdown over the prospect, and there'd be under 10 people voting for it. The useless prick could at least have called the press on it's own hypocrisies on the issue.

To be fair it should be anyway, given the point in the electoral cycle and the fact Cameron is a tool, but Corbyn has turned the Labour Party into such a useless organ the main opposition to the Government is, er, the Conservative Party.

When Iain Duncan Smith is doing a better job of challenging the top two, it's depressing.

Apparently, he hasn't actually released his tax returns at all, just a summary by some firm.

Yeah, and the real story would be his wife's finances in any event. Note that a number of the items "gifted" to him by foreign dignitaries have been conveniently split between him and the missus so that his portion was JUST below the level where he would have been legally required to disclose it to Parliament...

So, a large chunk of the data is now available to be searched by anyone.

And a few Americans have shown up on the list.

One of whom is running for President.

In Mexico the bank "severely understaffed" its compliance department and failed to implement an anti-money laundering programme despite evidence of serious risks.
Are you fucking kidding me? You actually have to set up a formal program to educate people as to why money laundering is bad?

So, pretty much almost all the important world leaders.

I'm sure they'll use the Steve Martin excuse.

WE don't DO anything. OUR elected GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS must address and remedy the problem. Any bets on when that may happen?

I say kick the bums out, but unfortunately most people are going to vote party lines and for "the lessor of the two evils."

Looks like the leaker might have gotten arrested.

If it wasn't the leaker, it might have been someone trying to duplicate his efforts.

I'm sure your name will turn up there somewhere.

I always said greed makes the world go round.

And Bernie Madoff's name has turned up in the papers. http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article87617392.html

Looks like the Panamanian investigation is going nowhere. http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN10G24Z