Icelandic Prime Minister Resigns After Panama Data Leak
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
In Iceland, no laws nor articles of constitution need to change to do this. All we need is a parliament majority that does it.
> Pirate Party is a label adopted by political parties in different countries. Pirate parties support civil rights, direct democracy and participation in government, reform of copyright and patent law, free sharing of knowledge (open content), information privacy, transparency, freedom of information, anti-corruption and network neutrality.
Politicians are mainly meddling chumps. Like new managers constantly ordering sweeping changes but hardly aware of how things are implemented on the ground.
Inventing feel good stats which are juked.
The old BBC series Yes, Minister is the most realistic depiction of politics.
Blind trust of authority is all too commonplace; the default should be mistrust of those who wield power.
Otherwise legal and permanent secretaries ( civil servants ) draft laws and parliaments ( congress ) debate and amend them.
I conceed the executive branch does propose the policy and ideas on which they are based.
I am all for legislatures ( parliaments ) and elected representatives but the executive ( govt. ) seems to increasingly be at odds with the citizenry and serve those who fund their election or pad their retirements with directorships.
Sure have govt. just much less of it - there are far too many laws and far too many bad laws.
Fewer better, well considered laws, informed by public debate.
Really watch a couple of episodes of Yes Minister, that shows how it works not how they say it works.
Which set of algorithms do you want to vote for?
I truly think there is something there though, something from the open-source process that can make government more efficient and productive, but it's probably not in the way we are thinking. It probably looks less like software maintenance and more like science, dare I say political science. Crowd-source solutions and organize experiments across counties and states in a way that's data driven, not politics and need-for-reelection driven.
No AI necessary.
The Independence Party is center-right (very conservative for Iceland) and was formed in 1929 advocating for full independence of Iceland. They haven't changed their name since. It's been one of the four major political parties of Iceland since inception and more often then not the largest; every head of the party has been prime minister at some point (except the current one; that might change in the next week as they are in coalition with the just-resigned prime ministers party and there is a void to fill). In short you could say that they are pro-business and for smaller government. The overview here [2] is a good start, but you can go straight to the source here (english below) [3].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Founding_of_the_Republic_of_Ic...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danish%E2%80%93Icelandic_Act_o...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independence_Party_%28Iceland%...
The last time an executive at my company took a "sabbatical" they never came back. It honestly sounds like your PM is trying to resign without using the word.
Do you know what exactly he has he done (to have to resign in shame)?
It's just odd that there are no details within the articles, nor from the people that are trying to get him to resign.
I can't find the illegal or the immoral part.
in general: one does not have to literally break the law to be asked to resign by your citizens. that is not, and should not be, the standards to which we hold our leaders.
Curious to see if/when they go after more sensitive/powerful Western interests. Seems like so far the articles have gone after fairly easy targets.
They're being careful. There are legitimate reasons for running these shell corps and (accidental) libel will throw all their accusations in to question.
> When asked about the lack of Americans in the original release, the German newspaper’s editor responded mysteriously: "Just wait for what is coming next."
I am patiently waiting with a bucket of popcorn.
We may see something eventually. But it has also been pointed out that U.S. laws give wealthy individuals fewer reasons to form companies in Panama. It is possible to form entities with secret owners under U.S. law, with a little effort. So the primary reason for Americans to go offshore may be tax-related, for which Panama would not normally be the jurisdiction of choice.
See: http://fusion.net/story/287671/americans-panama-papers-trove...
http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/07/27/157499893/episo...
http://www.npr.org/2016/04/05/473139196/panama-papers-leak-i...
This may mean that, though there are fewer Americans named in these files than one might expect, their dealings might be shadier, on average, than other nationalities'.
Why would that be of worthy entertainment value? Shouldn't you be hoping the exact opposite, that very few or no Americans are involved (and insert any replacement country, as the same should go for all nations)?
Everyone knows there are corrupt Americans. It's a fact. We're well past the fantasy land of universally ethical citizens. The debate isn't whether there are corrupt Americans, the question is who.
Mob bosses? Trust-fund baby tax evaders? Wall Street hedge funds? Big-Oil CEOs? Ex-military defense contractors? Politicians? I don't know, but some of them better get jailed to discourage others from gaming the system.
And it's entertaining when a big criminal gets caught and punished, especially when the public strongly suspected them but lacked the concrete evidence (like Al Capone).
He's also still rich as fuck and very powerful within the country.
One might suggest that this "leak" is being used to target foreign leaders that the US does not like - while gaining blackmail material against domestic individuals.
Someone would have to make the case that his holdings in this offshore company actually did influence the decisions made regarding the banks during the crisis, and nobody is doing that just yet.
(I can't find the law in question.)
Luckily the public doesn't care much for these sort of technicalities as everyone can see the obvious conflict of interest that was trying to be hidden.
Before banning possession of gold, FDR and all his friends and family actually sold their gold: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102
When taxes were 95% in UK or US(during and after the big war) it was better for the big guys that paid very little at the end.
In times of emergency measures, just having info means you are not affected by that. But everybody else is.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-27/the-world-...
It doesn't matter for US individuals or corporations, they need off shore accounts if they want to evade taxes.
The precise chain of events is:
1) 2006 Father of wife sells Toyota dealership at a very favourable price to a consortium of business men who use a bank loan to pay for it.
2) Wife inherits/is given money by father.
3) Wife uses some of the money to invest in Icelandic Banks using an offshore company Wintris. Note, Icelandic Banks are desperately raising capital during this period ... in order to allow them to make more loans. At the same time, Banks are also borrowing heavily from abroad, and re-lending that money to a small circle of businessmen (see 1).
4) Banks go under because during 2008 they are unable to rollover the loans that they have borrowed on the international credit market (see 3), and also are starting to experience massive defaults on the loans they have made to a small circle of Icelandic businessmen (see 1 & 3).
5) Wintris is listed as one of many creditors to the Icelandic Banks, and and consequently stands to benefit (or not) from the resolution talks that are ongoing to this day.
He chose to hide this ridiculous conflict of interest, not only by holding secret off-shore companies, but also by promoting legislation on what government officials are required to disclose.
Or something like that.
I think the above sentiment gets further reified as it becomes pare of the national identity: corruption scandals are for tropical dictators, not well-off postindustrial democracies.
this varies by region in the US, obviously. I suspect that the frequency of Pittsburgh lefts (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pittsburgh_left) is a pretty decent proxy for valuing system-optimal outcomes
(It's entirely possible that one could view this as emergent-behavior-converging-on-altruism without anyone consciously being altruistic. I'm just saying that anecdotally, it doesn't seem to derive directly from conscious altruistic values.)
Tax avoidance is different, and it's legal.
Finally, I'm not intimately aware of his tax mistakes. Primarily I keep seeing reporting on how his wife has bonds from an Icelandic bank and he, as PM, sought to have this bank pay its debtholders (including his wife) during the financial crisis (which was a financial meltdown in Iceland), an obvious conflict of interest. That's what I hear was mainly the issue.
Somehow I feel like the really big fish will just shrug it off by flexing its political muscle a little and get out clean.
They will point their fingers at a plot by CIA to destabilize their country and scream that the west is a lot more corrupt than insert name here.
To be honest, I don't see any other country doing anything remotely similar to Iceland. After all, Iceland is small, western, and very progressive country. 20 thousand people in the protest yesterday represents ~10% of registered voters, which is a huge percentage of people that came to protest.
First of all, if the parliament gets dissolved, the parties have really short time to actually prepare a campaign, which means that bigger parties will probably be more in a bit of an advantage, because they have a lot of experience. Pirate Party is not really big in Iceland neither, but according to the polls, it currently does have huge support (~40%).
Second of all, prime minister did try to dissolve the parliament by asking the president to do so before he resigned, but president rejected this proposal. This means that the parliament will probably be functional until the elections (set for autumn), just with a different Prime Minister. This gives the Pirate Party much more time to actually prepare for the elections, and, in my opinion, gives them enough time to actually crush the competition.
This is, by far, the best possible outcome for the Pirate Party.
Lots of people won't admit when they screwed up until days later (ask anyone in enough relationships :P), not sure why this is any different?
I wish we saw this more often in the US, but these days it seems like between a giant government and giant corporations, the people at the heads of them answer to almost no one.
The biggest reason why I want privacy and security for all is I don't want my future heads of government and policy makers to be beholden to anyone who might have dirt on them. If someone was able to get to those documents and leak them, who's to say someone else was not able to get to them before the leak?
What if someone were to get a hold of all the private conversations between future POTUS X and their boyfriends/girlfriends? I am more concerned that my elected representatives might have to reply "how high" when some clandestine operator says "jump". Yes, I am aware about campaign financing as well (saw the John Oliver video) and there's something we need to do about that as well.
http://www.visir.is/forseti-neitar-sigmundi-um-heimild-til-t...
And now it seems the former PM is accusing the president of lying..
http://www.visir.is/sigmundur-david-segir-forsetann-hafa-sag...
I'm pretty sure what happened is that he wanted the approval to dissolve the parliament, and then would then wave this authorization in the face of the other coalition party as a way to blackmail them for support.
I for one much prefer the rule of law to the vague rule of convention by "nobody did that before so he shouldn't".
Now if people don't agree with his use of his presidential powers the right thing to do is change the constitution, not complain about ÓRG following the law and his constitutional mandate.
I think his detractors just don't like that he shit on their parade, so instead of addressing that issue they're making this absurd argument that he used a clause of law that had never been used before and ubsetting that status quo is somehow bad, while conveniently forgetting that that unprecedented clause was invoked in the midddle of an unprecedented financial crisis.
This would be in my opinion the best description of ÓRG while president.
I think it's much more accurate to describe ÓLG as a literal constitutionalist.
He read the letter of the law and followed its mandate.
He's undoubtedly upset the established older. I'm just objecting to how that gets framed, which you can just as easily frame his actions as "nobody serving as president before him had actually read the constitution" as "he's using unprecedented powers as president".
I recently read "The Brethren" by Bob Woodward and and Scott Armstrong (http://www.amazon.com/The-Brethren-Inside-Supreme-Court/dp/0...), about the Supreme Court from 1969 to 1975. Watergate is a major episode, and it shows that Nixon knew that if they lost their Supreme Court appeal (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Nixon), there was little recourse left.
If you like The Thick Of It, you may also like the film 'In The Loop' and 'Veep' (both also 'created' by Armando Iannucci) as well as the Australian 'The Hollowmen'. 'Utopia', the sort-of follow on to The Hollowmen (which is excellent), is quite good too. There is also the 'Armando Iannucci show', which is very good, but also very different.
There is also supposed to be the Afghan version of the 'Thick Of It' too, although I have not found a source for that with translation.
It is mentioned in the excellent "Bitter Lake" by Adam Curtis.
http://billhicks.tumblr.com/post/24578142318/livinglikebill-...
This is beautiful. THIS is how you do a protest.
“But he was found guilty of not holding cabinet meetings when things turned critical. The lesser charge carried no prison sentence or fine. ”
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-17256626
My opinion: He was complicit in his government’s regulatory capture.
They don't "lie", that would entail thinking about the truth and then speaking differently. What might be true or false never crosses their minds.
Whenever some specific belief is challenged by external conditions (poor polling, disagreement with wealthy donors, etc), they just go through long doublethink processes multiple times with their advisors, until they're persuaded that changing their position is the best thing to do. Once they believe what they say, they simply sell it like only Real Believers could.
I'm sorry, but I truly believe that not only is this view utterly naive but apologist as well, and I simply think it tries to blot the sun with its thumb.
That's the whole idea behind whistleblowing, and whistleblower protection.
I'll be impressed when there's some reform or change in a powerful country or against a powerful and corrupt leader like Russia's Putin, who is clearly fleecing the Russian people to enrich himself and his friends. So far the only good news of note is that the US and the IRS will be cracking down harder on these characters now that they have all this ammo against them.
Sadly, this will get a lot of people thinking "our side won" when this is pretty much the lowest prize we could have. Where's the real reform? Where's the big leaders being taken down? Iceland is pretty much a suburban Danish city on an island. Its not a world power. My city's dog catcher got more votes than this guy. Lets demand more than trivial wins.
That said, bravo to the Icelandic people. Their example of a more direct form of democracy is pretty inspiring.
Their people mobilized aggressively against corruption twice now.
Our people have not, not for the banks, not for the NSA leaks, and we probably will not for this
The largest US banks have been semi-neutered, nearly nationalized by the Fed when it comes to control, and are heavily tamped down when it comes to risk. The result of all of that, is that America's banks are now arguably the strongest - and among the safest - in the world (compare Wells Fargo and JP Morgan right now to Europe's banks for example, or see: Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse).
So, nothing changed?
http://icelandmag.visir.is/article/many-22000-gathered-deman...
Imagine the political scandal required in the USA for more than 8 million people to turn out in less than a day to protest anything.
Population of Washington DC is a bit less than 5 times that of Reykjavik, so it would be like getting 50k protesters out. Still very impressive.
Also some background. The prime minister married into money, his wife's family being extremely succesful Toyota importers and dealers. On his accession he made a clear pledge that all his financial dealings would be above board and in plain sight.
At least he got the second one, though not willingly.
So completely different scale
And again there was the opposite message from Syria: "The reign can bomb you, and also call their allies to bomb you".
It was like a domino, leader falling after leader until Assad didn't. And no one did after.