© The Guardian
Capture of the Guardian’s totally accidentally misleading headline.
Capture of the Guardian’s totally accidentally misleading headline.
Luke Harding, a bastion of ethical journalism (and not at all a paranoid lunatic), has churned out 2 articles totaling over 5000 words, each using the word "Putin", almost as often as they use the phrases "allegedly", "speculation suggests", "has been described as" and "may have been".
Neither of his articles mentions by name any of the 12 world leaders, past and present, actually identified in the documents, nor do they mention David Cameron's dad, who is also in there. No, they focus on a cellist friend of Putin's, talk about his daughter's marriage, and include an awful lot of diagrams with big arrows that point at pictures of...Vladimir Putin. This is, apparently, all evidence of...something.
Comment: In related news, Russian prosecutors plan to open an investigation to confirm or deny the data relating to Russian individuals and entities named in the papers, to establish whether or not they are in compliance with Russian and international anti-corruption and anti-money laundering laws.
The ICIJ told TASS that the story isn't "about Russia" - it's "about the offshore world". That's true. After all, the places most implicated are Hong Kong and the UK. But as Corbett points out, the Western information war machine is turning this information to its own advantage, and so far no prominent Americans have been named. ICIJ even added: "We haven't disclosed the whole database and we're not going to. [The] Panama documents do not contain data on American politicians. Unfortunately, we do not have such data." How convenient.
On a lighter note, Edward Snowden laconically responded to David Cameron's description of Cameron's father's involvement as "a private affair" with the following tweet: "Oh, now he's interested in privacy."