MikeLigalig.com

smiling time? aylandil saw your face.

then...

you turned around.

crying time. she saw your ass.

huhuhu, praying here that i have no mental problems...

this is believable, more than all those annoying ads and mutual putdowns from all presidential wannabes. 

all dogs go to heaven. you will meet many friends there, dayko.

oh, yes. they're starring in some popular movies.

step 6: (optional) replace the addressee with the name and address of your favorite enemy.

QuoteDespite the fact that India’s claims against Bangladesh over jurisdiction in the Bay of Bengal were generally not vindicated, Modi calmly accepted the July 2014 decision rather than inciting xenophobic popular protests against alleged foreign unfairness. Modi emphasized that the arbitration, by putting hoary divisive issues behind the parties, had established the basis for future cooperation.

this shows that china needs better education on foreign relations more than bluster.

If seismologist Roger Bilham is right and we do begin to see a series of absolutely massive earthquakes, that could dramatically change the course of world events literally overnight.

Even a single magnitude 8.0 earthquake in a major city in Japan, China or the United States would cause global markets to crash and would mean billions of dollars in economic damage.

So let us hope that the crust of our planet begins to stabilize, but let us also not ignore the warnings of the scientists.

What they are warning us about right now lines up perfectly with what Jesus warned us about nearly 2000 years ago, and that is a very sobering thing to consider.

http://www.infowars.com/

In addition, let us not forget about all of the volcanic eruptions that have been in the news in recent weeks.

According to Volcano Discovery, 38 volcanoes around the globe are erupting right now.  This is definitely an unusually high number.

In Matthew 24, Jesus warned us that there would be earthquakes in “diverse places” just prior to His return.  This is something that I discuss quite a bit in my new book.  If we truly are in the times that the Bible refers to as “the last days”, we should expect the shaking of our planet to continue to intensify.

So why is this happening?

Why is Asia shaking so violently all of a sudden?

And does this shaking bode ill for other areas along the “Ring of Fire” including the west coast of the United States?

I think that it is important to point out that all of this shaking did not just begin this week.  In fact, ever since the start of this calendar year there has been a lot of unusual earthquake activity all over Asia…

"Just four days ago, on April 10, six people died in Pakistan when a 6.6-magnitude quake hit Kabul with aftershocks in India.

Two days before, on April 8, there was a magnitude 4.2 earthquake in Nepal.
Nepal had suffered a larger 5.5 magnitude one on February 22.

A month before, on January 20, there was a 6.1-magnitude earthquake in China, and 16 days earlier 11 people died when a 6.7-magnitude earthquake hit Manipur in India."

And of course on Wednesday a huge magnitude 6.9 earthquake caused tremendous devastation in Myanmar…

"A magnitude 6.9 earthquake struck Myanmar on Wednesday, causing tremors around the region, including in neighboring Bangladesh where scores were reported injured in stampedes and buildings were damaged. The quake, which took place at a depth of 134 kilometers (83 miles), hit some 400 kilometers northwest of Myanmar’s capital Naypyidaw, according to the US Geological Survey (USGS), and was also felt in parts of India and China. There were no immediate reports of casualties, although the region where the earthquake hit has poor communications infrastructure like many of Myanmar’s outlying provinces."

On Thursday we also saw a magnitude 6.5 earthquake hit Vanuatu, and a magnitude 5.9 earthquake shook the southern Philippines…

"A 5.9 magnitude earthquake hit off the coast of Mindanao early Thursday, April 14, seismologists said, with no damage or casualties immediately reported and no tsunami warning issued. The quake occurred at 2:21 am (1821 GMT Wednesday) off the coast of Zamboanga del Norte, with its epicenter at a depth of 15 kilometers, the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Phivolcs) said."

A single magnitude 8.0 earthquake in a populated area would be a disaster of historic proportions.

If we were to see four of them like Roger Bilham is projecting, that would be a complete and utter nightmare.

It is important to keep in mind that a magnitude 8.0 earthquake would be many, many times larger than the twin earthquakes that hit Japan earlier today…

"A devastating 6.4-magnitude earthquake has struck Japan hours after a first which killed at least three and injured 19 others.

The quakes, which struck the south-western island of Kyushu, leveled more than a dozen homes, sparked fires and trapped several people under collapsed buildings.

Around 350 military personnel have been dispatched to aid the rescue effort, said Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga.

The first earthquake, measuring 6.5-magnitude, hit the south-east Asian country late on Friday, local time, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency."

5 MAJOR EARTHQUAKES IN 48 HOURS AS A SEISMOLOGIST WARNS ‘CATASTROPHIC MEGA EARTHQUAKES’ ARE COMING

Why is the crust of the Earth shaking so violently all of a sudden?


Michael Snyder
End Of The American Dream
APRIL 15, 2016


Why is the crust of the Earth shaking so violently all of a sudden?

Over the past 48 hours, there have been five major earthquakes globally, and one prominent seismologist has declared that “catastrophic mega earthquakes” could be on the way.  In fact, seismologist Roger Bilham of the University of Colorado has made headlines all over the world by warning that “current conditions might trigger at least four earthquakes greater than 8.0 in magnitude”.  If his projections are accurate, our planet could be on the precipice of a wave of natural disasters unlike anything that any of us have ever experienced before.

Since the beginning of 2016, south Asia has been hit by an unusually high number of large earthquakes, and this has scientists groping for an explanation.  The following comes from the Express…

"Scientists say there has been an above average number of significant earthquakes across south Asia and the Pacific since the start of the year.

The increased frequency has sparked fears of a repeat of the Nepal quake of 2015, when 8,000 people died, or even worse.

Roger Bilham, seismologist of University of Colorado, said: “The current conditions might trigger at least four earthquakes greater than 8.0 in magnitude."

“And if they delay, the strain accumulated during the centuries provokes more catastrophic mega earthquakes.”

sorry, di gyod nako itug-an kinsay akong botaran nga presidente.

good boy.  kind man.

kuyawa diay sa davao uy.  abi ba nakog gihurot na ning mga badlungon ni mayor duterte.

the beginning of a great adventure!

Earlier this year the Syriac Orthodox Archdiocese of the Western United States published a photo of one of the seized churches writing: "Our Church, the Syriac Orthodox Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Maryam Ana), in Diyarbakir - Turkey, had been attacked a few days ago. The wall of the Church was hit with explosives, our dear priest father Yusuf Akbulut with his wife were threatened in their home in the court of the church."

It's always problematic when a state takes over churches, but that's even more the case in a Muslim majority country, which Turkey is: 99% of Turks are Muslim. What makes matters even more troubling is that the current president, ErdoÄŸan, isn't merely an authoritarian ruler, but also an Islamist.

more at https://pjmedia.com/faith/2016/04/16/turkish-president-erdogan-seizes-six-christian-churches-making-them-state-property/

Turkish President Erdogan Seizes Six Christian Churches, Making Them State Property

BY MICHAEL VAN DER GALIEN
APRIL 16, 2016


The 1,700-year-old Virgin Mary Syriac Orthodox Church in Diyarbakir was one of the churches seized. Image Courtesy of Shutterstock.

Recep Tayyip ErdoÄŸan's administration recently seized six churches as state property in the volatile southeastern part of Turkey. As World Watch Monitor reports:

After 10 months of urban conflict in Turkey’s war-torn southeast, the government has expropriated huge sections of property, apparently to rebuild and restore the historical centre of the region’s largest city, Diyarbakir.

But to the dismay of the city’s handful of Christian congregations, this includes all its Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant churches. Unlike the state-funded mosques, Turkey’s ancient church buildings â€" some of which pre-date Islam â€" have been managed, historically, by church foundations.

Because of this move, the churches in Diyarbakir now factually belong to the state. This includes a church that was built 1,700 years ago, and a new one, built in 2003.

this beats complicated child births.

porbida.  kaon, kaon.  away, away.  never the twain shall meet, kay, na, makakaon hinoon ug bala.

arang gajod. mora na hinoon siyag octopus nga natangtangan ug 6 ka tiil, as in bipus na lang.

The comparative size of the Panama Papers data leak. (Image source: USA Today)

The documents are primarily comprised of emails, pdf files, photo files and excerpts of an internal Mossack Fonseca database. It covers a period spanning from the 1970s to December 2015, according to the ICIJ.

"The sheer number of people we found in the data is becoming clear to us â€" dictators, Japanese mafia, Sicilian mafia, Russia mafia, weapons dealers, drug dealers, pedophiles," the newspaper's Frederik Obermaier, who also worked on the project, said in the video.



"You start to feel a little nervous when you realize that this one leak is going to expose them all, and that it all started at the Sueddeutsche Zeitung."

http://www.usatoday.com/

"He said that they must be stopped," the newspaper's Bastian Obermayer, who was involved in the project, said in a video. "It's rotten business they are doing."

After receiving the data, the newspaper's staff â€" realizing the 11. 5 million documents would be too much to take on for one newspaper, brought it to the Washington, D.C.-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).

The ICIJ had helped coordinate on other projects on tax havens and tax evasion involving the newspaper known as Offshore Leaks, Lux Leaks and Swiss Leaks.

The newspaper received about 2.6 terabytes (2,600 gigabytes) worth of information detailing how leaders, celebrities and athletes from around the globe acquired shell companies that can enable owners to cover up their dealings, and hide money.

The newspaper, which described in an article how it acquired the trove of documents, said the source of the material wanted no financial compensation. The source asked only for encryption and other security measures: "There are a couple of conditions. My life is in danger. We will only chat over encrypted files. No meetings, ever. The choice of stories is up to you."

Asked why the source was leaking the documents, the reply was: "I want to make these crimes public."

The story behind the massive Panama Papers leak

Jabeen Bhatti
Special for USA TODAY
April 6, 2016

BERLIN â€" It started with an email in early 2015: "Hello, this is John Doe. Interested in data?"

"We are very interested," replied a journalist in Munich.

The exchange resulted in internal documents from Mossack Fonseca â€" a Panama law firm that creates anonymous offshore companies around the world â€" being sent to staff at the Süddeutsche Zeitung, a large German daily. The newspaper had been involved in tax-haven investigations before.

this is sad.  i wonder how long it would take for the area to recover, if at all.

curse   /kÉ™rs/

noun
plural noun: curses

1.
a solemn utterance intended to invoke a supernatural power to inflict harm or punishment on someone or something.
"she'd put a curse on him"
synonyms: malediction, hex, jinx

2.
an offensive word or phrase used to express anger or annoyance.
"his mouth was spitting vile oaths and curses"
synonyms: obscenity, swear word, expletive, oath, profanity, four-letter word, dirty word, blasphemy

The Goat and the Curse of the Chicago Cubs


Credit: Henryk Sadura / Shutterstock.com

In 1945, a man named Bill "Billy Goat" Sianis was ejected from a Chicago Cubs game because he brought with him a pet goat. Outraged, Sianis reportedly cursed the club with the words, "The Cubs ain't gonna win no more!" Sure enough, the Cubs lost the next game and haven't won a World Series in more than a century, despite many attempts over the years to lift the curse (some of them involving goats). While most regard the curse as a silly superstition, many longtime fans take it very seriously. This April, police in Cook County, Ill., found a decapitated goat tied to a tree near a golf course. A few days later, an unknown man delivered a smelly box addressed to Tom Ricketts, the current owner of the Chicago Cubs baseball team; inside was a decaying goat's head.

http://www.livescience.com/

The Curse of Tippecanoe



Did Native American leader Tecumseh curse William Henry Harrison after Harrison's troops emerged victorious at the Battle of Tippecanoe? Perhaps, as historians have noted that ever since Harrison became president in 1840, every person elected to the office in 20-year intervals has died while serving as president. Harrison died of pneumonia after just one month in office. Abraham Lincoln, elected in 1860, was assassinated, as were James A. Garfield (elected in 1880) and William McKinley (1900). Both Warren G. Harding (1920) and Franklin D. Roosevelt (1940) died of natural causes in office, while John F. Kennedy (1960) was assassinated. Ronald Reagan (1980) was the target of an assassin's bullet in 1981, but he survived, and the curse was apparently lifted.

The Curse of the Hope Diamond


Credit: Creative Commons | KeepOpera

French merchant Jean Baptiste Tavernier, according to legend, stole a 115-carat blue diamond from the eye of a Hindu idol in India â€" for this sacrilege, Tavernier was supposedly mauled to death by dogs. But in reality, he sold the gem to King Louis XIV of France in 1669 and retired a wealthy man. All went well until the diamond fell into the hands of King Louis XVI and his wife, Marie Antoinette, who were beheaded during the French Revolution. After Lord Francis Hope of England inherited the diamond, he married an American showgirl. The pair squandered their fortune, sold the diamond and were eventually reduced to poverty. After Evalyn Walsh McLean bought the stone in 1912, her son was killed in a car accident, her daughter committed suicide and her husband left her for another woman (he eventually ended up in an insane asylum). The Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History bought the Hope Diamond in 1958 and hasn't suffered from owning it â€" but a truck hit the postman who delivered the jewel (he survived). His wife and dog died not long after, however, and his home caught fire.

The Curse of Timur's Tomb


Credit: Anatolijs Laicans | Shutterstock.com

A warlord and nobleman who controlled a vast swath of Asia during the 14th century, Timur (aka Tamerlane) was renowned as a military tactician whose warfare killed some 17 million people. He was also a celebrated patron of architecture and the arts, however. In 1941, Joseph Stalin sent a team of archaeologists to open Timur's tomb in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, much to the alarm of local residents and Muslim clergy. Upon opening Timur's coffin, the team discovered an inscription: "Whoever opens my tomb shall unleash an invader more terrible than I." Within a matter of hours, Adolf Hitler's troops invaded Russia; an estimated 26 million people died as a result. In 1942, Stalin ordered Timur's remains to be reinterred back in Samarkand in accordance with Islamic tradition; shortly thereafter, the German army surrendered at Stalingrad, ending their campaign against the Russians.

The Mummy's Curse


Credit: Dreamstime

According to some reports, the tomb of King Tutankhamun was guarded by a stone inscribed with the ominous threat: "Death Shall Come on Swift Wings to Him Who Disturbs the Peace of the King." Undeterred, Egyptologists Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon opened the tomb to worldwide fanfare in 1922. Shortly thereafter, however, strange fates befell those who had entered the tomb. Lord Carnarvon died four months later while in Egypt from an infected mosquito bite (he was already known to be in poor health). A few hours after his death, back in England, Carnarvon's beloved dog Susie let out a yelp and died. Financier George Jay Gould I died of a fever six months after visiting the tomb. Woolf Joel, a South African millionaire, was murdered a few months after his visit to the tomb. A. C. Mace, a member of Carter's archaeological team, was killed by arsenic poisoning. Carter's personal secretary was found smothered in his bed in 1929. But researchers have determined that, of the dozens of people connected with the opening of the tomb, the vast majority lived long and healthy lives. Others have speculated that some of the deaths may be attributed to toxic molds or bacteria that were disturbed when the tomb was opened.

The Curse of Ötzi



The frozen body of Ötzi "the Iceman" was discovered in 1991 in the Ötztal Alps on the Austrian-Italian border, some 5,300 years after the Bronze Age man died (probably during an enemy attack). Rainer Henn, a forensic pathologist who examined Ötzi, died in an auto accident one year later. Kurt Fritz, the guide who led Henn to Ötzi's body, died in an avalanche shortly thereafter. Helmut Simon, who first discovered the body, died from a fall while hiking in 2004. Dieter Warnecke, who headed the rescue team looking for Simon's body, died of a heart attack just hours after Simon's funeral. That may seem like quite a series of coincidences, but given the hundreds of people who have been involved in research on Ötzi, the number of deaths is actually not unusual.

Real or Not? 6 Famous Historical Curses

By Marc Lallanilla, Assistant Editor   
August 05, 2013

Introduction


Credit: Egyptian Museum

Humans can be a superstitious lot, but some historical curses seem too real to be mere coincidence or simple superstition. From King Tutankhamun to the Chicago Cubs, check out these six famous historical curses.

memo to drunks: walk, or crawl, if need be. avoid horses.

memo to horses: nihihihihi, hi-ya-tigidig-tigidig-tigidig. we understand. lisod ning pahimungtan ta nga way sala. for standing up on your own four legs, congratulations.

the latest addition:

Woman accused in Dallas dentist's murder added to FBI most wanted list


DALLAS COUNTY SHERIFF'S DEPARTMENT
Brenda Delgado, 33, is wanted on capital murder charges and the FBI added her to its Ten Most Wanted list Wednesday, 06 April 2016.

more at http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/woman-charged-dallas-murder-added-fbi-wanted-article-1.2590877

THE SISTERS-IN-ARMS- Donna Joan Borup and Elizabeth Anna Duke (62 and 75 years old) They’re known as the "Thelma and Louise" fugitives â€" and these aging radicals have been on the run since 1981. That’s when New Jersey native Donna Borup was accused of throwing acid into the eyes of a cop during an Anti-Apartheid demonstration in New York City. Texas-born Elizabeth Duke is wanted for an armored car robbery in NYC that same year. The FBI renewed the hunt in 2013 after sightings of the fugitives in the New Jersey/Pennsylvania area.

http://radaronline.com/

THE BRAZILIAN BLACK WIDOW- Claudia Hoerig (50 years old) Major Karl Hoerig survived nearly 200 Air Force combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, but couldn’t survive coming home to his wife, Claudia. Prosecutors charged her with murder in 2007, after her husband’s body was found covered in a tarp at the bottom of the stairs in their home. There were two bullet wounds in the back of his head, and evidence showed that she had emptied the family bank account before fleeing to her native Brazil â€" where she continues to fight extradition.

THE DEVIOUS DECORATOR- Karen Lynn Stricker (57 years old) This insidious interior decorator defrauded victims of more than $5 million during the late 1980s. She was indicted alongside her hubby Henry in 1992 on 30 counts of mail fraud, wire fraud, stolen property and obstruction of justice. The con-artist couple then promptly disappeared, with Stricker facing a $7.5 million fine and 195 years in prison.

THE HIJACKING REVOLUTIONARY- Catherine Marie Kerkow (63 years old) She’s the longest-standing fugitive on the FBI’s Most Wanted list, with 43 years on the lam since Catherine Kerkow hijacked a Western Airlines flight in 1972. She was joined by accomplice Willie Holder as they terrorized plane passengers by claiming to have a bomb. The pair demanded $500,000, and eventually allowed all the passengers off in San Francisco. The hijackers then flew the plane to Algeria, where they were granted asylum as activist members of the Black Panthers. Holder was caught after the pair entered France in 1975, but Kerkow’s whereabouts remain unknown.

THE HOMICIDAL DRUNK DRIVER- Muneerah Ali-Tarrah (31 years old) Michigan-born Muneerah Al-Tarrah was found guilty in 2005 of a drunken hit-and-run that killed 35-year-old Todd DeGain in Mesa, Ariz. She’s living in Kuwait, but can’t be extradited â€" especially with Al-Tarrah and her wealthy father having close ties to the royal family. Al-Tarrah’s lawyers once asked an American judge to lower her fugitive status so she could travel to Europe for mental health treatments. The judge refused, but Al-Tarrah still lives a life of luxury while Todd’s family waits for justice.

THE CON WOMAN IN LINGERIE- Julieanne Baldueza Dimitrion (42 years old) She was a Hawaiian real estate mogul until February 2010, when the feds charged Julieanne Dimitrion and husband John with mortgage fraud. The would-be entrepreneurs had swindled money from distressed homeowners to fund their own lavish lifestyle â€" and Dimitrion made the papers when her extravagant expenses were found to include shoes, designer purses and lots of high-end lingerie. The couple was last seen at a church in Oahu on July 2, 2010, four days before they were scheduled to be sentenced.

THE MANIPULATIVE MADAME- Amparo Altagracia Montas Hernandez (54 years old) She posed as a beauty salon owner, but Amparo Hernandez and son Eddy Vasquez were really harboring female illegal immigrants â€" and putting them to work as prostitutes to pay off the people who smuggled them into the States. She was arrested and charged with running brothels in Southwest Florida, and joined Eddy in fleeing the feds in August 2005 soon after they were indicted. Hernandez has a Dominican background, but strong ties in both New York and Boston.

THE TRAILER PARK WAITRESS- Hazel Leota Head (65 years old) This waitress has a history of moving throughout the country, has been married as many as 10 times and has gone by more than two dozen other names. She is wanted for the 1998 murder of a man in Benton, La., who was shot in the back of the head while he sat in his trailer. Investigators said Hazel Head would meet men by taking out personal ads, hanging out at truck stops and traveling with drivers. She has been wanted since 1991 by Nebraska law enforcement on charges of burning down a boyfriend’s trailer. Head should be considered armed and dangerous.

THE SEXUAL PREDATOR- Denise Harvey (47 years old) This church-going married mom was convicted in 2008 of multiple counts of sex with a minor. Denise Harvey first met the 16-year-old male while watching her son play baseball. The illegal couple then had sex on at least five occasions â€" including couplings in the office where the pretty predator worked as a mortgage broker. Harvey fled to Canada to evade prosecution, and was arrested while hiding out in Saskatchewan in 2011. She convinced the Canadian government to grant her asylum on the grounds that she faced "cruel and unreasonable punishment" in the U.S.

THE ECO-TERRORIST- Josephine Sunshine Overaker (40 years old) She’d been a midwife and a shepherd, but Josephine Overaker really found her calling as a full-time terrorist. The violent vegetarian started out in 1996 by using milk cartons to bomb rangers’ stations in Oregon national parks. That was just the start of her violent stint with the extreme environmentalists of the Earth Liberation Front. Overaker is now a suspect in 17 different acts of eco-terrorism, including attacks on nuclear facilities and a Vail ski resort. She’s officially on the run from a 2006 conviction on multiple counts of arson and terrorism.

Dirty Dozen! The FBI’s Most Wanted Women â€" 12 Photos Of America’s Lethal Ladies Living Life On The Lam

By Radar Staff
Posted on Feb 25, 2015



The Cuban Refugee - Joanne Deborah Chesimard (67 years old) This former member of the Black Liberation Army describes herself as a "20th century escaped slave," but she really escaped the Clinton Correctional Facility for Women in New Jersey in November 1979, after being convicted on two murder charges â€" including the 1972 death of New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster. Chesimard (now known as Assata Shakur) took refuge in Cuba in 1984, where she presumably followed the music career of her step-nephew, rapper Tupac Shakur.

the duterte is our own the donald.  chiz and cayetano are both scary and ambitious opportunists.  bongbong is a historical national nightmare.  need i say more?  okay, mar is said to be an uncontrollable drunk.

can we thus have top two leaders of the land with whom we can hold our heads up high? 

will someone please give me one of those?  wa man ko ana uy.  but i can be bribed... by a piggy bank.

a little look-see:

[...]

So why do some politicians refuse to go when it's clear that their time is up? "Ego is the reason," says Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. "The same thing that makes you do it in the first place makes you think you can get away with it."

Power, Perks, Paychecks

Doug Muzzio, a political scientist at Baruch College, suggests that politicians have a lot of reasons for staying in office â€" and possibly in denial â€" after it's clear to everyone else that they're in deep trouble.

"It's a question of power, perks, paychecks, self-delusion, hubris and arrogance," Muzzio says.

Few people in any line of work are eager to leave a job without a sense of future prospects. But politicians may be especially reluctant to quit, due to a sense that they're doing indispensable work to the applause of the public, or at least their staff.

"Once you've gotten elected, once you've earned the favor of the majority, you begin to think of yourself in a different way â€" as somehow invulnerable, above criticism and attack," says Matthew Crenson, a Johns Hopkins University political scientist.

more at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124214861

It's a question of power, perks, paychecks, self-delusion, hubris and arrogance.

-Doug Muzzio, political scientist at Baruch College

i leave it to sociologists to explain why leaders in other countries know when to go when tainted by a scandal while in our own 'cry, my beloved country', those who are in similar predicaments fight tooth and nail to stay on, shamelessly insisting that they shine like polished silver.

"It touched a nerve because in the bank crisis in 2008, when the Icelandic banking system and really Icelandic society collapsed, Iceland was pretty close to being bankrupt," Haukur Holm, a reporter for Iceland's national broadcasting agency, told NPR.

"We haven't really emotionally recovered from the bank crisis, so when this came out on Sunday night, it really kicked us down again."

http://www.vox.com/

This got really bad. The stock market lost 95 percent of its value; unemployment shot up from under 2 percent to over 8 percent.

The financial crisis was a disaster for Iceland, and one that made the public very wary of shady financial dealings. Finding out that the prime minister's family was holding on to huge secret cash reserves was bad enough. To make matters worse, Gunnlaugsson himself was involved in purchasing the shell company in 2007. He sold it to his wife for a pittance at the end of 2009, just one day before he would have had to disclose it due to his position in the country's government.

But the worst detail, by far, is Wintris' involvement in the Icelandic banking system. The shell company used by the prime minister's wife had actually invested in Iceland's banks before the financial crisis, and is currently claiming it's owed $4.2 million by the banks as a result. Gunnlaugsson had promised to deal with Iceland's remaining creditors after the collapse and international bailout; it turns out that his family was, in fact, one of the creditors. It essentially made his pledge to clean up the country seem totally incredible, leading to mass outrage â€" and, ultimately, his resignation.

Why this was such a big deal in Iceland

To understand why people were so mad, you need to understand just how bad things had gotten in 2009.

In the early 2000s, Iceland had built up a massive financial industry fairly rapidly. It did so, however, on totally unsustainable bases â€" promising depositors high interest rates while at the same time spending a lot of money purchasing new assets. This was a bubble set to pop, and so it did in 2008 when the global financial system it depended on began falling apart.

The effect on Iceland was dramatic, as the Washington Post's Matt O'Brien explains:

Iceland's government couldn't afford to bail out its banks that had gotten so much bigger than its economy. The only choice was to let them go under. In other words, Iceland's banks were too-big-not-to-fail. That was a lot easier, though, when letting the banks fail meant letting foreigners lose their money. Iceland's government, you see, guaranteed its own people's deposits, but no one else's.

But now it was Iceland's government that needed a bailout. It needed the money to protect domestic deposits, cushion the economy's free fall, and keep their currency, the krona, from crashing much more. In all, Iceland got $4.6 billion, with $2.1 billion of that coming from the IMF and the other $2.5 billion from its Scandinavian neighbors.

Why Iceland’s prime minister just resigned over the Panama Papers leak

by Zack Beauchamp
April 5, 2016


(Halldor Kolbeins/AFP/Getty Images)

Icelandic Prime Minister Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson resigned Tuesday, after documents leaked by a law firm in Panama revealed that his wife had a secret offshore account with millions of dollars.

This money is housed in a shell corporation, Wintris, to which Icelandic banks owed money after the financial sector collapsed during the global financial crisis. Gunnlaugsson won the prime ministership in 2013 on a platform of taking a hard negotiating stance on Iceland's remaining creditors. This remains a major issue for him, so many people in Iceland see his wife's account as an incredible conflict of interest.

Iceland is uniquely sensitive to the fallout of the financial crisis, having been hit harder than many other countries. The largest protests in the country's history pressured Gunnlaugsson to resign, after he initially tried to survive the leak.

daghan kog baboy uy.  i mean, piggy banks collection ito, pare.  di man ko ganahan magbuhi ug baboy aron lang patyon, so piggy banks na lang.  around 30 piggy banks with different designs, wa lay sulod, hihihi.  so milyonil gihapon ko.  note: i am not on the panama papers.

( Somewhat surprisingly, it is really easy to set up a shell company. In fact, NPR's podcast Planet Money set up its own shell companies just to test this out: Unbelizeable, Inc., in Belize, and Delawho? in Delaware.

Listen to Planet Money's discoveries on the ins and outs of owning a shell company, and why they are easy to set up and a hassle to deal with.

(The Planet Money team even drafted a resolution that would allow them to go to Belize to meet the "director" and "shareholder" of the company.)

http://www.vox.com/

Shell companies are the go-to method for the wealthy to protect their assets, because it's really easy.

(7) But while everyone has heard of the existence of tax havens, the actual practices that go into wealth management are more secretive.

The Atlantic explains how a select few legally "enable their clients to sidestep many laws policies" in its piece "Inside the Secretive World of Tax-Avoidance Experts":

Wealth management is a profession on the defensive. Although many people have never heard of it, it is well known to both state revenue authorities and international agencies seeking to impose the rule of law on high-net-worth individuals. Those individualsâ€"including the 103,000 people classified as "ultra-high-net-worth" based on having $30 million or more in investable assetsâ€"pay wealth-management professionals hefty fees to help them avoid taxes, debts, legal judgments, and other obligations the rest of the world considers part of everyday life. The general public doesn’t hear much about these professionals, since there are only a few of them worldwide (just under 20,000 belong to the main professional society) and they strive to keep a low profile, both for themselves and their clients.

(6) Tax havens aren't only in Panama and the Cayman Islands. For some, states like Delaware and Wyoming in the United States are tax havens as well.

Bloomberg published "The World’s Favorite New Tax Haven Is the United States." Why? Because even American law firms dedicated to protecting the financial assets of the world's elite say the US is a perfectly effective tax haven:

You can help your clients move their fortunes to the United States, free of taxes and hidden from their governments.

Some are calling it the new Switzerland.

After years of lambasting other countries for helping rich Americans hide their money offshore, the U.S. is emerging as a leading tax and secrecy haven for rich foreigners. By resisting new global disclosure standards, the U.S. is creating a hot new market, becoming the go-to place to stash foreign wealth. Everyone from London lawyers to Swiss trust companies is getting in on the act, helping the world’s rich move accounts from places like the Bahamas and the British Virgin Islands to Nevada, Wyoming, and South Dakota.

"How ironicâ€"no, how perverseâ€"that the USA, which has been so sanctimonious in its condemnation of Swiss banks, has become the banking secrecy jurisdiction du jour," wrote Peter A. Cotorceanu, a lawyer at Anaford AG, a Zurich law firm, in a recent legal journal. "That ‘giant sucking sound’ you hear? It is the sound of money rushing to the USA."

(5) The Panama Papers made one thing very clear: Tax havens, meaning countries or independent areas where taxes are levied at a low rate, are ubiquitous. So much so that avoiding them is nearly impossible, Nicholas Shaxson explained in his exposé on the world's tax havens for the Guardian.

"See if you can dodge all my bear traps, and declare yourself untainted by tax havens. If you succeed, you win my Hermit of the Year prize," Shaxson writes of the pervasiveness of these loopholes:

Do you celebrate Christmas? If you do (or even if you do not), did you buy any gifts on Amazon last December? If so, then your goods were quite likely to have been routed through a byzantine world hosted â€" only on paper, you understand â€" by the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, where Amazon has located its European headquarters, slashing its tax bills around the world. In 2011, Amazon revealed that the US Internal Revenue Service was chasing it for $1.5bn in back taxes. More recently, Amazon has said it will stop routing its UK sales through Luxembourg.

[...]

Let’s cut this challenge short. Did you at any point consume the services of any of these: AIG, Aviva, Barclays, Black & Decker, British American Tobacco, Burberry, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, Facebook, FedEx, GlaxoSmithKline, Ikea, HSBC, JP Morgan, Microsoft, Pepsi, Skype, Starbucks, Vodafone or Walt Disney? This is just my quirky personal selection from a list of more than 350 multinationals whose convoluted tax schemes were revealed last November by a whistleblower, working for one accountancy firm, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), in one European tax haven, Luxembourg.

The Panama Papers reaffirmed the pervasiveness of tax havens. This has been well documented.

(4) It's not only political elites. Top names in the entertainment and athletics industries also made the long list of Mossack Fonseca's clientele. Notably, the list included names closely tied with the already corruption-mired FIFA.

The records showed that four of the 16 FIFA officials indicted in the United States used offshore companies. And then there is famed Argentine player Lionel Messi, who, already under indictment for using offshore companies to skirt taxes, was found to have owned yet another offshore company in Panama: Mega Star Enterprises.

Messi has already said he is ready to sue the Spanish newspaper that outed his record of tax evasion for defamation.

You can read ICIJ's full report on the financial underbelly of international soccer and other athletics here.

(3) While China’s top leader, Xi Jinping says he is ready to take on the "armies of corruption," the Panama Papers revealed that, like many of the world leaders exposed in this data dump, members of Xi and other top Chinese officials' families are tied to multiple offshore companies.

The papers named Xi's brother-in-law Deng Jiagui and the daughter of former China Premier Li Peng, Li Xiaolin â€" both names that were previously exposed in a 2014 ICIJ report that the Chinese government denied.

The Washington Post explains why this can create an uncomfortable tension in a country that has tried to wage an aggressive â€" albeit selective â€" anti-corruption campaign:

Although there are legal uses for shell companies, the charges are sure to rile Beijing.

China’s ruling Communist Party does not like to discuss the wealth of its leaders, or their families, especially as it wages an aggressive, if selective, anti-corruption campaign.

[...]

In 2014, a report jointly published by the ICIJ and the Center for Public Integrity found 22,000 alleged tax haven clients from Hong Kong and China. That investigation found offshore accounts linked to more than a dozen of China’s richest people, including members of the National People’s Congress and executives from state-owned firms caught up in corruption probes.

[...]

Asked about the story at a Foreign Ministry press conference that year, a Chinese government spokesperson called the investigation "hardly convincing." The report was subsequently blocked. The Chinese press did not play up the story.

(2) Icelandic Prime Minister Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson walked out of an interview after a Swedish reporter asked him about investments exposed in the Panama Papers.


http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/watch-moment-icelandic-prime-minister-7686987

Gunnlaugsson and his wife, Anna Sigurlaug Pálsdóttir, bought the offshore company Wintris in 2007 to invest millions in Icelandic banks â€" a line of questioning the prime minister found "totally inappropriate."

The BBC explains Gunnlaugsson's questionable investments:

The leaked documents show that Mr Gunnlaugsson was granted a general power of attorney over Wintris - which gave him the power to manage the company "without any limitation". Ms Palsdottir had a similar power of attorney.

Court records show that Wintris had significant investments in the bonds of three major Icelandic banks that collapsed during the financial crisis which began in 2008. Wintris is listed as a creditor with millions of dollars in claims in the banks' bankruptcies.

Mr Gunnlaugsson became prime minister in 2013 and has been involved in negotiations about the banks which could affect the value of the bonds held by Wintris.

(1) The Russian government has already said it was "obvious" President Vladimir Putin was the main target of the Panama Papers leak. Whether or not the objective of the leak was to smear the Russian president, the findings showed a $2 billion trail of secret offshore deals and loans all pointing toward Putin.

The Guardian explains the "fabulous fortunes of the Russian president's inner circle":

Though the president’s name does not appear in any of the records, the data reveals a pattern â€" his friends have earned millions from deals that seemingly could not have been secured without his patronage.

The documents suggest Putin’s family has benefited from this money â€" his friends’ fortunes appear his to spend.

[...]

Cash was also handed over directly to the Putin circle, this time in the form of very cheap loans, made with no security and with interest rates as low as 1%. It is not clear whether any loans have been repaid.

The Panama Papers is the largest leak of insider information in history. What are some key findings?

Vox's Matt Yglesias explains:

The documents provide details on some shocking acts of corruption in Russia, hint at scandalous goings-on in a range of developing nations, and may prompt a political crisis in Iceland.

But they also offer the most granular look ever at a banal reality that's long been hiding in plain sight. Even as the world's wealthiest and most powerful nations have engaged in increasingly complex and intensive efforts at international cooperation to smooth the wheels of global commerce, they have willfully chosen to allow the wealthiest members of Western society to shield their financial assets from taxation (and in many cases divorce or bankruptcy settlement) by taking advantage of shell companies and tax havens.

More than 100 media organizations spent a year poring over 11.5 million leaked files with 40 years' worth of data connecting more than 214,000 offshore companies to people in 200-plus countries. Here are some key resources to help you catch up on the unfolding scandals.

The 8 most important things to read to understand the Panama Papers document leak

by Tara Golshan
April 4, 2016


Alexander Aksakov/Getty Images

On Sunday the world became familiar with the Panama Papers: a massive 2.6-terabyte leak of confidential documents revealing a deep web of international corruption and tax evasion from the world's political elite.

Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca â€" which specializes in helping foreigners set up international shell companies to protect their financial assets â€" leaked the papers to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists to expose the offshore holdings and hidden financial dealings of some of the world's most familiar names.

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While you are free to experiment with gentle stimulation of the LV 3 and other acupressure points, it is recommended to exercise caution, as this form of medicine can have unforeseen consequences for your health. WebMD says to avoid the practice if you suffer from rheumatoid arthritis, varicose veins, or are pregnant, as these could cause complications; if you have heart disease or cancer consult your doctor before trying acupressure.

As far as acupuncture is concerned, it is strongly recommended not to experiment with it yourself, as there is obviously a serious risk for injury. Only go to licensed professionals for assistance.

http://home.remedydaily.com/

In order to find your LV 3 point, locate, while barefoot, the area between your big toe and the adjacent one, then find the famous spot by moving two fingers' width downward. Explore IM says the point is located just near the protruding bone there, but not quite on it. Once you've found a slight depression in your foot, press down gently and massage the area. Do this in short intervals, a few times a day.

5. Fight Parkinson's

This one is a little different, as it involves acupuncture as opposed to acupressure. The Northwest Parkinson's Foundation reports LV 3 has been historically used to fight tremors caused by Parkinson's disease.