Responses to the question, “How was your weekend?” took on a whole new persona this Monday. Stories were a little less humdrum than usual, and I loved it.
From skipping around the rows of flowers at the Woodburn Shoe Tulip Festival, to successfully executing April Fools’ Day pranks on innocent victims, to finally catching the new Batman V Superman movie, thrill seemed to be on many people’s agendas this week.
But the mother of all action this past weekend was the controversial type – the world was exposed to The Panama Papers. The epically titled leak was massive. Huge. Ginormous. Remember the whole WikiLeaks scandal of 2010 by everyone’s second favorite silver fox (after Anderson Cooper) Julian Assange?
Well, take his 1.7 GB of findings on classified U.S. diplomatic cables and multiply it by more than 900 times. That gives you around the size of what we’re looking at with The Panama Papers.
Basically, an anonymous source from a German newspaper obtained 2.6 TB of 11.5 million financial and legal documents from the world’s fourth largest offshore law firm, Mossack Fonseca, which is based in Panama. What did all this leaked data contain, you ask? Major exploitation.
The German newspaper shared the records with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, who relayed the information to a number of its international partners, including the Guardian and the BBC. Thus the world saw the crookedness behind the Mossack Fonseca firm, as well as all the heads of state, celebrities and other filthy rich people who had accounts with them. Money laundering, tax evading and just all-out hiding billions of dollars are what this offshore firm was made of – just like the movies.
Things weren’t looking good for a lot of the world’s big shots like Russian President Vladimir Putin. On April 3, the Guardian brought to light how the leaked documents show a $2 billion trail that indirectly leads to none other than Putin. I hate to say it, but I’m not surprised. It seems like as days go on, more and more justification for the international “I Hate Putin Club” just continues to surface.
Then, there was the resignation of Iceland Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson on April 5. The Icelandic people put on mass protests to get their PM to step down, and once he finally did, the BBC noted it as “the first major casualty of the leaked Panama Papers.”
Haven’t any of these rich crooks seen Spotlight, All the President’s Men or The Insider? Investigative journalists expose corruption — it’s kind of their job.
Along with journalists being good at what they do, another given in today’s world is people protesting outside of the White House. It happens just about every day, but on April 2, a rally took place at the capital unlike any other. The D.C. Cannabis Campaign and other attendees lit up outside of President Obama’s residences to get him and his administration to put more money into research for marijuana and its medicinal value, along with pardoning the pot offenders in jail.
I have to give kudos to the protestors for 1) getting stoned left and right and not caring about Secret Service and other security trying to stop them, 2) blowing up a 51-foot inflatable “joint” and using it as a causal prop, 3) no one getting arrested.
Hopefully, their tactics impressed more people than just me, and being 420-friendly will become more acceptable. You never know; this could be one of Obama’s closing projects as his presidency is (sadly) coming to an end this year.
Sadness came over Eugene and Salem this past week when a first-year UO student was killed in a train accident on April 1. Connor James’ body was found on railroad tracks near the Northwest Expressway in North Eugene. According to the Lane County Sheriff’s Office, James’ death appeared to be an accident and it is plausible that he was trying to climb onto the back of a train but fell.
The James family will hold a celebration of life for the 18-year-old at the Salem Alliance Church on Saturday, April 9, at 11 a.m. They have also created a GoFundMe.com memorial fund in honor of the Sprague High School graduate. The proceeds will support Sprague’s lacrosse team, the sport James played for many years of his life.