Day: April 21, 2024

Biden gave Iran yet another win by pressing Israel to go easy on the terrorist state  New York Post

panama city — Eight years after 11 million leaked secret financial documents revealed how some of the world’s richest people hide their wealth, more than two dozen defendants are on trial in Panama for their alleged roles. The case has become known as the “Panama Papers.” 

The repercussions of the leaks were far-ranging, prompting the resignation of the prime minister of Iceland and bringing scrutiny to the then-leaders of Argentina and Ukraine, Chinese politicians and Russian President Vladimir Putin, among others. 

But those on trial now for alleged money laundering are principally the leaders and associates of the now defunct Panamanian boutique law firm that helped set up the shell companies used to obscure those really behind them. 

The leaders of that firm, Jurgen Mossack and Ramon Fonseca, are among those on trial. 

What is the Panama Papers case about? 

Panamanian prosecutors allege that Mossack, Fonseca and their associates created a web of offshore companies that used complex transactions to hide money linked to illicit activities in the “car wash” corruption scandal of Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht. 

In December 2016, Odebrecht pleaded guilty in U.S. federal court to a charge related to its use of shell companies to disguise hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes paid in countries around the world to win public contracts. 

According to Panamanian prosecutors, the Mossack Fonseca firm created 44 shell companies, 31 of which opened accounts in Panama to hide money linked to the Brazilian scandal. The judge on the case, Baloisa Marquinez, last year decided to also merge the Odebrecht-related charges to prosecutors’ allegations about the firm’s work for German giant Siemens. Prosecutors allege a former executive with the company used entities created by Mossack Fonseca to transfer funds for bribes. 

A Siemens spokesperson declined to comment, noting that it is not a party to the Panama case and that it involves former Siemens employees in their private capacity. 

What do Mossack and Fonseca say? 

The 71-year-old Fonseca has not been present for the trial, because his lawyer said he is hospitalized. But he had previously said his firm did not control how their clients used the shell companies the firm created for them. Its role was simply the creation and sale of the companies. 

Mossack, a 76-year-old lawyer originally from Germany, said in a statement to The Associated Press that “we categorically reject that we have committed any crime, not Mossack Fonseca nor the subsidiaries … and we hope that can be proved in the trial. If there is in fact justice in our case, they have to absolve us.” 

Both men were arrested in 2017, but had awaited trial out on bond. 

What happened to the firm? 

Mossack Fonseca helped create and sell around 240,000 shell companies across four decades in business. It announced its closure in March 2018, two years after the scandal erupted. 

“The reputational deterioration, the media campaign, the financial siege and the irregular actions of some Panamanian authorities have caused irreparable damage, whose consequence is the complete cease of operations to the public,” the firm said in a statement at the time. 

How did the scandal affect Panama? 

Panama’s international reputation for financial services was tarnished by the scandal. 

The European Union included Panama on a list of tax haven countries — low taxes or fiscal opacity — which led international financial institutions to demand the implementation of measures that would allow scrutiny of the banking and financial systems. 

Consequently, the country’s business creating shell companies plummeted some 40% within a year of the scandal. 

What changes did Panama make? 

Panama’s government implemented changes to make it possible to identify the ultimate beneficiary behind limited liability companies and their assets. 

Changes also sought to give greater responsibility to the registered agents — typically lawyers from Panamanian firms — listed for the shell companies. 

The objective was to make it possible for Panamanian authorities to respond to requests to assist in investigations. 

Julio Aguirre, an expert and financial specialist in Panama, said the government wants the registered agents to actually keep an eye on the companies. Before, “the law didn’t ask them to follow up, there wasn’t that legal obligation,” he said. 

Banks had also previously been restricted in their ability to know who was really behind accounts. “They gave the bank the vehicle to obtain that information,” Aguirre said. 

Opening arguments in Donald Trump’s criminal trial begin tomorrow morning, so I don’t know about you, but I’m in a pretty good mood. That said, before we get started, I want to touch on something that’s really bothering me right now – and will likely continue to bother me as this trial gets further underway.

Trump spent all week dozing off in the courtroom while continually passing gas. He also got up and tried to leave before the trial was even over, prompting the judge to explain to him that it was still going on. Then Trump was supposed to hold a rally last night, but it was canceled due to “wind.” Trump’s people apparently thought it was safe enough to let his supporters gather for Trump’s speech, but not safe enough for Trump to give the speech?

What we saw this past week was one piece of evidence after another pointing to Trump’s worsening dementia. He was too confused to understand that the trial was important enough to pay attention to. He was seemingly unaware of the inappropriateness of continually farting in a courtroom without asking for a recess. He was confused enough to try to leave the trial while court was still in session. And then his handlers canceled his planned rally speech under the thinnest of guises, seemingly to try to keep him from delivering a senile speech.

And yet through all of this, I haven’t seen a single mention in the media of how all these incidents from this past week are signs of Trump’s worsening dementia. He keeps falling asleep, that’s odd! Trump tried to leave in the middle of court, that’s odd! His rally was canceled at the last minute for nonsensical reasons, that’s odd too! Yet no one in the media dares to say that it’s all pretty obviously evidence that his dementia is getting worse.

This comes after Trump spent 2021, 2022, and 2023 making one semi-senile public appearance after another, with no mention from the media at all, before he got so cartoonishly senile in 2024 that the media felt it finally had to lightly cover his cognitive collapse. Then Trump’s people pulled the plug on most of Trump’s rallies in order to make the dementia headlines go away, and sure enough, the media is just about 100% playing along.

The media’s willful failure to cover Trump’s stunning cognitive collapse is infuriating, and it harms the public discourse. But it’s not surprising. It all comes back to the cold hard reality that if the media admits Trump is senile, the general public will figure out he’s finished in life, and they’ll stop nervously tuning in for their daily dose of doomsday hysteria about how Trump is going to come out on top.

If the media would just do its job – just be honest about how obviously Trump’s dementia is governing everything that happens in Trump’s life these days – Trump would be off the political stage in a heartbeat. But the media doesn’t want Trump off the stage yet. He’s too good for ratings. They’ll keep portraying him as finally having us right where he wants us, right up until the moment he finally takes the hard fall they all know is coming. In the meantime, this is why we can’t have nice things.

The post Here’s what bothers me about this… appeared first on Palmer Report.

(JTA) — With just hours before Jews around the world will sit down for the first Passover seder since the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, many are reckoning fully for the first time with how to discuss the trauma and pain of the last seven months at their tables.

A diverse array of Jewish groups and leaders have produced materials designed to help with that reckoning. The traditional haggadah — of which there are many new ones this year — offers a durable framework for grappling with a world that includes both danger and resilience for the Jewish people; the new supplements aim to help Jews connect that story with current events, including the attack on Israel, Israel’s war in Gaza and rising reports of antisemitism around the world. The supplements come from Jews and Jewish institutions across the political, ideological and religious spectrum.

Here’s a (non-exhaustive!) selection of some of the many supplements released this year, all of which can be printed at home for those who choose to do so.

• Under the direction of Rabbi Mishael Zion, the Hartman Institute produced an extensive supplement that includes contributions from people directly affected by Oct. 7 and an essay by prominent Israeli author David Grossman.
• Rabbi Menachem Creditor and Ora Horn Prouser, the CEO and dean of the Academy of Jewish Religion, edited a supplement that begins, “I am at the seder, but my heart is in October.”
• The Schechter Rabbinical Assembly in Israel crafted a supplement that is available in Hebrew and English and includes poetry written during a daylong conference about adapting Passover for the current moment.
• A digital supplement by New York City’s Reform Central Synagogue centers poetry written by Israeli poets since Oct. 7; while the Reform movement has released its own.
• The Hostage and Missing Families Forum has created a full haggadah that features those who remain hostages in Gaza; donations from the sale of the digital version benefit the advocacy organization.
• Yeshiva University’s Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks-Herenstein Center for Values and Leadership issued a supplement with a specific Oct. 7-related teaching or question for each step of the seder.
• The Pardes Institute’s supplement challenges users to draw direct parallels between Pharaoh and Hamas.
• Rabbi Joshua Kulp created a supplement that draws on the haggadahs produced in Israel’s early years by its kibbutz communities, some of which were attacked on Oct. 7.
• An international coalition of what its members call “the religious left” put out a reader meditating on the themes of the seder through a leftist, anti-occupation lens.
• The supplement from Bayit includes several poems including one that reimagines the four children of the haggadah as contemporary Jews: “Today the Four Children are a Zionist, a Palestinian solidarity activist, a peacenik, and one who doesn’t know what to even dream.”
• Anyone who has picked up the Kveller Haggadah from our families-focused sister site over the last four years since it was published will want to sign up to get the Oct. 7 supplement with seven ways to address the crisis at their seders.

This article originally appeared on JTA.org.

The post 11 Passover haggadah supplements to print if you want to discuss Oct. 7 at your seder appeared first on The Forward.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) on Sunday said her motion to vacate the Speakership is “coming” no matter what House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) decides to do, while also dodging questions about an alternative plan if he is booted.

“Mike Johnson’s Speakership is over. He needs to do the right thing and allow us to move forward in a controlled process, and if he doesn’t do so, he will be vacated,” she said Sunday on Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures.”

“Sunday Morning Futures” host Maria Bartiromo then asked if Greene plans to move forward with her motion to vacate, which she introduced last month. She has not yet brought the vote to the House floor or indicated what might prompt her to do so.

“It’s coming regardless of what Mike Johnson decides to do. And we have three more Republicans joining us for a special election coming up very soon. So, people need to know this can happen,” Greene responded.

Greene took the first step toward ousting Johnson after the House passed a spending package to avert a partial government shutdown just hours before the deadline. The package had votes from both sides of the aisle but came under scrutiny by House conservatives.

At the time, Greene called the motion “basically a warning,” but tensions were further inflamed in recent weeks after Johnson supported stand-alone aid to Ukraine, despite previously insisting aid for Kyiv needs to be linked with security measures for the U.S. southern border.

“[Johnson] has completely betrayed Republican voters all over the country, and he is absolutely working for the Democrats, pipe-passing, the Biden administration’s agenda,” Greene said Sunday. “So, this is a Speakership that is completely overwhelmed. It’s only Mike Johnson, is the one that tried to hang on to it and is in complete denial.”

Last week, Johnson called the ouster threat “absurd” and maintained that he would not resign. His remarks came shortly after Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) emerged as the first Republican to publicly back Greene’s motion. Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) publicly backed the motion last week.

Bartiromo asked Greene for her response to the critics who claim she is “creating chaos” for the GOP conference, to which she said, “Those that are calling this ‘drama’ are the very people that are responsible for the drama that the American people are having to live through every single day.”

“Those on the left, those on the right, the ‘uni’ party that’s in control of our government are the ones that have inflicted the American people with nearly $35 trillion in debt, ripped our border wide open,” she said.

Bartiromo followed this up by asking Greene for her alternative plan should Johnson be booted.

“Our plan is this: We have to give the American people a reason to trust us and fight for us. The American people are supporting President Trump to be the next president of the United States because they’ve seen him in action. He fought against the Democrat agenda. He put America first. They desperately want him to lead this country again because they trust him, and they know he will do that,” Greene responded.

Bartiromo then told Greene she did “not give a plan for the Speaker’s role,” before asking her about the timing for the motion.

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Israeli President Herzog warns of Iran developing nuclear weapons  Yahoo! Voices

bogota, colombia — Tens of thousands of Colombians marched Sunday to reject economic and social reforms being proposed by the leftist government of President Gustavo Petro, the latest in a series of demonstrations against Petro’s policies. 

The reforms, which Petro says will fight deep inequality, but which opponents say will damage the country’s already-struggling economy, were key campaign promises for the 64-year-old leader, who took office in 2022. 

Despite gray skies and rain, some 70,000 people marched in the capital Bogota, according to city government estimates, chanting “out with Petro,” waving national flags, and blowing on trumpets before gathering in the central Bolivar Square. 

The march comes after a Senate committee earlier this month rejected a proposed health reform aimed at stripping power from insurers and expanding access to health care, as the government took control of two major insurers it said had failed to correctly care for patients. 

The government is expected to propose a new version of the health reform once the new legislative session begins in July. Pension and labor reforms are still being debated by lawmakers. 

“This government’s policies are dire. The health system, despite its flaws, was working and now Petro is putting an end to it by plunging patients who have no health care or medicine into a crisis,” said Monica Leon, a 45-year-old doctor. 

Accountant Miguel Angel Larrota, 52, said he was protesting bad governance and demanding that Petro “not destroy what works and put an end to the corruption he promised to fight.” 

Paloma Valencia, a senator from the opposition Democratic Center, a conservative political party founded by former President Alvaro Uribe, said the march was bringing together not only opponents but people who voted for Petro two years ago. 

People also took to the streets in the city of Medellin and in Cali, near the Pacific coast. 

Marches have also previously taken place in support of Petro’s reforms.