Politics

The last few days days have been rife with speculation about the motivation, if any, behind the release of the Panama Papers, with the most prominent example coming from Wikileaks two days ago on Twitter which accused the journalist consortium behind the leak, the ICIJ, of being a "Washington DC based Ford, Soros funded soft-power tax-dodge which has a WikiLeaks problem" and adding that "PanamaPapers Putin attack was produced by OCCRP which targets Russia & former USSR and was funded by USAID & Soros."

The British Government is to spend almost £10 million of taxpayers’ money sending leaflets to every household in the country setting out their case for Britain to stay in the European Union. The move has been described by leave campaigners as “disgraceful” Boris Johnson said it was wrong to try to “stampede” voters while Nigel Farage said the document was “full of lies”. Downing Street signed off on plans to spend £9.2m printing and distributing a 16 page glossy leaflet outlining why Britain would be better off in the EU.

David Cameron has come under fire yet again after a 2013 letter emerged showing he shielded offshore trusts from an EU crackdown. The British prime minister personally intervened to prevent offshore trusts from being dragged into an EU-wide crackdown on tax avoidance The letter came to light as Cameron faces increasing pressure over his late father Ian Cameron’s offshore trust Blairmore Holdings, details of which were revealed in the Panama Papers leak.

Watching the European collapse over the past 6 years has been mostly an exercise in futility, during which unelected bureaucrats throw everything at an unsolvable problem just to maintain the "dream" a little longer, punctuated with moments of sheer, delightful absurdity. This was one of those moments.

Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook has begrudgingly admitted that terrorist groups Al-Qaeda and Al-Nusra are one and the same. In reply to persistent questions from reporters at a Pentagon press briefing, as to whether the two terrorist groups that are being targeted by the U.S. are somehow distinct from one another, Cook gave up and said: “Yeah, ok, ok! Al-Nusra and Al-Qaeda are one and the same! There I said it.” Russia Insider reports: Well what do you know.