The Panama Papers story has been over a century in the making
April 10th, 2016 by Roger Darlington
It is amazing that the Panama Papers were leaked almost a year ago but the story was only broken when journalists had done the necessary research.
Originally an anonymous hacker handed the files to journalists on “Süddeutsche Zeitung” who shared the information with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. Then 400 reporters working in 80 different countries and 75 different languages piled through 2.6 terabytes of material. Nobody leaked anything.
Everybody piled in on the appointed day, producing stories so far and so wide they couldn’t be stopped, but also targeted from region to region and country to country. This is why in the UK Prime Minister David Cameron has been targeted.
But the origin of the whole scandal lies in the origin of the state of Panama itself.
In 1903, the administration of Theodore Roosevelt created the country after bullying Colombia into handing over what was then the province of Panama. Roosevelt acted at the behest of various banking groups, among them JP Morgan & Co, which was appointed as the country’s ‘fiscal agent’ in charge of managing $10m in aid that the US had rushed down to the new nation.”
The reason, of course, was to gain access to, and control of, the canal across the Panamanian isthmus that would open in 1914 to connect the world’s two great oceans, and the commerce that sailed them.
Full story here.
Posted in World current affairs | Comments (0)
“Mexico: What Everyone Needs To Know”
April 9th, 2016 by Roger Darlington
This is the title of the book that I read during our recent two-week holiday in Mexico.
We visited six archaeological sites of pre-Hispanic civilisations, but I also wanted to learn about the contemporary issues facing Mexico and this book addresses those issues.
You can read my review here.
Posted in World current affairs | Comments (0)
A short guide to the Mexican political system
April 9th, 2016 by Roger Darlington
Over the years, I have written a series of short guides to various political systems, starting with those of the UK and the US. During the primary race in the States, my guide to the American system is being viewed by around 350 a day
I have just returned from a two-week visit to Mexico where I read about Mexican politics and discussed it with local people. As a result, I decided to produce a guide to the Mexican political system – the 15th in my series
You can check it out here.
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An account of our recent visit to Mexico
April 9th, 2016 by Roger Darlington
If you are a regular visitor to NighHawk, you will have seen a total of 15 postings written during our recent two-week holiday in Mexico.
I have now brought all these postings together into a single narrative which you can read here.
Posted in My life & thoughts | Comments (0)
U.S. presidential election (24): will there be a contested convention?
April 8th, 2016 by Roger Darlington
In Wisconsin this week, Ted Cruz soundly beat Donald Trump in the Republican race, while Bernie Sanders stormed to victory over Hillary Clinton in the Democratic contest. But, on 19 April when the New York primary is held, Trump expects to triumph and Clinton is hoping for a decisive win.
Meanwhile there is increasing speculation that Trump could arrive at the Republican convention with the most delegates but no overall majority. Much less likely, there is a scenario in which Clinton find herself lacking a convincing majority of pledged delegates. In this situation, we are in the territory of what is called a contested or brokered or deadlocked convention.
A contested convention happens when no candidate arrives with a majority of pledged delegates. On the first ballot, these pledged delegates will vote for the candidate to whom they are pledged. But, in any subsequent ballots, delegates are then free to vote for whomever they want. This could include the other candidates or even – subject to the rules of the convention – people who are not candidates. Delegates keep on voting until someone wins a majority.
The most famous deadlocked convention – it involved the Democrats – took place in 1924. It required 103 ballots to chose the Democratic candidate – who then lost to the Republican candidate in the general election.
The last deadlocked convention was experienced by the Republicans in 1976, when Gerald Ford did not have enough delegates before the convention to claim the nomination (his opponent was Ronald Reagan), but eventually won the nomination (Reagan withdrew) and went on to lose the general election.
The last time a contested convention produced a candidate who went on to win in the general election was in 1932 with Franklin Roosevelt.
For the 2016 convention, the Democrats will have a total of 4,763 delegates including super delegates and so, to win the nomination, the Democratic front runner needs a total of 2,282 delegates. For the 2016 convention, the Republicans will have a total of 2,472 delegates including unpledged delegates and so, to win the nomination, the Republican front runner will need a total of 1,237 delegates.
The Republicans will have their convention in Cleveland, Ohio from 18-21 July, while the Democrats will hold their convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvannia from 25-28 July.
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Post Office’s Network Transformation Programme gathers pace
April 7th, 2016 by Roger Darlington
The Post Office network is currently undergoing its largest ever restructuring through the Network Transformation Programme (NTP). Under the programme, the vast majority of post offices will convert to one of two new operating models – Post Office Mains and Post Office Locals.
The programme gathered pace towards the end of 2015 and, by February, there had been just over 2,500 Locals and 2,500 Mains conversions under the NTP; more than two thirds of which converted in the premises of the original post office. Another 500 Post Office Mains and up to 3,000 Post Office Locals are expected to convert by the programme’s end in March 2018.
Citizens Advice (CitA) continues to meet with Post Office Limited (POL) on a weekly basis to review proposals for branch changes; and to date have secured improvements to approximately sixty per cent of branch proposals.
Citizens Advice hosts a Post Office Advisory Group (POAG) which brings together CitA, POL, and stakeholders with an interest in post offices. POAG meets quarterly and I have chaired it for many years.
Posted in Consumer matters | Comments (0)
It’s “the largest mass poisoning of a population in history”, it’s still continuing, and you’ve never heard of it
April 7th, 2016 by Roger Darlington
“Nearly 20 million Bangladeshis are still drinking water poisoned with high levels of arsenic despite millions of wells being tested and hundreds of thousands of safe ones having been bored to avert a major health crisis, a new report has suggested.
The lack of progress in improving what the UN’s World Health Organisation called “the largest mass poisoning of a population in history” in the 1990s is blamed on government nepotism, rich country neglect and NGOs losing sight of the problem, says Human Rights Watch (HRW).
Latest estimates suggest 43,000 people in Bangladesh die each year from arsenic-related diseases. These include skin lesions, cancers, and cardiovascular and lung illnesses.”
Full story here.
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The Panama Papers scandal is HUGE
April 6th, 2016 by Roger Darlington
The leak of files from the Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca continues to create upheaval around the world. The documents were leaked to the German daily “Süddeutsche Zeitung”, which shared them with the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, the “Guardian”, the BBC and other media organisations.
Both the amount of information and the number of individuals affected in countries around the globe are enormous.
This is the largest leak in history. An incredible 11.5 files are involved. To put this in context, the Wikileaks scandal of 2010 involved 1.7 GB of data; the Panama Papers leak is a whopping 2,600 GB.
In all, the details of 214,000 entities, including companies, trusts and foundations, were leaked and this data covers nearly 40 years, from 1977 through the end of 2015.
Already there are links to 12 current or former heads of state and government in the data, including dictators accused of looting their own countries. More than 60 relatives and associates of heads of state and other politicians are also implicated.
I suspect that eventually there will hardly be a major country in the world where political and business leaders are not caught up in some way in this evolving scandal. For now, for a summary of some of the more prominent individuals in different nations who have been implicated so far, see here.
Posted in World current affairs | Comments (0)
What I missed most while in Mexico
April 5th, 2016 by Roger Darlington
I’ve just returned from a wonderful two-week holiday in Mexico. I took my iPad and managed to access the Internet in each of the hotels where we stayed – but, oh, how intermittent and how slow it was.
It was like being back on dial-up and I spent long minutes watching that thin blue line edging over to the right so s-l-o-w-l-y.
It’s good to be back to fast broadband.
Posted in Internet, My life & thoughts | Comments (2)
Highlights of Mexico (15): Chichen Itza
April 4th, 2016 by Roger Darlington
It was the last full day of our holiday – Day 12 (Sunday) – and Cox and Kings had managed to organise the programme so that effectively the best had been saved to the last: a visit to the famous Mayan ruins of Chichen Itza.
Roger and Vee were awake at 5.45 am (the clocks had gone forward an hour in the night) which gave us plenty of time to pack and have breakfast before Raul collected us at 8 am. The weather had changed totally overnight: the temperature was down to 29C/84F and it was cloudy and rainy, so it felt much cooler and much pleasanter.
We drove due east to Chichen Itza which is mid-way between Merida and Cancun, a journey of about an hour and a half. Since it was drizzling, an enterprising local was selling yellow plastic ponchos for $5 each but we were delighted to have such more equable weather conditions which enabled us to spend a comfortable three or so hours touring the site.
Chichen Itza was a ceremonial centre of the Mayans over several centuries and was inhabited for about 800 years, so the oldest buildings date from 600 AD and are Classical Mayan, while structures built after the Toltec conquest of 950 AD exhibit Toltec stylistic elements, and it is this blend of Mayan and Toltec architecture that makes it such an extraordinary site.
The most famous of the many notable buildings on this vast site – only a small proportion of which is open to the public – is the Temple of Kukulcan, the Mayan name for the god Quetzalcoatl who is usually represented as a plumed serpent. It is a pyramid reaching 25 metres (82 feet) high with a temple at the summit. It is the not the tallest pyramid that we had seen (and since 2010 one cannot climb the steps), but it was the most interesting because of what the construction represents.
The whole thing is a giant calendar. It consists of nine levels faced with a total of 52 panels – the number of years in the Mayan-Toltec cycle. The staircases on each face of the pyramid have 91 steps making a total of 364 which, with the square platform at the top, totals 365 – the number of days in the solar year. At the spring and autumn equinoxes, the shadow cast by the sun on the northern staircase appears to cause a massively long ‘snake’ to crawl down the building and link with the stone serpent’s head at the foot of the staircase. You can see the effect in a short video on YouTube here.
AnotherIt was the last full day of our holiday – Day 12 (Sunday) – and Cox and Kings had managed to organise the programme so that effectively the best had been saved to the last: a visit to the famous Mayan ruins of Chichen Itza.
Roger and Vee were awake at 5.45 am (the clocks had gone forward an hour in the night) which gave us plenty of time to pack and have breakfast before Raul collected us at 8 am. The weather had changed totally overnight: the temperature was down to 29C/84F and it was cloudy and rainy, so it felt much cooler and much pleasanter.
We drove due east to Chichen Itza which is mid-way between Merida and Cancun, a journey of about an hour and a half. Since it was drizzling, an enterprising local was selling yellow plastic ponchos for $5 each but we were delighted to have such more equable weather conditions which enabled us to spend a comfortable three or so hours touring the site.
Chichen Itza was a ceremonial centre of the Mayans over several centuries and was inhabited for about 800 years, so the oldest buildings date from 600 AD and are Classical Mayan, while structures built after the Toltec conquest of 950 AD exhibit Toltec stylistic elements, and it is this blend of Mayan and Toltec architecture that makes it such an extraordinary site.
The most famous of the many notable buildings on this vast site – only a small proportion of which is open to the public – is the Temple of Kukulcan, the Mayan name for the god Quetzalcoatl who is usually represented as a plumed serpent. It is a pyramid reaching 25 metres (82 feet) high with a temple at the summit. It is the not the tallest pyramid that we had seen (and since 2010 one cannot climb the steps), but it was the most interesting because of what the construction represents.
The whole thing is a giant calendar. It consists of nine levels faced with a total of 52 panels – the number of years in the Mayan-Toltec cycle. The staircases on each face of the pyramid have 91 steps making a total of 364 which, with the square platform at the top, totals 365 – the number of days in the solar year. At the spring and autumn equinoxes, the shadow cast by the sun on the northern staircase appears to cause a massively long ‘snake’ to crawl down the building and link with the stone serpent’s head at the foot of the staircase. You can see the effect in a short video on YouTube here.
Another impressive structure is the Ball Court, a common feature in Mayan cities but in this case the largest in ancient Mesoamerica. This would have been the scene of a complicated game in which small teams of players attempted to pass a heavy rubber ball through a stone hoop high up on the wall. The ball weighed 3-4 kg and could not be touched with the hands or feet, so it had to be kept in the air with elbows, knees, hips and backside. A score could take hours so one score was sufficient to win the game. We know that some the games concluded with the beheading of the losers. As Raul put it: “This was a brutal place”. A bit different from soccer but perhaps not so different from the behaviour of some English football fans abroad.
Many of the other structures on the site have exotic names: the Temple of the Jaguars and Shields, the Platform of Skulls (festooned with carvings of 2,000 skulls and eagles tearing out the hearts of human victims), the Platform of the Eagles and the Jaguars, the Temple of the Thousand Columns (actually ‘only’ about 860), the Ossuary, and the Snail (a kind of observatory).
Another remarkable feature of the site is one of the 7,000 ‘cenotes’ in the Yucatan peninsula. These are sink holes created by water wearing away the limestone terrain. The one at Chichen Itza, called the Sacred Cenote, is big: 60 metres (200 feet) in diameter and 35 metres (115 feet) wide. Apparently, on one of the explorations of the bottom of the green water, they found the skeletons of 127 children aged 11-13 – the only such case of human sacrifice known in the Mayan world.
Lunch was at a nearby restaurant called “El Jardin” which was more popular for being the site of another cenote called Ik Kil and this one – as we saw – is where you can go swimming (although the children use life belts because the water is very, very deep).
Finally, at 3.30 pm, we arrived at our sixth and last hotel where we said farewell to Raul, the best of our guides. It was a place called Hacienda Chichen whose cottages were originally the homes of archaeologists of the Carnegie Institute, who established their headquarters here in the 1920s, before they were extensively refurbished and redecorated for tourists.
On the last evening of our trip, Vee and Roger invited fellow traveller Susan to join us for dinner at the hotel. Roger – who is not noted for his alcoholic consumption – decided that he should conclude the holiday with a shot of the national drink tequila and chose something called ‘hornitos reposado’. A happy holiday ended with a happy man.
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Tomorrow we fly home from Cancun to London Gatwick so effectively our holiday is over. I hope that you have enjoyed these daily accounts of our travels. When we are home, I will copy and paste all these 15 postings into a single narrative with some hyperlinks and later some photographs.
Posted in My life & thoughts | Comments (0)