Panama
Papers leak leads to ‘largest protest’ in Iceland’s history
RT,
5
April, 2016
Thousands
of people have taken to the streets of Iceland’s capital,
Reykjavik, outraged by their Prime Minister’s alleged offshore
accounts that were brought to light in the so-called Panama Papers.
Icelandic
Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson reportedly failed to
declare his stake in an offshore company based in the British Virgin
Islands. The revelation has made Icelanders “mad” at their
government, with some demanding a no-confidence vote and the PM’s
resignation.
Banners
reading “Elections Now” could be seen in the capital, Ice News
reported, adding that other posters around the city encourage drivers
to honk their horns in protest.
Over
10,000 Facebook users expressed their intent to attend Monday’s
protest in Reykjavik. “Over 22,000 protesters [were] confirmed in
the square” as the demonstration near the Parliament building grew,
reports on Twitter suggested.
Whistleblower
Edward Snowden suggested in a retweet that the protest might be the
“largest by percentage of population in history.”
Edward Snowden Retweeted Hjortur Smarason
Edward Snowden added,
According
to the Iceland Monitor, people were angered not only by the
revelations of their PM’s unreported accounts, but also by his
reaction to the protest. “It’s not like everyone is going to
attend,” Gunnlaugsson said in an interview, sparking even more
fury.
When
asked by the reporter of Icelandic Channel 2 News if he had, at any
point, considered resigning in light of the latest revelations,
Gunnlaugsson said that he would not resign due to this or any other
matter, because his government had achieved “amazing results in
very important issues,” and “it’s important that it gets to
finish that work.”
He
also rejected an idea of stepping aside during the course of the
investigation, saying “Simply accusing someone of something in
order to force them to resign is not in harmony with how we want our
society to function.”
Responding
to the accusations against his wife, Anna Palsdottir, the PM stressed
that she had always paid taxes in Iceland, even while owning a
“foreign” company. According to Gunnlaugsson, it would be wrong
to label the firm an “offshore company,” as “it has always been
taxed in Iceland.”
There
have been a number of online streams broadcasting the Reykjavik
protest, but some were cut off as “the networks are overloaded,”
some users reported. One Periscope transmission suggested that the
gathering was “one of the biggest in Icelandic history,” while
other users commented, “Icelandic people always make me proud,”
“Well done Iceland, leading the way,” and even calling the Nordic
country “the hope of mankind.”
Documents
known as the Panama Papers were published on Sunday. Said to be “the
largest leak in offshore history,” the data claims to reveal the
offshore holdings of over a hundred international politicians and
public officials, including 12 current and former world leaders.
Posts
Figure
2. Existing
flood stage on December 28, 2015 (inner colored square) and
predicted maximum flood stage (outer colored square region around
the inner colored square) for the Lower Mississippi River and two
tributaries (the Arkansas and Ohio Rivers) near where they join the
Mississippi. I've added numerical ranking on the right side of the
squares to indicate where a top-ten flood crest in recorded history
is expected. Two gauges are expecting their highest floods on record
(Cape Girardeau and Thebes), and most of the Lower Mississippi is
expecting a top-five highest flood crest on record. Where the Ohio
River joins the Mississippi at Cairo, Illinois, the Ohio River is
forecast to crest on January 5 at the third highest level on record;
downstream from Little Rock, Arkansas, the Arkansas
River is
predicted to crest on Friday at the third highest level on record
near its confluence with the Mississippi. Image credit: NWS
River Forecast Center.
Figure
4. Temperature
analysis from the 00 UTC December 30, 2015 run of the GFS model,
showing temperatures near freezing (aqua colors) penetrating very
close to the North Pole. These temperatures are about 20°C (36°F)
above average. Image credit: University
of Maine Climate Reanalyzer.
Ásta Helgadóttir
Gissur Simonarson CN
Edward Snowden
