Look Before You Leak - But It's A Lot To Look At !

Heard of Mossack Fonseca ?  Good. That makes it two of us.

In all fairness, Mossack Fonseca would have barely heard of themselves above the din of all that money talking. Well, they are a Panama-based law firm that helps set up offshore, tax-exempt companies.

( Panama ? Okay. Panama is not a hat. It is also not , if you are an Indian of a certain age , a brand of cheap filterless cigarettes. And it is certainly not where Pan Am airline used to be based. It is admittedly a nice Van Halen song but what Panama really is is a country , i.e. a place whose leaders have money stashed away somewhere)   

Turns out Mossack Fonseca helped many very important people stash away their money. That includes heads of states, , businessmen, actors, sportsmen, even a 'life coach',... all those sorts of people.

What's intriguing is the investigation that revealed all of this.(read).

While look before you leak is a routine rule in journalism , this case begs the question how. 

I mean, 2.6 terabytes of data in 11 million documents ? Wow !

Stop. I know what you're thinking.

Yes, so  2.6 TB is a lot of Torrent movies and music but consider the larger question. Where would so much information fit ?

I bet Panama isn't big enough to hold it all. Why, for that matter, I bet Mr.Trump's mouth wouldn't be either. And even with 100 participating publications , it must have put everybody through plenty of stress and strife.

Can you begin to imagine, for example, the domestic discord ? ("Honey...." "Not tonight.I have a headache" "Oh ,er, good. I was only going to say I have these documents to go through ?")

And of course it was bound to have put their eyes through considerable strain.

This whole spectacle must have been quite the light of the lens maker's eye. Next up : an orgy of ophthalmologists stashing  their money away.

All of which begs the question why people stash their money away instead of spending it on having an insanely great time.

Nobody's talking though. They've all  gone into a shell company.

The Mile Hi(jack) Club Selfie

Ben Innes has it all figured out. When you see a hijacker you shoot.

A selfie.

(read here)

And you shoot without consideration for the havoc it could wreak on said hijacker's psyche  - assuming that more havoc could be wreaked on hijackers' psyches than they already come wreaked with.

Take Mr. Innes' subject. This is one hijacker who must be reevaluating his hijacking career in very critical light. The things they must be saying about him at the Hijacker Club or wherever it is that these people meet for  R& R !

Or, far worse, the You-Can't-Do-A-Thing-Right that he must be subjected to by his estranged wife - to impress whom he had committed this criminal act in the first place !

And considering how Ben and his selfie have stolen so much of the limelight , Mr. Mustafa must feel at least as hijacked against as hijacking. 

The only saving grace was that thankfully no lives were lost. Now if only all shootings  in the world were like this.

Ben only fired , as it were , in the air. 

(This is obviously on a VERY light note )