'Moneyland: why thieves and crooks now rule the world, and how to take it back'

True then. True now. True always ...Officials told to keep public in the dark on Great Barrier Reef splurge

Bureaucrats planned how to avoid revealing the $10 million cost of a PR push and a $100 million reef resilience package was also to be kept quiet

Senior judges lead the charge for a federal corruption watchdog

Federal Icac: former judges reveal plan to 'ferret out corruption'

Now Justin Milne has gone, the entire ABC board is exposed 

ABC chairman Justin Milne's tangled corporate web

Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry: interim report

Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry

ROYAL COMMISSION INTO MISCONDUCT IN THE BANKING, SUPERANNUATION AND FINANCIAL SERVICES INDUSTRY

This interim report of the Financial Services Royal Commission was tabled in Parliament on 28 September 2018. The report covers policy related issues arising from the first four rounds of hearings.

Climbing the stairway to disconnection

True leaders understand their place is neither at the top of the stairs or the bottom.

Sydney couple's alleged identity fraud and cryptocurrency web unravels

Two people have been arrested after they allegedly used stolen credit card details, while laundering more than $300,000 into offshore cryptocurrency accounts.

Phone scammers robbing Australians of millions in Australian Tax Office fraud

Low pay, poor prospects, and psychological toll: The perils of microtask work Ars Technica

The Epidemic of Gay Loneliness Huffington Post 

South Indian Telemarketer hit with record $285,000 'Do Not Call' penalty after complaints

The Customer Is Not Always Right: A Reply to Elliot Berkman Quilette 

Further evidence that the tax cuts have not led to widespread bonuses, wage or compensation growthEconomic Policy Institute

Three Lessons of Occupy Wall Street, With a Fair Dose of Memory Counterpunch

Too Hot for Work? The Nation

The Printed Word in Peril Harpers

Your gut is directly connected to your brain, by a newly discovered neuron circuit Science

What ‘The Big Lebowski’ taught me about style FT. “Hey, nice marmot!”

Artificial Intelligence: The Robots Are Now Hiring
See how new data-science tools are determining who gets hired, in this episode of Moving Upstream: “Hiring is undergoing a profound revolution. Nearly all Fortune 500 companies now use some form of automation — from robot avatars interviewing job candidates to computers weeding out potential employees by scanning keywords in resumes. And more and more companies are using artificial intelligence and machine learning tools to assess possible employees. DeepSense, based in San Francisco and India, helps hiring managers scan people’s social media accounts to surface underlying personality traits. The company says it uses a scientifically based personality test, and it can be done with or without a potential candidate’s knowledge. The practice is part of a general trend of some hiring companies to move away from assessing candidates based on their resumes and skills, towards making hiring decisions based on people’s personalities…”
Google Search – Deep Learning Revives the Neural Net Revolution



Moneyland: plutocracy, contagion and crisis In the September 2018 Tax Justice Network monthly podcast/radio show, the Taxcast:

• we talk to journalist Oliver Bullough about his new book, just out 'Moneyland: why thieves and crooks now rule the world, and how to take it back' We discuss the transnational elite that have broken free of democratic control and corruption contagion.
• Also, 10 years after the financial crash, the risks are as high as before, if not more severe – how do we tackle the next crisis?
• Plus, the fifth aide of US President Trump has now been convicted of, or admitted criminal charges: what does Paul Manafort's case tell us about the spread of plutocracy and oligarchy?

"politics is increasingly dominated by this very tight elite class and it is all about Moneyland...dark money is the enemy of democracy, there is a battle between money and democracy and right now money is winning. And it’s a very worrying thought that we aren’t more aware of this as a society and we really need to think about it because a trillion dollars a year is a lot of money and that's being stolen every year, which means all of that money is stacked up against us. And the longer we don’t act, the more money there will be essentially fighting back and they have been fighting back very successfully."

~ Oliver Bullough, author of Moneyland: why thieves and crooks now rule the world, and how to take it back

Featuring: journalist and author Oliver Bullough and John Christensen of the Tax Justice Network. Produced and presented by Naomi Fowler.

Full blog post with further reading available here.

SCRAPING THE WEB

Journalism and technology have become intrinsically linked. Come behind the scenes as we explain how reporters (and their developers!) are accessing large sets of data on the internet and turning them into useful information.

We have a (pretty) easy way to scrape the web, assuming you have a basic understanding of HTML, so you can get started today! And… if you’re more technologically savvy, we’ve got the inside word from our own developer who scrapes the web on a much larger scale. 

Undercover reporters expose ‘bogus’ scientific conferences

A new investigation reveals fake conferences that aim to ‘rip off’ researchers and damage credibility.