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Monday, April 29, 2019

Accenture sued over website redesign so bad it Hertz: Car hire biz demands $32m+

Despite accent on madness and heartache
Despite white supremacy and black magic
Despite heaven’s rage and earthquake
Let’s take a commercial break. 


The Future of Work Could Bring More Inequality, Social Tensions

 Federal election 2019: leaders prepare to debate in Perth - The Advertiser Story image for palmer cash from The Guardian
The Guardian
Clive Palmer’ Second Coming Show of 5000 million cash 💰 is redefining the old adage of having more money than sense...
The Australian -
A moment designed to get Australian voters to sit up and take notice
No one can say that we have seen these moments coming ....The very big business of organised crime costing Australians millions a year

Blowing the whistle on Porter's failure to intervene

Inquiry finds 'excessive' debt recovery action by ATO against small business - The Age


Chief sniper at Lindt cafe siege sues NSW Police - Sydney Morning Herald



Satanic temple gets tax-exempt status as official house of worship


The US tax office has granted the same non-profit status given to churches, synagogues and mosques to America's first devil-worshiping church.


Henry Wollman Bloch, Art Philanthropist And Co-Founder Of H&R Block, Dead At 96



The primary beneficiary of Bloch’s largesse has been Kansas City’s Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: he spent three years as its board chairman, he and his wife are the name donors on the museum’s 2007 expansion and its 2015-17 renovation, and at the same time the couple gave a collection of 29 major Impressionist paintings to NAMA. – ARTnews

Migration agent Rebecca Mason's trail of deception revealed in tales of debt and deportation




Immigrants trying to start a new life in Australia have been left thousands of dollars out of pocket and at risk of deportation following the deceptive actions of a migration agent who has been described as a "serious risk to consumers".

Key points:

  • The DHA found Rebecca Mason had been "repeatedly dishonest with her clients"
  • Ms Mason accepted responsibility but said the complaints were made in her absence
  • The number of migration agents disciplined has risen since 2015, authorities say


The agent, Rebecca Mason, has since gone on to receive a Federal Government grant worth tens of thousands of dollars for another business venture.

The Department of Home Affairs (DHA) has now cancelled her licence, describing her as "not a person of integrity" and labelling her behaviour "extremely serious".

But most of those affected are yet to get their money back from Mason Migration and have questioned why it took the DHA 20 months after receiving the first complaint to eventually cancel her licence.

















Baffling tale of Apple shops' 'non-facial' 'facial recognition', a stolen ID, and a $1bn lawsuit after a wrongful arrest

Teen loses driving permit, gets wrongly linked to spate of thefts



Defense against the Darknet, or how to accessorize to defeat video surveillance

Boffins from Belgium break people recognition software with a colorful placard
The Big Read
Why American CEOs are worried about capitalism



VLAD THE IMPLODER: Vlad the Impaler was the historical figure behind the Dracula legend. Alas, Vladimir Putin’s neo-Soviet imperial dreams are imploding. The StrategyPage podcast discusses why — and includes praise for U.S. fracking.

Here’s some useful background to Vlad’s implosion.

Leon Aron is a scholar and has an op-ed in The LA Times that does a good job summarizing Putin’s neo-Soviet imperialism. In another article linked at RealClearDefense Paul Goble notes the Russian Navy really isn’t capable of supporting Putin’s grand imperial plans.

After Goble quotes a Russian naval expert who says the Russian fleet is in “horrific” condition, he adds a telling sentence: “The Kremlin, for its part, is doing what it can to suggest otherwise via an intense propaganda campaign.” This tidbit follows a few paragraphs later:

But that is not the only problem the Russian navy faces, Timokhin continues. “It is a lie” that there has not been enough money for the fleet. Rather some of it has been drained off by corruption and much of the rest lost because of the absence of a strategic plan and structures capable of adhering to one, rigid plan. He also blames sanctions and unnamed “foreign agents” for undercutting the Russian fleet (Topwar.ru, April 5).

And just why are the sanctions in place? Oh yeah, Crimea and the war in eastern Ukraine.

The Russian Navy’s misery is a topic StrategyPage has covered for the last two decades. StrateyPage’s latest Russia update discusses other military woes, to include poor morale. It’s a post rich with insights. Here are a couple:

Russia has other problems with its actual military capabilities. Government efforts to project the image of a modern, professional and constantly improving armed forces is proving more difficult to sustain…Russian development and manufacturing efforts are still crippled by shortages of cash and talent. Arms exports are hurt by this, especially with competitors like China continuing to produce Russian designs more efficiently (more effective, reliable and less costly in the long run). New gear that does get produced in significant numbers is usually for export customers who have the cash for procurement that the Russian military still lacks.
This poverty of money and talent is very visible with the Russian military efforts in Ukraine (Donbas) and Syria. Both are being carried out on the cheap and with as much discretion as possible because these operations are unpopular with the Russian people. They see Russian money and Russian lives being wasted on expensive political games that do the average Russian no good at all. Thus government efforts to mask just how much these operations cost in terms of resources and casualties. Hiding the spending is easier than concealing the number of dead.

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