YES, IT IS THE SCHOOLS. IT IS PRECISELY THE SCHOOLS: Young people misunderstand socialism and its effects
Why the secrecy? Most of the Big Four’s audit inspections are blacked out; huge chunks redacted by the corporate regulators. In what other field would multiple breaches of the law be tolerated? asks Michael West.
Would the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority (ASADA) tolerate multiple drug testing failures by sports people, then hide them?
Would the state law councils tolerate multiple breaches of legal standards by Australia’s top law firms then hide them? (Okay … maybe).
Do the police allow multiple breaches of the drink driving laws, fail to take drink drivers to court then cover up their findings? No.
Why then are the audit inspections blacked out? These are inspections of public documents, of public financial accounts for this country’s largest corporations yet the findings remain largely secret.
ASIC looked at 49 audits for “Listed entities and other public interest entities” and found failures across the board.
Former senior bureaucrat Warwick Watkins dies
Mr Watkins shot to fame in 2011 when an investigation by the Independent Commission Against Corruption found that both he and former planning minister Tony Kelly had acted corruptly.
EDITORIAL
ICAC
ICAC budget must be protected from political manipulation
A proposed inquiry into the corruption watchdog's funding model presents an opportunity to shore up its independence.
Berejiklian calls for an audit of four agencies, including ICAC
- Exclusive Kylar Loussikian
- Newly uncovered tax documents show Trump kept ‘2 sets of books’ and may have committed financial fraud Business Insider
FBI Says Violent Hate Crimes Have Surged To A 16-Year High - BuzzFeedNews: “The number of violent hate crimes reported in the United States last year was the highest in 16 years, according to the FBI — but advocacy groups warned that the actual figure is much higher than the official count reported Tuesday. The Department of Justice defines a hate crime as a “criminal offense against a person or property, motivated in whole or in part by an offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender, or gender identity.” Data released Tuesday by the FBI shows that although the total number of reported hate crimes in the United States decreased from 2017 to 2018, the number of offenses against people increased by 12%. Of the 7,120 hate crimes reported to the FBI in 2018, 4,571 were crimes against persons (such as assault, rape, and murder). Most of the hate crimes — about 60% — were motivated by race, ethnicity, or ancestry bias. The other motivations included religion (19%), sexual orientation (17%), gender identity (2%), disability (2%), and gender (1%)…”
Do ghosts prefer southerly winds? Are Mediterranean ghosts calmer? They say that in Northern Europe ghosts are loud, horrifying, that their shrieks are more out of tune because of the cold. With Northern ghosts — Irish, Estonian, German, it's easy to imagine them coming at you with a knife and no explanation. Mediterranean ghosts, however, are not as gloomy, it's impossible to take them too seriously; even when they kill you, they do it in an incompetent way; Don Juan Tenorio and others like him are laughable, buffoonish, and sometime it's their own comedic candor that makes them all the more fearful; we'd risk our necks to bet that they'd rather dance to a tambourine than use a knife; Mediterranean ghosts sound like they'd be fun to have a few glasses of wine with. "Ghosts fervid for Frescuelo and Maria. "Is there a really frightening and serious ghost in Spanish literature? And in the Basque Country? Who are they? What are Basque ghosts like?
In secondhand bookshops, he's sell the books he'd lovingly collected over the years in exchange for a pittance, and then he drank his own books, each day he drank one, some days as many as two, I'm drinking The Odyssey, the small change they gave me for it is disappearing down my throat, he'd tell himself, look how little I got for the paperback edition of Martin Amis's Money, he exchanged literature for alcohol,Robinson Crusoe became a bottle of Baileys, The Brothers Karamazov a bottle of Smirnoff vodka, the three gin and tonics he'd just ingested were The Life and Adventures of Lazarillo de Tormes. He got his hands on an expensive bottle of Laguvulin whisky in exchange for the leather-bound copy of James Joyce's Ulysses that Ana had given him as a gift; if, on a given day, he sold Montaigne's essays for next to nothing, he would buy himself a Bordeaux red, trying to be coherent with what he drank; if he got rid of Madame Bovary, he had to try to find a potion similar to something Flaubert might have ingested, to be able to emulate him; in exchange for Italo Calvino's Our Ancestors he'd get a Chainti or a bottle ofpelaverga from Saluzzo, maybe. Whoever said that literature doesn't feed us, that it doesn't comfort our spirit or our soul?— from Twist, by Harkaitz Cano.
Translated from Basque by Amaia Gabantxo, Twist is published by Archipelago Books, available March 2018.
What Happens When A School Unlocks Its Books And Hires More Librarians?
Well, after the librarians remodeled the library and encouraged teachers at the Melbourne school to bring their entire classes – not just kids in detention – to the space, the school’s test scores shifted radically, and the school is seeing a massive increase in students wanting to study arts and music. – The Age (Australia)
“I am sitting here… feeling cold, useless, frustrated, helpless, disillusioned, angry and tired.”
While I stand with Elizabeth Barrett Browning in her exquisite admonition against the dangerous myth of the suffering artist, it has always seemed to me — both from a deep immersion in the personal histories of long-gone artists and from direct experience in contemporary creative communities — that artists are more porous to the world than other people and therefore more vulnerable to suffering. To be an artist is to be a human being who feels everything more deeply, the beautiful as well as the terrible, and builds of those feelings bowers where others can safely and sacredly process their own. Whitman intuited this when he observed that those capable of “sunny expanses and sky-reaching heights” are also apt “to dwell on the bare spots and darknesses.” Tchaikovsky articulated it in his touching resolve to find beauty amid the wreckage of the soul. Nietzsche knew it when he traced the wild oscillations of depression and hope.
Helsinki has a library to learn about the world, the city, and each other -Kottke.org: “The Finns love libraries, and a new fabulous one opened last year in Helsinki. Tommi Laitio, Helsinki’s executive director for culture and leisure was at the CityLab DC conference recently and presented some of the thinking behind Finland’s investments in libraries and culture, and why they are so important to their country
Articles and Columns for October 2019
Articles and Columns for October 2019
- Blockchain: What Information Professionals Need to Know – Anna Irvin, Ph.D.and Janice E. Henderson, Esq. presented this comprehensive 64 page guide at the LLAGNY Education Committee Program on October 15, 2019. The guide is an multidisciplinary resource that includes: articles from law, business and finance journals, CLE programs/materials, smart contracts, Westlaw and Practical Law citations, sources on the impact of blockchain on the U.S. government and the international regulatory landscape, as well as all states with blockchain and cybersecurity laws (introduced, pending and failed).
- The How and the Why of Law Blogs – Legal technology evangelist, author and blogger Nicole L. Black recommends that a legal blog is one of the best ways to create a memorable and search-engine-friendly online presence. Simply put, blogs are a great way for lawyers to showcase legal expertise while increasing their firms’ search engine optimization—all while helping them to stay on top of changes in their areas of practice by writing about them on their firm’s blog.
- Leaping Into Your Future with the Real-Life Mr. Spock – Bill Jensen’s fascinating interview with Prof. Sohail Inayatullah, UNESCO Chair in Future Studies at UNESCO and USIM, focuses on the future of work, leadership and the significance of the Key Performance Indicator [KPI].
- How women’s life-long experiences of being judged by their appearance affect how they feel in open-plan offices – Dr. Rachel Morrison identifies and discusses research respective to open-plan workspaces. Her conclusion is that female and male employees differ in their perceptions of being observed and this fact should be acknowledged and incorporated into office design.
- New Survey on Technology Use by Law Firms: How Does Your Firm Compare? –Nicole L. Black recommends firm conduct a technology audit to review the need for software updates, to identify and replace outdated technology and applications, and to plan and implement migrating operations such as document management and time and billing systems to cloud computing.
- Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, October 26, 2019 –Four highlights from this week: Equifax Allegedly Made It Super Easy to Hack Customer Data; New App Helps Prevent Fraud at the Gas Pump; The Wayback Machine’s Save Page Now is New and Improved; and Trading in your phone may pose a risk to your data, one expert warns.
- Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security iues, October 19, 2019 –Four highlights from this week: Preparing for Evolving Cybersecurity Threats Facing the U.S. Electric Grid; US, UK agencies issue joint VPN security alert; New Report: “The Market of Disinformation”; and Plan for the Future. Manage the Present. Open or access your my Social Security account today.
- Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, October 12, 2019 –Four highlights from this week: Americans and Digital Knowledge; 10 Tips to Avoid Leaving Tracks Around the Internet; Proving You’re You: How Federal Agencies Can Improve Online Verification; and New Report: “World’s First Deepfake Audit Counts Videos and Tools on the Open Web”.
- Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, October 5, 2019 –Four highlights from this week: EU can force Facebook and social media platforms to remove content globally; How to Set Your Google Data to Self-Destruct; The whistleblowing process, explained; and ABA Tech Report 2019.
DFAT receives 48,000 emergency calls as overseas trips reach all-time high
Nearly 1700 Australians died overseas last year, 1570 were arrested and nearly 400 were imprisoned in a foreign country.