Monday, July 13, 2020

Scamocracy: Devyn Hammond - Fourth person jailed for Operation Elbrus


"There is so much good in the worst of us and so much bad in the best of us that it will behold any one of us; to find fault with the rest of us." 
  - James Truslow Adams

“Bless this tiny little boat
And me who travels in it.
It stays afloat for years and years
And sinks within a minute.

And so the soul in which we sail,
Unknown by years of thinking,
Is deeply felt and understood
The minute that it’s sinking.”

-Leuning

Sometimes it’s hard to show confidence when we have insecurities about ourselves but I find so empowering to embrace that vulnerability



Trends in the Internal Revenue Service’s Funding and EnforcementCongressional Budget Office



HMRC is claiming that the UK is now the most compliant tax paying nation on earth, and I do not believe that

Posted on 

HMRC published its tax gap data for 2018/19 yesterday. I have long criticised this annual debacle which has always published a number between £29bn and £38bn
Read the full article…



 (CNN)Ramon Abbas flaunted a lavish lifestyle of private jets, designer clothes and luxury cars. 
To his 2.5 million Instagram followers,he went by Ray Hushpuppi, a man who boarded helicopters from his Dubai waterfront apartment and walked around with shopping bags from Gucci, Versace and Fendi. 
On social media, where he posted a video of himself tossing wads of cash like confetti, he told his followers he was a real estate developer. But a federal affidavit alleged his extravagant lifestyle was financed through hacking schemes that stole millions of dollars from major companies in the United States and Europe.

Why Humor Has Eluded Philosophers

Humour can be dissected, as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the purely scientific mind. – Aeon


Fourth Plutus tax fraud conspirator sentenced to jail


Fourth person jailed for Operation Elbrus

Devyn Hammond  was last week sentenced in the Supreme Court of NSW to 4 years jail for her role in a syndicate that is alleged to have defrauded the Commonwealth of more than $105 million over three years.

It's a matter of fairness': squeezing more tax from multinationals 


Rishi Sunak backs down over tax on employer-bought Covid- 19 tests


Ruling in EU Apple tax case due next Wednesday


Dutch MEP Paul Tang to chair new tax subcommittee 


The Dictator-Run Bank That Tells the Story of America’s Foreign Corruption - The influence of BCCI


Scottish care homes owned by the Chinese state in tax havens 



Philosophers LLC. reviews Au Revoirby Anastasia Gutting.


Jeff McMahan (Oxford) reviews The Quality of Life: Aristotle Revised (Oxford), by Richard Kraut.


Scott Soames (Southern California) reviews Frege’s Detour: An Essay on Meaning, Reference, and Truth (Oxford), by John Perry.


ANGELO CODEVILLA: Scamocracy: How a fraudulent ruling class plundered our most precious inheritance. “Our ruling class transformed America’s regime by instituting a succession of scams, each of which transferred power and wealth to themselves. These scams’ blending into one another compel us to recognize them, individually and jointly, as the kind of governance that Augustine called ‘magnum latrocinium,’ thievery writ large. Thievery of power even more than of money—colloquially, scamocracy.”



We’ve had a chat with our barman regarding this and he’d like it to be publicly known that the ongoing instability of global recession that could render him unemployed at any moment, the lurking danger of COVID-19 potentially killing everyone he loves, the destruction of entire ecosystems due to climate change and the inability to find a bloody cheap pouch of tobacco in the inner-city has all made it quite difficult for him to find much joy in life at the current moment,” the response reads.

“He said, however, that he will try and make more of an effort to smile,” the hotel administrators added

Pub Review Surry Hills


China’s Great Firewall Descends On Hong Kong Internet Users Guardian

The Political Logic of China’s Strategic Mistakes Project Syndicate

China reverts to its dirty coal ways Asia Times



The Guardian: “At midnight on Tuesday, the Great Firewall of China, the vast apparatus that limits the country’s internet, appeared to descend on Hong Kong. Unveiling expanded police powers as part of a contentious new national security law, the Hong Kong government enabled police to censor online speech and force internet service providers to hand over user information and shut down platforms. Many residents, already anxious since the law took effect last week, rushed to erase their digital footprint of any signs of dissent or support for the last year of protests. Charles Mok, a pro-democracy lawmaker who represents the technology sector, tweeted: “We are already behind the de facto firewall.” Hong Kong is facing a dramatic decline of one of its most important advantages – a free and open internet – a defining trait that sets it apart from mainland China where Facebook, Twitter, Google and most major foreign news sites are blocked…”