Friday, March 11, 2022

Vale Kimberley Kitching - IRS Audits Poorest Families at Five Times the Rate for Everyone Else

When Kumberley Kitching entered Parliament, Kitching ferociously campaigned for a Magnitsky Actso that Australia could join its allies - the United Kingdom, United States and Canada - in imposing sanctions on human rights violators.

Businessman Bill Browder, who spearheaded the global movement for human rights-based sanctions, led the tributes. The Act was named after Browder’s tax adviser Sergei Magnitsky, who was persecuted and killed by the Russian regime.

Vale Human rights leaders mourn death of ‘brave justice warrior’ Kimberley Kitching - The woman behind Magnitsky Act


IRS Audits Poorest Families at Five Times the Rate for Everyone Else

Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC): “A large increase in federal income tax audits targeting the poorest wage earners allowed the Internal Revenue Service to keep overall audit numbers from further declines for Americans as a whole during FY 2021. That resulted in these low-income wage earners with less than $25,000 in total gross receipts being audited at a rate five times higher than for everyone else. Last year out of over 160 million individual income tax returns that were filed, the IRS audited 659,003 – or just 4 out of every 1,000 returns filed (0.4%). This was only slightly lower than the overall odds of audit from FY 2019, and above FY 2020 levels where just 3 out of every 1,000 returns filed were examined. Audit rates in general have been dropping for many years…”


WSJ: IRS Is Audited Over Its Safeguards Against Favored Treatment Of Big Business



Russian ex-minister says invasion of Ukraine is stalling because officials stole from military budget for 'mega-yachts in Cyprus'


How  Corruption Destroyed the Russian Military Machine



Crypto king, 26, buys Toorak mansion for about $38 million


War and Imagination The Hudson Review


The Varieties of Bullshit Peter Ludlow


Meeting of Romantic Minds American Scholar


 “What is bad for the Reds is good for me.”



Mindful life: Can drinking ever be good for us?

A cool glass of wine with a friend will always be the epitome of joy for me—but it’s just as much about the friend as the


UK Government Awards CIA-Linked Spyware Firm, Palantir, Another Juicy NHS Contract

There are many reasons why Palantir’s new NHS deal is troubling, including first and foremost the company’s close ties with the US military, intelligence and security agencies.


Russia’s War on Ukraine: A Conversation Hosted by The Atlantic, Featuring Anne Applebaum, Tom Nichols & Jeffrey Goldberg


Open Culture: “After years of threats, Vladimir Putin’s Russian forces invaded Ukraine—culminating in the largest attack against one European state by another since the Second World War. What happens now?” Via YouTube you can watch a wide-ranging conversation hosted by The Atlantic, featuring Anne Applebaum (Pulitzer-prize winning historian), Tom Nichols (U.S. Naval War College professor), and Jeffrey Goldberg(editor-in-chief of The Atlantic) as they examine “the global reaction, the effectiveness of sanctions, and how to address the rise of authoritarianism and ongoing threats to democracy.” It’s also worth reading Applebaum’s latest piece, “The Impossible Suddenly Became Possible.”

See also via Open Culture How Volodymyr Zelenskyy Went from Playing a President on a Comedy TV Show to Very Real Life and The Story of Fascism: Rick Steves’ Documentary Helps Us Learn from the Hard Lessons of the 20th Century


Vlad the Impaler

"You’re occupiers. You are fascists. Why the fuck did you come here with your guns?" — Anonymous Ukrainian woman confronting Russian soldiers in Henichesk,...



       Vladimir Sorokin on Vladimir Putin 

       Day of the Oprichnik-author Vladimir Sorokin explains how Vladimir Putin sits atop a crumbling pyramid of power in The Guardian.



       Open letters 

       PEN International has released a letter "signed by over 1000 writers worldwide, expressing solidarity with writers, journalists, artists, and the people of Ukraine, condemning the Russian invasion and calling for an immediate end to the bloodshed". 
       The Los Angeles Review of Books has published an Open Letter from Translators and Interpreters of Ukrainian and/or Russian into English Condemning the Russian Invasion of Ukraine


‘Appalling’: Moderna Rebuked Over Latest Covid-19 Vaccine Patent Strategy

‘Billionaire CEO shouldn’t get to choose who lives and who dies,’ said one advocacy group after Moderna’s patent announcement.