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Wednesday, April 06, 2022

Former CIA Officer Mike Baker On Bad Intelligence And Putin

Asking a soul survivor or a working writer what he thinks about critics and leaders is like asking a lamppost how it feels about dogs. 

~The Act of Reading All Kinds of Books


Qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum
Let him who wants peace prepare for war
If you have no enemies, find a way to make them.


India’s refusal to condemn Russia not an issue for Australia: Barry O’Farrell


As part of its election pitch on fighting multinational tax avoidance, Labor announces plans to tighten legal loopholes that allow big companies to shift profits offshore, as well as to introduce steps to increase transparency.

Shadow Assistant Minister for Treasury Andrew Leigh told ABC News the policy details were still being nailed down, but Labor would consider how existing laws could be further tightened and, if elected, introduce a "beneficial ownership register" that would make it harder for secret people behind companies to hide who they are and what they get up to.

Labor and Coalition ramp up pressure on multinational tax avoidance ahead of election


Questions raised over millions in federal budget funding for charity with no office or staff


Beach Shack on Roo island: Federal Government probed over awarding of Manus Island security contracts to Paladin Group


Heard the one about the climate apocalypse? How to joke about the end of the world

Biden: Rupert Murdoch ‘most dangerous man in the world.’

President Biden reportedly decried Fox News owner and media magnate Rupert Murdoch as the “most dangerous man in the world,” according to new reporting in a forthcoming book by a team of New York Times reporters.

Excerpts from the book “This Will Not Pass,” by journalists Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns obtained by CNN reveal Biden assessed Fox News “as one of the most destructive forces in the United States.”

The book reportedly describes Fox News as a “torrent of anti-Biden programming, stoking skepticism about vaccines and disseminating wild conspiracy theories about the January 6 attack.”

Biden’s alleged comments to Martin and Burns are the first the president has ever made publicly about Murdoch, CNN noted.


I BLAME IT ON INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES HIRING GRADUATES FROM MARXIST-INFESTED UNIVERSITIES:  Why was the intelligence community wrong about Putin?

Most Marxists have been exquisitely trained to flinch away from logic. This is the result.


BATTLESWARM BLOG: Former CIA Officer Mike Baker On Bad Intelligence And Putin. “If you look at what he did in Chechnya, if you look at what he did helping Assad in Syria, if you look at what he did annexing Crimea, if you look at Georgia, Abkhazia, South Ossetia. Every step of the way he’s been following in his mind this stated desire, that he’s made very public over the years, to rebuild his sphere of influence.”



'Russophobia in action:' Russian socialites and influencers irate after being barred from purchasing Chanel goods

Slow Horses Series Premiere Review - "Failure's Contagious" and "Work Drinks"

“This website is created and maintained by Sarah Lawsky, a tax law professor at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law. The website uses Dash and Python and is freely available under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 license

IQ: What does this website do? A: It generates multiple-choice practice problems for federal income tax and partnership tax (that’s still a work in progress). The problems are a random selection of facts, names, and randomly (but thoughtfully) generated numbers about a range of basic tax topics and partnership tax topics. You decide whether you want to focus on basic tax or partnership tax, and then you can pick a particular topic within that subject, or you can have the website to pick both a topic and problem within that subject at random…”


Lies, damned lies and the Morrison government’s statistics

Retiring Liberal Party Senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells has taken full aim at the “corrupt antics” of Scott Morrison and his “consigliere” Alex Hawke. If the Prime Minister and his inner circle have “no moral compass” and choose to lie at will, how can Australians get a grip on the facts and whether it’s time for a


What Does a Bond Bear Market Look Like? A Wealth of Common Sense


Crouching Tiger, Hidden Problems Doomberg. Tiger Global Management.


Biotech to return almost €2bn to shareholders after Covid vaccine success FT


The Best Defense Against Rubber-Hose Cryptanalysis Cory Doctorow, OneZero


Abrogation Theory Dror Poleg


Ukraine Updates and More Discussion of the Russia “Gas for Roubles” Countersanction

Gazprom is scheduled to announce what its roubls-for-gas payments stipulations are, even though most Western countries said no, sight unseen.


Fake Emergency Search Warrants Draw Scrutiny from Capitol Hill – Krebs on Security Brian Krebs