You load 16 tons, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt
St. Peter, don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store (Travis 1946)
~The Hon Dr Andrew Leigh MP
Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury
Address to Maurice Blackburn Lawyers, Melbourne Note How uncompetitive markets hurt workers
Marginalia Uncovered in Leonardo’s Famous Codex Arundel Suggests the Renaissance Polymath Theorized Gravity Before Galileo ArtNet: “Physicists studying Leonardo da Vinci’s Codex Arundel have made the remarkable discovery that the Italian Renaissance man may have beaten Galileo and Isaac Newton to theorizing gravity. Leonardo’s groundbreaking scientific investigations have continued to amaze modern-day researchers as new findings come to light.
The latest discovery, published in the journal Leonardo, is a new triangular shaped doodle by the Italian polymath, that has been shown to be an early mathematical study that deconstructs gravitational movement by accounting not only for its evident downward pull but also for the way the force steadily accelerates over time.
Made some 500 years ago, these insights were startlingly ahead of their time, pre-empting the work of both Galileo and Isaac Newton in the 16th and 17th centuries respectively…”
How Did Paul Mescal Make Ireland Really, Really Proud? By Speaking Irish At The BAFTAs
THE ENEMY WITHIN: Chinese Communist Party Demands Employees At Western Firm Show Their Support.
When China began to require Western corporations to establish Chinese Communist Party (CCP) cells, businesses brushed off the move as benign. For example, when HSBCHBA became the first international financial institution at which workers established a Chinese Communist Party cell in its investment banking venture in China in July, the bank stated that the CCP committee does not influence the direction of the firm and has no formal role in its day-to-day activities. But the CCP may have begun to flex its muscle in other ways. This week, the CCP cell inside the Beijing office of Big Four accounting firm EY demanded that party members wear CCP badges at work in the run-up to China’s annual parliamentary meetings. The presence of CCP cells in Western financial institutions may not mean that communists are managing your money. However, they spell trouble for Western businesses operating in China.
The CCP is a master practitioner of lawfare, or the purposeful use of law to achieve strategic objectives. In a recent legal salvo, the CCP launched several reforms to increase Party influence in the corporate world. In January 2020, a CCP regulation required all Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs) to amend their corporate charters to include the Party in their governance structure. SOEs must now appoint a Party secretary to serve as chairman of any corporate board, and establish CCP committees to facilitate Party activities and advance government policy. In September 2020, the General Office of the Central Committee of the CCP released a report asking China’s United Front Work Departments to spread Party ideology and influence in the private sector, including integrating Party leadership into all aspects of corporate governance.
Recently, the China Securities Regulatory Commission began requiring the creation of CCP cells in foreign financial firms as well. Within Chinese corporations, CCP committees serve as labor unions. In some cases, they function as a way to install a party member in a corporation’s executive ranks. The Party’s aim seems to be to ensure that private sector businesses fall under Party influence and will work with it to achieve national goals.
Beijing has figured out a way to start forcing foreign-owned businesses to act as CCP state-owned enterprises. Westerners were fools to believe — or at least pretend to believe — these cells were benign.
Then again, that’s been true about most of how the West has done business in China these last 30 years.