Opera as Art

 

Fun little word game: Alphaguess. “Guess the word of the day. Each guess reveals where the word sits alphabetically.” (Today’s puzzle took me 16 guesses…is that good?)

x Knot … Using Rope

The secret to the old snow leopard’s longevityYouTube

A little history of the anchovy Engelsberg Ideas

Opera as Art by Paul Thom is reviewed by Nina Penner

The Best and Worst Art of Toilet Paper, Paper Towel, and Facial Tissue Brands

Art Words - Data is Plural: “The Getty Vocabularies, published by the Getty Research Institute, “contain structured terminology for art, architecture, decorative arts, archival materials, visual surrogates, art conservation, and bibliographic materials.” They provide definitions, relationships, translations, and disambiguations for a broad range of terms and entities. 

Their Art & Architecture Thesaurus, for example, describes 57,000+ generic concepts (e.g., lithography), while others focus on artist names, cultural objects, and geographies. The records are available several ways, including bulk downloads.

1. Descartes’s Method: The Formation of the Subject of Science by Tared R. Dika is reviewed by Patrick Brissey.
2. About Haecceity: An Essay in Ontologyby Matthew Davidson is reviewed by Sam Cowling.
3. Opera as Art by Paul Thom is reviewed by Nina Penner.
4. Nietzsche’s Struggle against Pessimism by Patrick Hassan is reviewed by Julian Young.

1000-Word Philosophy         ∅              

Project Vox        ∅     

BJPS Short Reads         ∅

Open-Access Book Reviews in Academic Philosophy Journals        ∅          

Recent Philosophy Book Reviews in Non-Academic Media           

1. The Happiness of Dogs: Why the Unexamined Life is Most Worth Living by Mark Rowlands is reviewed by Tim Dowling at The Guardian, and by Michael Prodger at The New Statesman.
2. The Invention of Good and Evil by Hanno Sauer is reviewed by Bryan Appleyard at The Spectator. 
3. What We Owe to Future People: A Contractualist Account of Intergenerational Ethics by Elizabeth Finneron-Burns and Philosophy for an Ending World by Tim Mulgan are together reviewed by Nikhil Venkatesh at The Times Literary Supplement.
4. Pursuits of Happiness: The Hollywood Comedy of Remarriage by Stanley Cavell is reviewed by Jane Hu at The New Republic.
5. Planta Sapiens: The New Science of Plant Intelligence by Paco Calvo with Natalie Lawrence reviewed alongside related books by Elizabeth Kolbert at The New York Review of Books. 

Compiled by Michael Glawson

BONUS: Aristotle, the father of modern science

1. George Orwell as an outsider philosopher — Peter Brian Barry (Saginaw Valley) discusses the writer’s moral and political philosophy
2. “More philosophers should consider starting their own blogs” — philosopher and blogger Richard Y. Chappell (Miami) explains why
3. “If you think it matters how exactly society is arranged and what may be done about that… you simply must demand a higher calibre of reasoning from the intelligentsia” — on both the left and right, says Liam Kofi Bright (LSE)
4. OpenAI says its new model, o1, aka Strawberry, “thinks before it answers—it can produce a long internal chain of thought before responding to the user” — here’s the organization’s report on what o1 can do, and how well
5. She found philosophy disappointing in college, worked in finance, got an MBA. Now she’s a successful public philosopher — Skye Cleary (Columbia) is interviewed at What Is It Like To Be A Philosopher?

 ATO FALLS ON VIRTICAL

A Chinese national charged over an elaborate phishing scam involving millions of fraudulent text messages had been living in Australia unlawfully and trying to avoid detection, a court has heard.  

Jiahui Liu, 30, was arrested by cybercrime detectives on Tuesday after police executed a search warrant at his share house in the Townsville suburb of Aitkenvale.

Chinese national living unlawfully in Australia denied bail over phishing scam involving millions of fraudulent texts

The main tax havens of Europe, how are they luring the rich?

The IRS just paid 3 whistleblowers a record $74 million award—and tax evaders should be very afraid

Sydney property developer who ‘washed’ money for tax fraud scheme blackmailer forced to repay $11m

Bowen: Huge Beirut strike leaves West powerless as Israel chases victory BBC

You need to send her a cease and desist

Services Australia has seen a massive surge in data breaches by scammers harvesting information from previous hacks and using it to access customer accounts, Guardian Australia can reveal.

Data obtained under freedom of information by a user, known as CR, on the transparency website Right to Know reveals that, as of 5 July, Services Australia had reported 49 data breaches as a result of social engineering – where people call an agency pretending to be someone in order to access information – in 2024.

Services Australia data breaches surge as scammers try to hack customer accounts using stolen details

Inaccurate comparison of benefit fraud and tax losses recirculates on social media

The world of… work enemies

TotalJobs Data Visualization: “Good working relationships can take months to build… but they can go wrong in a moment. 

Sadly, it seems most of us will experience this. 62% of the 7,076 workers surveyed by Totaljobs admitted to having a work enemy According to a Totaljobs survey of over 7,000 UK workers, 6 in 10 admitted they have at least one ‘work enemy’. 

For some, it’s an annoying colleague who is always getting on your nerves. But for others, it can be more serious, like an office bully causing much deeper damage. In The World of Work Spouses, Totaljobs discovered that only 2 in 10 UK workers have a close workplace friendship. 

That means we’re three times more likely to develop a rift with a colleague than a bond. Boys will be (annoyed by) boys. Girls will be (annoyed by) girls. Your work enemy is likely to be the same gender as you. 

Maybe familiarity breeds contempt. Or perhaps competitiveness and authority are the key factors in what make us fall out with a colleague. Either way, the relationships we have with our managers seem vulnerable to problems. We’re less likely to make enemies with someone who’s younger than us or lower on the company ladder. 

Either way, we probably have to deal with them every day. If you’re reading this at work, your work enemy is quite likely to be within sight right now. 85% say the relationship started out well… then things went wrong Interestingly, almost all rifts begin with a relationship that once worked.

 This suggests we know that a successful collaboration is possible. But before we can fix it, we need to figure out what went wrong…

Cognitive warfare in the West Voltaire.net

British Intel’s ‘Counter-Disinfo’ War Goes GlobalKit Klarenberg 

Haitian group in Ohio files criminal charges against Trump and Vance over false pet-eating claims Associated Press 

 

Bombshell transcripts: Trump urged use of troops to protect Capitol on Jan. 6 , but was rebuffed Just the News. Yes, this is a stone right wing site. But it quote a transcript released by a Congresscritter.

Lebanon: Memories of War New York Review of Books

Theda Skocpol (Harvard University; A..D. White Professor-at-Large at Cornell), Rising Threats to U.S. Democracy — Roots and Responses

• Abstract: Why is US democracy facing an existential crisis this year? While some focus on the persona and rhetoric of Donald Trump, or stress underlying institutional distortions and polarizing social divisions, Skocpol highlights and explains the recent turn of the Republican Party and its allies toward  minority authoritarian governance backed by threats and violence. 
• Historical and cross-national comparisons pinpoint the most worrisome developments and necessary responses by pro-democratic forces. “Today I therefore grapple with the pressing question before us as social scientists and as citizens: 
• How and why have U.S. politics and governance arrived at the present juncture where long-standing Constitutional practices and democratically responsive governance are very much at stake? My answer focuses on what I see as the prime driver of the current crisis, the recent radicalization of the Republican Party and its allies, as they have pursued two forms and phases of anti-democratic politics.
•  The first version involves maximum use of legal hardball steps that stretch existing laws and rules to disadvantage partisan opponents (I also call this approach “McConnellism” in honor of its chief practitioner, outgoing GOP Senate Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky). The second approach targets political competitors and government operations with extralegal harassment, threats of violence, even actual violence. 
• Drawing on my own research with many collaborators, as well as from many excellent studies by colleagues in political science and beyond, I will dissect the elite and popular roots of recent Republican embrace of both forms of antidemocratic politics.”
• Video of the presentation – https://www.cornell.edu/video/theda-skocpol-2024 
• Full Text – https://acrobat.adobe.com/link/review?uri=urn%3Aaaid%3Ascds%3AUS%3A1649f93f-16a7-4433-a73f-e8c2506db4d3&viewer%21megaVerb=group-discover

ATO to scrape social media, dark web for scams, tax fraud

By Connor Pearce,The Canberra TimesMonday 30 September 2024 

d PDF

THE Australian Taxation Office is looking to scrape social media and the dark web for tax cheats using an automated, open source intelligence tool.

Commonly known as OSINT, these software tools have come to prominence in the signals and intelligence community in the past few years with the increasingly large volume of information available online and the greater sophistication of software tools to capture and analyse these vast troves of information.

Notably, OSINT researchers in the UK were able to spot Russia's invasion of Ukraine before it happened due to live traffic information showing the movement of vehicles about to cross the border into Ukraine.

Now, the ATO is seeking to apply this technology in the fight against tax fraud, to catch users that might be sharing or distributing information about how to avoid paying the correct amount of tax on open and encrypted social media and the dark web.

In a request for tender published online, the ATO outlines it is in the market for a tool to "address the big data challenges facing us through an ability to detect, intercept, and respond to various and evolving threats, using integrated technology to complete advanced targeted digital data collection".

Senior Advisor at the ANU National Security College Ben Scott said more government departments were using OSINT tools to analyse publicly available data, for example Home Affairs.

"If you're trying to understand what's happening in terms of protest movements in Australia, you use what's on social media as much as possible, and that's a form of open source intelligence gathering."

The ATO lists a number of social media platforms it is hoping to scrape for information on tax fraud, including widely used platforms as well as encrypted sites such as Telegram and social media sites used by far right groups and criminals such as Gab and 8kun.

"This will provide the ATO, TPB and ACNC with an essential capability and allow us to be at the forefront of detecting, intercepting, and disrupting serious financial crime which is increasingly being exploited by criminals," the tender documents state.

The ATO sets out it has specific requirements in mind, including the ability to read large numbers of posts to find trends within the data, the ability to read images as text and to interpret how networks of users function.

Already there has been some awareness of how tax fraud can be spread online.

A viral TikTok scam saw the ATO pay out $1.6 billion in fraudulent refunds between April 2022 and June 2023. At least 150 ATO staff were investigated following the scheme's disruption.

Mr Scott said while these tools could be useful, Australia's lax data privacy laws raised concerns about the collection and use of data.

Australian Insights: Global Economic Crime Survey 2024

The Time flies when you are having fun fighting for the common interest ... So after 21 years of helping to create level playing fields and making sure no one, not even MD, was above the law, BU is heading to the centre of rising of the ashes world. There he will continue his services for the common wealth good... As For Sydney Australian-Bohemian network it will never be the same...

 

Straw directors …

This story appears to be connected to the Global Economic Crime Survey 2024 

 

PwC Australia > Risk and regulation > Global Economic Crime Survey 2024 > Managing bribery and corruption: Five actions you can take to mitigate risk for your organisation

 

Australian Insights: Global Economic Crime Survey 2024

Managing bribery and corruption: Five actions to mitigate risk for your organisation

• Insight
• September 26, 2024

By Jane He, Partner, PwC Australia and Penny Dunn, Partner, PwC Australia

On 8 September 2024, a new foreign bribery offence came into effect under the Crimes Legislation Amendment (Combating Foreign Bribery) Act 2024. This provides a timely reminder for business leaders to review and enhance key measures to mitigate for bribery and corruption risks. 

Under the legislation, a ‘failure to prevent’ offence has been established. Corporations can face criminal liability, and significant penalties, for failing to prevent foreign bribery by their associates. Associates are broadly defined to include officers, employees, agents, contractors, and anyone performing services on behalf of the corporation. A corporation can avoid liability for the ‘failure to prevent’ offence if it can demonstrate adequate procedures in place to prevent foreign bribery by its associates.

The complexity and challenge of managing bribery and corruption risks continues to be highlighted in PwC’s Global Economic Crime and Fraud Survey (GECS) 2024. The survey found that 73% of Australian respondents perceive the risk of corrupt or improper payments as either increased or unchanged over the past 12 months. This ongoing challenge continues to create a difficult operating environment for businesses.

The GECS survey reveals further challenges related to third parties, which represent a significant bribery risk. While the GECS data shows that 77% of Australian respondents feel confident in their ability to manage corruption risks, 30% either do not have a third-party risk management program or do not evaluate their third parties as part of their anti-bribery and corruption efforts. While implementing basic frameworks, such as a whistleblower policy or an anti-bribery and corruption code of conduct, is a crucial first step, organisations should also consider third party risk measures that strengthen anti-bribery and anti-corruption (ABAC) management. 

What you can do: Five actions to mitigate risk

Here are five key actions to support an effective anti-bribery and corruption compliance program:

1. Tone from the Top: Even the most well-designed compliance program can only be effective if it is supported by senior management. Organisations that excel in compliance are those where the Board and executive team actively demonstrate and communicate their commitment to these programs.
2. Adopt a risk-based approach: Underpin your corruption compliance program with fit-for-purpose bribery and corruption risk assessment that considers both quantitative and qualitative measures. This enables organisations to design and implement ABAC processes and controls that commensurate the level of bribery and corruption risk exposure instead of applying a one-size-fits-all approach. Where organisations rely heavily on their third parties for delivering goods and services, these should be an area of focus as part of their ABAC compliance program.
3. Design with intent: The organisation’s policy, processes and procedures must align to the organisation’s bribery and corruption risk exposure and appetite. All business users should be clear why policies and procedures exist and the implications of non-compliance.
4. Be data and evidence based: Organisations must proactively monitor the effectiveness of the compliance program and controls by collecting and reporting on the data/evidence (e.g. third-party due diligence, gift register), and running periodic analysis across internal data (e.g. accounts payable, employee expense reimbursement) to identify anomalies/unusual activity. It is pleasing to see that 75% of GECS respondents reported using data analytics to support their organisation’s anti-corruption compliance objectives It is also important to ensure there is adequate capacity in place to avoid falling behind on reviewing analytics output and timely follow up action.
5. Create a ‘speak up’ culture and channels: Bribery and corruption incidents can be secretive in nature and therefore hard to detect, which is why a high portion of bribery and corruption suspicions are first identified through employees/third parties making a disclosure to the organisation. This highlights the importance of an effective whistleblower program. But for it to be effective, it must be visible, accessible and people must understand it. Also, it must be supported by deliberate, ongoing education around how to use the channels, the positive impact of raising a concern, and building trust in whistleblower protection.

Addressing bribery and corruption risk requires involvement from all levels of an organisation. By taking these actions, organisations can effectively manage bribery and corruption risks as part of ethical, sustainable business operations. 

The dangerous culture that created Robodebt and RoboNDIS

Covid NSW Grant Fraud - John Palasty jumps from Virtical’s sinking ship

ATO found pub empire made ‘fictitious’ GST refund claims

John Palasty jumps from Virtical’s sinking ship

Max Mason, David Marin-Guzman and Larry Schlesinger

Developer John Palasty is attempting to distance himself from Virtical’s collapsing hospitality empire, stepping down and selling his shares to a man who is a director of multiple failed companies.

Virtical has been rapidly unravelling since The Australian Financial Review revealed two weeks ago that the Tax Office is investigating more than a dozen of its companies over more than $100 million in GST refund claims – a sum that required it to spend $1 billion on development.

Mr Palasty was not the head of the group when the claims were made.

John Palasty at his home in East Hills in Sydney’s west. Dion Georgopoulos

The pub owner and developer exploded onto the Sydney and Melbourne hospitality scene last year after spending more than $125 million on iconic pubs in just four months, including Sydney’s The Republic, Kinselas and The Courthouse, as well as Melbourne’s The Adelphi Hotel.

The company pitched itself as a burgeoning hospitality empire based around a strategy of snapping up trophy venues and revitalising them with multimillion-dollar renovations.

However, Virtical filed documents with the corporate regulator on Thursday claiming Mr Palasty sold his shares for just $4 and stating that his resignation was dated September 5.

The Financial Review sent its first set of questions to Virtical and Mr Palasty regarding GST claims under ATO investigation on September 4 and received a reply the following day. 

Virtical’s former managing director Mark Toma previously claimed on the website for his new finance firm that he netted $45 million when he sold the company to his business partner Mr Palasty in November 2023. Virtical’s new sole shareholder and director is a 27-year-old man from Mount Hunter, a rural town 70 kilometres south-west of Sydney.

Australian Securities and Investment Commission records show the man, who the Financial Review has chosen not to name, is currently a director of 15 companies, and has previously held a further 22 directorships. 

Many companies the man has been a director of have been liquidated or deregistered, and one has two payment defaults and two legal actions. Many have a registered office in the same building as Virtical in Alexandria, in Sydney’s inner west. 

Since the Financial Review published its investigation earlier this month, Virtical’s main financier has stepped in to protect its money.

Bond Finance – run by Sydney’s Morello family – has tipped The Republic, The Adelphi Hoteland Hotel Australasia on the NSW south coast into administration. It issued Virtical a default notice on $90 million in mortgages and gave the developer a month to pay up, or else it will move to sell its mortgaged properties. 

Sources who were not authorised to speak publicly said Bond Finance enforced a personal guarantee on Mr Palasty on Wednesday. This gave the financier control of all his shares, including those in Virtical. 

Virtical filed the share sale document and resignation advice on Thursday, stating it had occurred on September 5. 

On Friday, documents filed with the corporate regulator showed Mr Palasty resigned from a range of other Virtical group companies associated with properties in Eden, Newcastle in NSW, Queensland’s Gold Coast and Bateman’s Bay on the NSW south coast. The same man has been installed as sole shareholder and director. Similarly, the document said the sales and resignations happened on September 5.

Mr Palasty’s lawyers, Kennedys Law, and his external public relations representative did not respond to a long list of questions sent on Thursday morning.

The Australian Taxation Office fined a Virtical group company $1.8 million for “intentional disregard” of the law over GST refund claims it made for purportedly developing a block of land in Tasmania that it did not own, according to a damning audit obtained by the Financial Review earlier this week.

The ATO audit found that $20 million worth of claimed development expenses on the Tasmanian property did not happen. 

The completed audit, the first to be revealed from the ATO investigation, flies in the face of Mr Palasty’s denials that the group was under an audit or ATO investigation. The fine is potentially the tip of the iceberg for the property investor.

Mr Palasty says he is in dispute with the ATO and denies any wrongdoing.

Last week, the Financial Review also revealed Virtical has failed to pay hospitality staff superannuation all year.

17 Oct

9:15 am

2024/00233398

In the matter of VIRTICAL PTY LTD

Civil

Supreme Court

Directions

Justice S Nixon

Supreme Court Sydney

Law Courts Building Court 7C Queens Square Sydney

-

Covid small business grant fraud investigation: 658 charges laid, 14,300 businesses referred to police in fraud crackdown

Shock figures have laid bare the extent of fraudulent claims made to a Covid-19 era business grant program with police investigating thousands of cases that rorted the system at the expense of NSW taxpayers.

David Barwell

Shock figures have laid bare the extent of fraudulent claims made to a Covid-19 era business grant program with police investigating thousands of cases including interstate companies that rorted the system at the expense of NSW taxpayers.

A government crack force investigating fraudulent claims made to the Covid-19 microbusiness grant program has revealed almost one in four companies that applied for funds through the program are under investigation for alleged fraud.

The small business grants program enabled companies with an annual turnover between $30,000 and $75,000 that suffered a 30 per cent decline in turnover because of Covid restrictions to qualify for $1500 fortnightly payments.

The scheme paid out more than $784m to about 63,000 businesses in what was intended to help small traders weather successive lockdowns.

NSW Customer Service and Digital Government Minister Jihad Dib has now confirmed 14,300 applications for grant funding have been referred to police as a result of compliance activity. 

To date, more $15m has been clawed back by the government from fraudulent and ineligible applications, $52m in fraud has been prevented, 658 charges have been laid and 140 people have been convicted of defrauding the program.

This publication understands fraudulent claims have included cases where applicants from interstate purported to be from NSW to obtain the grants.

Other fraudulent activity has included identity theft, ABN hijacking as well as falsified documentation.

Service NSW said of the 14,300 applications referred to police for investigation, about 4500 applications have been referred to interstate law enforcement agencies – indicating a significant number of applicants in other states and territories were attempting to take advantage of a program designed to support NSW-based businesses.

Mr Dib said it was “deeply disturbing that significant fraud activity has been uncovered” and that the “criminal activity took place”.

“Any further matters where suspicious activity is identified will be referred to police for further action,” he said in a statement.

As part of the grants program, businesses applying for funds had been allowed to self-assess their eligibility and received funds automatically, on the proviso that their applications would be subject to future audits.

NSW Opposition Customer Service spokesman James Griffin recognised there had been “massive fraud” reported through the grant program, but raised concerns some businesses were being caught up in compliance blitz.

“Any businesses who took advantage of the micro grants should be caught and charged. Taking money from this worthwhile grant program is like stealing from a small business who actually needed the support,” he said.

“I am also aware of micro businesses, right across NSW, who have been trying their best to navigate being unfairly swept up in the fraud cases and are really struggling to get any support or information from ServiceNSW. 

“Good businesses are clearly being punished for the actions of dodgy operators.”

A Service NSW spokesman in a statement said the government took attempts to defraud financial support programs “very seriously”.

The spokesman said the government has put in place measures to support businesses selected for compliance checks and had followed up with companies to ensure all evidence related to their grant applications was in place, which was a condition of the grants to ensure taxpayer funds were spent responsibly.

“Service NSW understands these checks may be challenging for some customers and support is provided for customers who are experiencing hardship or who need assistance understanding the audit requirements or sourcing business documentation.”

The compliance audits have included a focus on businesses where discrepancies in paperwork were identified with referrals made to police when serious irregularities were identified.