Focusing ... On Reading ICAC: Stories of Exiles & Freedom

When what qualifies as iron will is not checking your email for an hour, there is little hope of finding the focus to read a long and complex book... Rivers of Calmness

''Brace yourselves,'' Watson warned as he opened the coal corruption inquiry. We've been bracing ourselves ever since Geoffrey Watson

EMPLOYERS will gain a new chance to scale back Labor's controversial limits on skilled worker visas when the Abbott government moves today to reignite a political row over the 457 visa program John Azarias 457 Visas 

Sydney businessman John Azarias recently wrote an account, that was published in the Financial Times, of the Greek Alexandrian poet Constantine Cavafy whose '"constant companions of the mind" were the multi-ethnic worlds of the Seleucids, of the Ptolemies, of Byzantium and of the Ottomans'. It was, as Azarias said, 'a quintessentially Alexandrian spirit'. Again, this culture was untidy, overlapping, contradictory and pluralistic—not a culture demanding conformity to a single religion or language—surely rich enough to fit King Abdullah's ideal of 'an overlap of cultures'. As I remember hearing Bill Clinton say once: 'Our differences make us interesting. Our common humanity is more important.' 

Writer - Patricia Azarias is the product of an immigrant family, born in Egypt, of an English father and a Spanish Jewish mother, speaking several languages. She is a passionate advocate of a multi-cultural Australia & is on the board of SBS Radio & Television, an active member of its Community Advisory Committee. She is the Deputy Chair of CRC (NSW). She worked for the United Nations for many years & was the Chief Auditor (2004-2006). She recently finished a year in Papua New Guinea as a UN expert on public finance and established a foundation for sending kids to school. As the Director of the Public Accounts Committee of the NSW Parliament, she wrote numerous publications. - See more at: Migrant Story

Nothing tastes better than freedom—except possibly burrata.

One May night, I sat beneath the blue whale at the American Museum of Natural History, nibbling through a four-course dinner at the gala for an Eminent Literary Organization.

This Organization defends persecuted writers from Qatar to Honduras. Founded in 1921, their history glitters. With them, Susan Sontag slugged whiskey. With them, Arthur Miller refused to denounce his Communist friends. They stood in solidarity with Salman Rushdie when the Ayatollah Khomeini called for his death Dissident freedom

Empires love their dissidents foreign.

Those Moving Minds & Plans of Mice & Men : AMEN

Aristotle was a big walker – thus we call his philosophical school Peripatetic – but is there really a connection between moving feet and moving minds? Moving Minds

First principle: government is not business. Indeed, government is the direct inverse of business, yet this basic axiom seems to elude it. Just as a motor is an inverse generator, or photosynthesis is inverse respiration, so with business and government. Business makes money from selling goods and services; government spends money to provide them There are only two reasons to have democratic government / 1 to regulate / 2 to provide services that are necessary but if done properly unprofitable ...

The World Welcomes My Great Nephew Matej

Congratulations to Milan and Monika ;-)

A year ago, the British government launched its online style guide. It is a single webpage that takes just a few minutes to read. The guide is neither a prescriptive nor a proscriptive list; rather, it describes how government should communicate, ''the whole ethos of Gov.uk; it's a way of writing''. Plain English Stories

Step aside, Strunk and White. To combat the scourge of bad writing, we need a science of crafting stylish prose. Cue Steven Pinker... Poetry

In praise of bean counters. Accounting once occupied the attention of thinkers in religion, art, and philosophy. Yes, accounting... Yes Accrual or Cruel Accounting

New/Old Media and Influence

So old is the IPA that when his father helped establish it, Rupert Murdoch was but a callow youth of 12. Gina Rinehart, another of its most prominent members, was not then even a gleam in the eye of Lang Hancock. But age has not wearied it. The IPA has never been more powerful than it is right now. Modern Media, Politics & Power Games

Words are Living Legends

“Love is for the young. It is for soldiers and athletes… Things are much more complicated here. It’s beyond love. It’s fate…”

~Pushkin Quote on. Day when we ask: What Does D-Day Mean To Us Now

“The men of Normandy had faith that what they were doing was right, faith that they fought for all humanity, faith that a just God would grant them mercy on this beachhead or on the next. It was the deep knowledge – and pray God we have not lost it – that there is a profound moral difference between the use of force for liberation and the use of force for conquest.”

A hard core irony media dragons beware: US Secret Service wants software to “detect sarcasm” on social media.

“She’s so bloody secretive, he thought. Saves secrets like sweets. Eat them in private.”

~ Parliamentary Musings of  Australian Mistresses known to Kabbalist Jozef Imrich ;-)

Words, I’ve come to learn, are pulleys through time. Portals into other minds. Without words, what remains? Indecipherable customs. Strange rites. Blighted hearts. Without words, we’re history’s orphans. Our lives and thoughts erased.

And:

Words are living legends, swollen with significance. We string them together to make stories, but they themselves are stories, encapsulating rich, runny histories Masters of Storytelling

What is written preserves what was passed down in conversation.  It selects and shapes a series of rambling, sharpened-up oral exchanges, remembered first hand, second hand, third hand, over many years.  What is written about things here, where no one could ever check, yields to the attraction of the tall story, and, crossing the line into fiction, makes it taller.  People contradict, and that’s just another story.  I have discovered already that it’s a town where people talk.  Their role is to fill the visitor’s ear with tales.  To keep a handle on things, they become unreliable narrators.  The lines of writing are like the slats of the venetian blind in our cabin, opening out on to the airy domain of the oval, filtering it at the same time.  But the oral, still around to comment and correct, or to simply move things along in some new direction of contemporary appeal, has power to set the record adrift.  Black Sheep in Imrich Family

Philosophy of Double Six

“The Philosophy” is a new shiraz-cab blend from McGuigan Wines. A bit pricier than these.

Before he shone as a novelist,Oscar Wilde was a book critic – a gifted, feisty, self-promoting book critic, who skewered his subjects... Wild Man & Devil

The singular course of Stephen Greenblatt. At 21, on a bridge in Istanbul, he tore up his acceptance to Yale Law School. His life was literature... Rebel

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Philosophers of time: here are some infographics on a few movie and tv time travel plots. Of course there are also thesecharts for the brain-twisting movie Primer.

“What’s the value of these potions on the open market?” — if Ayn Rand wroteHarry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.

Future Cantillon Effect: Past Drowning deaths in Australian rivers

Drowning deaths in Australian rivers, creeks and streams: a 10 year analysis

Royal Life Saving Society Australia

735 people drowned in Australian rivers, creeks and streams between 2002 and 2012. Rivers claimed more lives than any other aquatic location across the same period.

China provides many examples of the Cantillon Effect. Not only does China print like mad, but when the Federal Reserve prints money, lots of it eventually flows into China. China then exports this inflation to the world based on what it demands. Milk powder, gold, luxury handbags, homes etc.

From 2010, Andy Xie on China’s demand for French wine:

Cross-posted from Investing in Chinese Stocks.

Whenever money is printed or there is growth in credit, there is the Cantillon Effect. Very simply, inflation is not evenly distributed; it works through the economy unevenly. Print money in the 1970s and it flows into energy and commodities. Print money at the end of the 1990s and it flows into a technology stock bubble. Print money in 2009-2010 in China and it flows into real estate. Where the money flows depends upon on demographics, tastes and preferences of those first receiving the money, or existing investment trends.

Chinas property bust will spread from Beijing to Bondi

Tens of thousands of people attended a vigil in Hong Kong last night to mark the 25th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Squarecrackdown, calling on China to vindicate the student movement that led the protests. Bloomberg (crackdown what used to be called massacre / soon papers will say it was a minor misunderstanding)

Increasing numbers of the wealthy global elite are saying goodbye to their home country and taking up residence elsewhere in an effort to preserve their riches.

Popular destination countries like Cyprus, Spain and Australia have programs that offer a path to citizenship or permanent residency -- for those who can afford to pay up. Money Speaks; Untouchable Capitalism

Jones vs Turnbull: 'You like dishing it out but you don't like taking it'

Suspicion of government may be justified, but let’s not ignore a self-evident truth: Government is natural to the human condition. Roger Scruton explains... Reality of Political Leanings

You raise up your head/And you ask, "Is this where it is?"/And some-body points to you and says/"It's his"/And you says, "What's mine ?"/And somebody else says, "Where what is ?"/And you say, "Oh my God/Am I here all alone?"/ But something is happening here/But you don't know what it is/Do you, Mister Jones? – Ballad of a Thin Man, Bob Dylan

Federal Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbulls had a full and frank discussion with 2GB breakfast radio host Alan Jones this morning.Jones met his match when he took on Malcolm Turnbull.

Mr Jones

The famous former mayor of New York, Ed Koch, had what he called an inviolate rule. ‘‘You punch me, I punch you back. I do not believe it is good for one’s self respect to be a punching bag.’’ He rightly believed that a politician just could not let people take cheap shots and get away with it. My mum used to say something similar: ‘‘Look like a door mat, behave like a door mat, expect to get trodden on.’’ Punching Bags

Former prime minister John Howard has delivered a guarded rebuke to Tony Abbott, saying today's politicians rely too heavily on slogans and declaring Australians will support change and reform so long as they are satisfied it is ''fundamentally fair''.

Describing politics today as less ideological than in his time, the country's second longest-serving prime minister has observed: ''We sometimes lose the capacity to argue the case - we think that it's sufficient that we utter slogans.'' John Howard


“The Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) has today found that Eddie Obeid and Joe Tripodi have engaged in corrupt conduct. “Mr Tripodi’s membership will be expelled immediately, at a meeting of the Administrative Committee tomorrow, under Rule. A. 9 (b) of the Labor Party Rules. “Mr Obeid was expelled from the Labor Party in 2013.”
Wild Men Of Sydney

Becoming Bohemian-Moravian Born and Bred Freud

That is the new and excellent book by Adam Phillips, in the US available on Kindle only.  Here is one bit:

…Freud was discovering that we obscure ourselves from ourselves in our life stories; that that is their function.  So we will often find that the most dogmatic thing about Freud as a writer is his skepticism.  He is always pointing out his ignorance, without ever needing to boast about it.  He is always showing us what our knowing keeps coming up against; what our desire to know might be a desire for.

And later:

Psychoanalysis would one day be Freud’s proof that biography is the worst kind of fiction, that biography is what we suffer from; that we need to cure ourselves of the wish for biography, and our belief in it.  We should not be substituting the truths of our desire with trumped-up life stories, stories that we publicize.

~ Australia's wealthiest people use a complex web of trusts and companies to hide what could potentially be billions of dollars from the tax office. Auditor general Ian McPhee has released a report on the Australian Taxation Office's handling of high-wealth individuals (HWIs) – people who control an estimated net wealth of $30m or more each. McPhee said the tax compliance of the 2,650 HWIs and 3,700 potential HWIs, who had a total estimated wealth of $500bn in 2012/13, represented a "significant revenue risk".

The tax office estimates the wealthiest Australians contributed $1.4 billion in tax in 2011/12. Managing Compliance of High Wealth Individuals~ Tax policy and The Bible, by Bruce Bartlett

~ A tale of two brothers, one of whom is rich

~ Libel Suit Turns Singapore Blogger into Underdog for Pensioners

Wall Street Journal (blog)‎

~

Just remember, once you’re over the hill you begin to pick up speed

If the clouds hadn't cleared above Principe in 1919, Einstein would be just another physicist… On the day of John Hatton's Birthday 29 May

Quotation Websites And ‘The Outsourcing Of Erudition’

Or, how “Just remember, once you’re over the hill you begin to pick up speed” got attributed to, of all people, Arthur Schopenhauer.

Via Slate

SANDY DAWSON BARRISTER-AT-LAW. HE’S NOT EVEN A PRIVATE OF THE COURT LET ALONE AN OFFICER OF THE COURT

One of the reasons Kerry Stokes and his lawyer Justine Munsie are suing me for defamation is that they object to me calling them perjurers which they claim they are not. So what do they do? They sue me for defamation and send in the  junior barrister Sandy Dawson to lie and deceive the court from the bar table in clear breach of the solicitors rules and barrister rules. How do we know Sandy Dawson lied and deceived the court and what is the evidence to support that? The evidence is that I was there and I heard him and also Justice Harrison in his judgement indirectly said so.

story is: Kerry – Not Stoked

• story is: Kerry – Not StokedWhat Literature and Rock n Roll Have to Say to Each Other
  THERE is a great new-ish journal out of San Franscisco that not only has the right idea, it has the follow-through. Radio Silence includes work...[read more]
  

  Via CultureCrash 

What happens when an orchestra takes Bach and Theofanidis to a sports bar?... [read more]

Via  Creative Destruction 

Whistleblowers of Wall Street

The personal price of exposing financial wrongdoing can be devastating. William D Cohan meets three men who went public and paid for it

©Bloomberg

Whistleblowing is not for the faint-hearted – and especially not on Wall Street.

On Wall Street, as every­one now knows, wrong­doing by bankers, traders and executives led to disaster in 2008 after they were rewarded for taking risks with other people’s money. Leading bankers and traders were motivated – by the hope of getting large bonuses – to package up mortgages into securities and then sell them off as AAA-rated investments all over the world. This happened even though one damning email after another makes clear they knew some of the mortgages would probably default and that the securities should never have been sold in the first place. But some people did try to blow the whistle – the problem is they were not listened to. Worse than that, they were treated in a way that would discourage anyone from following in their footsteps. Wall Street Whistleblowers: the acts of failure

• Examples of Smart Communities & Cities
• Smart Cities Blog
• Smarter Communities & Cities
• Procedurally Taxing, Winning the He-Said-She-Said Case, by Scott Schumacher
• Daily Mail, Former Accountant Threatened to Kill IRS Agent and Rape His Wife Over $330,000 Tax Bill

• As Courts Look On, Online Comments Are Under Threat

  
  

  “One of the great questions for the future of the net is: to what extent this extraordinary freedom will be allowed to remain in the hands of the people, and to what extent will it be limited and regulated? If a recent ruling by the European Court of Human Rights is anything to go by, perhaps we should expect more of the latter.” Via Financial Times

Private equity: harnessing secrecy to fleece investors and taxpayers

The period between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Great Recession saw probably the most profound reshuffle of individual incomes on the (Monsanto the toxic face of globalisation ) global scale since the Industrial Revolution Iron Curtain

The widely-read U.S. financial blog nakedcapitalism (Naked Capitalism) is running a fascinating post about the private equity industry, which involves the release of a number of apparently sensitive documents. The article notes:

“For decades, private equity (PE) firms have asserted that limited partnership agreements (LPAs), the contracts between themselves and investors, should be treated in their entirety as trade secrets, and therefore not subject to disclosure under Freedom of Information Act laws in any jurisdiction. These private equity general partners argued that the information in their contracts was so sensitive that it needed to be shielded from competitors’ eyes, otherwise their unique, critically important know-how would be appropriated and used against them.”

 The New York Times recently quoted a U.S. official as saying “in some cases, investors’ pockets are being picked.”  (Read more about media starting to wake up  to the folly of investing in private equity (or hedge funds) In places like New Statesman.)

Of course, there are cases when private equity firms also seek to inject business nouse into badly managed companies, but as this article describes, it’s not necessarily any more profitable to do so when you may be able to make a quicker buck by just buying, squeezing, flipping and then discarding the husk, moving onto the next target.

Naked Capitalism is running a series on this, and the documents are available on their site, for those who take an interest in this sort of thing.