Yes Alternative Prime Minister

Scoop like no other regarding the way sunlight is the best disinfectant in politics ...

It is very likely that over a pint of beer in some cosy London pub Professor  Richard Murphy suggested to JC, (no not Jesus Christ) the new rising star of social conscious with the same initials, Jeremy Corbyn, to lead the way in transparency. In the context of Yes Minister that is extremely courageous move for the Mother of Parliaments to witness ...

The Labour party is considering making Jeremy Corbyn’s tax records public so they can be fully scrutinised, the party has said. A Labour source told journalists that the move was under consideration and that a decision was expected today Jeremy Corbyn considers voluntarily opening his tax records up to scrutiny

Google and Apple have fought back in the row over the big tech groups’ tax regimes, saying they are being unfairly targeted as the public backlash over the controversy escalates.

Letters page

‘Governments make tax law, Google complies’

‘In all the coverage of Google’s tax settlement, little has been said about the international tax rules and how they work’

Peter Barron

Google on Wednesday defended its £130m settlement with British tax authorities for the first time in a letter to the Financial Times, arguing that it was complying with British law. Separately, Apple said it should pay nothing over Brussels’ investigation into its alleged sweetheart tax deals in Ireland.

The interventions came as David Cameron, UK prime minister, tackled tough questions about the Google tax deal in parliament. Opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn asked: “Why is there one rule for big multinational companies and another for ordinary, small businesses and self-employed workers?”

Silicon Valley groups and US business leaders are stepping up their lobbying campaign in Washington, arguing that European authorities are discriminating against multinationals. A group of US senators recently said any fines imposed on companies such as Apple amounted to “discriminatory taxation”.

Peter Barron, Google’s European public affairs chief, wrote in the FT: “Governments make tax law, the tax authorities independently enforce the law, and Google complies with the law.” Taxing Times

This Quick Guide presents information about the backgrounds and service of Australia’s 29 prime ministers, from Edmund Barton to Malcolm Turnbull. It includes information about of their backgrounds (age, place of birth, gender and occupational background), period in office, experience in other parliaments, parties, electorates and military service Traits and trends of Australia’s prime ministers, 1901 to 2015: a quick guide

Many political pundits will be watching alternative Prime Minister Bill Shorten  Sussex Street tonight as the ALP is peppered with solid policies and hopefully they will also implement JC"s approach of   "Straight Talking and Honest Politics'.

Parliamentary relations: political families in the Commonwealth Parliament

Malcolm aka Cate aka Catherine McGregor says David Morrison was a 'weak and conventional choice' for Australian of the Year. The Queensland finalist, who used to work for the former army chief, said she felt really sad the board of the National Australia Day Council 'did not have the courage to go with an LGBTI person'.

It is all about Catherine 

Human Nature: Are female politicians less warlike than men?

“Most lives consist of choosing the wrong things.

We try to compensate by choosing more,

As if sheer mass bestowed integrity.”

~scribbled in a book facing the garden filled with nudes statues Italy's nude statues covered for iranian president's visit

The Moral Economy: Why Good Incentives Are No Substitute for Good Citizens (Castle Lectures Series) Implementing Vaclav Havel's VISIONS

Another Hamlet like most tragic study (source TF) finds that queenly reigns participated more in inter-state conflicts, without experiencing more internal conflict. Moreover, the tendency of queens to participate as conflict aggressors varied based on marital status.

Among married monarchs, queens were more likely to participate as attackers than kings. Among unmarried monarchs, queens were more likely to be attacked than kings. These results are consistent with an account in which queens relied on their spouses to manage state affairs, enabling them to pursue more aggressive war policies. Kings, on the other hand, were less inclined to utilize a similar division of labor.

This asymmetry in how queens relied on male spouses and kings relied on female spouses strengthened the relative capacity of queenly reigns, facilitating their greater participation in warfare.

 Are female politicians less warlike than men? Some evidence from European queens

Does the fame of female painters fade more quickly?

Inside Higher Ed, Are Academics Disproportionately Gay?

The Art of Travel is not a guide to travelling but an exploration of the role of travel, broadly understood, in the lives and work of some eminent artists and writers. De Botton doesn't attempt full biographies, but provides fawcettish insights into nature of who we are and more who we really want to be ... So Gustave Flaubert was obsessed by the exotic from childhood, but was not, somewhat surprisingly, disillusioned when he actually went to Egypt.

"[He] insisted that he was not French. His hatred of his country and its people was so profound, it made a mockery of his civil status. And hence he proposed a new way of ascribing nationality: not according to the country one was born in or to which one's family belonged, but according to the places to which one was attracted." TYson Exloring together with Tyla philosophy of exotic travel and escapes

Unserious naked shock art 

Hunting secrets of the Venus flytrap PhysOrg.“Fascinating! SES behaviour captured in the wild”

What Snyder Knew: Flint Email Dump Shows Attempts to Shift the Blame Common Dreams and Nightmares as Jozef Imrich is blamed for anything that goes wrong in rotten systems ...

The first (maiden) time I realized I had the ability to make someone laugh was in the church in Vrbov when I made a sound of a bird with a piece of tissue in the middle of a sermon by Father Glatz... Jokes are one of the only truly democratic art forms. If a large enough percentage of people laugh at something, it is defined as funny. It might not be good or clever, or add to the conversation, or even be socially aware. But it is funny. We can track whether or not something is funny, then, by figuring out how many people are laughing. And a lot of people have laughed at MEdia Dragon's ability to stir the wicked part of the soul of the saddest looking crown employees and taxing art collectors ;-)

Welles and Hemingway first met in 1937 in a projection room, when Welles was narrating the commentary for The Spanish Earth, a pro-Republican civil war documentary. Not realising Hemingway was in the room, Welles made various criticisms of the author’s text. Welles later said: “Then I heard this growl from the darkness. ‘Some damned faggot who runs an art theatre telling me how to write narration.’ So I began to camp it up... ‘Oh, Mr Hemingway, you think because you’re so big and strong and have hair on your chest that you can bully me.’ So this great figure stood up and swung at me. So I swung at him. 

“Now you have the picture of the Spanish civil war being projected on the screen and these two heavy figures swinging away at each other and missing most of the time. The lights came up. We looked at each other, burst into laughter and became great friends.” (Tillotson and Clune)

Joshua Wolf Shenk, Powers of Two: Finding the Essence of Innovation in Creative Pairs (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014).  The story of innovation, at least in the case of the digital revolution, has in the past often been reduced to the image of solo inventor in his or her garage, paradigmatically in Silicon Valley.  Shenk takes aim at this truism and highlights the power to be found in creative pairs working together toward breakthrough innovation.  Think Marie and Pierre Curie; Lennon and McCartney; Jobs and Wozniak and you get the idea.  (Not surprisingly, Walter Isaacson wrote one of the blurbs: “We sometimes think of creativity as coming from brilliant loners. In fact, it more often happens when bright people pair up and complement each other.  Shenk’s fascinating book shows how to spark the power of this phenomenon.”)

From a U.S. Attorney press release:

Yolanda Castro, 48, an employee of the U.S. Internal Revenue Service in Fresno, pleaded guilty today to aiding and assisting in the preparation of a false tax return, United States Attorney Benjamin B. Wagner announced.
According to court documents, Castro was employed by the IRS for approximately 20 years, including as a tax examiner and contact representative. Between 2007 and 2013, she prepared and filed false federal income tax returns for herself, her family members and others in which she fraudulently claimed tax deductions and credits. For instance, on her own 2008 tax return, Castro claimed a credit for education expenses that she did not incur, and provided the IRS phony textbook receipts to support the claim. Likewise, in tax returns she prepared for herself and others, Castro claimed child care expenses that had not been incurred.

Danish town says pork must be served at public institutions Guardian 

Marissa Mayer Has Become A Symbol Of Silicon Valley’s Disastrous Tokenism. “The jokes write themselves. But just in case you’re out of ink: a token female CEO who immediately goes on a disastrous spending spree — colour me shocked!”

The younger generation’s new wave of political correctness is a danger to society. “Suddenly, those of us who had never worried about being seen as politically unsound are being cast as ageing, right-wing bigots.”

Guantánamo parole board clears Yemeni who was victim of mistaken identity Miami Herald. Mistaken identities were made…

German attitudes to immigration harden following Cologne attacks: 62% of Germans now say the number of asylum seekers is too high, up from 53% in November – driven mainly by the hardening attitudes of women.

Who are the Cossacks, and Why Did the Bandidos Biker Gang Want Them Dead? “The word ‘outlaw,’ Wilson says, ‘was never attached to us till May 17.’” 

Why Danes Happily Pay High Rates of Taxes 

As Mark Steyn wrote a decade ago, “So you’re nice to gays and the Inuit? Big deal. Anyone can be tolerant of fellows like that, but tolerance of intolerance gives an even more intense frisson of pleasure to the multiculti masochists.” 

A few hours before delivering that State of the Union, President Obama met with rapper Kendrick Lamar. Obama announced that Lamar’s hit “How Much a Dollar Cost” was his favorite song of 2015. The song comes from the album To Pimp a Butterfly; the album cover shows a crowd of young African-American men massed in front of the White House. In celebratory fashion, all are gripping champagne bottles and hundred-dollar bills; in front of them lies the corpse of a white judge, with two Xs drawn over his closed eyes. So why wouldn’t the president’s advisors at least have advised him that such a gratuitous White House sanction might be incongruous with a visual message of racial hatred? Was Obama seeking cultural authenticity, of the sort he seeks by wearing a T-shirt, with his baseball cap on backwards and thumb up? 

“All you would be asked is the same few rubbish questions,” said the lawyer. “Just make it up.” However, the 2010 conversation was being secretly recorded by the feds as part of an investigation that “has led to the prosecution of at least 30 people” including lawyers, paralegals and others employed by ten law firms, as well as a church employee “accused of coaching asylum applicants in basic tenets of Christianity to prop up their claims of religious persecution.” [Kirk Semple, Joseph Goldstein and Jeffrey E. Singer, New York Times] Earlier on asylum law here, here, here, etc.. 

Mr. Alli was a participant, which extracted more than $50 million by impersonating and victimizing some 30,000 credit card holders: he “admitted to being personally responsible for $70,000 to $120,000 of the multimillion-dollar losses to banks and credit card companies”. Start deporting people like that, and where is our next generation of scam artists supposed to come from? [New York Times, Patrick at Popehat]

The grand illusion of empowerment Gillian Tett, Financial Times. She seems to think people have not figured it out. Low voter turnout in the US suggests citizens here have. As I’ve said, the fact that you’d never here the word “elite” used outside Marxist or equivalent or further leftist discourse and now it’s used routinely says that the public is aware of who is in charge.

In which Shakespearean play does Portia disguise herself as a lawyer?
Hint: At the time of the subterfuge, Portia is accompanied by her maid, Nerissa, and they are disguised as a male lawyer and his clerk. Did you chant Venice?

Dark Net of Hell

“Perhaps the short story has matured to a point where the form can no longer be shocked.” New York Magazine 

Georgia man linked to 2014 UNI data breach charged with tax fraud:

Bernard Ogie Oretekor, 45, also known as Emmanuel Libs, was charged last week with theft of government property and aggravated identity theft.

TaxGrrrl, Another State Puts Brakes On Tax Refunds, Citing Concerns About Identity Theft

The infamous dark web hacking forum called “Hell,” where hackers and cybercriminals share stolen data and hacking tips, just relaunched months after it was shut down amid rumors of its founder being arrested and the forum being swarmed by undercover cops. Last year, Hell made headlines when a hacker dumped the personal details and sexual preferences of almost 4 million users of the hookup site Adult Friend Finder. The data dump was only discovered months after the hack, forcing Adult Friend Finder to admit the breach. A couple of weeks later the site’s administrator and founder, known as “Ping,” disappeared, prompting rumors that he had been arrested. Even though Ping resurfaced a few days later, the website closed down shortly after in mid-July. (It was then briefly resurrected before going offline for good.) Now, an old forum moderator has relaunched the site, which looks and feels exactly the same way—and it’s still only accessible by using the anonymizing software Tor. The Dark Web Hacking Forum ‘Hell’ Is Back Online

Cyber security is climbing its way up the boardroom agenda as UK firms face determined attacks from organised hackers  Cybercrime

Ads for dangerous drug ice multiply on craigslist

Street gangs migrate from drugs to white-collar crimes NEW YORK (AP) - The Van Dyke Money Gang in New York made off with more than $1.5 million this year - but it wasn't in gunpoint robberies or drug running, it was a Western Union money order scheme. In New Jersey, 111 Neighborhood Crips used a machine to make dozens of fake gift cards for supermarkets, pharmacies and hardware stores. In South Florida, gangs steal identities to file false tax returns Gangs

Shodan Lets You Browse Insecure Webcams Bruce Schneier 

The Pentagon Has No Clue How Many Weapons It Has Lost to ISIS Mother Jones (reslc). That’s a feature if true. It would never want to admit to how bad it is.

“The war against cash”: government vs. the cash economy [Daniel Mitchell, Cato, first and second post]

Does any city have a more stratified sleep economy than wintertime Delhi? The filmmaker Shaunak Sen, who spent two years researching the city’s sleep vendors for a documentary, “Cities of Sleep,” discovered a sprawling gray market that has taken shape around the city’s vast unmet need for shelter. In some places, it breeds what he calls a “sleep mafia, who controls who sleeps where, for how long, and what quality of sleep.”  Desperate for Slumber in Delhi, Homeless Encounter a ‘Sleep Mafia

Does any city have a more stratified sleep economy than wintertime Delhi? The filmmaker Shaunak Sen, who spent two years researching the city’s sleep vendors for a documentary, “Cities of Sleep,” discovered a sprawling gray market that has taken shape around the city’s vast unmet need for shelter. In some places, it breeds what he calls a “sleep mafia, who controls who sleeps where, for how long, and what quality of sleep.” - See more at: http://marginalrevolution.com/#sthash.BIjW3W87.dpuf

A culture of poor cyber hygiene plagues the Office of Personnel Management and "likely aided the adversary" in the large-scale hack of the agency, according to a Department of Homeland Security and FBI report obtained by FCW. A lack of strong IT policies leaves OPM "at high risk for future intrusions," investigators concluded. "Convenience and accessibility [have] been prioritized over critical security practices," states the Dec. 23 "cyber alert," distributed to cleared contractors by the Defense Security Service on behalf of DHS and the FBI. "Inadequate" patching of OPM's sub-system is "symptomatic of a greater patching problem" within the agency, the document states. The breach, revealed in June 2015, led to the loss of more than 21 million personnel records. The unclassified memo reveals just what computer security experts at DHS' Computer Emergency Readiness Team and the FBI have learned from a hack that has roiled Uncle Sam's personnel agency, infuriated lawmakers and changed the cybersecurity conversation in Washington. The quietly distributed, dispassionate analysis is arguably more instructive for information security professionals than the hours of congressional hearings that have been devoted to the breach What DHS and the FBI learned from the OPM breach

Google paid Apple to maintain search on iPhone, court documents say Christian Science Monitor

Shackelford, Scott and Russell, Scott, Operationalizing Cybersecurity Due Diligence: A Transatlantic Comparative Case Study (January 12, 2016). South Carolina Law Review, 2016. Available for download at SSRN:http://ssrn.com/abstract=2714529

“Although much work has been done on applying the law of warfare to cyber attacks, far less attention has been paid to defining a law of cyber peace applicable below the armed attack 

The White House raised the pressure on the tech industry Friday to help rein in terrorism, dispatching top national security officials to Silicon Valley and announcing the creation of a task force to help prevent extremist groups from using social media to radicalize and mobilize recruits. The moves come a month after President Obama addressed the nation in the wake of the San Bernardino terrorist attack, when he urged high-tech and law enforcement leaders "to make it harder for terrorists to use technology to escape from justice." Although the tech industry says it wants to help, it's reluctant to give away private information and data to government agencies, arguing that doing so fosters user distrust and raises the risk of hacker attacks. The newly created Countering Violent Extremism task force will be led by the departments of Homeland Security and Justice but will include staff from the FBI, the National Counterterrorism Center and other federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies. In addition, the State Department will establish a unit called the Global Engagement Center to work with allies to deter terrorists from carrying out attacks overseas Washington raises pressure on Silicon Valley in fight against terrorism

Chinese officials discuss bitcoin and their own digital currency SYdney Morning Herald

 ICE and USCIS Could Improve Data Quality and Exchange to Help Identify Potential Human Trafficking Cases – January 4, 2016

Ukraine is reviewing security on its government computer systems after reporting a cyberattack on the main airport in Kiev originated from a server based in Russia

Via Wired – “In October 2013, a young entrepreneur named Ross Ulbricht was arrested at the Glen Park branch of the San Francisco Public library. It was the culmination of a two-year investigation into a vast online drug market called Silk Road. The authorities charged that Ulbricht, an idealistic 29-year-old Eagle Scout from Austin, Texas, was the kingpin of the operation. They said he’d reaped millions from the site, all transacted anonymously with Bitcoin. They said he’d devolved into a cold-blooded criminal, hiring hit men to take out those who crossed him. The story of how Ulbricht founded Silk Road, how it grew into a $1.2 billion operation, and how federal law enforcement shut it down is complicated, dark, and utterly fascinating. This two-part series tells that story.”

• The Untold Story of Silk Road, Part 1 – Joshuah Bearman
• The Untold Story of Silk Road, Part 2 – Joshuah Bearman

Twitter “is being sued by the widow of an American killed in Jordan… [Tamara Fields] said Twitter knowingly let the militant Islamist group use its network to spread propaganda, raise money and attract recruits.” [Reuters]

Future of the Internet Initiative White Paper. Internet Fragmentation: An Overview. William J. Drake, Vinton G. Cerf, Wolfgang Kleinwächter. January 2016 -“A thriving and open Internet provides the foundation for the fourth industrial revolution. 

Authorities in the Netherlands arrested 10 people as part of a money-laundering investigation involving bitcoin and the dark web. 

ATO's fraud squad probes Bitcoin 'creator' Craig Wright

Is Bitcoin Breaking Up? Wall 

Italian woman asks for help from firefighters after losing keys to her chastity belt

Seven ways technology has changed us Martin Wolf, FT. “[T]he new technologies have reinforced tendencies towards greater inequality, in at least three respects. One is the rise of ‘winner-takes-all’ markets in which a few successful people, businesses and products dominate the world economy. Another is the rise of globalisation. A last is the explosion in financial trading and other rent-extracting financial activities.”  

Ten arrested in Netherlands over bitcoin money-laundering allegations  

Troubled myGov website to be taken from Human Services and given to Digital Transformation Office for streamlining 

Schemes and Scheming

Between October 2010 and September 2012 the seven men, including Faraday, piggy-backed genuine cage fighting events, produced phoney promotional material and used the names of well-known fighters to enhance the authenticity of their companies. Anthony Swarbrick, Assistant Director, Fraud Investigation Service, HMRC, said:

“This was a fraud driven purely by greed with the single aim of extorting money which should have been spent on vital public services. This whole set up was a ruse with the sole purpose of stealing from the taxpayer. Gang and martial arts tax  Fraud

Jim Maule, Will Providing a Driver’s License Number Reduce Tax Return Identity Theft?:

The problem is two-fold. On one side, better systems of identification are necessary, and need to be based on information that is not as easily stolen. Databases need to be secured more carefully than at present. On the other side, identity thieves and those thinking of engaging in that behavior need to be presented with changes in their risk analysis. Not only are better methods required to track them down, they also need to face more severe consequences for their behavior.

I think the penalties in place are already severe enough. The problem is that it is too easy to steal tax refunds. The grifters that go in for identity theft aren’t known for impulse control or careful weighing of benefits and costs. They just know that with the right personal information and a copy of Turbotax, they can make prepaid debit cards rain on their mailboxes. And, of course, the overseas crime syndicates don’t care about the penalties, because they are unlikely to ever face them.

It’s much more important to improve IRS procedures to thwart I.D. theft in the first place. The IRS is finally taking needed steps here, but lots of horses are already out of the barn.

TaxGrrrl, 11 Tips To Protect You From Identity Theft & Related Tax Fraud

Robert Wood, Trump Is Unapologetically Aggressive On Taxes, Like Buffett And Bono. All the sort of folks who are happy to increase taxes, on other people.

Governments need to get out of their “cosy bed” with business, says Oxfam chief  

How Intellectuals Create a Public  

Linda Jellum (Mercer), Dodging the Taxman: Why the Treasury's Anti-Abuse Regulation Is Unconstitutional, 70 U. Miami L. Rev. 152 (2015):

To combat abusive tax shelters, the Department of the Treasury promulgated a general anti-abuse regulation applicable to all of subchapter K of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986. The Treasury targeted subchapter K because unique aspects of the partnership tax laws - including its aggregate-entity dichotomy - foster creative tax manipulation. In the anti-abuse regulation, the Treasury attempted to “codify” existing judicially-created anti-abuse doctrines, such as the business-purpose and economic-substance doctrines. Also, and more surprisingly, the Treasury directed those applying subchapter K to use a purposivist approach to interpretation and to reject textualism.