Infiltrating Attractive Island - Wicked Putin etc

China is building large covert informant networks inside Australia's leading universities, prompting Australia to strengthen its counter-intelligence capabilities.

Chinese Spy Network at Unis, Newsagencies & Post Offices Down Under

"(Russian) President (Vladimir) Putin has a dream to restore the Soviet Union," he said. "And every day, he goes further and further. And God knows where is the final destination."

Pro-Russian administrations are popping up all over eastern Ukraine, after pro-Russian protesters overran government buildings and set up roadblocks. Cold War looms over Ukraine via Moscow Putin and his old KGB colleagues; Chances of being murdered in this crazy world How to avoid getting killed tomorrow

In 25 breezy pages, Lewis Dartnell gives a rundown of the history of agriculture. Once all the canned food you find in abandoned supermarkets is gone, could you grow your own crops? You could if you had a few implements such as a manual hoe, plow, seed drill, scythe and thresher taken from museums. How to survive after the inevitable Chinese Russian armageddon

Rioting, kidnapping, breaking and entering, violence: For Elizabeth Russell, warfare was a way of life, as Shakespeare learned the hard way... Wicked Lady

Neville Wran: Praise, controversy and 'Balmain boys don't cry' quote marked time in office

His success was built on ruthlessness, authority in party and parliament, an unerring instinct for what the voters wanted and pioneering exploitation of television's political clout 

Jill Hickson aka Wran and Neville Wran had two children together: Hugo, whose godfather was Mr Turnbull, and Harriet, whose godfather was Kerry Packer. Mr Wran had a daughter, Kim, with his first wife, Marcia Oliver, who also had a son from a previous marriage.
Mr Wran became the chairman of the CSIRO, advised on Australia's bicentenary and thrived in business, including his chairmanship of the cleaning contact company Allcorp and his merchant bank venture with a young Mr Turnbull, who is now a Liberal frontbencher in the Abbott government. Mr Wran had been a university friend of Mr Turnbull's mother, Coral Lansbury.

Nifty: My first years down under serving as Crown Employee this kind of Balmain Boy; Forget the budget, just spread bread on the waters Carr on Wran Slides; Gerry Gleeson Path of Power

The power of the word and the many possibilities of Cold River story are living within the lines of those who lived to tell the tale such as more than magical Garcia ...  In accepting his Nobel, Mr. García Márquez said: “Poets and beggars, musicians and prophets, warriors and scoundrels, all creatures of that unbridled reality, we have had to ask but little of imagination. For our crucial problem has been a lack of conventional means to render our lives believable.”  Crown Employee discovers Gabriel Garcia Malquez (sic)

Gabriel García Márquez, novelist, journalist, master of magical realism, is no longer telling stories ... NY Times ... AP ... Reuters ... BBC ...Kakutani ... Guardian ... Edmund White ...Telegraph ... Independent ... WaPo ... LA Times ... Boston Globe ... New Yorker ...WSJ ... Paul Berman ... Financial Times ...Peter Carey ...

Photojournalism by Pernilla Holmes

 “There’s a famous saying that goes something like, ‘If an image doesn’t need a caption to be understood, then it’s art’. That works for me; it’s about a work’s universality
Valley of Light

New Brave Tax World

As millions of Americans rushed to file their taxes before today's deadline, they may have been more preoccupied with "where did that receipt go?" than "where will my tax money go?" But a new project called The New IRS is urging people to think about it, and submit their preferences, called "Personal Allocation Plans," through its interactive website. The project will then issue a report on April 17 aggregating those responses and comparing them to the projected federal budget.New IRS lets you allocate tax dollar

At the age of 46, depressed and aimless, Rod Dreher read the Divine Comedy. In Dante’s tale of of psychological crisis, Dreher found a way out of his own... Every day above the ground is a great Dante Day

Vision 2100: Confidence Games

Dennis J. Ventry, Jr. (UC-Davis), Not Just Whistling Dixie: The Case for Tax Whistleblowers in the States, 59 Vill. L. Rev. ___ (2014):

This Article examines the successes and failures of current tax whistleblower regimes, with particular emphasis on the states. It considers and then refutes several popular arguments against permitting whistleblowers to submit tax claims, under either a state’s False Claims Act (FCA) or standalone statute, including: (i) whistleblower statutes have historically been used to uncover and prosecute fraudulent behavior, not mere noncompliance with the law; (ii) the “knowing” standard of liability under FCAs creates new liability on taxpayers in jurisdictions permitting false claims pertaining to tax; and (iii) tax law is more complex and uncertain than other areas of the law and therefore off limits to whistleblower actions.

Tanina Rostain (Georgetown) presents Confidence Games: Lawyers, Accountants, and the Tax Shelter Crisis (MIT Press, 2014) (with Milton C. Regan, Jr. (Georgetown)) at Duke today as part of its Tax Policy Seminar hosted by Lawrence Zelenak:

IS IT THE ULTIMATE HEALTH FOOD? Daily coffee habit linked to lower risk of liver cancer, study says.

Futurology is alive and well, though futurologists are almost always wrong. Still we listen, yearning for salvation from our human condition. From predicting AI within 20 years to mass-starvation in the 1970s, those who foretell the future often come close to doomsday preachers Glass must be Half Full...

Sad Sad Week Vale Ashni

May His Soul Rest in Peace ... In his death we have lost a trusted friend.

 दिवंगत आत्मा को शांति

One of the best-described of all charismatic leaders is Jesus. About 90 face-to-face encounters with Jesus are described in the four gospels of the New Testament.

Interaction with Kindness

Dante on life ...

NSW, Australia, Premier Barry O'Farrell Resigns

It's been an extraordinary day in NSW politics this week / Even a single night is too long in politics as  on Tuesday was to mark the last day of ICAC's inquiry into Obeid-linked company Australian Water Holdings, which is now in its fifth week Barry O'Farrell in witness box

PS: Sydney, once home to the Rum Corps, is now apparently home to the Penfold Grange Corps, writes Tony Wright in a sketch piece surrounding today's events.

Barry O'Farrell Resigns

(PS - the world of lobbyists Down Under:  The ICAC has been following the influence of Eddie Obeid through a series of inquiries. The next, codenamed Operation Spicer, is expected to expose how influence peddling and backroom deals crossed from the Labor Party to the Liberals with the change of government in 2011.
Lobbyists Tend to take the low road) / “The thing about Barry is he wasn’t an overt control freak. He was a covert control freak, he had all these Machiavellian devices to keep hold of everything.”
Cuddly Barry O'Farrell was really a cranky bear

Bear Pit and it's secrets in the sunlight; "McCutcheon Breeds Cynicism: When it comes to campaign finance, the public's perception of corruption matters; But what if the public doesn't care?" Dahlia Lithwick has this jurisprudence essay online at Slate

Former NSW premier, Australian foreign minister and diarist Bob Carr has given an interview in Brisbane where he's spruiking his new book.

Mr Carr has said Mr O'Farrell had no alternative to resign, but would not be drawn on whether Mr O’Farrell’s “significant memory fail” about being gifted a $3000 bottle of 1959 Grange wine was plausible.

“Given that the Premier’s resigned, I don’t think there’s any more in argument, the point is he’s accepted the case and that’s really all that matters at this point,” he said.

"...As the evidence was emerging I think even his closest friends and supporters would saythere was going to be no alternative to this. It was decisive of him to get to the point quickly rather than to fight on.

Having attracted ridicule about the parts of his diary that focus on diet and exercise, Mr Carr - who gave up drinking three years ago - said he wouldn’t know how many calories were in a bottle of ’59 Grange.

“Too many... wine is full of sugar, and after wasting too much of my life savouring good wine, I reached a decision that the disadvantages outweigh the joy of the stuff,” he said.

“As tempted as I am by a wonderful pinot noir from time to time, I think being clear-headed is the better course.”

Pulitzer Vox etc

The Pulitzer Prizes Just Demolished The Idea That Edward Snowden Is A Traitor  to-the-snowden-story-system-a-pulitzer-might-have-gone

Ezra Klein on Vox’s Launch, Media Condescension, and Competing With Wikipedia

ezra-klein-interview-vox-launch

Centuries of Iron Curtains

To paraphrase Freud, sometimes a border crisis is just a border crisis. 

History of European border changes (short video).  Many lessons in that one  Border changes

Chapter one of Cass Sunstein’s On Rumours

Instructions for Lovers: teaching them, how to demean themselves towards their Sweet-hearts How to sweet talk your lady circa 1656 ; How to compliment lady circa 1663



Winner -take all

The New Brave Slav(e)s - Winnetous of the Old World

The author who has captured most aptly young people’s experience of life in foreign countries nowadays is Zuska Kepplová. In her prose debut Buchty švabachom/Sweet Buns with Gothic Script (2011) she articulated the fictive nature of the conflict between home and the world: “(...) none of us left. We did not pack our cases in the middle of the night; we did not swim across the Danube and climb over barbed wire. We simply did what everyone was talking about: Today you can travel, go to good schools, get to know people and speak to them in foreign languages... We wanted to join in, take part in the world. Scoop it up with a large spoon. Break our teeth on it. We did not leave anyone or anything. And if so, only symbolically.”  First Death in the family and Morava River in Australia

Pilgrim, remember these words, whenever you wade into water.
(Inscription in the sands.)

Water is the strongest.
How many have waded into water before you?
Ask the days, when you return.
Follow the flight of heaven’s birds and the heavenly
bodies, the counter-currents, the shine and the
dulled fury of the surface that hungers.
Share your food with water, with the fishy smell and
the ducks.
Don’t disturb them while feeding.
You step barefoot into water and you carry your life in
your hands.
The cormorants’ shriek is more intelligible to water
than human words.
The shrilling of the kingfishers, whose nest the
fishermen knocked over, will forever be repeated by
the reeds as their most cryptic song.
Murmur accompanies every movement, but there are
more silent surfaces too.
Water journeys onwards.
Traverses the bodies of pilgrims.
Splashes over them.
Have you praised that language?
Have you heard that tongue?
Where were you, if you were not by water?
Carry water in vessels, whenever the opportunity
arises.
Give water to flowers and the slender arboreal kinds.
Water is the strongest.
Speech that is uttered by water will remain in the land,
and above the surface it shall be borne afar. The riverbank, fortified by the alders’ roots, is
a rendezvous of the land’s defensive powers.
The secret of the soil’s fertility is guarded by the trees,
to which the rivers tune their flow.
The sough of the willow leaves is an echo of the mother
tongue.
Whether you have a brother or none, along the
waterline you are blood brother of the savage who understands all important things, even though he understands no others. 

Happy Vaisakhi to Sikhs in rainbow turbans & saris

• Sikh means “student” or “disciple”
  
• Sikhism is world’s 5th largest religion, after Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism
  
• 26 million Sikhs worldwide - 90,000 Sikhs celebrate Down Under  - The meaning of Vaisakhi

 Fifteen years of the Complete Review Posted by: M.A.Orthofer

       The first reviews -- a batch of forty-five -- were posted at the complete review fifteen years ago today, on 5 April 1999. 

       Which is pretty much all I have to say -- I don't really know how to mark these (non-)occasions. 

Shortlist: NSW Premier's Literary Awards 

       They've announced the shortlists for the (Australian) NSW Premier's Literary Awards. 
       Among the categories: there's a: 'Community Relations Commission Award for a Multicultural NSW'.   The winners will be announced 19 May Three days after few hangovers ...

The Czech Magnesia Litera awards have been handed out, and as Jan Richter reports at Radio Praha, Guide to wartime Prague wins top literary award, as the non-fiction category winner, the unusual Průvodce protektorátní Prahou by Jiří Padevět also took book of the year honors. 
       The fiction category winner was Skutečná událost, by Of Kids & Parents-author Emil Hakl; see also the (Czech) Argopublicity page. 
       The translation category winner was Robert Svoboda's translation of Esterházy Péter's Celestial Harmonies (get your copy of the English translation at Amazon.com orAmazon.co.uk). 

       I'm already won over by an article that reveals that the chief rabbi (of both Prague and the Czech Republic), Karol Sidon, admits:

I couldn't read anything but what is considered lowbrow sci fi literature which I really love

       But how great to hear that he went on to write his own (and publish it under a pseudonym) -- and that, as Jan Velinger reports at Radio Praha, Prague rabbi pens literary hit of season, as the first volume of his planned tetralogy, Altschulova metoda (see the (Czech) Torst publicity page), has become a big hit 
       Sounds pretty wild -- I'd love to hear more about this. 

New data on tax havens

New data on tax havens, from Gabriel Zucman

Here is the new paper (pdf):

This article shows that official statistics substantially underestimate the net foreign asset positions of rich countries because they fail to capture most of the assets held by households in offshore tax havens. Drawing on a unique Swiss data set and exploiting systematic anomalies in countries’ portfolio investment positions, I find that around 8% of the global financial wealth of households is held in tax havens, three-quarters of which goes unrecorded. On the basis of plausible assumptions, accounting for unrecorded assets turns the eurozone, officially the world’s second largest net debtor, into a net creditor. It also reduces the U.S. net debt significantly. The results shed new light on global imbalances and challenge the widespread view that after a decade of poor-to-rich capital flows, external assets are now in poor countries and debts in rich countries. I provide concrete proposals to improve international statistics.

The original pointer was from Paul Krugman.  Yesterday I was at an IMF forum with Jeff Sachs and he too was placing great stress on this issue.

Assorted Links:

The top 30 thinkers under 30? (includes three in economics)

Interesting review of *Cubed*, a new book on the history of the office

Proof by watercolor painting: “The Lamington, Australia’s famed dessert, was actually invented in New Zealand and originally named a “Wellington”, according to new research published by the University of Auckland.” Nude Ziland

Bionic kangaroo

Vulpes Libris – Shiny New Books

"There is no I in team,
but there's one in bitterness,
one in failure." 

Making a book magazine

“Do you mind if my post this week is shamelessly self-promoting?” said I to the foxes, and they politely averted their eyes and commented on the weather.  Which I took as a sign that, yes, I could.  (Admittedly, one of them cheekily sent me a link to this post on plugging books.)  Well, I am not plugging a book, but rather a whole other website – Shiny New Books.  And I’m not so much plugging as taking you behind the scenes of a very bookish venture…

But first things first – Shiny New Books, as you will find out if you click that link up above (or this identical one), is a quarterly recommendations magazine set up by me and four other bloggers, whose names I will mention soon.  With the same literary enthusiasm and friendliness as the foxes, we will be reviewing the best books of the past three months (hardback and paperback), covering fiction, non-fiction, and (my section) reprints – along with features by and interviews with authors, publishers, translators etc.  There, that’s the grubby, self-promoting bit out the way.  Now, I thought you might find it interesting to come with me behind the scenes and discover how the whole thing happened…

The Devil’s Workshop by Jáchym

Michael Stein is a writer and journalist in the Czech Republic and runs a blog on Central European writing called literalab. He is an editor at B O D Y.

Reading The Devil’s Workshop you come up against a remarkable and frightening historical reality: that the memory of the mass killings of World War II is most flawed, faded and even purposefully obscured precisely in those places where it was the most severe. At one point a western visitor to the commune that pops up around the site of the former concentration camp of Terezín makes a recriminatory speech to the Czechs how Western Europe has carefully tended cemeteries for its war dead, whereas here everyday life takes place on the very spots where people were killed or sent on to Auschwitz and no one seems to care. Of course, you could read about this imbalance in a history book or article, but the way Jáchym Topol is able to dramatize this amnesia and ignorance has the kind of effect no dispassionate recounting of figures could ever hope to achieve.