Thursday, October 10, 2019

Sark is awash with criminals


"The difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that in a democracy you vote first and take orders later; in a dictatorship you don't have to waste your time voting.


 R.T.’s Reviews and Marginalia: POV — patriots or criminals?

I suspect, and parliamentary  chef also suspects, Washington was well aware of what his fate would be if the colonists were defeated by the Brits. . . A bit of Amerikan his story as Lou heads for Washington DC 
Fraudulent tax scheme hits WA
 

Noam Noked (Chinese University of Hong Kong, Faculty of Law), Should the United States Adopt CRS?, 118 Mich. L. Rev. Online 118 (2019):
The United States’ one-sided approach to tax transparency might lead to an unprecedented clash with the European Union (EU) in the near future. In light of the EU’s deadline for the United States, the U.S. Treasury and Congress should urgently engage in a discussion on whether the United States should adopt the Common Reporting Standard (CRS) for automatic exchange of financial account information. A recent report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office considered this issue and did not recommend adopting CRS. This Essay discusses the contents of the report, as well as important considerations that were left out of the report.




Sark is awash with criminals


I loved this from the Jersey Evening Post this morning
'Code of silence': Sark police chief says island is awash with criminals


   



Ikea to face back tax payment order from EU  







Former NSW Labor boss Jamie Clements has told a corruption inquiry Chinese billionaire Huang Xiangmo gave him $35,000 hidden in a wine box to pay his legal fees.

Key points:

  • Jamie Clements told ICAC he did not think the cash to cover legal fees was unusual
  • He said that at the time of the $100,000 donation he was not responsible for fundraising
  • Mr Clements said there were "lax" rules about who was responsible for what at Labor NSW head office


The Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) is examining allegations Mr Huang, a property developer, was the source of a $100,000 donation to NSW Labor in 2015, which was disguised in a straw donor scheme.

Mr Clements told the hearing he was summonsed to Mr Huang's Mosman home in 2015 and handed the wine box with a handwritten note in English "for your legal fees".

He says he took it and they went downstairs and "had a cup of tea".
He says he did not think it was unusual because Mr Huang had paid the legal fees of former Labor senator Sam Dastyari.

The Streisand Effect: lawyers’ threats backfire amid the rising trade in hurt feelings












OECD reform weak on corporate tax havens, harsh on poorer countries



Hopes dashed as OECD’s reform plans expected to reduce profits booked in corporate tax havens by only 5 per cent Additional tax recovered from corporate tax havens will mainly benefit richest countries, while lower-middle income countries’ tax base is expected to shrink, analysis revealsCampaigners … [Read more...]


Has fiction, over the centuries, been the creator of compassion or a vehicle for its containment? Zadie Smith weighs the evidence  


The criminologist accused of cooking the books. How an anonymous whistle-blower and a police 

investigation pit a professor against his mentor Cooking books 

Sorting fact from opinion in the impeachment debate

When U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham appeared on CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday to talk about a whistleblower’s report that touched off the impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump, host Margaret Brennan challenged the senator on his assertion that the complaint was based on “hearsay.”

Much of what was in the complaint, she said, was backed up by a White House-produced call record detailing the July phone conversation between Trump and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky.
After some back-and-forth between the two, Graham (R.-S.C.) said: “Never mind. You know you've got an opinion and I got an opinion . . . I think this whole thing is a sham. I can't believe we're talking about impeaching the president based on an accusation based on hearsay.”
Essentially, Graham skirted Brennan’s attempt to fact-check his “hearsay” assertion in real time by labeling it all as opinion.
As the impeachment process moves forward in the U.S. House of Representatives, disinformation experts and fact-checkers are expecting to work overtime to sort fact from fiction.
But as every fact-checker knows, another challenge will be distinguishing fact from opinion.
At the same time that politicians like Graham are trying to spin fact as opinion, others are trying to paint opinions as facts. 
Take for example an assertion by some Trump supporters that the full House must vote to authorize the Judiciary Committee to begin the inquiry, as it did with the impeachments of Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton. 
One may hold the opinion that the House should vote, to affirm that a majority supports the inquiry. “Must” is another question. Committee rules have changed since Clinton, and such a vote “probably isn’t necessary,” congressional expert Sarah Binder wrote in the Washington Post recently.
At times like this, when both facts and opinions are flying every which way, it’s important to discern between them. It’s not easy because they are so intertwined. A person’s opinions may be based on facts. But politicians sometimes try to disguise one as the other. 
This distinction took on greater relevance this week when The Wall Street Journal reported that Facebook would exempt opinion pieces and satire from the fact-checking program. Facebook made the move after complaints about fact-checkers labeling opinion articles from conservative outlets as false. (Disclosure: Being a signatory of Poynter’s International Fact-Checking Network code of principles is a necessary condition for joining Facebook’s fact-checking project.)
But the exemption of satire and opinion from Facebook’s fact-checking efforts could mean that opinion pieces that use falsehoods to back them up will go unflagged. 
“There are cases where the line between fact and opinion are not as bright as you might think,” Angie Drobnic Holan, editor of (Poynter-owned) PolitiFact, told the Journal.
There is an old quote attributed to the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D.-N.Y.) that a person is entitled to their own opinions but not to their own facts. As the impeachment inquiry heats up, it will be increasingly important for journalists to help readers see the difference.  

. . . technology

·         In 2018, Facebook announced it would give some data to academics to study misinformation on the platform. But as BuzzFeed News reported in August, that partnership was delayed for more than a year. The New York Times published a good rundown of the situation this week.
  • Speaking of Facebook, in addition to exempting satire and opinion pieces from its fact-checking project, the company has also exempted politicians. Writing for The Washington Post, Abby Olheiser dove into Facebook’s defense of its decision: that politicians are newsworthy. 
·         Bill Adair wrote an elegy to the Share the Facts widget for Poynter. Fact-checkers embedded the widget, which is being turned off for good this week, at the end of their articles to sum up the statement being checked, who said it and the rating.

. . . politics

·         The verbal attacks on Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg have been relentless. They go after her family, her image and the merits of her campaign. The IFCN’s Daniela Flamini reported what’s behind this antagonism.
·         Singapore’s “fake news law” took effect this week amid criticism from tech giants and activists who fear it will have a chilling effect on speech. Here’s where else governments have passed laws related to misinformation.
·         A Canadian non-profit is launching an anti-misinformation campaign called “Doubt It?” The collection of quizzes and public service announcements came in response to recent polling finding that Canadians are regularly exposed to misinformation but don't always know how to combat it.

. . . the future of news

·         Services that will place “seemingly legitimate articles” on websites then spread them through inauthentic social media accounts have sprung up on criminal forums, according to a report from the Boston based threat researcher Insikt Group. Here’s NBC News’s report, which calls these actors “trolls for hire.”
·         A new report from the Oxford Internet Institute found that the number of countries that have experienced social media disinformation campaigns has risen to 70 from 48 in 2018. China is increasingly becoming a bigger player.
·         Two U.S. lawmakers teamed up to create a deepfake video for a House of Representatives subcommittee to illustrate the potential threat such videos pose. Lawmakers are increasingly concerned about the technology going into the 2020 election.

President Trump often points to his 2016 win when he’s under pressure from Democrats to argue that he has broad popular support. “Landslide” is a commonly used word.  
 
In keeping with his strategy, this week he tweeted a picture, first shared by his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, that showed a mostly red map (counties he won in 2016, as opposed to the blue ones Hillary Clinton won) with the words “Try to impeach this.”
 
But as CNN showed in a fact-check, there are problems with the map. First, it shows some counties that Clinton won as red instead of blue. Second, county-by-county maps can be misleading. As Holmes Lybrand and Daniel Dale wrote, such maps “do not distinguish between a county with millions of residents and a county with a few thousand.”

What we liked: There were several other good takes on the map as well, including stories from The Washington Post, Vox, The Fresno Bee and a Twitter thread from the data visualization expert Alberto Cairo. We liked how CNN traced the origins of the map.
1.     Snopes published an in-depth investigation of a Facebook page that was run by Ukrainians and targeted older Americans with pro-Trump content.
2.     There’s a new tool for fact-checking manipulated audio.
3.     The Financial Times, reporting on the annual fraud and risk survey by the business intelligence firm Kroll, said “fake news” and the spread of false market rumors “are becoming an increasing headache for companies around the world.”
4.     After Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani made several inaccurate claims on TV over the weekend, Nieman Lab published a piece that questions the news value of live interviews.
5.     Three nonprofit organizations signed a joint statement calling on the platforms to do more to temper misinformation spreading about the Hong Kong protests.
6.     Vice News reported that a Twitter executive has been working part-time for a British Army psychological warfare unit known for conducting disinformation campaigns. Twitter is among his platforms.
7.     A viral story linked transgender healthcare to thousands of deaths. NBC News broke down why it’s false.
8.     The Finnish Broadcasting Co. has developed a new game to teach people about the spread of misinformation online. It’s called Troll Factory.
9.     A new study found that people who understand how the news industry works are better able to recognize and understand online misinformation.
  1. BBC published a deep dive into celery juice health misinformation — who started it, how it spread on social media and what doctors think about it.

via
Daniel, Susan and Cristina

 The New York Times – “Almost a decade ago, Warren Buffett made a claim that would become famous. He said that he paid a lower tax rate than his secretary, thanks to the many loopholes and deductions that benefit the wealthy. His claim sparked a debate about the fairness of the tax system. In the end, the expert consensus was that, whatever Buffett’s specific situation, most wealthy Americans did not actually pay a lower tax rate than the middle class. “Is it the norm?” the fact-checking outfit Politifact asked. “No.” Time for an update: It’s the norm now. For the first time on record, the 400 wealthiest Americans last year paid a lower total tax rate — spanning federal, state and local taxes — than any other income group, according to newly released data….President Trump’s 2017 tax cut, which was largely a handout to the rich, plays a role, too. It helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.

…The data here come from the most important book on government policy that I’ve read in a long time — called “The Triumph of Injustice,” to be released next week. The authors are Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, both professors at the University of California, Berkeley, who have done pathbreaking work on taxes. Saez has won the award that goes to the top academic economist under age 40, and Zucman was recently profiled on the cover of Bloomberg BusinessWeek magazine as “the wealth detective.” They have constructed a historical database that tracks the tax payments of households at different points along the income spectrum going back to 1913, when the federal income tax began. The story they tell is maddening — and yet ultimately energizing…”
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