ANZAC STORIES

Essays convey observations and emotions, experiences unique to the writer. So what is the essayist’s obligation to fact?... Anzac Stories 

John Quiggin on Anzac Day 101 Years on

Anzac Day 2016: Time to end Myths

The Anzac day ode of Remembrance

Peter Greste awarded national RSL Anzac Peace Prize

Teenager 16 charged with terrorism offence allegedly linked to Anzac Day 

#‎lestweforget‬ ‪#‎sikhsoldiers‬ ‪#‎Gallipoli‬ ‪#‎veterans‬ ‪#‎ANZAC‬ day 

A 16-year-old western Sydney boy was intercepted on an online chat site over the weekend talking about obtaining a firearm and using it for a terror attack on Anzac Day, police allege.
Officers from the Joint Counter-Terrorism Team were forced to act with just hours' notice on Sunday afternoon, raiding the boy's Auburn home and arresting him in a street nearby just after 3pm.
Sources close to the investigation told Fairfax Media that the boy, who doesn't attend school, has been on the counter-terrorism team's radar for just over a year.
Boy in alleged Anzac Day terrorism plot was intercepted on social media: police

What explains the flow of foreign fighters to ISIS?

FOR THE SABERS THEY ARE A-RATTLING:China’s President, Xi Jinping, Gains a New Title: Commander in Chief

DEAR SCROTTY STUDENTS: “Understand us and understand this clearly: you have everything to learn from us; we have nothing to learn from you.”

ANZAC was the name given to the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps soldiers who landed on the Gallipoli Peninsula in Turkey early on the morning of 25 April 1915 during the First World War (1914-1918).

ANZAC Day | Home

https://anzacday.org.au  

It was tough, often dangerous, scary, lonely, crowded, noisy, challenging, rewarding, gut-wrenching, weird, hard, heartbreaking and sometimes fun, and all admit that Vietnam was the most significant event of their lives; for some of them, it still is.

They know that no one else can truly understand what it was really like, just as none of them really understand the war that took them to Vietnam in the first place.

And yet, if they had their time over, all of them would go again… (p.282)

Yvonne at Stumbling Through the Past has written a thoughtful piece on her blog, about how Anzac Day observance is not really inclusive of Australians’ diverse experiences of war.  You may have noticed that I have not named any of the nurses whose stories are told in this book, and that is in deference to the one who kept her service secret from her loved ones because of the controversies over Vietnam.  I know that there will be students who will stumble on this review and use it for study purposes, and by not naming anyone, I hope that they will have to pay these brave men and women the respect of actually reading the book and understanding something about it.

 Nation pauses to remember Anzac sacrifice 

Crowd numbers were down but the Anzac spirit was as strong as ever at dawn services marking the 101st anniversary... 

Live: Anzac Day marked across Australia People from across the country are gathering atAnzac Day services to remember Australians who served and died in... 

Anzac Day 2016: Thousands attend dawn services, marches across Australia to honour fallen 
Anzac commemorations are being held across the nation and the world today as Australia and New Zealand pay... 

Anzac Day 2016: Long Tan remembered as Vietnam veterans lead Melbourne march
Vietnam War veterans have led Melbourne's AnzacDay march for the first time as thousands of people lined St... 

Anzac Day: Thousands gather for Sydney dawn service
On a chilly morning in Sydney's centre, images were projected of the first generation of Anzacs, none of whom... 

Anzac Day 2016: Thousands commemorate at marches and services across South Australia
Thousands of people have gathered in Adelaide and across South Australia to remember fallen Australian soldiers at... 

Anzac Day: Soldiers remembered in Northern Territory dawn service
Australian soldiers today are continuing the Anzaclegend through their deployments around the world and by... 

Thousands honour Gallipoli Diggers
“The way our Anzacs bore the brunt of the fight at Gallipoli stirred in Australians everywhere a new feeling of... 

Thousands gather for Anzac Day dawn services across Australia
AUSSIES TURN OUT FOR ANZAC DAY. Thousands of Australians have gathered at AnzacDay dawn services across... 

Ask What the Media Dragon Can Do for Naked Life

“I do not mind if I lose my soul for all eternity. If the kind of God exists Who would damn me for not working out a deal with Him, then that is unfortunate. I should not care to spend eternity in the company of such a person.”
~ Mary McCarthy, Memories of a Catholic Girlhood

FASTER, PLEASE: First gene therapy successful against human aging

Some of us are blessed and cursed with a peculiar species of double vision. We see something – say, a fallen tree leaning on a fence – and we promptly see something else.  This also goes with conceptual images ... "I wonder why Arab prisons are not full of writers," says the poet Adonis. "I wonder why, because it means that Arab writers are not doing their jobs"... Arab and other Writers 

A VIDEO uploaded to Youtube  shows the Condamine River on fire near a coal seam gas site on the Darling Downs.

Where are Antipodean Writers What Happened to Real Anger Words of Action as Fracking appears to be making Rivers Bleed Fire

A metaphor creates a "little event in the mind of the reader." They make the familiar strange and the strange familiar ...

Speaking of metaphors,  Whitney Balliett is like MO'N and Dr Cope a master of describing unusual connections such as his take on the great tenor saxophonist Ben Webster (Collected Works: A Journal of Jazz 1954-2000, 2000): “In a slow ballad number, Webster’s tone is soft and enormous, and he is apt to start his phrases with whooshing smears that give one the impression of being suddenly picked up by a breaker and carried smoothly to shore.”


Still wondering why Media Dragon does not have comments .... and some blogs get rid of the comments? Here’s David Lat’s in-depth look at the issue. (Spoiler alert: it’s because they were terrible) [Washington Post]

One is always tracking down something, pursuing tidbits of information, turning hunches into certainties or dead ends. One develops an instinct for the promising and the futile. The internet is a blessing, of course, but also a lazy man’s curse, lending the appearance of learning when we are merely fact-czeching clerks ... We no longer smuggle lonely samizdat stories we no longer break teeth or have our teeth broken in fights ... We read old obituaries such the one in 1997 Re Andrei Sinyavsky

All the Sad, Broke, Literary Men Helaine Olen, Slate

“Storytelling ability appears to increase (a man’s) perceived status, and thus helps men attract long-term partners.” Antipodean Storytelling in my new Chez Imrich Naked restaurants franchised by Mossack Fonseca :-)

Ech ... Sydney here we come! Enough of lonely hearts :-)

A new pop-up restaurant coming to central London this summer will give diners the option to eat in the nude.

The Bunyadi, which is opening in June for three months, will be split into clothed and unclothed sections, and even feature staff in the nude with certain body parts covered up, Time Out reports.

The concept is already wildly popular. So far, nearly 4,000 people have signed up for tickets on the restaurant’s website

The Coetzee archives. “All writing is autobiography,” he likes to say. But how much could he bear to reveal in his own papers?... Papers 

I  suppose there is still somebody living who has not read or heard of Cold River: it seems inconceivable that it should be so, but queer things of this sort do happen ;-) As cowards geoff myer, keith ash et al metaphorised of Doorstopper ... RIP ;-) 

Zbigniew Herbert’s Barbarian in the Garden is like our “Memories of Village on the edge of the Forrest Hurstville circa 2004-2006" 

“I pocket both note-book and Job's iPhone... It’s time for the most pleasant item on the schedule—loafing around,

“wandering aimlessly, a guest of perspective,

“looking at exotic workshops and stores: the locksmith’s, a travel office,
the undertaker’s,

“staring,

“drinking wine in the darkest spots: Chez Tax,

“meeting people

“smiling at ironies in exile”

“The Antipodeans are a rich nation.”
(Memories of Christian Tania Irena ...)

The signature literary genre of the Stalinist era was the production novel: outsider at a factory solves a problem. Bohumil Hrabal was a master of the form...

“Contemporary criticism is positively crowded with first-person pronouns, micro-doses of memoir, brief hits of biography. Critics don’t simply wrestle with their assigned cultural object; they wrestle with themselves, as well. “ The Walrus: Who Cares as we are dead men women walking literary amen!?

What It’s Like To Work As A New York Times Obit Writer 

“All the writers start from scratch with their sources, calling friends and family caught in the midst of funeral planning, scanning yellowed clippings from the paper’s ‘morgue’ archives, and acting as their own fact checkers in the race against the evening’s deadline.” Hyperallergic

Why Nudging Your Customers Can Backfire Harvard Business Review  In their enthusiasm, marketers have overlooked some fundamental concerns about using nudges. A company that doesn’t understand these minefields could adversely affect its marketing. Nudges that are poorly thought out could be ticking time bombs waiting to explode and damage the company’s reputation and credibility among its loyal customers.

Like everyone else who pays the slightest attention to theater in America, I was neither surprised nor displeased that this year’s Pulitzer Prize for drama went to Hamilton, about whose overwhelming excellence I have long been on record. I do, however, want to offer a cultural footnote to yesterday’s announcement, one that says something revealing about how journalism works in the age of the social media Terry Teachout

While “What Would Jesus Do” might not be a completely adequate principle of advocacy, lawyers who try cases, to juries in particular, can learn a lot from Jesus’s storytelling tradition.
Look to a rabbi to see how to advocate

The Bondi Iceberg swimmer and PM has a thoughtful anecdote about cricket in his recent speech as well as Family & Work balance and how it is critical PM even quotes one of my former heroes, Jack Ferguson, former Deputy of Premier's of Niffty Wran. Allegedly Jack used to refer to our current PM then as   “Young Malcolm” [It was around the year of Charter 77 (in 1976)] when Jack told him that “peace on the home front is worth 10% of the basic wage …”

Prologue: The PM also answers the public service’s burning questions ...

Australia is lucky as both young Bill Shorten as well as young Malcolm Turnbull have the ability to make a difference and take leaves out of Vaclav Havel and Barrak Obama. Here comes the most dignified, intelligent and thoughtful American president of modern times. He arrives as a reminder that amid Tea Party craziness and Trumpery, hysterical slanders, racist smears and savage politics, a man can not just survive and thrive, but walk tall without descending in to the gutter with his opponents.

Those who watched Norma Percy and Paul Mitchell’s magnificent BBC four-parter, Inside Obama’s White House, will have come away with an enhanced sense of how a good – maybe a great – man, can keep his head when all about are losing theirs. This he does in a political system that now thwarts whatever plans a president is elected to implement. In the middle of the razzle-dazzle of the US election campaign, we should remember how empty the power bestowed on inauguration day can be Barrak Obama

Panama Papers: Transparency, Information Shocks, and Tax Avoidance

“Bureaucracy, the rule of no one, has become the modern form of despotism.”
~ Mary McCarthy, “The Vita Activa”

A movie about the Panama Papers and Cold River is already in the works

Panama Papers Russian Mob Connection

The Tax Justice Network has criticised a Senate report on corporate tax avoidance, saying it fails to recommend the most needed reforms, such as whistleblower protection for private-sector workers and disclosure of all subsidiaries in offshore tax havens.
Australia Senate tax avoidance report missing vital reforms, says Tax Justice Network 

Here's a Way to Shut Down Panama Papers-Style Tax Haven
 
Panama Papers: Journalists reveal funniest code names in data leak, discuss project pressures in Reddit Q&A

Introduction:  The following Wikipedia entries may offer updated information from time to time:

• Wikipedia entry on Panama Papers, here
• Wikipedia list of people named in Panama Papers, here

Czech out (sik) (sic) also Tax Krimes (sic)

Apple should pay more tax, says co-founder Wozniak BBC. 50% tax rate! Go Woz!

9 questions you were too embarrassed to ask about the Panama Papers Vox

Clearly money has something to do with life.” They  .... say that a full coin purse doesn’t rattle, and that the mega rich are such conservative spenders that you wouldn’t be able to pick one out in a crowd. Australia’s super rich to be unmasked

Primitive Accumulation as Creative Destruction? - What’s the Relationship Between Slavery and Capitalism?   

Fallout of Panama Papers felt in art market: Dealer

"In a stinging rebuke to Tax Commissioner Chris Jordan, the Federal Court has denied being in special talks about fast-tracking multinational tax avoidance cases.
A court spokesman said no private discussions about the timing of cases had occurred with the Australian Tax Office, contradicting comments made by Mr Jordan to a parliamentary inquiry.
"There is no 'deal' being struck between the Court and the ATO about listing of cases, or any other matter," the spokesman said.
"The Court is not, and has not been, in any private discussions with any party, including the ATO, about their cases." Fast tracking Justice Federal Court chides Tax Commissioner

Josh Meyer, Panama Papers: Federal Prosecutor Looking for Crimes By U.S. Citizens (NBCNews 4/10/16), here.

The Justice Department has opened a formal criminal investigation into potentially widespread illegalities exposed by the Panama Papers, the massive leak of financial details about secret offshore accounts, federal law enforcement officials told NBC News Wednesday -- and its first priority will be finding wrongdoing by U.S. firms and individuals. 

Panama Papers: Hong Kong Editor Fired For Naming Politicians ..

The media group that coordinated the Panama Papers investigation into offshore companies said on Thursday it would not participate in a criminal probe by the U.S. Department of Justice.
The group on Thursday told prosecutors in Bharara's office that it would not release unpublished data to them."ICIJ, and its parent organization the Center for Public Integrity, are media organizations shielded by the First Amendment and other legal protections from becoming an arm of law enforcement," said Gerard Ryle, director of the consortium, in a press release on the group's website.
Journalists will not share Panama Papers with Justice Department 

Panama Papers is a shift in mainstream journalism

Panama Papers 'will reveal' Australian criminals

The Real Casualties Of The Panama Papers

The Panama Papers prove we need to act together on tax avoidance

Panama Papers: how do leakers leak?

Cybersecurity Lessons Learned From 'Panama Papers' Breach

Please do not try this at home: The Washington Post. Why an Alaska plastic surgeon took a sudden road trip to Panama with millions of dollars.
How the world’s wealthy hide millions offshore — from their spouses

Transparency, Information Shocks, and Tax Avoidance
Zicklin School of Business, September 16, 2015. These findings suggest that financial transparency is an important tool which regulators can use in battling tax avoidance. 

Last week Mr Schembri said a report in the Financial Review that Mr Cini began the process of setting up Tillgate Inc and Hearnville Inc days after the Labour Government won power in March 2013 was "absolutely baseless" and showed "a false state of affairs through a collage of unrelated facts". The Panama Papers: New twist to Malta's Mossack Fonseca bank saga

Rupert Neate, Panama Papers: US launches criminal inquiry into tax avoidance claims (Guardian 4/19/16), here.  This article has a copy of the USAO SDNY letter to ICIJ.
Bharara, who as US attorney general for the southern district of New York has led several crusades against criminal wrongdoing in the financial sector, is already investigating several of the more than 200 US citizens named in the paper
  
Banks fight back over politicians' crackdown on accountability and pay

Panama Papers and 'who owns what' — big implications

Watch 'Dirty Little Secrets,' the Panama Papers Document: Wikileaks



 

 

RIP Prince:The Art of Survival in Utopia

It’s always educational to observe the behavior of wildlife in their natural habitat. For example, we learn that there’s nothing more vicious than a wild animal that’s cornered. Speaking of animals:

Oh! kangaroos, sequins, chocolate sodas!
You really are beautiful! Pearls,
harmonicas, jujubes, aspirins! all
the stuff they've always talked about
still makes a poem a surprise!
These things are with us every day
even on beachheads and biers. They
do have meaning. They're strong as rocks.

Frank O'Hara (1926-1966) was associated with the New York School, a group of poets, artists, dancers and musicians that created art during the 1950s and '60s
========================
"Prince did it all. Funk. R&B. Rock and roll. He was a virtuoso instrumentalist, a brilliant bandleader, and an electrifying performer " 
~ Obama 

"Dearly Beloved we are gathered here today to get through this thing we call ‘Life.'” Prince 1958 – 2016.

Tributes in purple to superstar Prince BBC. Even the FT has this as its top story.

PRINCE’S shock death has appeared to confirm what many people have been saying: 2016 is proving to be a horrible year for celebrities. The year was not even a fortnight old when the shocking news came through that rock legend David Bowie had died. Since then a string of other famous faces have lost their lives — many of them too soon. Here’s a look at some of the big names who sadly left us Talent Tributes: deaths in 2016 - the famous faces who have passed

HEAVEN’S BUILDING QUITE A BAND THIS YEAR: RIP blues guitar great Lonnie Mack

Creativity Is Much More Than 10,000 Hours of Deliberate Practice Scientific American

The Most Influential People such as IMRICH in the World Time List – 2016

A metaphor creates a "little event in the mind of the reader." They make the familiar strange and the strange familiar Imrich Yet Impoor

If the KGB did not give you a code name IMRICH, the link below includes five money habits you, or your kids, can form in your twenties that will guarantee you’ll be rich by 40 by David Koch


Facebook considers letting users add a tip jar to make money from post 

Introducing ‘The President Erdogan Offensive Poetry Competition’ – £1000 prize to be won Spectator. NC readers have provide many clever original poems in the comments section. Time to put those talents to profitable use!

From Verizon to McDonald’s, the Worker Strikes Back American Prospect

Google Books can go back to scanning.  As an author, I am happy.  As a reader and researcher, I am happy too

IT’S the question asked at every quiz night. Who wrote this famous song? If you guess Prince you’ve got a good chance of being right because when he wasn’t creating classics like Purple Rain, Little Red Corvette, 1999, Let’s Go Crazy — he was handing over hits to other performers. His songs were often their biggest successes.

As the New York Post wrote after the sad news of his death, Prince was so good, “he had to manufacture his own opposition”. No doubt casual fans will be aware he was behind at least a few of these tracks, but some should take you by surprise ...

Prince the King of Sharing

The Legal Battle Over Prince’s Name #RIPPrince http://abovethelaw.com/2016/04/the-legal-battle-over-princes-name/ … by @Kathryn1

• New York Times – A Prolific, Meticulous Master of Pop Music – The multifaceted songwriter and performer’s decades of music transcended and remade funk, rock and R&B with hits like “Purple Rain” and “1999.”
• Rollingstone – Prince Dead at 57 Iconic singer and musician leaves behind prolific, groundbreaking catalog
• The Atlantic – Prince the Immortal – The rock star, dead at 57, lived such a blazingly distinctive life as preparation for the day that has now arrived.
• TIME – Prince: Music Icon – “Prince, one of the best-selling recording artists in music history, has died at the age of 57, according to his publicist. Widely considered one of the most influential musicians born in the 20th century, his career spanned four decades.”
• Prince, Tom Petty, Steve Winwood, Jeff Lynne and others – “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” 2004 [solo begins at 3.24]
  
  
  Prince's breathtaking guitar solo at the end of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" is the single greatest musical moment at any Rock Hall induction ceremony in its history
  
  
  

  *10 hit songs you didn’t know Prince wrote
  
  

  Chaser: Raunchy Prince was actually a conservative Christian who reportedly opposed gay marriage.“Raised a Seventh Day Adventist, Prince later became a Jehovah’s Witness, and the story of his conversion became public in a rather remarkable way. The Guardian wrote in 2004: ‘A newspaper in his hometown reported how a married couple had answered their door to find Prince proffering a copy of the Watchtower. Though they were orthodox Jews, and it was Yom Kippur, they were also Prince fans. They welcomed him into the house.’”

It is also an example of great achievements in light of an epilepsy:

As a teenager, following a severe head injury—the result of her efforts to protect another slave—Tubman developed a lifelong, chronic condition, with debilitating symptoms that have been described as being similar to those of narcolepsy and temporal lobe epilepsy.

Here is that source.  Here are many other sources

London gets its first naked restaurant, waiting list already at 5,000 Independent

TaxGrrrl, On 4/20, It’s High Time To Think About Taxes, Revenues & Marijuana. It’s always 4:20 somewhere

Kay Bell, Considering marijuana and taxes on 4/20 

William Perez, Tax Advice for Cannabis Entrepreneurs

CRS report – The U.S. Intelligence Community: Selected Cross – Cutting Issues, Anne Daugherty Miles, Analyst in Intelligence and National Security Policy. April 12, 2016.
“This report focuses on cross-cutting management issues that affect the Intelligence Community’s (IC’s) ability to counter “pervasive and emerging threats” to the United States and balance resources both appropriately and wisely.

Panama Papers: PM urged to act on tax havens

Let  me add my two bytes to the megabytes  that have already been written about Panama Papers ...

However, first thing first as the Bondi Iceberg swimmer and PM has a lovely anecdote about cricket in his recent speech as well as a thoughtful story about the Family and Work balance with the emphasis why it is critical to maintain that balance. In another context, the  PM  quotes one of my former heroes, Jack Ferguson, former Deputy of Premier under Niffty Wran. Allegedly Jack used to refer our current PM then as   “Young Malcolm” [It was around the year of Charter 77 (in 1976)] when Jack told him that “peace on the home front is worth 10% of the basic wage …” Jack used to call most of the staff at the NSW Parliamentary library as young except Dr Cope. I used to be young Joe ... while his mate John Ducker called everyone Buver just like Johno Johnson ...

Prologue: The PM also answers the public service’s burning questions ...

Conversation: Did You Cheat on Your Taxes? Here’s Why Your Days May be Numbered, by James Alm (Tulane) & Jay Soled (Rutgers):

The so-called Panama Papers span thousands of pages, revealing that many of the world’s elite have been hiding their money in offshore accounts in an attempt to shield their income from taxes.

Their release – the biggest data leak in history – depicts a world of rampant tax noncompliance. However, it also reveals just how vulnerable all electronic data in the 21st century are to discovery.

E.U. Rules Will Chill Reporting New York Times (Richard Smith). Editorial. Why really disturbing: a tax dodge is a trade secret: Guest blog: how the European Trade secrets Directive will silence tax whistleblowers Tax Justice Network

The Tax Justice Network has criticised a Senate report on corporate tax avoidance, saying it fails to recommend the most needed reforms, such as whistleblower protection for private-sector workers and disclosure of all subsidiaries in offshore tax havens.

Mossack Fonseca is the fourth-largest law firm in the world that specializes in setting up shell companies. The largest firm of that kind is OIL (previously known as Incorporations Ltd) based in Hong Kong. According to the Economist, OIL takes up 10 percent of all the shell companies' business market. All of its companies are located in the British Virgin Islands from where OIL sets up around 10,000 shell companies a year.

FACT #1. Mossack Fonseca not only set up fake companies ... but also created fake email accounts for their clients that cost these people as much as $10,000 a year.

Among names chosen for the accounts were Winnie the Pooh, Harry Potter and Daniel Radcliff (not the real actor). The Guardian cited an email correspondence between the company's lawyer and a client:

Harry Potter: Did you the receive funds?
Mossack Fonseca: Dear Harry, your £25,000 was received.
#PanamaPapers Revelations Deal Major Blow to West Tax Dodgers, Global Crime

Who: Firm was founded by Jurgen Mossack, who was born in Germany in 1948, and Ramon Fonseca, who was born in Panama in 1952
When: Established in 1977; became Mossack Fonseca in 1986, when the two men merged their law firms
What: A global company that provides comprehensive legal, trust and wealth management services. Incorporates and administers companies in offshore jurisdictions such as Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Hong Kong, the British Virgin Islands and Malta, as well as in the U.S. states of Nevada and Wyoming.
Where: Located in Panama
Global presence: Considered the fourth-largest provider of offshore services

It’s always educational to observe the behavior of wildlife in their natural habitat. For example, we learn that there’s nothing more vicious than a wild animal that’s cornered. I would add that there’s nothing more devious than a top political or corporate official caught in a scandalous hypocrisy The Panama Papers reveal scandalous hypocrisy: The leak’s reminded us that governments make it all too easy for the super-rich to hide their money 

Mossack Fonseca may be the world’s fourth largest offshore law firm, but it’s the tip of the iceberg.  It’s just one law firm, in one tax haven. Just think what the others are hiding.
Only the Guardian and selected inner circle journalists know who are the entities on the list of the top ten providers of tax avoidance and evasion services
Mossack Fonseca: inside the fourth largest firm that helps the super-rich hide their money

A guide to history's biggest data leak

Panama Papers: More Trouble For The West Than Russia Forbes. Official confirmation of what you probably knew already…

UK: Premature Self-Congratulatory Hype: Tax transparency progress hailed by Chancellor 

AUSTRALIA: PM urged to act on tax havens

 Australian Tax Office is close to striking a deal with the Federal Court to fast-track large corporate tax cases that have dragged on for years. Tax Commissioner Chris Jordan said the ATO had "hardened its approach" to corporate tax avoidance and was refusing to be "stooged and gamed" by companies that do not deal in good faith Corporate tax avoiders to be fast-tracked through courts, says ATO

On 2 October 2014 the Senate referred an inquiry into corporate tax avoidance to the Senate Economics References Committee for inquiry and report by the first sitting day in June 2015. Following a further extension granted on 22 February 2016, the committee is now due to report by 22 April 2016.
Senate Committee Corporate tax avoidance

A Senate inquiry has heard there may be more Australians involved the in the Panama leak

Good friend of John Hatton AO, Marian has made a rare observation when even Czech communist links are referenced...
WILKINSON, Ms Marian, Journalist, Four Corners, Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Committee met at 10:18:
The background to the project and its post-publication impact is what I can address today. On 4 April, over 100 news organisations around the world, including the ABC, released a series of reports on the offshore financial world under the banner line 'The Panama Papers'. The story was based on 11.5 million leaked records from a little-known Panamanian law firm, Mossack Fonseca, a firm that creates offshore shell companies on an industrial scale. Some 214,000 companies, trusts and foundations were created over the years. With 30 offices around the world—from Panama to the British Virgin Islands, Hong Kong to New Zealand, the Czech Republic to Brazil—Mossack Fonseca has a huge footprint in the offshore world.
Draft Transcript from Senate Committee on Corporate tax avoidance

The signature literary genre of the Stalinist era was the production novel: outsider at a factory solves a problem. Bohumil Hrabal was a master of the form... Speaking of Czech Konnektions and Krimes

The focus of the worldwide response to the Panama Papers revelations switches to Beijing on May 11 when 35 countries working jointly on the data will report back on their findings.
Australian officials had been expecting 28 countries to attend the emergency OECD meeting, called by Tax Commissioner Chris Jordan in Paris on April 13, to discuss how to respond to the leak of 11.5 million documents of Panama law firm Mossack Fonseca.
But Australian deputy commissioner Mark Konza, who chaired the Paris meeting of the OECD's Joint International Tax Shelter Information and Collaboration (JITSIC) network, found that senior officials from all 35 JITSIC member countries showed up.
Panama Papers: 35 countries agree on joint compliance action

Corporate_Tax_Avoidance All Public_Hearings

The ATO’s Michael Cranston said the list covered a wide range of offences, “from very serious – the bikie gangs, etc – all the way through to promoters of tax schemes”.
The Panama Papers revelations have intensified the political debate about tax avoidance.
Mr Jordan told the committee he was determined to use his full powers to crack down on companies which have dodged their tax obligations.
“We do have a strong kit bag to utilise,” he said.
“We are getting on with the job but it will take time. But I do want to assure the community we’ll leave no stone unturned, as we put the whole picture together.”
He also flagged the ATO was hoping to work with the Federal Court to fast-track “strategically important” cases of multinational tax avoidance. Panama leak could reveal more Australians

Bikies embroiled in Panama papers 

Taxman Chris Jordan makes his mark

Panama Papers: SCBA wants national task force: Pakistan

Townhall op-ed:  Dealing with the IRS Doesn’t Have to Be Hell, by Reps. Kevin McCarthy, Jason Smith, Rick Allen, Kristi Noem, David Rouzer & Glenn Grothman:

[H]ow do we plan to make the IRS more accountable? We have six bills we plan to pass next week.

The first will require the IRS to crack down on their employees who are delinquent on their own taxes. ...

 GOP Congressman: IRS Too Busy Spying On Americans To Do Its Job

Conor Clarke (Ph.D. Candidate, Yale Law School), What Are Tax Havens and Why Are They Bad, 94 Tex. L. Rev. ___ (2016) (reviewing Gabriel Zucman, The Hidden Wealth of Nations: The Scourge of Tax Havens (University of Chicago Press, 2015)): This essay reviews Gabriel Zucman's The Hidden Wealth of Nations: The Scourge of Tax Havens. Zucman's important new book brings clarity to a confusing subject -- but occasionally does so at the expense of nuance. My review has three goals.

 McDonald's France faces €300m tax bill over Luxembourg link  
   G4S 'ran up parking fines in bid to avoid £580000 in tax'  
       Panama Papers: US opens criminal investigation  
          Super rich who hide money in tax havens to be unmasked  
             Panama Papers: Australian criminal activity aided by law firm, tax office says       Exploding the Neoliberal Tax Cutting Myths:  A graphical assault on supply-side tax cuts  
 The Reconnection Agenda: Reuniting Growth and Prosperity By Jared Bernstein  
   One in four executives believes 'corruption and bribery is rife in UK'  
      Developing countries left out of global tax decisions  
        Money laundering: New UK law planned to target corrupt officials 
            George Osborne has agreed to exempt MPs from anti-money laundering checks  
                UK’s Chancellor Osborne Exempts Members of Parliament, Other “Politically Exposed Persons” From Money Laundering Oversight  
                   Ultimate owners of UK property may be forced into spotlight  
                       Offshore owners of UK property 'to be unmasked'  
Reality Czech (sik) -  Has the UK given up its tax and banking veto?  
     UK insurer Prudential closer to £100m refund in marathon tax case  
        Tax havens to attend Labour conference  
           Scope of new UK tax evasion offence 'compliance nightmare'