Key points:
The ATO’s corporate tax transparency data again shows that hundreds of companies have been able to reduce their tax bills to zero
ATO deputy commissioner Rebecca Saint said the agency was still seeing some companies avoid tax by shifting profits offshore
Company financial accounts do not always give the full picture of tax positions and the ATO wants companies to be more transparent
Category: Uncategorized
There have been unsubstantiated rumours floating around that alleged the parents of Hawke’s wife Amelia were onboard the Ruby Princess along with some friends from the Hillsong Church.
Regardless, the growing influence of the Pentacostals in our government is of grave concern, as is their growing influence amongst our young people.
Why was the Colour Conference allowed to continue? Have any cases of coronavirus been linked to it? Who made phone calls to allow the Ruby Princess to dock after initially being refused permission? What charitable works does Hillsong undertake to avoid paying tax? And why are people like Alex Hawke and Stuart Robert Ministers?
Britain is ready to do America’s job and kill Assange in prison (ODT)
Trump announced a website under development by “1700 engineers at Google” which would would quiz Americans on their symptoms and pair them with the appropriate test facility.
The website didn’t exist. And by April 1 the grand total of drive-through testing facilities on the parking lots of these companies came in at five. And those five offered testing only to first responders and healthcare workers, not the general public. But it doesn’t matter now, because Trump is pulling the funding for those sites—and for every other drive-through testing site.
via WTF? Federal Funding For Coronavirus Testing Being Pulled | Crooks and Liars
The US needs enemies to pursue its imperial agenda. None exist so they’re invented.
Most often they’re sovereign independent nations the US doesn’t control, making them a prime targets for regime change — notably if they’re oil rich like Iran and Venezuela or powerful enough to challenge US hegemonic aims like Russia and China.
Time and again, US regimes falsely blame other nations for their own wrongdoing.
Russia is a prime target, blamed repeatedly by US hardliners for things it had nothing to do with.
The Russians did it Big Lie has a life of its own, notably because US establishment media operate as press agents for the imperial state and other privileged interests — at the expense of truth and full disclosure.
China is a prime target because of its growing prominence on the world stage politically, economically and militarily.
Major Sino/US differences have nothing to do with trade, everything to do with Washington wanting China marginalized, weakened, contained and isolated industrially, technologically, and militarily.
Will Trump’s actions flatten the curve and put the pandemic on an irreversible downward course in daily cases and deaths, as he produces a U-turn, if not a V-turn, dramatically driving the economy upward from depression and toward national prosperity?
Can he revive the economy without reviving the virus?
Or will the coronavirus so severely cripple the economy that the depression it produces will kill the Trump presidency?
via Trump’s Presidency Hangs on One Decision, by Pat Buchanan – The Unz Review
I’m sorry you will not be president, but I understand and appreciate your decision to end your quest at this point
It’s what China understands and turns to offer global assistance and what the US and Australian ultra conservatives ignore with their early calls of back to work while they social distance (ODT)
While the politicians offer reassurance, the scientists urge vigilance. And it is worth heeding the science. The medical experts who advise the government expect this threat to continue in waves for years.
Even if we eradicate the disease in Australia, says James McCaw of the Doherty Institute and the University of Melbourne, the virus will spread around the world and easily return.
“That epidemic in some places may also go locally extinct after a small or a large wave,” he says. “But it’s almost implausible to imagine this virus going extinct globally, which means that it will be here to stay. It will become a part of our everyday life and the transition to it not being a huge driver of complete societal change is a very difficult thing to work through.”
via Coronavirus Australia: This virus could change the way we live for years, not months
key points:
Medical experts said influenza spikes, which occurred this year in NSW, would strain hospitals
Both the flu and COVID-19 shared identical symptoms and would frustrate data-collection for both
Evidence from China and Italy showed lockdowns needed to be enforced for several monthsNews Corp says otherwise demanding we go back to work( ODT)
We’ve seen an impressive level of federal-state co-operation where the two tiers of government have each contributed, led and even persuaded each other. The federal government led on shutting borders, for example, while the states pushed the feds to accelerate shutdowns of restaurants, cafes and especially schools. We’ve seen a federal government that has consistently described fiscal stimulus for a flagging economy as reckless, embrace it at unprecedented levels; a government that flatly refused to increase the Newstart allowance suddenly double it; a Liberal-led government introduce a wage subsidy.
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via Coronavirus Australia: For a moment, at least, our politicians are behaving like grown-ups
As millions of believers in the religions of The Book prepare to celebrate a sanctified time, many among their ranks ignore the pandemic’s potency.
Despite a ban on driving beyond one’s home, a certain prince of the Catholic Church George Pell embarks on a road trip which crosses the New South Wales border from Victoria, to take up residence in palatial accommodation on Sydney’s outskirts.
And as Ultra-Orthodox Jews fail to observe social distancing rules in Israel, Muslims around the world come to terms with the need to cremate their mounting dead.
In the United States of America hundreds of thousands of devout Christians switch on televangelists in a vain attempt to ward off the ravages of their nation’s catastrophic response to the worst outbreak of illness since the incubation of the Spanish Flu in Kansas.
And as the Arts mourn the loss of many from its ranks, the actions of a buffoonish NSW Minister for the Arts diminishes the efficacy of art in a time of crisis.
And so the last words of my Easter story come with an apology to my favourite artist and poet, T.S. Eliot:
“This is the way the world ends, not with bang but a” virus.
via A not so Good Friday – » The Australian Independent Media Network
The Intercept’s Mehdi Hasan speaks with Senior Correspondent Naomi Klein about coronavirus capitalism and the selective use of emergency measures to offload risks onto workers and families, while the people who are relatively more secure get no-strings-attached bailouts.
via Live: Mehdi Hasan and Naomi Klein on Coronavirus Capitalism
Even after two decades of nearly unmitigated strategic failure in the Middle East coupled with the disastrous self-harm of unchecked defense spending, it seems that significant portions of the U.S. elite have still not awoken from their intoxication with foreign wars of choice. Amid a global pandemic that could kill millions and cripple the American economy for years to come, there are strong signs that the U.S. military might be ordered to embark on yet another war in Iraq
If this war does take place, we can place it into a larger context: a once-powerful country depleting its strength through costly military adventures in distant lands, but institutionally incapable of providing the basics of life for its people at home.
via Coronavirus Exposes How Foreign Wars Bled America’s Resources Dry
Casualisation of the workforce disproportionally affects younger generations. From Amazon’s big MEL1 sweatshop to even the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT), the gig economic proliferates. Millennial lawyer Geordie Wilson reports that even the Australian Government is casualising its workforce at an astounding rate. In this, the first of our series Millennials vs Boomers, Wilson says illegal workplace practices appear to be rife even in the public service. It is something the Baby Boomers generation would hardly have even contemplated as, back in the day, they sought secure government jobs and the protection of the law.
via Boomers vs Millennials: the gig economy breaks & enters the Australian Public Service – Michael West
His motives.
If hydroxychloroquine becomes an accepted treatment, several pharmaceutical companies stand to profit, including shareholders and senior executives with connections to the president. Mr. Trump himself has a small personal financial interest in Sanofi, the French drugmaker that makes Plaquenil, the brand-name version of hydroxychloroquine.
Who would have guessed? Well, just about anyone not deeply deluded by Trump’s claims to put America first.
via Surprise! Donald Trump Has A Financial Stake In Hydroxychloroquine | Crooks and Liars
And Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a New York University history professor who has long warned of Trump’s authoritarian tendencies, said his advocacy of hydroxychloroquine is more proof of his willingness to help his friends and donors who manufacture the drug while building himself up as the people’s only savior.
“It is hard to accept that we have a president who truly does not care if we live or die, especially at such a tragic moment in our history, but the sooner we recognize this the better off we will be,” she said. “The rationales of saving lives or acting for the public good don’t enter into his thinking.”
News Corp has certainly been fuelling Sinophobia as it did Islamophobia and anti African sentiments yet we have Racial vilification laws and the goverenment simply stands by and watches. (ODT)
Here are some recent examples of racism outbreaks:
people who appear to be Asian in origin being abused at supermarkets;
a Malaysian student being denied rental accommodation;
the Chinese being blamed for the virus;
Chinese restaurants seeing a marked drop off in patronage;
students at some schools being mocked as “Coronas” in the playground (my son has witnessed this personally);
my niece – of Indian ancestry – and another young girl being abused on a train in Melbourne — the abuse was about them “being the problem” that led the abuser to have to take his children out of school;
snide remarks being made to people of general “Asian” appearance; and
talkback hosts allowing these comments to go to air without regard for community outcomes.
Minutes after Pell’s conviction was quashed by the high court, the News Corp columnist Andrew Bolt posted a blog saying the cardinal was innocent and pointing the finger at the ABC for allegedly conducting a witch-hunt to have him convicted.
One doesn’t need to be a genius to note News Corp and the IPA have had a self interested agenda to rid the nation of the ABC. Bolt couldn’t have a more nepotistic up-close and personal relationship with the IPA. His son James works for them Bolt did podcasts with Roxham a regular on his Bolt Report and now father and son interchange on each others shows. It seems grooming is a term better used to describe what’s occurring here rather than any notion of market place merit.
Their agenda has been pure and simple to rid Australia of the ABC the most trusted news service in the country and to set up a quid pro quo relationship as exists in the USA where Murdoch Media’s Fox Corp is the quasi voice of the WhiteHouse press. Their agenda to take control of the political/economic narrative of the nation in the interests of Citizens United and other donor associated think tanks that represent 1% of the country. The IPA has grown in immense influence in Australia while our unions have been reduced. They have develpoped pathways to LNP politics for their staff and like no other association this century their 75 pt political agenda has been taken up as the policies since the Howard and accelerated under the Abbott government.
No Cut’s to the ABC have become 1000 cuts under Abbott/Turnbull/ Morrison’s LNP despite the outcry of Australians. So much so the ABC budget has been flatlined back to 1984. Death by a 1000 cuts is better understood as the News Corp/IPA/ LNP-2020 virus an intended and terminal condition. (ODT)
Of course, the top priority now is to put public health and safety first. To that end, employees across the country are now thinking about refusing to obey orders to work in unsafe job conditions. U.S. capitalism has thus placed a general strike on today’s social agenda. A close second priority is to learn from capitalism’s failure in the face of the pandemic. We must not suffer such a dangerous and unnecessary social breakdown again. Thus system change is now also moving onto today’s social agenda.
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via COVID-19 and the Failures of Capitalism | The Smirking Chimp
In other words, actions offering greater protection to the majority of the population would restart the economy in a truly sustainable fashion, while bringing back both jobs and confidence. But that, in turn, would involve a bold and courageous political response providing genuine and proportionate stimulus for people. Unfortunately, given Washington’s 1% tilt and Donald Trump’s CEO empathy, that is at present inconceivable.
via Wall Street Wins — Again: Bailouts in the Time of Coronavirus | The Smirking Chimp
Trump is a self-renewing mind fuck, soul fuck, spirit fuck, hope fuck, sanity fuck. Struggling to put him from our minds is a mark of sanity, but it is nearly impossible to achieve. We know this oaf and his idiosyncracies, his stunningly inappropriate responses to people and things, his crassness, and quirks, his gestures, the way he walks, the rhythms of his disjointed sentences, his very essence. We know the small details of his personality as well or better than we do the people who are closest to us. We can finish his sentences for him.
Because the toxicity of Trump has become so ubiquitous, so engrained, so embedded–rather like a virus–we can barely begin to imagine what it is to live in a world unsullied by the poison. But if you saw or heard Queen Elizabeth’s address to the people of Great Britain yesterday, then you might have been reminded of what is missing here in the United States as we struggle to deal–collectively or personally–with this unfolding viral disaster. Trump sours us, divides us, makes us forget any sense of this country that could give us pride in ourselves, that could buck us up. So we endure the virus while also enduring him.
Since posting that on 26 February much has changed. Country after country has been set the IQ test, and the results have varied. China, Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan are well ranked, though China may have cheated. Italy and Spain are towards bottom of the class. Sweden’s results are still being marked, but very much worth watching. Holland has also tried an intelligent, adult approach, with many shops open, but as death rates rise may move to more severe lockdown. The US is a new arrival to the class, and will be evaluated in a few week’s time.
If you don’t have tests, or treatments, you have to use social distancing. Social distancing works if everyone does it, but if only 10% cheat, then the effect is blunted.
On a broader front, this pandemic raises the question: how much of our economy is strictly necessary? The essentials of food growing, processing and distribution probably account for no more than 4% of the working age population. Power generation and basic utilities perhaps another 4%. Perhaps the remnant 92% will all be bloggers.
Give me a break.
I agree with Kissinger that the post-Covid world order will be significantly different from the world that preceded it, but that’s as far as I’ll go. In truth, the US-dominated system is unraveling because the people of the world don’t want to ruled by force, because US leaders are incompetent bunglers who cannot be trusted to do the right thing, and because Washington’s arrogant go-it-alone policy-making has turned vast areas of the Middle East and Central Asia into uninhabitable wastelands.
Let’s face it, the United States had a chance to show the world it could be a reliable steward of global security, and they blew it. Nothing Kissinger says is going to change that.
Henry Kissinger calls for a New Post-Covid World Order, by Mike Whitney – The Unz Review
We can’t afford to allow right-wing scapegoating China. (ODT)
This goes double for the right. In Australia, too, prominent voices are making it their business to ensure that this pandemic is blamed entirely on the PRC, and that this leads to a posture of conflict with that country. This will inevitably worsen the scapegoating of Asian immigrants which is being reported in majority-white countries.
There is a strong anti-China current being promoted in right-wing circles and some neo-liberal ones in light of the coronavirus epidemic.
These forces are seeking to redirect real criticisms of globalization – deindustrialization, stolen intellectual property, and trade deficits – and utilize them for support for regime change operations and possibly even war against China for the financial self-interest of a few American oligarchs. It’s similar to how anti-immigration sentiment was swerved into concerns about Islam’s illiberalism in hopes of advancing Israeli interests in Europe and promoting neo-conservative wars in America.
All in all, it is important to make a distinction between an accurate diagnosis of the symptoms arising from our relationship with China, and the actual problem. Moving factories from China to Vietnam, India or Taiwan will leave the American people just as poor and jobless. Wasting energy following conservatives in their idiotic crusade to change how Chinese people live in China will provide no benefit to the white worker. American liberalism is collapsing because it is an unnatural and dysfunctional system.
The real conversation should be focused on the legitimacy of money power that rules us, and whether it benefits us. The answer is that it doesn’t, which is why they would like your eyes on China, rather than them.
via International Finance’s Anti-China Crusade, by Eric Striker – The Unz Review
It’s something Capitalists don’t seem to get and what’s worse don’t want to (ODT)
If Covid-19 is not beaten in Africa it will return to haunt us all | Free to read | Financial Times
George Pell wins High Court appeal against child sex abuse convictions
Timeline of events in George Pell case:
- 2015: A former choirboy tells Victoria Police he and another boy were sexually abused by George Pell in the 1990s, shortly after he became Archbishop of Melbourne
- February, 2016: The Herald Sun newspaper reveals a Victoria Police taskforce is investigating Pell for historical child sexual abuse, the first time the investigation is made public
- October, 2016: Detectives question Pell in Rome about a number of allegations. The Cardinal denies any wrongdoing
- June 29, 2017: Pell is charged with historical child sexual abuse offences. He says he is looking forward to his day in court
- June 29, 2017: The Pope grants Pell leave to return to Australia to fight the charges
- May 1, 2018: Pell pleads not guilty after being committed to stand trial for historical sexual offences. The most serious of the charges against him are struck out
- August 15, 2018: A trial into the allegations Pell abused two choirboys when he was Archbishop of Melbourne in the 1990s begins at the County Court of Victoria
- September 20, 2018: The jury is unable to reach a verdict and is discharged
- November 7, 2018: A second trial begins
- December 11, 2018: A jury finds Pell guilty of one count of sexual penetration of a child under the age of 16 and four counts of committing an indecent act with, or in the presence of, a child. A suppression order banning all reporting on the trial is in place until the delivery of a verdict in another case
- February, 2019: The other case, relating to separate historic sex offence allegations, is dropped by Victoria’s Director of Public Prosecutions
- February 26, 2019: The suppression order is lifted and the guilty verdict is made public
- March 13, 2019: The County Court of Victoria sentences Pell to six years’ jail, with a non-parole period of three years and eight months
- June 5 – June 6, 2019: The Victorian Court of Appeal hears two days of legal argument as Pell appeals against his convictions on three grounds
- August 21, 2019: The Victorian Court of Appeal unanimously rejects two of the grounds for appeal, and a 2-1 decision rejects the third ground. Pell’s convictions are upheld
- March 10 – March 11, 2020: The full bench of the High Court of Australia hears two days of legal argument from Pell’s legal team and Victorian prosecutors. The court reserves its decision
- April 7, 2020: The High Court of Australia delivers its decision in Brisbane
“If the current approach of telling everyone to stay home is to be lifted, widespread and faster testing will be needed to identify infected people for isolation. Easing stay-at-home orders in the absence of sufficient testing would risk reigniting the outbreak.”
The question is: Where were WHO, NIH, CDC, health ministers, prime ministers, presidents? Why did the leadership of the Western World sit on its hands for three months? Has history ever experienced a worse and more complete failure of leadership?
Leadership is absent, because the West has been organized to serve private selfish interests with agendas inimical to the public interest. The People accepted lies and deception, and now we are paying the price.
A Failure of Leadership, by Paul Craig Roberts – The Unz Review
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