Igor Delovski Board

[Ike]

yahoo - A 13-year old just came up with the perfect anti-trolling weapon

"Prabhu wants to put a stop to cyber-bullying by making teens and tweens
rethink the things they want to post online that may be hurtful to others. In
short, she’s appealing to their conscience to prevent annoying messages
from being posted online.

Prabhu’s project is called exactly that – Rethink..."

[Ike]

http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/2hzlvt/power_can_corrupt_even_the_honest_the_findings/

Social SciencesPower Can Corrupt Even the Honest: The findings showed that those who measured as less honest exhibited more corrupt behaviour, at least initially; however, over time, even those who initially scored high on honesty were not shielded from the corruptive effects of power.

[delovski]

nybooks.com - Panama: The Hidden Trillions

"Previously, we thought that the offshore world was a shadowy, but minor,
part of our economic system. What we learned from the Panama Papers is
that it is the economic system.

The economic system is, basically, that the rich and the powerful exited long
ago from the messy business of paying tax"

[delovski]

foreignpolicy.com - Abandonment has consequences

Bill Browder is the CEO of Hermitage Capital Management and the head of the
Global Campaign for Justice for Sergei Magnitsky.

"With no real laws or institutions, 22 Russian oligarchs stole 40 percent of the
country's wealth from the state. The other 150 million Russians were left in
destitution and poverty, and the average life expectancy for men dropped from
65 to 57 years. Professors had to earn a living as taxi drivers; nurses became
prostitutes. The entire fabric of Russian society broke down."

"The injustice of it all was infuriating for average Russians, and they longed
for a strongman to restore order. In 1999, they found one: Vladimir Putin.
Rather than restoring order, however, Putin replaced the 22 oligarchs with
himself alone at the top. From my own research, I estimate that in his 18
years in power he has stolen $200 billion from the Russian people."

[delovski]

FT - Soros: Capitalism versus Open Society

"I first encountered the agency problem in connection with the so-called
resource curse. By resource curse I mean that countries that are rich in
natural resources are often cursed with corrupt or repressive governments,
insurrections, and civil wars so that the people are even poorer and lead
more miserable lives than in countries that are less well-endowed by nature.
Think of the Congo, Sudan, Sierra Leone, and Liberia."

[Ike]

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/01/170117105107.htm

Study finds links between swearing and honesty: Psychologists have learned that people who frequently curse are being more honest.

[delovski]

twitter - Stathis Kalyvas: Lessons I learned from Greece...

"Lessons I learned from Greece #1: abysmal incompetence of populist
government leads many to mistaken belief it will be over quickly

Lessons I learned from Greece #2: for a long time you think you've seen the
worst, but you haven't seen anything yet"

[delovski]

r - Steve Ballmer Serves Up a Fascinating Data Trove

"On Tuesday, Mr. Ballmer plans to make public... a stealth start-up...
called USAFacts. The database is perhaps the first nonpartisan effort
to create a fully integrated look at revenue and spending across federal,
state and local governments."

[Ike]

https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2017/jun/14/tax-evaders-exposed-why-super-rich-are-even-richer-than-we-thought

Tax evaders exposed: why the super-rich are even richer than we thought

At the time of the leak, HSBC Switzerland was a major actor in the offshore wealth management industry. It managed US$118.4bn ? about 4% of all the foreign wealth managed by Swiss banks. This is a unique source of information through which to study tax evasion, because the leak can be seen as a random event, and it comes from a large (and, the available evidence suggests, representative) offshore bank

[Ike]

currentaffairs.org - The Politics of Tragedies

"The Grenfell Tower fire was not the result of a criminal plot to burn the poor,
nor was it a freak accident. It was the logical end result of a process of deci-
sion-making driven by a particular philosophy of governance and a particular
set of economic laws. If there is no money to be made in housing the destitute
in safe buildings, and the prevailing ethos is that profit should be allowed to
determine the social good, then destitute people will be housed in unsafe
buildings."

[delovski]

occrp.org - The Spy Who Overthrew Macedonia's Government

"For long-serving spy Gjorgi Lazarevski, a 2010 raid on one of Macedonia's
few remaining independent TV stations was the last straw."

[Ike]

https://rantt.com/the-paradise-papers-how-ridiculously-easy-it-is-for-the-rich-to-avoid-taxes-15b082cffb68

While you and I might think that paying taxes is the price of living in a wonderful country, the 1% thinks differently. To them, dodging taxes is essential to wealth preservation. Taxation is tyranny.

[XNote]

https://qz.com/1137683/the-paradise-papers-suggest-chinese-tech-billionaire-lei-jun-is-connected-to-the-worlds-biggest-bitcoin-miner/

The Paradise Papers suggest Chinese tech billionaire Lei Jun is connected to the worlds biggest bitcoin miner

[Ike]

https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/7z80mm/more_than_two_thirds_of_all_countries_corrupt/

More than two thirds of all countries corrupt, Transparency International (TI) report says. TI found that majority of countries in the world can be called corrupt, with a clear link between high levels of corruption and little protection of the media and civil society groups. (dw.com)

[Ike]

https://www.channel4.com/news/data-democracy-and-dirty-tricks-cambridge-analytica-uncovered-investigation-expose

Data, Democracy and Dirty Tricks: Cambridge Analytica Uncovered

Watch all of Channel 4 News investigations into Cambridge Analytica - the British data firm linked to Trump's win.

[Ike]

Brazil Is About To Show The World How A Modern Democracy Collapses

Far-right president Jair Bolsonaro is a threat to Brazilian democracy -- and a model for authoritarianism that leaders around the world will follow

[Ike]

https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/aldfep/the_cost_of_corruption_in_the_eu/

The cost of corruption in the EU

https://i.redd.it/af2b4y2sqkd21.png

[Ike]

https://old.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/f6pp2u/a_new_study_of_world_bank_data_finds_that_aid/

A new study of World Bank data finds that aid disbursement to highly aid-dependent countries coincides with sharp increases in bank deposits in offshore financial centers. According to The Economist, the World Bank refused to release the study. Afterward, its chief economist resigned. (promarket.org)

[Ike]

zeit - There are networks of billionaires who essentially are arms of the Kremlin

"The financial block wasn't prepared for the scale of the sanctions that were
imposed, but they were able to quite rapidly react and impose capital controls.
The sanctions take time to bite. It is going to take another couple of months.
It will be autumn by the time the stocks of most Western goods are going to
run out.

They killed hundreds in their sleep in Moscow and caused Putin to launch the
war in Chechnya that raised his status from a gray bureaucrat who was only
known by 5 percent of the population to this national hero.

... oligarchs of the Yeltsin era, who used to dictate their will to the Kremlin,
suddenly found the boot was on the other foot. They could see that if
Khodorkovsky is going to go to jail for 10 years and his company is getting
gobbled by the state through arbitrary tax charges, then the same thing
could happen to them.

Then, once they reached a critical mass inside the country, they suddenly
had this huge web of cash outside of Russia under their command in the
offshore system, which they could then use to undermine and disrupt
Western democracies."

[Ike]

bbc - 'Putin's palace': Builders' story of luxury, mould and fake walls

"Walls and ceilings were covered in mould. Just ordinary mould - green. In
places even black. It had affected the whole building. We were shocked"