Interesting reads
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<blockquote class="ipsBlockquote" data-author="Tim" data-cid="596061" data-time="1468325666">
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<p><a class="bbc_url" href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/12/philippines-wins-south-china-sea-case-against-china">Philippines wins South China Sea case against China</a></p>
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<p>Yeah, cos China accept that ruling and it won't lead to escalating tensions.</p>
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<p>Crazy stuff going on out there at the moment. South China Sea clearly not the place for a pleasure cruise.</p> -
Yeah, their territorial claim is pretty hilariously brazen. <br><br><img src="http://i.imgur.com/XYwqr1I.jpg" alt="XYwqr1I.jpg">
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<p>Enjoyed reading this, Mods feel free to move it if it doesn't fit with this topic</p>
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<p><a data-ipb='nomediaparse' href='http://www.the-american-interest.com/2015/10/19/karl-marx-to-the-rescue/'>http://www.the-american-interest.com/2015/10/19/karl-marx-to-the-rescue/</a></p> -
<p>Some discussion of the implications of the court's ruling:</p>
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<p><a data-ipb='nomediaparse' href='http://www.chinafile.com/conversation/chinas-claims-south-china-sea-rejected'>http://www.chinafile.com/conversation/chinas-claims-south-china-sea-rejected</a></p> -
<p><a data-ipb='nomediaparse' href='https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/13/making-meth-how-new-zealands-knack-for-p-turned-into-a-homebaked-disaster'>https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/13/making-meth-how-new-zealands-knack-for-p-turned-into-a-homebaked-disaster</a></p>
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<p>Long article about meth & NZ</p> -
<p>Cross your legs before you read this <a data-ipb='nomediaparse' href='http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/australia/82083925/unathorised-testicle-removal-leads-to-guilty-plea'>http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/australia/82083925/unathorised-testicle-removal-leads-to-guilty-plea</a></p>
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<p><a data-ipb='nomediaparse' href='http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/82092987/new-childrens-commissioner-andrew-becroft-on-catching-children-before-they-fall'>http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/82092987/new-childrens-commissioner-andrew-becroft-on-catching-children-before-they-fall</a></p>
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<p>Becroft was a government appointment with rare approval from every party in parliament. Worth a read.</p> -
<p>https://vimeo.com/174313049</p>
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<blockquote class="ipsBlockquote" data-author="Rocky Rock Rockbottom" data-cid="601885" data-time="1469942803">
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<p><span style="font-family:meiryo, sans-serif;font-size:10pt;">This last one was spanked so hard it must be clear into fucking orbit by now:</span></p>
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<p>Fark, yeah.</p>
<p>Comedy gold: <span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:'Guardian Text Egyptian Web', Georgia, serif;font-size:medium;">May was seen as the safer pair of hooves.</span></p>
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<p><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:'Guardian Text Egyptian Web', Georgia, serif;font-size:medium;">Satire is the shiz.</span></p> -
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<strong><a class="bbc_url" href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/11/trotskyists-on-the-march-chaos-ahead">If the Trotskyists are on the march there’s chaos ahead</a></strong>
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<p><a data-ipb='nomediaparse' href='http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/08/slightly-more-than-100-exceptional-works-of-journalism/490622/'>http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/08/slightly-more-than-100-exceptional-works-of-journalism/490622/</a></p>
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<p>Take your pick, Atlantic just did a series on 100 exceptional works of journalism</p>
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<p>I like this one -</p>
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<p><a data-ipb='nomediaparse' href='https://newhumanist.org.uk/articles/4892/what-would-you-see-on-a-journey-to-the-centre-of-the-earth'>https://newhumanist.org.uk/articles/4892/what-would-you-see-on-a-journey-to-the-centre-of-the-earth</a></p> -
<p style="color:rgb(40,40,40);font-family:helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">Great article about corupt cops in NYC in the 80s:</p>
<p style="color:rgb(40,40,40);font-family:helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"> </p>
<p style="color:rgb(40,40,40);font-family:helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><a class="bbc_url" href="http://nymag.com/news/features/50431/" title="External link">http://nymag.com/news/features/50431/</a></p> -
<p>The words of one of Joseph Goebbel's secretaries</p>
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<p><a data-ipb='nomediaparse' href='http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/europe/83254136/brunhilde-pomsel-what-it-was-like-working-for-nazi-spin-doctor-joseph-goebbels'>http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/europe/83254136/brunhilde-pomsel-what-it-was-like-working-for-nazi-spin-doctor-joseph-goebbels</a></p> -
Psycho-active pharmaceuticals and tolerances:<br><br>
<a data-ipb='nomediaparse' href='http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/08/15/tolerance-troubles/'>http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/08/15/tolerance-troubles/</a> -
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<blockquote class="ipsBlockquote">
<div><a data-ipb='nomediaparse' href='https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-08-22/mirror-trades-and-tax-tricks'><strong>Mirror Trades and Tax Tricks</strong></a></div>
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<div>11 AUG 22, 2016 8:24 AM EST</div>
<div>By Matt Levine</div>
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<div><strong>Deutsche mirrors.</strong></div>
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<div>I like a good scandal as much as anyone, but the Deutsche Bank mirror-trading scandal leaves me pretty blah. Some Russians had money in Russia, and they preferred to have it elsewhere. That seems understandable? So they bought some stocks in Russia, and sold the same stocks (from the accounts of related offshore entities) in London, usually running both legs through a Deutsche Bank trading desk. The result was that they had less money in Russia and more in London, although if you do the accounting it would seem that they’d also be building up a large stock position in Russia and an offsetting short position in London. I’m a little curious how they closed out their short positions in London. Did they, like, fly bags of stock certificates from Moscow? Doing the mirror trades solves the problem of moving cash from Moscow to London, but would seem to leave a residual problem of moving stock.</div>
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<div>The big new New Yorker article about the mirror-trading scandal doesn’t answer that admittedly odd question. Nor does it quite explain what laws were broken by the mirror trades; presumably they evaded Russian capital controls, and there is a strong suggestion that some of the mirror traders were oligarchs subject to U.S. sanctions, who could not have moved money in more straightforward ways. But for the other ones, it's hard to tell if this was regular banal tax avoidance -- analogous to the dividend-arbitrage strategy that is legal in a lot of places, though roundly disliked everywhere -- or something more nefarious. On the one hand, there's a certain baseline level of shadiness that is just expected from global banks in Russia. "If you wanted to be competitive, you had to do a lot of things that were not done in the developed world, because it was Russia," says a guy. On the other hand, the former head of Deutsche's Moscow equities desk, a 37-year-old American who is apparently living in Bali these days, is compared to both Jason Bourne and Edward Snowden, so perhaps he got up to something genuinely juicy. </div>
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<div>Meanwhile, the Russian broker who brought in the trades "wasn’t a great trader, but he was a good fisherman," which is exactly what you want in your broker.</div>
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<div><strong>Amazon taxes.</strong></div>
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<div>A core basic trick of international tax is:</div>
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<div>Build some intellectual property -- patents, technology, whatever.</div>
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<div>Put the IP in a subsidiary in a low-tax jurisdiction, say Luxembourg.</div>
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<div>Have all your subsidiaries in higher-tax jurisdiction pay the Luxembourg subsidiary a licensing fee for the IP.</div>
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<div>Make the licensing fee equal to your revenue.</div>
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<div>And by magic, you have moved all your taxable income from the high-tax jurisdictions where it is actually earned, to the low-tax jurisdiction where your IP sits. (The classic example is pharmaceuticals: If it costs you $1 to manufacture a pill that sells in the U.S. for $1,000, you have $999 in taxable income in the U.S. But if it costs you $1 to manufacture it, and you pay $998 in licensing fees to your Irish subsidiary, then you have only $1 in taxable income in the U.S., and $998 in Ireland, where hopefully your taxes are lower.) </div>
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<div>One problem with this trick is that step 2 -- "put the IP in a subsidiary in a low-tax jurisdiction" -- isn't quite as simple as I made it sound. You can't just "put" intellectual property somewhere. You have to sell it, or license it. So if you build the intellectual property in the U.S., and then move it to a subsidiary in Luxembourg, the Luxembourg subsidiary has to pay licensing fees right back to the U.S. one, eliminating the tax savings from the licensing payments that the high-tax subsidiaries are paying to the Luxembourg one. Unless of course those payments are different. If the U.S. company licenses the technology to the Luxembourg one for $1 a year, and then licenses it right back for $100 a year, it can still take a nice $99 tax deduction. But how could you justify that?</div>
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<div>Regulators in Europe and the U.S. say that the value Amazon places on the technology behind that experience varies radically depending on which side of the Atlantic it’s on -- and which appraisal will lower its tax bill.</div>
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<div>In Europe, the e-commerce giant tells authorities that the intellectual property behind its web shopping platform is immensely valuable, justifying the billions in tax-free revenue it has collected there since moving its technology assets to tax-friendly Luxembourg a decade ago. In the U.S., however, it plays down the value of those same assets to explain why it pays so little in taxes for licensing them.</div>
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<div>I mean, I'm sure it's all fine! (Amazon "said that the IP was perishable given the high failure rate of tech companies," and argued that U.S. authorities "had drastically underestimated the amount of research and development costs that should be attributed to" its Luxembourg subsidiary.) But do you kind of get why the Deutsche Bank mirror trades leave me cold? Like, moving money from one jurisdiction to another while minimizing taxes is just ... I don't want to say that it's the point of the international financial system, but it's a point of an international financial system, anyway. </div>
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