18 January 2014

Melbourne’s heat wave, power cuts and corporate lies


In the week  beginning on Monday the 13th of January 2014, Melbourne (and Victoria for that matter) has experienced one of the hottest periods on record in over 100 years, with the temperatures in the 40's, there can be no denial whatsoever with regards to accuracy of the event.

What is most concerning is the lies that follow after the even with regards to the availability of electricity to households.

The Australian government regularly provides false information to ‘consumers’ or the general public either indirectly or via its many registered businesses, e.g. Victoria Police falsified crime statistics, the official unemployment rate (official figure for Victoria as f Dec 2013 at 6.3%) is falsified by the Australian government to ‘entice’ the economy (read government registered businesses). 

There is no 'mandate' to provide accurate information nor is there any Act that gives a financial penalty for providing false information

Most Victorians should be familiar with the fact that most of the electricity generated is from the south eastern part of Victoria where Hazelwood, Loy Yang and Yallourn power stations reside.

There are also many other power stations scattered throughout the state, which are gas turbine, gas thermal /reciprocating and hydro electric.

During the past generation (25 years) Melbourne has grown 30% in population according to official figures.

During this period there has been little or no infrastructure projects to cater for the expanding population with regards to water storage / electricity generation, except for the controversial ‘Money for Mates’ fraudulent businesses dealings of the desalination plant at Wonthagi.

In order to save on operating costs, power companies ration the supply of electricity, to domestic customers (but NOT industry), creating greater profit for the companies and their directors, at the expense of providing an ‘essential service’ that what electricity falls under.

During the ‘heat waves’ which inevitably happen every summer at various periods, and have been happening, the public are to blame for greater electricity usage, each year, e.g. by turning on air conditioners, by the corporate media / corporations, instead of focusing on the lack of provision of an ‘essential service’ by the ‘corporations’.

What the corporate media also fail to mention is that Melbourne also has a power station in the bayside industrial suburb of Newport. 

The Newport power station ( gas thermal - 500MW capacity) is literally idling constantly, as it is cheaper to have it idle, than turning it off and back on again, but power is NOT really supplied to customers, as the corporations would have to purchase the electricity, but rather power is cut by the corporations to households in order to maximise their profits.

Melbourne’s heat wave is another big win for the corporate conglomerate, with the help of the government and its lap dog the corporate media, but then again all this information could be easily dismissed as a ‘conspiracy theory’ or some one reporting the information from the ‘tin foil hat’ brigade.

17 January 2014

‘Shocking abuse of public trust’: Columbia University prof estimates $20tln hidden in tax havens


Reuters / Gary Hershorn

Reuters / Gary Hershorn

World billionaires and mega rich companies stash trillions in so-called “treasure islands” special tax zones like the British Virgin Islands and the Cayman Islands, Jeffrey Sachs, head of Columbia University’s Earth Institute told RT at the Gaidar Forum.

“It’s estimated that there are maybe $20 trillion of assets put in these tax havens around the world,” Sachs told RT on the sidelines of the fifth annual economic forum in Moscow.

“And who creates this? Not these little islands, but the US government by approving these arrangements, the UK government because after all these are British territories,” Sachs told RT.

An estimate by Boston Consulting Group pegs offshore wealth at $8.5 trillion. The British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, and Bermuda are among the key destinations for “offshore wealth” - money that is kept abroad for tax purposes.

“It’s an abuse of the public trust,” according to Sachs. “I believe, these abuses need to stop. And it’s not just about the exchange of information – that’s not enough,” Sachs told RT.

It's about “stopping the abuse itself by letting very-very rich people from the US or Europe or mega companies like Apple or Google take their profits, and instead of paying the taxes that they should pay as decent citizens, put them tax free into these tax havens with the approval of the politicians of course, who use this to pay campaign contributions,” said Sachs.


Tax evasion continues to be a hot topic at G8 and G20 forums, as governments worldwide are looking to collect more taxes to fill budget gaps.

“I think the world is waking up to the scandal of the international tax situation,” said Sachs.
The US has gone after companies like Facebook and Apple, which doesn’t keep company money on a tropical island, but in Ireland, which offers a corporate tax rate of 12.5 percent, instead of Uncle Sam’s 30 percent.

Apple isn’t alone. American Express, Dell, Microsoft, Nike, and other Fortune five hundred companies bear evidence of tax haven profits in their financial reports. Billions of dollars are saved by keeping money from the US tax system.

The Gaidar Forum, one of Russia’s top economic and political conference of the year, runs January 15-18, 2014. It is named for the late Egor Gaidar, a former Russian prime minister known for his “shock therapy” liberal economic policies during the transition to a market economy in the early 1990s.

The forum drew economic analysts from across the globe. Sachs is a professor at Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs in New York City and is a special adviser to the United Nations.

Billionaire Club

Though 2013 - a year marked by extreme austerity, unemployment, and hardship - billionaires and companies with offshore accounts continued to profit.

In the last year alone, billionaires, some of whom store their wealth in the cited tax havens, were able to add $226 billion to their personal wealth, according to The Wealth X and UBS Billionaire Census 2013.

The combined fortune of the world's billionaires now stands at $6.5 trillion, up from $3.1 trillion in 2009, according to the Billionaire Census.

rt.com 16 Jan 2014

How many 'successful' Australian business 'gurus' are involved in off shore tax havens, totally immune from prosecution?
 

Thugs bash teenager then send him graphic photo of them pulling hair and holding throat

THUGS who bashed a teenager and later sent him a graphic photo playing with his unconscious body have escaped with a "slap on the wrist''. 
 
The photo sent to the 17-year-old victim's phone showed the men pulling his hair and holding his throat while he is knocked out and defenceless.

Brett Tait, the father of the victim, is furious the pack's ringleader Jake Edward Luckett was given just a suspended six month jail term in the Maroochydore Magistrates Court this week.

"The level of violence in the community is ridiculous. To be slapped on the wrist with a six month suspended sentence is disgusting,'' Mr Tait told The Courier-Mail.

"To me that's not a punishment. They can go back to their normal life. My son still has nightmares over it. He was fairly violently beaten up.''

Other men involved in the attack and in taking photographs were not charged after agreeing to give evidence against Luckett, Mr Tait said.

The men bashed the victim in the street after falsely accusing him of damaging a car at Mt Coolum on March 9 last year.

"We're lucky, we still have our son. There's other parents out there that aren't lucky. The court system is not right,'' Mr Tait said.

"That photo wasn't just sent to my son. It was a badge of honour. They sent it out to everybody, it went right out through the Coast.

"We are still disappointed the two men holding him by the hair and the throat weren't charged.''

couriermail.com.au

Another judge to be added to the Corrupt Judges list.

16 January 2014

Australian Tax Office (ATO) is NOT a legal entity

In the corporate world of high dollar, white collar crime many deals are struck behind closed doors involving doctors, lawyers, police, politicians, judges and others which generally go unnoticed by the masses, and in certain instances information is deliberately withheld from the populous by the corporate 'crony' media.

Australia is a corporation set up in such a manner that corporate entities and businesses are supported by the tax paying general populous, to such a degree that a corporate structure can factually result in 0% tax paid, via registration in 'tax' havens, 'shelf' companies etc, actions which are deemed 'illegal' if done by the masses.

Court cases and rulings are invaluable tools, as not only are they 'legal', but also may set a precedence for other or similar cases, and can and are often used as reference for and by judges / magistrates, in the corporate places of business, trading or commerce commonly known as 'courts'.


From the 'print friendly' ATO the corporate spiel is as follows:
 
The role of the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) is to ensure the community has confidence in the administration of Australia's taxation and superannuation systems.
The taxation and superannuation systems are part of Australia's social and economic infrastructure. A major part of our administration of these systems is emphasising to the community the importance of willing and proper participation in underpinning nation building.
Our vision is that Australians value their tax and superannuation systems as community assets, where willing participation is recognised as good citizenship.
A major factor in achieving our goals is the way we align our strategies, planning and reporting. We integrate how we plan and deliver to ensure we use resources responsibly.
Our work is managed by our Executive and delivered through business and service lines. We work within important frameworks and models, such as the compliance model, integrity framework, Taxpayers' Charter and service standards. These are central to how we work.
We have some specific requirements for businesses and individuals who we procure goods and services from or who tender for our business. For organisations doing business with the ATO, our ABN number is 51 824 753 556.

ref:  http://www.ato.gov.au/printfriendly.aspx?url=/About-ATO/About-us/Contact-us/

Corpau has obtained documentation that states that the Australian Tax Office (ATO) ABN: 51 824 753 556 is NOT a legal entity.

The documentation is from the HIGH COURT of AUSTRALIA, Brisbane Office, lodged on the 1st day of March 2000. The plaintiff being IVAN GORSHKOV and the defendant Stephen Chapman (Deputy Commissioner of Taxation).

THIS DOCUMENTATION NEEDS TO BE PASSED ON TO EVERY AUSTRALIAN TAX PAYING CITIZEN.



The document is as follows:






















How to stop your smartphone from tracking and sending your location


Photo remixed from an original by Yurchyks/Shutterstock.

Your smartphone tracks your location for all sorts of useful things—driving navigation, updating the weather forecast, and even live traffic updates. However, if you'd rather not have Google and Apple tracking that information—not to mention having it available on your phone for thieves to find—here's how you can turn off location tracking.

Location tracking actually provides lots of useful things to us, but while Google and Apple collect all that data anonymously, it's still stored on your phone (and in Apple's case, your computer). Anyone with the right tools could easily find out where you've been with your phone over a significant period of time, so if you're worried about this, you may want to turn this features off. Here's how.

Disable Location Caching on AndroidP

How to Stop Your Smartphone from Constantly Tracking Your Location
Luckily, Android's location tracking is actually an opt-in feature. You may or may not have enabled it when you first set up your phone. To find out, head to Settings > Location and Security, and uncheck "Use Wireless Networks". This will make applications like Maps a bit slower to grab your current location, and it won't be quite as accurate, but Google won't be collecting any location data, nor will it be stored on your phone thereafter.

However, if you want to clear the previously cached locations from your phone, you'll need to rooted your device. Then after installing the free Location Cache app, you can view a map of your tracked locations on it, as well as clear them from your phone and disable the cache with one tap.

Disable Location Tracking on iOS 

How to Stop Your Smartphone from Constantly Tracking Your Location
In iOS, the situation is a bit more complicated. Turning off location services will stop sending data back to Apple, but it will still cache your location on your phone, so anyone with access to your computer or your phone can see where you've been (since iOS syncs all that information back to iTunes).

The only way to do anything about it is to jailbreak your device and install the previously mentioned Untrackerd app. Untrackerd is very simple, though, just install it, and it'll clear your location cache and prevent it from recording anything in the future. It doesn't even have an icon on your home screen—just install it and forget it.

Location tracking can be a great thing—in fact, we think it's one of the best things about smartphones. However, if you don't like the idea of big brother knowing your whereabouts—or if you're concerned about what could happen if your phone was lost or stolen—these simple tips should help keep your phones clean of location information.

ref: http://lifehacker.com/5854315/how-to-stop-your-smartphone-from-tracking-your-every-move

Google's Nest buy: Soon ALL your HOMES are BELONG to US

3.2 billion reasons why the Chocolate Factory will own the Internet of Things

Analysis Google’s proposed $3.2bn purchase of Nest Labs, a maker of internet-connected round-the-home devices, shows that the online advertising giant considers the Internet of Things a serious proposition. A very serious proposition.

It’s easy to be dismissive of the move. Nest is best known for an internet-enabled thermostat and a likewise cloud-connected smoke detector, both snazzy looking but ultimately prosaic devices. Why the heck, you might wonder, is Google willing to spend $3.2bn on a thermostat firm, especially when it values that company at more than 10 times its sales, derived from shipment figures?

Because Google doesn’t really care about the thermostat or the smoke detector, useful though they may be as devices and as products to sell. What it’s after is the platform Nest has created and upon which these products are based - where many, many more can also be built.

Nest has core hardware at the heart of its devices. Its founders are too smart to re-invent the wheel every time they develop a new product. It also has the server technology which bridges all the Nest devices out there in people’s homes - a fair few of them Google homes, according to Google’s Larry Page - and ties them to the apps on users’ smartphones. That server technology can undoubtedly scale far beyond the traffic Nest currently handles.

Together these elements form a platform that Nest, or Google, can sell as the foundation for other firms’ Internet of Things offerings. Imagine Google allowing anyone access to Nest’s core hardware and the software that runs on it, as it already does with the Android operating system, but retaining the server smarts, forcing anyone using a product based on Nest technology to adopt Google as a service provider (again as Android users must).

Nest founder and VP of Engineering Matt Rogers insists the Google grab won’t see users’ domestic data being mined on Google’s servers, which will undoubtedly be a key concern among many owners of Nest kit - as it should be for anyone embracing Internet of Things devices.

“Our privacy policy clearly limits the use of customer information to providing and improving Nest’s products and services,” says Rogers. “We’ve always taken privacy seriously and this will not change.”

The question of data ownership is going to be of increasing importance in the Internet of Things world, especially as the technology evolves beyond basic hardware-talks-to-phone into broader hardware-talks-to-commercial-servers setups. And this is an approach - whatever Nest says about privacy - which has now been given 3.2 billion endorsements by a company that is all about drawing business intelligence from ordinary folks’ data (albeit willingly given).

Internet of Things coverage tends to centre on the essential novelty of linking "non-technology" products, like thermostats, to the cloud to give them extended remote control. But these devices can also host sensors which feed back environmental data about the location in which they are situated. Google’s servers can crunch those numbers to analyse usage patterns and thus extract information to, say, allow homeowners to use their heating more efficiently, reducing their energy costs.

If that seems incompatible with Nest’s existing privacy policy, Google simply has to do what it always: provide an opt-in to its energy efficiency or other service in which punters get the benefit for free in exchange for voluntarily surrendering their data. Especially now that we live in a world where every now product or service we buy requires we establish yet another online account. Give us your data, Google will say, and we’ll give you a single sign-in for all of that.

Whether Nest continues with its current approach - making cloud-connected devices that it sells under its own name - or it attempts to become a foundation technology upon which other companies construct their devices or Internet-enable existing devices remains to be seen.

This is what some rival Internet of Things players, most notably Electric Imp, are trying to do: to become not a branded device-maker along the lines of Apple or Samsung, but a technology provider styled on Intel, with their own "inside" sticker placed alongside the manufacturer logo on the connected fridge, car, oven, thermostat, bike lock, burglar alarm, electricity meter et cetera.

Nest may very well try to have both cake and a full belly, and adopt both approaches, especially if Google wants to give the device-side technology away in order to buy itself a massive market share, just as it has done in the smartphone market with Android.

Google’s ownership of the Internet of Things starts here. ®

theregister.co.uk 15 Jan 2014

Part of the 'Nanny State' agenda, supported fully by politicians and law makers.

An excerpt form the article appearing on news.com.au :

ref: http://www.news.com.au/world/breaking-news/googles-nest-in-every-smart-home/story-e6frfkui-1226802770534

Analysts anticipate an entire line of internet-connected home products will be coming to countries around the world. Some could be melded with existing Google services in an effort to make people's lives easier. Such a move also would provide Google with the means to gather more insight that could be used to sell the digital advertising that generates most of the company's revenue.

Google also could plug its digital mapping software into Nest products so it could learn the layout of a home, said Brian Proffitt, a management instructor at the University of Notre Dame. That knowledge could be deployed to delegate such household chores as vacuuming to a robot that would be able to rely on the interior maps to navigate its way through an entire home without human help, Proffitt said.

There is a push for 'authorities' (read corporations) to [forcefully] install smart meters in peoples homes, under the 'benefit to the customer' propaganda.

Now companies will have access to every single action taken in your own home, via 'smart' appliances.

Every step you currently take is monitored by 'authorities' via technology, such as smartphones, which can have the camera and microphone turned on remotely, GPS technology in new motor vehicles, as well as government installed cameras on public roads.

There is literally no such thing as  online consumer privacy protection, further supported by the lack of 'laws' and consequently penalties for corporations.

15 January 2014

Police harassment to admit to crimes not committed

To the average Australian when asked what a policeman (or woman) is or what the role of the police is supposed to be, many definitions can be given by the general populous, including, peace keepers, enforcers of the law, revenue raisers (in relation to speed camera infringement notices), to just plain corrupt cops.

In Australia it is commonly accepted that the police are government public servants, employed to keep law and order, and respond to criminal activities.

According to Black’s Law Dictionary the definition of police is as follows:

Police is the function of that branch of the administrative machinery of government which is charged with the preservation of public order and tranquillity, the promotion of the public health, safety, and morals, and the prevention, detection, and punishment of crimes.

From what the general populous ‘believe’ the police are, to what the factual reality is, there is quite a significant difference.

Facts:

  • The police in Australia are not allowed to work for corporations.


  • The profit / loss statements (from ‘jobs’) of these companies are kept secret from the public.

  • In Australia, police ‘charges’ are not based on ‘laws’, but rather contractual ‘consent’ or agreements.

  • Police salary /performance is based upon conviction rate or charges laid on the unsuspecting masses.

  • The police CAN be secretly taped (video/audio) and the evidence used in Australian courts (read businesses).

The police are ever increasingly being caught out committing illegal / ‘unlawful’ activities by the general populous, only  to be broadcast on the global arena, via social media websites which in some cases the ‘evidence’ is erased by governments.

What the majority of the general populous do not understand is that when police approach you for questioning (for an alleged ‘offence’), the police are actually trying to engage you into a binding ‘contract’.

If this (contract) is not established or consent given (most times via police intimidation / threats) at the beginning, then there is NO ‘LAWFUL’ AUTHORITY over you whatsoever.

Corpau has been made aware of a matter involving police from the station of Melbourne’s north western suburb, of Avondale Heights attempting to extort a confession from  a law abiding citizen for  an alleged offence that was never committed by that individual.

The two female police ‘officers’ proceeded to say that if the person owned up, since they have a ‘clean record’ they (the police) will ‘let go’ the individual. The alleged offence was in relation to apparent ‘shoplifting’ by the harassed individual.

The police acted without any investigation into the matter or even viewing the closed circuit video footage of where the alleged offence occurred.

Some frightened individuals, or people of a less strong character, could easily succumb to police intimidation and admit to a crime that they factually never committed.

The real question begs to be asked and answered, is how many people are ‘criminals’ or even in prison due to corrupt police and the judicial system incarcerating them for ‘alleged’ crimes committed.