Before the UN Conference on a Nuclear Weapons [WMD] Free Zone in the Middle East
Edward Hicks, Peaceable Kingdom, c. 1834, oil on canvas – Lion with Lamb
In the spirit of TRANSCEND co-founder and friend Dieter Fischer, I’ll start with a joke. When Arafat and Rabin die they ask God, “When will there be peace in the Middle East?” God says, “Not in my lifetime.”
15 July 2019 (UN Environment)*— Today is Youth Skills Day. There are 1.2 billion young people aged 15 to 24 years in the world, accounting for 16 per cent of the global population.
Engaging young people in sustainable development efforts is central to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.
And, to averting the worst threats and challenges to sustainable development, including the impacts of climate change, unemployment, poverty, gender inequality, conflict and migration.
How developing countries lose $3 billion every day through an accounting trick that allows corporations to avoid paying tax.
Image: Kurtis Garbutt, CC by 2.0
10 July 2019 (openDemocracy)* — Amazon.com Inc. was brought to court by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in 2017 for transfer pricing discrepancies. In 2005 and 2006, the multinational tech company had transferred $255 million in royalty payments to its tax haven in Luxembourg, but according to the IRS these royalty payments should have amounted to $3.5 billion. This transfer pricing adjustment would have increased Amazon’s federal tax payments by more than $1 billion.
(Wall Street International)*— This conversation is not an easy one and I ask you all to bear with me as I open a subject that seems if not politically incorrect, at least forbidden in polite company…
Some of you may not have even heard it; others may have firm and serious opinions… It involves individual choice, once a basic American principle that has morphed into the extreme control over our lives of late stage capitalism.