Author Archives: Andrea

916 Million in one year

New York Times: Donald Trump Tax Records Show He Could Have Avoided Taxes for Nearly Two Decades, The Times Found.

“Donald J. Trump declared a $916 million loss on his 1995 income tax returns, a tax deduction so substantial it could have allowed him to legally avoid paying any federal income taxes for up to 18 years, records obtained by The New York Times show.

The 1995 tax records, never before disclosed, reveal the extraordinary tax benefits that Mr. Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, derived from the financial wreckage he left behind in the early 1990s through mismanagement of three Atlantic City casinos, his ill-fated foray into the airline business and his ill-timed purchase of the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan.

Tax experts hired by The Times to analyze Mr. Trump’s 1995 records said that tax rules especially advantageous to wealthy filers would have allowed Mr. Trump to use his $916 million loss to cancel out an equivalent amount of taxable income over an 18-year period.”

“Ethical failings in a politician are like raisins in a cookie: They shouldn’t be there. They disgust people.“

Huffington Post: John Oliver Is Back, And He Wants You To Get ‘F**king Outraged’ Over Donald Trump’s Scandals.

“If you think this election is simply a choice between two candidates with a scandal-filled history, John Oliver has a message for you… and it comes in the form of raisins.

In his return to HBO’s “Last Week Tonight“ on Sunday, Oliver took an in-depth look at the scandals surrounding both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump and found they’re not even close to equal.”

Gegenwind für Datenkrake

Das wurde ja mal Zeit! Obwohl ich meinen WhatsApp-Account gelöscht und die App vom Handy entfernt habe, verfolge ich weiter die Datenschutz-Frage von WhatsApp/Facebook.

Die Zeit: Datenschützer verbietet Facebook den Datenabgleich.
“Seit August gibt WhatsApp Kontakt- und Nutzungsdaten an Facebook weiter. Jetzt hat Hamburgs Datenschutzbehörde das untersagt. Facebook verweist zunächst nur auf EU-Recht.”

Der Grund, warum ich so vehement gegen die Praktiken von WhatsApp und Facebook bin, ist in dem Artikel erwähnt:

“Nach Caspars Angaben sind nicht nur Nutzer von WhatsApp oder Facebook gefährdet. Hinzu kämen noch “viele Millionen Personen, deren Kontaktdaten aus den Adressbüchern der Nutzer zu WhatsApp hochgeladen wurden, ohne dass diese etwas mit Facebook oder WhatsApp zu tun haben müssen. Diese gigantische Menge von Daten hat Facebook zwar nach eigenem Bekunden noch nicht erhoben. Die Antwort von Facebook, dass dies lediglich zur Zeit noch nicht erfolgt sei, gibt jedoch Anlass zur Sorge, dass das Ausmaß des Datenverstoßes noch massivere Auswirkungen nach sich ziehen wird.””

Deutsche Welle: Datenschützer stoppt Facebook. “Für die großen Internetkonzerne und die sozialen Netzwerke sind die Daten ihrer Nutzer eine Goldgrube, zum Ärger der Datenschützer. Gegen Facebook holen sie jetzt den großen Hammer raus.”

“Hamburgs Datenschutzbeauftragter Johannes Caspar hat Facebook verboten, Daten deutscher WhatsApp-Nutzer zu erheben und zu speichern. Dazu habe er eine Verwaltungsanordnung erlassen, teilte der für Facebook bundesweit zuständige Datenschützer der Hansestadt mit. Zudem müsse der US-Konzern alle bereits von dem Messaging-Dienst erhaltenen Daten löschen.”

“Hahn: If they have really got it, they have been very clever in keeping it secret.”

German History in Documents and Images: Transcript of Surreptitiously Taped Conversations among German Nuclear Physicists at Farm Hall (August 6-7, 1945).(PDF)

“At the beginning of the war, Germany’s leading nuclear physicists were called to the army weapons department. There, as part of the “uranium project“ under the direction of Werner Heisenberg, they were charged with determining the extent to which nuclear fission could aid in the war effort. (Nuclear fission had been discovered by Otto Hahn and Lise Meitner in 1938.) Unlike their American colleagues in the Manhattan Project, German physicists did not succeed in building their own nuclear weapon. In June 1942, the researchers informed Albert Speer that they were in no position to build an atomic bomb with the resources at hand in less than 3-5 years, at which point the project was scrapped.

After the end of the war, both the Western Allies and the Soviet Union tried to recruit the German scientists for their own purposes. From July 3, 1945, to January 3, 1946, the Allies incarcerated ten German nuclear physicists at the English country estate of Farm Hall, their goal being to obtain information about the German nuclear research project by way of surreptitiously taped conversations. The following transcript includes the scientists’ reactions to reports that America had dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. The scientists also discuss their relationship to the Nazi regime and offer some prognoses for Germany’s future. As the transcript shows, Otto Hahn was especially shaken by the dropping of the bomb; later, hecampaigned against the misuse of nuclear energy for military purposes.”

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