North Korea Increases Aid to Russia, Mos... Tue Nov 19, 2024 12:29 | Marko Marjanovi?
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Indymedia Ireland is a volunteer-run non-commercial open publishing website for local and international news, opinion & analysis, press releases and events. Its main objective is to enable the public to participate in reporting and analysis of the news and other important events and aspects of our daily lives and thereby give a voice to people.
Fraud and mismanagement at University College Cork Thu Aug 28, 2025 18:30 | Calli Morganite UCC has paid huge sums to a criminal professor
This story is not for republication. I bear responsibility for the things I write. I have read the guidelines and understand that I must not write anything untrue, and I won't.
This is a public interest story about a complete failure of governance and management at UCC.
Deliberate Design Flaw In ChatGPT-5 Sun Aug 17, 2025 08:04 | Mind Agent Socratic Dialog Between ChatGPT-5 and Mind Agent Reveals Fatal and Deliberate 'Design by Construction' Flaw
This design flaw in ChatGPT-5's default epistemic mode subverts what the much touted ChatGPT-5 can do... so long as the flaw is not tickled, any usage should be fine---The epistemological question is: how would anyone in the public, includes you reading this (since no one is all knowing), in an unfamiliar domain know whether or not the flaw has been tickled when seeking information or understanding of a domain without prior knowledge of that domain???!
This analysis is a pretty unique and significant contribution to the space of empirical evaluation of LLMs that exist in AI public world... at least thus far, as far as I am aware! For what it's worth--as if anyone in the ChatGPT universe cares as they pile up on using the "PhD level scholar in your pocket".
According to GPT-5, and according to my tests, this flaw exists in all LLMs... What is revealing is the deduction GPT-5 made: Why ?design choice? starts looking like ?deliberate flaw?.
People are paying $200 a month to not just ChatGPT, but all major LLMs have similar Pro pricing! I bet they, like the normal user of free ChatGPT, stay in LLM's default mode where the flaw manifests itself. As it did in this evaluation.
AI Reach: Gemini Reasoning Question of God Sat Aug 02, 2025 20:00 | Mind Agent Evaluating Semantic Reasoning Capability of AI Chatbot on Ontologically Deep Abstract (bias neutral) Thought
I have been evaluating AI Chatbot agents for their epistemic limits over the past two months, and have tested all major AI Agents, ChatGPT, Grok, Claude, Perplexity, and DeepSeek, for their epistemic limits and their negative impact as information gate-keepers.... Today I decided to test for how AI could be the boon for humanity in other positive areas, such as in completely abstract realms, such as metaphysical thought. Meaning, I wanted to test the LLMs for Positives beyond what most researchers benchmark these for, or have expressed in the approx. 2500 Turing tests in Humanity?s Last Exam.. And I chose as my first candidate, Google DeepMind's Gemini as I had not evaluated it before on anything.
Israeli Human Rights Group B'Tselem finally Admits It is Genocide releasing Our Genocide report Fri Aug 01, 2025 23:54 | 1 of indy We have all known it for over 2 years that it is a genocide in Gaza
Israeli human rights group B'Tselem has finally admitted what everyone else outside Israel has known for two years is that the Israeli state is carrying out a genocide in Gaza
Western governments like the USA are complicit in it as they have been supplying the huge bombs and missiles used by Israel and dropped on innocent civilians in Gaza. One phone call from the USA regime could have ended it at any point. However many other countries are complicity with their tacit approval and neighboring Arab countries have been pretty spinless too in their support
With the release of this report titled: Our Genocide -there is a good chance this will make it okay for more people within Israel itself to speak out and do something about it despite the fact that many there are actually in support of the Gaza
China?s CITY WIDE CASH SEIZURES Begin ? ATMs Frozen, Digital Yuan FORCED Overnight Wed Jul 30, 2025 21:40 | 1 of indy This story is unverified but it is very instructive of what will happen when cash is removed
THIS STORY IS UNVERIFIED BUT PLEASE WATCH THE VIDEO OR READ THE TRANSCRIPT AS IT GIVES AN VERY GOOD IDEA OF WHAT A CASHLESS SOCIETY WILL LOOK LIKE. And it ain't pretty
A single video report has come out of China claiming China's biggest cities are now cashless, not by choice, but by force. The report goes on to claim ATMs have gone dark, vaults are being emptied. And overnight (July 20 into 21), the digital yuan is the only currency allowed. The Saker >>
Interested in maladministration. Estd. 2005
RTEs Sarah McInerney ? Fianna Fail?supporter? Anthony
Joe Duffy is dishonest and untrustworthy Anthony
Robert Watt complaint: Time for decision by SIPO Anthony
RTE in breach of its own editorial principles Anthony
Waiting for SIPO Anthony Public Inquiry >>
Parse failure for http://humanrights.ie/feed/. Last Retry Tuesday September 23, 2025 06:33
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Scandal Exposed- Irish Times Ran Fake Story To Protect Rich
national |
arts and media |
press release
Thursday December 08, 2016 22:13 by pbp - People Before Profit

The Irish Times headline recently ran a headline, ‘Imposing French-style wealth tax would only yield €22m.
UCD sociologist Kieran Allen asked for a right to reply but received no response to his request. Here is his exposure of how journalism sometimes functions as propaganda.
The story is based on an ESRI Working Paper entitled ‘Scenarios and Distributional Implications of a Household Wealth Tax in Ireland’. The Irish Times lifts one or two figures from the paper but fails to give any context or critically examine the report. The study draws its data from a Central Statistics Office publication, ‘Household Finance and Consumption Survey, 2013’ 2013, however, was the year when the Irish economy was still caught in the after-effects of the crash. Since then there has been a recovery in wealth.
The data from the CSO is based on self-reporting. They took a sample of 10,552 households and asked them to provide detailed information. The response rate was just 51.5%. and this reduced the validity of the data.
The rich are even more likely to hide their assets from an interviewer. The CSO recognised this problem and gave a health warning, stating that,
‘ It is well known from research in this area that it can be very difficult to get accurate data from very wealthy household, not least because they can sometimes be physically difficult to locate or contact. While these are obviously a small percentage of household, they tend to hold significant percentages of the wealth and their absence or otherwise affect the average and aggregate data’
This health warning is not explicitly referenced in the ESRI report.
The data the ESRI used excluded key sources of wealth. Its focus was exclusively on household wealth and it ignored the wealth held by publicly traded companies
On the basis of these largely unacknowledged limitations of the Household Finance and Consumption Survey, the ESRI came up with a figure of the net worth of Irish households of just €378 billion. The ESRI authors then claims that this figure represents ‘the maximum potential wealth tax base’.
This is quite simply wrong. The purpose of the Household and Finance Survey was to identify the distribution of assets – it did not give a figure for the total assets held. It could not because of the limited nature of self-reporting in its sample.
The ESRI claimed that 47% of the €378 billion wealth base or €226 billion is derived – from the value of the ‘household main residence’, typically the family home. They also claimed that only 12% of the wealth base or just €60 billion comes from finance assets.
Yet the National Accounts of the CSO state that the total financial assets of Irish households in 2013 was € 323 billion. These refer to non-property assets such as shares or cash. In other words, the ESRI were way out.
The ESRI ran a number of scenarios of how a wealth tax might work. The main variations are the thresholds of which the tax kicks in – do they start at assets valued at €500,000 or a €1million; for example; the exemptions that might be granted; the annual tax rate.
The Irish Times story only quoted a few examples that serve its propaganda purpose.
There is a French model which uses a graduated rate of 0.5% to 1.5% on thresholds above €1 million which yields the relatively low €22 million figure. Or there is a Swiss system that imposes a 0.25% wealth tax on all assets above €49,824.
The Irish Times spin is that you can either have a wealth tax which targets a rich minority and you will only raise a very limited amount. Or you can tax the majority to capture any significant revenue.
However, there are many other variations which did not feature in the their story.
One is the Norwegian model. If this were applied to Ireland, the ESRI paper acknowledged that it would yield €774 million in tax – even though its wealth tax rate is set at only 0.85%. This would also only hit the top 12% of the richest in Irish society. They would have to make annual average payment of just €3,637 to help provide public services.
This is hardly an onerous burden. If a higher tax rate was used and if we assume a far larger wealth base than the limited one claimed in the ESRI paper, even more revenue would be raised.
Social welfare recipients are under a legal compulsion to reveal their meagre assets and, if they are being means tested, their social welfare payments are systematically reduced according to these declaration. The most interesting part of the ESRI paper is the statement that these imputed reductions correspond ‘to annual net wealth rates of 5.2% on net wealth above €20,000; 10.4% above €30,000 and 21.8% above 40,000’.
Just so we are absolutely clear on this, lets translate that again.
If you are on social welfare and you declare ownership of modest assets of €40,000 plus you will be penalised with a 21.8% reduction in your social welfare.
A genuine left government would transfer this type of punitive measure from the poor to the rich. The rich would at last be forced to make real declarations of their assets – not voluntary disclosures. A tax model would be set to target the top 10% and a policy of re-distribution of wealth would be established.
Given this approach, the readership of the Irish Times can be assured that the tax take from their friends wealthy would greatly exceed €22 million
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