[Majorityrights News] Alex Navalny, born 4th June, 1976; died at Yamalo-Nenets penitentiary 16th February, 2024 Posted by Guessedworker on Friday, 16 February 2024 23:43.
[Majorityrights Central] A couple of exchanges on the nature and meaning of Christianity’s origin Posted by Guessedworker on Tuesday, 25 July 2023 22:19.
[Majorityrights News] Is the Ukrainian counter-offensive for Bakhmut the counter-offensive for Ukraine? Posted by Guessedworker on Thursday, 18 May 2023 18:55.
Once again free speech is being restricted by anti-terrorist legislation. This happened in 1940 when Defence Regulation 18B was used to detain Oswald Mosley and a thousand of his followers. The Act had been introduced to control the IRA but it was used against peace campaigners. Dangerous extremists should be locked up but law-abiding groups should be free to express their opinions. Transgressors are liable to prosecution, so be careful what you write or say.
Colin Jordan
In 1965 Colin Jordan was sentenced to eighteen months in prison for publishing a leaflet entitled ‘The Coloured Invasion’. He was the first to be prosecuted under the new Race Relations Act. At that time Special Branch were scrutinizing everything produced by the so called far-Right and several people were threatened with prosecution. Bill Whitbread of the Trade Union Anti-Immigration Movement (Tru Aim) got over the problem by publishing a leaflet made up entirely of press cuttings. He could not be prosecuted for reproducing reports from the national press.
In those days Special Branch officers took shorthand notes at street corner meetings. Every word from the platform was dutifully written down. I once brought a smile to the face of a Special Branch officer at a meeting in Bethnal Green by claiming that West Indians are pouring into the country and committing, “rape, arson and buggery.” Today, that would probably get one arrested.
The powerful Zionist lobby links any criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism. They are hounding Jeremy Corbyn and they had Jez Turner imprisoned for commemorating a Stern Gang atrocity. Their arrogance is intolerable but there’s no point in provoking them. Far better to chose one’s words carefully and remain at liberty.
The ‘National Action’ case is another matter. Since the murder of the Labour MP Jo Cox, threats must be taken seriously. The State was right to lock up Jack Renshaw for threatening to kill Labour MP Rosie Cooper. It’s unlikely that he would have carried out his threat but his drunken boasting has earned him a life sentence.
Just as stupid was the photofit picture of Prince Harry posted by Michal Szewczuk, which got him four years in prison, and the threatening blog posted by Oskar Dunn-Kaczorowski, for which he was sentenced to eighteen months.
Words and actions have consequences. When somebody threw a milkshake at Nigel Farage, the ‘entertainer’ Jo Brand said that it should have been battery acid, She is a former psychiatric nurse, a medical professional who has promised, “to do no harm.”.She is lucky that the police have decided not to prosecute. If she had been a member of National Action she would now be doing a life sentence.
European Army
The idea of a European Army is anathema to the Brexiteers but it makes sense. If the leading nations of Europe pooled their resources we could have an army of half a million men at no additional cost to any member state. NATO is a European army with the addition of Canada and the United States. By having common arms, ammunition and command structures, the nations of the alliance are able to fight together. All that would be necessary to create a European Army would be for the US and Canada to withdraw from NATO. This would not be a hostile departure, 75 years after World War Two, many Americans, including President Donald Trump, think it’s time for Europe to defend herself.
A start has already been made with the Franco-German Brigade, known as Eurocorps, which is stationed at Strasbourg. This is the latest in a long list European Armies.
Facebook May Pose a Greater Danger Than Wall Street
Payments can happen cheaply and easily without banks or credit card companies, as has already been demonstrated—not in the United States but in China. Unlike in the U.S., where numerous firms feast on fees from handling and processing payments, in China most money flows through mobile phones nearly for free. In 2018 these cashless payments totaled a whopping $41.5 trillion; and 90% were through Alipay and WeChat Pay, a pair of digital ecosystems that blend social media, commerce and banking. According to a 2018 article in Bloomberg titled “Why China’s Payment Apps Give U.S. Bankers Nightmares”:
The nightmare for the U.S. financial industry is that a technology company—whether from China or a homegrown juggernaut such as Amazon.com Inc. or Facebook Inc.—replicates the success of Alipay and WeChat in America. The stakes are enormous, potentially carving away billions of dollars in annual revenue from major banks and other firms.
That threat may now be materializing. On June 18, Facebook unveiled a white paper outlining ambitious plans to create a new global cryptocurrency called Libra, to be launched in 2020. Facebook reportedly has high hopes that Libra will become the foundation for a new financial system free of control by Wall Street power brokers and central banks.
But apparently Libra will not be competing with Visa or Mastercard. In fact, the Libra Association lists those two giants among its 28 soon-to-be founding members. Others include Paypal, Stripe, Uber, Lyft and eBay. Facebook has reportedly courted dozens of financial institutions and other tech companies to join the Libra Association, an independent foundation that will contribute capital and help govern the digital currency. Entry barriers are high, with each founding member paying a minimum of $10 million to join. This gives them one vote (or 1% of the total vote, whichever is larger) in the Libra Association council. Members are also entitled to a share proportionate to their investment of the dividends earned from interest on the Libra reserve—the money that users will pay to acquire the Libra currency.
Nouriel Roubini
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@Nouriel
It will start as a private, permissioned, not-trustless, centralized oligopolistic members-only club. So much for calling it “blockchain”. Like all “enterprise DLT” it is blockchain in name only and an monopoly to extract massive seignorage from billions of users. A monopoly scam https://twitter.com/coindesk/status/1140620454262124545 …
CoinDesk
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@coindesk
Noted economist Nouriel Roubini (@Nouriel) has said Facebook’s soon-to-be unveiled cryptocurrency is not really crypto or blockchain. http://ow.ly/Srmc50uG7Yk
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12:36 AM - Jun 18, 2019
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Another Zero Hedge writer calls Libra “The Dollar’s Killer App,” which threatens “not only the power of central banks but also the government’s money monopoly itself.”
From Frying Pan to Fire?
To the crypto-anarchist community, usurping the power of central banks and governments may sound like a good thing. But handing global power to the corporate-controlled Libra Association could be a greater nightmare. So argues Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes, who writes in The Financial Times:
This currency would insert a powerful new corporate layer of monetary control between central banks and individuals. Inevitably, these companies will put their private interests — profits and influence — ahead of public ones. …
The Libra Association’s goals specifically say that [they] will encourage “decentralised forms of governance.” In other words, Libra will disrupt and weaken nation states by enabling people to move out of unstable local currencies and into a currency denominated in dollars and euros and managed by corporations. …
What Libra backers are calling ‘decentralisation’ is in truth a shift of power from developing world central banks toward multinational corporations and the US Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank.
Power will shift to the Fed and ECB because the dollar and the euro will squeeze out weaker currencies in developing countries. As seen recently in Greece, the result will be to cause their governments to lose control of their currencies and their economies.
Pros and Cons
Caitlin Long, co-founder of the Wyoming Blockchain Coalition, recently agreed that Libra was a Trojan horse but predicted it would have some beneficial effects. For one, she thought it would impose discipline on the U.S. banking system by leading to populist calls to repeal its corporate subsidies. The Fed is now paying its member banks 2.35% in risk-free interest on their excess reserves, which this year is projected to total $36 billion of corporate welfare to U.S. banks—about half the sum spent on the U.S. food stamp program. If Facebook parks its entire U.S. dollar balance at the Federal Reserve through one of its bank partners, it could earn the same rate. But Long predicted that Facebook would have to pay interest to Libra users to avoid a chorus of critics, who would loudly publicize how much money Facebook and its partners were pocketing from the interest on the money users traded for their Libra currency.
But that was before the Libra white paper came out. It reveals the profits will indeed be divvied among Facebook’s Libra partners rather than shared with users. At one time, we earned interest on our deposits in government-insured banks. With Libra, we will get no interest on our money, which will be entrusted to uninsured crypto exchanges, which are coming under increasing regulatory pressure due to lack of transparency and operational irregularities.
United Kingdom economics professor Alistair Milne points to another problem with the Libra cryptocurrency: Unlike Bitcoin, it will be a “stablecoin,” whose value will be tied to a basket of fiat currencies and short-term government securities. That means it will need the backing of real money to maintain its fixed price. If reserves do not cover withdrawals, who will be responsible for compensating Libra holders? Ideally, Milne writes, reserves would be held with the central bank; but central banks will be reluctant to support a private currency.
Long also predicts that Facebook’s cryptocurrency will be a huge honeypot of data for government officials, since every transaction will be traceable. But other reviewers see this as Libra’s most fatal flaw. Facebook has been called Big Brother, the ultimate government surveillance tool. Conspiracy theorists link it to the CIA and the U.S. Department of Defense. Facebook has already demonstrated that it is an untrustworthy manager of personal data. How then can we trust it with our money?
Why Use a Cryptocurrency at All?
Why has Facebook chosen to use a cryptocurrency rather than following WeChat and AliPay in doing a global payments network in the traditional way? Yan Meng, vice president of the Chinese Software Developer Network, says Facebook’s fragmented user base across the world leaves it with no better choice than to borrow ideas from blockchain and cryptocurrency.
“Facebook just can’t do a global payments network via traditional methods, which require applying for a license and preparing foreign exchange reserves with local banking, one market after another,” Meng said. “The advantage of WeChat and AliPay is they have already gained a significant number of users from just one giant economy that accounts for 20 percent of the world’s population.” They have no need to establish their own digital currencies, which they still regard as too risky.
Meng suspects that Facebook’s long-term ambition is to become a stateless central bank that uses Libra as a base currency. He writes, “With sufficient incentives, nodes of Facebook’s Libra network would represent Facebook to push for utility in various countries for its 2.7 billion users in business, investment, trade and financial services,” which “would help complete a full digital economy empire.”
The question is whether regulators will allow that sort of competition with the central banking system. Immediately after Facebook released its Libra cryptocurrency plan, financial regulators in Europe voiced concerns over the potential danger of Facebook running a “shadow bank.” Maxine Waters, who heads the Financial Services Committee for the U.S. House of Representatives, asked Facebook to halt its development of Libra until hearings could be held. She said:
Posted by DanielS on Wednesday, 26 June 2019 17:03.
Governor Wallace put on a show of defiance against Katzenbach as he brought Federal authority to open the doors of The University of Alabama to integration.
The night before, Wallace had gone undercover to meet with Federal officials and plead with them to understand that he had to put on a display of resistance but that he would step aside to integration after a speech at the door.
DAILYKENN.com—Blacks dominate interracial homicides much as they dominate basketball.
There were 40 interracial homicides in Alabama in 2016. 31 of those — or 78 percent — involved black suspects and white victims. The statistic contradicts the media-driven myth of white-on-black violence.
By comparison, 74.4 percent of NBA players is black.
26 percent of the state’s population is black; a ratio of about 2.6 per 10 residents. The ratio of black suspects in interracial homicides is 7.8 per 10 instances.
Most Americans are convinced that forced racial segregation was due to white racism; an irrational dislike for blacks. In reality racial segregation was intended to protect whites from black violence.
Interracial rape is also dominated by blacks. 87 percent of interracial rapes (8.7 in 10) involved black suspects and white victims, a fact ignored by fake feminists who continue to portray white men as a “rape culture.”
From The 2016 Alabama Uniform Crime Report via sbpdl.com ▼
- There were 40 arrests for interracial homicide in the state in 2016. Blacks were represented as 31 of those individuals arrested for homicide in an interracial murder (black on white)
- Though they represent 26 percent of the state population, in 2016 Alabama, blacks were 78 percent of homicide suspects in interracial (involving a black suspect/white victim or white suspect/black victim) murder…
- There were 260 arrests for interracial rape in the state in 2016. Blacks were represented as 227 of those individuals arrested for rape in an interracial sexual assault (black on white)
- Though they represent 26 percent of the state population, in 2016 Alabama, blacks were 87 percent of rape suspects in interracial involving a black suspect/white victim or white suspect/black victim) rape…
In the upper echelons of the Trump administration, hawkish voices on Iran predominate—most notably Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Adviser John Bolton. But as tensions between the U.S. and Iran have escalated over the last few weeks, there’s been another, far different voice in the president’s ear: that of Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
A source familiar with the conversations told The Daily Beast that, in recent weeks, the Fox News host has privately advised Trump against taking military action against Iran. And a senior administration official said that during the president’s recent conversations with the Fox primetime host, Carlson has bashed the more “hawkish members” of his administration.
While some Fox News hosts have argued that a conflict with Iran would be justified, Carlson has consistently criticized U.S. military intervention abroad, particularly in the Middle East. In recent weeks, he has questioned whether war with Iran would be “in anyone’s interest.” Last month, he publicly chided Bolton, saying he was intentionally escalating tensions, and that a potential conflict would “be like Christmas, Thanksgiving, his birthday wrapped into one.”
Colin Jordan.jpg?r=1561980880)
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg (Mike Deeroski/Flickr)(CC BY 2.0)
