Majorityrights News > Category: Law & Order

Salvini quotes Ezra Pound, “If a man is not ready to fight for his ideas, either his ideas are worthless, or he is,”

Italian ethnonationalist leader Matteo Salvini is to stand trial on charges of illegally detaining migrants at sea after senators voted Wednesday to strip him of his parliamentary immunity.

The Globe Post, 12 Feb 2020:

A court in Sicily recommended that former interior minister Salvini stand trial for blocking migrants from disembarking from a coast guard boat last July.

But ministers cannot be tried for actions taken while in office unless their parliamentary immunity is revoked.

The Senate’s decision sends the chief of the anti-immigrant League party to trial for abuse of power and illegal detention, charges for which he faces up to 15 years in jail.

“I have defended Italy. I have full and total faith in the justice system,” Salvini told ANSA news agency after the vote.

“I am not worried at all, and I’m proud of what I’ve done,” he said, adding he would “do it again when I get back into power.”

Salvini had refused to allow 116 rescued migrants to leave the Gregoretti coast guard boat – where they had been languishing for about a week in insalubrious conditions – until a deal was reached with other European states to host them.

A Catania court accused him of “abuse of power” in blocking them on board from July 27 to July 31 last year, and of illegally detaining them.

Salvini insists the decision had the backing of the government and Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte.

‘Head Held High’

Before the debate began, Salvini took to Facebook to say he had his “head held high, with the calm conscience of those who have defended their land and people.”

“If a man is not ready to fight for his ideas, either his ideas are worthless, or he is,” Salvini wrote, quoting Ezra Pound, a 20th-century American poet known for his fascist sympathies.

The Gregoretti on July 25 took on board 140 migrants who were trying to make the perilous crossing from war-torn Libya to Europe – the same day 110 migrants drowned off the Libyan coast.

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This plaque commemorates the first Boy Scout-Troop in America, “The Lord Baden-Powell Troop”, Troop 4, which gathered there, at Nishuane School, Montclair, New Jersey. My Boy Scout Troop, 12, met on the other side, the White side of Montclair at Watchung School. But Nishuane shool is not only the initial gathering place of the massive institution of Boy Scouts of America, which was ultimately subverted by liberalism, viz. as it opened the gate for pedophilia; but Nishuane also happens to be the majority black school where I got bused for the liberal social engineering program of “integration” of White kids with blacks, back in September 1971, when I was ten years old. A trauma of another kind for kids, an awakening indeed to the harrowing nightmare of imposed integration with blacks.  DanielS

Boy Scouts bankruptcy: What we know about victims, assets and the future of scouting

USA Today, 18 Feb 2020:

The Boy Scouts of America filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection early Tuesday as the organization faces 275 abuse lawsuits and potentially an additional 1,400 cases to come.

Having already paid more than $150 million in settlements and legal costs between 2017 and 2019, the Boy Scouts hopes to contain the financial damage of the abuse scandal and emerge as a more sustainable organization.

Bankruptcy was “the only viable option” for the Boy Scouts to consolidate numerous cases in one proceeding, pay its victims and emerge as a sustainable entity, the organization said.

But some victims attorneys have said the nonprofit is is turning to bankruptcy court to escape its obligations.

Chapter 11 bankruptcy: Boy Scouts files for court protection in the face of thousands of child abuse allegations.

More than 130 million Americans and more than 35 million volunteers have participated in the Boy Scouts since it was chartered by Congress in 1916. The Irving, Texas-based group currently has about 2.2 million youth participants, 800,000 adult volunteers, 261 local councils and 81,000 Scouting units.

Tuesday’s court filing raises questions that are not likely to be answered soon. Here’s what we know about how the bankruptcy process could unfold:

Could the Boy Scouts go away?

Bankruptcy is a legal process provided for in the U.S. Constitution that allows organizations that can no longer pay their debts a chance to reduce their liabilities. It’s designed to give organizations a second chance, and many major companies have survived the process, such as General Motors and United Airlines. Others have gone out of business, such as Toys R Us and Circuit City.

Theoretically, the national Boy Scouts organization could be dissolved as a result of the bankruptcy. Chapter 11, the type of bankruptcy the Boy Scouts seeks, allows an organization to be liquidated to pay off creditors, which in this case would include abuse victims. If that happens, the organization’s assets would likely be sold off piece by piece. Local councils could form a new entity to oversee themselves or operate independently.

It’s more likely that the Boy Scouts will reach a broad settlement with victims and emerge from bankruptcy as a more financially viable enterprise, though likely one with fewer assets.

How many abuse victims are there?

That’s hard to say. The Boy Scouts currently faces 275 lawsuits. Victims’ attorneys have notified the group of another 1,400 claims likely to be filed, according to a court document.

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Visegrad24@visegrad24

Yesterday, Hungarian PM Viktor #Orban and Slovak PM Peter #Pellegrini inspected the Hungary’s border fence with Serbia

Orban spoke about a sharp rise in illegal border crossings and told Pellegrini:

“It’s forbidden to say so in Europe, but this is an organised invasion”

Should take his own advice.

Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 258
A Conversation with Laura Towler

Laura, a solid English ethnonationalist

If you insert the word “international” for them, before the term “left”, you do them the favor of undoing their unwitting complicity with Jewish interests; though in Greg’s case, he perhaps cannot help it, as doubling down saves him from the criticism and bad news that he claims his elitism should hear.

Otherwise, some good thoughts in that conversation.

   
    Meanwhile, “I am not an ethnonationalist” - Richard Spencer
.....

Criticisms of Johson’s elitism, for example:

In his conversation with Morgoth just prior to this one with Laura, he calls the Scottish Nationalist Party the “perfect example of left nationalism.”

Is it really so hard for you to do something like put the word international before the term left?, Greg, or do you insist upon an oxymoron like internationalizing nationalism, which is what you are talking about with The SNP?

Also in this discussion, he wants to contrast aesthetics to counter the avarice of sheer mercantile utilitarianism.

I endorse the essence of the project he’s after, that is, countering radical liberalizing effects of mercantile hegemony…

But the concept of usefulness is not the opposite of the importance of aesthetics. Aesthetics play important, useful functions for people.

And paying attention to what is useful is an under utilized, liberating suggestion in service of orienting the popular understanding and deployment of philosophy. Hence, Greg’s superficial suggestion of aesthetics over utilitarianism just to play opposite day with me is a bum steer.

I guess that snooty right wing elitism is a comfy perch for Greg.

Related at Majorityrights:

Elitism, secrecy, deception … the way to save white America?

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The 2008 Meltdown And Where The Blame Falls

Robert Lenzner for Forbes Magazine, 2 June 2012:

Note:  This blog is based on my notes for a speech at the Harvard Class of 1957 55th reunion in Cambridge, Mass. on May 22nd.

Armageddon was threatening the financial system on Wednesday, September 17, 2008. The largest bankruptcy in American history,  that of investment bank Lehman Brothers on Monday, September 15, had roiled global markets, accelerating the stupendous decline in values of every possible investment vehicle—common stocks, corporate bonds, real estate, commodities like oil, copper and gold,  private equity and hedge funds alike. In the midst of the chaos Merrill Lynch, the firm that had brought Wall Street to Main Street, was absorbed in a shotgun marriage by Bank of America BAC +0%.

Only days earlier came the recognition at the New York Federal Reserve Bank and the US Treasury that AIG, the largest insurance company in the world was running out of money. This required an immediate injection of $85 billion in bail-out funds. And later another $100 billion, still not paid back to Uncle Sam.

That day, Sept 17, an even greater crisis was pending. All day long the chairman of General Electric, a company recognized across the globe as a leading industrial giant, was calling the Secretary of the Treasury, Hank Paulson to warn that the next day, Sept. 18,  that GE would no longer be able to roll over its short term debt. The American business system was on the cusp of faltering mightily. The US economy was on the brink of a precipice into the unknown.

Messrs Paulson and Bernanke, at the Fed, knew the nation could not suffer the risk of a total breakdown in industry and finance. So, they decided to instantly guarantee the $600 billion commercial paper market, which is widely used to finance day-to-day operations of all major firms. This guarantee became part of the total cost of bailing out Wall Street, which totaled over $7 trillion—when you added guarantees to loans, investments and outright grants. The bailouts were key to raising the Fed’s balance sheet from $1 trillion to $3 trillion—and to upping the nation’s total amount of debt some $5 trillion to a record $15 trillion.

Conversely, the household wealth of the nation, measured by losses in financial markets and the historic drop in residential real estate—was reduced by a sickenly humungus   $12-$14 trillion at the very bottom of the whole process in March, 2009. You take that money—$12-14 trillion away from the asset side of the ledger and add another $5 trillion in debt—- and you are bound to experience   a decline in the nation’s GDP and a very much slower rate of recovery from such a trauma. A recovery that could take 10 years or more according to Harvard economist Kenneth Rogoff. That brings us to 2018. Need I say more?

How did we reach this very near call on a total systemic breakdown?

Firstly, there were no cops on the beat.  Laissez-faire free market economics was the prevailing public policy. Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan spoke of irrational exuberance but took no steps to cool off markets in the late 1990s. In fact, he was asked by Loews chairman Larry Tisch and former Goldman Sachs co-chairman John Whitehead to raise the margins on trading, and refused, claiming falsely that such a move was up to the SEC—and not the Fed. Not true.

In 1999 the Glass-Steagall Act—which had separated commercial banking from investment banking for 66 years, was overturned—a move that opened the door to more speculative trading on the part of Wall Street firms.

Then, in 2000 Messrs. Greenspan, former Treasury Secretary Rubin and his successor Lawrence Summers pressed to pass a bill that would prohibit the regulation of derivatives—the fastest growing and most complicated and murky new financial product. This was an incredible mistake, as derivative contracts like mortgage backed bonds and credit default swaps mushroomed in across the globe without any oversight, strict capital requirements and on an organized exchange where buying and selling were handled daily.

The result of this vacuum; no one anywhere knew who owed what to whom across the world.  Despite the danger lurking in the rapid depreciation of these contracts,  Bernanke publicly stated the absurd amount of sub-prime mortgages being sold to unsuspecting buyers would not spread to a much wider, deeper crisis. He didn’t know what he was talking about, sadly..

Lastly, in 2004 the major firms convinced the SEC to let them value certain assets on their balance sheet at values they chose—rather than marking them t o market—which would reveal what losses they were carrying. This added another dangerous laxity to financial regulation. The system was falsifying its accounts believing the investments would bounce back.

The entire catastrophe’s underlying theme was summed up later by this admission from former Fed chairman Greenspan . ” I made a mistake,” he admitted in a hearing, “in presuming that the self-interests of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms.” And we made this man into the wise parental guardian of American capitalism for 18 years. We journalists, that is.

Pressed again later on, Greenspan admitted to “shocked disbelief, (because his whole) intellectual edifice had collapsed.”  Naive at minimum. At worst, locked into a narrow limited ideological viewpoint that set the stage for the meltdown. Let Goldman Sachs and Citigroup master their own appetite for profits. So much for reining in animals spirits.

Secondly, the banks and investment banks were using reckless amounts of leverage. They borrowed, in many cases, $30 to $40 of debt for every dollar of capital they had. In truth, this was a recipe for disaster, since a decline of only 4% in their capital put them on the road to insolvency.  It was as if you bought a million dollar house, put down a payment of $30,000 and borrowed $970,000. What sense of irrational optimism allowed this mad way of doing business.

By the fall of 2008 the decline in the value just of subprime mortgage backed bonds—which lost up to 80% of their value in the market—meant that Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Lehman, Merrill Lynch, Citigroup, Bank of America, Washington Mutual and Wachovia were in a state of peril. The only way to make money in bank stocks was to short them. My favorite day trader told me after it was all over that I should be worth $50 million. With the run on Lehman Bros. both Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs were in danger of experiencing a run on their accounts.

Perhaps AIG is the most extreme example of leverage as financial hari-kari. It had sold protection to banks and insurance companies across the globe by issuing $540 billion of credit default swaps, which meant AIG promised to make good on any losses in value of their mortgage holdings.

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Brexit day celebration: U.K. leaves the E.U.