[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.
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union’s top court ruled on Thursday that Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic had broken the law by refusing to host refugees to help ease the burden on southern states such as Greece and Italy after a surge in migrant arrivals from 2015.
The ruling underscores Europe’s bitter divisions over migration, though the three ex-communist nations face no immediate penalty as the relocation of tens of thousands of people agreed by the EU was only envisaged until 2017.
“By refusing to comply with the temporary mechanism for the relocation of applicants for international protection, Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic have failed to fulfil their obligations under European Union law,” the Luxembourg-based Court of Justice of the European Union said in its ruling.
Baruch Feldheim, 43, was arrested on Monday for allegedly making false statements to the FBI and hoarding desperately needed medical supplies, including 80,000 N95 masks which he was selling at a 700% markup.
When the FBI came to arrest him, he allegedly coughed on their agents and claimed he had the coronavirus.
According to a Department of Justice press release, Feldheim was hoarding enough medical supplies “to outfit an entire hospital.”
A Brooklyn man who said he had COVID-19 coughed on FBI agents, and lied to them about personal protection equipment he was hoarding to try to make a buck, authorities said Monday.
NEWARK, N.J. – A Brooklyn man was arrested today for allegedly coughing on FBI agents while claiming to have COVID-19, and with lying to them about his accumulation and sale of surgical masks, medical gowns, and other medical supplies, U.S. Attorney Craig Carpenito announced.
Baruch Feldheim, 43, was arrested by special agents of the FBI today and charged by complaint with assaulting a federal officer and with making false statements to law enforcement. Feldheim is scheduled to have his initial appearance this afternoon before U.S. Magistrate Judge Michael A. Hammer in Newark federal court.
According to documents filed in this case and statements made in court:
On March 25, 2020, the Department of Health and Human Services issued an executive order designating certain scarce health and medical resources necessary to respond to the spread of the Coronavirus. Those designated materials included N95 filtering face-piece respirators, personal protection equipment (PPE) face masks, surgical masks, sterilization services, and disinfecting devices, among other things.
Feldheim allegedly sold certain designated materials, including N95 respirators, to doctors and nurses at inflated prices. In one instance, on March 18, 2020, a doctor in New Jersey contacted Feldheim via a WhatsApp chat group labeled “Virus2020!” Feldheim agreed to sell to the doctor approximately 1,000 N95 masks and other assorted materials for $12,000, an approximately 700 percent markup from the normal price charged for those materials. Feldheim directed the doctor to an auto repair shop in Irvington, New Jersey, to pick up the order. According to the doctor, the repair shop contained enough materials, including hand sanitizers, Clorox wipes, chemical cleaning supply agents, and surgical supplies, to outfit an entire hospital. Feldheim later told the doctor that he had been forced to move all of those supplies from Irvington to another location.
On March 23, 2020, Feldheim allegedly offered to sell a nurse a quantity of surgical gowns and directed the nurse to his residence in Brooklyn. Feldheim also received, on March 25, 2020, a shipment from Canada containing approximately eight pallets of medical facemasks. On March 27, 2020, FBI agents observed an empty box of N95 masks outside of Feldheim’s residence.
On March 29, 2020, FBI agents witnessed multiple instances during which individuals approached Feldheim’s residence and walked away with boxes or bags that appeared to contain medical supplies. On that date, FBI agents approached Feldheim outside of his residence. After identifying themselves as FBI agents, they told Feldheim that they wanted to stay a distance away from him given concerns over the spread of Coronavirus. When the agents were within four to five feet of him, Feldheim allegedly coughed in their direction without covering his mouth. The agents then told him that they were looking for certain PPE materials and that they had information that Feldheim was in possession of large quantities of such materials. At that point, Feldheim told the FBI agents that that he had the Coronavirus.
Feldheim then made false statements to the FBI agents regarding his possession and sale of personal protective equipment and other materials. He falsely told the agents, among other things, that he worked for a company that bought and sold personal protective equipment and other materials and that he never took physical custody of the materials. Feldheim further falsely stated that he did not possess large quantities of personal protective equipment materials and that he never sold them directly to individuals.
The assault charge carries a maximum penalty of one year in prison and a $100,000 fine. The false statements charge carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
Here’s video allegedly showing the FBI seizing box after box of 3M N95 masks from Feldheim’s apartment:
The numbers on some countries do NOT appear to be updated - particularly not for China.
This updater is being posted primarily because the initial general posts meant to update the COVID-19 pandemic have fallen out of Majorityrights News carousel.
This French postcard from 1942 depicts our mother Europe sheltering her chicks with Switzerland and Sweden nearby and Britain heading towards the USA. Note the Star of David on the lid of the American box, and the striking image of Marshal Philippe Petain on the postage stamp. Seventy-eight years later things are much the same.
The Marshall has gone from France but their current president, Emmanuel Macron, fancies himself as ‘Father of the Nation’. Switzerland belongs to EFTA which is just outside the EU. Sweden is a member of the EU but with her own currency and an air of detachment. The Swedes, like the British, talk about ‘Europe’ as though it’s a separate place. And Britain is still drawn to America where the Star of David is as dominant as ever. As the French say: “Plus ca change…”
The big difference today is the coronavirus pandemic that has circled the world. When the EU offered us ventilators to treat the infection, Boris Johnson put Brexit before breathing by rejecting them, but now he has tested positive. His petty nationalism is in contrast to the co-operation between the EU states that are helping each other. President Donald Trump insists on calling it “the Chinese virus” but viruses don’t recognise nationalities, even paranoid North Korea is effected.
Our Day Will Come
We have quit the European Union just in time to be struck down by the coronavirus pandemic. Boris Johnson is doing his best but the crisis has revealed that we have fewer hospital beds and doctors than Spain or Italy. It has also exposed the fragility of our gig economy. Tim Martin the boss of Wetherspoons who is an apostle of the free market has told his redundant workers to get a job at Tescos.
Boris is spending money like a drunken sailor to show his concern for the workers, but at heart he is an old-fashioned Tory who described the poorest twenty percent of the population as: “chavs, losers, burglars and drug addicts.” He called single mothers: “uppity and irresponsible” and accused their children of being: “ill raised, ignorant, aggressive and illegitimate.” When Ken Bigley was beheaded by Isis terrorists, his home city of Liverpool mourned him, but Boris Johnson condemned: “the mawkish sentimentality of a society that is hooked on grief and likes to wallow in a sense of vicarious victimhood.” Nevertheless, the punters still voted for him.
When slavery was abolished in America most of the liberated slaves stayed on the plantations because there was nowhere else to go, and it seems that the British electorate are in the same position. We don’t trust the Labour Party, and if we vote Liberal Democrat our vote will be cancelled out by an unfair ‘first past the post’ system. So we stay where we are, with a government directed by the unelected advisor Dominic Cummings.
Our new Home Secretary Priti Patel has vowed to cut inward migration by 70%, and treat all applicants equally. We shall have to see what happens but every Immigration Act so far has failed to stem the tide.
Much of our industry relies on imported labour and some of our biggest companies are foreign-owned. This makes our workers vulnerable to cutbacks and redundancies. HSBC have announced 35,000 redundancies worldwide, many of them in the UK. Naturally, as a Chinese bank they are looking after their own people. And the same is true of Honda who will be making their electric cars in Japan.
Is there any hope? Yes, we can talk, read and write. We can express our contempt for the Old Gang parties and propose alternative policies. Ideas can’t be destroyed and nothing lasts forever. One day our class-ridden country will be liberated from plutocracy. The blatant hypocrites who preach peace and make war will be gone. So will the inverted racists who promote every nation except our own. Not to mention; faux patriots, metric martyrs, Luddites, Morris dancers, flat earthers, conspiracy freaks, Holocaust deniers, and assorted fruitcakes who support Boris Johnson. Don’t despair comrades; our day will come.
Union Movement Policy
Under Priti Patel’s points based immigration policy our fellow Europeans are to be excluded but West Indians, Africans and Asians are welcome. The Tories are anxious to improve trade with the Third World and they have already promised China and India that they will make life easier for their students and workers.
They have separated us from Europe but those of us who believe in genuine liberation are not satisfied with a country divided by class, where ex-servicemen sleep in doorways and beg for food, and where whole families live in bed and breakfast accommodation. We despise the politicians who misgovern us and we recall Union Movement’s policy from 1948 which is still relevant, except for point six about Africa.
1) To secure the Union of the European peoples.
2) To resist the menace of International Communism and International Finance.
3) To win the consent and enthusiasm of the people for a new way of life.
4) To win power in Britain by the vote of the people.
5) To abolish the Party game and thus to create a system of united national action.
6) To develop Africa as an estate of the European which can solve the economic problem of our continent.
7) To abolish the values and influence of class which rests on hereditary wealth and impedes the life of the nation.
8) To provide continuing security in creative service of the people for the man who has built his own means of livelihood and desires his children to follow after him in heredity, science, art, craft, profession or business.
9) To assert the right and will of the whole British people above every faction and thus to enable all to earn what they are worth with full security in sickness and old age.
10) To create a new sense of service and a new morality in the State.
Union Movement no longer exists but Mosley’s ideas are still discussed and Brexit has actually encouraged the European movement. As the elderly Brexiteers pass away the younger generation will reverse the decision to leave Europe. It’s only a matter of time.
In what is being called the worst financial crisis since 1929, the US stock market has lost a third of its value in the space of a month, wiping out all of its gains of the last three years. When the Federal Reserve tried to ride to the rescue, it only succeeded in making matters worse. The government then pulled out all the stops. To our staunchly capitalist leaders, socialism is suddenly looking good.
The financial crisis began in late February, when the World Health Organization announced that it was time to prepare for a global pandemic. The Russia-Saudi oil price war added fuel to the flames, causing all three Wall Street indices to fall more than 7 percent on March 9. It was called Black Monday, the worst drop since the Great Recession in 2008; but it would get worse.
On March 12, the Fed announced new capital injections totaling an unprecedented $1.5 trillion in the repo market, where banks now borrow to stay afloat. The market responded by driving stocks 8% lower.
On Sunday, March 15, the Fed emptied its bazooka by lowering the fed funds rate nearly to zero and announcing that it would be purchasing $700 billion in assets, including federal securities of all maturities, restarting its quantitative easing program. It also eliminated bank reserve requirements and slashed Interest on Excess Reserves (the interest it pays to banks for parking their cash at the Fed) to 0.10%. The result was to cause the stock market to open on Monday nearly 10% lower. Rather than projecting confidence, the Fed’s measures were generating panic.
As financial analyst George Gammon observes, the Fed’s massive $1.5 trillion in expanded repo operations had few takers. Why? He says the shortage in the repo market was not in “liquidity” (money available to lend) but in “pristine collateral” (the securities that must be put up for the loans). Pristine collateral consists mainly of short-term Treasury bills. The Fed can inject as much liquidity as it likes, but it cannot create T-bills, something only the Treasury can do. That means the government (which is already $23 trillion in debt) must add yet more debt to its balance sheet in order to rescue the repo market that now funds the banks.
The Fed’s tools alone are obviously incapable of stemming the bloodletting from the forced shutdown of businesses across the country. Fed chair Jerome Powell admitted as much at his March 15 press conference, stating, “[W]e don’t have the tools to reach individuals and particularly small businesses and other businesses and people who may be out of work …. We do think fiscal response is critical.” “Fiscal policy” means the administration and Congress must step up to the plate.
What about using the Fed’s “nuclear option” – a “helicopter drop” of money to support people directly? A March 16 article in Axios quoted former Fed senior economist Claudia Sahm:
The political ramifications of the Fed essentially printing money and giving it to people – there are ways to do it, but the problem is if the Fed does this and Congress still has not passed anything … that would mean the Fed has stepped in and done something that Congress didn’t want to do. If they did helicopter money without congressional approval, Congress could, and rightly so, end the Fed.
The government must act first, before the Fed can use its money-printing machine to benefit the people and the economy directly.
The Fed, Congress and the Administration Need to Work as a Team
On March 13, President Trump did act, declaring a national emergency that opened access to as much as $50 billion “for states and territories and localities in our shared fight against this disease.” The Dow Jones Industrial Average responded by ending the day up nearly 2,000 points, or 9.4 percent.
The same day, Democratic presidential candidate Rep. Tulsi Gabbard proposed a universal basic income of $1,000 per month for every American for the duration of the crisis. She said, “Too much attention has been focused here in Washington on bailing out Wall Street banks and corporate industries as people are making the same old tired argument of how trickle-down economics will eventually help the American people.” Meanwhile the American taxpayer “gets left holding the bag, struggling and getting no help during a time of crisis.” H.R. 897, her bill for an emergency UBI, she said was the most simple, direct form of assistance to help weather the storm.
The countries concerned would help Greece do the right thing though - mancinblack
Ellen Brown is an attorney, chairman of the Public Banking Institute; author of twelve books including “Web of Debt” and “The Public Bank Solution.”