[Majorityrights News] KP interview with James Gilmore, former diplomat and insider from first Trump administration Posted by Guessedworker on Sunday, 05 January 2025 00:35.
[Majorityrights News] Trump will ‘arm Ukraine to the teeth’ if Putin won’t negotiate ceasefire Posted by Guessedworker on Tuesday, 12 November 2024 16:20.
[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.
The much-derided and controversial discipline of using DNA to prove one’s race, religion and nationality has been upheld by the Israeli High Court following a legal challenge to its use in the determination of Jewishness. A panel of High Court justices rejected a petition against the Chief Rabbinate and the rabbinical court’s ruling that DNA testing to prove one’s Judaism should be allowed.
In the legal challenge, which according to Haaretz was filed by Yisrael Beitenu’s Avigdor Lieberman and several private petitioners, the judges dismissed their case that the rabbinate acted in a discriminatory manner by demanding DNA tests to prove one’s Judaism.
The case re-opens an ongoing feud over conducting genetic tests to determine who is and isn’t a Jew. With Israel electing to define itself in racial terms by declaring itself to be a “Jewish state”, conception of race as something existing in the blood, crushed civic notions of race and nationality, upon which modern democratic states are established.
Israel’s matrimonial law which is religious, not civil, has also meant that couples are required to prove their Jewishness through DNA testing if their heritage is in doubt. In Israel Jews can marry Jews, but intermarriage with Muslims or Christians is not permitted. This means that when a Jewish couple want to tie the knot, they are required by law to prove their Jewishness to the Rabbinate according to Orthodox tradition, which defines Jewish ancestry as being passed down through the mother.
According to the court’s decision DNA, “testing can only benefit the person being tested, whether he accepts the testing or refuses to undergo the test”. The judges debated the need for compiling a set of written rules around DNA testing, which they claimed would avert disagreements over its use.
During the hearing, the representative of the rabbinical court agreed to bring the matter of setting the rules in writing before the Chief Rabbinical Council.
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.
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.
LONDON, ENGLAND: Anti-Brexit campaigner Steve Bray protesting outside of the Houses of Parliament on January 30, 2020 in London, United Kingdom. At 11.00pm on Friday 31st January the UK and Northern Ireland will exit the European Union 188 weeks after the referendum on June 23rd 2016.
In 2016, Britain voted for Brexit. On Friday—four years, three prime ministers and two general elections later—the country will leave the European Union. Officially stepping out into the world is a major moment for a country that has driven itself mad on the tortuous path to the exit door. And yet, even the buildup to this historic event typified the silliest aspects of the years between the “leave” vote and the actual leaving.
Two quarrels about how Britain would mark the occasion broke out in recent weeks, one about a bell, the other about a coin. First came the fuss about whether Big Ben would ring out to mark the moment of independence. This Brexiteer wish was complicated by the fact that the bell, and the tower that houses it, are undergoing renovations, meaning a single bong would come with a $700,000 price tag. After Parliament refused to fund the move, and an online fundraising campaign failed to fill the gap, there will be no Big Ben bongs. “If Big Ben doesn’t bong, the world will see us as a joke,” lamented Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage.
A second brouhaha broke out over a commemorative 50 pence coin issued to mark the occasion. The coins, which read, “Peace, prosperity and friendship with all nations,” soon drew the ire of disbelieving Remainers. Otherwise serious and self-respecting members of the British establishment said they would refuse to use the coins or would deface any that came into their possession. (The novelist Philip Pullman also complained that the coin “is missing an Oxford comma and should be boycotted by all literate people.”)
Britain’s talent for turning these trivial rows into front-page stories illustrates how much the Brexit debate has become a negative-sum culture war, with Leavers and Remainers each compelled to take a side. Yet these dust-ups also obscure some of the more interesting, and important, divides over what Britain does with its newfound freedom. So far, much of the conversation has been backward looking, focused on whether the country would give effect to the 2016 vote with a viable version of Brexit, or whether that vote should be ignored. As Britain leaves the EU, and finally casts an eye forward, there are as many disputes as ever, with global implications, and the fault lines are more complicated than just Leave vs. Remain.
When Prime Minister Boris Johnson triumphed in last month’s election with a promise to “get Brexit done,” his opponents argued that after the sun rises on February 1, Britain’s future relationship with the EU, and a host of related questions, would remain unresolved. In a narrow sense, that claim is irrefutable. But it also misses the bigger picture.
The case for Brexit was built on possibilities. Among other things, exiting the EU allows Britain to decide for itself what trade relationships it should pursue with the rest of the world, the criteria it should set for its immigration system and how to regulate a host of areas that have been the competence of the EU for decades. These are big, difficult decisions in and of themselves. They aren’t part of a Brexit process that will ever be finished. Britain will not one day declare mission accomplished and no longer give any thought to, for example, trade policy—something that, as Americans will know, is an ongoing consideration in the politics of sovereign countries.
Understand that fact, and the divide between Leave and Remain starts to look less significant. On trade, for example, there is a split among Leavers. An image of buccaneering “Global Britain” striking trade deals with fast-growing economies around the world was a big part of the case pro-Brexit politicians made. There is little enthusiasm for this vision among Leave voters. According to one poll, Leave voters were more likely to support protectionist trade policies than Remainers. In fact, whether someone voted Leave was the single best predictor of a person’s support for barriers to trade. Politicians eager to use Brexit as an opportunity for liberalizing UK trade will have to think carefully about which voters they can rely on.
Posted by DanielS on Thursday, 30 January 2020 02:36.
Coronavirus Updater:
First cases in Finland, India and the Philippines; death toll reaches 170
Moodie David Report: 30 Jan 2020:
Coronavirus Update: First cases in India, Finland, the Philippines; death toll reaches 170
Finland
The coronavirus outbreak has spread to Finland with the first confirmed case. Finnish media Uutiset said that the individual is a Chinese tourist from Wuhan. The 32-year-old woman is being treated in Lapland Central Hospital in Rovaniemi.
Philippines
The first case in the Philippines has been announced by the World Health Organization.
Today, the Department of Health announced the first confirmed case of the 2019 novel #coronavirus in the Philippines. The patient is 38 years old from China.
UAE
The first cases in the Middle East have been confirmed, with the Ministry of Health & Protection in the UAE announcing that a family of four has been infected. The statement added that the general health situation “is not a cause for concern” and that the Ministry advises “all citizens and residents to adhere to the general health guidelines”.
UK
British Airways has suspended flights to and from Mainland China as the coronavirus outbreak worsens. This comes as the UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office advised against all travel to Hubei Province and all but essential travel to the rest of Mainland China.
China
China is likely to have a vaccine for the novel coronavirus for public use within three months. That will include a month and a half of development and a similar period of testing, according to Li Lanjuan, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, Global Times reports.
1,459 new cases of coronavirus and 3,248 suspected cases, including one in Tibet, were reported across China yesterday alone as the spread of the virus accelerates. The total number of confirmed infections reached 5,974, with 1,239 patients in critical condition. The death toll has reached 132 while 103 patients have recovered. [Source: Global Times]
International
A scientific race to find a vaccine for the virus is underway, writes The Moodie Davitt Report Senior Research & Commercial Analyst Min Jon Jung. Here is a roundup of key breakthroughs so far.
January 10: Chinese scientists posted a complete genome of the coronavirus.
January 28: Hong Kong University Professor Yuen Kwok-yung was successful in producing a vaccine but testing on animals will take months and clinical trials at least another year.
January 29: Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity in Australia successful in recreating virus outside of China.
The joint global effort may help to shorten the time required to develop a successful vaccine, but the development is both expensive and time-consuming. The vaccine for the SARS virus was developed 20 months after the viral genome was released and the outbreak was contained with public health measures before the vaccine was ready.
Dr Paul Stoffels, Johnson & Johnson’s chief scientific officer, estimated it could take eight to 12 months before his company’s vaccines reach human clinical trials.
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The West Wall at night (fragment) Wayne Mclean (jgritz) CC
Should take his own advice.
Laura, a solid English ethnonationalist
A Union Jack flag flutters in front of Big Ben as workers inspect one of its clocks, in London on Sept 11. (Reuters photo)
