President Trump, his three eldest children, the Trump Organization and the family trust have jointly filed a lawsuit to try and stop Deutsche Bank and Capital One from turning over records of its financial dealings with the Trump Organization to the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees, according to Bloomberg. In the lawsuit, the family’s lawyers contend that Congress is simply trying to “harass” their client with a “fishing expedition” (as Democrats cast about for a new narrative with which to bludgeon the president now that the Russia collusion narrative has fizzled with the publication of the Mueller report).
Trump’s lawsuit is similar to another he filed to block a subpoena sent by Elijah Cummings on behalf of the House Government Oversight and Accountability Committee to Mazar’s, the Trump Organization’s accounting firm.
Since winning control of the House in November, Democrats have warned about their plans to ‘let the subpeonaes fly’, and launch investigations into everything from Trump’s finances to any hint of interference from the White House in the DoJ’s decision to challenge the Time Warner-AT&T merger.
Leaks published earlier this year revealed how Deutsche Bank turned down a Trump Organization loan request made during the 2016 campaign. The company had been looking for money to finance renovations at its Turnberry golf club in Scotland. Documents showed the bank had been skittish about being associated with Trump due to his controversial rhetoric, and that senior executives at the bank weren’t aware of the extent of DB’s multi-decade lending relationship with the Trumps. Even after defaulting on a loan and suing the bank during the financial crisis, DB’s wealth management unit continued to do business with Trump.
DB has already started handing over documents to the New York State AG, who is carrying out a separate investigation.
The German lender has already begun the process of giving documents related to loans made to Trump or some of his businesses to the New York state attorney general, who is conducting her own probe, said a person familiar with the matter. The bank hasn’t yet handed over any client-related records to the House committees and will wait for the outcome of the legal proceedings, said the person, asking not to be identified in disclosing internal information.
“The subpoenas were issued to harass President Donald J. Trump, to rummage through every aspect of his personal finances, his businesses, and the private information of the President and his family, and to ferret about for any material that might be used to cause him political damage,” Trump’s lawyers wrote in the introduction to the 13-page complaint filed Monday in Manhattan federal court.
Though Deutsche Bank has been responsible for the bulk of the business lending to the Trump Org since the 1990s, Congress is seeking records from a total of nine financial institutions that have had financial dealings with the Trump Org.
House Democrats’ investigations into President Trump’s finances and potential money laundering tied to Russia have prompted them to demand documents from nine banking giants, according to people familiar with the matter. Deutsche Bank, which lent Trump some $340 million, has been a primary target of the House Financial Services Committee, led by Representative Maxine Waters.
But given Deutsche Bank’s reputation as the “biggest money laundering bank in the world”, as Maxine Waters once branded the bank, it has been the House’s highest-priority target.
Democrats vowed to push ahead with their subpeona, even as DB has decided to wait on complying with the House’s “friendly subpeona” until a judge rules on the Trump lawsuit.
Both Waters and House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff have been seeking information from Deutsche Bank since Democrats took over the House majority in January. Schiff said the Frankfurt-based bank has been cooperative with the investigations and their request was a “friendly subpoena.” Such a subpoena is typically submitted when a firm is willing to hand over documents but wants a formal request first.
“We remain committed to providing appropriate information to all authorized investigations and will abide by a court order regarding such investigations,” a Deutsche Bank spokesman said in a statement on Tuesday.
It’s unclear how Capital One plans to respond to the lawsuit.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2LcTK95 Tyler Durden
Cattle ranchers who lease public land to graze their livestock tend to see free-roaming wild horses as nuisances, fueling conflict among commercial interests, bureaucrats, and animal advocates. A controversial agreement was hammered out last week—but, unsurprisingly, that has hardly settled the dispute.
That something had to change is granted by pretty much everybody involved in the wild horse debate. The government can’t just continue removing wild animals from the land and warehousing them at growing expense, as it has done for decades.
In “The Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971,” Congress announced “that wild free-roaming horses and burros are living symbols of the historic and pioneer spirit of the West; that they contribute to the diversity of life forms within the Nation and enrich the lives of the American people; and that these horses and burros are fast disappearing from the American scene.” Lawmakers ordered the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) to keep what was left of the population—perhaps 10,000 animals—alive and kicking.
Government officials sort of complied with the congressional mandate—the population of wild horses and burros has certainly grown, to over 80,000. But more of that population now lives in captivity than roams free, with holding costs consuming roughly half of the budget designated for protecting the herds.
The BLM, which inherited the lion’s share of the task, managed to turn a program intended to preserve a population of much-beloved wild animals into a scheme for corralling captive beasts that nobody wants and some interests positively dislike.
Return to Freedom, a wild horse and burro advocacy group, sees serious conflicts of interest at work. The group’s website points out:
The BLM and the USFS, among others, are responsible for managing the nation’s public lands and are foremost the managers of wild horses and burros. Their responsibilities also include issuing public land grazing permits to cattle ranchers. These grazing permits cover limited areas of public land that are available for lease. So, for every wild horse removed from a grazing permit allotment, a fee-paying cow gets to take its place, and a public land rancher gets the benefit of public land forage at bargain rates.
In 2013, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) took a formal look at the management of the wild horse and burro population and agreed that officials have made a hash of balancing their responsibilities.
“The goal of managing free-ranging horses and burros to achieve the vaguely defined thriving natural ecological balance within the multiple-use mandate for public lands has challenged BLM’s Wild Horse and Burro Program since its inception,” the report found. Worse, BLM officials appear to have been making it up as they go along in terms of policies and procedures.
“The links between BLM’s estimates of the national population size and its actual population surveys—the data that underlie these estimates—are obscure,” the NAS assessment continued. “It seems that the national statistics are the product of hundreds of subjective, probably independent judgments and assumptions by range personnel about the proportion of animals counted during surveys, population growth rates, and other factors.”
If BLM hasn’t quite managed the challenges of conducting headcounts, it’s probably no surprise that management of the population has been equally sloppy. Removal and culling of herds to get them out of the way of competing interests even as those herds experience rapid growth—15 to 20 percent per year—is the result of ill-considered policies chasing themselves in a circle.
The NAS report adds:
Management practices are facilitating high rates of population growth. BLM’s removals hold horse populations below levels affected by food limits. If population density were to increase to the point that there was not enough forage available, it could result in fewer pregnancies and lower young-to-female ratios and survival rates. Decreased competition for forage through removals may instead allow population growth, which then drives the need to remove more animals.
To fix the problem, in addition to modifying removals, the NAS also recommended a fertility control campaign to control the horse and burro population. Birth control vaccines that prevent fertilization for females and chemical vasectomies for males, would be coupled with cross-breeding animals from different management areas to maintain diversity.
How “wild” the resulting population of neutered-and-bred horses and burros will be is an open question. But the herds have long been maintained more as museum exhibits of the wildness-that-was than as actual free-roaming beasts. Better management could have the benefit of being less self-defeating and more cost-effective in maintaining the populations. It would certainly be better than just fueling more population growth and spending ever-greater resources to warehouse or slaughter the results.
The deal that presented to BLM last week is supposed to achieve just that—better management of the not-so-wild horse and burro herds, bringing together competing groups and interests that have clashed over the issue for decades. Nonetheless, controversy continues.
On one side is the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), which calls the new agreement “a powerful, non-lethal path forward for these imperiled icons of the American West,” and The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS). The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, Public Lands Council, American Farm Bureau Federation, and Society for Range Management have also signed on to the plan.
But others organizations aren’t convinced. Friends of Animals President Priscilla Feral accused ASPCA and HSUS of “throw[ing] in the towel when it comes to protecting America’s wild horses” by “capitulating to the Bureau of Land Management.”
An American Wild Horse Campaign statement called it “a bad deal [that] violates the Statement of Principles and Recommendations signed by more than 100 horse organizations.” The group complains that ranchers benefit the most, large-scale roundups will continue, and the agreement neglects to specify the most effective fertility-control methods, such as vaccines.
So the debate is only settled-ish, pending an assessment of the results in the years to come. But for now, federal officials have demonstrated yet again that they can mismanage anything—even herds of wild animals—into a public policy mess.
from Latest – Reason.com http://bit.ly/2J56gVk
via IFTTT
European Central Bank’s President Mario Draghi recently announced that the ECB would be required to approve any management of gold reserves within the euro zone countries. The statement was specifically directed at two Italian members.
Why was Italy singled out? According to the Wall Street Journal, Italian citizens are preparing to take control of Italy’s gold reserves. During the past few years, a multitude of small investors lost billions of dollars due to the failure of several Italian banks. The Bank of Italy is seen as an elitist, inefficient entity indifferent to the needs of ordinary people. Deputy Prime Minister Luigi Di Maio is leading the attack against Italy’s central bank, along with the “5 Star Movement” and the nationalist “League,” all of whom blame the countries financial woes on the incompetence of the central bank.
The 5 Star Movement is asking Italy’s Parliament to approve measures that would allow private banks to sell their share in The Bank of Italy at 1930’s prices. Taking it a step further, they are also demanding that ownership of the Bank of Italy’s 2,451.8 tons of gold be taken over by the country’s citizens and spent on populist policies. The current value of these gold reserves is $102 billion.
If these laws are passed, investors would be able to sell gold and greatly deplete the central bank’s reserves. As Giorgia Meloni of the Brothers of Italy states, “The gold belongs to the Italians, not the bankers.”
Italy’s lawmakers hold a different view and are warning against any action that will upend the sovereignty of the central bank’s policies. Such expropriation of government gold would not be tolerated.
But the 5 Star Movement and the League are determined to return ownership of the country’s gold to the public. Approximately 60 percent of lawmakers support the movement, guarantying the law will be enacted. There is also rumbling about nationalizing the Central Bank of Italy entirely.
In the realm of global commerce, gold has become a most potent weapon.
Italy is not the only country embracing gold.
Romania has plans to repatriate gold reserves currently being held by the Bank of England. Romania currently has around 103.7 tons of gold, valued at $3.84 billion. Sixty-five percent of the yellow metal is being kept in storage at the Bank of England. According to a new law, only 5 percent of the country’s gold may be stored abroad. The rest will be repatriated. While the current leadership approves of the repatriation, the National Bank of Romania does not. Mugur Isarescu, director of the central bank, insists that the gold is for economic emergencies and should remain where it is.
Another European country, Germany, has quietly called back 674 tons of gold from France and the U.S. Federal Reserve to its central bank, the Bundesbank. Ninety-eight percent of Germany’s gold was stored abroad during the height of the Cold War to keep it out of the reach of Russia. With the weakening of the Euro, Germany wants the gold closer to home. The Bundesbank now has half of the country’s gold in safe storage.
Following the trend to keep gold close to home, the National Bank of Hungary will be recalling 100,000 ounces of gold from the Bank of England. Hungary has traditionally kept its gold reserves low, with only 50 tons being held in 1989. The global 2008 financial crisis had Hungary rethinking its approach to gold. Now, it wants its gold reserves home for safekeeping in the event of a geopolitical crisis.
Gold is seen by central banks as a way to maintain financial trust during economic upheaval. The move by global central banks to repatriate their gold may be a sign that an economic crisis could be looming in the near future.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2V5y9Un Tyler Durden
Officials with the Pearland, Texas, Independent School District say an administrator, who wasn’t named, has been placed on leave for mishandling disciplinary action. A male student showed up at Berry Miller Junior High School with an “M” shaved into his hair, a violation of the school dress code. An administrator told the boy he had three options: call his mother, receive a disciplinary action, or color it in. The boy ended up with the “M” colored in with a marker, though it isn’t clear whether the student colored it in or the school staffer. In either case, school officials say that shouldn’t have happened and have apologized.
from Latest – Reason.com http://bit.ly/2vCdE2N
via IFTTT
In a move that many have interpreted as a shot across the bow of President Trump, Pope Francis has upped his globalist-leaning interventionism by donating $500,000 to help Central American migrants stranded in Mexico as they try to reach America.
The money is from church collections from around the world and is intended to help 75,000 people who arrived in Mexico to find passage to America.
RT reports that The Catholic Church’s Peter’s Pence Fund said in a statement that aid to migrants by governments and private individuals has dropped as global media coverage of the crisis decreased.
“All these people were stranded, unable to enter the United States, without a home or livelihood,” Peter’s Pence said.
“The Catholic Church hosts thousands of them in hotels within the dioceses or religious congregations, providing basic necessities, from housing to clothing.”
Many have interpreted this move as retaliation after Trump cut all aid to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador last month, accusing the Central American countries of not doing “a thing for us.”
‘Pope Francis donates $500G to migrants at U.S.-Mexico border’
But not everyone sees the Pope’s intervention that way…
POPE GIVING AWAY PARISHIONERS MONEY.
SHOULDN’T HE “ASK” IF THAT’S HOW THEY WOULD LIKE THEIR TYTHES SPENT?
WOULD HAVE. HELPED A LOT OF HOMELESS PEOPLE OR VETS.
Pope Francis recently spoke out against governments that build walls to keep out migrants, saying: “Those who build walls will become prisoners of the walls they put up.”
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2J3Su5q Tyler Durden
Officials with the Pearland, Texas, Independent School District say an administrator, who wasn’t named, has been placed on leave for mishandling disciplinary action. A male student showed up at Berry Miller Junior High School with an “M” shaved into his hair, a violation of the school dress code. An administrator told the boy he had three options: call his mother, receive a disciplinary action, or color it in. The boy ended up with the “M” colored in with a marker, though it isn’t clear whether the student colored it in or the school staffer. In either case, school officials say that shouldn’t have happened and have apologized.
from Latest – Reason.com http://bit.ly/2vCdE2N
via IFTTT
The US-NATO alliance is determined to encircle Russia more tightly, and Georgia wants to help it do so…
Britain’s Daily Express newspaper is a bizarre publication that specialises in sensationalist raving. Some of its reports are weird beyond imagination, and it went even further than usual into fogs of delusion on April 21 when one of its headlines announced “World War 3: UK CONFRONTS Russia by sending warship to Black Sea.”
The vessel despatched on a “freedom of navigation manoeuvre” by the UK’s Royal Navy is HMS Echo, which cannot be described as a warship. It is “designed to carry out a wide range of survey work, including support to submarine and amphibious operations” and it carries a few cannon and machine guns, but it is difficult to see how it could confront anything more deadly than a prawn-boat. It is, however, part of the grand plan of the US-NATO military alliance which on April 4 “agreed a package of measures to improve NATO’s situational awareness in the Black Sea region and strengthen support for partners Georgia and Ukraine.”
HQ NATO much regrets that its encirclement of Russia does not yet include Georgia or Ukraine. The Brussels sub-office of the Pentagon is trying hard to formally enlist both countries and announced on March 26 that “Georgia is one of the Alliance’s closest partners. It aspires to join the Alliance. The country actively contributes to NATO-led operations and cooperates with the Allies and other partner countries in many other areas. Over time, a broad range of practical cooperation has developed between NATO and Georgia, which supports Georgia’s reform efforts and its goal of Euro-Atlantic integration.”
The day before NATO’s declaration the globe-trotting head of the organisation, Jens Stoltenberg, was in Georgia to attend military exercises. At a meeting with Prime Minister Mamuka Bakhtadze he declared it had been “clearly stated that Georgia will become a member of NATO” and “We will continue working together to prepare for Georgia’s NATO membership,” which was first mooted in 2008 but somehow has never come about.
Non-US NATO military spending totals $264 billion a year, four times that of Russia, and the US will splurge $750 billion next year, so Georgia’s 37,000 military personnel, ten Su-25 combat aircraft and military budget of $380 million are not going to make much of a contribution to NATO, but that’s not the point. What the US-NATO grouping wants is to deploy its armed forces even closer to Russia than at present. When Georgia joins, there will be an opportunity to base tanks, aircraft and missiles right up against the Russian border, as in the Baltic states.
The most interesting observation about Georgia by Radio Free Europe in its account of the Stoltenberg visit was that “The country of some 3.7 million people fought a brief war with Russia in August 2008, and Moscow’s continued military presence on the country’s territory adds to tensions in the region.”
It is never mentioned by the Pentagon, Brussels or the Western media that the “brief war” was entirely the fault of Georgia. Nor is it admitted that if Russia had wished to do so, it could have swept through and occupied the whole of Georgia in a few days without interference by NATO or anyone else.
The European Union decided to conduct an inquiry into the conflict, and in 2009 produced a report which, deep down in its 1,000 pages, states that Georgia initiated the war. This was not at all what the Western world wanted to be told, and the paper is full of observations intended to disguise or excuse Georgia’s military antics. The UK’s Independent online newspaper reported that “The first authoritative study of the war over South Ossetia has concluded that Georgia started the conflict with Russia with an attack that was in violation of international law,” but there are very few people in the Western Establishment who will admit that Georgia was to blame, and they steadfastly support Georgia’s foolhardy aggression.
The EU noted that “There were reportedly more than a hundred US military advisers in the Georgian armed forces when the conflict erupted in August 2008, and an even larger number of US specialists and advisors are thought to have been active in different branches of the Georgian power structures and administration. Considerable military support in terms of equipment and to some extent training was provided by a number of other countries led by Ukraine, the Czech Republic and Israel.” In other words, Georgia was considered a prime ally because it opposed Russia, and the US and its allies helped it prepare for its futile attack.
This is not surprising, given the speech by President George W Bush in Georgia’s capital, Tbilisi, in May 2005. The man who ordered the invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 was eloquent about Georgia’s military contribution to these disastrous conflicts, and observed that “last year, when terrorist violence in Iraq was escalating, Georgia showed her courage. You increased your troop commitment in Iraq fivefold. The Iraqi people are grateful and so are your American and coalition allies.” Indeed Washington is so grateful to the Georgian government for contributing to its wars (which involved the needless deaths of 32 Georgian soldiers in Afghanistan and five in Iraq), it provides generous aid packages, both civil and military.
A US Congressional Research Service Report of April 2019 notes that in this financial year Congress approved $89 million in civil aid and that in 2018 military aid was $40 million. These amounts don’t seem much at first glance, especially when compared to the mega-billions doled out to Afghanistan, Israel and Iraq — but given that its population is only 3.7 million, Georgia is doing very nicely.
In June 2018, the US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs saidUS policy is to “check Russian aggression,” including by “building up the means of self-defence for those states most directly threatened by Russia militarily: Ukraine and Georgia,” which repay US financial patronage not only by sacrificing their soldiers in Washington’s wars (18 Ukrainian soldiers were killed in Iraq), but in more intriguing ways, including in UN forums.
For obvious reasons it has long been thought by most countries that there should be international agreement to ban weapons in space, and a Russian-Chinese draft treaty proposing such legislation was submitted to the UN in February 2008. Washington refused to consider it, and when an amended version was presented at the UN’s First Committee in 2015 it was voted against by the US — along with its well-paid puppets, Israel, Georgia and Ukraine.
The US-NATO alliance is determined to encircle Russia more tightly, and Georgia wants to help it do so. Such provocative cooperation in these endeavours heightens tension between Georgia and Russia, which in the eyes of the western media serves to justify yet more NATO expansion. It is reminiscent of the 1930 song whose last verse is “Whoa, Georgia, Georgia, No peace, no peace I find; Just this old sweet song, Keeps Georgia on my mind…”
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2GQXs3O Tyler Durden
Just about seven months have passed since Jamal Khashogggi, a former government insider-turned-critic of Saudi Crown Prince MbS, walked into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul and disappeared, sparking an international scandal that prompted several governments (though notably not the US) to suspend arm sales and spoiling MbS’s second ‘Davos in the Desert’ as dozens of CEOs and scheduled speakers pulled out.
Considering the intensity of the backlash to Khashoggi’s murder at the hands of a government death squad, something the Saudi kingdom begrudgingly admitted following weeks of denials (though it insisted that the team had only been sent to ‘talk’ to Khashoggi, and that his killing, dismemberment and the destruction of his remains were the work of rogue operatives) it’s a testament to the shoddy attention span of the global public (and their political and business leaders) that the scandal has been so quickly forgotten.
But as the public has moved on to criticize KSA’s mass executions and the brutal proxy war in Yemen, it appears at least one government involved in the Khashoggi affair might be taking advantage of the fact that the spotlight has moved away to seek some brutal retribution.
On Monday, WSJ reported that one of two suspected UAE spies under investigation by the Turkish government for playing some unspecified role in the Khashoggi’s killing – and who were helping Saudi and its allies spy on Arab critics living in Turkey – had been found hanged in his cell at a notorious Turkish prison.
The cause of death was quickly ruled a suicide.
Turkish prosecutors on Monday said wardens had found the suspect, identified as Zaki Y.M. Hassan, hanged inside his solitary cell in Istanbul’s Silivri prison and had ordered an investigation into his death. Turkish state media said Mr. Hassan had died by suicide.
U.A.E. officials couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.
Turkish authorities had said they were investigating the two men for a possible connection with the killing of Mr. Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul at the hands of Saudi Arabian operatives in October.
The alleged U.A.E. spies came to Turkey soon after the Oct. 2 killing, according to state media reports. They were detained on April 15 and have confessed to spying on behalf of the Gulf state, the reports have said.
Turkish state media has said authorities had tailed the two suspects for several months and had evidence that they were collecting intelligence on Arab nationals residing in Turkey and seeking to recruit other operatives to create a larger surveillance network.
it’s possible that Hassan’s death may have been a suicide. But the tensions between Turkey and members of the GCC who have kept up a shipping ban against Qatar (as the UAE has) have only intensified in the wake of Khashoggi’s murder. Turkey is a close ally of Qatar.
Meanwhile, the Saudi government has pressured the children of Khashoggi to grant clemency to 11 men who are potentially facing the death penalty for their alleged role in the killing (they were scapegoated as the kingdom continued to deny MbS’s involvement in the plot, despite a stream of leaks out of the US intelligence community pointing the finger at the Crown Prince). On another front, Erdogan’s government has continued to provoke the US by arresting yet another consular employee (all have been Turkish nationals).
If this was an act of retribution, does that mean there could be more to come? And what would that mean for Turkey’s increasingly shaky economy?
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2DELHvg Tyler Durden
The weekend just gone, Manifestation 23, marked a seismic shift in the five month battle between the Gilets Jaunes and the French state. The Notre Dame fire has brought into the open the strategic shift in public opinion that has occurred over the winter; shifts all to the advantage of the Gilets Jaunes. While the cold winter months with their looming darkness only allowed us to glimpse two equal parties grinding away at each other in the gloom, the advent of spring and its clear light, reveals how the Gilets are gathering reserves of strength all over France, and how, now, they are slowly winning in Paris as well. The sight of French police surrounding Notre Dame and denying access to its ‘own’ population, starkly illustrates what the state seeks to deny. After all, these sort of monuments are the materiality through which states demonstrates their connection to the population, their right to rule and their own power.
The Neo-liberal state is crumbling and Macron is going be the sacrificial lamb. At this stage he will be lucky to last two months. His clumsy handling of the Notre Dame blaze has outraged and enraged more sections of the French population. Indeed throughout the five months of protest, and despite the wall to wall media propaganda, opinion polls consistently show continued and unwavering sympathy and support of the Gilets Jaunes.
In the sharp light of spring it is clear that Macron’s winter strategy: the Great National Debate, has achieved nothing for the government and more tellingly perhaps, has further revealed Macron’s own incapacity to either change himself or shift course. As one anonymous French state official reportedly said: ‘Mitterrand gave them an extra week’s holiday, but Macron can’t manage anything’. He simply seems unable in any form to communicate with either the Gilets or the people of France. His constant speeches, with their casual insults and lack of empathy, remain one of the best recruitment tools the Gilets possess.
His recent pronouncements continue this trend. His promise to rebuild the cathedral in five years was met with scorn – ‘this is not a railway line’, said one commentator, while his invitation to the world (a typical empty gesture) angered and aroused traditionalists. Indeed, as has been widely reported, his endorsement of cash donations from billionaires, simply provided the Gilets with yet more free sticks to beat him and the state.
Even his big showpiece speech was cancelled when the Cathedral burst into flames. And what was his big announcement? A freeze on hospital and school closures, the index-linking of pensions to inflation and the closing of the École Nationale d’Administration (ENA), the university that produces the country’s political and civil elite, all of which, particularly the last, were seen as too late and totally irrelevant. After all it doesn’t put food on the table or help the people get to the end of the month with any money. As I noted in previous articles, this is typical of Macron, revealing only how his personal authority is slipping away, and strangely enough, how irrelevant he is becoming to the entire debate.
Above all, Macron is guilty of being one of those stupid/intelligent middle class people; the sort neo-liberalism delights in providing for us in many guises: administrators, legacy media editors, heads of departments, councillors, politicians. He is bright, he is buffed, he has aspiration, he can speak fluently on subjects for hours, yet for all of that, every speech he makes simply inflames the situation. And this, coupled with his inability to convey a shred of empathy and his apparent lack of understanding concerning both politics and national history, reveal him to be nothing so much as a messenger boy for the rich and the powerful. Once again none of this escapes the French population.
Clearly Macron much prefers international summits to meeting his own people and in truth his dreams of the future, which is all he has, are as banal as Marinetti’s.
All of this was starkly obvious in the course of the great National Debate. Billed as a listening exercise, every photo showed Macron not listening, but lecturing, while his rolled shirt sleeves made him look like a boy, inexperienced and out of his depth. The state PR is simply not working and one can’t believe that any worker in France was fooled by this nonsense.
So Macron is finished and he’ll be gone soon, but the question remains where does this revolt go from here? For the manner in which his removal occurs, how long it takes and who replaces him, will determine the next stage.
Unfortunately for the French neo-liberal state, Macron’s dismissal will not solve the problem. Firstly because, in an immediate sense, there is no alternative candidate within ruling circles acceptable to the Gilets. Secondly, because it is becoming increasingly apparent that neo-liberalism as a form of governance can only succeed in a climate of profligate personal credit, which, along with rising house prices (not counted as inflation), remains the only method available to Neo-Liberalism for generating wealth among all social classes. They simply are unwilling or unable to give anything to the people.
The dismissal of the Paris police chief and the calls by the state for the police to use greater violence and employ more weaponry, simple confirm the gridlock which has entangled the neo-liberal state and its bureaucratic class. A gridlock which not only depresses and represses the rest of us, but also, within the current ruling dogma, is impossible to transcend; violence and exclusion are all the contemporary state has left.
And what of the Gilets? Well, they are everywhere. Every week Facebook is full of online Gilet house-parties, where films, discussion and reinforcement abound. When they don’t demonstrate they talk.. Nor, despite the toil required, is there any sign the people of France are quitting the movement. My roundabout still has people each week-end, as they have been every week-end through what was a cold and desolate winter, and in this they are simply duplicating events at the other twenty or so occupied roundabouts in Gers and all through France. Recently the group at my roundabout distributed a flyer saying that they were finding it difficult to continue every weekend and could others come and assist them, something which according to locals, met with an influx of new recruits. ‘Nous le faisons pour vous’ is their standard speech as they hand out flyers to passing motorists, almost all of whom appear friendly and sympathetic; something entirely to be expected, given all of them are locals.
Some liberal commentators still persist in presenting the Gilets as supplicant Oliver Twists, begging for more from their superiors table and these same commentators love to speak of the revolt as being the periphery verses the centre. As I have made clear in my previous articles, this is the opposite of the truth.
For the Gilets are showing rising levels of political consciousness; with an apparent endless enthusiasm for debates concerning violence, socialism and their demands – debates which are still, even after five months, managed online with toleration and respect for the diversity of people’s opinions.
Additionally, from a strategic perspective the Gilets have already demonstrated their capacity to bring every major French city to a halt. Toulouse, Marseilles, Bordeaux, Lyon, have all seen large, persistent demonstrations coupled with massive arrests.
Concurrently, smaller provincial centres like Tarbes in the south west continue to host their own weekly demonstrations, something duplicated in similar centres all over France. And with that is rising, both a hatred of the police, particularly the metropolitan police, and a sense of unity and determination among the Gilets. Naturally most of this escapes the metropolitan elite and the official media, preoccupied as they are with head counts and privates on parade. Yet even in Paris, there is considerable evidence of the movement’s growing support, with people increasingly prepared both to manifest at demonstrations and to express sympathy in media interviews, phone-ins and online.
This narrows the state’s room for manoeuvre drastically. In short the invisible hand is now visible. Something clear when the government, in a brief and crude attempt, sought to blame the Gilets for the Notre Dame blaze – accusations howled down and swiftly rescinded.
Slowly, slowly this battle is developing into a life or death struggle for the neo-liberal state and we can, over the next few months, expect them to intensify their violence during demonstrations, inaugurate house arrests, seal of more railways routes and Paris monuments and ultimately intensify various false flag operations aimed at splitting the movement and fermenting inter-communal conflict.
For the Gilets, this sense they are winning will only increase their determination. If I could make a prediction this will lead ultimately to increased demonstrations, perhaps beyond the self-imposed week-end boundaries, as well as larger, longer blockades of railways and motorways. The French word for demonstration is manifestation and that is a useful word here, because in every sense and every action the Gilets are manifesting their unity, their vision for France and their commitment to that vision.
The last week has been a good week for those who believe that neo-liberalism is a con trick, incapable of providing most a reasonable life, or indeed frankly of governing an increasingly sophisticated social world and an increasingly savvy citizenry. The simplistic nostrums of neo-liberalism remain incapable of confronting the huge problems facing us as a species – a simple truth which is becoming increasingly obvious.
Finally, this week, both the Gilets Jaunes and the Extinction Rebellion in London, are revealing that, despite massive surveillance, militarized, violent policing and the state’s propaganda apparatus, contemporary populations are developing new methods and new visions capable of surmounting these obstacles and finally, after this endless decade of stagnation, moving us forward in a positive, inclusive and effective manner.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2VyRQ6C Tyler Durden
The question is whether a life insurance “policy exclusion for deaths resulting from ‘intentionally self-inflicted injury'” applied to autoerotic asphyxiation:
The majority said yes, because the person intentionally inflicted partial strangulation on himself, and “partial strangulation … is still an ‘injury’ as the term is commonly understood” even when it’s not intended to lead to death: “For example, if [the person] had partially strangled another person, there would be no debate he had inflicted an injury.”
The dissent, joining the Second and Ninth Circuits, said no, because the “conduct was undoubtedly risky but was not inherently injurious,” since “when done correctly it can and does have a recreational purpose with no lasting health consequences.”
The Seventh Circuit has a sort of automatic pre-publication en-banc review (Local Rule 40(e)), under which an opinion that creates a circuit split is circulated to the whole court to see if a majority of the active judges want to take the case en banc. The panel opinion reports that a majority didn’t support review, though three judges did support it. In principle, the Supreme Court could now agree to hear the case, given the circuit split. But I doubt that it will:
