The ECB was caught stealing gold from Italy !

The Bank of Italy Gold 
(by Nino Galloni)
Source: https://scenarieconomici.it/loro-di-banca-ditalia-di-nino-galloni/

Mario Draghi responded directly to the yellow-and-green European MEPs questions on the subject. He spoke of the ECB's right to hold and manage currency resources (based on Article 30 of the ECB Statute). It is therefore two aspects: if it manages and holds it means that it is not the owner, in other words that it cannot sell; but if gold is a currency reserve it may have to be sold (at least in theory) based on obvious needs.


 
However, in these situations, to sell (extraordinary act) the authorization of a higher-level authority is required in the interest of the owner (Italian people, inalienable assets; Italian state, alienable assets); but this superordinate authority does not exist. Therefore, of the two, one: or gold is a reserve, then the guarantee authority is missing (as in the case of the property of a minor or a subject not considered independent); or gold cannot be sold and then it is not "reserve". In fact, the second and even more delicate aspect: the ECB Statute speaks of foreign exchange reserves, but gold could be considered as such when there was the pledge of the currency to gold (and to other currencies with fixed exchange rates between them and gold convertibility established by international agreements). Today this is no longer the case: the sale of gold in the various currencies (or vice versa) is not decided by agreements or by an authority, but by the free market.

The question would be very simple in a historical perspective: after 1971 it is a resource, not a reserve (in a technical-monetary sense). The only competence of the ECB, therefore, concerns the authorization regime towards the Bank of Italy in terms of supervision over it as required by the Treaties and by the same Statute.

Felwine Sar: "Africa does not have to catch up with anyone"

"Africa does not have to catch up with anyone"
Senegalese economist Felwine Sarr calls for abandonment of European values and development goals for Africa.
By Winfried Veit | 03/18/2019
Source:  https://www.ipg-journal.de/aus-meinem-buecherschrank/artikel/afrika-muss-niemanden-einholen-3329/

When a delegation of German parliamentarians headed by Foreign Minister Heiko Maas recently visited West African Mali, one of the deputies, according to a correspondent's report, offered a sobering picture: the weak state could not guarantee security, broken trains would stand for lack of infrastructure, the capital would suffocate in the garbage, economic growth is too weak. It is a picture that does not surprise Africa connoisseurs and that is not only true of Mali, but even more drastic in other African countries.

But does not this look through the Western glasses obscure the understanding of a completely different reality? Exactly this question poses the Senegalese economist, author and musician Felwine Sarr in his now published book in German "Afrotopia", which was already published in 2016 in French. And he answers them with a clear and clear yes, which he bases on 176 pages of his in many places almost lyrical and philosophical essay. Sarr, in the very postcolonial tradition, questions the universality of Western values ​​and models of development. According to Sarr, Sarr believes that it is not only the uncritical adoption of Western concepts such as development, growth, nation or representative democracy by the African elites, but above all that the West has succeeded in bringing "its ideas of human progress into the collective Imaginary of others ".

 

 It is not just about the appropriation of one culture by another, but more fatal and the appropriation and acceptance of the "image" that others make of this culture. With his criticism, Sarr follows up on the theses of Edward Said, who has mainly focused on "Orientalism", a trend emanating from Europe at the end of the 19th century, which has given its own stereotypes to the Middle East, some of them up to reverberate today. Similarly with Africa, Sarr demands nothing less than a "spiritual revolution" that puts an end to the "servile imitation of political models based on very different foundations and because they have no relation to the local (African) reality have, for extraversion, that is to lead to alienation. "

A departure from the "colonial library" and turning to a "pre-colonial library" was necessary. It is meant to throw overboard the narrative imposed by the colonial rulers of Africa and to reflect on the pre-colonial history of the "cradle of humanity". All the more so since since the Second World War in postmodern Europe its "great cultural orientations" are in disintegration: family, nation, sense of duty, social responsibility. Instead, there is now an extreme individualism, the cult of hedonism, fragmented identities and any social practices. In addition to the demographic, economic, political, cultural and social devastation caused by four centuries of slave trade and a century of colonization, there is now the "profound crisis of Western civilization", with which Europe and the West have finally served as models. As such, Japan in the Meiji era in the 19th century or the post-Hiroshima Japan, which both acquired Western technology while preserving its own tradition, are most likely to be considered. China, on the other hand, sees Sarr in the very colonial tradition of providing some infrastructure against the exploitation of natural resources and the colonization of lands.

 

 No, "Africa does not have to catch up with anyone. It no longer needs to walk on predetermined paths, but to take the path that it has chosen to swiftly follow. "But this path remains somewhat vague except for the constant references to the rediscovery of one's own tradition. Admittedly, Afrotopia is admittedly a utopia, but in Sarr's words it is an "active utopia that seeks to unearth the vast spaces of possibility within African reality and make them fruitful." If he opposes the Western He prefers to accept growth fetishism and instead focuses on the needs of the peoples. The same applies to his demand for a more ecological orientation of an African development model and the questioning of the Western concept of the nation. But all of this remains largely at odds, as it also somewhat nonchalantly overlooks the consequences of dramatic population growth in Africa, whose population will double by 2050 to two billion people. It is noteworthy, however, that Africa's share of world population at the beginning of the slave trade in the 16th century was 20 percent, at the end of which in the 19th century only 9 percent. If one could regard the re-growth to over 20 per cent by 2050 as compensatory justice, then it is certainly not sufficient to not only feed this growing number, but also to convey "education and the conditions for a life in dignity, in peace "in safety and freedom" must grant.

Despite some weaknesses, "Afrotopia" is a readable and worthy book by an African intellectual of the post-colonial generation, who recently became known to a wider public in Germany as co-author of a report to the French president about the return of looted colonial objects. The book should also give the West, and Europe in particular, more to think about in terms of, for example, devastating trade policies, but also the prevalent moral arrogance of making European values ​​the measure of all things, despite all the 're-rhetoric'

The Matrix Revealed: Cartels That Run The World

Mar16 by Jon Rappoport

by Jon Rappoport
March 16, 2019
Source: https://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2019/03/16/matrix-revealed-cartels-run-world/

The following information comes from insider interviews with Ellis Medavoy and Richard Bell, two people I interview extensively in my collection, The Matrix Revealed. This is just a brief taste of what they have to say…

Major institutions on this planet that control Military, Money, Energy, Government, Medical, Corporate, Media, and Education are becoming, more and more, global cartels, horizontally integrated across national borders.
This is more than a top-down command process. It’s organically evolving. Three steps forward, two steps back. There is a great deal of competition among the components of a given cartel, but there is also cooperation. And in the long run, the see-saw is tipping in the direction of cooperation, as these entities realize they may well have more to gain that way.

I can’t stress too strongly this EVOLVING process. All attempts to merely assume twelve men in a room run the planet fall woefully short.
Instead, over time, people who lead a powerful institution (like Energy, for example) look out and recognize more major players, and in this recognition there is an impulse to compete and win and destroy, but there is also an impulse to build commonality and therefore monopolize the entire territory.
During one conversation with retired master propagandist Ellis Medavoy, I asked him about the extent of mutual cooperation in his given field, psychological warfare.

He responded:
“Twenty years ago, I would have said we were all operating separately and jealously. Each of us was mining his own contacts and building his false pictures of reality for the masses. But then things began to change. Globally. First of all, more of us were pushing the same holograms. And because communication and travel were speeding up so rapidly, we were working a lot of the same venues. We would run into each other more often. We began to share information. I mean, it was cautious. We weren’t gushing with unbridled love, I assure you. The competitive factor was still strong. And we had fights. But through all that, we began to see through the fog, so to speak. We began to understand the effectiveness of cooperating. We would test each other with privileged information, to see if we could trust each other to keep it private. A tidbit here, a tidbit there.

“And you see, behind us, other groups were finding commonality, too. For example, in the area of medical propaganda, where I operated a lot of the time. And these groups saw they could join together for specific operations, on an international scale. They could push enormous lies globally, and everyone of their class would profit and gain wider control. So I would find myself working with a psy warfare guy from, say, France, or Germany in a joint venture. We would rub elbows. We’d be feeding from the same basic money trough.
“We’d both be briefed by a team of intelligence experts, and those experts would be of several nationalities. Slowly, I saw a new kind of umbrella structure emerging.

“See, suppose during the secret lead-up to a planned economic crisis [money cartel], you can distract everybody with a phony epidemic [medical cartel]. Do you see? Leaders perceive a reason to cooperate. Planners become more intelligent and clever. They reach across lines they never would have reached across before…
“You begin to see the outlines of a much more inclusive future structure. This is multi-front warfare.”

Richard Bell, another former insider, said to me: “People like to assume that money is everything. If you can limit the amount of money the public has, eventually they weaken and cave in and they’re easier to control. And this is certainly true. But on the other hand, as mega-corporations gain more power and range and markets, you have a clash, because those corporations, which are now cooperating in ways they never have, as a cartel in some respects, want customers for their products. They don’t want abject poverty across the board. People have to be able to buy their products.

“So there is a heavy conflict. It’s a conflict between elite bankers [money cartel] and mega-corporations [corporation cartel]. It needs to be resolved through advance planning, over the long term. So now you have these powerful men sitting down and talking in a new way. Other big-time players get involved, too [government, media, energy cartels, for example].”

This is just the beginning of what these people have to say about the Matrix in their interviews and how it REALLY works.

---

(To read about Jon’s mega-collection, The Matrix Revealed, click here.)

CARIGE CASE: THE ITALIAN GOVERNMENT IS LOSING 10 EUR BILLION

CARIGE CASE: THE GOVERNMENT IS LOSING 10 EUR BILLION

Rome, March 13, 2019 (OPI) - In the 25 billion lawsuit filed by MS, defended by the lawyer. Marco Della Luna at the Court of Genoa, the bank has refused the finding and the forfeiture of the sum of 25 billion found through the accounting analysis of the corporate balance sheet of CARIGE of 2013.
Appeals now to see the ownership of the entire sum to the finder recognized, pursuant to art. 929 of the civil code. If the Court continues to refuse CARIGE's accounting analysis for the fourth time, through a court-appointed expert (CTU), the State risks losing forever more than 10 billion of taxes that would derive from the assignment of the amount raised to the finder, after having lost them for the bank's refusal to accept this finding.
The question of accounting for the creation of money by the bank, a creation that officially emerged with the reply from the Bank of Italy to the question of the Hon. Villarosa in the Sixth Finance Commission in May 2017 (question 5-11277) asking for the overall volumes created by the central bank and commercial banks, also emerged in a World Bank document in May 2018, The Accounting View of Money, signed by Biagio Bossone and Massimo Costa. The lawyer Marco Della Luna points out that if the cause is not adequately considered by the Genoese Court, the current government will lose access definitively to 10 billion of revenues that could solve the current budget difficulties. It would be another chance lost by a government that promises a change that we are all waiting for. The State should intervene in the case through its advocacy and also make the Revenue Agency intervene so as not to betray the promises made to the defrauded savers and the dismissed workers.

February 27, 2019

Source: https://www.icij.org/investigations/world-bank/world-banks-legal-immunity-stripped-opening-door-for-lawsuits/

Reporting by

Sasha Chavkin

The World Bank headquarters in Washington, D.C.

i

World Bank / Simone D. McCourtie

Evicted and Abandoned

World Bank’s Legal Immunity Stripped, Opening Door for Lawsuits

The Supreme Court of the United States has rejected World Bank claims of complete legal immunity, ruling that one of its arms can be sued in relation to lending activities.
The 7-1 ruling could also open other American-based international organizations to the threat of lawsuits over financing overseas development.
For the World Bank, it means that it now faces having to defend against a suit by members of a fishing community in Mundra, India, who contend that their homes and livelihoods were damaged by pollution from a coal power plant that was financed by the bank’s private sector lending arm, the Washington, D.C.-based International Finance Corporation.

Recommended reading

• 
  Villagers In Limbo As World Bank Abandons Controversial Kosovo Power Plant
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  How 50 reporters exposed the World Bank’s broken promises
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Bharat Patel, general secretary of the Association for the Struggle of Fisherworkers’ Rights, one of the plaintiffs, welcomed the historic ruling, saying:  “This is a huge victory for the people of Mundra [and a] major step towards holding the World Bank accountable for the negative impacts their investments are causing.”
ICIJ covered the plight of the fishing community and the bank’s refusal to recognize its claims as part of its 2015 Evicted and Abandoned investigation.  The project found that about 3.4 million people were physically or economically displaced by World Bank-funded development projects between 2004 and 2013, and that the bank often failed to follow its own rules for properly resettling these communities.
The legal case surrounded a 1945 law which granted international organizations “the same immunity from suit” as foreign governments.

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The court had to decide how that law was impacted by a second one from 1976 excluding commercial activities by foreign governments from this immunity.
The Feb. 27 ruling does not reportedly affect either the United Nations or the International Monetary Fund, as they have complete immunity under their charters.
The World Bank argued that the exclusion on the immunity of commercial activities did not apply to it. If it could be for sued for its development loans, the bank maintained, it would become a target for lawsuits around the world that would cripple its ability to perform its core mission of fighting poverty and promoting development.

Fisherfolk in northwest India claim an IFC-funded power plant has contributed to depleted fish stocks.

i

Photo: Sami Siva

“Those concerns are inflated,” the Supreme Court held in its ruling.
Justice Stephen G. Breyer dissented; newly appointed Justice Brett Kavanaugh did not participate.
Breyer warned that the majority ruling would “create uncertainty” for international organizations involved in finance.
Two lower courts had sided with the World Bank on the immunity question.
Lawyers for EarthRights International, which represents the plaintiffs, say that the World Bank must be accountable if its actions or its negligence harms local populations. The fishing community’s case against the bank will now be allowed to proceed in lower courts in the U.S.
“Immunity from all legal accountability does not further the development goals of international organizations,” said Marco Simon, the General Counsel for EarthRights. “It simply leads them to be careless, which is what happened here.”

Banking: Secret Data Centres

Secret Data Centres

including GCHQ's Tempora and NSA's PRISM projects

Permalink (where you can find location links)

Perhaps with greater significance in our everyday lives, underground bunkers are also used by huge banking corporations to store backups of customer records and daily financial transactions. One magnificent example can be found between Sheffield and Barnsley in the former mining community of Tankersley. Take a look at HSBC's (formerly Midland Bank) South Yorkshire National/Group Data Centre (SYNDC/SYGDC) within Tankersley's Wentworth Business Park.

The secure ring-fenced hardened computer centre – completed back in 1981 at a cost of £40 million – is mostly hidden underground with just the surface entrances showing. The numerous ventilation funnels surrounding the site have led the locals to nickname it "Teletubbyland", as they resemble the voice trumpets on the children's TV show. It can be seen on Google Earth at high resolution but even better, it is available on Windows Live Local as a superb Bird's Eye view (shown further below). Still in Yorkshire, another example can be found built into a hillside between Halifax and Sowerby Bridge. It is known as the Halifax Bank of Scotland's (HBOS) Copley Data Centre.

Take a look near junction 31 of the M62 at Normanton near Wakefield. There's plenty going on around the north side of the village of Ackton. One site at Loscoe Lane roundabout off Havertop Lane is earmarked for the state-of-the-art replacement Divisional HQ for West Yorkshire Police, while another off Premier Way North is the new Northern Data Centre for the global secure financial operations of HSBC. The data centre, which was approaching completion in Summer 2009, includes a massive server hall (250 metres long by 100 metres wide), two dedicated electricity sub-stations, two DRUPS (Diesel Rotary Uninterruptible Power Supplies), underground fuel tanks and an Argonite fire suppression equipment storage building.

Meanwhile, in 2009 HSBC opened a new data centre "at a secret location in suburban North London", according to various trade journals and technology news websites. However, I can exclusively reveal that it has been constructed on the old Glaxo Smith Kline Beecham site at what is now known as Quadrant Park, Mundells, Welwyn Garden City in Hertfordshire. You might be fascinated by the detailed architect plans on the local council website.

Tragically during construction in November 2008, the HSBC Hertfordshire Data Centre cost one man his life and caused many others serious injuries when a cylinder of Argonite gas exploded and shot around the building like a missile, destroying everything in its path. The Health and Safety Executive issued three prohibition notices on Crown House Data Solutions (a division of construction company Laing O'Rourke) for serious breaches of statutory safety standards.

HSBC was poised to start construction of a £300 million northern data centre at Vangarde Business Park, Monks Cross, Huntington, York after receiving formal planning permission in May 2009. Again, all the detailed drawings were there on the council website for all to see. Due to the economic downturn, the project was suddenly halted in December 2009, to the dismay of the city's business leaders.

The German specialists e-Shelter are developing what will be Europe's second largest data centre campus – behind their own Frankfurt site – just a stone's throw from RAF High Wycombe's Strike Command bunker, north west of Saunderton Station at Bledlow Ridge. The former Molins cigarette machinery factory (which was previously a WWII munitions works) on Haw Lane has been demolished. In its place will be four data centre halls which will be grass covered to blend in with the surrounding fields. Another new data centre campus is well underway at the Broadoaks Estate in West Byfleet, Surrey. It is within the grounds of a manor house which was used by the MoD's Defence Operational Analysis Establishment (DOAE) from 1965 until 1996.

Think of Brimble Hill at Burderop near Wroughton Airfield, on the outskirts of Swindon, Wiltshire. Such a quaint sounding place and yet it was once the site of a USAF military hospital. After World War Two, the twenty buildings of the USAF facility were put to use by the UK Government for "psychiatric research" and subsequently an NHS Mental Health Unit. But even that's gone now. In its place? Not one but two huge data centres with impressive security systems.

The Brimble Hill, Burderop data centre site was specially built in the 1990s for Woolwich Building Society operating under the name NuDelta. In 2001, the NuDelta server engineers were made redundant when Barclays took over the operations and consolidated their activities at their own data centre in Gloucester. Later, Compaq moved in and extended the facilities and since Compaq were acquired by Hewlett Packard, it has been used as a key part of HP's data server infrastructure.

Hewlett Packard operates another massive data centre campus at Broadland Business Park in Thorpe St. Andrew, east of Norwich, which was originally built in 2007 for Norwich Union.

In November 2010, the Government announced plans to destroy all data and equipment associated with the cancelled National ID Card Scheme. The special Ministry of Defence grade secure data centre which was geared up to run the project is owned and operated by famous French defence contractor Thales. It is sited just a short drive from Junction 3 on the M18 at Doncaster, on the corner of White Rose Way, Carolina Way and Wisconsin Drive.

…and Forgive Them Their Debts

“Earth-shattering” book argues that ancients routinely did what our government should do: give debtors a clean slate

posted by Public Banking Inst | 8gb
February 28, 2019 

http://www.publicbankinginstitute.org/earth_shattering_book_argues_that_ancients_routinely_did_what_our_government_should_do_a_clean_slate

Photo courtesy Michael Hudson

Michael Hudson, one of the few economists who accurately predicted the Great Recession, has written a book — …and Forgive Them Their Debts — that caused John Siman to remark in Naked Capitalism: “To grasp his central argument is so alien to our modern way of thinking … that Hudson quite matter-of-factly agreed with me that the book is … ‘earth-shattering’ in both intent and effect.” Hudson’s central argument is that, again and again, century after century, forgiveness of debts had been a necessary cornerstone of successful civilizations.

This fact could not have been known until now, until twentieth century scholars of ancient Mesopotamia completed their archaeological and philological analyses … and Michael Hudson digested the scholarship to conclude that, “The Bible is preoccupied with debt, not sin.” Hudson explains in a recent interview with Dr Simon Radford:

“The problem today is that the debts are not owed to the Nazis [as was the case in 1947/48]: they are owed to the banks, and the richest layer of the population.” But history, mathematics, and economic logic all point in the same direction: it is only a clean slate that can restore economic vitality.

In light of Hudson's plea to heed the lessons of the ancients, the case for public banks becomes even more clear: when credit is issued by government, not by private interests, subsequent debt can and should be easily forgiven when needed so that all may benefit.

Hudson's interview article continued:

Many people today “don’t understand the linguistics of debt and sin”, [Hudson] says. “Again and again, Jesus denounces the creditors: they were the sinners, not the debtors. That’s the most important message that he had.”

The book was selected for the Best Books of 2018: Economics by the Financial Times.

[Read the full Naked Capitalism article]

[Read the full interview with Dr. Simon Radford]

[Watch related video: On Contact with Chris Hedges]

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