Wednesday, October 16, 2019
Tuesday, October 15, 2019
Monday, October 14, 2019
Pope's bodyguard resigns over new financial leaks scandal
The Vatican said its police chief, 57-year-old Domenico Giani, bore no responsibility for a leaked police flyer but resigned to avoid disrupting the investigation.
Pope Francis walks with head of security Domenico Giani near Rome on March 5, 2017.
Tony Gentile / Reuters file
Oct. 14, 2019, 1:24 PM EDT
By Associated Press
VATICAN CITY — The Vatican's latest leaks scandal claimed its first victim Monday, as Pope Francis' chief bodyguard resigned over the leak of a Vatican police flyer identifying five employees who were suspended as part of a financial investigation.
The Vatican said its police chief, 57-year-old Domenico Giani, bore no responsibility for the leaked flyer but resigned to avoid disrupting the investigation and "out of love for the church and faithfulness" to the pope.
The person who leaked the document to the Italian newsweekly L'Espresso remains unknown.
Giani, a 20-year veteran of the Vatican's security services, has stood by Francis' side and jogged alongside his popemobile during hundreds of public appearances and foreign trips. He also was the chief bodyguard for Pope Benedict XVI, and the Vatican took pains to stress his "unquestionable faithfulness and loyalty" to the Holy See.
Giani had signed the Oct. 2 police flyer after his agents raided two Holy See offices — the secretariat of state and the Vatican's financial intelligence unit — as part of an investigation by Vatican criminal prosecutors into alleged financial irregularities surrounding a money-losing London real estate deal.
The deal — which reportedly resulted in a loss to the Holy See of tens of millions — has itself raised questions about the Vatican's murky finances and poor investment decisions during Benedict's papacy. Recently, Francis ordered cost cuts to relieve a structural deficit estimated at some 70 million euros.
But the raids and related suspensions, apparently launched due to more recent efforts to recover some of the lost money, were highly unusual for the Vatican and sparked fresh speculation about its Machiavellian turf battles, power struggles and score-settling.
That the alleged leaker remains unknown has added to the mystery surrounding the case, which has implicated high-ranking Vatican cardinals.
Sunday, October 13, 2019
Saturday, October 12, 2019
Rothschild emerges from the shadows for the Centenary of the London Gold Fixing
16 Sep 2019 03:09
Ronan Manly
“The history of the London Gold Fixing is a history of gold price intervention and manipulation“
This month in London marks the 100th anniversary of the first “London Gold Fixing”, the infamous daily meeting of a secretive cartel of bullion banks which has met since 1919 to set benchmark gold prices used throughout the international gold market, a meeting which continues to this day through its thinly disguised successor, the LBMA Gold Price auction.
London gold price benchmarks are critically important to the global gold market because they are used as a valuation source for everything from ISDA gold interest rate swap contracts to gold-backed Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs), and everything from OTC gold contracts to transaction reference prices used by physical bullion dealers when purchasing gold bars and gold coins from refineries and suppliers.
Since 2015, the London Gold Fixing has been known as the LBMA Gold Price following a rush by the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) bullion banks to patch over the then scandalized ‘Fixing’ in a smoke and mirrors and circle the wagons relaunch and renaming exercise. The collusive Gold Fixing first formally came into existence on 12 September 1919 when the Bank of England tapped its favorite bankers N.M. Rothschild & Sons to be the daily Fixing’s permanent chairman. Rothschild and the Bank of England had been joined at the hip since the early 1800s and would continue to be so in the Gold Fixing throughout the next century.
The 1919 launch of the Gold Fixing by the Bank of England and Rothschild succeeded a more informal version of a gold fixing that had existed up to the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, which consisted of a meeting of four London gold brokers Mocatta & Goldsmid, Samuel Montagu, Sharps & Wilkins, and Pixley & Abell who between them set a daily gold price at the offices of Sharps & Wilkins.
For the next 85 years from its inception in September 1919, the Gold Fixing occurred daily at Rothschild’s headquarters in New Court, St. Swithins Lane, across the road from the Bank of England, with five men from five bullion banks religiously meeting at 10:30 am each morning. After the collapse of the London Gold Pool in 1968, the Gold Fixing moved to a twice per day pricing with an extra 3:00 pm meeting added by the fixers to ‘watch over’ the US morning hours gold market.
Rothschild would remain as the Gold Fixing’s permanent chairman until May 2004 at which point the fabled investment bank mysteriously departed the gold fixing and stepped back into the shadows after 200 years in the London Gold Market. Until now that is, for in one of its rare re-appearances, the LBMA’s seminar and cocktail reception to celebrate the Gold Fixing’s centenary took place this week at, you guessed it, NM Rothschilds’ headquarters in St Swithins Lane. In the words of the LBMA, the ‘momentous occasion’ of the centenary celebrations is being:
“held on the centenary of the first gold price, and held in the current Rothschild building which was built on the site of (the second) New Court, St Swithin’s Lane, where the first gold price was set. We are grateful to Rothschild & Co for their support in co-hosting this event with LBMA.”
NM Rothschild’s London headquarters at New Court in St Swithin’s Lane, City of London, England
Friday, October 11, 2019
Environmentalists have a new target: Charmin toilet paper
BY IRINA IVANOVA
UPDATED ON: OCTOBER 10, 2019 / 6:15 PM / MONEYWATCH
Consumer goods giant Procter & Gamble faces pressure from environmentalists to clean up its act.
More than 150 groups are pushing the maker of Charmin toiler paper and Bounty paper towels to use recycled materials in its products. Currently, neither of those products uses recycled paper, and about one-third of it is sourced from Canada's boreal forest — a large swath of virgin forest that rings the Arctic Circle and acts as a critical check on climate change.
"It's just unacceptable that a company like P&G is making toilet paper, a product that is used for seconds and flushed, from virgin pulp," said Shelley Vinyard, boreal corporate campaign manager for the Natural Resources Defense Council and one of several dozen protesters at P&G's annual shareholders meeting in Cincinnati, Ohio, on Tuesday.
The NRDC likens Canada's vast forests to "the Amazon of North." Replacing just half of P&G's virgin pulp usage with recycled content "would dwarf the company's current climate commitments," the NRDC said in a letter to the company that was co-signed by 150 other activist groups.
P&G offers a simple reason for not using recycled wood pulp: It doesn't make for good toilet paper.
‘CO2 is plant food’: Australian group signs international declaration denying climate science
Mining engineers and business leaders among those joining Clintel group targeting UN
Graham Readfearn
@readfearn
Thu 26 Sep 2019 01.21 EDT
A group of 75 Australian former and current business figures – including mining engineers and retired geologists – have signed on to an international declaration targeting the UN and the EU and claiming “there is no climate emergency” and that “CO2 is plant food”.
Several of the signatories to the group – which described itself as Clintel – have high-level links to conservative politics, industry and mining.
They include Hugh Morgan, a former president of the Business Council of Australia, and Ian Plimer, a director on Gina Rinehart’s Roy Hill Holdings iron ore project.
The move was designed to coincide with the UN’s climate action summit and general assembly in New York.Great Barrier Reef expert panel says Peter Ridd misrepresenting science
Also signing the declaration is Dr Peter Ridd, the former James Cook University scientist who claims that devastating bleaching events on the Great Barrier Reef are not driven by climate change.
@readfearn
Thu 26 Sep 2019 01.21 EDT
A group of 75 Australian former and current business figures – including mining engineers and retired geologists – have signed on to an international declaration targeting the UN and the EU and claiming “there is no climate emergency” and that “CO2 is plant food”.
Several of the signatories to the group – which described itself as Clintel – have high-level links to conservative politics, industry and mining.
They include Hugh Morgan, a former president of the Business Council of Australia, and Ian Plimer, a director on Gina Rinehart’s Roy Hill Holdings iron ore project.
The move was designed to coincide with the UN’s climate action summit and general assembly in New York.Great Barrier Reef expert panel says Peter Ridd misrepresenting science
Also signing the declaration is Dr Peter Ridd, the former James Cook University scientist who claims that devastating bleaching events on the Great Barrier Reef are not driven by climate change.
Witches Are Having Their Hour
Pam Grossman at The Grand Prospect Hall in Brooklyn, NewYork.
Mengwen Cao for The New York Times
Pam Grossman, author and host of the popular “The Witch Wave” podcast, said witches are having a resurgence among feminists who want authority over their lives.
By Laura M. Holson
Pam Grossman, author and host of the popular “The Witch Wave” podcast, said witches are having a resurgence among feminists who want authority over their lives.
By Laura M. Holson
Oct. 11, 2019
Pam Grossman lives on a quiet street in Park Slope, Brooklyn, next door to a Mexican restaurant that sells cheap burritos and $3 bottles of Mexican cola. She is soft-spoken with long, dark hair, wears punk black boots and is married to a man who collects “Star Wars” figurines, which he lines up on a dresser in their bedroom.
“My life is pretty ordinary,” she said one recent Monday as her cat, Remy, rubbed his whiskers against her hip.
Ms. Grossman was showing me her altar, a pastiche of moon pendants, candles, crystals and dried flowers. She calls herself a witch, and cast spells and teaches magical history. She has been named “the Terry Gross of witches” for “The Witch Wave” podcast she hosts. In June, she published “Waking the Witch: Reflections on Women, Magic, and Power.” And last weekend, she was an organizer of the Occult Humanities Conference hosted by New York University.
Today’s witches — those who identify more with feminism than burnings at the stake — are a part of the collective consciousness. For nearly two years, President Trump has called the investigation into Russia’s influence in the 2016 election a “witch hunt.” Witches are the subject of recent art exhibits. Even members of the Wing, the popular co-working space among well-heeled women in their 30s, refer to themselves as a coven.
Ms. Grossman, who keeps a statue of the Roman goddess Diana the Huntress on her altar, said witches are having a resurgence among feminists who want authority over their own lives. But they continue to be persecuted in places like Papua New Guinea, where angry mobs have recently accused vulnerable people, often women, of sorcery.
The witch is “the perfect symbol for anyone who wants to subvert the status quo and who wants to proclaim they belong to themselves,” Ms. Grossman said.
Georgetown University must decide whether it is a university or a hostage to censors
OPINION
by Tom Rogan
October 10, 2019 12:51 PM
Georgetown University must defend the right of invited speakers to speak.
On Monday, acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan was prevented from delivering remarks at a formal Georgetown University event. While faculty repeatedly attempted to calm protesters in the crowd, their words went unheard. Every time McAleenan attempted to speak, he was drowned out. One member of the faculty explained that McAleenan had agreed to take questions, including from protesters. They ignored him. They weren't interested in dialogue or learning, or even arguing.
Frustrated, McAleenan eventually decided to leave.
Does Georgetown accept this? Does it hope that it doesn't happen next time? Or does it take action to create consequences for those who would destroy its community and its learning environment from within?
On Monday, acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan was prevented from delivering remarks at a formal Georgetown University event. While faculty repeatedly attempted to calm protesters in the crowd, their words went unheard. Every time McAleenan attempted to speak, he was drowned out. One member of the faculty explained that McAleenan had agreed to take questions, including from protesters. They ignored him. They weren't interested in dialogue or learning, or even arguing.
Frustrated, McAleenan eventually decided to leave.
Does Georgetown accept this? Does it hope that it doesn't happen next time? Or does it take action to create consequences for those who would destroy its community and its learning environment from within?
Vatican is forced to deny claim that the Pope questioned Christ's divinity
By Faith Ridler For Mailonline 16:18 10 Oct 2019, updated 16:51 10 Oct 2019
- Journalist Eugenio Scalfari claimed Pope Francis said Christ is not God incarnate
- Vatican insisted this 'cannot be considered a faithful account of what was said'
- Atheist Scalfari has previously claimed Pope Francis denied the existence of hell
The Vatican has denied a claim that Pope Francis questioned Christ's divinity, insisting comments published by an Italian journalist are not a 'faithful account of what was actually said'.
In a statement given on Wednesday, Matteo Bruni said 'any words' Eugenio Scalfari attributed 'in quotation marks to the Holy Father' instead 'represent a personal and free interpretation of what he heard'.
Bruni, the director of the Holy See Press Office, added: 'As already stated on other occasions, the words that Dr. Eugenio Scalfari attributes in quotation marks to the Holy Father during talks with him cannot be considered a faithful account of what was actually said but represent a personal and free interpretation of what he heard, as appears completely evident from what is written today regarding the divinity of Jesus Christ'.
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