Majorityrights News > Category: Modernity

DW Documentary, “The climate cover up - big oil’s campaign of deception”, 25 Feb 2018 (YouTube Posting):

Scott Pruitt was appointed the head of the EPA by Donald Trump. With perverted irony, Trump has appointed severe corporatists to key positions that are supposed to look after our common interests.

Nick Fuentes vs. RC Maxwell | Civic Nationalism Debate.

Fuentes stakes-out some classic arguments against civic nationalism and specifically in this case, against those arguments for inclusion of blacks within the nation. While a full endorsement is not implied, he establishes a plateau from which to elaborate, differ and/or transform.

ContraPoints has done his/her homework as well, also enough to stake out a polemic - by contrast to Fuentes, ContraPoints argues in defense of blacks - giving explanations/excuses for what are taken by those who dislike them to be typical black behavior (bad) - again, providing a position for difference, elaboration and/or transformation.

A new PhD, “Mexie” the Vegan and anti-capitalist activist, considers that to be her favorite ContraPoints video, one that all “racists” (and anti-racists) should see.

Going Vegan: A Discussion with Mexie | ContraPointsLive

Washington Post, “4 things we learned from the indictment of 13 Russians in the Mueller investigation”, 16 Feb 2018:

This post has been updated.

We have the first indictment in the investigation by Robert S. Mueller III that actually has to do with Russian meddling in the 2016 election. The special counsel on Friday indicted 13 Russians in connection with a large-scale troll farm effort aimed at influencing the election in violation of U.S. law.

The indictment of the Internet Research Agency comes on top of two Trump advisers having pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI — Michael Flynn and George Papadopoulos — and two more being indicted on charges of alleged financial crimes that predated the campaign — Paul Manafort and Rick Gates. Nobody is in custody and Russia does not extradite to the United States, but the document from the secretive Mueller investigation does shed plenty of light where there previously wasn’t any.

So what does the new indictment tell us? Here’s what we can say right away:

1. It doesn’t say the Trump campaign colluded with Russia, but doesn’t rule it out either.

Anybody looking for clues about the collusion investigation into the Trump campaign won’t find much to grab hold of. If anything, the indictment may hearten Trump allies in that it doesn’t draw a line to the campaign — which suggests there was a large-scale effort independent of any possible collusion. Perhaps that’s the real meddling effort, some folks in the White House may be telling themselves right now. Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein even specified that Trump campaign officials who were contacted by the Russian nationals “did not know they were communicating with Russians.”

But that’s about as much insight as anyone can draw; we simply don’t know what else is coming down the pike, and any ties to Trump campaign officials may have been withheld from this indictment to avoid disclosing details of an ongoing investigation. The president hasn’t even been interviewed yet, so we wouldn’t expect any ties to the campaign at this juncture.

Asked whether campaign officials had knowledge of the scheme or were duped, Rosenstein chose his words carefully. “There is no allegation in this indictment that any American had any knowledge,” Rosenstein said.

The words “in this indictment” mean Rosenstein’s comments are pretty narrow.

Update:

In a statement, Trump and the White House suggested that the announcement “further indicates that there was NO COLLUSION between the Trump campaign and Russia.” Again, it doesn’t provide any direct indication.

2. It just got a lot harder for Trump to dismiss Mueller’s probe as a “witch hunt.”

At one point in the indictment, a price tag is put on the effort: $1.25 million in one month, as of September 2016. To put that in perspective, that’s as much as some entire presidential campaigns were spending monthly during the primaries. And that lends credence to the idea that this was a large-scale effort connected to the Russian government.

President Trump has often sought to downplay the idea that Russia interfered in the 2016 election — even suggesting he believed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s assurances that it didn’t happen. This document lays it out in extensive detail.

The argument that this is a “witch hunt,” which Trump has argued and more than 8 in 10 Republicans believe, just became much more difficult to make. And the document would seem to make pretty clear that the Mueller investigation isn’t just targeted at taking down Trump, either.

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New Observer, “8,606 Fake Refugees Invade Europe in first 37 Days of 2018”:

At least 8,606 nonwhites pretending to be “refugees” invaded Europe in the first 37 days of 2018, meaning that 232 invaders landed every day, according to new figures released by the United Nations’ International Organization of Migration (IOM).

 

The IOM figures show that 7,795 of the nonwhites invaded Europe by sea, and 811 by land as of 7 Feb 2018.

At least 186,768 nonwhites invaded Europe this way in 2017, and 392,879 in 2016, the IOM added.

The main nationalities of the invaders are, in descendant order, as follows:

To Italy: Nigeria, Guinea, Cote d’Ivoire, Bangladesh, Mali, and Eritrea;

To Greece: Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Pakistan, and Algeria;

To Spain: Morocco, Algeria, Guinea, Cote d’Ivoire, Gambia, and Syria;

To Bulgaria: Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Turkey, and Pakistan.

In the period from 1 February 1 to 7, 11 nonwhites invaders landed in Cyprus, and in the same period, 10 nonwhites demanded “refuge” in Hungary.

At the same time, 29 nonwhites demanded “refuge” in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

In 2017, at least 92 percent of the invaders landed by sea (172,362) to Italy, Greece, Spain and Cyprus. The remaining 14,406 invaded Europe by using land routes to the Spanish enclaves Ceuta and Melilla in North Africa (6,293) and from Turkey to Greece (5,551) and Bulgaria (2,562).

The IOM also revealed in its “Flows Compilation Report” for Decemebr 2017 that under the “EU Relocation Scheme”—through which that organization moves nonwhites from the countries of landing to other EU nations, another 106,000 nonwhites were moved from their landing points in Greece and Italy to elsewhere in Europe.

To date, 25 countries have committed to make places available under the scheme, namely Austria (50) Belgium (1,530), Bulgaria (1,070), Croatia (316), Cyprus (205), Czech Republic (50), Estonia (396), Finland (2,128), France (6,940), Germany (13,250), Ireland (1,152), Latvia (627), Liechtenstein (10), Lithuania (1,160), Luxembourg (545), Malta (205), the Netherlands (2,825), Norway (1,500), Poland (100), Portugal (3,218), Romania (2,182), Slovakia (60), Slovenia (579), Spain (2,500), Sweden (3,777) and Switzerland (1,530) with an overall number of 47,905 places.

An additional 54,000 nonwhites claiming to be Syrians were flown out of Turkey for “resettlement” in Europe.

The Russia Investigations: Trump Reportedly Wanted To Fire Mueller; D.C. Dumbstruck. A journalist describes Robert Mueller, pictured in 2007 when he was FBI director, as “about as apolitical and nonpartisan a figure as you could find in Washington.” (photo credit Susan Walsh/AP).

NPR, “Mueller’s Reputation In Washington Is ‘Stunningly Bipartisan,’ Journalist Says”, 1 Feb 2018:

As the investigation into the Trump campaign and Russian interference in the 2016 election forges on, Robert Mueller, the Justice Department special counsel leading the investigation, has managed to stay largely out of public view.

Journalist Garrett Graff says that is in keeping with Mueller’s personality: “This is not someone who in any way has tried to grab the spotlight, but instead has kept his head down and worked hard throughout his career.”

Graff’s 2011 book, The Threat Matrix, explores the transformation of the FBI under Mueller’s leadership. Appointed by President George W. Bush, Mueller took over as director of the FBI one week before the Sept. 11 attacks. After Mueller completed his 10-year term as FBI director, President Barack Obama reappointed him for a two-year term, which required a special act of Congress.

“Bob Mueller is probably about as apolitical and nonpartisan a figure as you could find in Washington, particularly at the levels of government in which he has served,” Graff says. “This is someone who really, truly believes in truth, justice [and] in the American way, in a way that very few people in American life today anymore do.”

Interview Highlights

On Mueller’s bipartisan record

We know him most recently, obviously, as the FBI director, but his tenure in government really dates back to the Reagan years. And he’s been appointed or held top jobs in the administrations of all five of the last presidents, and was appointed to the Justice Department, the head of the criminal division, under George H.W. Bush’s administration, then was appointed a U.S. attorney by Bill Clinton, then appointed the acting deputy attorney general by George W. Bush, and then later FBI director — a position he was reappointed to, in an unprecedented move, by President Obama and confirmed by the U.S. Senate by a vote 100-0, a stunningly bipartisan track record in today’s times.

On Mueller’s military service

Part of what makes Bob Mueller such a fascinating character is he has dedicated his life sort of time and again to public service. ... Mueller and a handful of other colleagues ... [signed] up for Vietnam after college. This was early in the 1960s, so it was before Vietnam became the cultural touchpoint that it did later.

White House Touts ‘Unprecedented’ Cooperation Amid Mueller Interview Talks

Second Lt. Marine Corps Bob Mueller ended up leading a platoon in the jungles of Vietnam for a year and really distinguished himself in combat. He received a Bronze Star with valor for his leadership in an ambush that his unit suffered in the fall of 1968, and then was actually shot himself in a separate incident in April 1969 where he received, of course, the Purple Heart and was quickly back on patrol, serving out the remainder of his year.

He came into the F.B.I. in part, in the summer of 2001 because he was known inside the department as a computer-guy. He had help found the Justice Department’s first real computer crime unit. And, the FBI in the summer of 2001 had this incredibly outdated computer system…

On how the FBI changed after the Sept. 11 attacks

Bob Mueller, in the days after Sept. 11, sees this incredible sea change in the mission of the FBI, which until then for most of its first 90 years had primarily been a law enforcement agency focused domestically on solving crimes after the fact. And on Sept. 11, we saw an international plot that focused on a suicide attack with catastrophic results, and that that necessitated this top-to-bottom change in the way that the United States approached counterterrorism issues, that after-the-fact investigation was going to be inadequate in the face of these threats.

So Mueller was given a mission by [former Attorney General] John Ashcroft and President Bush to not just investigate attacks afterwards, but to stop plots in the first place, to disrupt the attack before it happened.

It led to this massive reorganization that Bob Mueller spent the next 12 years of his tenure working on, to move the FBI from what was traditionally a domestic law enforcement agency into something that is more akin to an international intelligence agency.

On how Mueller’s investigation into the Trump campaign is similar to other FBI investigations

This is, in many ways, a perfectly standard and routine FBI investigation. The FBI, as an investigative agency, takes down corrupt organizations, that’s what it’s designed to do, go after street gangs, drug cartels, organized crime families, and the way that they do that is by starting on the outside and working their way in. And so that can either mean starting at the bottom of an organization, or starting with ancillary charges and working their way inwards, the equivalent of getting Al Capone for tax evasion.

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TV: postmortem on passivity induced runaway destruction, including speculation on zombie effects despite the new dawn of interactive media. It’s being a retrospective gives me an excuse to post this older show which I’ve only seen today for the first time. It’s funny as hell. Charlie Brooker is clever. I don’t vouch for his politics, am unfamiliar with that.

But as we say goodbye to the hegemonic days of television and the passive acceptance of its audiences of a world they could not interact with nor hope to change, it is worthwhile to take another look back on the days of how the Televitz shaped and manipulated our attention; and to speculate on some of its lingering effects, both on runaway systems in a world unchallenged, and its parallel tropisms in the computer screen, exponentially better though it is in the choice and interaction the mechanisms attached may provide…

“How Television Ruined Your Life”

Parts 1-6, BBC production, 2012, under Youtube license:

Episode 1 - Fear

Episode 2 - Life Cycle

Episode 3 - Aspiration

Episode 4 - Love

Episode 5 - Progress

Episode 6 - Knowledge

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