[Majorityrights News] Alex Navalny, born 4th June, 1976; died at Yamalo-Nenets penitentiary 16th February, 2024 Posted by Guessedworker on Friday, 16 February 2024 23:43.
[Majorityrights Central] A couple of exchanges on the nature and meaning of Christianity’s origin Posted by Guessedworker on Tuesday, 25 July 2023 22:19.
[Majorityrights News] Is the Ukrainian counter-offensive for Bakhmut the counter-offensive for Ukraine? Posted by Guessedworker on Thursday, 18 May 2023 18:55.
Posted by DanielS on Thursday, 28 December 2017 05:38.
Correction: I spoke too soon about Timothy Snyder being an anti-nationalist, and I did that in light of his estimation that Britain and France were not really nations while they were empires, that their “nationhoods” were creations of post hoc political convenience. Nevertheless, to say that he is against nationalism would not be correct, since in fact he sees the weak state and the destruction of the state as that which abets genocide.
Snyder’s characterology of how Putin’s and Trump’s positions have emerged in fairly conjoint construction is uncanny…
As such he does make of himself a useful idiot in that he exposes one side of the YKW equation - the specific origin and characters of their right wing cohorts, Putin and Trump.
Youtube, “A Republic, If You Can Keep It: Masha Gessen Talks Autocracy with Timothy Snyder”, 12 July 2017:
As his fellow Trump/Putin critic, (((Masha Gessen))) would suggest, we would miss the truth of these characters, more like mafia dons than statesmen, if we were to maintain a policy of sheer fact checking. Because essentially, they don’t care. They both have a cynical world view and it is about power - logical consistency is for the naive. By contrast to that, one must have the courage and confidence to tell the true story -
Youtube, “Chatham House Primer: Modern Authoritarianism”, 30 Oct 2017:
This guy, (Ivan) Ilyin, I think was a very interesting philosopher; he is kind of the grandfather of the current Russian “fascism.” Current Russian “fascists” like Alexander Dugin are a little jealous of him and say that he just serves a technical function in the Kremlin and he’s not that interesting. I think he’s interesting. One of his ideas is that for Russia to have a leader, that person has to be free of history, which is a high demand.
He (Ilyin) was a right-wing Hegelian ...his whole idea was that god created the world and that was a mistake. It’s an interesting view, those of you who know anything about Orthodox theology know that there are references… god created the world, it was a mistake, the factuality of the world is itself sinful, history is itself sinful, contingency, to use the technical term, contingency is sinful, all these facts and passions we have, they’re inherently sinful.
So, in order for Russia to be rescued it has to be rescued by someone who is somehow clean of history.
It has to be a redeemer who comes from beyond history.
What I find so interesting is that this actually happened in a way.
The place that is not history is fiction.
When Mr. Putin came to power, Surkov and the others in the Kremlin literally had a kind of game and then a public opinion poll where they tried to figure out which Russian fictional character would be most attractive to Russians. They came up with this character (Max Otto von) Stierlitz, who was a double agent and a person in a novel, and in a film, in the 70’s, who was a Russian spy who spoke German. That’s why they chose Mr. Putin. So, he literally .. this true people! This is the world we live in. So he literally came from fiction.
Then you connect Mr. Putin to Mr. Trump. Mr. Trump is Not a successful real estate developer! That never happened. Mr. Trump bankrupted six companies. He owed billions of dollars to, I think, seventy banks. Until, low and behold, some nice Russians came and said, ‘hey, why don’t you just put your name on some buildings and we’ll give you money for that, and we will build the buildings - which then became his business plan. Which is a great (((business plan))) if you can get it.
The Miss Universe pageant. How did he run (((the Miss Universe pageant)))? The Russians gave him twenty million dollars and he showed up. Which is a great business plan if you can do it.
So, a fictional Russian character comes to power and then creates a fictional American character called Mr. Trump. This happened!
Once the Russians had bailed him out, he then appeared on American television, on celebrity apprentice, playing a successful real estate developer - which he never was.
But as a character, he was great, he could say, “you’re fired!” in a really convincing way.
So, one fictional character then creates another fictional character. And that fictional character also comes to power. ..with the help of all kinds of fictional devices, mostly delivered through the internet. So there really is an interesting problem of (((genre))) going on in our life.
Posted by DanielS on Saturday, 25 November 2017 06:29.
Washington Post, “Michael Flynn is the key to the Russia scandal — and he may have just flipped on Trump”, 24 Nov 2017:
A lawyer for Michael Flynn has ended communications with President Trump’s legal team, a sign that Flynn may be preparing to cooperate in the Russia probe.
Michael Flynn, who served as President Trump’s national security adviser for just 24 days before being cut loose, may be the key figure to unraveling the entire Russia scandal. If that’s true, the president just got some very, very bad news in the form of a New York Times report:
Lawyers for Michael T. Flynn, President Trump’s former national security adviser, notified the president’s legal team in recent days that they could no longer discuss the special counsel’s investigation, according to four people involved in the case — an indication that Mr. Flynn is cooperating with prosecutors or negotiating a deal.
Mr. Flynn’s lawyers had been sharing information with Mr. Trump’s lawyers about the investigation by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, who is examining whether anyone around Mr. Trump was involved in Russian efforts to undermine Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.
That agreement has been terminated, the four people said. Defense lawyers frequently share information during investigations, but they must stop when doing so would pose a conflict of interest. It is unethical for lawyers to work together when one client is cooperating with prosecutors and another is still under investigation.
We should be clear that this news is not definitive proof that Flynn is cooperating with Mueller. It may mean only that he is in the process of negotiating a deal to avoid prosecution, and that deal might or might not involve giving information on other figures in the investigation. But if Flynn is indeed cooperating, Trump is in big trouble.
That’s because if Flynn is cooperating, it can only be because he has information to offer Mueller on someone more important than himself. That’s how it works. And who is more important than Flynn? Only a very small number of people. Among those implicated in this whole affair, that group may consist of Jared Kushner and Trump, and that’s about it.
Posted by DanielS on Friday, 17 November 2017 08:36.
Donald Trump gives a thumbs up as his son Donald Trump, Jr. speaks at a campaign rally at Valdosta State University in Valdosta, Georgia February 29, 2016 Reuters.
NPR, “Donald Trump Jr. Had Direct Contact With WikiLeaks During Campaign”, 14 Nov 2017:
During the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump Jr. was in direct contact with WikiLeaks at the same time the muckraking website was publishing hacked emails from Democratic officials that proved damaging to the Clinton campaign, according to several major publications.
Following the reports, Trump Jr. acknowledged the contact in a tweet detailing one exchange with the radical transparency organization.
The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post, in articles published late Monday, said that then-candidate Donald Trump’s eldest son used the messaging feature on Twitter to communicate with WikiLeaks, which in turn alerted the campaign to the impending release of the hacked emails.
The publications report that the messages between Trump Jr. and WikiLeaks were among thousands of documents turned over to Congress as part of its ongoing investigation into claims that Russia interfered in the November election — a finding backed unanimously by U.S. intelligence agencies, which have said that the Kremlin aimed to aid Donald Trump’s campaign.
Posted by DanielS on Tuesday, 14 November 2017 15:54.
Newsweek, “Evidence of Trump-Russia Collusion Already Exists, Watergate Prosecutors Say”, 14 Nov 2017:
There is definitive proof of whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia during the 2016 election — and it exists in the email inboxes of Jared Kushner, Stephen Miller, Hope Hicks and others.
That’s what several former Watergate prosecutors believe, telling Newsweek that evidence of collaboration between the Kremlin and the president’s top campaign aides could literally be at Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s fingertips. It just has to be uncovered.
“The key difference between this and Watergate is … at the time, you certainly didn’t have computers,” said Nick Ackerman, one of the prosecutors who probed the 1972 break-in at the Democratic party’s Watergate offices. “Rather than use burglars to break into the Democratic National headquarters, they used Russian hackers. ... The question is whether that was coordinated in any way with the Trump campaign. Their emails will answer that question, once the special counsel gets its hands on them.”
Kushner has reportedly turned over documents related to his campaign contacts with Russians to Mueller earlier this month, a voluntary move of cooperation between the White House senior adviser and the federal probe. Still, it remains unclear whether those documents include emails, as well as whether Kushner provided the entirety of his communications with Russians to the investigators. If he didn’t provide investigators the full details about his correspondences, it certainly wouldn’t be the first time the president’s son-in-law failed to disclose his Russian contacts (or his business interests, for that matter), having been forced to revise his government security clearance forms with at least 100 foreign contacts previously left off the list.
Even if he’s cooperating, Kushner may be lying about the campaign’s interactions with the Russians, and doing a terrible job of covering it up, according to Jill Wine-Banks, another former Watergate prosecutor. At issue is his response to the discovery of a June meeting in Trump Tower attended by Kushner, other Trump campaign officials and Russian operatives. The meeting was set up by Donald Trump Jr.; Kushner said he didn’t know what was going to be discussed and left early after being bored by the conversation.
“The data ... will make Kushner’s defense fall entirely apart,” Wine-Banks told Newsweek. “We know that statement was a total fabrication since the [Trump] campaign was looking for dirt on Hillary Clinton from the Russians … I have faith the grand jury will get down to the bottom of what really happened in that meeting.”
Also at issue is the Trump campaign’s involvement with Cambridge Analytica, the controversial data mining operation with apparent ties to Russia, which Kushner boasted was “brought in” to steer the campaign to victory.
“As far as Russian collision, right now there are two aspects: one is, did they micro target Hillary Clinton voters to suppress the vote?” Ackerman said. “We know that there was a data mining process that was done by Kushner out of Texas and we know that the Russians were doing targeting with Facebook and Twitter. The question is trying to compare the data sets to see if there was coordination between those two things.
“Email evidence already shows that the purpose of the meeting on June 9 was to bring incriminating evidence, supposedly emails about Clinton, to the campaign, but we don’t know exactly what they did with that evidence after that meeting,” Ackerman continued.
Why is Donald Trump reacting to Vlaimir Putin the way he has?
Because, if this was all bull crap, and there was nothing the Putin had on Trump; he was not compromised by Russia or by Putin at all; if only for political purposes, and Trump’s not an imbecile, he’s not brilliant but he’s not an imbecile and he clearly is a political person - he likes to be liked… he would be attacking Vladimir Putin at every opportunity.
..especially on the issue of their meddling in the election. That would be just the natural inclination.
Now, not only is he not doing that, he’s done the opposite of that.
He has been complimentary of Putin at every opportunity. And there is no evidence that he has punished Putin at all, for Russia’s meddling, regardless of whether or not the Trump team colluded in that meddling.
And today, something even more startling than Trump’s prior ass-kissing of Putin and his unwillingness to address this issue directly, of meddling having occurred.
Trump is on his foreign trip, he met with Putin, and then he told the press, that Putin told him, that Russia had nothing to do with the meddling; that it was the democrats doing, supposedly Trump quoting Putin.
And then Trump went our of his way to bash, by name - by name - the former heads of several of our intelligence agencies - including James Comey, calling them hacks and liars!
And completely buying into the idea, that the persons telling him the truth are not the people working for our own intelligence agencies, including, by the way, people that are still working for our intelligence agencies, including every major member of Congress, anybody with any credibility on this issue, or our side, has said, it’s not even a question. Russia attempted to meddle in our elections.
8:03: It’s not even a question. Russia attempted to meddle in our elections. And Trump is publicly saying, “no, I don’t believe any of that because Vladimir Putin told me so.” Seriously?
If Barack Obama had ever had a meeting with Vladimir Putin after winning re-election ..remember that election he won where he got caught telling .the Russian official tell Vladimir “I’ll have more flexibility after the election?” Remember that whole thing which the media buried, and should have been a massive scandal, the conservative media went ape crap over that little thing, frankly only little in comparison, that was a bid deal to me at the time ...
Sean Hannity
Can you imagine if after winning the 2012 election, Obama had met with Putin, and all of our intelligence agencies were saying that yeah, Putin helped Obama win; and Obama then came out and bashed those intelligence agencies of The United States of America and said, “I believe Putin because he seems very sincere in what he’s telling me” ...can you imagine the reaction of the Republicans in Congress, can you imagine the so-called conservatives in media? ...Sean Hannity would be live 24/7 outside of the White house.
Instead from the conservative media there is silence. In fact, if anything, they’ll support Putin and Russia because Trump told us to. They’ll be the one’s we’re supposed to believe over our own intelligence agencies. By the way, not a couple of them, all of them - with unanimity and certitude.
Evelyn Farkas: Former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia: 14:45: It drives me crazy when Former Director Comey says that the Russians are coming back. To your point, they never left. I mean they’re still here, they have all that information, they’re in our cyber- and in our information-sphere.
Ned Price: And its broader than just Wikileaks and the overt or semi overt organs of the Russian government. I think one thing we noticed even after the election; you take the sort of trending story in Alt-Right or so-called Alt-Right circles: [example] hashtag #Syriahoax started in Russia and somehow make their way to the United States and started trending in some of the same circles that are collectively known as the Alt-Right. And I think the linkage between the two is not something we fully understand; how something jumps across he Atlantic like that and tends to land with the same group of people after originating in pro-Russia circles.
Now we need a non-Jewish panel discussing Israeli and Jewish influence over the American electorate - lol.
..in fact, there are some questions toward the end that bear upon that -
Charlie D. from Duke Law: 52:00: Would it help if we broadened the discussion about all foreign nations who are trying to influence our campaigns?
Panel averts the question -
Ned Price: 52:19: I would start with the proposition that it’s natural for governments to have policy preferences. Clearly I would suspect lots of the NATO member countries were made uncomfortable listening to Donald Trump during the campaign speak of NATO being obsolete. I think that the issue is that in today’s environment there has been attempt at criminalization on policy preferences on the part of foreign capitals. But I think we have to remember is a far cry from a NATO country, you know, privately rooting for Hillary Clinton and a strategic adversary getting involved in our election with Active Measures, covert influence, social media, you name it.
Julia Ioffe: They weren’t probing and scanning our election infrastructure, yeah.
Audience Member: Have any of you considered the business role of the president and Russia; because he has, right now, no one will lend him money in New York City, no one will do business with him in New York City. He owes a great deal of money. Where does he get the money? There are a lot of rumors that he gets it from Russia. Have any of your explored any of that?
Julia Ioffe: 53:48: Both of his sons said that he (Trump) gets most of his money from them (Russia) ...and its not a crazy proposition either that if he’s doing real estate in New York and Florida ...and guess where (((Russians))) who want to park their money outside of Russia, guess where they want to buy real estate? - (((New York and Florida))).
Posted by DanielS on Thursday, 09 November 2017 19:19.
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Bloomberg, “U.K. Cabinet Minister Resigns Over Secret Israeli Meetings”, 8 Nov 2017:
- Aid secretary Patel held unofficial meeting with Netanyahu
- She failed to tell PM May or U.K. Foreign Office in advance
Priti Patel resigned as U.K. international development secretary over talks with the Israeli government behind Prime Minister Theresa May’s back after more revelations of undisclosed visits came to light.
Patel failed to tell either May or the U.K. Foreign Office that she would be having 12 meetings with officials including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a 13-day holiday in Israel in August. On Tuesday, it emerged that she had suggested giving British aid money to an Israeli army project and that she had held further unauthorized meetings.
“I offer a fulsome apology to you and to the Government for what has happened and offer my resignation,” Patel said in a letter. May responded: “Now that further details have come to light, it is right that you have decided to resign and adhere to the high standards of transparency and openness that you have advocated.”
Israel’s Haaretz newspaper reported Wednesday that Patel had also traveled to the Golan Heights in a breach of normal diplomatic protocol.
Those further revelations forced May to summon Patel back from a trip to Kenya within hours of her arrival. She then met the international development secretary on Wednesday evening for about half an hour, before her office made the resignation public.
‘Active’ Role
Patel’s departure piles pressure onto May, who initially tried to keep her in place while issuing a public rebuke over her lapse. Patel is the second cabinet minister to quit May’s government a week after Michael Fallon resigned as defense secretary over allegations of sexually inappropriate behavior.
May is struggling to maintain her grip on a government that’s been rocked by multiple crises since she lost personal authority as a result of her failure to retain her parliamentary majority in June’s national election.
Patel, one of the most prominent members of the campaign to leave the European Union, suggests in her letter that she is unlikely to let herself fade into obscurity now that she’s been relegated to the back benches.
She promises to “take an active role” representing local residents now she’s outside government and to “speak up for our country, our national interests and the great future that Britain has as a free, independent and sovereign nation.”
Patel, 45, first won a seat in Parliament in 2010 and became a junior Treasury minister four years later. She joined the cabinet as development secretary when May succeeded David Cameron in the aftermath of the Brexit referendum.
The ministerial code that governs the behavior of members of the British government makes no specific mention of secret meetings with foreign heads of government, but it does urge ministers to take “special care” when talking about issues “which are the responsibility of other ministers.”
On Tuesday, May’s spokesman told reporters that on returning from her vacation, Patel had asked her officials whether British aid money could be given to support the Israeli army’s relief work in the Golan Heights, which Israel seized from Syria in the 1967 Six-Day War. The idea was rejected—Britain doesn’t recognize Israel’s occupation of Golan.
Some 2,800 of the documents have been released tonight by the US National Archive under a 25-year secrecy law from 1992. But some files will be held back after intelligence and security agencies raised concerns.
Donald Trump gives a thumbs up as his son Donald Trump, Jr. speaks at a campaign rally at Valdosta State University in Valdosta, Georgia February 29, 2016 Reuters.
Sean Hannity
Image PA 
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