Majorityrights News > Category: Geopolitics

CNBC, “Mueller Is Now ‘Untouchable’ After The Manafort Indictment: Former US Attorney”, 30 Oct 2017:

John Lauro, former U.S. Attorney on the scope of the indictment:

“It’s very aggressive.” While it doesn’t have anything to do with the campaign yet, it is a historical indictment that includes money laundering, failure to register as a foreign agent and conspiracy against the United States.

“And they threw in something at the end there which was very significant - at the very end an item about his son-in-law. They are going to press him to no end. They are going to pressure Paul Manafort to flip or cooperate [like the prisoner’s dilemma?]. Absolutely”

“The significance of this indictment is that it gives Mueller cover going forward, nobody’s going to touch him because Paul Manafort is under indictment. And this gives him opportunity to press Manefort for information.”

[When you say nobody’s going to touch him, what do you mean?]

“He can’t be fired by the president of the United States, there’s no way, this indictment is significant because going forward nobody is going to even suggest that the investigation should stop or that Meuller should be relieved of his duties.”

“Because Paul Manafort is under indictment now, the investigation is moving forward, Trump would be impeached the next day [for obstruction of justice] if he tried to remove Mueller.”

“Mueller is now untouchable as a result of this indictment. That’s the significance of it.”

[You’ve actually got two guys under indictment, Manafort and Gates, setting up another prisoner’s dilemma as they could turn on one another]

“Right, right.”

“And here’s how the conversation goes: Mr. Manefort, you’re facing a long time in jail. Your son-in-law could be implicated, we’re ready to indict your son-in-law as well, what are you going to give us in return? What are you going to talk about? Whether its the Trump administration, other business deals or the campaign itself?”

[and they’re saying the same thing to Rick Gates as well?]

“Absolutely, that’s going on right now.”

“It’s very specific: they call it a ‘speaking indictment’, and prosecutors do that in order to signal to the defense that we have a powerful case against you.”

“This is actually a long standing case against Manafort that Meuller picked up because it allows him to squeeze Manafort and Gates.”

“The government acts slowly, but when they do, they’ve made sure to button-down every hatch.”

“The indictment sends a message to everybody that ‘we’re serious.’ There’s going to be a lot of pressure on Manafort. I suspect that there’s going to be other indictments as well; anybody who is the subject of a federal investigation, with dozens of FBI agents and sixteen of the most skilled prosecutors, good luck to you.”

Poland is correct to denounce Richard Spencer in his neo-Molotov-Ribbentrop larp.

While the Polish government is not perfectly articulate of its reasons to denounce Richard Spencer for his advocacy of a counter productive world view, they are not far off the mark and not wrong to reject him either.

Typical of American right wingers, Spencer is nursing a neo-Germanophilic world view, overly sympathetic to the German imperialism of the world wars (and antagonistic to Great Britain’s ‘interference’), with a new twist that would larp and valence a re-empowered German / Russian axis -  i.e., a newly got up Molotov-Ribbentrop agreement for an “imperium”, i.e., imperialism that would run rough shod over the interests of many necessary allies - Hungary rejected him for the same reason Poland rejects him for the same reason Britain rejected him for the same reason Japan would reject him (for the same reason all of Asia would reject him for the same reason Zionism embraces him, for the quid pro quo reasoning that comprador wielding right wing enterprises embrace him) etc. - while his larped empire (Lisbon to Vladivastok) would be governed by whom? Apparently he would depend heavily on working with Jewish interests to facilitate (maneuver) his Russo-Germanic grand civic Euro larp, in Duginesque delusion of grandeur - a delusion coddled by ((())).

News Week, “Richard Spencer Is Too Racist for Poland’s Right-Wing Government”, 27 Oct 2017:

Poland’s right-wing government doesn’t want white supremacist Richard Spencer to visit the Eastern European country, calling him a “threat” to democracy.

Spencer was scheduled to speak at a conference organized by Poland’s far right to celebrate Polish Independence Day on November 11, but the country’s Foreign Ministry condemned the alt-right leader, whose condemnation of diversity has found support among neo-Nazis, whose ideological predecessors invaded Poland and killed millions during World War II.

“As a country which was one of the biggest victims of Nazism, we believe that the ideas promoted by Mr. Spencer and his followers could pose a threat to all those who hold dear the values of human rights and democracy,” the Polish Foreign Ministry said in a statement, adding that Spencer’s views are in conflict with Poland’s legal order.

Poland is not beyond criticism in its brand and particular expressions of nationalism, but Richard Spencer is highly dubious in his imperial larp; and the Poles are correct to denounce Spencer and like apologists for the imperialist aspirations of Nazi Germany and the casualties it left in the wake of its aspired imperialism, relevantly in this case, the Poland that came back not as “a gift of Woodrow Wilson”, but through the endurance and perseverance of Polish nationalism through 123 years in exile during the tri-partition; and then again through 50 years in exile during the Nazi and Soviet regimes.

It is significant that Trump has declared his campaign against the opioid issue a worldwide problem.

It is a reflection of dishonesty and supremacism as opposed to a move toward ethnonational coordination.

A preliminary matter of suspicion has to do with resources being devoted to criminal enforcement rather than public health.

In particular, resources as such are not necessarily being devoted even for the public health management of the poor White communities impacted. But rather toward a covert means to deal with blacks and browns though criminalization; while resources will be devoted to foreign browns and yellows to a lesser extent through criminalization, but to a greater extent through politicization - their being seen as engaging in a covert war of drug trafficking - a depiction which could then mutate into broader, more explicit wars, markedly in Asia.

This comes back to dishonesty and supremacism as opposed to White Nationalism, which is supposed to represent ethnonationalism for European peoples.

As ethnonationals, we should be working on rule structures which lead to our separatism and sovereignty for ourselves, blacks, browns and yellows. We do not want to be a part of the same governance; and in fact, we need to be of a separate governance.

It is supremacist to detain migrants, drug users and petty dealers for any significant length of time in prisons - private jails in particular have been cited as being used for the literal supramacist purpose of slave labor.

Ethno-nationals would either repatriate them or work on the means of separatism, physically and legally; i.e., they would honestly admit that in seeing themselves as significantly different from these people, that they want to be separate; and need to separate, as opposed to generating an atmosphere of exploitation and revenge; or the liberal supremacism of integrationist genocide. That only separatism, not heirarchical control within the same governance will allow us to manage our peoples in good faith coordination with others.

As for the trafficking of opioids, cocaine and other drugs - again, rather than a government engaging in a dishonest, covert means of warfare against a people that Jews and right wingers see as a threat (Hispanics and Asians), White governance needs to acknowledge that drugs have long been, though clandestinely, a huge part of Western economies; and what needs to happen instead is an open and honest acknowledgement of the part these drugs play in the medical and recreational economy and as a public health issue - in the need for mental adventure and a certain amount of pleasure on the one hand; and in the need for escape into being, the need to deal with pain, anxiety, depression, boredom and despair on the other hand - particularly regarding the addictive aspects and the anti-social ramifications of abuse that can ensue. Thus, not only dealing with the punishable aspects of drug abuse, but in the social compassion of looking into and dealing with what might be lacking in these peoples lives that has them not seeing better recourse to drug abuse or illegal trafficking.

This would allow for a better management of our own peoples. In addition, this would allow for a fair, non-Jewish, non-right wing negotiation with Asian and South American peoples, as opposed to more brutal exploitation and catastrophic wars in the dishonest interests of Jews and right wingers.

McClatchyDC.com, “Steve Bannon’s already murky Middle East ties deepen”, 23 Oct 2017:

Former presidential aide Steve Bannon appears to be fostering ties to the UAE and Saudi Arabia, countries that have cut off ties with Qatar and have been encouraging the United States to act against the nation as well - though it is home to largest American base in the Middle East. Brynn Anderson AP

White House

WASHINGTON

Shortly after Donald Trump’s chief strategist Steve Bannon left the White House, a company with close ties to him was hired by the United Arab Emirates to launch a social media campaign against its Arab neighbor, Qatar.

It was part of a multimillion-dollar effort by several Middle Eastern nations to isolate Qatar that received a boost when Trump criticized the country that for years had been a critical regional ally.

The UAE is paying $330,000 to a firm with the same parent company as Cambridge Analytica, the business Trump employed to reach voters with hyper-targeted online messaging during the campaign, to blast Qatar on Facebook and Twitter, among other sites, according to federal records.

Bannon, who remains one of Trump’s closest advisers, has long had an interest in the region. He has huddled with UAE officials behind closed doors, visited the country as recently as last month and pushed for a group of Middle Eastern nations, including the UAE, in their bitter dispute with Qatar.

On Monday, Bannon is scheduled to speak at a day-long conference in Washington organized by the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank and paid for by multiple donors, entitled “Countering Violent Extremism: Qatar, Iran, and the Muslim Brotherhood.”

The speech follows Bannon’s September meeting in the UAE with its crown prince, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan. The two weren’t strangers: Bannon, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and ousted National Security Adviser Michael Flynn met with the crown prince at Trump Tower during the presidential transition in December. That meeting triggered controversy, as the UAE hadn’t notified the outgoing Obama administration about the visit as is customary.

The UAE also helped broker a meeting in January between a Bannon friend, Blackwater founder Erik Prince, and a Russian close to President Vladimir Putin to try to establish a back-channel line of communication to Moscow for Trump just days before Trump’s inauguration, according to the Washington Post; Prince met with the Russian in the Seychelle islands off East Africa.

Prince lives in the UAE and had a multimillion dollar contract with that government to assemble a mercenary security force there. His firm also does security work in Africa, much of it for Chinese interests. But Bannon has encouraged Prince to move back to the U.S. and run for office, and in recent weeks, Prince has begun to publicly consider a primary challenge to Wyoming GOP Sen. John Barrasso.

The UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Egypt cut off all ties with Qatar in June, supposedly in response to its alleged support of terrorism and ties to Iran, and mounted a blockade against the nation. Trump abruptly began accusing Qatar of funding terrorism despite its importance as host to al Udeid, the largest American military base in the Middle East, home to nearly 10,000 troops.

The nation of Qatar, unfortunately, has historically been a funder of terrorism at a very high level, and in the wake of that conference, nations came together and spoke to me about confronting Qatar over its behavior.
            - President Donald Trump

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Pence owes his position to doing the dirty bidding of the Koch brother’s interests, starting with lobbying against carbon tax, an initiative that wound up putting oil man Scott Pruitt in charge of EPA - the proverbial fox in charge of the hen house. That’s not the half of Pence’s classic story of right wing corruption.

NPR, “Understanding Mike Pence And His Relationship To Trump: ‘His Public Role Is Fawning”, 18 Oct 2017:

Though President Trump ran as an outsider, New Yorker writer Jane Mayer describes his vice president as “the connective tissue” between Trump and the billionaire donors in the Republican party.

TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I’m Terry Gross. Many of President Trump’s critics are hoping he won’t serve his full term, but what kind of president would Mike Pence make? That’s one of the questions Jane Mayer sets out to answer in her new article about Pence titled “The President Pence Delusion.” It’s published in the current issue of The New Yorker.

She writes about how Pence became an evangelical Christian and how he became a favored candidate of billionaire backers, most especially the Koch brothers. She traces how religion and money shaped his ideology. She investigates how Pence became Trump’s running mate and how much power he has in the White House and how he’s used it.

Mayer is a staff writer for The New Yorker. She’s also the author of the bestseller about the Koch Brothers titled “Dark Money: The Hidden History Of The Billionaires Behind The Rise Of The Radical Right.” Last March in The New Yorker, she profiled another billionaire funder of right-wing causes, Robert Mercer, who she says has become a major force behind the Trump presidency.

Jane Mayer, welcome back to FRESH AIR. So I feel like I don’t see Mike Pence very much, and I often wonder if he’s a power behind the scenes or if he really doesn’t matter that much within the Trump administration. So what’s your impression?

JANE MAYER: Well, it’s really hard to tell. He is - as Joel Goldstein, a specialist in the vice presidency, told me, he calls him the sycophant in chief because when you do see him, he’s usually acting as an emcee to Trump or kind of echoing Trump and praising Trump. So his public role is really fawning. Behind the scenes, though, according to Newt Gingrich, he’s 1 of the 3 people who have the most power in the Trump administration along with the chief of staff, John Kelly, and Trump himself.

GROSS: What are the signs that he’s that powerful?

MAYER: Well, (laughter) that’s a good question - because I think he acts as the connective tissue between the Trump administration and Congress, between the Trump administration and the - kind of the socially conservative base of the party. And most importantly, he is the connector between the Trump administration and the billionaire donors in the Republican Party. He is the guy who does most of the fundraising and outreach to the money.

GROSS: And the money includes the Koch brothers and Robert Mercer.

MAYER: It does. And one of the interesting things to me in writing about Pence is it poses such a juxtaposition between the way that Trump ran, which was as a populist outsider who was attacking the big-money forces in the Republican Party as corrupt and saying that they were puppeteers trying to control the candidates as puppets. And Trump made a huge point of saying, I’m my own man; I’m so rich; no one controls me. Yet as his vice president, he chose Mike Pence. And you could hardly find a candidate in the American political scene who has closer ties to the big donors and particularly the Koch brothers. He’s been sponsored by them for years.

GROSS: So how do the Kochs first start backing Mike Pence?

MAYER: So this was when Pence was in Congress in 2009. He really did the Kochs a big favor. There was legislation pending that might have put a tax on carbon pollution, and it would have been terrible for Koch Industries. And Pence took up the cause and tried to help defeat that legislation and specifically carried around a pledge that the Kochs had created, trying to get people to sign it. And after he was successful in that, the Kochs invited him to come to their secret donor summits. And at that point on, they started showering him in money. So it was - it’s really became a working relationship then. And I hadn’t realized that until recently.

GROSS: One of the things you say Mike Pence is responsible for is bringing the Kochs and Donald Trump together. The Kochs didn’t support Trump’s candidacy. Charles Koch described the choice between Trump and Hillary as one between cancer or a heart attack. (Laughter) So what did Pence do to bring the Kochs and Trump together?

MAYER: Well, so this is what was interesting to me - is that Pence has been very close with the Kochs, and they have just showered money on his campaigns. And he’s kind of act as a peacemaker between the Kochs and Trump. And but in that process, what interested me most was that I really do think that Trump ran as a different kind of Republican. He ran against the big-donors orthodoxy and kind of libertarian vision of people like the Kochs. He said he was going to deliver something for the little guys and build infrastructure all across the country and use the government in various ways that the Kochs disapprove of.

And what you’ve seen with Pence is that in many ways, Pence has brought in a ton of people who are allied with the Kochs into the government, and he’s brought a lot of their policies in - so whether it’s on environmental issues or tax policy now where the Kochs are working very closely with the Trump White House on the Trump tax plan. And it is a tax plan that the Kochs love, and it’s a tax plan that’s going to help the super-rich according to many nonpartisan analyses and not do very much for the middle class. So you’re beginning to kind of see the government moving in the direction of the Kochs.

GROSS: You say 16 high-ranking officials in the Trump White House have ties to the Koch brothers.

MAYER: Well, and that’s according to a study by a group called the Checks And Balances Program. And you can count them. You can see it online. They’re - that’s in the White House. There are also many, many people who’ve worked for the Kochs in the government at large, in the cabinet, in the other departments. And a tremendous number of people who work with and for Pence have gone in and out of working for the Kochs to the point that you had Politico saying - they quoted a Republican operative saying that the Koch operation really was the shadow campaign for Pence for president.

And chief among them really has been Pence’s former chief of staff, Marc Short, who went - after working for Pence in Congress, he went to run the Koch’s political operation, Freedom Partners. And then when Pence was chosen as vice president on the ticket, Marc Short came back, worked with Pence in the campaign and is now the head of Congressional Liaison in the Trump White House. So the man that actually ran the Koch’s political operation is a key player inside the Trump White House.

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Luke Ford, “Alt Right Jews”, 15 Oct 2017 by Luke Ford

The Z Blog posts:

Anyone who has engaged with Orthodox Jews knows they regard Liberal Jews with a high degree of hostility. They are not as bad as the Hasidim, but they view Reformed Jews as fakers, getting the benefits of being Jewish without the commitment. Their relatively small numbers have made them easy to ignore, but demographics are changing quickly. Orthodox are 10% of American Jews and a full decade younger than the median age of Reformed Jews. They also have many more children per female.

Now, the Orthodox are famously ethnocentric. They also vote for conservative white candidates in elections. When it comes to identity politics, the Orthodox favor it over consensus. They may not be talking about ethno-states and separatism, but their revealed preferences run strongly in that direction. Like the Amish though, their numbers will only grow the old fashioned way. They don’t recruit so they don’t attract a lot of converts. Talk to anyone who has converted and they will tell you it is a long and challenging process.

There’s another division, somewhat related to the Orthodox movement, and that is the Chabad movement. Here’s a Globe story from two years ago and a Forward story from last year for some background. One of the unique things about Chabad is they recruit and do so aggressively. They even recruit gentiles. I’ve had them put the arm on me more than once, even though they know I’m not a Jew. President Trump’s son-in-law and daughter are Chabad. Joel Pollak, the Breitbart big shot, is Chabad. This is not an accident.

As that Globe story makes clear, the Chabad movement is a curious thing. On the one hand, they are Orthodox, which puts them culturally to the right of most people and way to the Right of most Jews. On the other hand, they seem to be following the model of the early Christian church by letting converts ease into the life. Jared Kushner is not growing a beard and wearing all black anytime soon. It’s hard not to think that they are first concerned with growing the movement. They’ll worry about discipline later.

There’s another piece to the puzzle. There are Conservative Jews who make up about 20% of American Jewry. These are the folks you will not only see filtering into the Chabad movement, but also on the fringes of the alt-right. They may or may not consider themselves white, but either way, they are fine with white identity politics. They think multiculturalism is madness. It’s not just madness for Jews, but for everyone. Diversity is a cancer to be avoided. These are folks who would be called Alt-Jew.

The number of Conservative Jews sympathetic to the alt-right is debatable, depending upon how you define the terms. There are quite a few Jews supporting Jared Taylor’s work at American Renaissance. I correspond with maybe half a dozen Conservative Jews who share my politics. They think their numbers are growing as Jews in America come to terms with the failings of liberalism and reformed Judaism. To use a phrase I picked up at AmRen, these are Jews who are religious, if not spiritual.

None of this means that Jews are suddenly going to lift Richard Spencer up and carry him to the throne of the ethno-state. It just means that demographics and shifting politics spare no one. Liberal Jews are old and not particularly fertile. Orthodox Jews are young and extremely fertile. Conservative Jews fall somewhere in between, but probably represent a much more practical alternative for American Jews who wish to remain American and Jewish. In a majority-minority world, everyone is going to have to pick sides.

The Z Man, “Alt-Jew”, 29 Aug 2017:

Someone contacted me the other day saying they were starting a site called Alt-Jew and he wanted to know if I knew any right-wing Jews that would be interested. You never know about these things. It could have been a terrorist organization trying to get some names of people they could terrorize. Anyone can register a website. Well, not anyone, thanks to terrorist groups like the SPLC and ADL. Still, you never can be sure about these things. The Reagan Battalion was an elaborate Soros fraud.

Regardless, it provides a reason to write about a subject that gets zero attention. That is the schism among American Jews, one that is looking a little bit like the divide within the white world. There are a growing number of right-wing Jews, who are wondering if liberal Jews are bad for Jews. It’s not just politically, but culturally and racially. They look around at the demographics in America and see greater out-marriage, lower birth rates and the telltale signs of assimilation and secularization.

Anyone who has engaged with Orthodox Jews knows they regard Liberal Jews with a high degree of hostility. They are not as bad as the Hasidim, but they view Reformed Jews as fakers, getting the benefits of being Jewish without the commitment. Their relatively small numbers have made them easy to ignore, but demographics are changing quickly. Orthodox are 10% of American Jews and a full decade younger than the median age of Reformed Jews. They also have many more children per female.

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Ending the Iran deal has been the veritable raison d’être for the Trump Presidency. Trump refers to an “international community” whose opinion on the matter he will take under consideration. The “international community”, i.e., YKW and other right wingers.

Way to go Alt-Right! Along with Donald, you sure know how to make a deal.

Donald Trump: Given the regime’s murderous past and present, we should not take lightly its sinister vision for the future. As I have said many times, The Iran Deal was one of the worst and most one sided transactions The United States has ever entered into. The Iranian regime has committed multiple violations of the agreement, for example, on two separate occasions they have exceeded the limit of 130 metric tonnes of heavy water; until recently, the Iranian regime has also failed to meet our expectations in its operation of advanced centrifuges. The Iranian regime has also intimidated international inspectors into not using the full inspection authorities that the agreement calls for; Iranian officials and military leaders have repeatedly claimed they will not allow inspectors onto military sites even thought the international community suspects some of those sites were part of Iran’s clandestine nuclear weapons program. Importantly, Iran is not living up to the spirit of the deal. So today, in recognition of the increasing menace posed by Iran and after extensive consultations with our allies, I am announcing a new strategy to address the full range of Iran’s destructive actions. First, we will work with our allies to counter the regime’s destabilizing activity and support for terrorist proxies in the region. Based on the factual record I have put forward, I am announcing today that we cannot and will not make this certification.

What about Saudi, Donald? He cites Iran’s backing of terrorists; this, coming from a man who just a few months back lavished Saudi - Saudi - with a 110 billion dollar arms deal. 

Related Story: 11 September Attacks: 28 Pages Declassified.

Related Story: What Saudi Arabia’s royal reshuffle means for the world.

The Hill, “Trump makes his move on Iran nuke deal”, 13 Oct 2017:

President Trump declared Friday that the Iran nuclear deal is no longer in the national security interest of the United States, but stopped short of withdrawing from the Obama-era pact.

“I am announcing today that we cannot and will not make this certification,” Trump said during a speech at the White House.

“We will not continue down a path whose predictable conclusion is more violence, more terror and the very real threat of Iran’s nuclear breakout,” he continued.

The president said that Iran “has committed multiple violations of the agreement” and accused Tehran of “not living up to the spirit of the deal.”

Trump ticked off a list of problems with the deal and laid out a new, tougher strategy to confront “the rogue regime” over a series of other “hostile actions” unrelated to its nuclear program.

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Paul Weston, an ex-Muslim and Anne Marie Waters -