[Majorityrights News] Trump will ‘arm Ukraine to the teeth’ if Putin won’t negotiate ceasefire Posted by Guessedworker on Tuesday, 12 November 2024 16:20.
[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, 09 November 2017 19:19.
Image PA
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.
Posted by DanielS on Thursday, 09 November 2017 06:44.
President Donald Trump and Saudi Deputy Crown Prince and Minister of Defense Mohammed bin Salman meet at the White House in Washington, U.S., March 14, 2017. Kevin Lamarque | Reuters
CNBC, “Trump may have pushed Saudi Arabia and Iran closer to war”, 7 Nov 2017:
- Saudi Arabia’s moves over the past few days are bringing it closer to direct war with Iran.
- But this process seems to have been kick started by the new Saudi crown prince’s meeting with President Trump in March.
- It’s crucial to keep this conflict contained to the Middle East.
Crucial news keeps flying out of Saudi Arabia at a frantic pace, but here’s the bottom line: The Saudis are marching ever closer towards a wider regional war. And the U.S. may have helped send them down that path.
Just to recap, in the last several days the new crown prince of Saudi Arabia has initiated a massive purge of dozens of his fellow princes, ministers, and others in the kingdom in what’s been labeled as an “anti-corruption” sweep. Most of the headlines so far are understandably focusing on the one celebrity arrested, Alwaleed bin Talal, the billionaire investor seen and heard frequently for years on financial news channels like CNBC.
But that was just the first wave of news from Riyadh. Since the crackdown began on Saturday, the Saudis have considerably ramped up their accusatory rhetoric towards their neighbors. First, the kingdom squarely blamed Iran for a missile attack on Riyadh from Yemen that was thwarted by the U.S.-made Patriot anti-missile system. The Saudis called that attack “direct military aggression by the Iranian regime and may be considered an act of war.”
Second, the Saudis accused Lebanon of — figuratively at least — declaring “war” against it because of aggression from Hezbollah. That statement spurred even Saudi ally and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to publicly urge for calm.
al-Sisi may be too late. Because the common denominator in all these Saudi moves is a more focused preparation for a wider and more direct war with Iran for control of the region. As I noted when he was first put in his top position by his father King Salman in June, Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman was already known as a hardcore hawk against Iran. Just a month before he was made crown prince, bin Salman declared that peace dialogue with Iran was impossible.
“More aggressive anti-Iranian hawks like bin Salman may have seen Donald Trump’s election as an excuse to win the day over more dovish princes and ministers. And the White House seemingly gave Saudi Arabia a green light.”
But the direct line to these more bellicose moves begins earlier than that and goes directly to the White House. While still deputy crown prince, bin Salman visited with President Trump in March of this year. During that meeting, they publicly declared Iran as the key regional security threat in the Middle East. That was step one.
Posted by DanielS on Thursday, 02 November 2017 07:10.
Although Schumer remains as self righteous a bracket about immigration as ever, in point of fact, he was part of a group of eight which proposed a bill in 2013 to end the Visa Lottery Program. True, he was perhaps opposed to the Visa Lottery for the same reason that the Republican dominated Capital Hill shot down the bill to end the lottery - because it provided a loop hole in which some Whites, who might not otherwise be able, could actually immigrate to the Unites States despite the anti-White measures of the 1965 Immigration and Naturalization Act.
NBC News, “Trump: Suspect Entered U.S. in ‘Diversity Visa Lottery,’ Blames Schumer”, 1 Nov 2017:
President Donald Trump said Wednesday that the Uzbek immigrant suspected of killing eight people in New York City with a rental truck entered the U.S. through the “Diversity Visa Lottery Program,” and the president accused Sen. Chuck Schumer and other Democrats of having loosened the nation’s borders.
Trump did not provide any supporting evidence for the claim about the visa program, which was being discussed on the morning TV program “Fox and Friends” that the president indicated in his tweets he was watching.
“The terrorist came into our country through what is called the ‘Diversity Visa Lottery Program,’ a Chuck Schumer beauty. I want merit based,” Trump tweeted.
At a Cabinet meeting later, Trump said he would work with Congress to end the visa program.
“I am today starting the process of terminating the diversity lottery program. I am going to ask Congress to immediately…get rid of this program,” said the president, who called the suspect an “animal.” “Diversity lottery — sounds nice, it’s not nice. It’s not good. It hasn’t been good.”
Trump continued, “We want people that are going to help our country, we want people that are going to keep our country safe. We don’t want lotteries where the wrong people are in the lotteries and guess what? Who are the suckers that get those people? We want a merit-based system.”
A spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security later confirmed the suspect in the attack, a 29-year-old Uzbek immigrant named Sayfullo Saipov, had been admitted to the U.S. “upon presentation of a passport with a valid diversity immigrant visa to U.S. Customs and Border Protection in 2010.”
After Trump’s attacks on him, Schumer shot back on Twitter: “I guess it’s not too soon to politicize a tragedy.”
In a statement, the New York senator slammed Trump for “dividing America” and called on the president not to follow through on proposed cuts to “vital anti-terrorism funding.”
“I have always believed and continue to believe that immigration is good for America,” Schumer said. “President Trump, instead of politicizing and dividing America, which he always seems to do at times of national tragedy, should be focusing on the real solution — anti-terrorism funding — which he proposed cutting in his most recent budget.”
Schumer also took on Trump in a passionate speech from the Senate floor, asking, “President Trump, where is your leadership?”
The New York lawmaker drew a comparison between Trump’s conduct after Tuesday’s attack and the way former President George W. Bush responded to 9/11.
Bush “understood the meaning of his high office” in the midst of a national tragedy, Schumer said. “The contrast between President Bush’s actions after 9/11 and President Trump’s actions this morning couldn’t be starker.”
The Trump-Schumer back and forth came less than 24 hours after eight people were killed and more than a dozen injured when a motorist in a rented pickup truck deliberately drove down a bike path in lower Manhattan and mowed down several people before crashing into a school bus in what officials said was a terror attack.
Police found a note inside the truck indicating the suspect claimed to have carried out the attack to show his support for ISIS.
In a planned attack which he declared on behalf of ISIL, Sayfullo Saipov rented a pickup truck and mowed down pedestrians and cyclists along a busy bike path near the World Trade Center memorial 31 Oct 2017, killing eight.
According to The New York Times, he had obtained a green card, giving him permanent legal resident status in the U.S.
Trump, in his tweets Wednesday, was apparently referring to the Diversity Immigrant Visa lottery, which was established by the Immigration Act of 1990. That bill was passed with bipartisan support and signed into law by then-President George H.W. Bush.
The program allows the State Department to offer 50,000 visas annually to immigrants from countries with low immigration rates.
Meanwhile, Democrats and Republicans alike hit back against Trump.
Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said on “Morning Joe” that “it was kind of absurd (for Trump)...to be using it as a fulcrum for…this kind of a debate.”
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, at a press conference later Wednesday, said Trump’s tweets “were not factual” and “were not helpful.”
“You play into the hands of the terrorists,” Cuomo, a Democrat, said when asked for his thoughts on the tweets. “The tone now should be the exact opposite on all levels.”
Sens. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., and Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., who have both become vocal Trump critics since announcing they would not run for reelection next year, also took on the president.
“I don’t think that brings out the best in our country,” Corker told NBC News, while Flake called Trump’s response “premature.”
“He should express solidarity with those trying to fix this (visa) program,” Flake said.
Another Republican defended the diversity visa lottery.
“To be honest with you, I’ve known a number of people in New York who come in under the lottery system — they’ve made outstanding contributions, they’ve become citizens,” Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., a former House Homeland Security Committee chairman, told the Fox Business Network. “So that really is separate from the idea of the vetting.”
According to the State Department, diversity visa lottery applicants must meet certain education and work experience requirements, including having obtained “at least a high school education or its equivalent” or “two years of work experience within the past five years in an occupation that requires at least two years of training or experience to perform.”
The State Department determines those accepted under the program through a randomized computer drawing, its website states.
In 2013, a bipartisan group of senators, including Schumer, known as the “Gang of Eight” proposed a compromise immigration reform bill that would have eliminated the diversity lottery. The bill did not make it through Congress.
Posted by DanielS on Thursday, 02 November 2017 06:00.
“The Collapse of the Soviet Union Was the Greatest Geo-Political Catastrophe of the Century” - Vladimir Putin
Last Day of The Soviet Union. Now subtitled by RT, “Stabbing The Empire”, it provides further background - telling the story of the Bialowieza Accords that dissolved The Soviet Union.
On December 8th, 1991, the three leaders of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus signed the document which marked the end of the Soviet empire. The fate of the great conglomerate country was decided in less than 24 hours. It happened in secret in a remote residence in the Belavezha forest. Soon the agreement entered the history as the Belavezha Accords. Visit the place where it happened and reveal the mysterious details of the document with the eyewitnesses to the historic event only on RT.
Posted by DanielS on Tuesday, 31 October 2017 06:07.
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.”
Posted by DanielS on Monday, 30 October 2017 06:00.
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.
Posted by DanielS on Saturday, 28 October 2017 12:28.
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.
Posted by DanielS on Wednesday, 25 October 2017 12:21.
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