Majorityrights News > Category: Geopolitics

Rob Goldstone, left, shown in contact with Trump prior to his son’s meeting with Goldstone that promised high level Russian dirt on Hillary Clinton.

Oh, Wait. Maybe It Was Collusion.

New York Times, Op-Ed Contributors JOHN SIPHER and STEVE HALL, August 2, 2017:

Did the Trump campaign collude with Russian agents trying to manipulate the course of the 2016 election? Some analysts have argued that the media has made too much of the collusion narrative; that Jared Kushner and Donald Trump Jr.’s meeting with Kremlin-linked Russians last year was probably innocent (if ill-advised); or that Russian operatives probably meant for the meeting to be discovered because they were not trying to recruit Mr. Kushner and Mr. Trump as agents, but mainly trying to undermine the American political system.

We disagree with these arguments. We like to think of ourselves as fair-minded and knowledgeable, having between us many years of experience with the C.I.A. dealing with Russian intelligence services. It is our view not only that the Russian government was running some sort of intelligence operation involving the Trump campaign, but also that it is impossible to rule out the possibility of collusion between the two.

The original plan drawn up by the Russian intelligence services was probably multilayered. They could have begun an operation intended to disrupt the presidential campaign, as well as an effort to recruit insiders to help them over time — the two are not mutually exclusive. It is the nature of Russian covert actions (or as the Russians would call them, “active measures”) to adapt over time, providing opportunities for other actions that extend beyond the original intent.

It is entirely plausible, for example, that the original Russian hack of the Democratic National Committee’s computer servers was an effort simply to collect intelligence and get an idea of the plans of the Democratic Party and its presidential candidate. Once derogatory information emerged from that operation, the Russians might then have seen an opportunity for a campaign to influence or disrupt the election. When Donald Trump Jr. responded “I love it” to proffers from a Kremlin-linked intermediary to provide derogatory information obtained by Russia on Hillary Clinton, the Russians might well have thought that they had found an inside source, an ally, a potential agent of influence on the election.

The goal of the Russian spy game is to nudge a person to step over the line into an increasingly conspiratorial relationship. First, for a Russian intelligence recruitment operation to work, they would have had some sense that Donald Trump Jr. was a promising target. Next, as the Russians often do, they made a “soft” approach, setting the bait for their target via the June email sent by Rob Goldstone, a British publicist, on behalf of a Russian pop star, Emin Agalarov.

They then employed a cover story — adoptions — to make it believable to the outside world that there was nothing amiss with the proposed meetings. They bolstered this idea by using cutouts, nonofficial Russians, for the actual meeting, enabling the Trump team to claim — truthfully — that there were no Russian government employees at the meeting and that it was just former business contacts of the Trump empire who were present.

When the Trump associates failed to do the right thing by informing the F.B.I., the Russians probably understood that they could take the next step toward a more conspiratorial relationship. They knew what bait to use and had a plan to reel in the fish once it bit.

While we don’t know for sure whether the email solicitation was part of an intelligence ploy, there are some clues. A month after the June meeting at Trump Tower, WikiLeaks, a veritable Russian front, released a dump of stolen D.N.C. emails. The candidate and campaign surrogates increasingly mouthed talking points that seemed taken directly from Russian propaganda outlets, such as that there had been a terrorist attack on a Turkish military base, when no such attack had occurred. Also, at this time United States intelligence reportedly received indications from European intelligence counterparts about odd meetings between Russians and Trump campaign representatives overseas.

Of course, to determine whether collusion occurred, we would have to know whether the Trump campaign continued to meet with Russian representatives subsequent to the June meeting. The early “courting” stage is almost always somewhat open and discoverable. Only after the Russian intelligence officer develops a level of control can the relationship be moved out of the public eye. John Brennan, the former director of the C.I.A., recently testified, “Frequently, people who go along a treasonous path do not know they are on a treasonous path until it is too late.”

Even intelligence professionals who respect one another and who understand the Russians can and often do disagree. On the Trump collusion question, the difference of opinion comes down to this: Would the Russians use someone like Mr. Goldstone to approach the Trump campaign? Our friend and former colleague Daniel Hoffman argued in this paper that this is unlikely — that the Russians would have relied on trained agents. We respectfully disagree. We believe that the Russians might well have used Mr. Goldstone. We also believe the Russians would have seen very little downside to trying to recruit someone on the Trump team — a big fish. If the fish bit and they were able to reel it in, the email from Mr. Goldstone could remain hidden and, since it was from an acquaintance, would be deniable if found. (Exactly what the Trump team is doing now.)

If the fish didn’t take the bait, the Russians would always have had the option to weaponize the information later to embarrass the Trump team. In addition, if the Russians’ first objective was chaos and disruption, the best way to accomplish that would have been to have someone on the inside helping. It is unlikely that the Russians would not use all the traditional espionage tools available to them.

However, perhaps the most telling piece of information may be the most obvious. Donald Trump himself made numerous statements in support of Russia, Russian intelligence and WikiLeaks during the campaign. At the same time, Mr. Trump and his team have gone out of their way to hide contacts with Russians and lied to the public about it. Likewise, Mr. Trump has attacked those people and institutions that could get to the bottom of the affair. He fired his F.B.I. director James Comey, criticized and bullied his attorney general and deputy attorney general, denigrated the F.B.I. and the C.I.A., and assails the news media, labeling anything he dislikes “fake news.” Innocent people don’t tend to behave this way.

The overall Russian intent is clear: disruption of the United States political system and society, a goal that in the Russian view was best served by a Trump presidency. What remains to be determined is whether the Russians also attempted to suborn members of the Trump team in an effort to gain their cooperation. This is why the investigation by the special counsel, Robert Mueller, is so important. It is why the F.B.I. counterintelligence investigation, also quietly progressing in the background, is critical. Because while a Russian disruption operation is certainly plausible, it is not inconsistent with a much darker Russian goal: gaining an insider ally at the highest levels of the United States government.

In short, and regrettably, collusion is not off the table.

John Sipher (@john_sipher), a former chief of station for the C.I.A., worked for over 27 years in Russia, Europe and Asia and now writes for The Cipher Brief and works for CrossLead, a consulting company. Steve Hall (@StevenLHall1) is a former C.I.A. chief of Russian operations and a CNN national security analyst.

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New Observer, “Orban: Hungary is a “Refuge for Europeans,” and Uses Tax Money to Boost Birthrate”, 24 July 2017:

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has announced that his nation will “remain a place where Western European Christians will always be able to find security”—and that his government is using taxes on multinational companies to fund social policies to spur families to have more children.

Speaking at a cultural festival in Baile Tusnad, Romania, Orbán also said that the European Union, together with Open Society founder—and Hungarian Jew—George Soros was seeking a “new, mixed, Muslimized Europe.”

He went on to say that Hungary’s border fences, supported by other Central European countries, “will block the EU-Soros effort to increase Muslim migration into Europe.”

While Hungary opposed taking in migrants “who could change the country’s cultural identity,” Orban said under his leadership, Hungary would remain a place where “Western European Christians will always be able to find security.”

He also said that Hungary’s opposition parties were no match for his government, and that he would win the next election in April 2018.

“In the upcoming campaign, first of all we have to confront external powers,” Orban said.

“We have to stand our ground against the Soros mafia network and the Brussels bureaucrats. And, during the next nine months, we will have to fight against the media they operate.”

Recent legislation in Hungary seeks to close or expel the Budapest-based Central European University, founded by Soros in 1991. There are also new rules about non-governmental organizations funded at least partly from abroad.

Orban reiterated his charge that Soros-funded NGOs want to weaken Hungary’s security with their advocacy for asylum-seekers and said Hungary had managed to stop the “migrant invasion” with razor-wire fences on its borders with Serbia and Croatia.

In the speech, broadcast by Hungarian state media, Orban repeated his claim that the EU leadership was encroaching on member states’ rights and trying to apply policies, such as increased immigration, which he said were opposed by most Europeans.

Orban said Poland, which is under pressure from the EU because of attempts to put its Supreme Court under political control, had replaced Hungary as the target of the EU’s “chief inquisitor,” whom he identified as European Commission Vice-President Frans Timmermans.

“The main target of the inquisition, the example of national governance to be weakened, destroyed and broken is Poland,” Orban said, vowing to defend the Polish government. “Hungary will use every legal possibility in the European Union to be in solidarity with the Poles.”

Finally, Orban said Hungary’s low birth rate made the country an “endangered species,” and that the government was using taxes on multinational companies to fund social policies that would spur families to have more children.

However much of a taboo one is breaking by saying it, there is no cultural identity in a population without a stable ethnic composition

Visigrad Post, “Full speech of V. Orbán : Will Europe belong to Europeans?” 24 July 2017:

Viktor Orbán’s speech at the 28th Bálványos Summer Open University and Student Camp, 22 July 2017, Tusnádfürdő (Băile Tuşnad, Romania)

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán: “First of all, I’d like to remind everyone that we started a process of collective thinking 27 years ago in Bálványosfürdő, a few kilometres from here. That is where we came to a realisation. Just think back: at that time, at the beginning of the nineties, most people – not only in Hungary, but also across the whole of Central Europe – thought that full assimilation into the Western world was just opening up to us again. The obvious approach was adjustment to that world: to in a way shed our skin and grow a new, fashionable Western skin. From this it followed that in our politics we would simply need to copy what they were doing in the West. Back then – 27 years, 28 years ago – we came together here, and we thought that we freedom fighters living on this side of the Iron Curtain could also have something valuable to say to a Europe which had by then been living in peace, freedom and prosperity for forty years. Back then we weren’t surrounded by television cameras, and our words commanded no attention whatsoever.

Now, however, they do. And if I were to name the most important event, the most important Hungarian and European event of the past year – the twelve months since our last meeting – I would say that it is the strengthening of the Visegrád Four. Although there was a presidential election in the United States, and not so long ago the French presidential and parliamentary elections swept away the entire French party system – which are both important things – I’m convinced that the most important development of the past year has been the Visegrád Four cooperation becoming closer than ever before. We can say that Warsaw, Prague, Bratislava and Budapest are speaking with one voice. This is a great achievement, as these are countries which are very different in their characters. Here we have the enthusiastic Poles, the ever-cautious Czechs, the sober Slovaks and the romantic Hungarians; and yet we are able to speak the same language. We can be truly proud of this.

It is customary for the Open University presentations to seek to give an account of the extent of change over the past year, also in a broader civilisational context. Certainly not everyone remembers that in 2009, after his election, President Obama made his first important speech abroad in the city of Cairo. This year the newly-elected US president delivered his first important speech abroad in the city of Warsaw. To illustrate the extent of the changes, it’s enough to quote a few sentences from the speech made by the American president in Warsaw. I’ll quote from it now:

“We have to remember […] that the defence of the West ultimately rests not only on means, but also on the will of its people to prevail and be successful and get what you have to have. […] Our own fight for the West does not begin on the battlefield. It begins with our minds, our wills and our souls. […] Our freedom, our civilization and our survival depend on these bonds of history, culture, and memory.”

He then went on to say: “So together let us all fight like the Poles: for family, for freedom, for country and for God.”

Ladies and Gentlemen,

These words would have been inconceivable anywhere in the Western world two years ago. This is the extent of the change that is taking place around us. This, perhaps, is the point at which I should greet Piotr Naimski and the Polish delegation led by him. He is the President of the Hungarian-Polish Parliamentary Group in Warsaw. Welcome, Dear Polish Friends.

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Trump would try to stop election hacking by working with the man who has turned election hacking into an art form

Vox, 9 July 2017:  No, really.

“Trump wants to work with Putin to fight election hacking.”

President Donald Trump began his high-profile Europe trip by publicly questioning the US intelligence community’s unanimous conclusion that Russia interfered in the 2016 election. He used a one-one-one meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin to make clear Moscow wouldn’t be punished for the hack.

Then, on Sunday, Trump capped his time at the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, with an announcement that he and Putin had agreed to create “an impenetrable Cyber Security unit so that election hacking, & many other negative things” will be prevented.

Trump, if he sticks with the plan, will be trying to stop election hacking by working with the man who has turned election hacking into an art form.

The announcement stunned lawmakers from both parties, with Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham describing it as “pretty close” to the “dumbest idea I’ve ever heard.” Graham also blasted Trump for his continued refusal to acknowledge the Russian hacking campaign.

“He is literally the only person I know of who doesn’t believe Russia attacked our election in 2016,” Graham said on NBC News’s Meet the Press.

With criticism pouring in, Trump tried to slightly distance himself from the idea late Sunday night, with a tweet that said the “fact that President Putin and I discussed a Cyber Security unit doesn’t mean I think it can happen. It can’t-but a ceasefire can, and did!”

Trump’s quasi-denial aside, there was something genuinely startling about his first announcement. Trump left for the G20 summit with his presidency engulfed in an array of Russia-related scandals, including a criminal investigation into whether his campaign knowingly colluded with Kremlin hackers.

That meant there was one major question hanging over Trump as he prepared for his face-to-face meeting with Putin: whether he would hold the Russian leader accountable for directing what US spies describe as a systematic hacking campaign designed to hurt Hillary Clinton and help him win the White House.

On Sunday, Trump appeared to answer that question with a resounding “no.”

The summit was a win for Putin and a loss for everyone else.

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TVN24, “Permanent presence of American troops in Poland is our aim”, 5 July 2017:

“Security understood very broadly – military, energy security – will be the most important issue for President Andrzej Duda during his talks with U.S. President Donald Trump,” announced President’s spokesman Krzysztof Łapiński in “Fakty z Zagranicy”, TVN24 BiS. The minister was asked what the President’s plans were for his talks with the American President, what would be the most important issue for him, what he would like to hear from Trump or what kind of deal he would like to do with him.

“We know roughly what topics the talks will touch on. It is no secret that security [will be the key topic], security understood very broadly,” replied Łapiński. “On the one hand, military security, the presence of American troops in Poland, NATO, and on the other hand, energy security,” he explained.

“Security guarantees” “So, as of today, American soldiers are stationed [in Poland], and we are hoping that their presence will be permanent. It is important that these soldiers – whether they will be rotated once a year or once every two years, or three, this is less important. What is important is that American troops will be present in Poland, because this constitutes a security guarantee,” added Łapiński.

Asked how long the two Presidents’ tête-à-tête would be, he answered that it was expected to last about 25 minutes. Trump and Russia (http://www.tvn24.pl)

On Tuesday, in an interview for the wyborcza.pl website, Łapiński was asked if President Andrzej Duda hoped Trump would confirm the U.S. commitment to NATO during his visit to Poland. “Every day we see that President Trump and the United States confirm their commitment to the alliance, because American soldiers, who came here, are still stationed on the Polish soil. President Trump has never issued any signal or indication to justify any doubts, he never said that the presence of American soldiers in Poland was a bad idea,” the minister said.

The President on Trump’s visit: it cannot be ruled out that it will have historic significance

Asked whether the President expected Trump to announce permanent, rather than merely rotating presence of U.S. troops in Poland, he replied: “This is our aim. Whether such a declaration will be made now or at some other point is a question we should ask President Trump. The minister was also asked about charges made against Trump, concerning his alleged pro-Russian stance. Łapiński recalled the fact that one of Trump’s advisers, who had concealed his contacts with Russia, was dismissed. “President Trump himself, since he took office, has not given any indications that he was contemplating a deal with Russia over our heads,” stressed Łapiński. Źródło: tvn24.pl, wyborcza.pl/ tłumaczenie Intertext.com.pl (http://www.tvn24.pl)

Could have historic significance and impact on Poland indeed.

....as imposition of foreigners would: black, well financed and militarily equipped.

Unz Review, 19 June 2017: “Russia and Islam: Connecting the Dots and Discerning the Future.”

Russian nationalists (as opposed to Russian patriots) did try their best to infect Russia with her own brand of Islamophobia, but that movement was defeated by an absolutely uncompromising stance by Vladimir Putin himself:

I need to say that, as I have repeated many times before, from its beginning Russia had formed as a multiconfessional and multiethnic state. You are aware that we practice Eastern Christianity called Orthodoxy. And some theorists of religion say that Orthodoxy is in many ways closer to Islam than to Catholicism. I don’t want to evaluate how true this statement is, but in general the coexistence of these main religions was carried out in Russia for many centuries. Over the centuries we have developed a specific culture of interaction, that might be somewhat forgotten in the last few decades. We should now recall those our national roots.”

Clearly, as long as Putin and those who support him remain in power, Islamophobia will have no future whatsoever in Russia. Russia will have to become the place where the Islamophobic myths will debunked ..

This site, Unz Review, is being treated by the Alt-Right as being in its friendly orbit.

True, the site does provide occasional useful information from which arguments for White interests can be derived, such as the study showing Harvard’s massive discriminatory bias against Asians (from which bias against Whites can be inferred also if you recognize and parse out the fact that Jews are not White), or the demographic projections that (((Steve Sailer))) puts up of Africa’s horrifying birth trajectory compared to Europeans, but you must look beyond, to the site’s chutzpah in projecting influence and goals upon the Alt-Right.

First, the black dress that they lay-out for our funeral:

Unz Review, “Will Sub-Saharan Africa’s Population Hit 10 Billion? 15 Billion?”, 27 June 2017:

Over at VDARE.com, a demographer points out that all my scary graphs lately have been based on the U.N. Population Division’s optimistic-sounding “medium fertility variant” in which total fertility rates magically converge toward 1.85 babies per woman by the end of the century.

But what if Africans just go on doing what comes natural? The correspondent points out that 10 billion is within reach under the assumption of constant fertility and mortality rates. Indeed, the UN offers a “constant fertility” table with, I believe, declining mortality due to technological advances in health care in which Sub-Saharan Africa’s population in 2100 is 15,175,708,000.

Fifteen billion Sub-Saharans is really not likely to happen, but my main point is: I’m not making these numbers up. These all come from the United Nations, not me.

Also, the UN offers a super optimistic “instant replacement fertility” table in which the total fertility rate drops to replacement today and remains that for the rest of the century. Due to demographic momentum, the population of sub-Saharan Africa still grows from 969 million in 2015 to 1,237 million* in 2035 to 1,444 million* in 2050 to 1,731 million in 2100.

        * He meant to write “billion” (but maybe getting nervous).

       
It’s easy to get blinded like a deer in the headlights by something like this. Take it to heart as a massive weapon that can be used against us, but don’t lose site of who’s taking the aim, the array of “equipment” (other people besides blacks) that they deploy and just how mean they are in doing it. Don’t be distracted into thinking they are on our side: Look under the dress -

We’ll provide this example and then treat this as an ongoing roller, as we say, to monitor just what the Unz Review is up to in its chutzpah. Have a closer look again at this first:

Unz Review, 19 June 2017: “Russia and Islam: Connecting the Dots and Discerning the Future”

Russia only has an observer status in the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) due to the fact that she is not a majority Muslim country. Russia is also a member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) which brings together China, Kazakhstan , Kyrgyzstan , Russia , Tajikistan , Uzbekistan , India and Pakistan. Let’s look at the approximate number of Muslims in the SCO countries: China 40,000,000 , Kazakhstan 9,000,000, Kyrgyzstan 5,000,000, Russia 10,000,000, Tajikistan 6,000,000 , Uzbekistan 26,000,000, India 180,000,000, Pakistan 195,000,000. That’s a grand total of 471 million Muslims.



Add to this figure the 75’000’000 Iranians which will join the SCO in the near future (bringing the grand total to 546’000’000) and you will see this stunning contrast: while the West has more or less declared war in 1.8 billion Muslims, Russia has quietly forged an alliance with just over half a billion Muslims!

Russian nationalists (as opposed to Russian patriots) did try their best to infect Russia with her own brand of Islamophobia, but that movement was defeated by an absolutely uncompromising stance by Vladimir Putin himself who went as far as stating that:

I need to say that, as I have repeated many times before, from its beginning Russia had formed as a multiconfessional and multiethnic state. You are aware that we practice Eastern Christianity called Orthodoxy. And some theorists of religion say that Orthodoxy is in many ways closer to Islam than to Catholicism. I don’t want to evaluate how true this statement is, but in general the coexistence of these main religions was carried out in Russia for many centuries. Over the centuries we have developed a specific culture of interaction, that might be somewhat forgotten in the last few decades. We should now recall those our national roots.”

Clearly, as long as Putin and those who support him remain in power, Islamophobia will have no future whatsoever in Russia. [...] Russia will have to become the place where the Islamophobic myths will debunked and a different, truly multi-cultural, multi-religious and multi-ethnic civilizational model offered as an alternative to the monolithic Hegemony dominating the world today.

Modern secularist ideologies have given mankind nothing except violence, oppression, wars and even genocides. It is high time to kick them into the trash heaps of history were they belong…

Ah yes, “Russia and Islam: Connecting the Dots and Discerning the Future” ... connecting the dots…Islam and Russia, the blood, bread and s/oil resource behind Israel/Judaism, they’ll protect us from “Islamophobia” ....they have given us nothing but peace ...and Christianity will keep us real, protect us from violence. ...let us pray together (not think together).

Do you believe this stuff is being circulated flagrantly among the Alternative Right!?!

Reuters, “Ex-FBI chief Comey tells U.S. senators Trump pressured him on Russia probe”, 7 June 2017:

Former FBI Director James Comey said on Wednesday that U.S. President Donald Trump asked him to drop an investigation of former national security adviser Michael Flynn as part of a probe into Russia’s alleged meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

In written testimony released the day before he appears before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Comey said Trump told him at a meeting in the White House in February: “I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go.”

The testimony puts more pressure on Trump, a Republican, whose presidency has been overshadowed by allegations that Moscow helped him win last year’s election.

Some legal experts said Comey’s testimony could strengthen any impeachment case built on obstruction of justice, but U.S. markets shrugged off the news from the testimony for lack of any major disclosures.

To build a criminal obstruction of justice case, federal law requires prosecutors to show that a person acted with “corrupt” intent. It does not matter whether the person succeeds in impeding an investigation.

While a sitting president is very unlikely to face criminal prosecution, obstruction of justice could form the basis for impeachment.

NPR, 7 June 2017: Full text of Comey’s opening statement.