[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.
As fires ravage massive areas of the Amazon, the vital rainforest is nearing a “tipping point” in which a third of its ecosystem could be irreversibly decimated, experts have warned.
The loss of such huge areas of the forest would result in the eradication of species, many of which are yet to be studied, but would also unleash vast amounts of stored carbon.
Such devastation could spell catastrophe for the planet due to the implications for climate change.
Thousands of fires are racing through the Amazon, with Brazil recording more than 75,000 individual forest fires in the first eight months of the year.
In July, the rate of deforestation equated to roughly an area the size of Manhattan every day, or the size of Greater London every three weeks.
Professor Thomas Lovejoy of George Mason University, who has studied the Amazon since 1965, told The Independent there are signs it is on course for further extensive deforestation which will soon stretch beyond human control.
The previous research of his colleague Carlos Nobre indicates further razing could break the Amazon’s hydrological cycle, whereby it generates half its own rainfall. If a critical amount of trees are felled, the ecosystem will degrade to the point of being unable to support the rainforest.
But speaking to The Independent on Friday, Professor Lovejoy said things have since become much worse.
“When we were first worried about it, the amount of deforestation was small,” he said. “But then these other things started to interact – the impact of deforestation and the effects of climate change became apparent, and the extent of the use of fire [for clearing land] became apparent.
“The reason we believe the tipping point is so close is because we’re seeing historic droughts in 2005, 2010, and 2016. And satellite images in the north central Amazon also show forests remote from everything are beginning to convert into grassland. That’s yet another symptom.
“These are not little droughts – boats cannot get up some of the river’s tributaries, because they’re so dry.”
Professor Lovejoy said such a conversion from rainforest to savannah and scrubland would be the wider effect if a tipping point is reached.
“You’d have extensive parts of the southern and eastern Amazon and parts of the central converting to savannah, and maybe to even drier conditions.”
As well as the catastrophic loss of the rainforest as a massive carbon sink, Professor Lovejoy said losing swathes of the Amazon would result in a huge loss in the planet’s biodiversity.
“People don’t really grasp that the biodiversity in one part of the Amazon is very different to that in other parts,” he said.
A [right winger] is burning the Amazon – but Macron is complicit too
PM’s minister ‘cosying up’ to far-right Brazilian government.
Macron says France will block trade deal with Brazil over Amazon fires
Meat eaters are helping to fuel the Amazon forest fires
“So if you have regional loss, you’ve having actual total loss of that biodiversity. It’s the largest terrestrial repository of biodiversity on the planet, so all that will impact the future of Brazil, the economy, for the future of the world, vanishes.
“We tend to live in the delusion we don’t depend on the biology of the planet, but we do. Agriculture, forestry, medicine, all of that has a major biological base. Scientists are revealing new potential all the time. But you can’t do that if the species isn’t there to study. It’s like book burning on a very grand scale.”
He added: “The standing forest is absorbing carbon on an annual basis, but its even greater importance is in the total amount of carbon stored in the forest itself. Tropical rainforests store more carbon per unit area than basically any other kind of habitat. So it’s folly in the end.”
Asked if he thought Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro was a threat to the future of life on our planet, Professor Lovejoy said: “He certainly is, and he’s also a threat to Brazilian agriculture.”
But he said judging by the amount of public concern in Brazil, he believes things can change, despite Mr Bolsonaro’s policies.
“When there’s so much smoke in Sao Paolo, the street lamps come on at three in the afternoon, it’s clear there’s a problem.
“The world doesn’t expect Brazil to manage this all completely on its own, the world would like to help. And we hope we will be welcomed into some kind of partnership.”
This article was originally published on Kurier.plus.
European Union – On July 22, French President Emmanuel Macron announced at a press conference in Paris that an agreement had been reached by 14 countries of the European Union on a temporary and voluntary redistribution mechanism for migrants taken on board European ships in the Mediterranean. Macron then once again threatened those countries that refused to take part in this “voluntary” scheme that France would no longer approve their receipt of EU structural funds. Although no specific country was named,the French media had no doubt that Macron was thinking of the Visegrád Four, and Hungary and Poland in particular. “As far as solidarity is concerned”, the French president said, “Europe is not ‘à la carte’. You cannot have countries saying ‘I don’t want your Europe when it is about sharing the burden, but I want it when it is about receiving structural funds’.”
A new Franco-German redistribution plan with similarities to the old compulsory relocation scheme
According to French sources, the temporary agreement reached in Paris is meant to avoid the endless squabbles over who should take charge of how many migrants each time an NGO ship conducts a new operation near the coast of Libya. It is based on the plan proposed earlier by German foreign minister Heiko Maas when he called for a “coalition of the willing” to replace the failed EU compulsory relocation mechanism. “We must now move forward with those member states that are ready to receive refugees – all others remain invited to participate,”Maas had said. On July 18, at an informal meeting of interior and justice ministers in Helsinki, Maas’s plan was proposed by Germany’s interior minister Horst Seehofer and supported by his French counterpart Christophe Castaner. France then organised the July 22 informal meeting in Paris with foreign and interior ministers from the “coalition of the willing”, as well as officials from the European Commission, the United Nations’ refugee agency and the International Organization for Migration (IOM). Maas’s proposal was by then being presented as a joint Franco-German initiative.
However, only eight countries were actually named and said to have agreed to “actively” take part in such a voluntary redistribution mechanism. These are France, Germany, Finland, Luxembourg, Portugal, Lithuania, Croatia and Ireland. Macron said that “in principle, 14 member states, at this stage, have expressed their agreement with the Franco-German document”, but the other six countries who are supposed to have expressed their agreement have not been named and were nowhere to be found in subsequent media reports.
One thing is for sure: Italy was not among them. And this is good news for the Visegrád Group, as Macron’s statement about EU structural funds clearly shows that, in the minds of some European leaders, this so-called “coalition of the willing”, when it is further discussed at European level in September as planned by Paris and Berlin, is meant to become a new version of the former compulsory EU relocation scheme.As soon as Germany’s foreign minister made known his proposal for a “coalition of the willing”, it was dismissed by former Austrian chancellor Sebastian Kurz. His centre-right ÖVP party being the front-runner to win the election in September, Kurz will probably soon become chancellor again. “The distribution of migrants in Europe has failed,” Kurz said on July 13, “we are once again discussing ideas from 2015 that have long proved impractical.” And he went on to explain that “the order of the day is rather to remove the business case for unscrupulous smugglers and return people after sea rescues to their home or transit countries, as well as creating initiatives for stability and economic development in Africa”, which is exactly what the Visegrád countries have been advocating since the beginning of the current migrant crisis.
In fact, not only would such a scheme take immigration out of the control of participating member states, but the discussions on the subject are sending a new signal to would-be emigrants in Africa and the Middle-East, and also to people smugglers in North Africa, that Europe’s gates are being opened wide once again, thus reinforcing the pull factor created by lenient policies in many European countries – not least in France and Germany, which allow most immigrants to stay and move freely around the Schengen area even after their requests for asylum have been rejected (see here for the figures as of 2018). At a press conference in Helsinki, French interior minister Christophe Castaner himself had to acknowledge that several EU countries fear the proposed voluntary redistribution mechanism will generate a new massive influx of migrants. This impression created by the likes of Maas, Seehofer, Castaner and Macron is further reinforced by the fact that NGO ships are now back in the Mediterranean, trying to force Salvini to reopen Italy’s ports to illegal immigrants, while France and Germany have also been making repeated calls for Italian ports to open up to boats transporting rescued migrants. The Franco-German mechanism which was agreed on in Paris on July 22 is still based on having rescued migrants disembarked in Italian ports and thereafter redistributed among participating countries. Similarly to the now defunct compulsory relocation scheme, the redistribution of migrants would only concern those asylum seekers who are likely to gain refugee status, and who are in fact a small minority of all illegal immigrants trying to cross the Mediterranean. According to the Franco-German plan, the remaining migrants would have to be kept in Italian centres until they could be deported. From the Italian point of view, there is nothing new in that proposal, and such a scheme will probably only increase the pressure on Libyan shores and increase the number of illegal immigrants making it to Europe, as well as the death toll by drowning in the Central Mediterranean.
Italy and Malta came to the summit in Helsinki on July 17–18 with a different proposal. A day after Heiko Maas had first presented his own plan to the German RND media group, namely on July 14, Italy’s foreign minister Esteri Moavero Milanesi described his alternative plan in an interview with Corriere della Sera. What Rome and Valletta proposed was to give people the possibility of applying for refugee status as close as possible to their countries of departure, so that asylum requests could be considered before migrants illegally tried to cross the EU’s external borders. Charter flights would then be organised to safely take to Europe those who really deserved refugee status, thereby weakening the smugglers’ business model and avoiding unnecessary deaths at sea. Since the number of people reaching Europe in such a manner would be smaller and better controlled, a distribution scheme could be more easily agreed among EU member states. For those who nonetheless try to reach Europe illegally by sea, the joint Maltese–Italian plan requires the creation of controlled centres (“hotspots”) in all countries of the EU-28 and common policies to force the countries of departure to take their citizens back. It rejects the idea of having all migrants on the Central Mediterranean route landing in Italy before their relocation to other countries. It also calls for NGO vessels to be kept out of the search & rescue zones of Libya and other third countries.
Salvini to Macron: “Italy will not be France’s refugee camp”
This plan was rejected at Helsinki, as both Germany and France supported Seehofer’s plan. The League’s leader, Matteo Salvini, confirmed in a statement released on the day after a meeting in Helsinki on July 17 between ministers from France, Germany, Italy and Malta that the Franco-German proposal was unacceptable to Italy, as “simply redistributing refugees will leave hard-to-expel illegal immigrants in the first country of arrival”. And while Malta’s Prime Minister Joseph Muscat announced preparations for a new meeting between interior ministers of all four countries in Malta in September, France’s Christophe Castaner announced that he was inviting ministers from the “coalition of the willing” to Paris on July 22 in order to go ahead with the Franco-German scheme.This infuriated Italy’s Matteo Salvini, who refused to take part in the Paris meeting, choosing instead to send a “technical” delegation to block any new joint declaration. On July 19, Salvini wrote his French counterpart a letter in which he expressed his surprise at the fact that only the Franco-German proposal was to be discussed in Paris,pointing out that the Maltese–Italian proposal had “gathered broad support” among EU countries. In that letter, the League’s leader insisted again on the need to review the rules on search and rescue operations in order to put an end to behaviours which encourage illegal and uncontrolled immigration, and to make NGOs comply with both international and national laws. According to Salvini, many at the Justice and Home Affairs Council held in Helsinki had “positions very close to the one expressed by Italy, in particular as regards a strict commitment to a migration policy based on the protection of the EU’s and the Schengen Area’s external borders”.
After the announcement by President Macron of an agreement reached under his auspices and supported by 14 countries (of which only eight, including France, were named and said to be ready to participate “actively”), Italy’s interior minister published a video on his Facebook profile with his own virulent reaction, mocking French leaders and saying directly to Macron, whom he called by his first name, that if he wanted ports open to migrants he should open France’s own ports in Marseilles, Corsica and elsewhere. He added that Italy would not take orders from France and would not be France’s refugee camp, as it is not a French colony.
Italy under pressure from France and Germany to take back illegal immigrants as per the Dublin Regulation
Salvini’s tone was no surprise to observers, who have been witnessing deteriorating relations between France and Italy since those whom the French president contemptuously calls “populists” and “nationalists” formed a coalition government in Rome over a year ago. Salvini’s mockery and verbal attacks have mostly come in response to Macron’s own highly arrogant and undiplomatic criticism of Italy’s leaders, particularly Matteo Salvini, which resembles some of the language he has used against the leaders of Poland and Hungary, as when he publicly asked last autumn in Bratislava: “What are these leaders doing with these crazy minds and lying to their people?”. Salvini’s anger is further fueled by the fact that, while French leaders call for Italy to open its ports to migrants for humanitarian reasons,the French authorities have been enforcing border controls for years between Ventimiglia and Menton on the Mediterranean coast, and they send back illegal immigrants to Italy, including, according to some media reports, when those immigrants are caught at some distance from the Italian border, in which case such ‘hot returns’ are in breach of European rules. The Italians have also accused Germany of breaking the rules when returning migrants to Italy as per the Dublin Regulation (the so-called “Dubliners”). Apart from being asked by Germany and France to reopen its ports to illegal immigrants, as the first country of arrival Italy is under great pressure from other EU member states to take back some 46,000 immigrants. As a consequence of the mass disembarkation which took place under the auspices of Matteo Renzi’s government, the number of asylum seekers sent back to Italy has tripled in just five years, with most of the 188,000 requests for transfer made since 2013 coming from Germany, Switzerland, France and Austria.
To make things worse, on the eve of the Paris meeting of July 22, SOS Méditerranée, an NGO based in the French city of Marseilles, announced the launch of a new joint search and rescue operation together with the Franco-Swiss NGO Doctors Without Borders (MSF), using a new boat said to be larger and faster than the Aquarius, which has remained blocked at the request of Italian prosecutors. The Ocean Viking left the Polish port of Szczecin flying the Norwegian flag and heading towards Libyan shores. SOS Méditerranée and MSF estimate the cost of this operation at around €14,000 per day. In a press release published on July 12, the city of Paris had announced that it would contribute €100,000 to this expensive operation. The grant made by the French capital was announced at the same time as the award of a medal to Carola Rackete and Pia Klemp, two German NGO vessel captains who are facing serious charges in Italy for allegedly aiding illegal immigration, including – in the case of Klemp – through active collusion with smugglers.
France’s responsibility for the situation in Libya
Hollywood millionaire Richard Gere has called upon the Italian government to assist migrants who have been stranded on a Spanish charity boat in the Mediterranean for more than a week.
The Italian government needed to stop “demonizing people”, the actor said.
Gere boarded the vessel, which has been blocked from entering Italian waters, on Friday.
Gere, who visited the Open Arms ship in a show of support, also joined a news conference on the Italian island of Lampedusa calling for the migrants to be allowed to dock.
He made comparisons between Salvini, who has made repeated efforts to block migrant ships from docking in Italy, and US President Donald Trump, who has faced widespread criticism for his immigration policies.
“We have our problems with refugees coming from Honduras, Salvador, Nicaragua, Mexico… It’s very similar to what you are going through here”, he said, accusing both politicians of demonizing migrants.
“This has to stop everywhere on this planet now. And it will stop if we say stop”, he added.
It didn’t take Salvini long to respond.
“Given this generous millionaire is voicing concern for the fate of the Open Arms migrants, we thank him: he can take back to Hollywood, on his private plane, all the people aboard and support them in his villas. Thank you Richard!”, he said in a statement. Over the course of a career spanning more than 40 years, Gere, 69, has starred in films including Pretty Woman, American Gigolo and An Officer and a Gentleman.
A campaigner for environmental causes and AIDS awareness, he is also a Buddhist who pays regular visits to Dharamshala, the headquarters of the Tibetan government-in-exile.
Richard Gere is worth an estimated £100million according to the website celebritynetworth.com.
Salvini, whose party made sweeping gains in last year’s Italian general election, has pledged to deport 500,000 migrants by 2023. Earlier this week he tabled a motion of no confidence in his own government, in a bid to force through a snap election and take control from his coalition partners Five Star Movement.
Posted by DanielS on Sunday, 11 August 2019 21:23.
Blacks as a biological weapon of the right
Threat, intimidation, shock and awe, extortion:
Just because public money in the form of Welfare, Foodstamps, Medcaid, Social Security, Government Programs, Scholarships and so on, is not considered “private”, i.e., “their per capita income”, does not mean that black woman have a disadvantaged economic basis, one which is in important ways more secure, not exactly at a disadvantage, in crucial life matters such as the capacity to have children - quite the opposite: they do not have to work and can just take their time and headspace to have children at everyone’s expense, who then register as more “blacks” come black women who have “five dollars a year net worth.”
Ridiculous.
There is also a factor of money that might funnel to them through crime - which might be spun by liberals into an expression of victimization. But if they get away with that additional income, it is not as if their only other recourse was welfare.
Blacks have an advantage when it comes to education through school or college of any kind, public or private.
After their educational advantage, educated black women make more money than White women.
If they do not choose to go to college, or trade school, blacks have a tremendous advantage with government jobs, such as the US Post Office or Public Transit or universities - which offer excellent benefits and retirement plans - if they do care to work. Actually, they have advantage with private business and corporations as well! In a word, what the hell are you talking about when you expect me to feel sorry for these people?
And all many of us White people want to do with them is nothing. We are repulsed from joining these public situations with them knowing that it will lead to straight out lineal extinction, a harrowing nightmare for what White children do survive for a time or Mulatto grandchildren, ultimately.
There is also a factor now of above board wealth among blacks that is not being factored into these statistics parceled out discreetly as ‘black woman poverty’ (which frankly is not my concern anyway).
In addition, there are the intangibles - black solidarity, the taboo and danger of criticizing and discriminating against them - “racism!” - to go along with their warrior gene, high testosterone hyper assertiveness and lack of impulse control that makes them a great weapon of fecundity, disingenuous self righteousness - along with the ever present threat of violence and riot to extort the system - and when you look like many of them do and cannot rise to wealth through protracted intellectual effort, what do you have to lose? - now even seeking reparations for slavery on top of the trillions they’ve already received in a program of White r-p-a-c-m-nt (a word forbidden to be used by us “privileged people”), on behalf of those who would wallpaper over the decency and expense of those offering the coordination of White Left ethnonationalism.
Do you seriously expect me to care about these people who are so destructive to ordinary and working class Whites? These blacks, who Right Wingers brought to bear against us, to the destruction of millions of our loving brothers and sisters, would-be sons and daughters? Whites who are not even allowed to organize in group defense? Not to mention the Caribbean and other Native American Indians.
Blacks know the ropes of the American system and work it much better than other groups, for example, some White peoples who are often more recently immigrated and not powerfully supported as a group by YKW language games.
While right wingers and lucky liberals intermarry with the YKW and continue this pig game…
This is how marginalized White men are made into cows along with the rest of the working/labor surplus world, to pay to make these fat asses even fatter (some now hidden beneath a burka) and more fecund to the detriment of all…to supply their feral sons and their feral black fathers with veritable harems as they go on to impregnate naive Hispanic, Indio and White women..and yes, Asian women too, in order to mix away the would-be left ethnonationalist unions/coalition in favor of one ruler, Abrahams’ favorite sons and daughters.
Stop wallpapering Whites, depicting all White men as powerful, privileged elite. Stop characterizing White right wingers, elite traitors that they are, taking the payoff with “fellow Whites” YKW - the truly organized oppressors - as if they represent us - they do not.
Stop using black biopower, its ugly violent element with nothing to lose, against us to destroy our marginals- who would otherwise begin to help manifest the union bounds that could form coalitions to hold right wing perfidy, betrayal and exploitation to account.
Just like Muslims, many blacks are well suited to be biological weapons of the right wing by nature, and those who seek to bring them to bear against other solidarities/unions, in the name of pity and self righteousness are perpetrating atrocity. Those women who bring them to bear and exploit against other peoples, pretending that it is out of sensitivity and compassion ought rather go and live with them in the societies that stem from their nature.
There has been a ramped-up effort since 2008 to identify White activism with “the right” and to join forces, even to the point of amalgam with YKW against “the left”....but if Non-White left ethnonationalists join forces with the Jewish, anti-White program - that Whites are responsible for the world’s problems - all of them! - to the point of wallpapering over White left ethnonationalism, it will be at the loss of one of their greatest potential allies in staving off their becoming a part of an ongoing disaster of Brazilification, for all its human and other ecological disaster - while these people who you rightfully hate get away with it.
Twenty people have been killed and 26 injured in a mass shooting at a Walmart store in the Texas city of El Paso.
Governor Greg Abbott described it as “one of the most deadly days in the history of Texas”.
Police are investigating whether the attack, which happened a few miles from the US-Mexico border, was a hate crime.
A 21-year-old man is in custody. Police said the suspect lived in Allen, Dallas, about 650 miles (1,046km) east of El Paso.
He has been named by US media as Patrick Crusius.
CCTV images said to be of the gunman and broadcast on US media show a man in a dark T-shirt wearing ear protectors and brandishing an assault-style rifle.
The Texas shooting is believed to be the eighth deadliest in modern US history.
It came less than 24 hours before another mass shooting in Dayton, Ohio, and less than a week after a teenage gunman killed three people at a California food festival.
The police and FBI are investigating whether an anonymous white nationalist “manifesto”, shared on an online forum, was written by the gunman. The document claims the attack was targeted at the local Hispanic community.
The Walmart, which is near the Cielo Vista Mall, was full of shoppers buying back-to-school supplies at the time of the shooting.
US President Donald Trump described the attack as “an act of cowardice”.
“I know that I stand with everyone in this country to condemn today’s hateful act. There are no reasons or excuses that will ever justify killing innocent people,” he wrote on Twitter.
The victims have not yet been named but Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said three Mexicans were among the dead, according to Reuters news agency.
“We as a state unite in support of these victims and their family members,” Mr Abbott said.
“We must do one thing today, one thing tomorrow and each and every day after this - we must unite.”
What happened?
El Paso Police Chief Greg Allen said reports of an active shooter were received at 10:39 local time (16:39 GMT), and law enforcement officers were on the scene within six minutes.
The 21-year-old is the only suspect in custody and police say no officers fired their weapons while arresting him.
Mr Allen said the ages of victims were “numerous” as he described the situation as “horrific”.
Kianna Long said she was at the Walmart with her husband when they heard gunfire.
“People were panicking and running, saying that there was a shooter,” Ms Long told Reuters. “They were running close to the floor, people were dropping on the floor.”
Ms Long said she and her husband ran through a stock room before taking cover with other customers.
Another witness, Glendon Oakly, told CNN he was in a sporting goods store in the nearby shopping mall when a child ran inside “telling us there’s an active shooter at Walmart”.
Mr Oakly said no-one took the child’s claim seriously but just minutes later he heard two gunshots.
“I just thought about getting the kids out of the way,” he said.
El Paso Police Department had earlier tweeted that blood donations were “needed urgently”.
New UK PM Boris Johnson paves the way for an amnesty for 500,000 illegal immigrants – insists the Government will “look at it”
Speaking in the Commons, Boris Johnson said he had raised the idea of an amnesty when he served under Theresa May, “and it did not receive an overwhelming endorsement”.
He said the Windrush scandal had shown the difficulties that can be caused by a mass expulsion of people who “may have been living and working here for many, many years without being involved in any criminal activity at all”.
In the Windrush scandal it emerged that 161,000 asylum seekers – part of a huge backlog of almost half a million cases discovered in Home Office files – had been allowed to stay in the UK because they had been in the country so long it “would breach their right to a family life to remove them”.
“We should look at it”, Johnson said. “And the truth is the law already basically allows them an effective amnesty.”
He separately confirmed that Theresa May’s net migration target of 100,000 a year would go.
The PM’s official spokesman said he “wasn’t interested in a numbers game”.
Campaigners immediately warned an amnesty could fuel an explosion in migrants crossing the Channel from France in a desperate bid to reach the UK.
Alp Mehmet, chairman of the Migration Watch think tank, said: “The idea of an amnesty for illegal immigrants is a non-starter”. “Such a scheme will reward people with no right to be here, encourage future illegality and will be costly.” “It is absurd to link this with the Windrush debacle which was about a Home Office cock-up that led to people with every right to be in the UK being wrongly targeted.”
“Windrushers were not illegal immigrants.”
Boris Johnson called for an “earned amnesty” for as many as 400,000 illegal immigrants when he was Mayor of London.
He said that anyone who had been living in the capital for more than five years could show their “commitment to this society” and be given the right to stay – so they could then pay taxes.
Announcing the controversial move in 2008, he agreed it would be better if illegal immigrants were “taken and sent back to their place of origin” but added “it is just not going to happen”.
Epstein is only the latest incarnation of a much older, more extensive and sophisticated operation that offers a frightening window into how deeply tied the US government is to the modern-day equivalents of organized crime.
Despite his “sweetheart” deal and having seemingly evaded justice, billionaire sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was arrested earlier this month on federal charges for sex trafficking minors. Epstein’s arrest has again brought increased media attention to many of his famous friends, the current president among them.
Many questions have since been asked about how much Epstein’s famous friends knew of his activities and exactly what Epstein was up to. The latter arguably received the most attention after it was reported that Alex Acosta — who arranged Epstein’s “sweetheart” deal in 2008 and who recently resigned as Donald Trump’s Labor Secretary following Epstein’s arrest — claimed that the mysterious billionaire had worked for “intelligence.”
Other investigations have made it increasingly clear that Epstein was running a blackmail operation, as he had bugged the venues — whether at his New York mansion or Caribbean island getaway — with microphones and cameras to record the salacious interactions that transpired between his guests and the underage girls that Epstein exploited. Epstein appeared to have stored much of that blackmail in a safe on his private island.
Claims of Epstein’s links and his involvement in a sophisticated, well-funded sexual blackmail operation have, surprisingly, spurred few media outlets to examine the history of intelligence agencies both in the U.S. and abroad conducting similar sexual blackmail operations, many of which also involved underage prostitutes.
In the U.S. alone, the CIA operated numerous sexual blackmail operations throughout the country, employing prostitutes to target foreign diplomats in what the Washington Post once nicknamed the CIA’s “love traps.” If one goes even farther back into the U.S. historical record it becomes apparent that these tactics and their use against powerful political and influential figures significantly predate the CIA and even its precursor, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). In fact, they were pioneered years earlier by none other than the American Mafia.
In the course of this investigation, MintPress discovered that a handful of figures who were influential in American organized crime during and after Prohibition were directly engaged in sexual blackmail operations that they used for their own, often dark, purposes.
In Part I of this exclusive investigation, MintPress will examine how a mob-linked businessman with deep ties to notorious gangster Meyer Lansky developed close ties with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) while also running a sexual blackmail operation for decades, which later became a covert part of the anti-communist crusade of the 1950s led by Senator McCarthy (R-WI), himself known throughout Washington for having a habit of drunkenly groping underage teenaged girls.
Yet, it would be one of McCarthy’s closest aides who would take over the ring in later years, trafficking minors and expanding this sexual blackmail operation at the same time he expanded his own political influence, putting him in close contact with prominent figures including former President Ronald Reagan and a man who would later become president, Donald Trump.
As will be revealed in Part II, after this figure’s death, the blackmail operation continued under various successors in different cities and there is strong evidence that Jeffrey Epstein became one of them.
Samuel Bronfman and the Mob
The Prohibition Era in the United States is often used as an example of how banning recreational substances not only increases their popularity but also causes a boom in criminal activity. Indeed, it was Prohibition that greatly increased the strength of the American Mafia, as the top crime lords of the day grew rich through the clandestine trade and sale of alcohol in addition to gambling and other activities.
It is through the bootlegging trade of the 1920s and the early 1930s that this story begins, as it brought together key figures whose successors and affiliates would eventually create a series of blackmail and sex trafficking rings that would give rise to the likes of Jeffrey Epstein, the “Lolita Express” and “Orgy Island.”
Samuel Bronfman never planned to become a major producer of liquor but true to his family’s last name, which means “brandy man” in Yiddish, he eventually began distributing alcohol as an extension of his family’s hotel business. During Canada’s Prohibition period, which was briefer than and preceded that of its southern neighbor, the Bronfman family business used loopholes to skirt the law and find technically legal ways to sell alcohol in the hotels and stores the family owned. The family relied on its connections with members of the American Mafia to illegally smuggle alcohol from the United States.
Soon after Prohibition ended in Canada, it began in the United States and, by the time the flow of illegal alcohol had turned the other way, the Bronfmans – whose business ventures were then being led by Sam Bronfman and his brothers — were relatively late to an already flourishing bootlegging trade.
“We were late starters in the two most lucrative markets – on the high seas and across the Detroit River. What came out of the border trade in Saskatchewan was insignificant by comparison,” Bronfman once told Canadian journalist Terence Robertson, who was then writing a biography of Bronfman. Nonetheless, “this was when we started to make our real money,” Bronfman recounted. Robertson’s biography on Bronfman was never published, as he died under mysterious circumstances soon after warning his colleagues that he had uncovered unsavory information about the Bronfman family.
Samuel Bronfman pictured in 1937 with his sons Edgar and Charles
Samuel Bronfman mob
Key to Bronfman’s success during American Prohibition were the ties his family had cultivated with organized crime during Canada’s Prohibition, ties that led many prominent members of the mob in the United States to favor Bronfman as a business partner. Bronfman liquor was purchased in massive quantities by many crime lords who still live on in American legend, including Charles “Lucky” Luciano, Moe Dalitz, Abner “Longy” Zwillman and Meyer Lansky.
Most of Bronfman’s mob associates during Prohibition were members of what became known as the National Crime Syndicate, which a 1950s Senate investigative body known as the Kefauver Committee described as a confederation dominated by Italian-American and Jewish-American mobs. During that investigation, some of the biggest names in the American Mafia named Bronfman as a central figure in their bootlegging operations. The widow of notorious American mob boss Meyer Lansky even recounted how Bronfman had thrown lavish dinner parties for her husband.
Years later, Samuel Bronfman’s children and grandchildren, their family’s ties to the criminal underworld intact, would go on to associate closely with Leslie Wexner, allegedly the source of much of Epstein’s mysterious wealth, and other mob-linked “philanthropists,” and some would even manage their own sexual blackmail operations, including the recently busted blackmail-based “sex cult” NXIVM. The later generations of the Bronfman family, particularly Samuel Bronfman’s sons Edgar and Charles, will be discussed in greater detail in Part II of this report.
Lewis Rosenstiel’s dark secret
Crucial to Bronfman’s Prohibition-era bootlegging operations were two middlemen, one of whom was Lewis “Lew” Rosenstiel. Rosenstiel got his start working at his uncle’s distillery in Kentucky before Prohibition. Once the law banning alcohol was in force, Rosenstiel created the Schenley Products Company, which would later become one of the largest liquor companies in North America.
Though he was a high school drop-out and not particularly well-connected socially at the time, Rosenstiel happened to have a “chance” meeting with Winston Churchill in 1922 while on vacation in the French Riviera. According to the New York Times, Churchill “advised him [Rosenstiel] to prepare for the return of liquor sales in the United States.” Rosenstiel somehow managed to secure the funding of the elite and respected Wall Street firm Lehman Brothers to finance his purchase of shuttered distilleries.
Officially, Rosenstiel is said to have built his company and wealth after Prohibition, by following Churchill’s advice to prepare for Repeal. However, he was clearly involved in bootlegging operations and was even indicted for bootlegging in 1929, though he evaded conviction. Like Bronfman, Rosenstiel was close to organized crime, particularly members of the mostly Jewish-American and Italian-American mob alliance known as the National Crime Syndicate.
Subsequent New York state legislative investigations would allege that Rosenstiel “was part of a ‘consortium’ with underworld figures that bought liquor in Canada [from Samuel Bronfman]”, whose other members were “Meyer Lansky, the reputed organized crime leader; Joseph Fusco, an associate of late Chicago gangster Al Capone and Joseph Linsey, a Boston man Mr. Kelly [the congressional investigator testifying] identified as a convicted bootlegger.” Rosenstiel’s relationship with these men, particularly Lansky, would continue long after Prohibition and Bronfman, for his part, would also maintain his mob ties.
In addition to his friends in the mob, Rosenstiel also cultivated close ties with the FBI, developing a close relationship with longtime FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and making Hoover’s right-hand man and longtime assistant at the FBI, Louis Nichols, the Vice President of his Schenley empire in 1957.
Despite their similar backgrounds as bootlegger barons turned “respectable” businessmen, Bronfman’s and Rosenstiel’s personalities were drastically different and their relationship was complicated, at best. One example of the dissimilarities between North America’s top liquor barons was how they treated their staff. Bronfman was not necessarily known for being a cruel boss, whereas Rosenstiel was known for his erratic and “monstrous” behavior towards employees as well as his unusual practice of bugging his offices in order to hear what employees said about him when he wasn’t present.
Rosenstiel was connected to both the FBI and to organized crime
Such differences between Bronfman and Rosenstiel were also reflected in their personal lives. While Bronfman married only once and was loyal to his wife, Rosenstiel was married five times and was known for his relatively closeted bisexual antics, a part of his life that was well-known to many of his close associates and employees.
Though for years there were only hints to this other side of the controversial businessman, details emerged years later during a divorce proceeding brought by Rosenstiel’s fourth wife, Susan Kaufman, that would back the claims. Kaufman alleged that Rosenstiel hosted extravagant parties that included “boy prostitutes” that her husband had hired “for the enjoyment” of certain guests, which included important government officials and prominent figures in America’s criminal underworld. Kaufman would later make the same claims under oath during the hearing of the New York’s State Joint Legislative Committee on Crime in the early 1970s.
Not only did Rosenstiel organize these parties, but he also made sure that their venues were bugged with microphones that recorded the antics of his high-profile guests. Those audio recordings, Kaufman alleged, were then kept for the purpose of blackmail. Though Kaufman’s claims are shocking, her testimony was deemed credible and held in high regard by the former chief counsel of the Crime Committee, New York Judge Edward McLaughlin, and committee investigator William Gallinaro and aspects of her testimony were later corroborated by two separate witnesses who were unknown to Kaufman.
These “blackmail parties” offer a window into an operation that would later become more sophisticated and grow dramatically in the 1950s under Rosenstiel’s “field commander” (a nickname given by Rosenstiel to an individual to be named shortly in this report). Many of the people connected to Rosenstiel’s “field commander” during the 70s and 80s have again found their names in the press following the recent arrest of Jeffrey Epstein.
The “Untouchable” Mobster
Bronfman and Rosenstiel became legendary in the North American liquor business, in part due to their fight for supremacy in the industry, which the New York Times described as often erupting “into bitter personal and corporate battles.” Despite their dueling in the corporate world, the one thing that united the two businessmen more than anything else was their close connection to American organized crime, particularly renowned mobster Meyer Lansky.
Lansky is one of the most notorious gangsters in the history of American organized crime and is notable for being the only famous mobster rising to notoriety in the 1920s who managed to die an old man and never serve a day in jail.
Lansky’s long life and ability to avoid prison time was largely the result of his close relationships to powerful businessmen like Bronfman and Rosenstiel (among many others), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the U.S. intelligence community, as well as his role in establishing several blackmail and extortion rings that helped him keep the law at arm’s length. Indeed, when Lansky was finally charged with a crime in the 1970s, it was the Internal Revenue Service that brought the charges, not the FBI, and he was charged with and acquitted of tax evasion.
Lansky was remarkably close to both Bronfman and Rosenstiel. Bronfman regularly threw “lavish dinner parties” in Lansky’s honor both during and after Prohibition. These parties were remembered fondly by Lansky’s wife, and Lansky in turn did favors for Bronfman, ranging from exclusive protection of his shipments during Prohibition to getting him tickets to coveted “fight of the century” boxing matches.
Rosenstiel also threw regular dinner parties honoring Lansky. Susan Kaufman, Rosenstiel’s ex-wife, claimed to have taken numerous pictures of her ex-husband and Lansky socializing and partying together, photos that were also seen by Mary Nichols of The Philadelphia Inquirer. In addition, Lansky, per Kaufman’s recollection, was one of the individuals that Rosenstiel sought to protect from legal scrutiny as part of his child prostitution and blackmail ring targeting high-ranking officials, and he was overheard saying that if the government “ever brings pressure against Lansky or any of us, we’ll use this [a specific recording taken at one of the ‘parties’] as blackmail.”
Lansky was known to address Rosenstiel as “Supreme Commander,” a title that would later be used to refer to Rosenstiel by another individual deeply connected to the mob and sexual blackmail operations, previously referred to in this report as Rosenstiel’s “Field Commander.”
Lansky also had close ties to the CIA and U.S. military intelligence. During World War II, Lansky — along with his associate Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel — worked with Naval intelligence in what was codenamed “Operation Underworld,” an operation the existence of which the government denied for over 40 years.
Journalist and noted chronicler of CIA covert activities, Douglas Valentine, noted in his book The CIA as Organized Crime: How Illegal Operations Corrupt America and the World that the government’s cooperation with the Mafia during World War II led to its expansion after the war and set the stage for its future collaboration with U.S. intelligence.
According to Valentine:
Top government officials were also aware that the government’s Faustian pact with the Mafia during World War II had allowed the hoods to insinuate themselves into mainstream America. In return for services rendered during the war, Mafia bosses were protected from prosecution for dozens of unsolved murders. […]
The Mafia was a huge problem in 1951 [when the Kefauver Committee was convened], equivalent to terrorism today. But it was also a protected branch of the CIA, which was co-opting criminal organizations around the world and using them in its secret war against the Soviets and Red Chinese. The Mafia had collaborated with Uncle Sam and had emerged from World War II energized and empowered. They controlled cities across the country.”
Lansky outside the High Court of Israel where he sought permission to emigrate in 1972. Photo | AP
Indeed, not long after its creation, the CIA forged ties with Lansky at the behest of CIA counterintelligence chief James J. Angleton. The CIA would later turn to the Lansky-linked mob in the early 1960s as part of its consistently fruitless quest to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro, showing that the CIA maintained its contacts with Lansky-controlled elements of the Mafia long after the initial meeting with Lansky took place.
The CIA also had close connections to associates of Lansky, such as Edward Moss, who did public relations work for Lansky and was said to be of “interest” to the CIA by the agency’s then-inspector general J.S. Earman. Harry “Happy” Meltzer was also another Lansky associate that was a CIA asset and the CIA asked Meltzer to join an assassination team in December 1960.
In addition to the CIA, Lansky was also connected to a foreign intelligence agency through Tibor Rosenbaum, an arms procurer and high-ranking official in Israel’s Mossad, whose bank – the International Credit Bank of Geneva – laundered much of Lansky’s ill-gotten gains and recycled them into legitimate American businesses.
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Who can say anything to black males? What government program, institution or job isn’t aimed at discriminating IN THEIR FAVOR? To be prohibited discrimination against blacks and forced into involuntary contract with blacks as Whites have been for decades has made White men slaves to blacks by definition. Black men have been indulged extravagantly at White men’s expense for decades. Black males owe Whites trillions in reparations.
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Lewis “Lew” Rosenstiel. Jeffrey Epstein and Roy Cohn (Graphic | Emma Fiala)
Samuel Bronfman pictured in 1937 with his sons Edgar and Charles
Rosenstiel was connected to both the FBI and to organized crime
Lansky outside the High Court of Israel where he sought permission to emigrate in 1972. Photo | AP