[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.
How would you like to tell your constituents that there was an extra $758,000,000 each year to spend in their district? How could you help direct the spending of $758,000,000 ($758 MILLION!) in your district each year?
According to a study by noted Economist, John Williams, which can be viewed at Carrying Capacity Network [1] which sponsored the Study, U.S. Taxpayers pay out a NET $330 BILLION ANNUALLY (believe it or not) on LEGAL Immigration. That is, LEGAL Immigration costs U.S. tax-payers $330 BILLION AFTER SUBTRACTING ALL TAXES IMMIGRANTS PAY. [And this $330 Billion does NOT include the additional NET amount of Taxes State and Local Taxpayers pay to finance this LEGAL Immigration.]
Posted by DanielS on Friday, 02 February 2018 10:03.
The Russia Investigations: Trump Reportedly Wanted To Fire Mueller; D.C. Dumbstruck. A journalist describes Robert Mueller, pictured in 2007 when he was FBI director, as “about as apolitical and nonpartisan a figure as you could find in Washington.” (photo credit Susan Walsh/AP).
NPR, “Mueller’s Reputation In Washington Is ‘Stunningly Bipartisan,’ Journalist Says”, 1 Feb 2018:
As the investigation into the Trump campaign and Russian interference in the 2016 election forges on, Robert Mueller, the Justice Department special counsel leading the investigation, has managed to stay largely out of public view.
Journalist Garrett Graff says that is in keeping with Mueller’s personality: “This is not someone who in any way has tried to grab the spotlight, but instead has kept his head down and worked hard throughout his career.”
Graff’s 2011 book, The Threat Matrix, explores the transformation of the FBI under Mueller’s leadership. Appointed by President George W. Bush, Mueller took over as director of the FBI one week before the Sept. 11 attacks. After Mueller completed his 10-year term as FBI director, President Barack Obama reappointed him for a two-year term, which required a special act of Congress.
“Bob Mueller is probably about as apolitical and nonpartisan a figure as you could find in Washington, particularly at the levels of government in which he has served,” Graff says. “This is someone who really, truly believes in truth, justice [and] in the American way, in a way that very few people in American life today anymore do.”
Interview Highlights
On Mueller’s bipartisan record
We know him most recently, obviously, as the FBI director, but his tenure in government really dates back to the Reagan years. And he’s been appointed or held top jobs in the administrations of all five of the last presidents, and was appointed to the Justice Department, the head of the criminal division, under George H.W. Bush’s administration, then was appointed a U.S. attorney by Bill Clinton, then appointed the acting deputy attorney general by George W. Bush, and then later FBI director — a position he was reappointed to, in an unprecedented move, by President Obama and confirmed by the U.S. Senate by a vote 100-0, a stunningly bipartisan track record in today’s times.
On Mueller’s military service
Part of what makes Bob Mueller such a fascinating character is he has dedicated his life sort of time and again to public service. ... Mueller and a handful of other colleagues ... [signed] up for Vietnam after college. This was early in the 1960s, so it was before Vietnam became the cultural touchpoint that it did later.
Second Lt. Marine Corps Bob Mueller ended up leading a platoon in the jungles of Vietnam for a year and really distinguished himself in combat. He received a Bronze Star with valor for his leadership in an ambush that his unit suffered in the fall of 1968, and then was actually shot himself in a separate incident in April 1969 where he received, of course, the Purple Heart and was quickly back on patrol, serving out the remainder of his year.
He came into the F.B.I. in part, in the summer of 2001 because he was known inside the department as a computer-guy. He had help found the Justice Department’s first real computer crime unit. And, the FBI in the summer of 2001 had this incredibly outdated computer system…
On how the FBI changed after the Sept. 11 attacks
Bob Mueller, in the days after Sept. 11, sees this incredible sea change in the mission of the FBI, which until then for most of its first 90 years had primarily been a law enforcement agency focused domestically on solving crimes after the fact. And on Sept. 11, we saw an international plot that focused on a suicide attack with catastrophic results, and that that necessitated this top-to-bottom change in the way that the United States approached counterterrorism issues, that after-the-fact investigation was going to be inadequate in the face of these threats.
So Mueller was given a mission by [former Attorney General] John Ashcroft and President Bush to not just investigate attacks afterwards, but to stop plots in the first place, to disrupt the attack before it happened.
It led to this massive reorganization that Bob Mueller spent the next 12 years of his tenure working on, to move the FBI from what was traditionally a domestic law enforcement agency into something that is more akin to an international intelligence agency.
On how Mueller’s investigation into the Trump campaign is similar to other FBI investigations
This is, in many ways, a perfectly standard and routine FBI investigation. The FBI, as an investigative agency, takes down corrupt organizations, that’s what it’s designed to do, go after street gangs, drug cartels, organized crime families, and the way that they do that is by starting on the outside and working their way in. And so that can either mean starting at the bottom of an organization, or starting with ancillary charges and working their way inwards, the equivalent of getting Al Capone for tax evasion.
Posted by DanielS on Wednesday, 31 January 2018 06:06.
New Observer, “Trump’s Immigration Plan: Two Million Amnesty “Bigger than Obama’s”, 26 Jan 2018:
The Trump Administration’s newly-released “immigration outline” is a “preemptive surrender” which will mean an amnesty for up to two million illegal aliens—a number far bigger than what even was contemplated during the Obama presidency, the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) has warned.
Writing on the CIS website in an article titled “The Art of the Choke,” CIS Executive Director Mark Krikorian said that the enforcement component of the plan “is fine, as far as it goes. There’s no E-Verify, but the White House decided months ago not to push that, thinking it would be a bridge too far for Democrats, since it impacts illegals who are already here.
“But the amnesty and chain migration components are fatally flawed. The fact that the amnesty would include a path to citizenship (i.e., the beneficiaries would eventually get green cards like regular immigrants) is fine with me–if you’re going to amnesty illegal aliens, just rip off the band-aid and get it over with.”
“Instead, the issue is the size of the amnesty, or rather the universe of people who would be amnestied. If–as the White House promised just days ago–the amnesty were confined to those who now actually have DACA work permits (or even those who had them but didn’t renew), administering the amnesty would be relatively straightforward.”
“All those people are already in the DHS database, and even if they were all re-examined as part of the amnesty process (to weed out the fraudsters that snuck past Obama’s eagle-eyed DHS), it could still be done relatively quickly and with minimal disruption of the work of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the DHS component that deals with green cards, work permits, and the like.”
“But going beyond DACA beneficiaries to those who could have applied but didn’t is a different thing.”
“It’s not just a difference in degree, but in kind. A whole new process will have to be set up for the one million additional people who would be expected to apply.”
“The other work of USCIS would grind to a halt, delaying other legal immigration applications, as happened when DACA was originally implemented (and remember that Obama’s DACA amnesty was smaller than what Trump is proposing).”
“In addition, there would be an opportunity cost, with USCIS unable to pursue many urgently needed administrative reforms.”
“What’s more, expanding the amnesty beyond DACA beneficiaries is morally dubious.”
“The reason they have a compelling case for amnesty before all enforcement measures and in place and legal immigration curbed is that not only did they arrive here as minors but they voluntarily came forward and provided their information to the government.”
“Those who chose not to do so should not be granted the same extraordinary act of mercy.”
Posted by DanielS on Sunday, 28 January 2018 11:56.
Diversity Macht Frei, “It’s too late for Germany’: German feminist SJW admits she got it wrong on immigration, plans to emigrate to Poland”:
In 2012 Rebecca Sommer founded the refugee aid association Arbeitsgruppe Flucht + Menschen-Rechte (AG F+M) [Working Group Asylum + Human Rights]. At the end of 2015, this artist, photographer and journalist and documentary maker applauded Angela Merkel’s decision to open German’s borders to the “refugees” who had been blocked in Hungary, despite the vacuum effect this would create. “At that time I wanted to help everyone and truly believed that all these people were fleeing hell and were in a state of complete distress,” the German activist explained in an article published by the conservative Polish weekly Do Rzeczy on 15 January, discussing how she woke up to reality.
In 2015, her NGO had almost 300 volunteers who were giving German courses to the new arrivals.
…”I thought their medieval view was going to change with time…but after having seen these situations occur repeatedly and observing what was happening around me, as a volunteer, I have had to recognise that the Muslim refugees have grown up with values that are totally different, they have undergone brainwashing from childhood on and are indoctrinated by Islam and absolutely do not intend to adopt our values. Worse, they regard we infidels with disdain and arrogance.”
“It was a jarring perception when I noticed that these people I had helped, who were eating, drinking, dancing and laughing with me, who didn’t pray, who didn’t go to the mosque, who didn’t respect Ramadan, who made fun of religion and deeply religious people, called me ‘the stupid German whore’ when they were eating my food and were in my garden.”
…Rebecca Sommer says she is not an isolated case, that many other volunteers also came ultimately to have the same perception and that there are now far fewer volunteers ready to work with the new arrivals today in Germany. She also acknowledges that, through their numbers, these Muslim immigrants pose a threat to the German way of life, and that this will get worse with family reunification.
She also told the Polish weekly magazine Do Rzeczy that she personally knows Germans who are getting ready to emigrate to Poland because they had have enough, and she added: “If Poland and Hungary do not give in on this question, you could become countries that some Germans and French will flee to. You could become islands of stability in Europe.”
Islands of stability but also democracy because Rebecca Sommer also notes that democracy no longer really exists in Germany….When the human rights activists wanted to denounce forced conversions to Islam in Indonesia, her account was blocked.
This Berlin woman no longer dares to go out on her own on New Year’s Eve and she has already been attacked five times by men speaking Arabic!
She thinks it is already too late for Germany and she plans to emigrate for her retirement. Political Islam is present everywhere, including in the government, in political parties, in the police and schools. With family reunification, millions of additional Muslim immigrants are going to come. In the German capital where she lives, entire districts are already dominated by the Muslim community which forms a parallel society.
Posted by DanielS on Saturday, 27 January 2018 06:08.
Way to go Alt-Right. You’re wise to them, don’t get played by them or anything.
Trump: It’s great to be with Prime Minister Netanyahu, we’ve developed a great relationship, both as countries it has never been stronger and also as personal friends.
The big move is the fact that we will be moving our embassy to Jerusalem, way ahead of schedule by years.
Netanyahu: We also support you on your stalwart position on the Iran nuclear deal, you said it’s a disastrous deal. You said its fatal flaws are now fixed. You should walk away from it and I want you to know that if you decide to do that we will back you all the way.
We also appreciate the fact that you confront Iran’s aggression with us and with other parties in the region as never before.
I’ve never seen the holistic alliance between the Unites States, Israel and your other allies in the region as strong, as unified as it is under your leadership.
The last one is that you stood up for Israel in the UN, in a remarkable way, rock solid support. This is a place, it’s a house of slander against Israel and against The Unites States, and by word and by deed you’ve told them enough is enough ..as you finish your first year in office, I want to say that I look forward to continuing our remarkable, tremendous friendship in the years ahead and I want to express the appreciation of the people of Israel to you - thank you Mr. President.
Trump: Israel has always supported The United States.
There were many deals that came close [with the Palestinians] but we could never get past Jerusalem.
We took Jerusalem off the table so we don’t have to talk about it [with the Palestinians] anymore.
I am gross and perverted
I’m obsessed ‘n deranged
I have existed for years
But very little has changed
I’m the tool of the Government
And industry too
For I am destined to rule
And regulate you
I may be vile and pernicious
But you can’t look away
I make you think I’m delicious
With the stuff that I say
I’m the best you can get
Have you guessed me yet?
I’m the slime oozin’ out
From your TV set
You will obey me while I lead you
And eat the garbage that I feed you
Until the day that we don’t need you
Don’t go for help . . . no one will heed you
Your mind is totally controlled
It has been stuffed into my mold
And you will do as you are told
Until the rights to you are sold
That’s right, folks . . .
Don’t touch that dial
Well, I am the slime from your video
Oozin’ along on your livin’ room floor
I am the slime from your video
Can’t stop the slime, people, lookit me go
I am the slime from your video
Oozin’ along on your livin’ room floor
I am the slime from your video
Can’t stop the slime, people, lookit me go
- Frank Zappa, “I’m The Slime”
TV: postmortem on passivity induced runaway destruction, including speculation on zombie effects despite the new dawn of interactive media. It’s being a retrospective gives me an excuse to post this older show which I’ve only seen today for the first time. It’s funny as hell. Charlie Brooker is clever. I don’t vouch for his politics, am unfamiliar with that.
But as we say goodbye to the hegemonic days of television and the passive acceptance of its audiences of a world they could not interact with nor hope to change, it is worthwhile to take another look back on the days of how the Televitz shaped and manipulated our attention; and to speculate on some of its lingering effects, both on runaway systems in a world unchallenged, and its parallel tropisms in the computer screen, exponentially better though it is in the choice and interaction the mechanisms attached may provide…
“How Television Ruined Your Life”
Parts 1-6, BBC production, 2012, under Youtube license: