Majorityrights News > Category: U.S. Politics

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:

Episode 1 - Fear

Episode 2 - Life Cycle

Episode 3 - Aspiration

Episode 4 - Love

Episode 5 - Progress

Episode 6 - Knowledge

Looking back a year, to the onset of the Russia investigation…

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The Russian Federation is still crying: “Nobody likes traitors. Apparently, Kurds will stay alone with Turkish armed forces. Neither Damascus nor Moscow will provide any assistance to them. And only Kurdish leaders are responsible for that” - Alexandr Dugin.

It is a good sign that they are, along with their People’s Protection Unit (YPJ), putting imperialist Turkey, US, Russia and Israel in a bind.

Having their origin in separation from the Jewy treachery of Soviet Russia, its imperialism, its Muslim Turkish cohorts, in favor of left nationalism in order to wrest national independence for the Kurds, it would be ideal if this Asian backed left nationalism could sheer off the eastern half of Turkey and, along with fellow ethnonationalists from the west, put the squeeze on those rats. The imperial Russian Federation is still crying that the Kurds have rejected them. In causing consternation for the JewSA, Russovitz and Israel’s Turkish Friends, they are causing ethnonational consternation for imperial Israel as well.

Now, the Kurds have different facets and we are talking favorably about the ideal form and purpose of their left nationalism, not any assistance or alignment that some of them may have provided for radical Islam - on the contrary, that is just another form of imperialism.

Jerusalem Post, “Turkish and Syrian threats in Afrin put U.S., Russia in a bind, 19 January 2018:

What does it all mean for Israel?

People hold flags of People’s Protection Unit (YPJ) as they walk during a protest against Turkish attacks on Afrin, in Hasaka, Syria, January 18, 2018. . (photo credit: RODI SAID / REUTERS)

On Friday, Turkey increased its shelling of the Kurdish-held Afrin enclave in northern Syria. According to the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) up to 70 artillery shells were fired during the night.

While Turkey has threatened to invade the Kurdish area, which it says is being controlled by terrorists aligned with the Kurdistan Workers Party, Syria has threatened to shoot down Turkish warplanes in case of any attack on Syria’s territory. The war of words in northern Syria puts the US and Russia in a bind because the US is allied with the Kurds in eastern Syria while Russia has been a close ally of the Syrian regime.

Since mid-January, there have been rumors and threats of a Turkish invasion of Afrin. The area has been controlled by the YPG since the early years of the Syrian civil war. In eastern Syria, the YPG and its affiliated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have been successful at defeating Islamic State. However, in northern Syria, the Kurds have only come to control the thinly populated mountainous area of Afrin.

The autonomous canton is home to around one million people. The area is surrounded by Turkey on two sides and in Syria it borders areas controlled by Syrian rebel groups. The Kurds in this area have remained mostly outside the Syrian conflict because the Syrian rebel groups represent a buffer from most of the heavy fighting.

However, the Kurds here also have a complex relationship with the Syrian regime. They have not opposed Russian military personnel, for instance, who have been spotted in the Afrin area, and the YPG maintains amicable contact with the Russians, who are the Syrian regime’s closet ally.

Since the fall of 2016, when Turkey began to intervene in Syria, the YPG has been targeted by the Turks and their Syrian rebel allies. When Turkey and those allies moved into the area between Jarabulus and Kilis in 2016, it was widely seen as an offensive not only against ISIS, but also to make sure the Kurdish forces did not get any closer to the Turkish border to link up Afrin with the areas they control in eastern Syria.

In March 2017, the US, which has been working closely with the SDF and YPG against ISIS, sent vehicles to Manbij to ward off any Turkish attack on its Kurdish partners. This was an important symbol because it showed the US had drawn a clear line around its partner forces and would warn off any attack. The US shot down a Syrian plane in June 2017 that was operating close to the SDF as well.

However, US-led coalition spokesman Ryan Dillon put out a statement on January 16 saying it is not operating in Afrin and the Pentagon told the Turkish news agency Anadolu that it was not involved with the YPG in Afrin. “We don’t consider them as part of our defeat ISIS operations,” a Pentagon spokesman said. This is a clear message to Turkey that the US would not be involved in any sort of operations if they happened in Afrin.

However, the US has indicated the US will be remaining in eastern Syria for the foreseeable future. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson reiterated this pledge Wednesday. The US has often urged Turkey to keep its focus on fighting ISIS, rather than mission creep that would lead to conflict with the Kurds. Any conflict with the Kurds would inevitably complicate the US mission in eastern Syria, because it would cause the Kurds in the east to want to aid their comrades in Afrin.

Turkey has posited that any operation into Afrin would be with rebel groups and that the operation is carried out “for them,” and Turkey is “helping our brothers,” according to statements from the Turkish Presidency. However, this poses problems because the Syrian rebels that Turkey wants to work with against Afrin are busy fighting the Syrian regime in Idlib, where they are hardpressed, suffering civilian and military loses.

Nevertheless Turkey’s defense minister Nurettin Canikli vowed on January 19 that Ankara would carry out the operation, according to Turkish media. “The threat level against Turkey is increasing by the day. This operation will be carried out and we will combat terrorism.” At the same time, the Syrian regime warns that any incursion could bring Syrian air defense into the picture. Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Daisal Mekdad warned Friday that any attack on Afrin would be an act of “aggression” against Syria.

According to Al-Jazeera, Russia has moved military observers in Afrin “away” from the area, closer to Syrian regime-held territory. Any attack would therefore not harm the Russians who have become a key arbiter of issues in Syria. Russia has hosted the Astana and Sochi talks about the future of Syria, meeting with Turkey, Iran and Syria’s governments. In Afrin, Russia is the key player because it has relations with all sides and it has warmed relations with Turkey over the last six months.

However, Russia has remained mum on any potential Turkish operation. It must balance its interests in cultivating relations with Syria, with its support of Damascus and its relations with the Kurds. Wishing to see itself as the broker of peace, Russia would hope that there is not a major Turkish incursion. That means any Turkish action might be limited, as it has been before, and the war of words is intended more to test the waters with the US, Russia and Syria, than lead to a major attack jeopardizing the lives of thousands.

For Israel, what does this mean? A similar scenario will eventually play out near the Golan, without Turkey but with the regime seeking to test the US, Jordan and Israel’s resolve with Russia in the background. Afrin therefore matters greatly to the region and what transpires there will tell us about the future of Syria.

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The Heartfelt Hypocrisy Of The American Conscience

by William Hanna

Note the war drums in the video

While many of us may applaud the commendable outpouring of American public outage over President Trump’s supremacist “shithole” comment, we should not forget that those same Americans have maintained almost seven decades of unconscionable silence over far worse supramacist comments by Israeli leaders who take pride in statements that characterise and dehumanise Palestinians as never having existed; as having to be killed unless they were resigned to live as slaves; as being beasts walking on two legs; as being like crocodiles who when given more meat, wanted even more; as a people whose physical homes should be obliterated to prevent more snakes being raised in them; and as deserving to be bombed back to the Middle ages.

Furthermore, those currently outraged Americans have not only remained silent over rampant supramacism in Apartheid Israel but they have gone a stage further by wholeheartedly supporting and financing Israel’s ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people: and they have done all this despite the U.S. Department of State’s alleged respect for democracy and human rights.

“Democracy and respect for human rights have long been central components of U.S. foreign policy. Supporting democracy not only promotes such fundamental American values as religious freedom and worker rights, but also helps create a more secure, stable, and prosperous global arena in which the United States can advance its national interests. In addition, democracy is the one national interest that helps to secure all the others. Democratically governed nations are more likely to secure the peace, deter aggression, expand open markets, promote economic development, protect American citizens, combat international terrorism and crime, uphold human and worker rights, avoid humanitarian crises and refugee flows, improve the global environment, and protect human health.”

“The protection of fundamental human rights was a foundation stone in the establishment of the United States over 200 years ago. Since then, a central goal of U.S. foreign policy has been the promotion of respect for human rights, as embodied in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The United States understands that the existence of human rights helps secure the peace, deter aggression, promote the rule of law, combat crime and corruption, strengthen democracies, and prevent humanitarian crises.”

Ultimately, irrespective of how many American lawmakers, TV anchors, and pundits condemn the supremacist comments of their incumbent and ignorant President, the inescapable fact remains that not only did 62,980,160 Americans vote for him, but also the reality that most Americans are nothing but lamentable cowards and hypocrites when it comes to criticising Israel’s blatant and barbaric disregard for the human rights of the indigenous Palestinians. Thanks to their unconditional support for Israel, the American people have lost their moral compass, abandoned the true principles of democracy, and shattered the American Dream.

William Hanna is a freelance writer - details at: http://www.hiramicbrotherhood.com

There are couple of important matters to note in regard to this article. One being that “rights” should not only regard individuals as being in need of protection; but also group rights as the designation of species potentially under threat as a pattern from patterns of aggressors; or even inadvertent destruction from other groups and individuals.

With regard to Trump’s “shit hole country” remarks, it is interesting to note in the context of this article that El Salvador, one of the countries that he referred to as a shit-hole, has apparently taken a large number of Palestinian refugees - there are approximately 100,000 Salvadorans with Palestinian ancestry; and with that, it is a country more wise than many to the hypocrisy of Israel. This may in part explain why it is not highly regarded by Trump and his ZOG. Why, in fact, in terms of deportation schedule, it is ranked even less urgent a matter than Haiti - the Haitians of which slaughtered entire French peoples, men, women and children the moment they disembarked from ship upon arrival in Haiti; despite their having come there upon fervent assurances that there would be no violence against them and pleas for help to rebuild the country after the Mulatto supremacist revolution had already slaughtered the prior French colonists and troops; and where after the Mulatto supremacists were, in turn, slaughtered by the blacks proper. These blacks are forbears of present day Haiti. Some of us wouldn’t mind having, and could have done a great deal better with, the kind of aid money that has been sunk into that s*** hole.

Israel is facing a possible international criminal court war-crimes probe over its 2014 assault on Gaza, which killed more than 2,100 Palestinians, including over 500 children.

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In my cursory look at the situation, if these photos are indications of the genetics of the nations Honduras and El Salvador, I’d wish to treat Salvadorians as closer allies than Hondurans - all are expected to manage their own, of course. But there would be a preference for Siberian influence over African for any WN but the most disingenuous, elitist snob. 

Salvadorians

After that - i.e., protecting from the genetic distance and destruction of African, Jewish and some genetic groups housed within Islam - the matter is largely of carrying capacity, and who can be reasoned with to manage human ecologies - both reasons factor largely into considerations of who to ally with more closely, but particularly when it comes to “reasoning with people” to manage human ecologies, the first three categories are less promising in addition to their genetic distance (or insufficient lack thereof in the case of Jewish crypsis).

Carrying capacity is not only a concern of pervasive ecology corresponding with the management of human ecological enclaves within a nation such as The Unites States, but also a matter of the reasoned negotiation of ethnostates - with a reasoned negotiation, would living in Honduras or El Salvador be such a bad thing?

Still, that’s not the immediately interesting question. The question is, why are right wingers cool with blacks but not people like the Salvadorians? Again, I get the carrying capacity argument and the fact that they are in large part different from Whites, but when I hear Richard Spencer saying that he is cool with giving Florida to blacks, and his right wing ilk playing the violin for blacks being dispossessed by Central and South Americans it bothers me. I’ll take that trade-off of Amerindios/Amerindio-White mix for blacks any day (and yes, CC, we do need allies). And who has more righteous claim to Florida - the Seminole or blacks? Who should have more claim to the Caribbean - The Taino or blacks?

Monica Martinez, Salvadorian advocate.

Washington Post, “200,000 Salvadorans May Be Forced to Leave the U.S. As Trump Ends Immigration Protection”, 8 Jan 2018:

In one of its most significant immigration decisions, the Trump administration said Monday that it will terminate the provisional residency permits of about 200,000 Salvadorans who have lived in the country since at least 2001, leaving them to potentially face deportation.

The administration said it will give the Salvadorans until Sept. 9, 2019, to leave the United States or find a way to obtain legal residency, according to a statement Monday from the Department of Homeland Security. The Salvadorans were granted what is known as Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, after earthquakes hit the country in 2001, and their permits have been renewed on an 18-month basis since then.

Monday’s announcement was consistent with the White House’s broader stated goal of reducing legal immigration to the United States and intensifying efforts to expel those who arrived illegally. But Homeland Security officials characterized the decision by Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen in narrower legal terms: as a recognition that conditions in El Salvador have improved enough since the earthquakes to no longer warrant the TPS designation.

{snip}

The DHS statement noted that the U.S. government has deported more than 39,000 Salvadorans in the past two years, demonstrating, it said, “that the temporary inability of El Salvador to adequately return their nationals after the earthquake has been addressed.”

DHS officials said 262,500 Salvadorans have been granted TPS permits, but recent estimates indicate that closer to 200,000 people with that status reside in the United States.

{snip}

“Only Congress can legislate a permanent solution addressing the lack of an enduring lawful immigration status of those currently protected by TPS who have lived and worked in the United States for many years,” the DHS statement read. “The 18-month delayed termination will allow Congress time to craft a potential legislative solution.”

Trump administration officials have repeatedly said they considered the TPS program an example of American immigration policy gone awry, noting that when Congress created the designation in 1990, its purpose was to provide “temporary” protection from deportation following a natural disaster, armed conflict or other calamity.

In November, DHS ended TPS for 60,000 Haitians who arrived after a 2010 earthquake, and for 2,500 Nicaraguan migrants protected after Hurricane Mitch in 1998.

Salvadorian women and children

{snip}

Lawmakers from both parties who represent cities and states with large immigrant populations blasted Monday’s DHS decision, including Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), who called it “a shameful and cynical move” whose purpose is to “score political points with the extreme right-wing Republican base.”

{snip}

There were new signs Monday that TPS could end up as a bargaining chip in a potential congressional immigration deal. A source familiar with the negotiations said Congress could step in to help the Salvadorans, Haitians and other groups whose temporary protected status is now set to expire in 2019.

Honduran family of Rosa Rivera.

NY Daily News, “Hondurans live in limbo as over 200,000 Salvadorans await Trump’s decision on Temporary Protected Status”, 6 January 2018:

It was the hardest decision of Rosa Rivera’s life: leaving her three small kids in Honduras as she headed for the U.S.

“You don’t know how it felt to leave them so young and then to see them grown today,” said Rivera, 55, speaking with the Daily News in Spanish. “But it was for them to have a better life. That was my sacrifice.”

Rivera is one of roughly 86,000 Hondurans with federal Temporary Protected Status, a program created by Congress through the Immigration Act of 1990.

She and the rest are temporarily shielded from deportation and permitted to live and work legally in the U.S. — although that could change this year.

Related article at Majorityrights: Do the Taino still exist?

What it’s like to argue with a bracket and why ‘American founding fathers constitutionalism’ is too complicated and flawed a premise to defend White nationalism.

When asked why she wanted to exclude certain people from White Nations…

Tara experiences what it’s like to argue with a virulent bracket and why defending White America (let alone White Nations generally, of course) on the basis of the U.S. Constitution, founding fathers, exceptionalism, etc., is not the best angle.

If you mean to defend White Nationalism, defend White Nationalism, not American Nationalism of the Founding fathers, their constitution and not I.Q., as Tara does. The intentions of the founding fathers, what their text say, matters of I.Q. and the accomplishments (or lack of certain kinds of misdeeds) of White Nations can provide rebuts to fallacious counter arguments, but are not effective as a premisary thesis for defending White Nationalism.

MR’s platform takes rather a premise of deep systemic, pervasive ecology and biodiversity ... to be deliberately coordinated among human and pervasive ecology; and to be distinguished from Hitler’s ‘ecology’ which was more like Darwinism and absent the sufficient human and humane aspect of praxis.

Perhaps we should let Tara find out the hard way - she has been warned (as Mancinblack noted). There are reasons to be critical of her: she has associated with some pretty bracketed individuals, such as the guy promoting the Jewish alternative payment set up (I’ll find the link a little later); in addition to going along with the fundamentally right wing and Jewish aligned platform that is the Alternative Right.

According to Wolff book: Trump was shocked by presidential victory. He had run with anticipation of a loss to Hillary based on her “fake” media support which he could parlay into a “real” media empire by contrast; Bannon warned presidential victory would spotlight Trump’s Russian money laundering; Melania cried in stress over “botched plan gone right” which actually landed the presidency for Donald.

NewsWeek, “Trump Was Horrified When He Won the White House and Melania Cried, Book Claims”, 3 Jan 2018:

No one on Donald Trump’s presidential campaign team thought Trump would actually become president—and they didn’t really want him to either, according to excerpts from Michael Wolff’s book published Wednesday in New York magazine.

Now-President Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, Donald Trump Jr., campaign manager Kellyanne Conway and first lady Melania Trump were all reportedly left dumbfounded and afraid on the night of the election in 2016, the book claims. Shortly after 8 on election night, it became clear that Trump had a real shot of becoming president. Wolff wrote that Don Jr. said his father “looked as if he had seen a ghost. Melania was in tears—and not of joy.” Steve Bannon, who helped run the Trump campaign and helped Trump’s team through the transition, said he saw Trump morph from “a disbelieving Trump and then into a horrified Trump.”

A week before the election, Trump was sure he would lose the presidency. But still, according to Wolff’s book, he told Ailes that it was “bigger than I ever dreamed of. I don’t think about losing, because it isn’t losing. We’ve totally won.”

Then he actually won.

Wolff’s claims match various reporting on Trump’s election: He certainly wanted the fame that goes along with running a successful campaign, but critics theorized that he wasn’t quite as happy claiming the job of president. In February, The New York Times reported that Trump misses his access to “fans and supporters — an important source of feedback and validation.” The Associated Press wrote that Trump didn’t even want to live in the White House.

But Wolff’s new book claims Trump and his campaign never planned to win and never wanted to accept the job that comes along with a victory. So once he did take office, the West Wing was in disarray, with Bannon, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner all operating in a free-form environment. Bannon, especially, saw his role as creating the “soul” of the White House, according to Wolff. And Trump’s own behavior was credited as not befitting the White House.

“Nothing contributed to the chaos and dysfunction of the White House as much as Trump’s own behavior,” Wolff wrote. “The big deal of being president was just not apparent to him. Most victorious candidates, arriving in the White House from ordinary political life, could not help but be reminded of their transformed circumstances by their sudden elevation to a mansion with palacelike servants and security, a plane at constant readiness, and downstairs a retinue of courtiers and advisers. But this wasn’t that different from Trump’s former life in Trump Tower, which was actually more commodious and to his taste than the White House.”

Wolff’s book Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House is to be published by Henry Holt & Co. on January 9.

The Hill, “Bannon warned Russia probe would focus on money laundering: report”, 3 January 2018:

Former White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon warned that the special counsel investigation into whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia would focus on money laundering, according to a book to be published next week.

The revelation is included in “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House,” a new book by Michael Wolff. The Guardian, which has viewed a copy, published several stories on Wednesday about the book, which includes interviews with Bannon and President Trump.

Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort was charged with money laundering in an October indictment brought by special counsel Robert Mueller, as was his associate Richard Gates.

In Wolff’s book, Bannon identifies Weissmann, an attorney on Mueller’s team, as a “money-laundering guy.”

“You realize where this is going,” Bannon said in the book. “This is all about money laundering. Mueller chose Weissmann first and he is a money-laundering guy. Their path to fucking Trump goes right through Paul Manafort, Don Jr and Jared Kushner. … It’s as plain as a hair on your face.”

“They’re going to crack Don Junior like an egg on national TV,” Bannon said, referring to the president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr.

The former White House chief strategist also spoke about the 2016 meeting between Trump Jr. and a group of Russians, describing it as “treasonous.”

And Bannon in “Fire and Fury” mentioned connections between Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and loans taken out from the German Deutsche Bank that have come under scrutiny in relation to the investigation.

In December, federal prosecutors subpoenaed Deutsche Bank for records tied to Kushner’s family’s real estate business, Kushner Companies.

“It goes through Deutsche Bank and all the Kushner shit,” Bannon said of the probe. “The Kushner shit is greasy. They’re going to go right through that. They’re going to roll those two guys up and say play me or trade me.”

Business Insider, “I know why Steve Bannon let Michael Wolff into the White House”, 4 Jan 2018:

- Michael Wolff’s new book, “The Fire and the Fury,” is rocking the Trump White House, and it hasn’t even been released yet.

- It has the president turning on former adviser Steve Bannon. This is in part because Bannon helped Wolff gain incredible access to the White House.

- Why? Add this to the long list of ego-driven media mistakes made by the administration - a costly one at that.

- What Bannon didn’t count on was that Wolff isn’t a soldier in his army.

I feel like I write this all the time, but the White House is in chaos.

The Trump administration is being thrown by the forthcoming publication of Michael Wolff’s book “The Fire and The Fury: Inside the Trump White House.”

The excerpts, until now jealously guarded at select media outlets like New York Magazine and NBC for weeks, tell of a shockingly incompetent president and the in-over-their-heads aides who openly disrespect him. It is chaos, and someone let Wolff take a front seat and watch it all.

That person, by all accounts, was former White House adviser Stever Bannon. While Trump may have known that the biographer of his idol, Rupert Murdoch, was on site, it was Bannon who ensured Wolff had access.

Why? Consider it one part self-aggrandizement, another part a desire for acceptance, and wholly and completely a continuation of Bannon’s desperate search for ideological allies.

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