Majorityrights News > Category: World Affairs

Nya Dagbladet, Sumatran Rhino encountered in Indonesian Borneo, 3 April 2016:

Sumatran Rhino encountered in Indonesian Borneo (Photo: Angelskiss31 / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

A very small number Sumatran Rhinos are remaining in the world.

The Sumatran Rhino is one of the world’s most endangered mammals, with possibly fewer than 100 left in the wild. Now, however, a little hope is kindled by a species branch member found in Kalimantan, Borneo for the first time in 30 years.

WWF reports that a female 4-5 years old was captured in a specially designed trap and that this came as a big surprise as most believed that the species is extinct in the Indonesian part of Borneo.

- This is a unique find, something I never thought we would be a part of. Now we have a great opportunity to save an almost extinct species, says Olle Forshed, rainforest expert at WWF.

Already in 2013 footprints were identified in the region and it is estimated that there are at least three families of about 15 rhinos in Kalimantan. In order to secure the survival of the species WWF experts need also to advocate policies for rainforest preservation so that the large animals can live and breed in peace. The female who was discovered and captured will now be moved to a safer rainforest, where her habitat is not threatened by destruction.

Felling of forests for coal mine in Central Kalimantan.

(Photo: Andrew Taylor / WDM / CC BY 2.0)

Poaching, oil palm cultivation and mining are deemed to be the greatest threats to Sumatran Rhino today. On the Malaysian part of Borneo it was declared the species extinct last year.

Carl Svensson

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TNO, Syrians, Russians, Hezbollah, Take Palmyra, 27 March 2016:

A combined force consisting of ground forces from Syria, Russia, and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, in conjunction with the Russian air force, have retaken the ancient city of Palmyra from the US-backed “rebels” in a highly symbolic victory announced on Easter Sunday.

A combined force consisting of ground forces from Syria, Russia, and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, in conjunction with the Russian air force, have retaken the ancient city of Palmyra from the US-backed “rebels” in a highly symbolic victory announced on Easter Sunday.

According to a report on the Syrian national news service, SANA, the city had been retaken after “heavy fighting against the terrorist Daesh organization,” and the “UNESCO World Heritage List city was now stable and free of terrorists.”

Daesh is an acronym for the Arabic phrase al-Dawla al-Islamiya al-Iraq al-Sham, which translates as Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or ISIL.

The SANA report said that the Syrian military had completely destroyed Daesh and had taken “absolute control over all parts of the city, including the ancient city and the airport.”

The victory is made even more significant because of the fact that it was made possible by a combined assault of forces which many western governments—in western Europe and the US in particular—vehemently oppose.

The European Union still has sanctions against Russia, and many liberals oppose Vladimir Putin’s government because of its non-toleration of homosexual marriages and propaganda.

Hezbollah is hated by the Jewish lobby because it successfully defended Lebanon against an Israeli invasion in 2006, and of course, the Syrian government is hated because of its opposition to Israel.

Russian ground forces were also involved in the assault on Palmyra. Col. Gen. Aleksandr Dvornikov, deputy commander of the Central Military District in Russia, confirmed to RT that the Special Operations Forces (SOF) are deployed in Syria.

“They conduct ground reconnaissance of pre-selected targets for Russian warplanes, assist in targeting warplanes in remote areas, and perform other tasks,” the general said.

One of the Russian soldiers achieved fame by calling in an airstrike on his own positon after being spotted by ISIS militants after spending nearly a week hidden in the desert near Palmyra, detecting and radioing back important targets and providing coordinates for Russian warplanes to strike.

The SANA report said that Syrian military engineers had immediately begun combing the city, looking for “hundreds of mines and improvised explosive devices” left behind by the terrorists.

The explosives had been placed all around the archaeological monuments, houses, and orchards surrounding the city, the statement continued.

Above: The Temple of Baalshamin, Palmyra, before and during its destruction by ISIS. The temple was built in 131 AD, to commemorate the Roman Emperor Hadrian’s visit to Palmyra two years earlier.

Palmyra had been under ISIS rule since June 2014, during which time they had infamously destroyed many of the ancient and irreplaceable Roman monuments as “heathen blasphemy.”

They also carried out a number of executions in the city, including the beheading of the Syrian scholar and antiquities expert Khalid al-Asaad, who refused to lead the terrorists to a number of hidden Palmyra treasures in return for his life.

They also infamously used the Roman theater in Palmyra for a mass execution of twenty-five captured Syrian army soldiers, employing ISIS children as executioners.

The SANA report said that 450 of the terrorists had been killed in the assault on Palmyra, and “hundreds of others” had retreated eastward. Among those killed in the city were a large number of “foreign mercenaries who had earlier infiltrated the city from Raqqa, Deir al-Zour, and the Iraqi border,” with the intention of totally destroying the ancient city before retreating.

SANA said that the “Russian air force had been intensively involved” in the operation, and many of the fleeing terrorists had been killed by pinpoint strikes against armored vehicles and other ISIS transport.

“The tightening of control over the city of Palmyra is a significant milestone and a starting point to achieve more victories in the war on terrorism,” the SANA report added.

“[The victory] is proof that the Syrian Army is the main actor in the move to confront the terrorist organizations and thwart their sponsors’ schemes,” the SANA statement said, concluding by naming these sponsors: Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and “the West.”

As reported earlier, ISIS has been enabled and largely armed by the US and its allies who sent “aid” to the “moderate Syrian rebels.” After receiving money and guns from the fools in Washington DC, the “moderates” all joined ISIS.

Their defeat in Palmyra proves that ISIS could have been defeated a long time ago had the US and Western governments not been beholden to the Jewish lobby who seeks the destruction of Syria.

Below: Russian drone footage of Palmyra taken two days ago at the height of the battle, as released on Russian television.

Print and distribute.

TNO, ‘African Rioting Tears through Melbourne’, 27 Dec. 2015:

by TNO Staff — in Australia ·

“Hundreds” of African invaders engaged in a widespread orgy of violence over the Christmas weekend in Melbourne, the capital and most populous city in the Australian state of Victoria.

According to local media reports—all of which deliberately failed to report on the race of the rioters—the incidents took place outside a train station in Melbourne’s southeast and outside a Carlton nightclub on Queensberry Street, North Melbourne.

In addition, a further brawl took place later at a police station when groups of the arrested Africans went on a rampage, attacking each other and wounding two policemen in the process.

The violence outside the Kananook Railway Station in Seaford took place on Sunday, December 27, with two large gangs of Africans—estimated at around 200 in total—battled it out with knives, baseball bats, stones, and at least one samurai sword and a machete.

One of the Africans was stabbed several times and admitted to the hospital with what was described as “life-threatening” wounds.

None of the controlled media coverage dared point out the race of the rioters, with only the News.com.au website making a slight reference to their origin by reporting that the fight was believed to have started in the car park of the nearby Frankston Basketball Centre during the “South Sudanese Australian Summer Slam” basketball competition.

However, CCTV and photographs of the fighting showed clearly that the perpetrators were Africans, despite the controlled media’s efforts to ignore that reality.

Police arrested 12 Africans, aged between 19 and 32, and detained them for questioning.

However, not long after the Africans were placed in a communal cell at Frankston Police Station, at least two of them started fighting with one another again, forcing a second police intervention which also saw two officers slightly wounded.

The second incident involved at least 250 Africans outside a Carlton nightclub on Queensberry Street about 5:30 a.m. on Sunday, local media reported. A police car was damaged and a woman suffered minor injuries.

Officers were forced to use pepper spray to control the crowd, and four men and a woman were arrested and will be issued with penalty notices for riotous behavior.

Once again, the controlled media coverage refused to mention the race of the rioters, although their efforts at censorship were also once again undone by the video and still photography footage of the event.

According to the Australian Census Bureau, there are some 19,370 Sudanese-born Africans in Australia. Of that number some 5,911 live in Melbourne. Sudanese are by far the single largest black immigrant group in Australia.

If nearly 500 Sudanese were rioting over Christmas in these two incidents, this means that at least 10 percent of Melbourne’s Sudanese took part in the street violence in the space of one day.

It does not matter where they are and barely even matters when their economic circumstances are better: blacks will behave as blacks.

Public opinion about supposedly ‘vulnerable’ Islamist men on an international level has become so ‘toxic’ that the Guardian no longer wants to offer up its comments section as a vehicle through which people all around the world can say things that the Guardian editors and journalists don’t agree with.

See here:

Guardian, ‘The readers’ editor on… handling comments below the line’, Stephen Pritchard, 31 Jan 2016 (emphasis added):

[...]

Certain subjects – race, immigration and Islam in particular – attract an unacceptable level of toxic commentary, believes Mary Hamilton, our executive editor, audience. “The overwhelming majority of these comments tend towards racism, abuse of vulnerable subjects, author abuse and trolling, and the resulting conversations below the line bring very little value but cause consternation and concern among both our readers and our journalists,” she said last week.

As a result, it had been decided that comments would not be opened on pieces on those three topics unless the moderators knew they had the capacity to support the conversation and that they believed a positive debate was possible.

The policy would be worldwide, applying to our UK, US and Australia offices, as the issues were global. And, where they were open, it was likely that threads would close sooner than the typical three-day window.

[...]

This was not a retreat from commenting as a whole, she said; it was an acknowledgement, however, that some conversations had become toxic at an international level – “a change in mainstream public opinion and language that we do not wish to see reflected or supported on the site”.

[...]

Totally exploitable.

This is almost like a return to the 1970s, except with a massively expanded infrastructure for communication, which results in black propaganda and grey propaganda being pushed by all sides of the political spectrum until one side finally cries out in pain and shuts everything down.

The difference now is that if the Guardian staff refuse to facilitate these conversations because they find it to be too painful, it won’t make them go away, it just means that these conversations will be shifted to other locations which are not under the watch of people in their political camp.

One thing that social democrats have never been able to understand is how to win at Information Operations (IO). They had forgotten that some audiences are more sophisticated than others, and that in a completely globalised communication environment in which the internet ‘remembers everything’, their attempts to fabricate a false reality to support their political positions in different temporal and geographical contexts will always be exposed. There will always be some commenter who will ask “Why did they say this thing here, but then this other thing over here? It’s contradictory! It makes no sense at all!”

For example, if a news organisation, such as perhaps the Guardian, or the Huffington Post, writes articles in its North America edition that try to induce feelings of guilt and paralysis among the Americans of European descent by taking the position that the Pilgrims who landed in North America on the Mayflower were actually a collection of religious fundamentalists who ended up carrying out genocide and were subsequently hated and reviled by the Amerindians, then that is an anti-Pilgrim line they can take. It’s based on reality so a person could indeed say it. But they would have to be consistent about it.

A problem emerges for that newspaper if it should happen to mysteriously become pro-Pilgrim in a Middle East and North African context, where the Islamist reactionary ‘refugees’ who are fleeing from the Middle East and North Africa to find ‘a new life’ in Europe, are presented as being beyond reproach because of their similarity to the American Pilgrims. American Pilgrims who are suddenly recast as noble heroes fleeing from a supposedly repressive Europe to find ‘a new life’ in the Americas. ‘Pilgrims fleeing repression’ is also a narrative based on reality. But its moral content and implied policy prescriptions are 180 degrees opposite to that of the aforementioned anti-Pilgrim narrative.

It’s 2016, social democrats. If you constantly contradict yourselves like that, then it becomes possible to find the key which is held in common between the different kinds of propaganda you are creating, by simply comparing them to each other. That’s something which is pretty trivial to do in the era of digital media. So that happened, and will continue to happen.

I would say to everyone who has been struggling against social democrats, that this latest move to restrict speech which is being carried out by the Guardian should be regarded as a victory of sorts over the Guardian. They are in fact conceding that the people in the various ethno-nationalist camps—globally—have a level of influence over mainstream public opinion which has been able to move the mainstream out of lockstep with social democrats.

Counterpropaganda involves shining a light in the darkness, and the Guardian’s desire to retreat into the darkness when hit with that light only further reveals the perniciousness of their propaganda campaign, and also its fundamental weakness.

Reuters, ‘Britain and Bill Gates pledge 3 billion pounds to fight malaria’ 25 Jan 2016:

Britain will spend 500 million pounds ($700 million) per year for the next five years to try and end deaths caused by malaria, the government said on Monday, announcing a partnership with Microsoft founder Bill Gates worth a total of 3 billion pounds.

Finance minister George Osborne announced the spending, to be funded from the country’s overseas aid budget, at an event with billionaire Gates, whose Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will also contribute around $200 million per year to the package.

“Across the globe over a billion people are infected with malaria and it’s a cause of both untold misery and lost economic potential,” Osborne said in a statement.

“That’s why, working with Bill Gates, I’m determined that Britain leads the world in the fight against this disease.”

In December, the World Health Organization’s annual malaria report showed deaths falling to 438,000 in 2015 - down dramatically from 839,000 in 2000 - and found a significant increase in the number of countries moving towards the elimination of malaria.

The U.N. now wants to cut new cases and deaths from malaria, a parasitic mosquito-borne infection, by 90% before 2030.

Osborne said some of the money would be spent in Britain to advance the science being used to combat the disease. The Gates Foundation first annual contribution will support research, development and regional efforts to eliminate the disease.

The Gates Foundation was launched in 2000 by Gates and wife Melinda to fight disease and poverty around the world.

Are you stupid or just evil, Bill? Just where we need big money directed - to compound Africa’s exploding population…

It’s time for another instalment of ‘things Putin actually said’. Imagine that Europe became a really hazardous place to live one day, so hazardous that the Jews started looking for places to run to in order to escape from the backlash stemming from their own handiwork.

Would Putin facilitate them in their escape?

Let’s find out. See here:

Euronews, ‘Jews welcome in Russia, Putin tells Europe’s Jewish leaders’, 19 Jan 2016 (emphasis added):

Putin meets with Kantor.

Russian president Vladimir Putin has met with European Jewish leaders to discuss their concerns over rising anti-Semitism on the continent.

During the meeting, Putin pointed out that many Jews emigrated from Moscow when it was part of the former Soviet Union. He said now they can come back.

The president of the European Jewish Congress, Moshe Kantor said the number of Jews fleeing Europe is also on the rise.

“The situation with the Jews in Europe is the worst it has been since the end of the Second World War,” said Kantor. “The Jews are again in fear and a Jewish exodus from Europe is quite real. There are more Jews fleeing France, which is considered very secure, than from civil-war-torn Ukraine.”

“Let them come here,” said Putin. “They emigrated from here under Soviet Union, but now they can come back.”

Of course. He’ll probably invite them to settle in the ‘Far East’, land which the Russians have no warrant to put themselves in, much less their Jewish friends.

RFE/RL, ‘Russia’s Jewish Autonomous Region In Siberia ‘Ready’ To House European Jews’, 20 Jan 2016 (emphasis added):

Far East Jewish Autonomous Region.

The governor of Russia’s Far East Jewish Autonomous Region says the area is “ready” to house Jews from Europe who are facing anti-Semitism.

Aleksandr Levintal said his region “will welcome Jews from European countries, where they may face attacks by anti-Semitic elements.”

Levintal also called his region “the first officially established Jewish statehood.”

Levintal’s remarks come a day after Russian President Vladimir Putin called on Jews to return to Russia.

In Moscow on January 19, Putin told the head of the European Jewish Congress, Moshe Kantor, that he had seen reports saying European Jews were scared to wear a yarmulke, the traditional Jewish skull cap, in public.

Putin told Kantor, “They can come to us. They left the Soviet Union. Let them return.”

The Jewish Autonomous Region was established by the Soviet government in 1934 in a part of southeastern Siberia that borders China.

In 1948, the Jewish population there peaked at 30,000—a quarter of the region’s total population.

By 2010, out of 180,000 residents in the region, only about 1,600 were of Jewish ancestry.

The Russians want to use their federal structure as a tool to vector more Jews into Siberia. How long is humanity going to have to endure the existence of a structure like the Russian federal state? Who will rid the world of that gigantic bloated cancer?

BBC News, ‘Iran nuclear deal: ‘New chapter’ for Tehran as sanctions end’, 17 Jan 2016:

Iran “has opened a new chapter” in its ties with the world, President Hassan Rouhani said, hours after international nuclear sanctions were lifted.

The move came after the international nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, said Iran had complied with a deal designed to prevent it developing nuclear weapons.

Most Western governments hailed the move but Israel accused Tehran of still seeking to build a nuclear bomb.

Four dual US-Iran nationals were released from jail by Iran on Saturday.

They include Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, who was arrested in 2014 and jailed in November for espionage.

Early reports said all four had left the country, however unnamed US officials later said that while “those who wished to depart Iran have left” and that one of the four, Nosratollah Khosravi-Roodsari, was not on the plane headed for Switzerland.

• Five key points of the nuclear deal
• Will Tehran now get a McDonald’s?
• Iran’s press ecstatic as sanctions end
• Iran frees US citizens in prisoner exchange
• Who is freed US reporter Jason Rezaian?

A fifth American, Matthew Trevithick, was also been released separately.

The US offered clemency to seven Iranians being held in the US for sanctions violations.

Nuclear sanctions have been in place since 2006, on top of other sanctions stretching back decades:

• The economic sanctions being lifted now were imposed progressively by the US, EU and UN in response to Iran’s nuclear programme
• The EU is lifting restrictions on trade, shipping and insurance in full
• The US is suspending, not terminating, its nuclear-related sanctions; crucially, Iran can now reconnect to the global banking system
• The UN is lifting sanctions related to defence and nuclear technology sales, as well as an asset freeze on key individuals and companies
• Non-nuclear US economic sanctions remain in place, notably the ban on US citizens and companies trading with Iran, and US and EU sanctions on Iranians accused of sponsoring terrorism remain in place

A flurry of Iranian economic activity is anticipated:

• Nearly $100bn (£70bn) of Iranian assets are being unlocked
• Iran is expected to increase its daily export of 1.1m barrels of crude oil by 500,000 shortly, and a further 500,000 thereafter
• Iran is reportedly poised to buy 114 new passenger planes from the Airbus consortium

What it means for Iran’s economy and world markets

UN, US and EU sanctions have hit Iran hard for years.

Mr Rouhani said everyone was happy with the deal, apart from those he described as warmongers in the region - Israel and hardliners in the US Congress.

“We Iranians have reached out to the world in a sign of friendliness, and leaving behind the enmities, suspicions and plots, have opened a new chapter in the relations of Iran with the world,” he said in a statement on Sunday morning.

The lifting of sanctions was “a turning point” for Iran’s economy, he added, saying the country needed to be less reliant on oil revenues.

US Secretary of State John Kerry, an architect of the deal, said it had been pursued “with the firm belief that exhausting diplomacy before choosing war is an imperative. And we believe that today marks the benefits of that choice”.

However US Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan said the Obama administration had moved to lift economic sanctions “on the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism”.

And Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said: “Without an appropriate reaction to every violation, Iran will realise it can continue to develop nuclear weapons, destabilise the region and spread terror.”

‘Expectations are high’ - Amir Paivar, BBC Persian business reporter

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani says the lifting of sanctions is a victory for the Iranian nation. It is one for him too.

Mr Rouhani had pledged to strike a deal ending the nuclear standoff. He just delivered his biggest promise. This will boost his allies in parliamentary elections next month.

But hardliners will not sit and watch. They call the shots in domestic, security and cultural areas. There is always danger of a backlash unless Mr Rouhani’s faction shares the post-sanctions financial benefits with them.

Expectations are high, and managing them will be a difficult job. The impact of lifting of sanctions in livelihoods of many Iranian will not come overnight. Rouhani now says he will focus on boosting foreign direct investment and Iran’s non-oil exports. Easier said than done.

The prospect of Iran doubling its crude oil exports has contributed to the continuing fall in the oil price. Benchmark Brent crude closed below $29 (£20.3) on Friday. Share prices in Saudi Arabia, the Arab world’s largest stock market, fell more than 6% following the lifting of sanctions.

The IAEA said it had installed a device at the Natanz plant to monitor Iran’s uranium enrichment activities in real time, in order to verify that uranium enrichment levels were kept at up to 3.67% as agreed in the deal with world powers.

As part of the deal, Iran had to drastically reduce its number of centrifuges and dismantle a heavy-water reactor near the town of Arak, both of which could be used in creating nuclear weapons.

Iran has always maintained its nuclear programme is peaceful, but opponents of the deal say it does not do enough to ensure the country cannot develop a nuclear bomb.

This is of course a wonderful development. Despite all the obstacles that were placed in the way, a sane and encouraging outcome has emerged.

As a retrospective look back, I’ll offer you all a set of links to accompany this story:

• [Bloomberg Business, ‘Mideast Stocks Plummet as Iran Plans to Boost Crude Exports’, 17 Jan 2016]
• [Bloomberg Business, ‘Iran Kicks Off Plan to Boost Oil Exports as Sanctions Lifted’, 17 Jan 2016]
• [DefenseOne, ‘Your Opinion About the Iran Deal Means Nothing to Obama ‘, 19 Mar 2015]
• [Bloomberg Business, ‘Asia Readies for Iran Oil Bargains on Potential Nuclear Deal’, 23 Mar 2015]
• [Al-Monitor, ‘Rouhani’s Cabinet Seeks New Balance in Iranian Policies’, 12 Aug 2013]
• [New York Times, ‘Iran’s Leaders Fall Into Line Behind Nuclear Accord’, 07 Apr 2015]
• [Ring of Fire, ‘Even Fox News Thinks Louie Gohmert’s Plan to Bomb Iran is Ridiculous’, 30 Mar 2015]
• [The World Post, ‘Zbigniew Brzezinski: Cooperation On Iran Deal Boosts U.S.-China Ties’, 09 May 2015]
• [Youtube, ‘PBS - Zbigniew Brzezinski on Iran & Israel’, 25 Jan 2012]
• [Youtube, ‘VOA London - Lord Lamont: Britain should renew the diplomatic relations with Iran’, 31 Jul 2013]
• [Arstechnica, ‘American spy malware infecting Iranian networks is engineering marvel to behold’, 29 May 2012]
• [Reason.com, ‘Israeli Hackers Installed Sophisticated Malware on U.S. Computers. Why Doesn’t Anyone Care?’, 04 Jul 2015]
• [Majorityrights.com, ‘The NSA collects information on Israeli lobbyists, Jews scream bloody murder.’, 16 Jan 2016]
• [Euractiv, ‘EU turns to Iran as alternative to Russian gas’, 25 Sep 2014]
• [Asian Development Bank, ‘Falling Oil Prices in Asia and the Pacific: Potential Gains for Importers, Opportunities for Exporters’, 14 Jan 2015]
• [Asian Development Bank, ‘Cheap Oil Can Benefit Asia - ADB Report’, 17 Dec 2014]
• [International Atomic Energy Agency, ‘New IAEA Uranium Enrichment Monitor to Verify Iran’s Commitments under JCPOA’, 16 Jan 2016]

Those links should cover the highlights on how things ended up like this, and who the key winners and losers have been.

Broadly speaking, the winners have been all oil importers, particularly the United States, the European Union, and certain oil-importing countries in South America and South East Asia.

The losers have been all oil exporters, but especially Saudi Arabia and Russia. Israel also emerges as a loser, having failed to accomplish most of its objectives.