[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.
“Where once were men but now are sheep
- a fiction and far cry,
From planet Earth’s proud animal
- who would be you and I
Alas, our forebears drank the cup of poisoned alibi
And made excuses far and wide,
And made God in the sky.
This boogaloo’s now round the world
- bad trips for everyone.
No more the man of paradise
Or the Celt of Albion
They queue like burning moths to spread
- the all time viscous lie
You Christians destroyed our tribe
- I’ll fight you till I die….”
Posted by DanielS on Tuesday, 12 December 2017 19:00.
National Vanguard, “EU-Funded Report Tells Journalists not to Write Negative Articles on Migrant Crisis” - Christopher Rossetti 10 Dec 2017:
A new journalistic code of practice, funded by the EU, calls on journalists to avoid reporting on the migrant crisis in a negative way, refrain from linking Islam to terror and avoid mentioning whether or not a criminal migrant was in the country illegally.
The guideline even calls on journalists to report colleagues to the authorities for “hate speech” if they do so.
The code, financed by the European Union’s Rights, Equality and Citizenship program, defines hate speech as expressions which ‘promote or justify xenophobia’ including ‘intolerance expressed by aggressive nationalism’.
The report says that although journalism cannot ‘solve the problem of hate speech on its own…the European Union must reinforce existing mechanisms and support new tools designed to combat hate speech’.
To do this, the report calls on journalists to shop their colleagues to police, as well as people who comment on their articles, on the grounds that they’ve committed a hate speech offence.
The new guidelines ask hacks to not to report ‘migrants as exclusively having a negative impact on society’ and singles out ‘reports that present migration as constituting a net cost to the social safety net’ and to only mention a migrant’s ethnic origin or religion ‘when necessary for the audience to understand the news’.
The code urges reporters not to focus on ‘issues such as whether asylum seekers’ claims are genuine’, which is odd because the EU’s own statistics show that most of those who come are economic migrants who don’t qualify for protected refugee status.
It also calls on journalists to refrain from reporting on crimes committed by migrants unless they include ‘statistics that disprove assumptions that migration leads to rising crime levels’ — a worrying ask for those on the right who frequently write about no-go zones which are directly linked to mass migration.
“Don’t fall into the trap of focusing solely on possible negative aspects of large-scale migration. It is also important to highlight positive contributions of migration and individual migrants,” they say.
The report’s author states: “When problems inside the asylum system occur — e.g, migrants riot, or an increase in small-time criminality is noted — look critically for the root cause” — which on the previous page, the authors say includes “poverty and climate change”. Climate change?!
The report recommends that journalists should not use the adjective “illegal” when referring to migrants.
When reporting on Islam, journalists are asked not to refer to Islamic culture as ‘barbaric, irrational, primitive, aggressive, threatening or prone to terrorism’ and when reporting negative or ‘hateful comments’ towards Muslims, reporters should ‘challenge any false premises on which such comments rely’.
Additionally, the group say that reporters shouldn’t quote politicians or other public figures on migration ‘without challenging their statements’ and recommends approaching migrant advocacy groups for lines that can be used against anti-migration narratives — effectively asking supposedly neutral reporters to become pro-migrant advocates within the media.
Posted by DanielS on Tuesday, 12 December 2017 15:03.
Jonathan Porritt, author of The World We Made, feels the Green Party must still discuss population.
The Ecologist, “Jonathon Porritt calls for progressive case for taking control of EU immigration”, 7 Dec 2017:
JONATHON PORRITT, author of The World We Made, joined the Green Party four decades ago. At that time the party keenly debated population growth, and the impact this would have on the environment. Today, Porritt argues, the referendum and anxiety around immigration means progressives still need to discuss this hotly contested issue.
These increasingly significant deficits are not caused by high levels of immigration: they’re caused by wretchedly inadequate economic and fiscal policy.
When I joined the Green party in the mid-1970s population was a big issue, regularly debated with enthusiasm and intellectual rigour. People joining the Green party today would have to wait a long time before even hearing the word mentioned – and then might easily find themselves ‘warned off’ from this no-go territory.
I just don’t get this. In a world where overall population growth projections are rising, and where global migration is still on the rise, it’s a complete dereliction of all environmentalists’ duty to protect the planet (particularly members of the Green party) to continue to ignore population growth and not to campaign for its reduction. Without such a reduction, all solutions to other aspects of ecological and social concern are made far more difficult to deal with.
A couple of weeks ago, myself and Colin Hines published a paper entitled The Progressive Case for Taking Control of EU Immigration – and Avoiding Brexit in the Process. This case is simple: Brexit could still be reversed; hard Brexit can certainly be avoided.
Population growth
But this won’t happen unless Labour, the Lib Dems and the Green Party stop dickering around and come up with some serious ideas about more effectively managing immigration into and between EU countries. Without that, many of those who voted Brexit will cry out in rage at the referendum result being seen to be ‘set aside’, given that concern about immigration was paramount in their minds at that time.
Uncomfortable though this might be for contemporary greens – and indeed for all progressives – high levels of population growth and immigration go hand-in-hand. If net migration continues at around recent levels, then the UK’s population is expected to rise by nearly 8 million people in 15 years, almost the equivalent of the population of Greater London (8.7 million).
At least 75 percent of this increase would be from future migration and the children of those migrants. As already indicated, future population growth would not stop there. Unless something is done about this growth, it is projected to increase towards 80 million in 25 years and keep going upwards.
It’s important to be completely logical about this. For instance, the UK is already struggling to maintain critical infrastructure, to meet housing demand, and to invest sufficiently in education, healthcare and social services.
As Colin and I unhesitatingly pointed out in our paper, these increasingly significant deficits are not caused by high levels of immigration: they’re caused by wretchedly inadequate economic and fiscal policy, going back at least a couple of decades. But continuing population growth clearly exacerbates those deficits.
Resolutely defended
The UK’s Total Fertility Rate has not been above 2.1 children per mother since 1972, but ‘population momentum’ (increase in numbers of births when babies born at peak of population growth reach reproductive age), plus net immigration, has led to a population increase of nearly 10 million people since 1972.
And these challenges can only get worse. We know, as a matter of increasingly painful inevitability, that the lives of tens/hundreds of millions of people (particularly in Africa and the Middle East) will be devastated by the effects of climate change.
We know that many of those people will have no choice but to leave their homes and communities if they are to have any prospect of survival, let alone a better life. And we know that many of them will seek to come to Europe, as the place that offers the best possible refuge in an all-encompassing storm not of their own making.
How can anyone suppose that an ‘open borders’ positioning is an appropriate response to that kind of backdrop? How can most progressives stick to the line that the EU’s principle of ‘freedom of movement’ should be resolutely defended, especially after resurgent right-wing populism has had such a negative impact on elections this year in France, the Netherlands, Germany, the Czech Republic and Austria?
All I can do, therefore, is to urge all environmentalists to open up their minds again and re-think the whole population/immigration nexus – from a radical, genuinely progressive perspective.
This Author
Jonathon Porritt is an environmentalist and author.
Posted by DanielS on Monday, 11 December 2017 05:01.
The Hill, “Russia recognizes Jerusalem as Israel’s capital”, 6 April 2017:
Russia on Thursday publicly recognized West Jerusalem as the capital city of Israel.
The announcement was made in a statement by Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs that addressed the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
In the statement, Moscow reaffirmed “support for the two-state solution” while acknowledging that East Jerusalem should be the capital of the future Palestinian state.
“We reaffirm our commitment to the UN-approved principles for a Palestinian-Israeli settlement, which include the status of East Jerusalem as the capital of the future Palestinian state,” the ministry said.
“At the same time, we must state that in this context we view West Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.”
Moscow’s announcement comes as the new U.S. administration is considering moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, thereby recognizing the city as Israel’s capital.
Israel declared Jerusalem its capital in 1950, but Russia is the first nation to recognize it as such, according to The Jerusalem Post.
Long-standing U.S. policy has called for the status of Jerusalem to be resolved by the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
According to the Jerusalem Post, Russia is currently not planning on moving its embassy to the city.
In the statement, Russia maintained that a two-state solution is the best policy for the achieving peace in the region and pledged to focus on ensuring access to Jerusalem “for all believers.”
“Moscow reaffirms its support for the two-state solution as an optimal option that meets the national interests of the Palestinian and Israeli people, both of whom have friendly relations with Russia, and the interests of all other countries in the region and the international community as a whole,” the ministry said.
“Russia will continue to provide assistance to the achievement of Israeli-Palestinian agreements. We will focus on ensuring free access to Jerusalem’s holy places for all believers.”
Posted by DanielS on Friday, 08 December 2017 07:37.
A whistleblower has told House Democrats that eleven minutes into Donald Trump’s inaugural speech, National Security Advisor Michael Flynn [shown inset] was texting a former business associate to say, “we’re going to rip-up those (Russian) sanctions and a lot of people are going to make a lot of money.” Flynn specified that their private nuclear proposal which Flynn had lobbied for would have his support in the White House.
WASHINGTON (AP) — As Donald Trump delivered his presidential inaugural address last January, his national security adviser Michael Flynn told a former business associate in text messages that a private plan to build nuclear reactors in the Mideast was “good to go” and that U.S. sanctions hobbling the plan would soon be “ripped up,” a whistleblower told congressional investigators.
The witness did not specify which sanctions Flynn was referring to in his texts. But the nuclear project that Flynn and his business associate had worked on together was stymied by U.S. financial sanctions on Russia.
The witness’s account, made public Wednesday by the ranking Democrat on the House oversight committee, raises new concerns about the extent to which Flynn may have blurred his private and public interests during his brief stint inside the White House.
Trump fired Flynn in February, saying he had misled Vice President Mike Pence and others about his contacts with Russia’s ambassador to the U.S. Flynn, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant general, pleaded guilty in federal court last week to one count of making false statements to the FBI and is now a cooperating witness in special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into possible coordination between Trump’s campaign and Russian intermediaries during the 2016 election.
Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings, the ranking Democrat on the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said Wednesday the whistleblower’s allegations raise concerns that Flynn improperly aided the nuclear project after joining the White House as one of Trump’s top national security officials. The project has yet to get off the ground.
Cummings detailed the whistleblower’s allegations in a letter to committee chairman Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., and urged Gowdy to authorize subpoenas to Flynn and his business associates to learn more about his efforts.
In a reply late Wednesday, Gowdy said he had shared Cummings’ letter with Rep. Michael Conaway, R-Texas, and Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., the chairman and ranking Democrat heading the House intelligence committee inquiry into Russian involvement in the 2016 election. Gowdy spurned Cummings’ request for subpoenas, echoing his replies to previous Cummings subpoena requests.
“If you have evidence of a crime, you should provide it to the Special Counsel immediately,” Gowdy wrote.
Flynn had been a paid consultant for the venture before he joined the Trump campaign last year. The plan, backed by a group of investors, nuclear power adherents and former U.S. military officers, was to construct dozens of nuclear reactors across the Mideast with aid from Russian and other international private interests.
House Democrats noted that a federal ethics law requires White House officials to refrain for a year from dealing with any outside interests they had previously worked with on private business.
“Our committee has credible allegations that President Trump’s national security adviser sought to manipulate the course of international nuclear policy for the financial gain of his former business partners,” Cummings said.
The whistleblower told House Democrats that while Trump spoke in January, Flynn texted from the Capitol steps to Alex Copson, the managing director of ACU Strategic Partners and the nuclear project’s main promoter. The whistleblower, whose identity was not revealed in Cummings’ letter, said that during a conversation, Copson described his messages with Flynn and briefly flashed one of the texts, which appeared to have been sent 10 minutes after Trump was sworn in as president.
“Mike has been putting everything in place for us,” Copson said, according to the whistleblower. Copson added that “this is going to make a lot of very wealthy people.” The whistleblower also said that Copson intimated that Flynn would ensure that U.S. financial sanctions hobbling the nuclear project were going to be “ripped up,” allowing investment money to start flowing into the project.
Attorneys for Flynn and Copson did not immediately return email and phone requests for comment. White House lawyer Ty Cobb declined to comment on the allegation.
In Flynn’s plea agreement last week, prosecutors said he lied to FBI agents about his discussions on sanctions against Russia with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the presidential transition.
Copson had promoted a succession of nuclear projects designed to include Russian participation dating back to the 1990s. In an earlier note to the committee, Copson said his firm had provided Flynn with a $25,000 check — left uncashed — and paid for Flynn’s June 2015 trip to the Mideast as a security consultant for the project.
Flynn’s financial disclosure did not cite those payments, but he did report that until December 2016, he worked as an adviser to two other companies that partnered with Copson’s firm. That consortium, X-Co Dynamics Inc. and Iron Bridge Group, initially worked with ACU but later pushed a separate nuclear proposal for the Mideast.
___
Associated Press writers Chad Day and Eric Tucker contributed to this report.
NewsWeek, “Flynn’s Secret Text Messages Show Trump Colluded With Russia, Experts Say”, 6 Dec 2017:
Michael Flynn, President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, told a former business partner that economic sanctions against Russia would be “ripped up” as soon as Donald Trump took office, according to an anonymous whistleblower.
The revelation is the latest evidence suggesting the Trump campaign may have agreed to help Russia in exchange for Russia’s help getting Trump elected president, experts say.
Special counsel Robert Mueller had already secured Flynn’s cooperation in his investigation into whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to influence the outcome of the 2016 election, and Wednesday’s revelation publicly provides new evidence that will embolden Trump critics, experts say.
“It won’t come as a surprise to the special counsel, but it reveals to the public that there was something in the nature of an exchange or quid pro quo,” Lisa Griffin, a law professor at Duke University, told Newsweek.
“There are at least four potential avenues of criminality that the special counsel and others are exploring, and this provides more circumstantial evidence,” Griffin continued. “This might be relevant to the possibility of a bribery case, or assistance with the campaign that was done in exchange for what the Russians want most: the easing of sanctions.”
Whistleblower: Flynn was doing private Russia-related business on his phone during Trump’s inauguration speech https://lnkd.in/d2STwWp
7:52 PM - Dec 6, 2017
Flynn pleaded guilty last week to lying to the FBI about his contacts with the Russian ambassador at the time, including speaking with him about U.S. sanctions against Russia. Flynn is known to have maintained close business ties with people in Russia and Turkey.
According to the whistleblower, Flynn also wanted U.S. sanctions against Russia lifted in order to complete an international energy project he was working on. The whistleblower said Flynn texted his former business associate on the day of Trump’s inauguration to say that the project was “good to go.”
The information was given to Representative Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, who published an open letter on Wednesday to the committee’s chairman, Trey Gowdy, explaining the revelations.
“General Michael Flynn—within minutes of Donald Trump being sworn in as president—was communicating directly with his former business colleagues about their plans to work with Russia to build nuclear reactors in the Middle East,” the letter reads.
“Our committee has credible allegations that President Trump’s national security advisor sought to manipulate the course of international nuclear policy for the
financial gain of his former business partners,” Cummings continued. “These grave allegations compel a full, credible and bipartisan congressional investigation.”
The revelation is one of the strongest pieces of evidence to date that the Trump administration wanted to cancel U.S. sanctions against Russia, and it sheds light on why Flynn originally lied about his conversation with the Russian ambassador, a former Watergate prosecutor says.
Posted by DanielS on Wednesday, 06 December 2017 06:51.
Offendedamerica, “For Jews, Supporting Trump is a Moral Imperative”, 27 Nov 2017:
By Jacob Wohl
Spread the Truth
Donald Trump is the first Zionist President.
Trump is as close as we have ever come to having the first Jewish President.
President Trump understands that the duty to protect Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish State is a moral one. Uniquely, Trump understands that there are good guys and bad guys in the Middle East, and Israeli’s are inarguably the good guys.
Previous presidents were perfectly happy to support Israel insofar as that support furthered the advancement of America’s national security and intelligence complexes. The problem, of course, is that previous presidents approached support for Israel amorally, and in many cases, immorally.
Under previous US Presidents, the US Government was willing to stand by as the UN, or as they now like to be called, the “International Community”, leveled one abusive measure after another against the Israel. When the United Nations passed a resolution saying “Zionism is a form of Racism”, they showed clearly what side the “International Community” is on.
Even though the International Community has shown their collective moral compass to be dubious at best, Obama fetishized them in a way that the world could never have imagined. Obama idolized the same “International Community” that gives Iran, a nation whose state policy is Holocaust Denial, a seat at the table.
By contrast on October 12, Trump announced that he was withdrawing the US from UNESCO after years of UNESCO (and the UN at-large) demonstrating clear anti-America and anti-Israel bias.
Regardless of Barack Obama’s religious affiliations, which remained in question throughout his presidency, his intellectual affiliations remained clear. Obama was a disciple of Noam Chomsky, William Kunstler and Andrew Cockburn. Obama’s Harvard sensibilities lead him down the path of becoming an anti-Israel social justice crusader from a very young age.
While Trump’s support from non-practicing Jews remains anemic, he is overwhelmingly supported by Orthodox Jews. According to a survey by the American Jewish Committee, fifty-four percent of Orthodox Jews say that they voted for Trump. For reference, Clinton garnered just 13% of the Orthodox vote while receiving 78% of the Reform vote. Trump doesn’t just win with Evangelical Christians, he wins with religious people at-large.
On the roster of world leaders, Trump is in a class of his own when it comes to defending Israel in moral terms, rather than in dry, pragmatic terms of US regional interests. Trump understands the fact that Israel has no morally equivalent adversary, and he defends the historical record that clearly makes Israel the rightful land of the Jewish people.
Perhaps president Trump’s empathy for Israel and the Jewish people extends from his rather unique position as the first President to have a daughter and son-in-law who are Orthodox Jews. Perhaps his empathy for Israel and the Jewish people extends from his own devout Christian heritage and understanding that Jews are God’s chosen people. Wherever the roots of Trump’s ideology come from, his position is clear.
President Trump understands the eternal struggle for survival of the Jewish people, while also understanding the eternal struggle of members of the Arab world, who wish to eliminate them.
President Trump unconditionally supports Israel and the Jewish people.
As Jews, we owe it to him to reciprocate.
Offendedamerica, “Trump is Crushing the Left’s Social Orthodoxy”, 13 Oct 2017:
Jacob Wohl
Spread the Truth
President Trump’s speech this morning to the 2017 Values Voters Summit was a bolt of lightning to the gatekeepers of the left’s social orthodoxy. President Trump enumerated his unapologetic appreciation for old-school values.
Liberals were horrified, and described the speech as “turning back the clock”. They were horrified at the idea that Trump may bring us back to an era where political correctness is considered a nuisance, not a necessity. An era of decency, where women are women, and men are men.
The left is terrified that Trump may turn back the social clock to a time when the term “lady-like” wasn’t considered a sexist epithet, but rather a trait in women that is admirable. They’re terrified that Trump may usher in an era where a man opening the door for a woman isn’t considered sexism (for assuming she cannot open it herself), but instead is revered as decent.
The left looks at the Trump years as a new Dark Ages. A horrible time where the “stupid conservatives” think that more nurses are women than are men, because women make better nurses, not because they were forced to become nurses by the subconscious collective patriarchy.
The left knows that Trump’s supporters participate in dangerous practices such as enrolling their sons in the Boy Scouts, while only allowing their daughters to join the Girl Scouts.
The left is worried sick that Trump’s moral leadership may create an untenable environment where test scores are decided based on how many questions you answer correctly, regardless of your race.
The left is in a state of panic that doctors may again use the term “mentally ill”, instead of “gender confused”.
Most of all, the left is worried that the Pledge of Allegiance will be again be considered a mandatory show of patriotism, rather than a burdensome imposition of “White Privilege”.
So far, the evidence suggests that all of the these fears by the left are becoming a reality.
President Trump is ending Affirmative Action, while protecting homeschooling. He’s saying Merry Christmas, while removing the government mandate for churches to fund abortions. He’s conspicuously protecting Israel while mercilessly killing Islamic terrorists, all the while neglecting to give tortured, excuse-laden explanations why people turn to Islamic extremism.
That’s right ladies and gentlemen, your president believes in the Constitution, he believes in Judeo-Christian values and he believes in American Exceptionalism. While those in the media and on the far-left look at this new reality as the most dire crisis of our time, most Americans are celebrating it.
The Spirit Lives, by 
Jonathan Porritt, author of The World We Made, feels the Green Party must still discuss population.
