[Majorityrights News] KP interview with James Gilmore, former diplomat and insider from first Trump administration Posted by Guessedworker on Sunday, 05 January 2025 00:35.
[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.
Posted by DanielS on Saturday, 17 December 2016 16:31.
Mark Collett:
Nationalism should never be about being edgy and scaring people. We aren’t some 1% motorcycle club, with the motto, ‘no one likes us and we don’t care.’ ..we aren’t trying to scare people or offend them. In fact, we are trying to offer scared people hope…and our people have plenty to fear.
RUSSIA is engaged in a “campaign” of propaganda and cyber-warfare against Britain, Government officials have acknowledged for the first time. British officials are concerned about growing Russian influence on UK institutions. Theresa May will chair a National Security Council session within weeks to discuss the issue after senior Whitehall figures claimed the Kremlin is responsible for a plot to sabotage the UK with espionage and misinformation.
This comes after Barack Obama directly challenged Russia in an astonishing response to reports by US intelligence services claiming November’s general election was hacked under Vladimir Putin’s watch..
The outgoing President vowed the US would retaliate to the suspected espionage, and said the country would take action “at a time and place of our own choosing”.
He added: “Don’t do this stuff to us, because we can do this to you.”
US officials have expressed near-certainty Putin supervised the data breaches which brought Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign to ruin.
One official said: “If anything, given his background as a KGB officer, Putin has a much tighter grip on all Russian surveillance operations, civilian and military, foreign and domestic, than any democratic leader does.”
And in a cabinet meeting two months ago, top intelligence officers and civil servant voiced worries the same scale of threat from Moscow could extend to Britain.
A source told the Times: “There was an agreement on the need to do more across Whitehall to understand and assess and formulate options on how to reposed to Russian activities.”
Security services fear British institutions and companies have been infiltrated by Russian agents – some of whom could even be UK citizens.
And last night it was revealed several leading academics at Cambridge University left an intelligence forum following concerns over Russian interference.
The head of the armed forces earlier this week urged for counterintelligence efforts to be ramped up in an attempt to catch Russian cells.
Air Chief Marshal Sir Stuart Peach said: “We need to pay more attention to counterespionage and counterintelligence to protect our hard-won research, protect our industry and protect our competitive advantage.”
The extent of Russian infiltration in Britain is believed to be more severe than during the Cold War.
Posted by DanielS on Monday, 12 December 2016 11:23.
Update: New York Times, “Trump Picks Rex Tillerson, Exxon C.E.O., as Secretary of State”, 12 Dec 2016:
WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald J. Trump on Monday settled on Rex W. Tillerson, the chief executive of Exxon Mobil, to be his secretary of state, dismissing bipartisan concerns that the globe-trotting leader of the energy giant had forged a too-cozy relationship with Vladimir V. Putin, the president of Russia, transition officials said.
Mr. Trump planned to announce the selection on Tuesday morning, finally bringing to an end his public and chaotic deliberations over choosing the nation’s top diplomat — a process that at times veered from rewarding Rudolph W. Giuliani, one of his most loyal supporters, to musing about whether Mitt Romney, one of his most vicious critics, might be forgiven.
Russia’s Prime Minister Putin speaks with Tillerson in Sochi in 2011
President-Elect Trump ‘will name Exxon CEO with close links to Putin as his secretary of state’, snubbing Mitt Romney.”
Trump is expected to name Rex Tillerson as secretary of state.
Exxon Mobil chief emerged on Friday as the leading candidate.
Favored status was revealed as Giuliani withdrew.
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump is expected to name the chief executive of Exxon Mobil as the country’s top diplomat, NBC News reported Saturday.
Exxon chief Rex Tillerson emerged on Friday as Trump’s leading candidate for U.S. secretary of state and is expected to meet with him later on Saturday, a transition official told Reuters.
NBC News cited two sources close to the transition team in reporting that Tillerson will be named as secretary of state.
The president-elect had interviewed 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney twice – taking him to a three-Michelin starred dinner on one of those occasions.
Should Tillerson be nominated, his business ties, too, will come under scrutiny. Exxon Mobil has operations in more than 50 countries and boasts that it explores for oil and natural gas on six continents.
In 2011, Exxon Mobil signed a deal with Rosneft, Russia’s largest state-owned oil company, for joint oil exploration and production. Since then, the companies have formed 10 joint ventures for projects in Russia.
In 2013, Russian President Vladimir Putin awarded Tillerson his nation’s Order of Friendship.
‘He has had more interactive time with Vladimir Putin than probably any other American with the exception of Henry Kissinger,’ John Hamre, a deputy defense secretary to Bill Clinton told the Wall Street Journal.
But U.S. sanctions against Russia for its incursion into Crimea cost Exxon Mobil dearly, forcing it to scrap some projects and costing it at least $1 billion in losses. Tillerson has been a vocal critic of the sanctions.
Trump has spoken of wanting warmer relations with Moscow, which has sparked concerns in Congress that he could lift or loosen some of the sanctions on Russia.
Tillerson has been chairman and CEO of Exxon Mobil since 2006. He is expected to retire from the company next year.
Should Tillerson be nominated, climate change could be another divisive issue. The company is under investigation by the New York Attorney General’s Office for allegedly misleading investors, regulators and the public on what it knew about global warming.
Posted by DanielS on Saturday, 10 December 2016 14:15.
Reuters, “The CIA has concluded that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help President-elect Donald Trump win the White House, and not just to undermine confidence in the U.S. electoral system, the Washington Post reported on Friday.” 9 Dec 2016:
Citing U.S. officials briefed on the matter, the Post said intelligence agencies had identified individuals with connections to the Russian government who provided thousands of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee and others, including the chairman of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, to WikiLeaks.
The officials described the individuals as people known to the intelligence community who were part of a wider Russian operation to boost Trump and reduce Clinton’s chances of winning.
“It is the assessment of the intelligence community that Russia’s goal here was to favor one candidate over the other, to help Trump get elected,” the Post quoted a senior U.S. official as saying. “That’s the consensus view.”
The Post said the official had been briefed on an intelligence presentation made by the Central Intelligence Agency to key U.S. senators behind closed-doors last week.
The CIA, in what the Post said was a secret assessment, cited a growing body of evidence from multiple sources. Briefers told the senators it was now “quite clear” that electing Trump was Russia’s goal, the Post quoted officials as saying on condition of anonymity.
In October, the U.S. government formally accused Russia of a campaign of cyber attacks against Democratic Party organizations ahead of the Nov. 8 presidential election.
President Barack Obama has said he warned Russian President Vladimir Putin about consequences for the attacks. But Russian officials have denied all accusations of interference in the U.S. election.
A CIA spokeswoman said the agency had no comment on the report.
Trump has said he is not convinced Russia was behind the cyber attacks. His transition team issued a statement on “claims of foreign interference in U.S. elections” on Friday but did not directly address the issue.
The hacked emails passed to WikiLeaks were a regular source of embarrassment to the Clinton campaign during the race for the presidency.
The CIA presentation fell short of a formal U.S. assessment by all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies, the Post said. A senior U.S. official said there remained minor disagreements among intelligence officials about the assessment because some questions are unanswered, it said.
Intelligence agencies did not have specific intelligence showing the Kremlin directed the individuals to pass the hacked emails to WikiLeaks, another senior official told the Post. The actors were “one step” removed from the Russian government rather than government employees, the official said.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has said in a television interview that the Russian government was not the source of the emails, the Post said.
The British reporter, Luke Harding, who revealed “the dossier” which alleged Trump campaign ties to Russia. Harding discusses the disposition of Russian ‘Active Measures’ to influence the US election and White Nationalist politics in Europe - such as with Marine le Pen (Russia gave her a 10 million dollar loan). He also talks about the brutal treatment of dissenters from Putin’s regime and how that reflects Putin’s long term goal for the Russian Federation to be one of only a few grand players in the world, expanding its reach well beyond ethno-national borders.
Posted by DanielS on Thursday, 08 December 2016 09:10.
Israeli missile attack on the Al-Mezzeh Airport, west of Damascus.
TNO, “Israeli Attack as Aleppo End-Game Nears”, 7 Dec 2016:
Israel has launched another devastating airstrike in Damascus in a desperate attempt to thwart the final defeat of the terrorist “rebels” in the Syrian city of Aleppo.
The latest Israeli attack took place on an airport in Damascus near Syrian President al-Assad’s personal home on Wednesday morning.
The Syrian Arab News Agency reported that the “Israeli enemy launched at 3:00 a.m. Wednesday a number of surface-to-surface missiles from inside the occupied territories to the west of Tall Abu al-Nada (hill) that landed in the surroundings of al-Mezzeh Airport west of Damascus.”
The attack was part of the “desperate attempts of the Israeli enemy to support the terrorist groups and raise their deteriorating morale,” SANA added.
“This attack will only make the Syrian Arab Army even more determined to cut off the hands of the terrorist agents of the Zionist entity, which should be held fully responsible for the repercussions and consequences of these criminal attacks.”
SANA concluded that the attack “came a week after the air force of the Israeli army fired from the Lebanese airspace two missiles on al-Sabboura area in the western countryside of Damascus, in an attempt to divert attention from the successes which the Syrian army has been making against the terrorist organizations.”
The Israeli attack came as Syrian army forces, backed by ground units from Hezbollah and Iran, ousted the ISIS and other U.S., U.K., French and E.U.-backed “rebel” terrorists from Aleppo’s Old City area.
After terrorizing inhabitants of the city for years with torture, and murders of the most demented kind, the terrorists have now played a “humanitarian” card, asking for a five-day “ceasefire” to allegedly allow remaining civilians to be evacuated.
This cynical ploy—clearly aimed at seeking “world sympathy”—is an attempt by the shrinking terrorist forces to shore up their collapsing front line by seeking time to bring up reinforcements.
More than 30,000 civilians had already crossed over into safe areas set up by the Syrian government-held west Aleppo.
For two months, using marinetraffic.com, we have been monitoring the movements of ships owned by a couple of NGOs, and, using data from data.unhcr.org. We have kept track of the daily arrivals of African immigrants in Italy. It turned out we were witness of a big scam and an illegal human traffic operation.
NGOs, smugglers, the mafia in cahoots with the European Union have shipped thousands of illegals into Europe under the pretext of rescuing people, assisted by the Italian coast guard which coordinated their activities.
Human traffickers contact the Italian coast guard in advance to receive support and to pick up their dubious cargo. NGO ships are directed to the “rescue spot” even as those to be rescued are still in Libya. The 15 ships that we observed are owned or leased by NGOs have regularly been seen to leave their Italian ports, head south, stop short of reaching the Libyan coast, pick up their human cargo, and take course back 260 miles to Italy even though the port of Zarzis in Tunis is just 60 mile away from the rescue spot.
The organizations in question are:MOAS, Jugend Rettet, Stichting Bootvluchting, Médecins Sans Frontières, Save the Children, Proactiva Open Arms, Sea-Watch.org, Sea-Eye and Life Boat.
The real intention of the people behind the NGOs is not clear. Their motive can be money, we would not be surprised if it turned out to be so. They may also be politically driven; the activities of the Malta-based organisation, MOAS, by trafficking people to Italy is the best guarantee that migrants will not show up on the Maltese shore. MOAS is managed by an Maltese Marine officer well known in Malta for his maltreatment of refugees 1). It is also possible that these organisations are managed by naive “do-gooders” who do not understand that offering their services they are acting like a magnet to the people from Africa and thus they are willy-nilly causing more fatalities, not to mention that their actions are destabilizing Europe.
How high-minded the intentions of these organisations might be, their actions are criminal as most of these migrants are not eligible for being granted asylum and will end up on the streets of Rome or Paris and undermine Europe stability raising racially motivated social tensions.
Brussels has created particular legislature to protect people traffickers against prosecution. In a dedicated section of an EU resolution entitled On Search and Rescue, the text states that “private ship masters and non-governmental organisations who assist in sea rescues in the Mediterranean Sea should not risk punishment for providing such assistance.”2)
During the two months of our observation, we have monitored at least 39,000 Africans illegally smuggled into Italy, which was done with the full consent of the Italian and European authorities.
* * *
Ships permanently used by NGOs off the Libyan coast
The Phoenix is one of the two MOAS vessels. The ship is regularly spotted in the territorial waters of Libya. It is registered in Belize, South America. However, the ship is owned and operated by the Maltese to bring the immigrants to Italia. Website: MOAS
The Topaz Responder, a 51-meter custom-made emergency response vessel, which hosts two high-speed rescue launches. The ship is managed in combination with MSF. This is one of the three ferries that can transport hundreds of people at one go. The ship is registered at the Marshall Islands. Website: MOAS
Iuventa is registered under the flag of the Netherlands and owned by the German NGO Jugend Rettet. Website: Jugend Rettet.
The Golfo Azzurro is used by the Dutch ‘Boat Refugee Foundation’. Golfo Azzurro operates under the Panama flag. The Boat Refugee Foundation charters the vessel for a symbolic price. Website: Bootvluchteling.
Dignity 1 is registered under the flag of Panama. We believe the ship belongs to Médecins Sans Frontières. Website: MSF
The Bourbon Argos, a ship of Médecins Sans Frontières. It is one of the three ships used to ferry people from the smaller vessels to Italy. The vessel is currently registered under the flag of Luxembourg. MSF.
The Aquarius is one of the many ships managed by Médecins Sans Frontières. It is registered under the flag of Gibraltar. Website: MSF.
The Vos Hestia search and rescue ship, chartered by the charity Save The Children, like many of the NGO vessels it is under the supervision of the Italian Coast Guard Website: Save the Children.
Proactiva Open Arms operates the Astral. We spotted the Astral many times in Libyan territorial waters. The ship disappeared on a regular basis from the AIS tracking websites. Website: Proactiva Open Arms.
The MS Sea-Watch I is owned by a Berlin-based organisation. It works closely with Watch The Med, a transnational network of people that fight against the European border regime, and demand a free and safe passage to Europe. Website: Sea-Watch.
The MS Sea-Watch II is owned by a Berlin-based organisation. It works closely with Watch The Med a transnational network of people that fight against the European border regime, and they demand a free and safe passage to Europe. Website: Sea-Watch.
The Audur is registered under the Netherlands’ flag. We do not know to whom this ship belongs.
The MS Sea-Eye is owned by Sea-Eye-eV. Michael Buschheuer from Regensburg, Germany, and a group of family and friends founded the non-profit sea rescue organisation Sea-Eye e.V. Website: Sea-Eye.
The Speedy is a speedboat owned by Sea-Eye-eV. The ship is confiscated by the Libyan government. Website: Sea-Eye.
Minden is owned by the German organisation LifeBoat. The vessel is currently registered under the flag of Germany. Website: Lifeboat.
More information:
In October we discovered that four NGOs picked up people in the Libyan territorial waters. We have proof that these smugglers communicated their action in advance with the Italian authorities. Ten hours before the immigrants left Libya, the Italian coast guard directed the NGOs to the “rescue” spot: Full account “Caught in the act: NGOs deal in migrant smuggling”
The Center for Political Beauty is an assault team that establishes moral beauty, political poetry and human greatness while aiming to preserve humanitarianism. The group’s basic understanding is that the legacy of the Holocaust is rendered void by political apathy, the rejection of refugees and cowardice. It believes that Germany should not only learn from its History but also take action.
The Center for Political Beauty engages in the most innovative forms of political performance art- an expanded approach to theatre: art must hurt provoke and rise in revolt. In one basic alliance of terms: aggressive humanism.
NPR, “Trump’s Potential Conflicts Of Interest: ‘They’re Everywhere”:
Donald Trump tweeted that he will be taking himself out of his business operations and will announce the detail his plan on Dec. 15th. But that hasn’t eliminated concerns that the trump organization’s business interests in the US and in at least twenty countries around the world could lead to conflicts of interest when Trump becomes president.
In response to Trump’s tweets yesterday, the office of government ethics tweeted that - as we discussed with your council - divestiture is the way to resolve these conflicts.
As we are about to hear, “divestiture” is different from Trump taking himself out of his business operations.
16 democratic members of the house judiciary requested that the committee hold hearings to discuss conflict of interest provisions that might apply to Trump when he becomes president.
New York Times investigative reporter Eric Lipton tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross that because of a “quirk in the law,” American presidents are not mandated to separate themselves from their businesses.
“He could legally continue to operate them and even take actions as president that would benefit those businesses, and it wouldn’t be a formal ethics violation,” Lipton says.
Trump’s business entanglements and the complication of his potential conflicts of interest as president are unprecedented. It’s worth a listen - NPR, 1 Dec 2016
Theresa May will chair a meeting to discuss the issue.
Russia’s Prime Minister Putin speaks with Tillerson in Sochi in 2011
Israeli missile attack on the Al-Mezzeh Airport, west of Damascus.
Ivanka’s simple presence as part of the entourage of the Trump administration is 
