Majorityrights News > Category: Activism

Zaida Catalán (6 October 1980 – March 2017) was a Swedish politician who was a member of the Green Party and leader of the Young Greens of Sweden between 2001 and 2005. She was known for her work in animal rights, equality and the sex purchase law (which she supported).

Diversity Macht Frei, 4 May 2017:

Equality is one of the cornerstones of the Greens’ ideology. They promised equal pay for equal work, breaking gender segregation in employment, splitting parental leave into three parts (one for each parent and one freely transferable including to a third person close to the child), fighting violence against women, quotas for women on the boards of stock market-listed companies, investments in school health (to fight mental health problems), laws against sexist advertising which perpetuate gender norms, improving sex ed, improving support to people who have faced abuse and a law on gender mainstreaming.

While these Green Party positions might be fine in Sweden and for Swedes, it is also the case that…

[...] the Greens are the most pro-immigration party, enthusiastically supporting open borders (or a world without borders). Its manifesto endorsed a liberalization of asylum laws (an automatic right to a permanent residence permit if an asylum seeker hasn’t been deported within 2 years, facilitating family reunification, people born and permanently residing in Sweden should automatically obtain citizenship); better integration (easier access to housing and jobs for new arrivals) and fighting discrimination.

Zaida Catalán was killed while on a UN mission to the Democratic Republic of the Congo in March 2017. On 12 March 2017, Catalán and another UN employee were kidnapped during a mission near the village Ngombe in the Kasai Province in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. They were both found dead on 27 March.  Catalán had been beheaded and was found in a shallow grave.

Liveleak video:  https://www.liveleak.com/view?i=190_1493329068

NPR,“A ‘Forgotten History’ Of How The U.S. Government Segregated America”, 3 May 2017:

Federal housing policies created after the Depression ensured that African-Americans and other people of color were left out of new suburban communities - and pushed instead into urban housing projects, such as Detroit’s Brewster-Douglass towers. Paul Sancya/AP

In 1933, faced with a housing shortage, the federal government began a program explicitly designed to increase — and segregate — America’s housing stock. Author Richard Rothstein says the housing programs begun under the New Deal were tantamount to a “state-sponsored system of segregation.”

Race: Historian Says Don’t ‘Sanitize’ How Our Government Created Ghettos

Code Switch: Everyone Pays A Hefty Price For Segregation, Study Says

The government’s efforts were “primarily designed to provide housing to white, middle-class, lower-middle-class families,” he says. African-Americans and other people of color were left out of the new suburban communities — and pushed instead into urban housing projects.

Rothstein’s new book, The Color of Law, examines the local, state and federal housing policies that mandated segregation. He notes that the Federal Housing Administration, which was established in 1934, furthered the segregation efforts by refusing to insure mortgages in and near African-American neighborhoods — a policy known as “redlining.” At the same time, the FHA was subsidizing builders who were mass-producing entire subdivisions for whites — with the requirement that none of the homes be sold to African-Americans.

Rothstein says these decades-old housing policies have had a lasting effect on American society. “The segregation of our metropolitan areas today leads ... to stagnant inequality, because families are much less able to be upwardly mobile when they’re living in segregated neighborhoods where opportunity is absent,” he says. “If we want greater equality in this society, if we want lowering of hostility between police and young African-American men, we need to take steps to desegregate.”

Interview Highlights

On how the Federal Housing Administration justified discrimination

The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America - by Richard Rothstein

The Federal Housing Administration’s justification was that if African-Americans bought homes in these suburbs, or even if they bought homes near these suburbs, the property values of the homes they were insuring, the white homes they were insuring, would decline. And therefore their loans would be at risk.

There was no basis for this claim on the part of the Federal Housing Administration. In fact, when African-Americans tried to buy homes in all-white neighborhoods or in mostly white neighborhoods, property values rose because African-Americans were more willing to pay more for properties than whites were, simply because their housing supply was so restricted and they had so many fewer choices. So the rationale that the Federal Housing Administration used was never based on any kind of study. It was never based on any reality.

On how federal agencies used redlining to segregate African-Americans

The term “redlining” comes from a development by the New Deal, by the federal government of maps of every metropolitan area in the country. And those maps were color-coded by first the Home Owners Loan Corp. and then the Federal Housing Administration and then adopted by the Veterans Administration, and these color codes were designed to indicate where it was safe to insure mortgages. And anywhere where African-Americans lived, anywhere where African-Americans lived nearby were colored red to indicate to appraisers that these neighborhoods were too risky to insure mortgages.

On the FHA manual that explicitly laid out segregationist policies

The Two-Way: Interactive Redlining Map Zooms In On America’s History Of Discrimination

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We should be more eager to suspect Jewish deep state insiders who wanted Trump to win.

‘It takes a lot of work to lose to Donald Trump.’

Indeed, and that is why it looks like she may have gotten some “gentle encouragement” (read, subtle bum steer - part of ‘a lot of work’ from (((insiders)))) to not bother addressing typical White Americans - she would have won if she could have been at all bothered to treat them like normal human beings with legitimate concerns; rather than placing herself exclusively on the side and among an entourage of blacks, liberal feminists, married gay couples, etc. - anything to be in-the-face of Whites about the new, “tolerant”, America; i.e., basically anything to represent a cartoon of the political correctness that is totally intolerant of, and eager to ignore the concerns of White Americans; demonstrating more of the same, not giving a fig about them, as they’ve experienced for decades.

The Hill, “Axelrod on Clinton: ‘It takes a lot of work to lose to Donald Trump”, 3 May 2017:

Democratic strategist David Axelrod says Hillary Clinton would be well served to move on from last year’s presidential election and stop talking about it.

“It takes a lot of work to lose to Donald Trump,” Axelrod told CNN on Wednesday. “Let me tell you, he was the least popular presidential candidate to win in the history of polling.”

Clinton on Tuesday said she takes responsibility for her 2016 presidential election loss, but added she would have won if not for FBI Director James Comey, Russian hackers and WikiLeaks.

“If the election had been on Oct. 27, I would be your president,” she told CNN at a Women for Women event in New York on Tuesday, referencing Comey’s letter informing Congress that the FBI had discovered new emails that appeared pertinent to an investigation into Clinton’s handling of classified material.

“It wasn’t a perfect campaign - there is no such thing - but I was on the way to winning until a combination of Jim Comey’s letter on Oct. 28 and Russian WikiLeaks raised doubts in the minds of people who were inclined to vote for me and got scared off.”

Axelrod called the 2016 race a “miserable slog” and said nobody in America wants to relive it “except the combatants who keep going back to it.”

“She has a legitimate beef because Comey’s letter was instrumental I think in her defeat, so in a narrow sense she is right about it,” Axelrod said.

“But Jim Comey didn’t tell her not to campaign in Wisconsin after the convention. Jim Comey didn’t say don’t put any resources into Michigan until the final week of the campaign,” he continued.

“And one of the things that hindered her in the campaign was a sense that she never fully was willing to take responsibility for her mistakes, particularly that server.”

Axelrod then offered a piece of advice for Clinton.

“If I were her, if I were advising her, I would say, ‘Don’t do this. Don’t go back and appear as if you’re shifting responsibility.’ ... She said the words ‘I’m responsible,’ but the — everything else suggested that she doesn’t really feel that way,” he said.

“And I don’t think that helps her in the long run, so if I were her I would move on.”

Axelrod was chief strategist for both of Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns and worked in the Obama White House as a senior adviser.

Visigrad Post, “Poland: French presidential candidate Macron wants quick sanctions”, 28 April 2017:

France, Paris – The Liberal-Libertarian candidate for the French presidency assured that he would take, once elected, measures against Poland. According to him, Poland violated “all the principles of the European Union”.

“In the three months following my election, there will be a decision on Poland. I put my responsibility on the table on this subject,” Emmanuel Macron said in an interview on Thursday, April 27th.

“One cannot have a country that plays social tax differentials within the European Union and which is in breach of all the principles of the Union,” he warned.

But for the candidate who faces Marine Le Pen in the second round of the French presidential elections, the question also concerned the “values” of the European Union.

“I want sanctions on those who disrespect the rights and values ​​of the European Union,” he said. “We cannot have a Europe that debates to the decimal each of the budgetary subjects on each country when there’s a European Union member state that behaves like Poland or Hungary on such topics as University and knowledge, refugees, fundamental values, and decides not to do anything.

“According to his adviser for European affairs, Clément Beaune, this issue is close to the 39-year-old banker and former minister of the socialist government under François Hollande’s presidency.

“He assumes to be pro-European but we cannot be European without respecting fundamental principles,” his adviser told Reuters. “It is also a signal of strength and general credibility vis-à-vis Russia, vis-à-vis the United States and, internally, vis-à-vis Europeans.”

Emmanuel Macron is the favorite to win the French presidential elections which will end on May 7th.

Hiramic Brotherhood, “America’s Arrogant, Apocalyptic Assaults Against The Rest Of Humanity Are Self-Destructive”, by William Hanna, 27 April 2017:

“. . . The causes of the malady are not entirely clear but its recurrence is one of the uniformities of history: power tends to confuse itself with virtue and a great nation is peculiarly susceptible to the idea that its power is a sign of God’s favour, conferring upon it a special responsibility for other nations — to make them richer and happier and wiser, to remake them, that is, in its own shining image. Power confuses itself with virtue and tends also to take itself for omnipotence. Once imbued with the idea of a mission, a great nation easily assumes that it has the means as well as the duty to do God’s work.

The Lord, after all, surely would not choose you as His agent and then deny you the sword with which to work His will. German soldiers in the First World War wore belt buckles imprinted with the words ‘Gott mit uns’ [‘God with us’]. It was approximately under this kind of infatuation — an exaggerated sense of power and an imaginary sense of mission — that the Athenians attacked Syracuse and Napoleon and that Hitler invaded Russia. In plain words, they overextended their commitments and they came to grief.” - Senator J. William Fulbright (1905-1995) in The Arrogance of Power, 1966.

As a result of being obsessively preoccupied with the dangerous delusion of “American exceptionalism” that maintains the U.S. is qualitatively different, arguably superior to all other nations, and deserving of being the dominant world power — a hegemonic tendency that has caused untold death and destruction starting with the 1893 overthrow of the constitutional government of the Hawaiian Kingdom and the annexation of the Hawaiian Islands — the American people have consequently failed to notice the gradual apocalyptic erosion of their own accursed society: a society whose precariously perched position on the edge of a crumbling precipice was recently confirmed by the inauguration of President Donald “Make America Great Again” Trump: a barely literate, bigot, sexist, racist, and con artist whom psychologists and psychiatrists have diagnosed as having all the classic symptoms of mental illness.

With its “exaggerated sense of power” and “imaginary sense of mission,” America has with delusional self-righteousness embarked on a series of invasions, interventions, regime changes, and “Wars on Terror” whose imperial overreach is inevitably accelerating its own global decline. Despite a brief hiatus of soul-searching and aversion to overseas military incursions following the humiliating and costly debacle in Vietnam, America soon resumed — egged on by Jewish “American” neocons — its contemptuous military adventurism including a more recent unilateral decision to “take out” seven predominantly Muslim countries in five years, (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rz5fZziMWEE) a decision which incidentally happened to be in line with Israel’s “Yinon Plan” of causing the target countries to “fall apart along sectarian and ethnic lines” with the resulting fragmentation compelling each one to be “hostile” to its “neighbours.”

“Greater Israel”: The Zionist Plan for the Middle East”

In the still ongoing process of “taking out” oil-rich Iraq, the U.S. has dehumanised millions of civilians and according to a report from Physicians For Social Responsibility (PSR), a U.S.-based medical and public health organisation, the U.S. military has between 1991 and 2003 killed 1.9 million Iraqis and a further one million have been killed from 2003 to the present time by U.S.-led military interventions. The PSR study also found that four million Muslims have been killed in countries ranging from Iraq to Pakistan. Though the situation in Iraq had alone mobilised some anti-war activism, not enough people had been spurred into action because of the alleged global “War on Terror” which had the Bush administration, the British government, and other Western allies describing Muslim civilians casualties as “collateral damage” — and all armed factions fighting the U.S.-led occupation as barbarians — thereby denying Iraqis any semblance of humanity. This is not “collateral damage,” but premeditated murder akin to a deliberate and barbaric genocide.

“We have become a Nazi monster in the eyes of the world — bullies and bastards who would rather kill than live peacefully. We are whores for power and oil with hate and fear in our hearts.” - Hunter S. Thompson (1937-2005) American journalist and author.

In order to facilitate its global warfare against those it perceives as being either enemies or simply obstacles to its hegemonic aspirations, the U.S. maintains some 200,000 active troops in 800 bases spread over 177 countries at an annual cost of $100 billion. With some 54 percent (about $600 billion) of all U.S. discretionary spending being for the military, the U.S. has the capability of continuing to commit its historic crimes against humanity either as and when it pleases, or in accordance with the wishes of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) which exercises complete control over Congress. This is despite the fact that 46 percent of Americans in 2016 supported punitive action against Israel in response to its settlement policies, representing a nine percent increase over the previous year.

The inherent nature of American “exceptionalism” — akin to the racist concepts of a Jewish “God Chosen People,” and the Nazi Lebensborn Program for the creation of a blond, blue-eyed “Master Race” — demands a diabolical disregard for the inalienable human rights of others as declared in Article 2 of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights which the U.S. — along with its “greatest ally” and “only democracy in the Middle East,” Israel — has hypocritically signed and continues to violate with with arrogant impunity:

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Gary tax Asia to pay for black Welfare Cohn and Steve put the goyim to work Mnuchin

The Hill, 27 April 2017:

“Trump officials stage full-court press for tax plan”

The Trump administration on Thursday began a full-court press aimed at generating momentum for President Trump’s tax reform plan.

(((...)))

The Trump administration also made efforts to rally support from influential conservatives. Mnuchin and White House economic adviser Gary Cohn on Thursday met with groups such as Americans for Prosperity (AFP), a group backed by the Republican mega-donors Charles and David Koch.

(((...)))

The White House’s plan came in the form of one-page overview, and set down some significant markers, including lowering the top individual rate from 39.6 percent to 35 percent and the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 15 percent.

(((...)))

Businesses have been excited about the prospects for tax reform since Trump was elected, and groups overall were pleased to see a plan that proposed lower rates for businesses and a move to a “territorial” system that doesn’t tax U.S. companies foreign earnings.

(((...)))

We can be sure these tax proposals are going to run contrary to Jewish interests and their complicit, predatory right wing interests (of course not).

(((...)))

In fact, Gary Cohn’s tax program is going to tax Asia in order to pay for American blacks ..and even to pay for all America’s SSD and SSI, which America’s wealthy should be paying their fair share for (either that, or have Americans come to terms with who they don’t want to live with and be bothered by).

Kumiko, “A view of Brexit from Asia: Britain as a Pacific trading power in the 21st century”, 6 Mar 2017:

I mean let’s be real, the Americans just somehow non-ironically elected a guy who came out with a speech 120 hours ago where he advocated what? This hilarious list:

a. 54 billion more drunkenly spent on defence spending targeted at nothing,
b. 1 trillion more for infrastructure spending for inner city no-go zones which will have pitiable return on investment,
c. More o’ dem social programmes for the poor baby Trayvons in Detroit who lost their jobs – despite them never having had a job – to the allegedly ‘bad bad’ people in Manila or ‘bad bad’ people in Ho Chi Minh City who are apparently ‘ripping’ you, because why? Because of course. Apparently according to Hunter Wallace, African-Americans are now more valuable to the Alt-Right than trade with Asian states is, so what the hell.
d. Free cash-money for Israel. Because Trump just loves Israel. Because his family is married into it. All of them will continue to studiously ignore that tendency.

So there I was, watching that mortifying clown-car of super-horrible policies unpacking itself into the international arena and I was asking – while I was drinking white rum directly from the bottle – a single question. Only one question.

“But Bernie—I mean, Trump, how are you planning to actually pay for any of this stuff, fam?”

The answer arrived shortly thereafter! The ‘answer’ is apparently:

a. Doubling-down on protectionist tariffs and incoherent ‘buy American’ sloganeering to socially reinforce it, a move which depends on the absurd and not-ever-happening idea that Asian economies will passively allow the United States to subject them to a tariff regime designed by Gary Cohn since certain commodities stocks have spiked up since 09 November 2016, and maybe if the markets reorder themselves around that, those positions can continue to grow. People can make instruments which tap into that expansion, and then people and the state itself can borrow against those instruments using some very fancy mathematical formulas to predict their performance. Detroit and other Rust Belt disaster zones will somehow magically be rebuilt, and the African-Americans will somehow crank out billions of widgets while somehow not being at all socially-dysfunctional, so that all of the big spending will totally somehow pay for itself. The formulas may or may not have documentation associated with them. The formulas may or may not even be based in any kind of rational thought. Your children can then repay the money to Goldman Sachs about 35 years from now. And all of that is to be done so that the allegedly heroic America can finally defeat the allegedly undead East Asia.

Wow, right? Really very much wow. I mean the whole Trump-style plan has literally never failed before except for like every single time ever.

I guess you could say that I disagree with the Israel-backed Trumpist manchild plan, because my geopolitical stances are all anti-Semitic in one way or another. You could say that I disagree with the Israel-backed Trumpist manchild plan because I am of course an Asian woman, which is another factor that makes me very scary and perhaps ‘evil’.

Financial Samurai, “Maximum Taxable Income Amount For Social Security (FICA)”

Uncle Sam The Tax ManFICA stands for Federal Insurance Contributions Act and consists of a Social Security tax and a Medicare tax. This tax is very important for everyone to understand because so often we only think about federal tax rates and state income tax rates. The FICA tax is a big percentage of your total tax bill, especially for those making under six figures a year.

When I was making big bucks in finance, the tax bill was equally big bucks. The only saving grace was seeing my after tax paycheck increase after the maximum taxable income threshold for Social Security was breached each year. The tax amounts were jolting based on how inefficient the government was and still is with regards to spending our money.

For 2017, the maximum amount of taxable earnings for Social Security and Medicare is $127,500. In other words, an employee must pay 6.2% of any income up to $127,500 for 2017 = $7,905. But any dollar you make above $127,500 is free of the Social Security tax. Hence, a good goal for everyone is to make as much as they can over $127,500 as possible, right?

Not so fast. Given we have a progressive tax system in America with Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) and deduction phaseouts, I’ve calculated that the optimal Adjusted Gross Income is roughly $250,000, +/- $50,000. At $250,000, $131,500 of the earnings is free from the 6.2% Social Security tax. Meanwhile, you still get most of your mortgage interest deduction, and only have to pay a slight amount of AMT, depending on the person. A $250,000 income is also high enough to live relatively comfortably in any part of the world.

Some might argue that the Social Security tax is regressive because it caps out at $127,500 in 2016. Why shouldn’t rich people pay more? Here’s the thing people might not understand. Social Security benefits cap out based on the maximum amount of Social Security tax contribution as well. It’s not like someone who is making $500,000, and not having to pay the 6.2% Social Security tax on $381,500 of his earnings is getting extra benefits based off his $500,000 income. He’s just getting the maximum Social Security payout amount when it comes time for him to collect based on the maximum taxable income amount he contributes.

The $500,000 income earner is already paying the highest marginal federal tax rate of 39.6% plus state taxes, if applicable.

In what is becoming a “no-go zone” for Whites in East London, a group of blacks savagely beat two Whites passing through; one White is seen sprawled unconscious while blacks gather around to snap pictures of him in his helplessly beaten, unconscious state. The few Whites passing by the event offer no help; except for one White guy who runs interference for the second victim at the end of the sequence.

NewObserver, “Israeli Air Force Bombs Anti-ISIS Forces in Syria”, 23 Apr 2017:

The Israeli Air Force has carried out two bombing raids against anti-ISIS army forces in the west of Syria as part of the [Israeli imperialist state’s] long-running campaign to disrupt the Syrian government’s military campaign against the terrorist army.

According to a report by the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA), a military source announced that the “Israeli enemy’s warplanes fired two missiles at 18:45 from within occupied territory at a military position in the surroundings of Khan Arnabeh in Quneitra countryside, causing material damage.”

The “occupied territory” being referred to is the Golan Heights, which Israel seized in 1967, and annexed against all international law.

The SANA report said that the Israeli “aggression came after an attempt by terrorists to infiltrate military positions in Quneitra countryside was foiled and the terrorists suffered heavy losses.”

This, SANA said, “proves that Israel provides direct support to terrorist organizations,” adding that their source “affirmed that such desperate attempts will not dissuade the Army and Armed Forces from continuing to crush the terrorist groups that act as Israel’s proxy in the area.”

A follow-up report in Al Jazeera revealed that Sunday’s attacks targeted fighters loyal to the Syrian government in the Naba al-Fawwar area of Quneitra province, which is located in the 30 percent of the Golan Heights that is not under Israeli occupation.

Three fighters from the pro-government National Defence Forces (NDF) were killed and at least two more were wounded in the attack, an NDF official said.

The terrorist armies fighting Syria’s Bashar al-Assad government and its allies control much of the Quneitra area.

Unusually, the Israeli Army confirmed that it had targeted positions inside Syria in retaliation for mortar fire that hit the northern part of the occupied Golan Heights.

“The Israeli army targeted the source of the fire,” an army statement said without giving further details.

In reality, the terrorist groups operating in the area against the Syrian government often operate close to Israeli lines—because Israel treats their wounded in hospitals inside the Jewish state, and it is therefore inevitable that the Israeli side will be hit occasionally by stray rounds.

The Israelis however always take these stray rounds as an excuse to bomb Syrian government positions.

The Jerusalem Post even admitted as much, saying that the Israeli attack was due to “errant rocket fire” caused by “fighting between Hezbollah and regime troops against rebel groups near Ain Ayshaa, Samadiniyah Sharqiyah & Madinat al-Baath near Quneitra.”

The other excuse which the Jewish [imperialist] state uses to attack the anti-ISIS forces in Syria is that they are “carrying weapons to Lebanon” to fight Israel—as if Syria could at this stage spare such military effort.

The Lebanese Hezbollah organization—most famous for defeating the 2006 Israeli invasion of Lebanon—is one of the Syrian government’s key military allies, providing tens of thousands of troops on the ground in the fight against ISIS.