[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 Friday, 16 February 2018 08:54.
Washington Post, “4 things we learned from the indictment of 13 Russians in the Mueller investigation”, 16 Feb 2018:
This post has been updated.
We have the first indictment in the investigation by Robert S. Mueller III that actually has to do with Russian meddling in the 2016 election. The special counsel on Friday indicted 13 Russians in connection with a large-scale troll farm effort aimed at influencing the election in violation of U.S. law.
The indictment of the Internet Research Agency comes on top of two Trump advisers having pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI — Michael Flynn and George Papadopoulos — and two more being indicted on charges of alleged financial crimes that predated the campaign — Paul Manafort and Rick Gates. Nobody is in custody and Russia does not extradite to the United States, but the document from the secretive Mueller investigation does shed plenty of light where there previously wasn’t any.
So what does the new indictment tell us? Here’s what we can say right away:
1. It doesn’t say the Trump campaign colluded with Russia, but doesn’t rule it out either.
Anybody looking for clues about the collusion investigation into the Trump campaign won’t find much to grab hold of. If anything, the indictment may hearten Trump allies in that it doesn’t draw a line to the campaign — which suggests there was a large-scale effort independent of any possible collusion. Perhaps that’s the real meddling effort, some folks in the White House may be telling themselves right now. Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein even specified that Trump campaign officials who were contacted by the Russian nationals “did not know they were communicating with Russians.”
But that’s about as much insight as anyone can draw; we simply don’t know what else is coming down the pike, and any ties to Trump campaign officials may have been withheld from this indictment to avoid disclosing details of an ongoing investigation. The president hasn’t even been interviewed yet, so we wouldn’t expect any ties to the campaign at this juncture.
Asked whether campaign officials had knowledge of the scheme or were duped, Rosenstein chose his words carefully. “There is no allegation in this indictment that any American had any knowledge,” Rosenstein said.
The words “in this indictment” mean Rosenstein’s comments are pretty narrow.
Update:
In a statement, Trump and the White House suggested that the announcement “further indicates that there was NO COLLUSION between the Trump campaign and Russia.” Again, it doesn’t provide any direct indication.
2. It just got a lot harder for Trump to dismiss Mueller’s probe as a “witch hunt.”
At one point in the indictment, a price tag is put on the effort: $1.25 million in one month, as of September 2016. To put that in perspective, that’s as much as some entire presidential campaigns were spending monthly during the primaries. And that lends credence to the idea that this was a large-scale effort connected to the Russian government.
President Trump has often sought to downplay the idea that Russia interfered in the 2016 election — even suggesting he believed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s assurances that it didn’t happen. This document lays it out in extensive detail.
The argument that this is a “witch hunt,” which Trump has argued and more than 8 in 10 Republicans believe, just became much more difficult to make. And the document would seem to make pretty clear that the Mueller investigation isn’t just targeted at taking down Trump, either.
Posted by DanielS on Thursday, 15 February 2018 06:00.
This Vox article concludes:
What we don’t know
The shooter’s motive
A safe bet is that the shooter’s motive was rather an incoherent motive of broad revenge against societal incoherence and therefore lack of accountability, agency and warrant that socially delimited human ecologies would otherwise afford.
VOX, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Florida: what we know:
At least 17 people are dead. The 19-year-old suspect is in custody.
Parents wait for news after a shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Joel Auerbach
A shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, has left at least 17 people dead. Students and adults are among the victims.
A 19-year-old male suspect, Nikolas Cruz, has been charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder. Cruz, a former student at Stoneman Douglas, took an Uber to the school Wednesday afternoon. He was armed with an AR-15 rifle, law enforcement officials said, which he used to carry out his rampage. He fled the scene on foot, blending in with the rush of students pouring from the building. The massacre unfolded in less than 10 minutes, according to the timeline released by the Broward County Sheriff’s office.
“That should not happen in Parkland. It should not happen anywhere in this country,” Broward County Public Schools superintendent Robert Runcie said on Wednesday night. “We have got to find a way for this to stop.”
The investigation is still in its early stages. Details could change with more information. Here’s what we know — and don’t.
What we know
- Around 2:30 pm on Wednesday, just before class dismissal, the fire alarm went off, and shooting began. A law enforcement official told told CBS News it was believed the suspect pulled the fire alarm before the shooting rampage.
- At least 17 people were killed in the school shooting. At least 14 others were wounded, with five individuals sustaining life-threatening injuries. Teenagers and adults are among the victims, according to the Broward County Sheriff’s Office.
- The victims we know of so far: Jaime Guttenberg, Martin Duque, Alyssa Alhadeff, Aaron Feis, Gina Montalto, Nicholas Dworet, Luke Hoyer, Carmen Schentrup, Meadow Pollack, Joaquin Oliver, Alaina Petty, Cara Loughran, Helena Ramsey, Alex Schachter, Chris Hixon, Scott Beigel, and Peter Wang. The Miami Herald has the full list with photos and more information.
- The lone suspect is 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz, according to the Broward County Sheriff’s Office. He was taken into custody off school property about an hour after the shooting, the sheriff said.
- Cruz confessed to the shooting, according to a sheriff’s report. He’s been charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder.
Posted by DanielS on Wednesday, 14 February 2018 06:22.
Her kind, anyway, since this particular woman is spoken-for. She’s an ingenious pioneer, living off the grid in the “North-West Front” ...she isn’t bad looking either.
Kehinde Wiley, the artist chosen to paint the official portrait of former US President Barack Obama, previously depicted black women decapitating white women.
Wiley, who is 39 and from New York, created the two paintings in 2012 and was inspired by the Biblical story of Judith beheading the Assyrian general Holoferne. At the time, Wiley told The New York Times that he was inspired by the classical European depictions of Bible stories by Caravaggio and Gentileschi, only he chose to depict Judith as a black woman and Holoferne as a white woman. He commented: “It’s sort of a play on the ‘kill whitey’ thing”.
The description for the work from the North Carolina Museum of Art foundation reads:
“Wiley translates this image of a courageous, powerful woman into a contemporary version that resonates with fury and righteousness.”
The portraits were part of an exhibition in which his paintings only depicted women he would scout on the street and depict in poses seen in classical European artwork. The sitter for Judith was Triesha Lowe, a stay-at-home mother whom Wiley discovered in a Brooklyn shopping centre.
Barack Obama unveils his portrait alongside the portrait’s artist, Kehinde Wiley
That Obama artist, Kehinde Wiley, is also know for these fun paintings, which you can file under
“Imagine if this showed a TKTK “
8:54 PM - Feb 12, 2018
143 people are talking about this
Wiley’s portrait of Obama will hang in the US National Portrait Gallery. It has sparked conversation and criticism, but the sitter himself appeared pleased with his likeness, adding that Wiley’s work “challenged our conventional views of power and privilege.”
Posted by DanielS on Monday, 12 February 2018 07:07.
While growing up a child refugee in Britain he acquired the accent that would have him nicknamed among the infam four, ‘the Beatles’, heard promoting the mania of their terror campaign…
The Infam Four: El Shafee Elsheikh ( far right), one of the four infamous ISIS murderers, identified as a “child refugee” accepted into Britain. The other three were also admitted into Britain through legal immigration channels.
TNO, One of the four ISIS murderers infamous for appearing in the “Jihadi John” decapitation videos has been revealed as a former “child refugee” granted “asylum” in Britain through that country’s open doors “asylum” policy.
The former “child refugee” has been named as El Shafee Elsheikh, whose family managed to swindle their way into Britain—and UK citizenship—by claiming to be “refugees” from the Sudan in the 1990s.
Elsheikh was one of four nonwhite invaders in Britain who went off to join ISIS in Syria when that “caliphate” was at its height.
The group to which Elsheikh belonged (named as Alexandar Kotey, Aine Davis, and Mohammed Emwazi) was nicknamed the “Beatles” by the media because of their British accents.
Emwazi was born Muhammad Jassim Abdulkarim Olayan al-Dhafiri in Kuwait, and moved to Britain as a six-year-old with his family in 1994. He was dubbed “jihad John” and was the most famous of the group, doing the speaking on the numerous decapitation videos they produced.
Emwazi was killed in an air strike in November 2015.
Davis—the mixed race grandson of Jamaican trombonist in the 1980s UK “Ska” band, The Specials—was arrested in Turkey while planning a new attack and sentenced to seven-and-a-half years’ jail for membership of terrorist organization in May 2017.
In 2014 Davis’s wife, Amal El-Wahabi, 27, became the first woman in the UK to be jailed for terrorism offences connected to Syria after she was caught paying a smuggler to take €20,000 in cash to Turkey for her husband.
Kotey is also of mixed-race origin—Ghanaian and Greek-Cypriot—and he, along with Elsheikh, were arrested by Kurdish fighters in the east of Syria at the beginning of 2018.
The two were identified and handed over to American Special Operations forces, who confirmed their identities using fingerprints and other biometric measurements.
Together, the four nonwhites—all of who were initially based in London—beheaded atr least 27 hostages and tortured many more.
It is still not clear what is going to Kotey and Elsheikh. They could be put on trial in the US for killing American hostages, or they could be returned to the UK for trial.
Some reports have said that the two have had their UK citizenship stripped—something that is only possible if they have been naturalized as British nationals, and have citizenship of another nation.
No matter what their eventual fate, one thing is clear: the open borders “asylum” policy and the promotion of mass Third World immigration by successive UK governments has proven to be a disaster, and may yet destroy Britain forever.
The United Nations has warned that fighters belonging to the Islamic State militant group may be using blank Syrian passports to cross borders.
The UN Security Council on Thursday released a report prepared by experts on the militant group and other terrorist organizations. It is based on information collected from local UN staff and governments of member states.
The report says the group has collected travel and identification documents from fighters coming from outside Syria and Iraq for potential use in travel. It also says the group has thousands of blank Syrian passports. It adds that they may be used by fighters seeking to return home or relocate.
The report also says the group continues to try to maintain and expand its influence despite recent setbacks in Iraq and Syria. It says the group is sending fighters and weapons to Libya and Somalia.
It also notes that the group obtains funds through systematic human trafficking.
The report says the group commands between 1,000 and 4,000 fighters in Afghanistan, including Afghan defectors from the Taliban as well as militant Islamist groups in Pakistan and Uzbekistan.
It warns that the Islamic State group continues to pose a significant and evolving threat around the world.
Posted by DanielS on Saturday, 10 February 2018 06:35.
Daily Kos, “Bombshell: Devin Nunes’ Entire Net Worth Sunk In Company With Strong Ties To Russia: Updated”, 26 Mar 2017:
Oh those rascally republicans! Not only was Devin Nunes caught sharing evidence with the White House he is supposed to be investigating, now reports show that he has sunk almost his entire net worth (which ain’t a lot) into The Napa Valley’s Alpha Omega winery, which has, as it’s only European contract, a distributor in Russia with close ties to…you guessed it… Putin.
“Nunes has put almost his entire net worth into a winery with strong ties to Russia.How strong? Well, the Alpha Omega Winery has distributors all over the U.S., but just a few abroad. One of those overseas distributors is the Luding Trading Company in Russia. Luding is, in fact, Russia’s largest distributor for alcoholic beverages. But they don’t just operate in Russia – they also appear to have a relationship with Vladimir Putin.”
Here’s a copy of his financial dregs:
So, Nunes is worth $51,000 and a penny and has $50,000 tied up in Russian Red.
Nice.
But he’s taking care to protect his investment, huh?
“It’s also odd that Alpha Omega Winery would have a relationship with Russia’s largest distributor when they only have a relationship with one Western nation (Switzerland). They don’t have any relationships with any other distributor in the EU, which means no relationships with NATO allies at all.
Then there’s the fact that Nunes is one of the people Trump called upon to refute news about the whole Russia scandal. That right there compromised the House’s investigation into Trump and Russia because it blurs the lines between the intelligence community, the White House, and Congress.”
Sunday, Mar 26, 2017 · 9:04:59 PM · durrati
Several Comments have pointed out that the source of this story didn’t make a compelling case for the Nunes/Russia slant of this story and they may be right to do so. The link to the LA Times Financial information has value though, it seems to me, and it is strange that a major player in the Russian Liquor Distribution Industry lists as one of it’s suppliers a small California vintner Nunes is invested in. I’ll leave this up because some of our sleuths here might find it interesting to dig into.
Daily Sabah, “FM Çavuşoğlu meets Trump’s top national security advisor”, 18 Jan 2017:
Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu met with designated U.S. National Security adviser Rt. Gen. Mike Flynn on Wednesday at Trump Hotel in Washington.
“Met with General Flynn, who will assume the position of National Security Advisor, and other officials at a working breakfast in Washington D.C.,” Çavuşoğlu tweeted.
The meeting marks a first direct reachout between the President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan administration and the incoming Donald Trump administration, other than a phone call between two leaders last November.
House Intelligence Committee Congressman Devin Nunes, a Republican heavyweight, also attended the breakfast.
An aide of the foreign minister didn’t provide additional details on the meeting, but said that Çavuşoğlu was the only foreign leader at the breakfast and the topics on the U.S.-Turkish agenda were discussed by the attendees.
A invitation letter for the breakfast, obtained by Daily Sabah, said the breakfast would be a small event for about 50-60 guests. It also said White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus might join the meeting. It was not immediately clear whether he attended. An official at the Trump Organization, and two other fundraisers were presented as co-hosts, according to the letter.
Çavuşoğlu previously told Turkish media that he would attend the incoming Trump administration’s inauguration ceremony, which is due to be held on the West Front of the United States Capitol Building in Washington D.C. on Friday.
The official announcement comes as questions over whether the Trump administration will be able to normalize relations between Turkey and the U.S. are increasing.
Turkish officials have previously stated that Turkey can cooperate with the new U.S. administration since many of Turkey’s views overlap with the incoming president
Daily Sabbah, “Turkey confident on extradition of Gülen under Trump administration”, 23 Jan 2017:
Turkey’s Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmuş addressed the media after a Cabinet meeting Monday, reiterating the Turkish government’s two primary expectations of the newly sworn in Donald Trump administration, the extradition of U.S.-based Gülenist Terror Group (FETÖ) leader Fetullah Gülen and the halting of U.S. support for the PKK’s Syrian offshoot, the Democratic Union Party (PYD), and its armed wing, the People’s Protection Units (YPG) in Syria.
The revelation comes on the heels of the inauguration of Donald Trump who took the Oval Office as the 45th president of the U.S. on Friday. Despite recent tensions with Washington, Turkish officials are confident that, compared to the Barack Obama administration, the new administration will usher in a new era of cooperation for the NATO-ally, especially in the counterterrorism fight against Daesh and FETÖ.
“Especially in efforts to revamp Turkish-U.S. relations, we expect the Trump administration to conduct a re-assessment of its position on Turkey and reconsider its position on two primary matters, the first of which is the extradition of the retired preacher Gülen, who lives in self-imposed exile in the U.S. as the purported leader of an outlawed Turkish gang which conducted crimes against the nation during the failed July 15 coup attempt. The second fundamental matter is halting U.S. support for the PYD,” the deputy prime minister asserted.
Emphasizing Turkey’s hopes that the new U.S. administration will not repeat the mistakes of the previous administration, Kurtulmuş also said that, “It is our aim to bring bilateral relations back to the level that is required between two, long-standing allies.”
Under the Obama administration, Turkish-U.S. relations deteriorated significantly due to Obama’s insistent claims that the PKK and the YPG are not one-in-the-same, regardless of mounting evidence and statements made by YPG terrorists.
Thus, Turkey’s deputy prime minister said that he is confident Turkey will see results under the Trump administration, further referring to the PYD as, “An armed group with a few militants who are accountable for the instability of the region.”
“The PYD, an armed group with few militants, is clearly a contributing factor to the region’s instability. Turkey urges the U.S. to stop supporting the group on the grounds that it is affiliated with the PKK and engages in terror activities. We are hopeful that we will yield results regarding this matter, as well. If these two expectations are met, Turkish-U.S. bilateral relations will be restored and strengthened once again. I do hope that this new administration moves forward by making decisions that contribute not only to Turkish-American relations but also to world peace and stability in the Middle East,” Kurtulmuş added.
Posted by DanielS on Friday, 09 February 2018 06:09.
Take away the Trojan Horse that is Christianity, and replace it with a moral order that is authentic to European ethno-national interests and you’ve got an example of a sound ethno-national coalition in the Visegrad Group.
Visigrad Post, Why so much fuss about the Visegrad Group?”
By Gabor Toth, President of the V4-China association, 8 Feb 2018:
Visegrad Group – In the recent years, the international media has helped make the profile of the V4 rise significantly. It is fair to say that the V4 have never been so important and well-known around the world as nowadays. But why is that? This formation has been around since 1335! In its modern form, it has been active since its resurrection in the 1990s. So how come we haven’t really heard about it until about 2015-16?
And why the fuss about the V4, especially in European politics?
The story goes back to 2015, when a great number of both refugees and migrants mainly from the Middle East and Africa arrived at the borders of Hungary. They wanted to pass through, so they can go to Germany, Sweden and other western European countries. The Hungarian government did not allow this, saying that entering the territory of the EU can only be done legally, based on the existing treaties. The other three V4 countries quickly joined Hungary’s position, while some western countries criticized Hungary for the move.
As the burden of the crisis became heavier, the profile of the V4’s stance grew stronger. Today, only two years later, the situation has escalated so much that many experts see the V4, being the leading formation of CEE, as the only viable and strong enough opposition to the politics of Western Europe. A very clear divide has taken shape between East and West. To the west, countries that have accepted migration and multiculturalism, to the east, countries that wish to remain as they have always been. To the west, countries that are abandoning the idea of nation states and Christianity as the foundation of Europe, to the east, countries that want to stick to this foundation. Of course, this is not that simple, but these are the basic differences between the two sides.
In other words, the V4, lead by Viktor Orban, the Hungarian prime minister, have emerged as representatives of a future Europe that keeps its traditions, historic background and spiritual foundation, while some western countries, such as France, Belgium and Holland represent a future Europe with mixed societies and a way of life based on a progressive idea that the continent can be great without clearly separated nation states and many different religions can coexist, because it has happened in other places before, such as the United States.
But what will the peoples of Europe choose? Or is it really a choice they face?
History has the answer, and it is clear.
Europe and its people cannot and will not simply erase or even compromise their Christian roots and national pride. It is foolish for anyone to think that they will. It is rooted too deep in their genes, their traditions, even in their everyday habits…
This article does not mean to judge who is right or wrong. These are facts of history and those of us that live on this continent know it, even if this is something we don’t think about on a daily basis. However, when European people feel that their way of life and long spiritual foundations are questioned or even threatened, they raise their voice. This has been going on since the end of 2015, and it’s been getting more and more vocal. All eyes on Italy and Germany now. Will they take the position of the V4 and Viktor Orban? Those that say they will not, are likely to lose their bet, because all indicators show that the “opposing” side cannot come up with a clear vision for a future Europe where all peoples can live in peace and prosperity without having to change their foundations drastically. And even if that side did have a clear alternative, chances are high that the peoples of Europe would reject it, because in their mind Europe can hardly be greater than it was in those times when it was leading the world…
In football, there’s a saying: “don’t change a winning team”. Europeans love football, but more importantly, this is the way they think about being a collection of strong, Christian nation states, too. They have absolutely no reason to change their ancient, winning formula.
Interestingly, however, some western countries call for a “United States of Europe”, which is considered by some to be the alternative to the V4’s position.
But this is not entirely true, because individually strong, Christian nation states must also find a way to unite and work out a way to organize themselves into a strong, unified block. Europe is crying for a strong leader to finally get it out of the rut it’s been stuck in for a long period now. With troubles mounting on the borders of Europe and inside as well, this becomes more and more essential. Especially, if military conflicts escalate around her borders.
We can predict, that the dispute between East and West may very easily be settled in a way that Europe will turn back to its original strength by becoming a “United States of Europe”, but not at all the way some western countries imagine it, instead, as an empire of strong nation states, coordinated by the already existing, soon-to-be drastically reformed European institutions, such as the Council and the Committee. The issue is NOT with the way the EU was born and developed. It is with the way it is organized and lead.
Weak leadership and governing without a solid ideological foundation that people agree with is what’s causing the difficulties the EU is facing. Reorganizing the institutional system and placing strong leaders in their top seats, with a Council president, given that the council goes back to being the strongest of the three main institutions, which it was always meant to be. Recognizing that Christianity will make Europe great again, and instead of fighting it, using it as a starting point to reestablish the relationship of church and state, bringing back the “winning formula”. These are the steps Europe is going to take, if it follows the clear pattern of history.
Time will tell how quickly the so-called “Hungarian model” (having found a modern way of church and state relations) will spread further, but the process has begun and is speeding up notably.
The next question is Europe’s future partners in trade, because this major resurrection of the “old” Europe means a totally new alliance system as well. As power shifts from the West to the East, China’s new silk road seems to be the clear alternative. China needs a strong Europe, and Europe needs China, and the “One belt, One Road” initiative presents itself as this new alliance system with the potential to make Europe great again.
Moreover, China’s approach toward CEE countries is also evident, with the 16+1 platform and several projects already underway.
Interestingly, the V4 are in an historic position, because they hold the key to Europe’s revival, as well as the success of the 16+1. Hungary holds the presidency of the V4 until July 2018, which gives a significant advantage to the Hungarian prime minister, Orban, who is considered to be the leader of the conservative camp in Europe, and considered to be the most friendly and pragmatic leader in Europe by the Chinese.
Ironically, the “United States of Europe” that Mr. Schulz talked about would also need a strong leader, and today, there is simply no match to the success of Mr. Orban as a politician in the EU, so even if the people voted for a European President, it would not be surprising at all, if they voted for him. Of course, this is not what Mr. Schulz or other EU leaders would be happy about. While current EU leaders struggle to find solutions to their problems, something powerful is happening in the eastern front. The V4 have started to build the new Silk Road, and China appreciates this enormously.
In the coming years, as the divide between western and eastern Europe deepens, watch for the rapidly developing sentiment, that opening to the East is what will provide the solution.
Judith and Holofernes, by Kehinde Wiley Credit: Twitter 
Barack Obama unveils his portrait alongside the portrait’s artist, Kehinde Wiley
The Infam Four: El Shafee Elsheikh ( far right), one of the four infamous ISIS murderers, identified as a “child refugee” accepted into Britain. The other three were also admitted into Britain through legal immigration channels.
Beheading of 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians in Libya by ISIL functionaries.
