Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.

For The Record  

FTR #617 Miscellaneous Articles and Updates

Record­ed Novem­ber 4, 2007
MP3: Side 1 | Side 2
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Intro­duc­ing or updat­ing a num­ber of top­ics, the pro­gram begins with two sto­ries doc­u­ment­ing the upsurge in anti-Semi­tism around the world. After high­light­ing a Turk­ish best sell­er that attrib­ut­es the rise of glob­al Islamism to—you guessed it—the Jews, the broad­cast sets forth a recent com­mem­o­ra­tion of Kristall­nacht by hold­ing a Holo­caust-denial con­fer­ence! One of the orga­niz­ers of this event is a reg­u­lar con­trib­u­tor to Alexan­der Cockburn’s “Coun­ter­punch,” a sta­ple of the so-called pro­gres­sive sec­tor. Ver­mont pro­gres­sives have been net­work­ing with hard­core South­ern racists on the sub­ject of seces­sion from the Unit­ed States. Some of the neo-Con­fed­er­ates who net­work with Ver­mont pro­gres­sives would love the views of DNA pio­neer and Nobel Prize win­ner James Wat­son, who has open­ly expressed his view that black peo­ple are intel­lec­tu­al­ly infe­ri­or to whites. Look­ing into a “eugen­ics crys­tal ball” and con­tem­plat­ing the future of human­i­ty, the pro­gram under­scores a prog­nos­ti­ca­tion that the human race will divide into two basic divisions—one supe­ri­or and one marked­ly infe­ri­or. Updat­ing Mr. Emory’s cov­er­age of weath­er con­trol tech­nol­o­gy, the pro­gram details a plan to “steer” hur­ri­canes in order to avoid dev­as­ta­tion such as that wrought by Hur­ri­cane Kat­ri­na. After set­ting forth the recent con­vic­tion of an Argen­tine priest for par­tic­i­pat­ing in that country’s “Dirty War,” the pro­gram con­cludes with a look at the Frei­heit Foun­da­tion [“Free­dom” Foun­da­tion in Eng­lish]. Found­ed and fund­ed by Black­wa­ter king­pin Erik Prince, the foun­da­tion finances a vari­ety of right wing caus­es.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: A Turk­ish author’s asser­tion that “the Zion­ists” cre­at­ed Islamism in order to desta­bi­lize Turkey’s sec­u­lar gov­ern­ment; review of project HAARP; review of the ultra-wing Schmitz family’s obses­sion with things Ger­man; father Chris­t­ian von Wernich’s Ger­man her­itage; review of the Ger­man dias­po­ra to Argenti­na and else­where in Latin Amer­i­ca.

1. Sup­ple­ment­ing FTR#’s 567, 613, the pro­gram sets forth what a wag might term “a new, world’s indoor record for anti-Semi­tism.” Turk­ish nation­al­ists and fas­cists are dri­ving the sales of a book that blames the advent of Islam­ic extrem­ism on—hold on to your seats—the Jews! Specif­i­cal­ly, a new best sell­er in Turkey attrib­ut­es the rise of Islam­ic fun­da­men­tal­ism in that coun­try to a pur­port­ed plot by “Inter­na­tion­al Zion­ism” to desta­bi­lize sec­u­lar Mus­lim coun­tries by first cre­at­ing, and then estab­lish­ing, Islam­ic fun­da­men­tal­ism! Note that the author is a “Kemalist”—endorsing the idea of a sec­u­lar Turkey. (For more about Pan-Turk­ism and fas­cism, see—among oth­er programs—AFA#’s 14, 21—avail­able from Spitfire—as well as FTRs 549, 550, 614.) “A book resem­bling The Pro­to­cols of the Elders of Zion has become a best­seller in Turkey. What makes this book so spe­cial is that the blood libel against the Jews takes on a new twist. The Wash­ing­ton Post report­ed the sto­ry. The book is called The Chil­dren of Moses. Its cov­er shows Turk­ish Prime Min­is­ter Tayyip Erdo­gan inside a Star of David. Reporter Mustafa Aky­ol writes that this is the first in a series of vol­umes. The book argues that Erdo­gan and his con­ser­v­a­tive allies in the pro-Islam­ic par­ty are in fact cryp­to-Jews with secret ties to the con­spir­a­to­r­i­al forces of ‘Glob­al Zion­ism.’ The book is not a rar­i­ty. Copies are on dis­play in book­shops, on Inde­pen­dence Avenue (Istik­lal), in the sec­u­lar part of Istan­bul and in Turkey’s inter­na­tion­al air­port. They are dis­played along­side a Turk­ish book with an inter­na­tion­al rep­u­ta­tion by Pamuk Orhan. The pub­lish­ers claim that over 520,000 copies—an aston­ish­ing figure—have been sold since it came out ear­li­er in the year. The Pro­to­cols of the Elders of Zion blamed ‘Inter­na­tion­al Jew­ry’ for destroy­ing both Czarist Rus­sia and com­mu­nism as well as for the cap­i­tal­ist sys­tem. But this is the first time Jews have been blamed of all things for set­ting up an Islam­ic state. Most iron­i­cal­ly, the book por­trays Israel as allied with the Islam­ic jus­tice and devel­op­ment Par­ty (AKP). The author, Ergun Poyraz, is a self-declared Kemal­ist, i.e. a loy­al fol­low­er of Kemal Ataturk, who found­ed mod­ern Turkey in 1923. ‘Zion­ism has decid­ed to turn Turkey from its sec­u­lar path and make it a mod­er­ate Islam­ic repub­lic,’ Poyraz main­tains in all seri­ous­ness, offer­ing no sup­port for his argu­ments, which are not doc­u­ment­ed and have no fac­tu­al back­ing. . . .”
(“The Pro­to­cols of the Elders of Zion—Turkish Style” by Ran Porat; 10/112007.)

2. Anoth­er sto­ry sup­ple­ment­ing the “Social­ism of Fools” series [FTR#’s 567, 613] high­lights the extent to which overt fas­cists and anti-Semit­ic ele­ments have been able to estab­lish pro­fes­sion­al work­ing rela­tion­ships with ele­ments of the so-called “pro­gres­sive” com­mu­ni­ty. One George Beres—who writes for Alexan­der Cockburn’s Coun­ter­punch—is mark­ing the anniver­sary of Kristall­nacht by co-spon­sor­ing a Holo­caust denial con­fer­ence! (Kristall­nacht was one of the Third Reich’s first large-scale pogroms against the Jews and Cockburn’s pub­li­ca­tion is high­ly esteemed with­in the so-called “pro­gres­sive” com­mu­ni­ty.) “Here’s anoth­er sto­ry con­cern­ing what appears to be a trend: pur­port­ed ‘peace activists’ pro­mot­ing Holo­caust denial and anti-Semit­ic con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry. In this case, a Uni­ver­si­ty of Ore­gon peace orga­ni­za­tion called Paci­fi­ca Forum, which was found­ed and is led by a retired pro­fes­sor and a retired admin­is­tra­tor from that uni­ver­si­ty, is mark­ing Kristall­nacht with two days of speech­es and con­fer­ences this week­end con­duct­ed by Mark Weber direc­tor of the Holo­caust denial group Insti­tute for His­tor­i­cal Review. Weber, the for­mer edi­tor of the Nation­al Van­guard, the main pub­li­ca­tion of the neo-Nazi Nation­al Alliance Par­ty, has spent the past 30 years as a pro­fes­sion­al advo­cate of Holo­caust denial and anti-Semi­tism. His open­ing lec­ture on Fri­day is enti­tled: ‘Free Speech vs. Zion­ist Pow­er’. Adver­tise­ments for the event fea­ture the image of a snake in the shape of a Star of David with the leg­end ‘The Israel Lob­by: How Pow­er­ful Is It?’ Novem­ber 9 marks the 69th anniver­sary of Kristall­nacht, which is con­sid­ered by many his­to­ri­ans to be the begin­ning of the Holo­caust. . . . The founders and lead­ers of Paci­fi­ca Forum are Orval Etter and George Beres. Beres, who was the man­ag­er of the UO Speak­ers Bureau and was UO Sports Infor­ma­tion Direc­tor, has retired from those posi­tions and is cur­rent­ly a colum­nist for a num­ber of inter­net pub­li­ca­tions includ­ing Coun­ter­punch and is a mem­ber of the Ore­gon Inter­re­li­gious Com­mit­tee for Peace in the Mid­dle East. Just two days ago, a pro-free speech piece he authored was pub­lished on the anti-Semit­ic ziopidia.com. In the midst of his piece is a fund rais­ing ad read­ing: ‘Help us increase aware­ness of Jew­ish suprema­cism and the sick­en­ing evil­ness of Zion­ism. . . . .”
(“Ore­gon ‘Peace’ Group to Mark Kristall­nacht with Holo­caust Denial Con­fer­ence”; 11/1/2007.)

3. In anoth­er exam­ple of strange polit­i­cal bed­fel­lows, the broad­cast cites a curi­ous alliance between an appar­ent­ly “pro­gres­sive” polit­i­cal group from Ver­mont and the neo-Con­fed­er­ate League of the South. Although the Ver­mont group denies that the League of the South is racist, that asser­tion flies in the face of estab­lished fact. The League of the South cel­e­brates and seeks to restore the Confederacy—it is overt­ly racist and not any­thing else but racist. (For more about the League of the South, see FTR#197.) In addi­tion to the obvi­ous fact that this polit­i­cal phe­nom­e­non is a man­i­fes­ta­tion of fas­cist Third Posi­tion pol­i­tics, this alliance of “pro­gres­sives,” racists and eth­nic and social groups from oth­er places bodes ill for the future of this coun­try. Among the peo­ples with whom this Vermont/Deep South alliance are net­work­ing are native Hawai­ians, some of whom are also con­tem­plat­ing seces­sion. It is Mr. Emory’s view that, in the event of an eco­nom­ic, polit­i­cal or envi­ron­men­tal dis­as­ter, the Unit­ed States itself could suc­cumb to cen­tripetal pres­sures and dis­in­te­grate in a man­ner sim­i­lar to the dis­so­lu­tion of the for­mer Sovi­et Union. (Note in this con­text that the UNPO is cham­pi­oning the rights of the Native Hawai­ians.) “In an unlike­ly mar­riage of desire to secede from the Unit­ed States, two advo­ca­cy groups from oppo­site polit­i­cal traditions—New Eng­land and the South –are sit­ting down to talk. Tired of for­eign wars and what they con­sid­er right-wing courts, the Mid­dle­bury Insti­tute wants lib­er­al states like Ver­mont to be able to secede peace­ful­ly. That sounds just fine to the League of the South, a con­ser­v­a­tive group that refus­es to give up on South­ern inde­pen­dence. ‘We believe that an inde­pen­dent South, or Hawaii, Alas­ka, or Ver­mont would be bet­ter able to serve the inter­est of every­body, regard­less of race or eth­nic­i­ty,’ said Michael Hill of Killen, Ala., pres­i­dent of the League of the South. Sep­a­rat­ed by hun­dreds of miles and diver­gent polit­i­cal philoso­phies, the Mid­dle­bury Insti­tute and the League of the South are host­ing a two-day Seces­sion­ist Con­ven­tion start­ing Wednes­day in Chat­tanooga. They expect to attract sup­port­ers from Cal­i­for­nia, Alas­ka and Hawaii, invit­ing any­one who wants to dis­solve the Union so states can save them­selves from an over­bear­ing fed­er­al gov­ern­ment. . . . The League of the South says it is not racist, but proud­ly dis­plays a Con­fed­er­ate Bat­tle Flag on its ban­ner. Mark Potok, direc­tor of the South­ern Pover­ty Law Center’s Intel­li­gence Project, which mon­i­tors hate groups, said the League of the South ‘has been on our list close to a decade. What is remark­able and real­ly astound­ing about this sit­u­a­tion is we see peo­ple and insti­tu­tions who are sup­pos­ed­ly on the pro­gres­sive left rub­bing shoul­ders with bona fide white suprema­cists,’ Potok said. . . .”
(“South­ern Seces­sion­ists Wel­come Yan­kees to Con­ven­tion” [AP]; Fox News; 10/03/07.)

4. The League of the South would find Nobel Prize win­ning sci­en­tist James Watson’s views to their lik­ing. Cred­it­ed with hav­ing dis­cov­ered DNA, Wat­son feels that Africans are genet­i­cal­ly infe­ri­or to whites—specifically, less intel­li­gent. In this regard, Watson’s views are in line with eugenic think­ing, which espous­es the doc­trine that non-whites are infe­ri­or to whites. “Nobel Prize win­ner Dr. James Wat­son was this week banned today from speak­ing at London’s Sci­ence Muse­um after report­ed­ly say­ing black peo­ple were less intel­li­gent than whites. In an extra­or­di­nary out­burst, the vet­er­an aca­d­e­m­ic, 79, claimed he was ‘inher­ent­ly gloomy about the prospect of Africa’ because ‘all our social poli­cies are based on the fact that their intel­li­gence is the same as ours—whereas all the test­ing says not real­ly.’ But his remarks prompt­ed out­rage with crit­ics brand­ing his remarks ‘racist’ and ‘offen­sive.’”
(“Sci­ence Muse­um Bans DNA Genius at Cen­ter of Race Row”; Dai­ly Mail; 10/18/2007.)

5. In the light of human hered­i­ty, the fol­low­ing pre­dic­tion of a genet­i­cal­ly-select­ed human race is inter­est­ing to con­tem­plate: “The human race will one day split into sep­a­rate species, an attrac­tive, intel­li­gent rul­ing elite and an under­class of dim-wit­ted, ugly gob­lin-like crea­tures, accord­ing to a top sci­en­tist. 100,000 years into the future, sex­u­al selec­tion could mean that two dis­tinct breeds of human will have devel­oped. The alarm­ing pre­dic­tion comes from evo­lu­tion­ary the­o­rist Oliv­er Cur­ry from the Lon­don School of Eco­nom­ics, who says that the human race will have reached its phys­i­cal peak by the year 3000. These humans will be between 6ft and 7ft tall and they will live up to 120 years. . . .The future for our descen­dants isn’t all long life, per­fect bod­ies and chis­eled fea­tures, how­ev­er. While humans will reach their peak in 1000 years’ time, 10,000 years’ time, 10,000 years lat­er our reliance on tech­nol­o­gy will have begun to dra­mat­i­cal­ly change our appear­ance. Med­i­cine will weak­en our immune sys­tem and we will begin to appear more child-like. Dr. Cur­ry said: ‘The report sug­gests that the future of man will be a sto­ry of the good, the bad and the ugly. . . .”
(“Human Race Will ‘Split into Two Dif­fer­ent Species” by Niall Firth; Dai­ly Mail; 10/25/07.)

6. Updat­ing pre­vi­ous pro­grams about weath­er con­trol tech­nol­o­gy, the pro­gram sets forth pro­pos­als to tech­nol­o­gy manip­u­late hur­ri­canes to avoid dis­as­ters like Hur­ri­cane Kat­ri­na. “Sci­en­tists have made a break­through in man’s desire to con­trol the forces of nature—unveiling plans to weak­en hur­ri­canes and steer them off course, to pre­vent tragedies such as Hur­ri­cane Kat­ri­na. . . . Under one scheme, air­craft would drop soot into the near-freez­ing cloud at the top of a hur­ri­cane, caus­ing it to warm up and so reduce wind speeds. Com­put­er sim­u­la­tions of the forces at work in the most vio­lent storms have shown that even small changes can affect their paths—enabling them to be divert­ed from major cities. . . Satel­lites could also heat the cloud tops by beam­ing microwaves from space. . . .The MIT team has now hired a pro­fes­sor of risk man­age­ment to advise on steps nec­es­sary to pro­tect them­selves from legal action by com­mu­ni­ties affect­ed if a hur­ri­cane is divert­ed. It is press­ing for changes to US law and for an inter­na­tion­al treaty to set­tle pos­si­ble dis­putes between neigh­bor­ing coun­tries. . . .”
(“Sci­en­tists a Step Clos­er to Steer­ing Hur­ri­canes” by Tim Ship­man; Dai­ly Tele­graph; 10/24/2007.)

7. Updat­ing cov­er­age of Oper­a­tion Con­dor and the bru­tal counter-insur­gency pro­grams con­duct­ed in Latin Amer­i­ca dur­ing the 1970’s and 1980’s, the pro­gram notes that a Catholic priest who served as a police chap­lain in Argenti­na has been con­vict­ed of par­tic­i­pat­ing in that country’s “Dirty War” of the 1970’s. It is inter­est­ing and pos­si­bly sig­nif­i­cant that Father Wer­nich bore a name indica­tive of his mem­ber­ship in the Ger­man aris­toc­ra­cy. Von Wernich’s sit­u­a­tion may derive from the Ger­man dias­po­ra to Argenti­na after the Sec­ond World War. (For more about Argentina’s dirty war, see—among oth­er programs—FTR#131. For more about the Ger­man dias­po­ra to Argenti­na and its eco­nom­ic impli­ca­tions for the Under­ground Reich, see—among oth­er programs—FTRs 130, 305, 532, 609.) “A Catholic priest accused in a series of deaths and kid­nap­pings dur­ing Argentina’s Dirty War was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to life in prison Tues­day. For­mer police chap­lain Chris­t­ian von Wer­nich was found guilty of being a ‘co-par­tic­i­pant’ with police in sev­en homi­cides, 31 tor­ture cas­es, and 42 kid­nap­pings, end­ing a tri­al that has focused atten­tion on the church dur­ing the 1976–83 mil­i­tary rule. . . .”
(“Priest Guilty in ‘Dirty War’ Tri­al”; CNN; 10/09.07.)

8. Con­clud­ing with a look at the con­tro­ver­sial Black­wa­ter secu­ri­ty firm, the pro­gram notes that Erik Prince, the head of Black­wa­ter, con­tributes to rightwing caus­es through his pri­vate foun­da­tion. Named the Frei­heit Foun­da­tion, it car­ries the Ger­man word for “free­dom.” While this may be coin­ci­den­tal, it may also be sig­nif­i­cant. In addi­tion to the well-doc­u­ment­ed ties between the Amer­i­can far right and Nazis, old and new, one must con­sid­er the iden­ti­ty of the oper­at­ing head of the firm—Germanophile Joseph Schmitz, a mem­ber of the ultra-right wing Schmitz fam­i­ly of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia. (For more about Joseph Schmitz and the Schmitz fam­i­ly, see—among oth­er programs—FTRs 469, 476, 529.) “Black­wa­ter founder and West Michi­gan native Erik Prince funds a vari­ety of rightwing and reli­gious caus­es accord­ing to a review of grants award­ed by Prince’s Frei­heit Foun­da­tion. [Empha­sis added.] Prince, whose Black­wa­ter has drawn con­sid­er­able atten­tion for its work in Iraq, post-Kat­ri­na New Orleans and Colom­bia, also has strong ties to the eco­nom­ic and reli­gious right both through the con­tri­bu­tions of his Frei­heit Foun­da­tion as well as his par­ents, Edgar and Elsa Prince, who are promi­nent sup­port­ers of the reli­gious right both in Michi­gan and on the nation­al lev­el. . . .”
(“Black­wa­ter Founder and West Michi­gan Native Funds Right-Wing through Foun­da­tion”; mediamouse.org; 9/27/2006.)

9. Two video pro­duc­tions are being gen­er­at­ed by a cou­ple of doc­u­men­tary film­mak­ers. One is a DVD of a three-lec­ture series called “The First Refuge of a Scoundrel: The Rela­tion­ship Between Fas­cism and Reli­gion.” In addi­tion, there will soon be a doc­u­men­tary about Mr. Emory, titled “The Anti-Fas­cist.” For more about this project, vis­it TheAntiFascist.com.

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