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With a new Pres­i­dent about to take office, this broad­cast high­lights mul­ti­ple (and esca­lat­ing) crises with which he must deal. The avail­able evi­dence sug­gests that his ene­mies in the Under­ground Reich are delib­er­ately heat­ing things up for him, and this pro­gram sets forth analy­sis of who is doing this and how they are doing it. Deriv­a­tive of the car­tel sys­tem put in place at the end of the First World War, the Third Reich drew sus­te­nance from those eco­nomic rela­tion­ships to go under­ground at the end of the Sec­ond World War and per­pet­u­ate itself in Mafia-like style through a global money machine that (today) stands astride the world’s econ­omy. This pro­gram iden­ti­fies the pieces of the jig­saw puz­zle that the Under­ground Reich has assem­bled to sub­vert and destroy the Obama admin­is­tra­tion and the United States.

Cen­tral to an under­stand­ing of this analy­sis is the con­cept of the “vir­tual state,” advanced by pro­fes­sor Philip Bob­bitt of the Uni­ver­sity of Texas. A func­tion­ing state in all senses of the word, the vir­tual state is unique in that it has no for­mal geo­graph­i­cal bound­aries, but exists in var­i­ous coun­tries and envi­ron­ments around the world. In his book The Shield of Achilles, Bob­bitt coined the term to char­ac­ter­ize al-Qaeda. The con­cept applies per­fectly to the Under­ground Reich. Through­out the pro­gram, the ele­ments of the vir­tual state of the Under­ground Reich are seen to be act­ing against the inter­ests of the Obama admin­is­tra­tion and for the geopo­lit­i­cal strate­gies of the Under­ground Reich, uti­liz­ing polit­i­cal fronts around the world and pow­er­ful cor­po­rate inter­ests con­trol­ling the opinion-forming media.

Begin­ning with review of the Hamas char­ter, the broad­cast high­lights the explic­itly Nazi char­ac­ter of this orga­ni­za­tion. The Mus­lim Broth­er­hood is one of the piv­otal ele­ments of the “vir­tual state” that is the Under­ground Reich. Al-Qaeda, too, is deriv­a­tive of the Broth­er­hood. The Brotherhood’s oper­a­tions in the Mid­dle East and South Asia con­sti­tute two of the ele­ments heatin’ it up for Obama. In addi­tion, Broth­er­hood and Under­ground Reich media ele­ments main­tain the ele­vated tem­per­a­ture. Among the fac­tors influ­enc­ing the Israeli deci­sion to act against Hamas is the pop­u­lar effect on the Israeli pub­lic of the mur­der of two Ortho­dox Jews in the Mum­bai mas­sacre and the emo­tional impact of the nation-wide broad­cast of their orphaned toddler’s tears for his mur­dered par­ents. As fore­cast in FTR 657, the Mum­bai inci­dent height­ened ten­sions between Pak­istan and India, caus­ing Pak­istan to rede­ploy sig­nif­i­cant num­bers of troops away from the tribal areas adja­cent to Afghanistan. This has greatly enabled the Tal­iban and weak­ened the posi­tion of the incom­ing Obama admin­is­tra­tion, whose expressed intent on shoring up the war effort in Afghanistan was denounced by al-Qaeda’s Ayman al-Zawahiri. Do not lose sight of the fact that the Mum­bai attacks were per­pe­trated by a Mus­lim Broth­er­hood affil­i­ate, the Lashkar-e-Taiba.

Not­ing the pri­macy of the Under­ground Reich in the GOP, even as Obama is prepar­ing to assume office, the Bush admin­is­tra­tion has con­cluded a secu­rity treaty with Geor­gia, mod­eled on one recently con­cluded with the Ukraine, whose pres­i­dent is cozy with the descen­dants of the fas­cist OUN/B.[1. To approach this com­pli­cated sub­ject, For The Record pro­grams 529 and 647 may be help­ful to newer lis­ten­ers. Anti-fascist Archives 36 and 37 go into his­tor­i­cal and polit­i­cal dynam­ics at great length.] With added pres­sure on its south­ern and west­ern flanks, Rus­sia fig­ures to shore up its mil­i­tary cor­re­spon­dents and client states such as Iran and Syria in the South, thereby heatin’ it up for Obama still fur­ther in the Mid­dle East.

Here at home, the ther­mo­stat is being turned up on Obama as well. After dis­cussing the sus­pi­cious death of a key GOP oper­a­tive with infor­ma­tion about elec­toral theft and (pos­si­bly) the McCain campaign’s com­mu­ni­ca­tion with Geor­gian per­son­nel in the run-up to last summer’s war with Rus­sia, the pro­gram notes that Karl Rove is ratch­et­ing up dis­cus­sion of the Blago­je­vich con­nec­tions to the slum­lord milieu to which Obama belonged in Chicago. (He’s been doing that, recently, on Fox News, whose sec­ond largest stock­holder is Prince Alwaleed of Saudi Ara­bia, who does fund rais­ing telethons for Hamas in his native coun­try.) As noted in FTR 654, Rove is linked to the same slum­lord milieu that brack­ets Obama and Blago­je­vich. Last, but cer­tainly not least, in the fac­tors heatin’ it up for Obama is the econ­omy. A report from the Fed­eral Reserve Bank of Mineapo­lis indi­cates that a num­ber of reported aspects of the finan­cial cri­sis are mytho­log­i­cal. Is the finan­cial cri­sis a delib­er­ate attempt by Under­ground Reich to weaken and/or destroy Amer­ica? Is it a delib­er­ate attempt by the GOP “move­ment con­ser­v­a­tives” to force the elim­i­na­tion of social pro­grams to which they are opposed?

Pro­gram High­lights Include: The sus­pi­cious death of a Bay Area pro-Israel activist in the run-up to the lat­est Mid­dle East war; review of Arab/Muslim Broth­er­hood and Nazi con­trol of the major media; deceased GOP oper­a­tive Michael Connell’s state­ment that he feared for his life and that he had been specif­i­cally threat­ened by Karl Rove; the fact that the bailout of the finan­cial insti­tu­tions equals 60 per­cent of GDP; the height­ened ten­sions between Rus­sia and Ukraine over the latter’s attempts at join­ing NATO.

1. Begin­ning with review of the Hamas char­ter, the broad­cast high­lights the explic­itly Nazi char­ac­ter of this organization.

” . . . Hamas, whose char­ter calls for the Jew­ish state’s destruc­tion, is urg­ing a cam­paign of sui­cide bomb­ings in Israel. . . .”

“Pales­tini­ans , Israelis Bit­ter over Civil­ian Toll” by Richard Boudreaux and Ahmed Burai [Los Ange­les Times]; San Jose Mer­cury News; 12/30/2008; pp. 1A-9A.)

2. Illus­trat­ing the fas­cist nature of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and its Pales­tin­ian off­shoot Hamas–the anti-Semitism expressed here has def­i­nite Euro­pean fas­cist over­tones. Note the ref­er­ences to the Jews being behind all wars and rev­o­lu­tions, con­trol­ling finance and media and the ref­er­ences to “Jew­ish con­trol” or gen­e­sis of the Freema­sons, the Rotary Club, etc. This is straight Nazi/fascist ide­ol­ogy. Note also the ref­er­ences to the Pro­to­cols of the Elders of Zion.

“ . . . For our strug­gle against the Jews is extremely wide-ranging and grave, so much so that it will need all the loyal efforts we can wield, to be fol­lowed by fur­ther steps and rein­forced by suc­ces­sive bat­tal­ions from the mul­ti­far­i­ous Arab and Islamic world, until the ene­mies are defeated and Allah’s vic­tory pre­vails. …The prophet, prayer and peace be upon him, said: The time will not come until Mus­lims will fight the Jews (and kill them); until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: O Mus­lim! There is a Jew hid­ing behind me, come on and kill him!”

(“The Hamas, MI6, BBC Axis” by Melanie Phillips; Melanie Phillips’ Diary; 6/18/2007.)

3. In typ­i­cal fascist/Nazi style, they blame the World Wars and com­mu­nism on “the Jews”!

“The ene­mies have been schem­ing for a long time, and they have con­sol­i­dated their schemes, in order to achieve what they have achieved. They took advan­tage of key ele­ments in unfold­ing events, and accu­mu­lated a huge and influ­en­tial mate­r­ial wealth which they put to the ser­vice of imple­ment­ing their dream. This wealth [per­mit­ted them to] take over con­trol of the world media such as news agen­cies, the press, pub­li­ca­tion houses, broad­cast­ing and the like. [They also used this] wealth to stir rev­o­lu­tions in var­i­ous parts of the globe in order to ful­fill their inter­ests and pick the fruits. They stood behind the French and the Com­mu­nist Rev­o­lu­tions and behind most of the rev­o­lu­tions we hear about here and there.”

(Idem.)

4. Note the ref­er­ence to the Pro­to­cols of the Elders of Zion and the asser­tion that the Rotary Clubs, Lions Clubs, etc., were “Zion­ist” orga­ni­za­tions. This is pure, unadul­ter­ated Nazi dogma.

“They also used the money to estab­lish clan­des­tine orga­ni­za­tions which are spread­ing around the world, in order to destroy soci­eties and carry out Zion­ist inter­ests. Such orga­ni­za­tions are: the Freema­sons, Rotary Clubs, Lions Clubs, B’nai B’rith and the like. All of them are destruc­tive spy­ing orga­ni­za­tions. They also used the money to take over con­trol of the Impe­ri­al­ist states and made them col­o­nize many coun­tries in order to exploit the wealth of those coun­tries and spread their cor­rup­tion therein. As regards local and world wars, it has come to pass and no one objects, that they stood behind World War I, so as to wipe out the Islamic Caliphate. They col­lected mate­r­ial gains and took con­trol of many sources of wealth. They obtained the Bal­four Dec­la­ra­tion and estab­lished the League of Nations in order to rule the world by means of that orga­ni­za­tion. They also stood behind World War II, where they col­lected immense ben­e­fits from trad­ing with war mate­ri­als and pre­pared for the estab­lish­ment of their state. They inspired the estab­lish­ment of the United Nations and the Secu­rity Coun­cil to replace the League of Nations, in order to rule the world by their inter­me­di­ary. There was no war that broke out any­where with­out their fin­ger­prints on it…Their scheme has been laid out in the Pro­to­cols of the Elders of Zion, and their present [con­duct] is the best proof of what is said there… Within the cir­cle of the con­flict with world Zion­ism, the Hamas regards itself the spear­head and the avant-garde. It joins its efforts to all those who are active on the Pales­tin­ian scene, but more steps need to be taken by the Arab and Islamic peo­ples and Islamic asso­ci­a­tions through­out the Arab and Islamic world in order to make pos­si­ble the next round with the Jews, the mer­chants of war. . . .”

(Idem.)

5. In the run-up to the cur­rent round of hos­til­i­ties, a Bay Area activist on behalf of Israel died in highly sus­pi­cious fashion.

“It was a bizarre and abrupt way to die for a man who, by all accounts, went at life full-bore and was fit and agile from rid­ing his bicy­cle every­where he went.

But as San Fran­cisco police combed over the evi­dence Tues­day, inves­ti­ga­tors said this is what appears to have hap­pened: Dr. Daniel J. Kli­man, an Alameda physi­cian and one of the Bay Area’s fore­most pro-Israel activists, stepped into an open ele­va­tor shaft by acci­dent last week and died.

His body was found Mon­day by work­ers inspect­ing an ele­va­tor in the his­toric, nine-story Sharon Build­ing at 55 New Mont­gomery St., where Kli­man appar­ently plunged to his death Nov. 25. As news of the dis­cov­ery fil­tered out Tues­day, his sup­port­ers and friends were in near dis­be­lief that some­one so dynamic could be gone. . . . Kli­man, 38, lived near the tem­ple in Oak­land and was per­haps best known as co-founder of S.F. Voice for Israel, a 4-year-old orga­ni­za­tion that vocif­er­ously demon­strates on behalf of Israeli causes. He also main­tained a prac­tice in Alameda as a doc­tor of inter­nal med­i­cine and was an ardent pro­po­nent of veg­e­tar­i­an­ism and alter­na­tive trans­porta­tion to cars.

He had been tak­ing Ara­bic lan­guage courses in the Sharon Build­ing for three years and was last seen, inves­ti­ga­tors said, on the night of Nov. 25, when he went there to attend a class on the sev­enth floor.

Police Inspec­tor Matt Krim­sky said Kli­man appar­ently fell through an open ele­va­tor door on the sev­enth floor, although the building’s man­ager insists the door must have been secured.

The ele­va­tor in that shaft was out of order at the time, build­ing man­ager Brad Bern­heim said. By design, doors to a mal­func­tion­ing ele­va­tor are clamped shut and can be opened only by a mechanic, said Erika Mon­ter­roza, spokes­woman for Cal/OSHA.

The details of how Kli­man wound up in the shaft are being inves­ti­gated by police and Cal/OSHA. Some in Kliman’s activist com­mu­nity won­dered Tues­day if he had been killed by some­one he loudly opposed in street demon­stra­tions over the years, but Krim­sky called that pos­si­bil­ity ‘beyond remote.’

‘There is no indi­ca­tion of any foul play at this point, even though I’ve been get­ting calls from con­spir­acy the­o­rists from every­where, even some­one who said they had infor­ma­tion from a seance,’ Krim­sky said. Faith Meltzer, a mem­ber of S.F. Voice for Israel, said she will push police to inves­ti­gate the mat­ter until all chance of homi­cide is eliminated.

‘It’s hard for me to believe this wasn’t delib­er­ate,’ Meltzer said. . . .”

“Israel Activist’s Mys­te­ri­ous Fall in Ele­va­tor Shaft” by Kevin Fagan; San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle; 12/3/2008; pp. A1-A10.

6. Among the fac­tors influ­enc­ing the Israeli deci­sion to act against Hamas is the pop­u­lar effect on the Israeli pub­lic of the mur­der of two Ortho­dox Jews in the Mum­bai mas­sacre and the emo­tional impact of their orphaned toddler’s tears.

“The cries of lit­tle Moshe Holtzberg wounded hearts Mon­day at a tear­ful memo­r­ial for his par­ents in India. ‘Mommy, mommy, mommy!’ he wailed, clutch­ing a toy bas­ket­ball while squirm­ing in the arms of mourn­ers at the Mum­bai syn­a­gogue. Then the tod­dler and the care­taker who res­cued him dur­ing the ter­ror­ist attacks boarded a jet along with the bod­ies of his par­ents and four other Jews slain at the Chabad House to fly to Israel–a place the curly haired 2-year-old had never seen. The wrench­ing scene at the ser­vice played over and over again on Israeli tele­vi­sion as gov­ern­ment offi­cials, Chabad lead­ers and rel­a­tives pre­pared for the funer­als of the vic­tims and the future of the orphaned Moshe. . . . Moshe was spir­ited out of Chabad House on Thurs­day by San­dra Samuel, a nanny who had worked at the cen­ter for years. She found him cry­ing beside his par­ents’ bod­ies, his pants drenched in blood. . . .”

“India Blames Pak­ista­nis, Calls for Pun­ish­ment” by Mark Lavie [AP]; San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle; 12/2/2008; p. A13.

7. Ana­lyz­ing the Mum­bai inci­dent, it becomes increas­ingly clear that there was com­plic­ity by ele­ments in Pakistan.

“New Delhi: As Islam­abad con­tin­ues to be in denial mode, India is com­pil­ing evi­dence about the role of Pakistan-based ele­ments in the ter­ror strikes for shar­ing it with the world besides the neigh­bour very soon.

The evi­dence, being put together, includes the con­fes­sion of the lone ter­ror­ist held in Mum­bai ter­ror attack Ajmal Amir Qasab, log­book recov­ered from the ves­sel in which the 10 ter­ror­ists came from Karachi, records of satel­lite phone used by the attack­ers and tran­script of con­ver­sa­tions between the attack­ers and their han­dlers in Pak­istan, the sources said.. . .”

“India Com­pil­ing Evi­dence to Share with Pak, Rest of World” [Press Trust of India]; NDTV.com; 1/3/2009.

8. As fore­casted, the Mum­bai inci­dent height­ened ten­sions between Pak­istan and India, caus­ing Pak­istan to rede­ploy sig­nif­i­cant num­bers of troops away from the tribal areas adja­cent to Afghanistan. This has greatly enabled the Taliban.

“Tal­iban mil­i­tants are behead­ing and burn­ing their way through Pak­istan’s pic­turesque Swat Val­ley, and res­i­dents say the insur­gents now con­trol most of the moun­tain­ous region far from the law­less tribal areas where jihadists thrive.

The dete­ri­o­rat­ing sit­u­a­tion in the for­mer tourist haven comes despite an army offen­sive that began in 2007 and an attempted peace deal. It is espe­cially wor­ri­some to Pak­istani offi­cials because the val­ley lies out­side the areas where al-Qaida and Tal­iban mil­i­tants have tra­di­tion­ally oper­ated and where the mil­i­tary is stag­ing a sep­a­rate offensive.

‘You can’t imag­ine how bad it is,’ said Muzaf­far ul-Mulk, a fed­eral law­maker whose home in Swat was attacked by bomb-toting assailants in mid-December, weeks after he left. ‘It’s worse day by day.’

The Tal­iban activ­ity in north­west Pak­istan also comes as the coun­try shifts forces east to the Indian bor­der because of ten­sions over last month’s ter­ror­ist attacks in Mum­bai, poten­tially giv­ing insur­gents more space to maneu­ver along the Afghan frontier. . . .”

“Scenic Pak­istani Val­ley Falls to Tal­iban Mil­i­tants” by Nahal Toosi [AP]; Yahoo.com; 12/29/2008.

9. While the Mid­dle East is explod­ing while Obama waits in the wings, the Bush admin­is­tra­tion is attempt­ing to fur­ther bully Rus­sia by con­clud­ing a secu­rity arrange­ment with Geor­gia, its hos­tile neigh­bor to the South. (Note that this type of pres­sure will almost cer­tainly heat things up in the Mid­dle East, where Rus­sia will attempt to re-arm and strengthen ele­ments such as Hezbol­lah and Hamas, benefic­di­aries of Russ­ian weaponry.)

“Months after Geor­gia fought a short, nasty war with its north­ern neigh­bor, the United States is mov­ing to shore up secu­rity ties with the for­mer Soviet Repub­lic. Agence France-Presse reports that Geor­gian offi­cials will sign a “strate­gic part­ner­ship” treaty on Jan. 4 in Wash­ing­ton. On Tues­day, the Depart­ment of State issued the first con­fir­ma­tion that the United States and Geor­gia would pur­sue a more for­mal secu­rity arrange­ment. In a response to ques­tions from reporters, State issued the fol­low­ing news release: ‘As Pres­i­dent [Mikheil] Saakashvili noted to the press on Decem­ber 22, the United States and Geor­gia are dis­cussing the text of a new bilat­eral char­ter that will out­line our enhanced coop­er­a­tion to help Geor­gia adance secu­rity, demo­c­ra­tic, and mar­ket eco­nomic reforms to strengthen Geor­gia, bol­ster our part­ner­ship, and deepen Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic inte­gra­tion. This char­ter is sim­i­lar to the one signed by the United States and Ukraine on Decem­ber 19 in Wash­ing­ton.’ This item has largely gone unre­ported in the U.S. media, but it comes as both Moscow and Tbil­isi con­tinue the post-war rhetoric. . . .”

“U.S., Geor­gia to Sign Strate­gic Pact” by Nathan Hodge; Dan­ger Room [Wired.com]; 12/26/2008.

10. Not­ing the State Department’s recently con­cluded arrange­ment with Ukraine, we should not for­get the quasi-fascist nature of the Ukrain­ian regime of Vik­tor Yuschenko, who has restored tdo power the suc­ces­sors to the OUN/B fas­cist orga­ni­za­tion that col­lab­o­rated with the SS in the atroc­i­ties com­mit­ted in the Soviet Union dur­ing World War II and then jumped to the Gehlen spy orga­ni­za­tion and the CIA after the war. (Yuschenko mar­ried the for­mer Yka­te­rina Chu­machenko, the point per­son for the Ukrain­ian fas­cist emi­gre com­mu­nity in the U.S. and in charge of Pres­i­den­tial lia­son dur­ing the Rea­gan admin­is­tra­tion.) Note the sim­i­lar­ity between the anti-Semitic rhetoric endorsed by Yuschenko and the screed that is the Hamas charter.

” A report by the British Helsinki Human Rights Group (BHHRG) notes that Vik­tor Yushchenko, the sup­pos­edly ‘pro-Western’ ‘demo­c­ra­tic’ can­di­date for the Ukrain­ian pres­i­dency, defended a large cir­cu­la­tion Ukrain­ian paper that in 2003 pub­lished a bizarre anti-Semitic tract claim­ing, among other things, that some 400,000 Jews par­tic­i­pated in the Nazi inva­sion of the Soviet Union in 1941. The paper’s edi­tor, Vasily Gruzin, is quoted via the Jew­ish Tele­graph Agency as say­ing in defense of his deci­sion to pub­lish the tract, ‘I per­son­ally have noth­ing against com­mon Jews, but rather against a small group of Jew­ish oli­garchs who con­trol Ukraine both eco­nom­i­cally and polit­i­cally. I believe the point of Zion­ism today is Jew­ish con­trol of the world, and we see this process at work in Ukraine today.’

The paper, Sil­ski visti, which sup­ports the Ukrain­ian ‘oppo­si­tion’ of Vik­tor Yushchenko, was ordered closed by a Ukrain­ian court in Jan­u­ary 2004 fol­low­ing charges brought by the Jew­ish Anti-Fascist Com­mit­tee that it was incit­ing eth­nic hatred. An English-language web­site on Ukrain­ian affairs repro­duces a press release dated 29 Jan­u­ary 2004 from the web­site of Vik­tor Yushchenko’s “Our Ukraine” party, in which Yushchenko responds to the court deci­sion as fol­lows: ‘The gov­ern­ment will get more and more upset with truth­ful infor­ma­tion in mass media the closer we get to elec­tions and it will not be sur­pris­ing to see increased pres­sure at other oppo­si­tional pub­li­ca­tions.’ (Note that the English-language archives cur­rently avail­able on the ‘Our Ukraine’ web­site only go back to July 2004.)The BHHRG report, titled ‘Shadow of Anti-Semitism over Ukraine’s Dis­puted Elec­tion’, also points to links between Yushchenko and the Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ist leader Andry Shkil, who is quoted favor­ably cit­ing Nazi ide­ol­o­gist Wal­ter Darré’s ideas on eugen­ics as well as Mein Kampf.

On Yushchenko’s sup­port for Shkil, German-Foreign-Policy.com (not an offi­cial site of the Ger­man For­eign Office, but rather a crit­i­cal watch­dog organ) writes [link in Ger­man]: Pre­cisely in the west­ern Ukrain­ian city of Lviv, a place where many thou­sands of Jews were mur­dered under the Nazi occu­pa­tion, Yushchenko’s elec­toral alliance sup­ported a lead­ing fig­ure of the extreme-right anti-Semitic party UNA-UNSO [Ukrain­ian National Assembly-Ukrainian National Self Defense]. The UNA-UNSO counts as mil­i­tantly anti-Russian and advo­cates a ‘Ukrainian-German-Spanish Axis.’ It belongs to the tra­di­tion of Ukrain­ian Nazi-collaborators.... The Ukrain­ian Nazi-collaborators were mem­bers of the ‘Orga­ni­za­tion of Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists’ (OUN(B)). The anti-Semitic nation­al­ist block ‘enjoyed the par­tic­u­lar pro­tec­tion of the Ger­man Abwehr’ [’Blutige Ouvertüre’, Die Zeit, 26/2001]. The Con­gress of Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists (KUN) is con­sid­ered the con­tem­po­rary suc­ces­sor orga­ni­za­tion of the OUN(B). It forms part of the elec­toral alliance of Vik­tor Yushchenko.”

“Europe’s Ukraine I: Vik­tor Yuschenko, Demo­c­rat and Anti-Semite?” by John Rosen­thal; Transat­lantic Intel­li­gencer; 12/02/2004.

11. Attempts at bul­ly­ing Rus­sia and mov­ing its old arch-enemies up to its bor­ders are pre­cip­i­tat­ing coun­ter­mea­sures by Rus­sia. Rus­sia has turned off the nat­ural gas spigot to the Ukraine and West­ern Europe.

“Fuel deliv­ery to four Euro­pean coun­tries fell below nor­mal Sat­ur­day as Russia’s state gas monop­oly with­held nat­ural gas from neigh­bor­ing Ukraine for the third con­sec­u­tive day. Ukraine warned that its gas pipeline sys­tem could expe­ri­ence “seri­ous dis­rup­tions” if a wors­en­ing price dis­pute isn’t set­tled in 10 to 15 days, threat­en­ing short­falls across Europe in the heart of win­ter. Gas flows to Poland, Roma­nia, Hun­gary and Bul­garia, all of which depend on pipelines that cross Ukraine, slumped on Sat­ur­day, offi­cials said. . . . Ukraine’s pro-Western pres­i­dent has enraged Rus­sia by push­ing for NATO mem­ber­ship for the for­mer Soviet state.”

“Russia-Ukraine Gas Fight Rip­ples West­ward” by Megan K. Smith [Los Ange­les Times]; San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle; 1/04/2009; p. A3.

12. While the heat is being turned up for Obama, a key Bush admin­is­tra­tion offi­cial died in a mys­te­ri­ous plane crash. His tes­ti­mony in ongo­ing inves­ti­ga­tions might have shed light on the theft of the 2000 and 2004 elec­tions, as well as the destruc­tion of White House e-mails. The late Michael Con­nell also did all of the McCain campaign’s com­puter work. He may have had infor­ma­tion about the McCain advi­sor and Geor­gia lob­by­ist Randy Sche­une­mann. Note the reports of Con­nell hav­ing been threat­ened by Karl Rove.

“Michael Con­nell, the Bush IT expert who has been directly impli­cated in the rig­ging of George Bush’s 2000 and 2004 elec­tions, was killed last night when his sin­gle engine plane crashed three miles short of the Akron air­port. Vel­vet Rev­o­lu­tion (“VR”), a non-profit that has been inves­ti­gat­ing Mr. Connell’s activ­i­ties for the past two years, can now reveal that a per­son close to Mr. Con­nell has recently been dis­cussing with a VR inves­ti­ga­tor how he can tell all about his work for George Bush. Mr. Con­nell told a close asso­ciate that he was afraid that George Bush and Dick Cheney would “throw [him] under the bus.”

A tip­ster close to the McCain cam­paign dis­closed to VR in July that Mr. Connell’s life was in jeop­ardy and that Karl Rove had threat­ened him and his wife, Heather. VR’s attor­ney, Cliff Arnebeck, noti­fied the United States Attor­ney Gen­eral , Ohio law enforce­ment and the fed­eral court about these threats and insisted that Mr. Con­nell be placed in pro­tec­tive cus­tody. VR also told a close asso­ciate of Mr. Connell’s not to fly his plane because of another tip that the plane could be sab­o­taged. Mr. Con­nell, a very expe­ri­enced pilot, has had to aban­don at least two flights in the past two months because of sus­pi­cious prob­lems with his plane. On Decem­ber 18, 2008, Mr. Con­nell flew to a small air­port out­side of Wash­ing­ton DC to meet some peo­ple. It was on his return flight the next day that he crashed.

On Octo­ber 31, Mr. Con­nell appeared before a fed­eral judge in Ohio after being sub­poe­naed in a fed­eral law­suit inves­ti­gat­ing the rig­ging of the 2004 elec­tion under the direc­tion of Karl Rove. The judge ordered Mr. Con­nell to tes­tify under oath at a depo­si­tion on Novem­ber 3rd, the day before the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. Vel­vet Rev­o­lu­tion received con­fi­den­tial infor­ma­tion that the White House was extremely con­cerned about Mr. Con­nell talk­ing about his ille­gal work for the White House and two Bush/Cheney 04 attor­neys were dis­patched to rep­re­sent him.

An asso­ciate of Mr. Connell’s told VR that Mr. Con­nell was involved with the destruc­tion of the White House emails and the set­ting up of the off-grid White House email system.

Mr. Con­nell han­dled all of John McCain’s com­puter work in the recent pres­i­den­tial cam­paign. VR has received direct evi­dence that the McCain cam­paign kept abreast of the legal devel­op­ments against Mr. Con­nell by read­ing the VR ded­i­cated web­site, www.rovecybergate.com.. . .”

“Bush Insider Who Planned to Tell All Killed in Plane Crash: Non-Profit Demands Full Fed­eral Inves­ti­ga­tion”; Yahoo.com; 12/20/2008.

13. While events abroad are heatin’ it up for the President-elect, the slum­lord milieu dis­cussed in FTR 654 is back on the front burner with the attention-garnering antics of Illi­nois Gov­er­nor Rod Blagojevich.

“. . . In terms of dol­lar amounts of cam­paign con­tri­bu­tions directly from Rezko in Illi­nois, the top four earn­ers were, the now deceased Pres­i­dent of the Cook County Board, John Stroger, Blago­je­vich, Chicago Mayor, Richard Daley, and Obama — in that order.

Rezko was the head of Stroger’s cam­paign finance com­mit­tee at the same time that he served on Obama US Sen­ate finance committee. . . .”

“Barack Obama-The Wiz­ard of Oz” by Eve­lyn Pringle; Scoop.co.NZ; 3/29/2008.

14. Karl Rove–part of the Rezko/Blagojevich slum­lord milieu dis­cussed in FTR #654 was heatin’ it up for Obama on Fox News. Fox and Rove focused on the Blago­je­vich scan­dal and how it might affect Obama’s administration.

“Karl Rove Takes on the Bush Legacy and the Chal­lenges Fac­ing President-elect Obama”; FoxNews.com; 12/28/2008.

15. Con­sum­mat­ing the domes­tic heat on the incom­ing Obama admin­is­tra­tion is the enor­mity of the eco­nomic cri­sis we are fac­ing. The bailout just enacted is roughly 60% of GDP!

” . . . The fed­eral gov­ern­ment com­mit­ted an addi­tional $800 bil­lion to two new loan pro­grams on Tues­day, bring­ing its cumu­la­tive com­mit­ment to finan­cial res­cue ini­tia­tives to a stag­ger­ing $8.5 tril­lion, accord­ing to Bloomberg News. That sum rep­re­sents almost 60 per­cent of the nation’s esti­mated gross domes­tic product. . .”

“Bailout Grows: Total Relief Pack­age Up to $8.5 Trillion–Nobody Knows Risk to Tax­payer” by Kath­leen Pen­der; San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle; 11/26/2008; p. A1.

16. Adding to the stun­ning eco­nomic news fac­ing Obama is the fact that, accord­ing to a report by the Fed­eral Reserve Bank of Min­neapo­lis, much of the ratio­nale for the bailout rests on myth.

“Work­ing Paper 666: Facts and Myths about the Finan­cial Cri­sis of 2008″ by Patrick J. Kehoe, V.V. Chari and Lawrence J. Chris­tiano; Fed­eral Reserve Bank of Mineapo­lis; Octo­ber 2008; pp.1–3. (PDF)