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

For The Record  

FTR #890 Tracking from the Far Right: Update on the Adventures of Eddie the Friendly Spook

Dave Emory’s entire life­time of work is avail­able on a flash dri­ve that can be obtained here. The new dri­ve is a 32-giga­byte dri­ve that is cur­rent as of the pro­grams and arti­cles post­ed by late spring of 2015. The new dri­ve (avail­able for a tax-deductible con­tri­bu­tion of $65.00 or more) is com­plete through the late spring of 2015.

WFMU-FM is pod­cast­ing For The Record–You can sub­scribe to the pod­cast HERE.

You can sub­scribe to e‑mail alerts from Spitfirelist.com HERE.

You can sub­scribe to RSS feed from Spitfirelist.com HERE.

You can sub­scribe to the com­ments made on pro­grams and posts–an excel­lent source of infor­ma­tion in, and of, itself HERE.

This pro­gram was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment

Intro­duc­tion: Hav­ing just pre­sent­ed two pro­grams set­ting forth Glenn Green­wald’s and Pierre Omid­yar’s far-right polit­i­cal her­itage, we review, and fur­ther devel­op analy­sis of, sim­i­lar forces man­i­fest­ing through “L’Af­faire Snow­den.”

Assaults on the vac­u­um-clean­er elec­tron­ic intel­li­gence gath­er­ing of the NSA and GCHQ (Britain’s equiv­a­lent of the NSA) began in the 1990’s with Ger­many’s assault on the Men­with Hill (York­shire) facil­i­ty in the UK, charg­ing that it was being used for indus­tri­al espi­onage. This cued a year-long Euro­pean Par­lia­ment inves­ti­ga­tion of the ECHELON net­work (also known as the “Five Eyes” spy­ing club), which con­clud­ed in Sep­tem­ber of 2001 that many oth­er Euro­pean coun­tries also had the same capa­bil­i­ties.

An excerpt from FTR #166, record­ed in August of 1999, reviews the indus­tri­al spy­ing charges against Men­with Hill and brings into focus the far-right, fas­cist nature of the forces attack­ing the NSA/GCHQ liai­son. The attack on ECHELON fea­tured the Free Con­gress Foun­da­tion, a far-right polit­i­cal action group with strong, active links to the Under­ground Reich.

The Free Con­gress foun­da­tion was found­ed by right-wing lynch­pin Paul Weyrich in 1974, the year after he start­ed the Her­itage Foun­da­tion. Weyrich had ear­li­er par­tic­i­pat­ed in an attempt to take over the Amer­i­can Inde­pen­dent Par­ty, an amal­gam of Ku Klux Klans­men and John Birchers. Found with­in the FCF are indi­vid­u­als and ele­ments asso­ci­at­ed with the milieu of the Anti-Bol­she­vik Bloc of Nations.

The Anti-Bol­she­vik Bloc of Nations (ABN) was essen­tial­ly a re-nam­ing of the Com­mit­tee of Sub­ju­gat­ed Nations, formed by Hitler in 1943.

Com­prised of fas­cist orga­ni­za­tions allied with Hitler, such as the Orga­ni­za­tion of Ukrain­ian Nationalists/Bandera or OUN/B and Hun­gar­i­an Arrow Cross, the ABN advo­cat­ed an anti­com­mu­nist approach that not only favored the rolling back of Sovi­et influ­ence from East­ern Europe, but the dis­so­lu­tion of the Sovi­et Union into its con­stituent republics.

The Free Con­gress Foun­da­tion appears to have been heav­i­ly involved in the dis­so­lu­tion of the for­mer Sovi­et Union, uti­liz­ing indi­vid­u­als asso­ci­at­ed with both OVN/B and Arrow Cross, FCF’s direc­tor of “lib­er­a­tion” activ­i­ties was Las­z­lo Pas­tor, the Arrow Cross vet­er­an who cement­ed the Nazi emi­gre milieu in the Unit­ed States into a wing of the Repub­li­can par­ty.

In light of FCF’s involve­ment with, and pro­mo­tion of, ele­ments like ABN, it is odd that they have become born-again civ­il lib­er­tar­i­ans vis-a-vis ECHELON, Men­with Hill, etc. The broad­cast high­lights the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the FCF may, in fact, be func­tion­ing as a Fifth Col­umn move­ment for Ger­man indus­try and the “Under­ground Reich.”

After ana­lyz­ing the FCF against the back­ground of both the attack on Men­with Hill and “L’Af­faire Snow­den,” we note Grover Norquist’s efforts against NSA/GCHQ. Grover Norquist has been run­ning inter­fer­ence for the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and ter­ror­ist ele­ments asso­ci­at­ed with al-Qae­da and the Bank al-Taqwa. Might Norquist’s antipa­thy to NSA spy­ing have some­thing to do with his ongo­ing asso­ci­a­tion with ter­ror­ists?

Fur­ther sup­ple­ment­ing our dis­cus­sion, we reprise a sec­tion of FTR #706, an inter­view with the hero­ic John Lof­tus. Note our dis­cus­sion of NSA elec­tron­ic vac­u­um-clean­ing. This was record­ed more than three years before every­one was “shocked, shocked” by the so-called dis­clo­sures of Edward Snow­den. Again, this is not new! 

Next, we review Snow­den’s far-right views, his oppo­si­tion to Social Secu­ri­ty and sup­port for a return to the Gold Stan­dard, in par­tic­u­lar. QUICK: Who said this?: “ ‘It seems like the [Unit­ed States Dol­lar] and [Great Britain’s Pound] are both like­ly to go the way of the zim­babwe dol­lar,’ he sug­gested in March 2009. ‘Espe­cially with that cock­bag Bernanke decid­ing to mag­i­cally print 1.2T more dol­lars.’ . . . Oba­ma was ‘plan­ning to deval­ue the cur­rency absolute­ly as fast as the­o­ret­i­cally pos­si­ble,’ he wrote. . . .” Ted Cruz? Don­ald Trump? Mar­co Rubio? Paul Ryan? Rand Paul?

No, it is Edward Snow­den. Note how this jibes with Paul Krug­man’s descrip­tion of the GOP pri­ma­ry field:  ” . . . . After all, Paul Ryan, the speak­er of the House, not only berat­ed Ben Bernanke, Ms. Yellen’s pre­de­ces­sor, for poli­cies that alleged­ly risked infla­tion (which nev­er mate­ri­al­ized), but he also dab­bled in con­spir­a­cy the­o­riz­ing, accus­ing Mr. Bernanke of act­ing to ‘bail out fis­cal pol­i­cy.’ . . . But Wall Street isn’t the only source of malign pres­sure on the Fed, and in the actu­al­ly exist­ing U.S. polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion, such a bill would essen­tial­ly empow­er the cranks — the gold-stan­dard-lov­ing, hyper­in­fla­tion-is-com­ing types who dom­i­nate the mod­ern G.O.P., and have spent the past five or six years try­ing to bul­ly mon­e­tary pol­i­cy mak­ers into ceas­ing and desist­ing from their efforts to pre­vent eco­nom­ic dis­as­ter.”
Pro­gram High­lights Include:
  • Review of the pro­found involve­ment of the OUN/B with Free Con­gress Foun­da­tion.
  • Review of the Euro­pean Par­lia­men­t’s Sep­tem­ber, 2001 report on the ECHELON net­work, a report that con­clud­ed that many Euro­pean coun­tries had the same abil­i­ty.
  • Review of Snow­den’s views on Social Secu­ri­ty: ” . . . Snow­den wrote that the elder­ly ‘wouldn’t be fuck­ing help­less if you weren’t send­ing them fuck­ing checks to sit on their ass and lay in hos­pi­tals all day.’ ”
  • Review of Mr. Emory’s first post on “L’Af­faire Snow­den,” in which he won­dered why every­one was so “shocked, shocked” since the infor­ma­tion had been pub­lic for years.
1a. We begin by review­ing the first post Mr. Emory did on “L’Af­faire Snow­den.” (Mr. Emory was not yet back on the air at this point.)

Planet of the Apps: On the Subject of those “Shocking” Disclosures about NSA/GCHQ Electronic Surveillance (Y‑A-W‑N!)

Mr. Emory not­ed:

COMMENT: We expe­ri­enced a mix­ture of gen­uine amuse­ment and revul­sion at the screech­ing over “dis­clo­sures” that NSA and GCHQ (the U.K. equiv­a­lent of NSA) are engaged in a mas­sive data min­ing and sur­veil­lance pro­gram involv­ing cell phones and inter­net com­mu­ni­ca­tions.

For open­ers, this isn’t new, to say the least. It’s been going on for decades, scru­ti­niz­ing phone calls at first, and then inter­net com­mu­ni­ca­tions. On top of that, oth­er coun­tries do the same thing, includ­ing Ger­many.

The inter­net itself was devel­oped by DARPA. DARPA also devel­oped the GPS. The smart phones peo­ple have so enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly embraced have a GPS func­tion that can’t be dis­abled.  That GPS func­tion per­mits the user to be pin­point­ed to with­in 30 feet of their exact loca­tion at any time. Users of these phones think noth­ing of putting their finan­cial infor­ma­tion, their tastes in recre­ation and just about every­thing else on these devices.

In the Bay Area, radio ads are hyp­ing a new “app” which will per­mit smart phone users to phys­i­cal­ly mon­i­tor their premis­es and their chil­dren’s where­abouts, as well as lock­ing doors. Smart phone are not secure. Cyber crim­i­nals must be lick­ing their chops in antic­i­pa­tion of co-opt­ing that func­tion.

Google and Yahoo make no bones about track­ing and mon­i­tor­ing peo­ple’s e‑mail and inter­net use. Google is putting the whole world online with their Google Earth func­tion. They make no bones about shar­ing this infor­ma­tion with oth­er insti­tu­tions, gov­ern­men­tal and cor­po­rate.

With the devel­op­ment of social net­works (also aid­ed by the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty), those smart phones and the inter­net have made any con­cept of pri­va­cy fun­da­men­tal­ly obso­lete!  Peo­ple have enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly embraced these devel­op­ments! They would do well to stop their whin­ing.

It is also inter­est­ing to note that none of the crit­ics of Echelon/Menwith Hill/PRISM have raised any objec­tion what­so­ev­er to T‑Mobile, owned by Deutsche Telekom, which is con­trolled by the Ger­man gov­ern­ment. This was autho­rized by the Bush admin­is­tra­tion. (See excerpt below.) It is a safe bet that BND-Ger­man intelligence–monitors all calls made on T‑mobile.  Deutsche Telekom–parent com­pa­ny of T‑Mobile and MetroPCS–is used by the BND. BND does the same thing. Not inci­den­tal­ly, T‑mobile owns Metro PCS.  If you use T‑Mobile or Metro PCS, you are being spied on by the Ger­man gov­ern­ment. Enjoy, civ­il lib­er­tar­i­ans!

It is of more than a lit­tle sig­nif­i­cance that the ini­tial attacks on the Ech­e­lon sys­tem and the Men­with Hill GCHQ/NSA sta­tion in the U.K. came large­ly from the Free Con­gress Foun­da­tion (inex­tri­ca­bly linked with the far right and the Under­ground Reich) and Ger­many (which has the same capa­bil­i­ty!) Those attacks inten­si­fied after 9/11. 

There are indi­ca­tions that the 9/11 attacks may have much to do with the Ger­man-dri­ven neg­a­tive pub­lic­i­ty about NSA/GCHQ sig­nals intel­li­gence. A report by the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment about Men­with Hill and Ech­e­lon was released just before 9/11. (Be sure to see excerpts below.) 

We sus­pect that much of the neg­a­tive pub­lic­i­ty the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion is receiv­ing recent­ly comes from GOP/Underground Reich ele­ments seek­ing to alien­ate the so-called “pro­gres­sive sec­tor” from the Democ­rats, in antic­i­pa­tion of upcom­ing elec­tions. (Oba­ma con­tin­ues to prove “gam­able” in his efforts to pla­cate the GOP. Comey’s appointment–see below–is typ­i­cal and will like­ly prove dis­as­trous.)

From the dis­clo­sure of this oper­a­tion to the pub­lic­i­ty sur­round­ing the “Olympic Games” cre­ation of Stuxnet to the Wik­iLeaks tor­rent, we are see­ing information/programs begun under the Bush admin­is­tra­tions sur­fac­ing to cre­ate embar­rass­ment for Oba­ma.

The Naz­i­fied GOP sure­ly knows how unpop­u­lar their agen­da is with most Americans–they seek to gut Social Secu­ri­ty and Medicare. Their best hope at the polls is to gen­er­ate suf­fi­cient apa­thy, par­tic­u­lar­ly among younger vot­ers, to enable them to game anoth­er elec­tion.

If the GOP does get back into office with Repub­li­can majori­ties in both hous­es of Con­gress, watch out! 

They will not wait for the wave of pop­ulist out­rage over their pro­grams to sweep them out of office. Some sort of mon­strous event will be allowed to happen–or created–that will eclipse the out­rage and send us into war and bank­rupt­cy at the same time. . . .

1b. The pro­gram begins analy­sis of the fascist/far right nature of the attacks on NSA/GCHQ by intro­duc­ing one of the cen­tral ele­ments of dis­cus­sion: the Free Con­gress Foun­da­tion.  In 2009, we not­ed the pres­sure by Ger­many to remove the vital Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Agency instal­la­tion in Men­with Hill, Eng­land and the relat­ed ECHELON elec­tron­ic intel­li­gence net­work. (The first item of dis­cus­sion is an excerpt from FTR #166, record­ed in August of 1999.)

Scape­goat­ing NSA indus­tri­al espi­onage alleged­ly con­duct­ed from the Men­with Hill base for some of its eco­nom­ic dif­fi­cul­ties, Ger­many has com­plained bit­ter­ly through both media and polit­i­cal chan­nels. Inter­est­ing­ly, the Free Con­gress Foun­da­tion has recent­ly begun com­plain­ing about the ECHELON net­work (includ­ing the Men­with Hill instal­la­tion).

This orga­ni­za­tion’s burn­ing inter­est in pro­tect­ing the civ­il lib­er­ties of Amer­i­can cit­i­zens (and for­eign busi­ness­es) is more than a lit­tle strange in light of some of the insti­tu­tions and ele­ments which it embraces.

2. Next, we review infor­ma­tion about the Free Con­gress Foun­da­tion, the “civ­il lib­er­tar­i­ans” who’ve so loud­ly protest­ed against ECHELON.

The Free Con­gress foun­da­tion was found­ed by right-wing lynch­pin Paul Weyrich in 1974, the year after he start­ed the Her­itage Foun­da­tion. Weyrich had ear­li­er par­tic­i­pat­ed in an attempt to take over the Amer­i­can Inde­pen­dent Par­ty, an amal­gam of Ku Klux Klans­men and John Birchers. Found with­in the FCF are indi­vid­u­als and ele­ments asso­ci­at­ed with the milieu of the Anti-Bol­she­vik Bloc of Nations.

The Anti-Bol­she­vik Bloc of Nations (ABN) was essen­tial­ly a re-nam­ing of the Com­mit­tee of Sub­ju­gat­ed Nations, formed by Hitler in 1943.

Com­prised of fas­cist orga­ni­za­tions allied with Hitler, such as the Orga­ni­za­tion of Ukrain­ian Nationalists/Bandera or OUN/B and Hun­gar­i­an Arrow Cross, the ABN advo­cat­ed an anti­com­mu­nist approach that not only favored the rolling back of Sovi­et influ­ence from East­ern Europe, but the dis­so­lu­tion of the Sovi­et Union into its con­stituent republics.

The Free Con­gress Foun­da­tion appears to have been heav­i­ly involved in the dis­so­lu­tion of the for­mer Sovi­et Union, uti­liz­ing indi­vid­u­als asso­ci­at­ed with both OVN/B and Arrow Cross, FCF’s direc­tor of “lib­er­a­tion” activ­i­ties was Las­z­lo Pas­tor, the Arrow Cross vet­er­an who cement­ed the Nazi emi­gre milieu in the Unit­ed States into a wing of the Repub­li­can par­ty.

In light of FCF’s involve­ment with, and pro­mo­tion of, ele­ments like ABN, it is odd that they have become born-again civ­il lib­er­tar­i­ans vis-a-vis ECHELON, Men­with Hill, etc. The broad­cast high­lights the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the FCF may, in fact, be func­tion­ing as a Fifth Col­umn move­ment for Ger­man indus­try and the “Under­ground Reich.”

The text is from “The Free Con­gress Foun­da­tion Goes East” by Russ Bel­lant and Louis Wolf, from Covert Action Infor­ma­tion Bul­letin Issue #35.

“The Free Con­gress Foun­da­tion Goes East” by Russ Bel­lant and Louis Wolf; Covert Action Infor­ma­tion Bul­letin #35; Fall/1990.

With the rapid pace of polit­i­cal change sweep­ing East­ern Europe and the Union of Sovi­et Social­ist Republics, many oppor­tu­ni­ties have emerged for west­ern inter­ests to inter­vene in the pol­i­tics of  that region. In some cas­es, such a vac­u­um has been cre­at­ed that vir­tu­al strangers to the area sev­er­al years ago are now able to active­ly par­tic­i­pate in chang­ing those soci­eties from with­in.

These inter­ven­tions are not only being prac­ticed by main­stream orga­ni­za­tions. The involve­ment of the Unit­ed States Far Right brings with it the poten­tial revival of fas­cist orga­ni­za­tions in the East. One U.S. group, the Free Con­gress Foun­da­tion, has been play­ing a role in East­ern Euro­pean and Sovi­et pol­i­tics and has ties to Boris Yeltsin and the Inter-Region­al Deputies Group (IRG) in the U.S.S.R.

The Free Con­gress Foun­da­tion (FCF) was found­ed in 1974 by Paul Weyrich as the Com­mit­tee for the Sur­vival of a Free Con­gress. Weyrich, who had start­ed the Her­itage Foun­da­tion the year before, was heav­i­ly fund­ed by the Coors fam­i­ly for both orga­ni­za­tions.

Weyrich has kept one foot in the right wing of the Repub­li­can Par­ty while dal­ly­ing with the racist Right and the extreme Chris­t­ian Right. In 1976, for instance, he and a hand­ful of oth­er New Rights (William Rush­er, Mor­ton Black­well, Richard Viguerie) attempt­ed to take over the seg­re­ga­tion­ist  Amer­i­can Inde­pen­dent Par­ty (AIP), formed by George Wal­lace in 1968. The AIP was an amal­gam of Ku Klux Klan and John Birch Soci­ety ele­ments. . . .

. . . . The IRG was estab­lished by Andrei Sakharov, Boris Yeltsin and oth­ers in the sum­mer of 1989. By the end of that year, a train­ing school had been estab­lished for can­di­dates to put for­ward the IRG pro­gram. Their elec­toral suc­cess this year pro­pelled Yeltsin to the lead­er­ship of the Russ­ian Sovi­et Social­ist Repub­lic. He imme­di­ate­ly began forg­ing col­lab­o­ra­tive rela­tion­ships with the deeply reac­tionary lead­ers of the Lithuan­ian Sajud­is par­ty. The IRG has also served as a source of right-wing pres­sure on Gor­bachev to dis­man­tle social­ism and the Sovi­et Union itself.

One of the key dan­gers in this agen­da is the polit­i­cal vac­u­um it cre­ates, allow­ing ultra-nation­al­ist forces in a num­ber of republics to take pow­er. Such nation­al­ist and fas­cist ele­ments are already evi­dent in Lithua­nia and the Ukraine. In the lat­ter repub­lic, the pro-Nazi Orga­ni­za­tion of Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists (OUN) has gained influ­ence in sev­er­al par­ties and has mobi­lized large demon­stra­tions that hon­or OUN lead­ers who abet­ted Hitler’s war on the East­ern Front. Sim­i­lar­ly, sev­er­al deputies Sajud­is deputies served in Ger­man mil­i­tary units in 1944, and Sajud­is has made dec­la­ra­tions against eth­nic Rus­sians liv­ing in Lithua­nia. Accord­ing to some reports, Poles have also been den­i­grat­ed.

It should also be not­ed that the “rad­i­cal reformer” Boris Yeltsin has dal­lied with Pamy­at, the fore­most Russ­ian fas­cist group to emerge in the last sev­er­al years. Pamy­at’s vir­u­lent anti-Semi­tism com­pares to the crude pro­pa­gan­da of the ear­ly Ger­man Nazi Par­ty in the 1920’s.

The FCF is not entire­ly dis­con­nect­ed from the his­to­ry of the OUN. The Trea­sur­er of the FCF board is George­town Uni­ver­si­ty Pro­fes­sor Charles Moser. Moser is also serves on the edi­to­r­i­al advi­so­ry board of the Ukrain­ian Quar­ter­ly, pub­lished by the Ukrain­ian Con­gress Com­mit­tee of Amer­i­ca, a group dom­i­nat­ed by the OUN. The Ukrain­ian Quar­ter­ly has praised mil­i­tary units of the Ger­man SS and oth­er­wise jus­ti­fied the OUN alliance with the Third Reich which reflects the fact that the OUN was polit­i­cal­ly and mil­i­tar­i­ly allied with Hitler and the Nazi occu­pa­tion of the Ukraine.

The OUN, an inter­na­tion­al semi-secret cadre orga­ni­za­tion head­quar­tered in Bavaria, has received finan­cial assis­tance from the late Franz Joseph Strauss, the right­ist head of the Bavar­i­an state. Strauss also had a work­ing rela­tion­ship with Weyrich. . . .

. . . . Final­ly, FCF’s insin­u­a­tion into the pol­i­tics of the East must be judged by their selec­tion of Las­z­lo Pasz­tor to head their Lib­er­a­tion Sup­port Alliance, “which seeks to lib­er­ate peo­ples in Cen­tral and East­ern Euro­pean Nations.”

Pasz­tor’s involve­ment in East Euro­pean pol­i­tics began in World War II when he joined the youth orga­ni­za­tion of the Arrow Cross, the Nazi par­ty of Hun­gary.

When the Arrow Cross was installed in pow­er by a Ger­man com­man­do oper­a­tion, Pasz­tor was sent to Berlin to help facil­i­tate the liai­son between the Arrow Cross and Hitler.

Pasz­tor was tried and served two years in jail for his Arrow Cross activ­i­ties after an anti­com­mu­nist gov­ern­ment was elect­ed in 1945. He even­tu­al­ly came to the U.S. and estab­lished the eth­nic arm of the Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee for Richard Nixon. He brought oth­er Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tors from the East­ern front into the GOP. Some were lat­er found to have par­tic­i­pat­ed in mass mur­der dur­ing the war.

The dor­mant Arrow Cross has sur­faced again in Hun­gary, where there have been attempts to lift the ban on the orga­ni­za­tion. Pasz­tor spent sev­er­al months in Hun­gary. When Weyrich lat­er con­duct­ed train­ing there, he was pro­vid­ed a list of Pasz­tor’s con­tacts inside the coun­try. Weyrich reports that he con­duct­ed train­ing for the recent­ly formed and now gov­ern­ing New Demo­c­ra­t­ic Forum.

Pasz­tor claims to have assist­ed some of his friends in Hun­gary in get­ting NED funds through his advi­so­ry posi­tion with NED. [Note that Pierre Omid­yar has worked close­ly with NED–D.E.] In 1989 he spoke at the Her­itage Foun­da­tion under the spon­sor­ship of the Anti-Bol­she­vik Bloc of Nations (ABN), a multi­na­tion­al umbrel­la orga­ni­za­tion of emi­gre fas­cists and Nazis found­ed in alliance with Hitler in 1943. It is led by the OUN. Pasz­tor spoke for the “Hun­gar­i­an Orga­ni­za­tion” of ABN, which is the Arrow Cross. . . . .

3a. The year-long inves­ti­ga­tion con­clud­ed just before the 9/11/attacks. [The NSA/GCHQ vac­u­um clean­ing pre­dates 9/11–D.E.] The Euro­pean Par­lia­men­tary com­mis­sion con­clud­ed that many oth­er Euro­pean coun­tries had the same capa­bilty.

“World Brief­ing | Europe: Report On U.S. Spy Sys­tem” by Suzanne Daley; The New York Times; 9/6/2001.

[Notice when this was published–9/6/2001.–D.E.] . . . The Unit­ed States-led spy­ing sys­tem known as Ech­e­lon can mon­i­tor vir­tu­al­ly every com­mu­ni­ca­tion in the world — by e‑mail, phone or fax — that bounces off a satel­lite, the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment was told. But in report­ing on a year­long study of the sys­tem that was prompt­ed by con­cern that Amer­i­can com­pa­nies were using data from the sys­tem to gain a com­pet­i­tive edge, Ger­hard Schmid, a Ger­man mem­ber of the Par­lia­ment, said that many Euro­pean coun­tries had sim­i­lar abil­i­ties . . .

3b. Dip­ping into the archives once again, we not­ed in FTR #541 that Grover Norquist was among those protest­ing against the NSA’s vac­u­um clean­ing. Norquist has also been a major pro­mot­er of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and his involve­ment with the Ikhwan has placed him in the mid­dle of jihadist milieu whose cor­po­ratist eco­nom­ics and util­i­ty as proxy war­riors trumps any reser­va­tions he might have about such ele­ments.

As we saw in—among oth­er pro­grams—FTR#’s 435, 454, 467, 515, Norquist has served as a lob­by­ist and front man for the Islam­o­fas­cist milieu impli­cat­ed in 9/11. His Islam­ic Insti­tute is a Mus­lim Broth­er­hood beach­head in the Repub­li­can Par­ty. One can­not help but won­der if Norquist’s dis­taste for the NSA spy­ing pro­gram is root­ed in fear that his col­lab­o­ra­tion with the ter­ror­ist milieu impli­cat­ed in 9/11 might be revealed to a greater extent than it already has been.

“Polit­i­cal Oppo­sites Aligned Against Bush Wire­taps” by James Stern­gold; San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle; 1/26/2006; p. A1.

. . . . Lar­ry Dia­mond, a Demo­c­rat and a Hoover Insti­tu­tion senior fel­low, went to Bagh­dad in 2004 as a con­sul­tant for the U.S.-run Coali­tion Pro­vi­sion­al Author­i­ty, believ­ing strong­ly in the Bush administration’s goal of build­ing a democ­ra­cy there. While crit­i­cal of many aspects of the Iraq war, he has, he says, whole­heart­ed­ly sup­port­ed Pres­i­dent Bush’s aggres­sive approach to the war on ter­ror. Grover Norquist is one of the most influ­en­tial con­ser­v­a­tive Repub­li­cans in Wash­ing­ton. His week­ly ‘Wednes­day Meet­ing’ at his L Street office is a must for con­ser­v­a­tive strate­gists, and he has been called the ‘man­ag­ing direc­tor of the hard-core right’ by the lib­er­al Nation mag­a­zine. Per­haps the country’s lead­ing anti-tax enthu­si­ast, he is, like Dia­mond, a hawk in the war on ter­ror. Despite com­ing from oppo­site ends of the polit­i­cal spec­trum, they agree on one oth­er major issue, that the Bush administration’s pro­gram of domes­tic eaves­drop­ping by the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Agency with­out obtain­ing court war­rants has less to do with the war on ter­ror than with threats to the nation’s civ­il lib­er­ties. . . . .

4. Review­ing infor­ma­tion from FTR #706 (record­ed in May of 2010, more than 3 years before Snow­den’s so-called “rev­e­la­tions”), we dis­cussed the NSA/GCHQ coop­er­a­tive effort mon­i­tor­ing elec­tron­ic com­mu­ni­ca­tions.

Among the points dis­cussed are:

  • John reviews the devel­op­ment of the rela­tion­ship between the NSA and the GCHQ. In order to cir­cum­vent legal restric­tions on wire­tap­ping and elec­tron­ic sur­veil­lance, NSA (Amer­i­can) and GCHQ (British) wire­tap each other’s cit­i­zens and turn the infor­ma­tion over to appro­pri­ate oper­a­tives of the respec­tive agen­cies.
  • Sweep­ing the microwaves used to con­vey long dis­tance calls, the agen­cies mon­i­tor and record all long dis­tance calls.
  • Pro­grammed to respond to indi­vid­ual voic­es and key words, the sys­tem gen­er­ates tons of tran­scribed inter­cepts each day.
  • A par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­turb­ing aspect of this “vac­u­um clean­er” approach involves the posi­tion­ing of the Cana­di­an embassy in Wash­ing­ton. Jux­ta­posed to the hous­es of Con­gress, the embassy is locat­ed in such a way as to per­mit elec­tron­ic sur­veil­lance of Con­gress.
  • One of the method­olo­gies involved in such eaves­drop­ping involves the direct­ing of a laser beam against the win­dow­pane of a room to be mon­i­tored. The com­pres­sion and rar­efac­tion of the win­dow­pane gen­er­at­ed by the sound of the voic­es of the sur­veil­lance tar­gets reg­is­ters on the laser beam, which, in turn, prop­a­gates an audio repro­duc­tion of the con­ver­sa­tion.
  • The reten­tion and gen­er­a­tion of so much raw intel­li­gence input cre­ates a bot­tle­neck at the analy­sis lev­el, weak­en­ing the actu­al hands-on appli­ca­tion of the infor­ma­tion.

5. Next, we review Snow­den’s far-right views, his oppo­si­tion to Social Secu­ri­ty and sup­port for a return to the Gold Stan­dard, in par­tic­u­lar.

“Would You Feel Dif­fer­ently About Snow­den, Green­wald, and Assange If You Knew What They Real­ly Thought?” by Sean Wilentz; The New Repub­lic; 1/19/2014.

[Snow­den is post­ing under the moniker “The True­HOOHA”] At the time the stim­u­lus bill was being debat­ed, Snow­den also con­demned Obama’s eco­nomic poli­cies as part of a delib­er­ate scheme “to deval­ue the cur­rency absolute­ly as fast as the­o­ret­i­cally pos­si­ble.” (He favored Ron Paul’s call for the Unit­ed States to return to the gold stan­dard.) The social dis­lo­ca­tions of the finan­cial col­lapse both­ered him not at all. “Almost every­one was self-employed pri­or to 1900,” he assert­ed. “Why is 12% employ­ment [sic] so ter­ri­fy­ing?”In anoth­er chat-room exchange, Snow­den debat­ed the mer­its of Social Secu­ri­ty:

<TheTrue­HOOHA> save mon­ey? cut this social secu­rity bull­shit

<User 11> haha­hayes

<User 18> Yeah! Fuck old peo­ple!

<User 11> social secu­rity is bull­shit

<User 11> let’s just toss old peo­ple out in the street

<User 18> Old peo­ple could move in with [User11].

<User 11> NOOO

<User 11> they smell fun­ny

<TheTrue­HOOHA> Some­how, our soci­ety man­aged to make it hun­dreds of years with­out social secu­rity just fine . . . .

<TheTrue­HOOHA> Mag­i­cally the world changed after the New Deal, and old peo­ple became made of glass.

Lat­er in the same ses­sion, Snow­den wrote that the elder­ly “wouldn’t be fuck­ing help­less if you weren’t send­ing them fuck­ing checks to sit on their ass and lay in hos­pi­tals all day.”

6. More about Snow­den’s ultra-right wing views, at one with those of the GOP-con­trolled 114th Con­gress, whose elec­tion appears to have been great­ly aid­ed by the Snowden/WikiLeaks “op.” (The 42% turnout was small, even by off-year elec­tion stan­dards.)

“In 2009, Ed Snow­den Said Leak­ers “Should Be Shot.” Then He Became One” by Joe Mullin; Ars Tech­ni­ca; 6/26/2013.

. . . . Hired by the CIA and grant­ed a diplo­matic cov­er, he was a reg­u­lar old IT guy whose life was ele­vated by a hint of inter­na­tional intrigue. . . .

. . . . But as his first spring dawned in Switzer­land, it must have felt cold, for­eign, and expen­sive. Two days after his arrival in Switzer­land, Snow­den logged onto #arsi­fi­cial, a chan­nel on Ars Technica’s pub­lic Inter­net Relay Chat (IRC) serv­er. He’d been fre­quent­ing this space for a few months, chat­ting with whomev­er hap­pened to be hang­ing out. . . .

. . . . Snow­den logged on to the pub­lic IRC chat room with the same user­name he used across the Web: TheTrue­HOOHA. The chat room was a place he would return to on dozens of occa­sions over his years in Switzer­land, and his writ­ings fill in details about the man who may go down as the most famous leak­er in US his­tory. Over the years that he hung out in #arsi­fi­cial, Snow­den went from being a fair­ly insu­lated Amer­i­can to being a man of the world. He would wax philo­soph­i­cal about mon­ey, pol­i­tics, and in one notable exchange, about his uncom­pro­mis­ing views about gov­ern­ment leak­ers.

Four years lat­er, Snow­den took a job with a gov­ern­ment con­trac­tor for the spe­cific pur­pose of gath­er­ing secret infor­ma­tion on domes­tic spy­ing being done by the Nation­al Secu­rity Agency (NSA). In May, he hopped a plane to Hong Kong before the NSA knew where he was going. Once there, Snow­den began a process of leak­ing top-secret doc­u­ments to jour­nal­ists. Snowden’s first leak con­firmed what activists had sus­pected but couldn’t prove: there was a drag­net gov­ern­ment sur­veil­lance pro­gram col­lect­ing infor­ma­tion on every American’s phone calls. [This is man­i­fest­ly false, obvi­ous­ly, this was known well before.–D.E.]. . .

. . . . And he could be abra­sive. Snow­den didn’t short stocks just to make money—he did it because it was the right thing to do. He saw him­self as a pal­adin of the mar­kets, bring­ing “liq­uid­ity” to all. As for those who didn’t agree with him about the right­ness of the gold stan­dard or the need to elim­i­nate Social Secu­rity, they weren’t just mistaken—they were “retards.” . . .

. . . . A Ron Paul man and a short-sell­er

If Snow­den was get­ting com­fort­able in Gene­va, he was ful­ly at home in #arsi­fi­cial. In a depar­ture from his near­ly 800 posts in oth­er Ars forums, here he spoke blunt­ly on mat­ters of state. In the months fol­low­ing the 2008 elec­tion, he dis­cussed his embrace of a return to the gold stan­dard and his admi­ra­tion of its high­est-pro­file cham­pi­on.

In his more hyper­bolic moments, Snow­den spoke about the fall of the dol­lar in near-apoc­a­lyp­tic terms. “It seems like the USD and GBP are both like­ly to go the way of the zim­babwe dol­lar,” he sug­gested in March 2009. “Espe­cially with that cock­bag Bernanke decid­ing to mag­i­cally print 1.2T more dol­lars.” . . .

. . . . The high unem­ploy­ment rate that was on the way for the US didn’t phase Snow­den; those wring­ing their hands and seek­ing con­ven­tional Key­ne­sian solu­tions seemed soft­headed to him. Oba­ma was “plan­ning to deval­ue the cur­rency absolute­ly as fast as the­o­ret­i­cally pos­si­ble,” he wrote. Ris­ing unem­ploy­ment was a mere “cor­rec­tion,” a “nec­es­sary part of cap­i­tal­ism.” . . .

7. The pro­gram con­cludes with a com­par­i­son of Snow­den’s eco­nom­ic views and rhetoric with those of the “Star Wars bar­room” assem­blage of GOP pri­ma­ry can­di­dates. Note Snow­den’s empha­sis on the neces­si­ty of bring­ing back the Gold Stan­dard and his warn­ings about “that cock­bag Bernanke” and hyper-infla­tion.

“On Eco­nom­ic Stu­pid­i­ty” by Paul Krug­man; The New York Times; 2/12/2016.

. . . . Eco­nom­ic views on that side of the aisle range from fair­ly crazy to utter­ly crazy.

Lead­ing the charge of the utter­ly crazy is, you won’t be sur­prised to hear, Don­ald Trump, who has accused the Fed of being in the tank for Democ­rats. A few months ago he assert­ed that Janet Yellen, chair­woman of the Fed, hadn’t raised rates “because Oba­ma told her not to.” Nev­er mind the fact that infla­tion remains below the Fed’s tar­get and that in the light of cur­rent events even the Fed’s small Decem­ber rate hike now looks like a mis­take, as a num­ber of us warned it was.

Yet the truth is that Mr. Trump’s posi­tion isn’t that far from the Repub­li­can main­stream. After all, Paul Ryan, the speak­er of the House, not only berat­ed Ben Bernanke, Ms. Yellen’s pre­de­ces­sor, for poli­cies that alleged­ly risked infla­tion (which nev­er mate­ri­al­ized), but he also dab­bled in con­spir­a­cy the­o­riz­ing, accus­ing Mr. Bernanke of act­ing to “bail out fis­cal pol­i­cy.”

And even super­fi­cial­ly sen­si­ble-sound­ing Repub­li­cans go off the deep end on macro­eco­nom­ic pol­i­cy. John Kasich’s sig­na­ture ini­tia­tive is a bal­anced-bud­get amend­ment that would crip­ple the econ­o­my in a reces­sion, but he’s also a mon­e­tary hawk, argu­ing, bizarrely, that the Fed’s low-inter­est-rate pol­i­cy is respon­si­ble for wage stag­na­tion. . . .

. . . . Now, the idea of mak­ing the Fed account­able sounds good. But Wall Street isn’t the only source of malign pres­sure on the Fed, and in the actu­al­ly exist­ing U.S. polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion, such a bill would essen­tial­ly empow­er the cranks — the gold-stan­dard-lov­ing, hyper­in­fla­tion-is-com­ing types who dom­i­nate the mod­ern G.O.P., and have spent the past five or six years try­ing to bul­ly mon­e­tary pol­i­cy mak­ers into ceas­ing and desist­ing from their efforts to pre­vent eco­nom­ic dis­as­ter. [Like Edward Snowden–D.E.]. . .

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Discussion

3 comments for “FTR #890 Tracking from the Far Right: Update on the Adventures of Eddie the Friendly Spook”

  1. We and our friend Eddie can breathe a lit­tle eas­i­er.

    http://www.toptechnews.com/article/index.php?story_id=031000IIAX96
    .................................
    Bosch Unveils Cloud Ser­vices for Inter­net of Things

    By Shirley Siluk. Updat­ed March 11, 2016 12:55PM

    Post­ed March 11, 2016......

    “Ger­man glob­al engi­neer­ing and elec­tron­ics firm Bosch has launched a suite of cloud Rel­e­vant Prod­uct­s/Ser­vices-based ser­vices for the Inter­net of Things. The new ser­vices, designed to build on the com­pa­ny’s exist­ing sen­sor, soft­ware and con­nec­tiv­i­ty offer­ings, were announced dur­ing the Bosch Con­nect­ed­World 2016 event in Berlin that wrapped up yes­ter­day”........
    ‘A Com­pet­i­tive Edge’ in Secu­ri­ty

    “The Bosch IoT Cloud is the final piece of the puz­zle that com­pletes our soft­ware exper­tise,” Den­ner said Wednes­day dur­ing the con­fer­ence. He added that the new ser­vices, which the com­pa­ny will begin using in-house this year and offer to oth­er cus­tomers start­ing in 2017, rep­re­sent “a major mile­stone for Bosch.”

    One key ben­e­fit the com­pa­ny is high­light­ing is the fact that its cloud infra­struc­ture is locat­ed in Ger­many rather than in the U.S., where con­cerns over secu­ri­ty Rel­e­vant Products/Services have been raised in the wake of sur­veil­lance by the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Agency and bat­tles over Apple encryp­tion led by the Fed­er­al Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion.

    “Many com­pa­nies and con­sumers state that secu­ri­ty con­cerns keep them from using cloud tech­nolo­gies and con­nec­tiv­i­ty solu­tions,” Den­ner said in a state­ment from the con­fer­ence. He added that Bosch’s IoT cloud com­put­er cen­ter near Stuttgart pro­vides the com­pa­ny’s offer­ing with “a com­pet­i­tive edge.”

    Posted by GK | March 13, 2016, 6:51 am
  2. I just hap­pened across this inter­view with a 98 year-old Ger­man-Jew­ish “Crit­i­cal” Com­mu­nist (at the link), who tells that, on vis­it­ing Rus­sia in 1987, he found out from a Lat­vian Com­mu­nist he knew who spoke excel­lent Ger­man that Mikhail Gor­bachev was being top­pled by the fas­cist Pamy­at orga­ni­za­tion. Minute 35:40. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZs25lO_lVQ

    Posted by Atlanta Bill | October 18, 2018, 1:13 am
  3. @Atlanta Bill–

    It was FAR more than Pamy­at that oust­ed Gor­bachev.

    Pamy­at was very close to Yeltsin, but only one tile in a MUCH larg­er mosa­ic.

    You–and many oth­er listeners–need to access much of my ear­li­er work„ as long and cum­ber­some as much of it is.

    AFA #37 would be a good start.

    https://spitfirelist.com/anti-fascist-archives/rfa-37-how-the-united-states-lost-the-second-world-war/

    Best,

    Dave

    Posted by Dave Emory | October 18, 2018, 3:04 pm

Post a comment