Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.
The tag 'Unification Church' is associated with 40 posts.

FTR #1118 Update on the Coronavirus Outbreak

As the title indi­cates, the broad­cast updates a num­ber of points of inquiry and analy­sis con­cern­ing the Covid-19 out­break. Of par­tic­u­lar note in this con­text, is the fact that the CDC shut down the Army’s research facil­i­ty at Ft. Det­rick. In ear­ly August of 2019, short­ly before the record­ed start of the out­break in Wuhan, Chi­na, the U.S. Army Med­ical Research Insti­tute of Infec­tious Dis­eases at that facil­i­ty was closed down by the CDC due to mul­ti­ple safe­ty vio­la­tions. “All research at a Fort Det­rick lab­o­ra­to­ry that han­dles high-lev­el dis­ease-caus­ing mate­r­i­al, such as Ebo­la, is on hold indef­i­nite­ly after the Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion found the orga­ni­za­tion failed to meet biosafe­ty stan­dards. . . . The CDC sent a cease and desist order in July. After USAMRIID received the order from the CDC, its reg­is­tra­tion with the Fed­er­al Select Agent Pro­gram, which over­sees dis­ease-caus­ing mate­r­i­al use and pos­ses­sion, was sus­pend­ed. That sus­pen­sion effec­tive­ly halt­ed all bio­log­i­cal select agents and tox­in research at USAMRIID . . . .”

Much of the pro­gram cen­ters on an arti­cle from Glob­al Research. It is Mr. Emory’s opin­ion that J. Kyle Bass’s com­ments (see above) and the State Depart­ment crack­down on Chi­nese media are relat­ed to some of the ele­ments of dis­cus­sion in this arti­cle. He had heard alle­ga­tions for weeks that there was dis­cus­sion in Chi­nese media about the virus hav­ing orig­i­nat­ed in the Unit­ed States. Up until this arti­cle came to his atten­tion, he had seen noth­ing to that effect.

NB: Although West­ern media and offi­cial treat­ment of Chi­nese media pro­nounce­ments on the coro­n­avirus’s ori­gin being in the U.S. will be dis­missed as “fake news,” “pro­pa­gan­da,” etc., the spec­u­la­tion in a major Japan­ese TV broad­cast and the analy­sis pre­sent­ed in a Tai­wanese sci­en­tif­ic video pre­sen­ta­tion are not eas­i­ly dis­missed as “Com­mu­nist Chi­nese dis­in­for­ma­tion.” It is alto­geth­er dubi­ous that major Japan­ese media or Tai­wanese sci­en­tif­ic pre­sen­ta­tion would car­ry water for the Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Par­ty.

The arti­cle rais­es a num­ber of points of dis­cus­sion and analy­sis, includ­ing:

1.–” . . . . A new study by Chi­nese researchers indi­cates the nov­el coro­n­avirus may have begun human-to-human trans­mis­sion in late Novem­ber from a place oth­er than the Hua­nan seafood mar­ket in Wuhan. The study pub­lished on Chi­naX­iv, a Chi­nese open repos­i­to­ry for sci­en­tif­ic researchers, reveals the new coro­n­avirus was intro­duced to the seafood mar­ket from anoth­er location(s), and then spread rapid­ly from the mar­ket due to the large num­ber of close con­tacts. . . .”
2.–” . . . . Chi­nese med­ical author­i­ties – and “intel­li­gence agen­cies” – then con­duct­ed a rapid and wide-rang­ing search for the ori­gin of the virus, col­lect­ing near­ly 100 sam­ples of the genome from 12 dif­fer­ent coun­tries on 4 con­ti­nents, iden­ti­fy­ing all the vari­eties and muta­tions. Dur­ing this research, they deter­mined the virus out­break had begun much ear­li­er, prob­a­bly in Novem­ber, short­ly after the Wuhan Mil­i­tary Games. . . . ”
3.–” . . . . They then came to the same inde­pen­dent con­clu­sions as the Japan­ese researchers – that the virus did not begin in Chi­na but was intro­duced there from the out­side. China’s top res­pi­ra­to­ry spe­cial­ist Zhong Nan­shan  said on Jan­u­ary 27. ‘Though the COVID-19 was first dis­cov­ered in Chi­na, it does not mean that it orig­i­nat­ed from Chi­na.’ . . . .This of course rais­es ques­tions as to the actu­al loca­tion of ori­gin. If the author­i­ties pur­sued their analy­sis through 100 genome sam­ples from 12 coun­tries, they must have had a com­pelling rea­son to be search­ing for the orig­i­nal source out­side Chi­na. This would explain why there was such dif­fi­cul­ty in locat­ing and iden­ti­fy­ing a ‘patient zero’. . . .”
4.–” . . . . In Feb­ru­ary of 2020, the Japan­ese Asahi news report (print and TV) claimed the coro­n­avirus orig­i­nat­ed in the US, not in Chi­na, and that some (or many) of the 14,000 Amer­i­can deaths attrib­uted to influen­za may have in fact have result­ed from the coro­n­avirus. (5) . . .”
5.–” . . . . The TV Asahi net­work pre­sent­ed sci­en­tif­ic doc­u­men­ta­tion for their claims, rais­ing the issue that no one would know the cause of death because the US either neglect­ed to test or failed to release the results. Japan avoid­ed the ques­tions of nat­ur­al vs. man-made and acci­den­tal vs. delib­er­ate, sim­ply stat­ing that the virus out­break may first have occurred in the US. The West­ern Inter­net appears to have been scrubbed of this infor­ma­tion, but the Chi­nese media still ref­er­ence it. . . .”
6.–” . . . . Then, Tai­wan ran a TV news pro­gram on February,27,(click here to access video (Chi­nese), that pre­sent­ed dia­grams and flow charts sug­gest­ing the coro­n­avirus orig­i­nat­ed in the US. (6) . . . .”
7.–” . . . . The man in the video is a top virol­o­gist and phar­ma­col­o­gist who per­formed a long and detailed search for the source of the virus. He spends the first part of the video explain­ing the var­i­ous hap­lo­types (vari­eties, if you will), and explains how they are relat­ed to each oth­er, how one must have come before anoth­er, and how one type derived from anoth­er. He explains this is mere­ly ele­men­tary sci­ence and noth­ing to do with geopo­lit­i­cal issues, describ­ing how, just as with num­bers in order, 3 must always fol­low 2. . . .”
8.–” . . . . The basic log­ic is that the geo­graph­i­cal loca­tion with the great­est diver­si­ty of virus strains must be the orig­i­nal source because a sin­gle strain can­not emerge from noth­ing. He demon­strat­ed that only the US has all the five known strains of the virus (while Wuhan and most of Chi­na have only one, as do Tai­wan and South Korea, Thai­land and Viet­nam, Sin­ga­pore, and Eng­land, Bel­gium and Ger­many), con­sti­tut­ing a the­sis that the hap­lo­types in oth­er nations may have orig­i­nat­ed in the US. . . .”
9.–” . . . . With about 50 nations scat­tered through­out the world hav­ing iden­ti­fied at least one case at the time of writ­ing, it would be very inter­est­ing to exam­ine virus sam­ples from each of those nations to deter­mine their loca­tion of ori­gin and the world­wide sources and pat­terns of spread. . . .”
10.–” . . . .The Tai­wanese doc­tor then stat­ed the virus out­break began ear­li­er than assumed, say­ing, ‘We must look to Sep­tem­ber of 2019’. He stat­ed the case in Sep­tem­ber of 2019 where some Japan­ese trav­eled to Hawaii and returned home infect­ed, peo­ple who had nev­er been to Chi­na. This was two months pri­or to the infec­tions in Chi­na and just after the CDC sud­den­ly and total­ly shut down the Fort Det­rick bio-weapons lab claim­ing the facil­i­ties were insuf­fi­cient to pre­vent loss of pathogens. (10) (11) He said he per­son­al­ly inves­ti­gat­ed those cas­es very care­ful­ly (as did the Japan­ese virol­o­gists who came to the same con­clu­sion).. This might indi­cate the coro­n­avirus had already spread in the US but where the symp­toms were being offi­cial­ly attrib­uted to oth­er dis­eases, and thus pos­si­bly masked. . . .”
11.–” . . . . On Feb­ru­ary 26, ABC News affil­i­ate KJCT8 News Net­work report­ed that a woman recent­ly told the media that her sis­ter died on from coro­n­avirus infec­tion. Mon­trose, Col­orado res­i­dent Almeta Stone said, ‘They (the med­ical staff) kept us informed that it was the flu, and when I got the death cer­tifi­cate, there was a coro­n­avirus in the cause of death.’ . . .”
12.–” . . . . In the past two years (dur­ing the trade war) Chi­na has suf­fered sev­er­al pan­demics: A) Feb­ru­ary 15, 2018: H7N4 bird flu. Sick­ened at least 1,600 peo­ple in Chi­na and killed more than 600. Many chick­ens killed. Chi­na needs to pur­chase US poul­try prod­ucts. B)June, 2018: H7N9 bird flu. Many chick­ens killed. Chi­na needs to pur­chase US poul­try prod­ucts. C) August, 2018: out­break of African swine flu. Same strain as Rus­sia, from Geor­gia. Mil­lions of pigs killed. Chi­na needs to pur­chase US pork prod­ucts. D)May 24, 2019: mas­sive infes­ta­tion of army­worms in 14 province-lev­el regions in Chi­na, which destroy most food crops. Quick­ly spread to more than 8,500 hectares of China’s grain pro­duc­tion. They pro­duce aston­ish­ing num­bers of eggs. Chi­na needs to pur­chase US agri­cul­tur­al prod­ucts – corn, soy­beans. E) Decem­ber, 2019: Coro­n­avirus appear­ance puts China’s econ­o­my on hold. F) Jan­u­ary, 2020: Chi­na is hit by a ‘high­ly path­o­gen­ic’ strain of bird flu in Hunan province. Many chick­ens died, many oth­ers killed. Chi­na needs to pur­chase US poul­try prod­ucts. . . .”

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Fur­ther dis­cus­sion of the State Depart­men­t’s crack­down on Chi­nese media out­lets; Fur­ther dis­cus­sion of Shincheonji–a South Kore­an cult that was appar­ent­ly the vehi­cle for intro­duc­ing the virus into that coun­try and which has a branch in Wuhan Chi­na; the struc­tur­al, oper­a­tional and doc­tri­nal over­lap between Shin­cheon­ji and the Uni­fi­catin Church; Don­ald Rums­feld’s posi­tion as chair­man of the board of direc­tors of Gilead Sciences–at the fore­front of Big Phar­ma’s race to devel­op coun­ter­mea­sures to the Covid-19 and a major invest­ment tar­get for hedge funds; The pres­ence on Gilead­’s board of C. Ben­no Schmidt, Sr., who helped launch Richard Nixon’s War on Cancer–a cov­er for the NCI’s Spe­cial Viral Can­cer Research Pro­gram.


Disturbing Article about DARPA and Bat-Borne Coronaviruses

A thought-pro­vok­ing and dis­turb­ing arti­cle about DARPA research into bat-borne dis­eases, includ­ing some caused by coronaviruses–is set forth here, as sup­ple­men­tal to broad­casts on the sub­ject. Whit­ney Webb has pro­vid­ed us with trou­bling insight into Pen­ta­gon research–some of which remains clas­si­fied: A) Into bat-borne coro­n­avirus­es. B) At bio­log­i­cal research facil­i­ties ring­ing both Chi­na and Rus­sia. C) Net­worked with Chi­nese research facil­i­ties in Wuhan. D) Into the DNA of both Russ­ian and Chi­nese pop­u­la­tions. E) Into “gene-driving”–a biotech­no­log­i­cal devel­op­ment that can per­ma­nent­ly alter the genet­ic make­up of entire pop­u­la­tion groups and lead to the extinc­tion of oth­er groups. F) Into the use of “Insect Allies” to sup­pos­ed­ly pro­vide crops with pro­tec­tion against pests and disease–a tech­no­log­i­cal pro­gram crit­ics have charged masks an offen­sive bio­log­i­cal war­fare man­i­fes­ta­tion. G) Osten­si­bly aimed at pre­vent­ing pan­demics but–very possibly–masking prepa­ra­tions for offen­sive bio­log­i­cal war­fare projects. H) That is heav­i­ly net­worked with the U.S. health and med­ical infra­struc­tures. I) That is heav­i­ly net­worked with firms cho­sen to devel­op vac­cines for the Covid-19. J) Into vac­cines that have not been used on human beings and that use gene-alter­ing manip­u­la­tion that alarms crit­ics. K) Into over­lap­ping tech­nolo­gies man­i­fest­ing philoso­phies of eugen­ics and eth­nic cleans­ing. L) Involv­ing the U.S. Army Med­ical Research Insti­tute of Infec­tious Dis­eases, locat­ed at Fort Det­rick, Mary­land, a facil­i­ty that was closed down by the CDC at the begin­ning of August, 2019, for mul­ti­ple safe­ty vio­la­tions. M) Into the appli­ca­tion of genet­ic engi­neer­ing in order to cre­ate eth­no-spe­cif­ic bio­log­i­cal war­fare weapons.


FTR #1117 More Than One “Flu” Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

Researchers found that lev­els of the Covid-19 virus increased soon after symp­toms first appeared, with high­er amounts in the nose than in the throats, which is also more con­sis­tent with influen­za than SARS. Of the 18 patients they exam­ined, one had mod­er­ate lev­els in their nose and throat but no symptoms–people who are asymp­to­matic can still poten­tial­ly spread the virus. It’s this com­bi­na­tion of air­borne trans­mis­sions and asymp­to­matic patients who shed the virus that makes this a par­tic­u­lar­ly infec­tious dis­ease.

This anom­alous new abil­i­ty to infect the upper res­pi­ra­to­ry tract, of course, brings up the chill­ing exper­i­ments where researchers mod­i­fied the H5N1 bird flu virus until it was capa­ble of air­borne trans­mis­sions between fer­rets. That’s the same research that was banned by the NIH fol­low­ing the uproar but has sub­se­quent­ly been real­lowed in ear­ly 2019. That orig­i­nal 2012 study specif­i­cal­ly found that it was muta­tions that gave the virus the abil­i­ty to infect the upper res­pi­ra­to­ry tracts of the fer­rets that made it an air­borne virus. We have yet to year if the SAR-CoV­‑2 virus had the same or sim­i­lar muta­tions to those that were induced in the H5N1 bird flu virus exper­i­ment but it seems like­ly.

The infec­tious­ness of the SARS-CoV­‑2 coro­n­avirus is unprece­dent­ed based on this new study. As one immu­nol­o­gist put it, “This virus is clear­ly much more capa­ble of spread­ing between humans than any oth­er nov­el coro­n­avirus we’ve ever seen. This is more akin to the spread of flu”.

In the con­text of the Covid-19’s flu-like abil­i­ty to infect the upper res­pi­ra­to­ry tract, we explore exper­i­ments adapt­ing the lethal H5N1 avian flu to fer­rets. These exper­i­ments were halt­ed in 2014 but sub­se­quent­ly resumed in 2017.

Might some of this exper­i­ment have been adapt­ed to the Covid-19?

We explore addi­tion­al exper­i­ments adapt­ing the lethal H5N1 avian flu to fer­rets. These exper­i­ments were halt­ed in 2014 but sub­se­quent­ly resumed in 2017.

Might some of this exper­i­ment have been adapt­ed to the Covid-19?

These exper­i­ments were resumed, short­ly before the out­break of Covid-19. Again, might some of the results of the adap­ta­tion of the H5N1 avian flu to fer­rets have fig­ured in the Covid-19 phe­nom­e­non?

Note that many experts were crit­i­cal of the process.

A report on the adap­ta­tion of the A/H5N1 to fer­rets notes that Oseltamivir–marketed under the brand-name Tamiflu–was suc­cess­ful in treat­ing the fer­rets. That is one of the anti-virals in a drug cock­tail used by Thai doc­tors to suc­cess­ful­ly treat a Covid-19 suf­fer­er.

In FTR#55, we not­ed in 1997 that U.S. Army researchers had suc­cess­ful­ly recov­ered genet­ic mate­r­i­al from the 1918 influen­za epi­dem­ic.

As will be seen in future pro­grams, one of the vari­ants of the Covid-19 does indeed behave like the 1918 flu virus. As we will also see in future pro­grams, that virus was res­ur­rect­ed by researchers in 2005.

In the past, we have heard it alleged by cred­i­ble sources that Ger­many was behind the 1918 flu epi­dem­ic that killed scores of mil­lions world­wide.

From Ger­many Watch comes anoth­er post rein­forc­ing this line of inquiry. 

After main­tain­ing that Ger­man agents were sab­o­tag­ing live­stock with anthrax, the post dis­cuss­es British intel­li­gence dis­til­late indi­cat­ing that, after dis­cov­er­ing the par­tic­u­lar strain of vir­u­lent flu, Ger­man agents began delib­er­ate­ly spread­ing it in the U.S.

NB: We don’t feel that the infor­ma­tion from the book Three Wars with Ger­many con­firms the hypoth­e­sis that the flu pan­dem­ic was a Ger­man bio-war­fare weapon gone awry beyond the point of debate. It DOES, how­ev­er, high­light that pos­si­bil­i­ty.

We then tack­le the sub­ject of a cult/church that is at the epi­cen­ter of a Covid-19 out­break in South Korea. The over­lap between this orga­ni­za­tion and the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church is dis­cussed in a Food For Thought post. Might this cult have been a vec­tor for intro­duc­ing the virus into Wuhan?

The fascis­tic nature of the cult and some of the rit­u­als and beliefs of the orga­ni­za­tion would ren­der the group and/or some of its mem­bers as viable “use­ful idiots” for manip­u­la­tion in con­nec­tion with this out­break.

The next two points of dis­cus­sion con­cern the fact that the cur­rent U.S. Ambas­sador to South Korea was the for­mer head of the Unit­ed States Pacif­ic Com­mand. We won­der if he might be ONI and/or CIA, and if he might have any con­nec­tion to the anti-Chi­na blitzkrieg and the Covid-19 out­break?

As the for­mer Com­man­der of the Guan­tanamo base in Cuba, Admi­ral Har­ris cer­tain­ly did have oper­a­tional links with the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty.


FTR #1116 Update on The Chinese Winter and the Coronavirus “Bio-Psy-Op”

In our ongo­ing series about the Covid-19 break­out and the Chi­nese win­ter, we have dis­cussed the dam­age the break­out has done to the Chi­nese econ­o­my, our belief that the out­break is part of a desta­bi­liza­tion effort against Chi­na, and the invest­ments of Steve Ban­non asso­ciate J. Kyle Bass and, in turn, Bass’s polit­i­cal asso­ci­a­tion and prob­a­ble co-invest­ment posi­tion with Trump asso­ciate Tom­my Hicks, Jr.

Posi­tioned to prof­it as a result of a Chi­nese eco­nom­ic down­turn, Bass and Hicks may  well be prof­it­ing from Chi­na’s eco­nom­ic prob­lems, which are grow­ing more severe as a result of the out­break.

Now, many Chi­nese firms say they can­not pay their work­ers their full salaries–a devel­op­ment that will fur­ther strain the Chi­nese econ­o­my.

NB: With the eco­nom­ic con­se­quences of the out­break spread­ing glob­al­ly, Bass, Hicks et al would not nec­es­sar­i­ly have to be invest­ed in Chi­nese equi­ties to prof­it enor­mous­ly from this event.

New bank loans in Chi­na hit a record high in Jan­u­ary, reflect­ing the grow­ing need for cash to keep the busi­ness­es oper­at­ing and employ­ees  paid. The PBOC, China’s cen­tral bank, also cut its bench­mark lend­ing rate today as part of a push to ease the financ­ing costs for busi­ness. As the arti­cle notes, small and rur­al banks are most at risk–a stress test last year by the PBOC found that 13 per­cent of banks were con­sid­ered “high risk”.

As not­ed below, Tom­my Hicks brought in J. Kyle Bass to lec­ture to inter­a­gency gov­ern­ment net­works about Chi­na’s bank­ing sys­tem.

We review the fact that Bass is close to, and may well be a co-investor with, Tom­my Hicks Jr., a key mem­ber of Team Trump. Hicks, Com­merce Sec­re­tary Wilbur Ross and nation­al secu­ri­ty offi­cials are, in turn, work­ing to deny Chi­nese elec­tron­ics firm Huawei access to devel­op­ing 5G net­works, fur­ther ham­string­ing the Chi­nese econ­o­my.

Paul Krug­man, among oth­ers, has not­ed that Wilbur Ross was open­ly cel­e­brat­ing the coro­n­avirus as a boon to the Unit­ed States.

We high­light key aspects of this dis­cus­sion:
1.–Hicks is not a gov­ern­ment offi­cial but has access to high-lev­el gov­ern­men­tal process, includ­ing (appar­ent­ly) CIA activ­i­ties. ” . . . . Tom­my Hicks Jr., 41, isn’t a gov­ern­ment offi­cial; he’s a wealthy pri­vate investor. And he has been a part of dis­cus­sions relat­ed to Chi­na and tech­nol­o­gy with top offi­cials from the Trea­sury Depart­ment, Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil, Com­merce Depart­ment and oth­ers, accord­ing to emails and doc­u­ments obtained by ProP­ub­li­ca. In one email, Hicks refers to a meet­ing at ‘Lan­g­ley,’ an appar­ent ref­er­ence to the CIA’s head­quar­ters. . . .”
2.–Hicks has used his posi­tion to arrange for J. Kyle Bass to net­work with gov­ern­ment agen­cies and offi­cials. Bear in mind that Bass is posi­tioned to ben­e­fit from a down­turn in Chi­na’s econ­o­my. ” . . . . Hicks used his con­nec­tions to arrange for a hedge fund man­ag­er friend, Kyle Bass — who has $143 mil­lion in invest­ments that will pay off if China’s econ­o­my tanks — to present his views on the Chi­nese econ­o­my to high-lev­el gov­ern­ment offi­cials at an inter­a­gency meet­ing at the Trea­sury Depart­ment, accord­ing to the doc­u­ments. . . .”
3.–Hicks and Bass have invest­ed togeth­er since 2011. ” . . . . Bass pre­sent­ed his views on China’s bank­ing sys­tem in the office of Heath Tar­bert, an assis­tant sec­re­tary at Trea­sury in charge of inter­na­tion­al mar­kets and invest­ment pol­i­cy and a pow­er­ful inter­gov­ern­men­tal com­mit­tee that reviews for­eign invest­ments in the U.S. for nation­al secu­ri­ty con­cerns. Among the offi­cials at the meet­ing with Tar­bert were Bill Hin­man, the direc­tor of the divi­sion of cor­po­ra­tion finance at the Secu­ri­ties and Exchange Com­mis­sion, and Ray Wash­burne, a wealthy Dal­las restau­rant own­er and fam­i­ly friend of Hicks’ who was nom­i­nat­ed by Trump to head the Over­seas Pri­vate Invest­ment Cor­po­ra­tion. Hicks and Bass, both Dal­las res­i­dents and long­time denizens of the finan­cial com­mu­ni­ty there, have invest­ed togeth­er since at least 2011, accord­ing to secu­ri­ties fil­ings and court records. . . .”
4.–Hicks did not deny that he par­tic­i­pat­ed in Bass’s funds, but was eva­sive.” . . . . But it’s not clear if Hicks or his fam­i­ly have an invest­ment in Bass’ Chi­na-relat­ed funds. Reached twice on his cell­phone, Hicks declined to be inter­viewed by ProP­ub­li­ca. In the sec­ond call, in June, Hicks didn’t dis­pute that he and his fam­i­ly have invest­ed in Bass’ funds. But when asked to detail their busi­ness rela­tion­ship, he cut the con­ver­sa­tion short. . . . ”
5.–Bass has a his­to­ry of bet­ting against trends that will turn down­ward, hav­ing made his for­tune on the 2008 crash. ” . . . . Bass, who made his name and for­tune by bet­ting against sub­prime mort­gages before the crash and is known for large bets that economies or cer­tain macro trends will turn down­ward, declined to com­ment. . . .”
6.–Official review did not exam­ine pos­si­ble busi­ness rela­tion­ships between Hicks and Bass. ” . . . . An admin­is­tra­tion offi­cial briefed on the Bass meet­ing at the Trea­sury down­played it as ‘strict­ly a lis­ten­ing ses­sion.’ . . . . He acknowl­edged that the review didn’t include an exam­i­na­tion of any finan­cial rela­tion­ship between Hicks and Bass. . . .”
7.–Bass is posi­tioned to main­tain “mas­sive asym­me­try” to down turns in Hong Kong and Chi­na, in oth­er words, he will ben­e­fit if they go down. ” . . . . Bass has become a vocal advo­cate for an aggres­sive U.S. pol­i­cy toward Chi­na. On Twit­ter and on cable busi­ness chan­nels he’s denounced every­thing from the country’s Com­mu­nist Par­ty gov­ern­ment to its busi­ness prac­tices. Secu­ri­ties fil­ings show Bass raised $143 mil­lion from about 81 investors in two funds — invest­ments that would ben­e­fit if China’s cur­ren­cy were deval­ued or the coun­try faced cred­it or bank­ing crises. In April, in a let­ter to his investors, Bass wrote that his com­pa­ny, Hay­man Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment, was posi­tioned for com­ing prob­lems in Hong Kong and was set up to ‘main­tain a mas­sive asym­me­try to a neg­a­tive out­come in Hong Kong and/or Chi­na.’ . . . ”
Next, we turn to dis­cus­sion of the pos­si­ble manip­u­la­tion of the virus to make it com­mu­ni­ca­ble through air­borne trans­mis­sion, sim­i­lar to the trans­mis­sion of influen­za.

Researchers found that lev­els of the virus increased soon after symp­toms first appeared, with high­er amounts in the nose than in the throats–more con­sis­tent with influen­za than SARS. Of the 18 patients they exam­ined, one had mod­er­ate lev­els in their nose and throat but no symp­toms. Peo­ple who are asymp­to­matic can still spread the virus. It’s this com­bi­na­tion of air­borne trans­mis­sion and asymp­to­matic patients who are still shed­ding the virus that makes this a par­tic­u­lar­ly infec­tious dis­ease.

This sud­den anom­alous (for SARS-like coro­n­avirus­es) new abil­i­ty to infect the upper res­pi­ra­to­ry tract, of course, brings up chill­ing exper­i­ments in which researchers mod­i­fied the H5N1 bird flu virus to become capa­ble of air­borne trans­mis­sions between fer­rets. That research was banned by the NIH fol­low­ing pub­lic out­cry but resumed in ear­ly 2019. The orig­i­nal 2012 study specif­i­cal­ly found that it was the genet­i­cal­ly engi­neered muta­tions that gave the virus the abil­i­ty to infect the upper res­pi­ra­to­ry tracts of the fer­rets. We have yet to hear if the SAR-CoV­‑2 virus had the same or sim­i­lar muta­tions to those that were induced in the H5N1 bird flu virus exper­i­ment but it seems like­ly.

Thus, the infec­tious­ness of the SARS-CoV­‑2 coro­n­avirus is unprece­dent­ed based on this new study. As one immu­nol­o­gist put it, “This virus is clear­ly much more capa­ble of spread­ing between humans than any oth­er nov­el coro­n­avirus we’ve ever seen. This is more akin to the spread of flu”.

The virus can also be spread through human fecal mate­r­i­al from an infect­ed per­son.

Yet anoth­er spec­u­la­tive ele­ment of dis­cus­sion con­cerns a cult/church in South Korea which is the epi­cen­ter of a burst of cas­es in that coun­try. A reput­ed pres­ence of a branch of the orga­ni­za­tion is in Wuhan, which has direct­ed dis­cus­sion in the direc­tion of the virus hav­ing migrat­ed from Hubei province to South Korea.

Against the back­ground of Uni­fi­ca­tion Church activ­i­ty dur­ing the Cold War, in con­nec­tion with CIA, in con­nec­tion with the fas­cist pow­er elite in Japan that is con­tin­u­ous with that coun­try’s activ­i­ties dur­ing World War II, we won­der about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of the use of this cult as a vec­tor­ing agent.

Might it be pos­si­ble that it was used to intro­duce the virus into Chi­na in the first place?

As will be high­light­ed in future pro­grams, there appear to be operational/networking links between the Shin­cheon­ji and the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church, as well as doc­tri­nal sim­i­lar­i­ties.


Networking and Doctrinal Overlap Between Unification Church and Shincheonji

A spec­u­la­tive ele­ment of dis­cus­sion con­cerns a cult/church in South Korea which is the epi­cen­ter of a burst of coro­n­avirus cas­es in that coun­try. A reput­ed pres­ence of a branch of the orga­ni­za­tion is in Wuhan, which has direct­ed dis­cus­sion in the direc­tion of the virus hav­ing migrat­ed from Hubei province to South Korea. Might it be pos­si­ble that it was used to intro­duce the virus into Chi­na in the first place? “. . . . Jung Eun-kyeong, direc­tor of the Korea Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion, said the author­i­ties were inves­ti­gat­ing reports that Shin­cheon­ji had oper­a­tions in Hubei, the Chi­nese province that includes Wuhan, where the virus emerged. The South Kore­an news agency New­sis report­ed on Fri­day that Shin­cheon­ji had opened a church in Wuhan last year, and that ref­er­ences to it had been removed from the church’s web­site. Church offi­cials could not imme­di­ate­ly be reached for com­ment. . . .” The Shin­cheon­ji orga­ni­za­tion appears to over­lap the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church. In addi­tion to net­work­ing between ele­ments of both orga­ni­za­tions, the Shin­cheon­ji Church has many doc­tri­nal sim­i­lar­i­ties to the Moon orga­ni­za­tion. Most impor­tant of these points of over­lap between the orga­ni­za­tions is the posi­tion and influ­ence of Kim Kun-Nam in Shin­cheon­ji: ” . . . . Kim Kun-nam, one of the two authors of Shin­tan, which can be called the first doc­trine of Shin­cheon­ji, is from the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church. Kim also served as a lec­tur­er in the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church. It is no exag­ger­a­tion to say that Shin­cheon­ji doc­trine devel­oped on the basis of what Kim made. . . .”


FTR #1104 Fascism, 2019 World Tour, Part 14: Lithium Coup in Bolivia, Part 1 and FTR #1105 Fascism, 2019 World Tour, Part 15: Lithium Coup in Bolivia, Part 2

These pro­grams high­light fea­tures of an appar­ent coup d’e­tat in Bolivia, empha­siz­ing the indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions fig­ur­ing in the coup itself, as well as the under­ly­ing dynam­ic of the devel­op­ment of Bolivi­a’s enor­mous lithi­um reserves. Cen­tral to the dis­cus­sion is the fact that lithi­um is essen­tial for the devel­op­ment of elec­tric car bat­ter­ies and that tech­nol­o­gy is impor­tant to any suc­cess­ful “Green­ing” of the glob­al econ­o­my.

Fas­cists from Latin Amer­i­ca and Europe net­worked with transna­tion­al cor­po­rate ele­ments and some U.S. intel­li­gence cut-outs to oust Evo Morales and his gov­ern­ment.

Although Morales had vio­lat­ed con­sti­tu­tion­al norms on term lim­its in order to extend his gov­er­nance, his polit­i­cal agen­da had great­ly ben­e­fit­ed Bolivi­a’s poor and its his­tor­i­cal­ly oppressed indige­nous pop­u­la­tion, in par­tic­u­lar. The coun­try’s min­er­al wealth has been exploit­ed by for­eign com­pa­nies and select mem­bers of the Boli­vian elite to the detri­ment of much of the pop­u­la­tion. Even the con­ser­v­a­tive “Finan­cial Times” has not­ed that Morales restruc­tur­ing of the Boli­vian economy–mineral extrac­tion, in particular–has sig­nif­i­cant­ly improved the coun­try’s econ­o­my and reduced pover­ty.

This ele­ment of dis­cus­sion involves many sub­jects cov­ered at length over the decades and fea­tured in the archives:

1.–Material about Klaus Bar­bie and the Euro­pean fas­cists in his “Fiances of Death” (or “Bride­grooms of Death”) mer­ce­nar­ies can be found in, among oth­er pro­grams, AFA #‘s 19 and 27.
2.–The Vat­i­can’s rela­tion­ship to fas­cism, includ­ing Opus Dei and the Ustachi in Croa­t­ia, is high­light­ed in, among oth­er pro­grams AFA #17.
3.–Information about the re-emer­gence of the Ustachi can be found in, among oth­er pro­grams, FTR #‘s 49, 154, 766, 901.

Key indi­vid­ual and insti­tu­tion­al play­ers in the devel­op­ment of, pre­lude to, and exe­cu­tion of the Boli­vian coup include:

1.–Luis Fer­nan­do Cama­cho, a wealthy Boli­vian described in the Pana­ma Papers, Cama­cho is: ” . . . . an ultra-con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian fun­da­men­tal­ist groomed by a fas­cist para­mil­i­tary noto­ri­ous for its racist vio­lence, with a base in Bolivia’s wealthy sep­a­ratist region of San­ta Cruz. . . .”
2.–He is heir to a tra­di­tion of wealth, the nation’s nat­ur­al gas busi­ness, in par­tic­u­lar: : ” . . . . Cama­cho also hails from a fam­i­ly of cor­po­rate elites who have long prof­it­ed from Bolivia’s plen­ti­ful nat­ur­al gas reserves. And his fam­i­ly lost part of its wealth when Morales nation­al­ized the nation’s resources, in order to fund his vast social pro­grams — which cut pover­ty by 42 per­cent and extreme pover­ty by 60 per­cent. . . .”
3.–Prior to the coup, Cama­cho: ” . . . . met with lead­ers from right-wing gov­ern­ments in the region to dis­cuss their plans to desta­bi­lize Morales. Two months before the putsch, he tweet­ed grat­i­tude: ‘Thank you Colom­bia! Thank you Venezuela!’ he exclaimed, tip­ping his hat to Juan Guaido’s coup oper­a­tion. He also rec­og­nized the far-right gov­ern­ment of Jair Bol­sonaro, declar­ing, “Thank you Brazil!’ . . .”
4.–A mar­gin­al fig­ure with lit­tle pub­lic grav­i­tas, includ­ing on social media, Cama­cho was mov­ing to neu­tral­ize the Morales gov­ern­ment before the coup itself. His polit­i­cal pres­ence and base of sup­port is a Chris­t­ian fas­cist orga­ni­za­tion: ” . . . . Luis Fer­nan­do Cama­cho was groomed by the Unión Juve­nil Cruceñista, or San­ta Cruz Youth Union (UJC), a fas­cist para­mil­i­tary orga­ni­za­tion that has been linked to assas­si­na­tion plots against Morales. The group is noto­ri­ous for assault­ing left­ists, Indige­nous peas­ants, and jour­nal­ists, all while espous­ing a deeply racist, homo­pho­bic ide­ol­o­gy. . . .”
5.–The UJC: ” . . . . The UJC is the Boli­vian equiv­a­lent of Spain’s Falange, India’s Hin­du suprema­cist RSS, and Ukraine’s neo-Nazi Azov bat­tal­ion. Its sym­bol is a green cross that bears strong sim­i­lar­i­ties to logos of fas­cist move­ments across the West. And its mem­bers are known to launch into Nazi-style sieg heil salutes. . . . Even the US embassy in Bolivia has described UJC mem­bers as ‘racist’ and ‘mil­i­tant,’ not­ing that they ‘have fre­quent­ly attacked pro-MAS/­gov­ern­ment peo­ple and instal­la­tions.’ . . .”
6.–Camacho was allied with a wealthy Croa­t­ian named Branko Marinkovic: ” . . . . Cama­cho was elect­ed as vice pres­i­dent of the UJC in 2002, when he was just 23 years old. He left the orga­ni­za­tion two years lat­er to build his family’s busi­ness empire and rise through the ranks of the Pro-San­ta Cruz Com­mit­tee. It was in that orga­ni­za­tion that he was tak­en under the wing of one of the sep­a­ratist movement’s most pow­er­ful fig­ures, a Boli­vian-Croa­t­ian oli­garch named Branko Marinkovic. . . .”
7.–Marinkovic is one of the prime movers of a seces­sion­ist move­ment for the San­ta Cruz area: ” . . . . Camacho’s Croa­t­ian god­fa­ther and sep­a­ratist pow­er bro­ker Branko Marinkovic is a major landown­er who ramped up his sup­port for the right-wing oppo­si­tion after some of his land was nation­al­ized by the Evo Morales gov­ern­ment. As chair­man of the Pro-San­ta Cruz Com­mit­tee, he over­saw the oper­a­tions of the main engine of sep­a­ratism in Bolivia. In a 2008 let­ter to Marinkovic, the Inter­na­tion­al Fed­er­a­tion for Human Rights denounced the com­mit­tee as an ‘actor and pro­mot­er of racism and vio­lence in Bolivia.’ The human rights group added that it ‘condemn[ed] the atti­tude and seces­sion­ist, union­ist and racist dis­cours­es as well as the calls for mil­i­tary dis­obe­di­ence of which the Pro-San­ta Cruz Civic Com­mit­tee for is one of the main pro­mot­ers.’ In 2013, jour­nal­ist Matt Ken­nard report­ed that the US gov­ern­ment was work­ing close­ly with the Pro-San­ta Cruz Com­mit­tee to encour­age the balka­niza­tion of Bolivia and to under­mine Morales. . . .”
8.–There has been spec­u­la­tion that Marinkovich may be descend­ed from Croa­t­ian Ustachis fas­cists: ” . . . . But even some of his sym­pa­thiz­ers are skep­ti­cal. A Balkan ana­lyst from the pri­vate intel­li­gence firm Strat­for, which works close­ly with the US gov­ern­ment and is pop­u­lar­ly known as the ‘shad­ow CIA,’ pro­duced a rough back­ground pro­file on Marinkovic, spec­u­lat­ing, ‘Still don’t know his full sto­ry, but I would bet a lot of $$$ that this dude’s par­ents are 1st gen (his name is too Slav­ic) and that they were Ustashe (read: Nazi) sym­pa­thiz­ers flee­ing Tito’s Com­mu­nists after WWII.’ . . . .”
9.–Marinkovich’s activism in the San­ta Cruz area is part of a fas­cist polit­i­cal land­scape in that area that dove­tails with Klaus Bar­bie (of whom we spoke in–among oth­er programs–AFA #19): ” . . . . In a 2008 pro­file on Marinkovic, “The New York Times” acknowl­edged the extrem­ist under­cur­rents of the San­ta Cruz sep­a­ratist move­ment the oli­garch presided over. It described the area as ‘a bas­tion of open­ly xeno­pho­bic groups like the Boli­vian Social­ist Falange, whose hand-in-air salute draws inspi­ra­tion from the fas­cist Falange of the for­mer Span­ish dic­ta­tor Fran­co.” The Boli­vian Social­ist Falange was a fas­cist group that pro­vid­ed safe haven to Nazi war crim­i­nal Klaus Bar­bie dur­ing the Cold War. A for­mer Gestapo tor­ture expert, Bar­bie was repur­posed by the CIA through its Oper­a­tion Con­dor pro­gram to help exter­mi­nate com­mu­nism across the con­ti­nent. . . .”
10.–The coup fol­lows by some years an attempt by a group of inter­na­tion­al fas­cists to mur­der Morales: ” . . . . In April 2009, a spe­cial unit of the Boli­vian secu­ri­ty ser­vices barged into a lux­u­ry hotel room and cut down three men who were said to be involved in a plot to kill Evo Morales. Two oth­ers remained on the loose. Four of the alleged con­spir­a­tors had Hun­gar­i­an or Croa­t­ian roots and ties to right­ist pol­i­tics in east­ern Europe, while anoth­er was a right-wing Irish­man, Michael Dwyer, who had only arrived in San­ta Cruz six months before. The ring­leader of the group was said to be a for­mer left­ist jour­nal­ist named Eduar­do Rosza-Flo­res who had turned to fas­cism and belonged to Opus Dei, the tra­di­tion­al­ist Catholic cult that emerged under the dic­ta­tor­ship of Spain’s Fran­cis­co Fran­co. . . .”
11.–Eduardo Rosza-Flo­res had fought in the for­mer Yugoslavia on behalf of the neo-Ustachi regime that ulti­mate­ly came to pow­er: ” . . . . Dur­ing the 1990s, Rosza fought on behalf of the Croa­t­ian First Inter­na­tion­al Pla­toon, or the PIV, in the war to sep­a­rate from Yugoslavia. A Croa­t­ian jour­nal­ist told Time that the ‘PIV was a noto­ri­ous group: 95% of them had crim­i­nal his­to­ries, many were part of Nazi and fas­cist groups, from Ger­many to Ire­land.’ By 2009, Rosza returned home to Bolivia to cru­sade on behalf of anoth­er sep­a­ratist move­ment in San­ta Cruz. . . .”
12.–Rosza-Flores had no mon­ey, yet his group of would-be fas­cist assas­sins were well fund­ed. Marinkovic appears to have been among the fund­ing sources: ” . . . . Marinkovic was sub­se­quent­ly charged with pro­vid­ing $200,000 to the plot­ters. The Boli­vian-Croa­t­ian oli­garch ini­tial­ly fled to the Unit­ed States, where he was giv­en asy­lum, then relo­cat­ed to Brazil, where he lives today. He denied any involve­ment in the plan to kill Morales. As jour­nal­ist Matt Ken­nard report­ed, there was anoth­er thread that tied the plot to the US: the alleged par­tic­i­pa­tion of an NGO leader named Hugo Achá Mel­gar. . . .”
13.–Hugo Acha Mel­gar was net­worked with the Human Rights Foun­da­tion, a right-wing orga­ni­za­tion with strong links to U.S. intel­li­gence and financed in part by Peter Thiel. The Human Rights Foun­da­tion is involved in the Hong Kong tur­moil. ” . . . . Achá was not just the head of any run-of-the-mill NGO. He had found­ed the Boli­vian sub­sidiary of the Human Rights Foun­da­tion (HRF), an inter­na­tion­al right-wing out­fit that is known for host­ing a “school for rev­o­lu­tion” for activists seek­ing regime change in states tar­get­ed by the US gov­ern­ment. HRF is run by Thor Halvorssen Jr., the son of the late Venezue­lan oli­garch and CIA asset Thor Halvorssen Hel­lum.  . . . . He launched the HRF with grants from right-wing bil­lion­aires like Peter Thiel, con­ser­v­a­tive foun­da­tions, and NGOs includ­ing Amnesty Inter­na­tion­al. The group has since been at the fore­front of train­ing activists for insur­rec­tionary activ­i­ty from Hong Kong to the Mid­dle East to Latin Amer­i­ca. . . .”
14.–Proxy pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Car­los Mesa is heav­i­ly net­worked with the Inter-Amer­i­can Dia­logue, financed in con­sid­er­able mea­sure by the AID: ” . . . . Today, Mesa serves as an in-house “expert” at the Inter-Amer­i­can Dia­logue, a neolib­er­al Wash­ing­ton-based think tank focused on Latin Amer­i­ca. One of the Dialogue’s top donors is the US Agency for Inter­na­tion­al Devel­op­ment (USAID) . . . .”

Cen­tral to the mul­ti-nation­al dis­sat­is­fac­tion with Evo Morales is his nation­al­iza­tion of some of Bolivi­a’s min­er­al resource indus­try. And cen­tral to the Boli­vian min­er­al resource inven­to­ry is lithi­um, essen­tial for the man­u­fac­ture of elec­tric car bat­ter­ies: ” . . . . The main tar­get is its mas­sive deposits of lithi­um, cru­cial for the elec­tric car. . . .”

Bolivia has been report­ed to hold up to 70 per­cent of the world’s lithi­um, and the Morales gov­ern­men­t’s piv­ot toward devel­op­ing those reserves in tan­dem with Chi­nese firms, rather than West­ern transna­tion­als, may well have been the cen­tral dynam­ic in his ouster. ” . . . . Over the course of the past few years, Bolivia has strug­gled to raise invest­ment to devel­op the lithi­um reserves in a way that brings the wealth back into the coun­try for its peo­ple. Morales’ Vice Pres­i­dent Álvaro Gar­cía Lin­era had said that lithi­um is the ‘fuel that will feed the world.’ Bolivia was unable to make deals with West­ern transna­tion­al firms; it decid­ed to part­ner with Chi­nese firms. This made the Morales gov­ern­ment vul­ner­a­ble. It had walked into the new Cold War between the West and Chi­na. The coup against Morales can­not be under­stood with­out a glance at this clash. . . .”

The com­plex­i­ties of the Salar de Uyu­ni salt flats–location of much of Bolivi­a’s lithi­um reserves–mandate the tech­no­log­i­cal involve­ment of for­eign firms. A deal reached with Ger­man ACI Sys­tems (heav­i­ly sub­si­dized by the Ger­man gov­ern­ment) was negat­ed by protests on the part of local res­i­dents in the Salar de Uyu­ni area. Chi­nese firms were poised to fill that vac­u­um, offer­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a more equi­table devel­op­ment of the min­er­al. ” . . . . Last year, Germany’s ACI Sys­tems agreed to a deal with Bolivia. After protests from res­i­dents in the Salar de Uyu­ni region, Morales can­celed that deal on Novem­ber 4, 2019. Chi­nese firms—such as TBEA Group and Chi­na Machin­ery Engineering—made a deal with YLB. It was being said that China’s Tian­qi Lithi­um Group, which oper­ates in Argenti­na, was going to make a deal with YLB. Both Chi­nese invest­ment and the Boli­vian lithi­um com­pa­ny were exper­i­ment­ing with new ways to both mine the lithi­um and to share the prof­its of the lithi­um. The idea that there might be a new social com­pact for the lithi­um was unac­cept­able to the main transna­tion­al min­ing com­pa­nies. . . .”

After the ouster of Morales, the val­ue of Tes­la’s stock increased dra­mat­i­cal­ly.

The ACI/Bolivia deal had heavy back­ing by the Ger­man gov­ern­ment and fea­tured the planned export of lithi­um to Ger­many and else­where in Europe. ” . . . . With the joint ven­ture, Boli­vian state com­pa­ny YLB is team­ing up with Germany’s pri­vate­ly-owned ACI Sys­tems to devel­op its mas­sive Uyu­ni salt flat and build a lithi­um hydrox­ide plant as well as a fac­to­ry for elec­tric vehi­cle bat­ter­ies in Bolivia. ACI Sys­tems is also in talks to sup­ply com­pa­nies based in Ger­many and else­where in Europe with lithi­um from Bolivia. . . . Wolf­gang Schmutz, CEO of ACI Group, the par­ent com­pa­ny of ACI Sys­tems, said more than 80 per­cent of the lithi­um would be export­ed to Ger­many. . . .”

Of par­tic­u­lar sig­nif­i­cance for the dis­cus­sion to fol­low is ” . . . . Chi­na’s dom­i­nance in the glob­al lithi­um sup­ply chain and its strong ties with La Paz. . . .”

Short­ly after the ouster of Morales, Tes­la announced that Tes­la would locate a new car and elec­tric bat­tery fac­to­ry near Berlin. If the ACI lithi­um devel­op­ment project in Bolivia is resus­ci­tat­ed, the Tes­la move will give the firm access to the Boli­vian lithi­um.

Might that have been the rea­son for the rise in Tes­la’s stock? Might there have been some insid­er trad­ing?

The pro­grams con­clude with review of the rebirth of Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca as a syn­the­sis with British “psy-op” devel­op­ment firm SCL. A key direc­tor of Emerdata–the new firm–is a Hong Kong financier and busi­ness part­ner of Black­wa­ter chief Erik Prince, the broth­er of Trump Sec­re­tary of Edu­ca­tion Bet­sy de Vos. Not­ing the firm for­mer­ly known as Black­wa­ter’s deep involve­ment in the world of covert oper­a­tions and for­mer Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca lynch­pin Steve Ban­non’s piv­otal role in the anti-Chi­na move­ment, it is not unrea­son­able to ask if Emer­da­ta may be involved in the Hong Kong tur­moil.

We also review Chi­na’s lead­er­ship in the devel­op­ment of Green tech­nolo­gies.


What Were John Foster Dulles and Kodama Yoshio Doing in Seoul on the Eve of the Outbreak of the Korean War?

In our last post, we high­light­ed the 1951 “Peace” Treaty between the Allies and Japan, an agree­ment which false­ly main­tained that Japan had not stolen any wealth from the nations it occu­pied dur­ing World War II and that the (already) boom­ing nation was bank­rupt and would not be able to pay repa­ra­tions to the slave labor­ers and “com­fort women” it had pressed into ser­vice dur­ing the con­flict. In the con­text of the fan­tas­tic sums loot­ed by Japan under the aus­pices of Gold­en Lily and the incor­po­ra­tion of that wealth with Nazi Gold to form the Black Eagle Trust, that 1951 treaty and the advent of the Kore­an War raise some inter­est­ing, unre­solved ques­tions. One of the prin­ci­pal fig­ures in the loot­ing of occu­pied Asia dur­ing World War II was the remark­able Kodama Yoshio. Net­worked with the pow­er­ful Yakuza Japan­ese orga­nized crime milieu, the Black Drag­on soci­ety (the most pow­er­ful of the patri­ot­ic and ultra-nation­al­ist soci­eties), the Impe­r­i­al Japan­ese mil­i­tary and the Roy­al fam­i­ly of Emper­or Hiro­hi­to, Kodama loot­ed the Chi­nese under­world and traf­ficked in nar­cotics with Chi­ang Kai-shek’s fas­cist nar­co-dic­ta­tor­ship. We can but won­der about Kodama Yosh­io’s pres­ence along with 1951 “Peace” Treaty author John Fos­ter Dulles at nego­ti­a­tions in Seoul on the eve of the out­break of the Kore­an War. ” . . . . In Octo­ber of 1949, the Peo­ple’s Repub­lic of Chi­na came into being. Eight months lat­er, in June of 1950, the Kore­an War broke out. Just before the war began, Kodama [Yoshio] accom­pa­nied John Fos­ter Dulles to nego­ti­a­tions in Seoul. The Dulles par­ty also includ­ed Kodama’s pro­tege Machii Hisayu­ki, boss of the Kore­an yakuza in Japan. Efforts to dis­cov­er under Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion what Kodama and Machii did dur­ing the trip with Dulles have run into a stone wall. In the MacArthur Memo­r­i­al archive we dis­cov­ered a per­son­al let­ter from Kodama to Gen­er­al MacArthur offer­ing to pro­vide thou­sands of yakuza and for­mer Japan­ese Army sol­diers to fight along­side Amer­i­can sol­diers in Korea. Accord­ing to sources in Korea and Japan, the offer was accept­ed and these men joined the Allied force on the Penin­su­la, pos­ing as Kore­an sol­diers. . . . ”


Requiem for “Victory at Sea,” Part 2

In numer­ous pro­grams, we have dis­cussed Kodama Yoshio, one of Japan’s pre­mier orga­nized crime boss­es, who was head of the Kodama Agency, charged with procur­ing mate­ri­als for Japan’s Impe­r­i­al Naval Air Force. Kodama was aid­ed in his efforts by Gen­er­al Tai Li, Chi­ang Kai-shek’s chief of intel­li­gence, who swapped key raw mate­ri­als for nar­cotics to back the Kuom­intang nar­co-dic­ta­tor­ship. ” . . . . Offi­cial­ly, Kodama was in Shang­hai as a buy­er for the Impe­r­i­al Navy Air Force, under the rubric of the Kodama Kikan, or Kodama Agency. (Spe­cial Ser­vice Units were named after the offi­cer in charge and then called an agency.) On paper, his mis­sion was to locate and acquire sup­plies of cop­per, cobalt, nick­el and mica. In most cas­es, he bought these direct­ly from KMT secret police chief Gen­er­al Tai Li, who was paid in hero­in. . . . Because the Strike South would involve Japan’s navy, and the navy would admin­is­ter the Malay Arch­i­pel­ago through which [Gold­en Lily] trea­sure ships must pass, Kodama was trans­ferred overnight from the army to the navy, and giv­en the rank of rear admi­ral. This was like mak­ing Al Capone a U.S. Navy admi­ral. . . . Kodama returned to Shang­hai just in time for Pearl Har­bor. . . .”


Requiem for “Victory at Sea” UPDATED ON 1/16/2020

Hav­ing been born in 1949, I grew up with World War II as a crit­i­cal ele­ment of my polit­i­cal, civic and cog­ni­tive upbring­ing. I vivid­ly remem­ber watch­ing the doc­u­men­tary “Vic­to­ry at Sea” on tele­vi­sion as a child. As I have grown old­er, more knowl­edge­able and wis­er, learn­ing the truth about World War II has been very sad and painful. In FTR #1095, we not­ed the his­tor­i­cal back­ground to the ongo­ing con­flict with China–the bru­tal Japan­ese onslaught and the col­lab­o­ra­tion of Chi­ang Kai-shek’s Kuom­intang nar­co-dic­ta­tor­ship with Japan’s attack and occu­pa­tion. As a boy, I was awed and moved by the hero­ism of Amer­i­can and Allied ser­vice per­son­nel who braved the dan­gers of fly­ing over the Hump to bring U.S. sup­plies to Chi­ang Kai-shek’s forces. Although offi­cial­ly allied with the U.S., Chi­ang Kai-shek’s forces were actu­al­ly work­ing “both sides of the street.” We have encoun­tered noth­ing more grotesque­ly trag­ic and dis­il­lu­sion­ing than the aware­ness that Amer­i­can mil­i­tary sup­plies flown over the Hump and/or sent along the Bur­ma Road found their way into the hands of the Japan­ese, cour­tesy of KMT gen­er­al Ku Chu-tung and his orga­nized crime broth­er. Col­lab­o­rat­ing with Kodama Yoshio, the Japan­ese crime boss and Admi­ral of the Impe­r­i­al Japan­ese Navy, the broth­ers swapped U.S. lend lease sup­plies for drugs.


FTR #1091 The Destabilization of China, Part 2

The pro­gram begins with an excerpt of AFA #37 (from the fall of 1992), deal­ing with the desta­bi­liza­tion of the U.S.S.R. Rely­ing on arti­cles from Covert Action Infor­ma­tion Bul­letin #35, by Doug Hen­wood and Sean Ger­vasi, the pro­gram reviews both NSC 68 and what Ger­vasi terms “the full court press” strat­e­gy that was its ulti­mate ful­fill­ment.

Using polit­i­cal action focused on pro­mot­ing frac­tious nation­al­ism among tar­get­ed eth­nic­i­ties with­in the tar­get­ed nation and eco­nom­ic and diplo­mat­ic pres­sure to weak­en that coun­try, the strat­e­gy worked very well with the Sovi­et Union.

It is Mr. Emory’s con­sid­ered opin­ion that the same strat­e­gy is being applied to Chi­na. Whether that strat­e­gy will be suc­cess­ful remains to be seen.

Next, we note the role of the Nation­al Endow­ment for Democ­ra­cy (an exam­ple of Orwellian Newspeak if ever there was one) in con­tin­u­ing our exam­i­na­tion of the tur­moil in Hong Kong. NED was deeply involved in the desta­bi­liza­tion of the U.S.S.R. We exam­ined NED’s role in pro­ject­ing Nazi and fas­cist ele­ments back into Lithua­nia in AFA #37, as well as FTR #858.

In this arti­cle we note: the involve­ment of the NED with the lead­ing indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions involved with the tur­moil in Hong Kong; the net­work­ing between oth­er U.S. “soft-pow­er” intel­li­gence fronts with the Hong Kong activists; U.S. “Alt-right” involve­ment with the Hong Kong unrest; the meet­ing of a U.S. diplo­mat with Hong Kong activists; the net­work­ing between top Trump admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials and the Hong Kong activists; the use of anti-Chi­nese slurs dat­ing to the fight­ing between Japan and Chi­na pri­or to, and dur­ing, World War II; the use of what–if it were used by peo­ple act­ing in the U.S.–rioting and ter­ror­ism by the crowds in Hong Kong; the vio­lence used in Hong Kong includes throw­ing gaso­line bombs at the police, set­ting fire to sub­way sta­tions, attack­ing passers-by and assault­ing counter-pro­test­ers.