FTR #1109 Deutsche Bank, “Suicides,” The Supreme Court and Team Trump (Send in The Clowns, Part 2)

While the pub­lic’s atten­tion is focused on the impeach­ment pro­ceed­ings, high­ly sus­pi­cious infor­ma­tion has sur­faced involv­ing the finances of “Team Trump,” Deutsche Bank, osten­si­ble “sui­cides,” and appar­ent destruc­tion of finan­cial records.

With the fail­ure of a Trump fil­ing in appeals court, this con­cate­na­tion appears to be head­ed to the Supreme Court, where both Neil Gor­such and Brett Kavanaugh clerked for for­mer Jus­tice Antho­ny Kennedy. (Kavanaugh took Kennedy’s seat.) 

Dur­ing the con­fir­ma­tion hear­ings of both judges, none of the occu­pants of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­to­r­i­al Clown Car brought up the fact that Jus­tice Kennedy’s son Justin was in charge of Deutsche Bank’s real estate lend­ing depart­ment when the insti­tu­tion was Trump’s only lender. Justin Kennedy also had strong pro­fes­sion­al trans­ac­tions with Jared Kush­n­er’s real estate oper­a­tions, as well.

Thomas Bowers–a key Deutsche Bank offi­cial involved with Don­ald Trump’s deal­ings with the bank–allegedly com­mit­ted sui­cide in late Novem­ber of 2019, as “The Don­ald” attempt­ed to keep his finan­cial records from Con­gres­sion­al inves­ti­ga­tors. ” Thomas Bow­ers, iden­ti­fied as a for­mer Deutsche Bank exec­u­tive who signed off on con­tro­ver­sial loans to Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, died last week after appar­ent­ly tak­ing his own life at 55.. . . . ‘One source who has direct knowl­edge of the FBI’s inves­ti­ga­tion into Deutsche Bank said that fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tors have asked about Bow­ers and doc­u­ments he might have. Anoth­er source who has knowl­edge of Deutsche Bank’s inter­nal struc­ture said that Bow­ers would have been the gate­keep­er for finan­cial doc­u­ments for the bank’s wealth­i­est cus­tomers.’ . . . .”

In addi­tion to Mr. Bow­ers, a Deutsche Bank exec­u­tive named William Broeksmit alleged­ly com­mit­ted sui­cide in 2014. His son, Val, has giv­en the FBI doc­u­ments involv­ing the bank’s deal­ings with Team Trump. “Fed­er­al author­i­ties are inves­ti­gat­ing whether Deutsche Bank com­plied with laws meant to stop mon­ey laun­der­ing and oth­er crimes, the lat­est gov­ern­ment exam­i­na­tion of poten­tial mis­con­duct at one of the world’s largest and most trou­bled banks . . . . The inves­ti­ga­tion includes a review of Deutsche Bank’s han­dling of so-called sus­pi­cious activ­i­ty reports that its employ­ees pre­pared about pos­si­bly prob­lem­at­ic trans­ac­tions, includ­ing some linked to Pres­i­dent Trump’s son-in-law and senior advis­er, Jared Kush­n­er . . . . The same fed­er­al agent who con­tact­ed Ms. McFadden’s lawyer also par­tic­i­pat­ed in inter­views of the son of a deceased Deutsche Bank exec­u­tive, William S. Broeksmit. . . . . . . . F.B.I. agents met this year with Val Broeksmit, whose father was a senior Deutsche Bank exec­u­tive who com­mit­ted sui­cide in Jan­u­ary 2014. Mr. Broeksmit said he had pro­vid­ed the agents with inter­nal bank doc­u­ments and oth­er mate­ri­als that he had retrieved from his father’s per­son­al email accounts. . . .”

Irreg­u­lar­i­ties sug­gest­ing mon­ey laun­der­ing also involved Deutsche Bank deal­ings with Jared Kush­n­er, Trump’s son-in-law. The bank ignored its employ­ees’ requests to rile reports with the gov­ern­ment. ” . . . . Anti-mon­ey-laun­der­ing spe­cial­ists at Deutsche Bank rec­om­mend­ed in 2016 and 2017 that mul­ti­ple trans­ac­tions involv­ing legal enti­ties con­trolled by Don­ald J. Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kush­n­er, be report­ed to a fed­er­al finan­cial-crimes watch­dog. . . . .But exec­u­tives at Deutsche Bank, which has lent bil­lions of dol­lars to the Trump and Kush­n­er com­pa­nies, reject­ed their employ­ees’ advice. The reports were nev­er filed with the gov­ern­ment. . . .”

In addi­tion to pos­si­ble mon­ey-laun­der­ing trans­ac­tions involv­ing Trump and Kush­n­er, Deutsche Bank lent Kush­n­er $285 mil­lion the day before elec­tion day, a for­tu­itous move that allowed Kush­n­er to net $74 mil­lion on a real estate invest­ment. ” . . . . One month before Elec­tion Day, Jared Kushner’s real estate com­pa­ny final­ized a $285 mil­lion loan as part of a refi­nanc­ing pack­age for its prop­er­ty near Times Square in Man­hat­tan . . . . . . . The Deutsche Bank loan capped what Kush­n­er Cos. viewed as a tri­umph: It had pur­chased four most­ly emp­ty retail floors of the for­mer New York Times build­ing in 2015, recruit­ed ten­ants to fill the space and got the Deutsche Bank loan in a refi­nanc­ing deal that gave Kushner’s com­pa­ny $74 mil­lion more than it paid for the prop­er­ty. . . .”

Deutsche Bank does not have Trump’s tax returns, some­thing flagged by the insti­tu­tion’s employ­ees as unusu­al. The bank had pre­vi­ous­ly informed the Sec­ond Cir­cuit Court of Appeals. Note that Deutsche Bank said in a let­ter to the Unit­ed States Court of Appeals for the Sec­ond Cir­cuit in New York that they had tax returns for two mem­bers of the Trump fam­i­ly! That changed, quick­ly! “If inves­ti­ga­tors are going to get their hands on Pres­i­dent Trump’s tax returns, they will have to find them some­where oth­er than Deutsche Bank. The Ger­man bank — which for near­ly two decades was the only main­stream finan­cial insti­tu­tion con­sis­tent­ly will­ing to lend mon­ey to Mr. Trump . . . Last month, The New York Times and oth­er media out­lets asked the Unit­ed States Court of Appeals for the Sec­ond Cir­cuit in New York to unseal a let­ter from Deutsche Bank that iden­ti­fied two mem­bers of the Trump fam­i­ly whose tax returns the bank pos­sess­es. On Thurs­day, the court reject­ed the request. Part of the rea­son, it said, was that Deutsche Bank had informed the court that ‘the only tax returns it has for indi­vid­u­als and enti­ties named in the sub­poe­nas are not those of the pres­i­dent.’ Cur­rent and for­mer bank offi­cials pre­vi­ous­ly told The Times that Deutsche Bank had por­tions of Mr. Trump’s per­son­al and cor­po­rate tax returns. . . .”

An unnamed Deutsche Bank exec­u­tive not­ed in an e‑mail to the afore­men­tioned David Enrich that this was high­ly unusu­al, and the bank may have destroyed the doc­u­ments and cleansed their servers: ” . . . . David Enrich, finance edi­tor at The New York Times, post­ed to Twit­ter a screen­shot of his con­ver­sa­tion with the unnamed exec­u­tive in which they expressed sur­prise that Deutsche told a fed­er­al appeals court it did not have the president’s tax returns any­more. ‘Holy f**k,’ the exec­u­tive wrote, per the screen­shot. ‘The cir­cum­stance could be that they returned any phys­i­cal copies or destroyed any phys­i­cal copies under an agree­ment with a client and cleansed their servers. Not nor­mal though.’ . . . . ”

A dis­turb­ing per­spec­tive on the alleged “sui­cide” of Thomas Bow­ers, who was in charge of Trump’s deal­ings with the bank, as well as the alleged “sui­cide” of William Broeksmit is pro­vid­ed by an argu­ment voiced by Trump attor­ney William Consovoy in a hear­ing at the Sec­ond Cir­cuit Court of Appeals: ” . . . . [Judge] Dunne brought up Trump’s famous state­ment when he caught fire dur­ing the 2016 Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry, say­ing, ‘I could stand in the mid­dle of 5th Avenue and shoot some­body and I wouldn’t lose any vot­ers.’ ‘If he did pull out a hand­gun and shoot some­one on Fifth Ave,’ Dunne asked, ‘would the local police be restrained?‘Judge Chin raised Dunne’s point. He asked Consovoy for his ‘view on the Fifth Avenue exam­ple.’ ‘Local author­i­ties couldn’t inves­ti­gate, they couldn’t do any­thing about it?’ he asked. ‘No,’ replied a vis­i­bly annoyed Consovoy amid sti­fled chor­tles. ‘Noth­ing could be done? That’s your posi­tion?’ Chin repeat­ed. ‘That is cor­rect, that is cor­rect,’ Consovoy respond­ed . . . .”

It now appears that the Deutsche Bank case will be heard by the Supreme Court. There are already two sim­i­lar cas­es on their way to the court. It will be more than a lit­tle inter­est­ing to see how the SCOTUS rules, and how Judges Gor­such and Kavanaugh per­form in the case. ” . . . . A fed­er­al appeals court said Tues­day that Deutsche Bank must turn over detailed doc­u­ments about Pres­i­dent Trump’s finances to two con­gres­sion­al com­mit­tees, a rul­ing that will most like­ly be appealed to the Supreme Court. . . . Demo­c­ra­t­ic-con­trolled con­gres­sion­al com­mit­tees issued sub­poe­nas to two banks — Deutsche Bank, long Mr. Trump’s biggest lender, and Cap­i­tal One — this year for finan­cial records relat­ed to the pres­i­dent, his com­pa­nies and his fam­i­ly. Mr. Trump sued the banks to block them from com­ply­ing . . . . Mr. Trump’s lawyer, Jay Seku­low, said in a state­ment that ‘we are eval­u­at­ing our next options includ­ing seek­ing review at the Supreme Court of the Unit­ed States.’ He called the con­gres­sion­al sub­poe­nas ‘invalid as issued.’ . . . .”

When the Sen­ate hear­ings for Gor­such and Kavanaugh were held, none of the Sen­a­tors ques­tioned the nom­i­nees about some crit­i­cal rela­tion­ships:

Antho­ny Kennedy’s son Justin was  Trump’s  banker at Deutsche Bank. Fur­ther­more, jurists who clerked for Antho­ny Kennedy fig­ure promi­nent­ly in Trump’s judi­cial appoint­ments:

1.–” . . . . He [Trump] picked Jus­tice Neil M. Gor­such, who had served as a law clerk to Jus­tice Kennedy, to fill Jus­tice Scalia’s seat. . . .”
2.–” . . . . Then, after Jus­tice Gorsuch’s nom­i­na­tion was announced, a White House offi­cial sin­gled out two can­di­dates for the next Supreme Court vacan­cy: Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh of the Unit­ed States Court of Appeals for the Dis­trict of Colum­bia Cir­cuit and Judge Ray­mond M. Keth­ledge of the Unit­ed States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Cir­cuit, in Cincin­nati. The two judges had some­thing in com­mon: They had both clerked for Jus­tice Kennedy. . . .”
3.–” . . . . In the mean­time, as the White House turned to stock­ing the low­er courts, it did not over­look Jus­tice Kennedy’s clerks. Mr. Trump nom­i­nat­ed three of them to fed­er­al appeals courts: Judges Stephanos Bibas and Michael Scud­der, both of whom have been con­firmed, and Eric Mur­phy, the Ohio solic­i­tor gen­er­al, whom Mr. Trump nom­i­nat­ed to the Sixth Cir­cuit this month. . . .”
4.–” . . . . Jus­tice Kennedy’s son, Justin . . . . spent more than a decade at Deutsche Bank, even­tu­al­ly ris­ing to become the bank’s glob­al head of real estate cap­i­tal mar­kets, and he worked close­ly with Mr. Trump when he was a real estate devel­op­er, accord­ing to two peo­ple with knowl­edge of his role. Dur­ing Mr. Kennedy’s tenure, Deutsche Bank became Mr. Trump’s most impor­tant lender, dis­pens­ing well over $1 bil­lion in loans to him for the ren­o­va­tion and con­struc­tion of sky­scrap­ers in New York and Chica­go at a time oth­er main­stream banks were wary of doing busi­ness with him because of his trou­bled busi­ness his­to­ry. . . .”

The Justin Kennedy/Trump fam­i­ly rela­tion­ship does not end there: After Kennedy left Deutsche Bank in 2009 he went on to become co-CEO LNR Prop­er­ty LLC. LNR Prop­er­ty saved Jared Kushner’s mid­town Man­hat­tan prop­er­ty in 2011:

1.–” . . . . from 2010–2013 Justin Kennedy was the co-CEO of LNR Prop­er­ty LLC with Tobin Cobb. . . .”
2.–” . . . . Accord­ing the New York Times, in 2007 Kush­n­er Com­pa­nies pur­chased ‘an alu­minum-clad office tow­er in Mid­town Man­hat­tan, for a record price of $1.8 bil­lion.’ At the time the NYT wrote that this deal was ‘con­sid­ered a clas­sic exam­ple of reck­less under­writ­ing. The trans­ac­tion was so high­ly lever­aged that the cash flow from rents amount­ed to only 65 per­cent of the debt ser­vice.’ . . .”
3.– ” . . . Who came to the res­cue? None oth­er than LNR Prop­er­ty, the com­pa­ny whose CEO at the time was Justin Kennedy. Accord­ing to the NYT and the Real Deal, Mr. Kush­n­er and LNR ‘reached a pos­si­ble agree­ment with LNR Prop­er­ty, a firm spe­cial­iz­ing in restruc­tur­ing trou­bled debt and which over­sees the mort­gage, that would allow him to retain con­trol of the tow­er by mod­i­fy­ing the terms of the $1.2 bil­lion mort­gage tied to the office por­tion of the build­ing.’ . . .”

Last time we checked, Deutsche Bank was not a Russ­ian bank. The pro­gram con­cludes with review of infor­ma­tion from Mar­tin Bor­mann: Nazi in Exile.

Mar­tin Bor­mann: Nazi in Exile; Paul Man­ning; Copy­right 1981 [HC]; Lyle Stu­art Inc.; ISBN 0–8184-0309–8; p. 205.

. . . . The [FBI] file [on Mar­tin Bor­mann] revealed that he had been bank­ing under his own name from his office in Ger­many in Deutsche Bank of Buenos Aires since 1941; that he held one joint account with the Argen­tin­ian dic­ta­tor Juan Per­on, and on August 4, 5 and 14, 1967, had writ­ten checks on demand accounts in first Nation­al City Bank (Over­seas Divi­sion) of New York, The Chase Man­hat­tan Bank, and Man­u­fac­tur­ers Hanover Trust Co., all cleared through Deutsche Bank of Buenos Aires. . . .

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Dis­cus­sion of the alleged “sui­cide” of Calogero Gam­bi­no, a Deutsche Bank attor­ney; the fact that Antho­ny Kennedy only agreed to resign after he was assured that Brett Kavanaugh would be named as his replace­ment. 

Deutsche Bank and the Financial Meltdown

It is impor­tant to under­stand that Ger­man banks are any­thing but blame­less in the Euro­pean finan­cial cri­sis. Deutsche Bank car­ried a large amount of bad debt on its books and lied about it in order to fool investors. In 2007, the Fed­er­al Reserve had to help bailout Deutsche Bank. The U.S. sued Deutsche Bank over its manip­u­la­tion of the Amer­i­can mort­gage mar­ket.

Deutsche Bank took its pain but is it now poised to gain?

The Wall Street Jour­nal Deutsche Bank has avoid­ed the worst of the bank­ing car­nage by pulling off a series of trades that have light­ened its load of soured invest­ments. While it still could need to write down assets or raise cap­i­tal, Ger­many’s largest bank by mar­ket val­ue is posi­tion­ing itself to be an acquir­er in […]

FTR#1196 The Narco-Fascism of Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang, Part 3

The pro­gram begins with dis­cus­sion of two arti­cles that frame the analy­sis of the New Cold War with Chi­na.

” . . . . ‘the polit­i­cal-eco­nom­ic sys­tem of the Peo­ple’s Repub­lic is pre­cise­ly that what no one expects, in the West — where agi­ta­tion­al report­ing usu­al­ly only con­firms resent­ful clichés about Chi­na. . . .”

Much jour­nal­is­tic blovi­at­ing and diplo­mat­ic and mil­i­tary pos­tur­ing in the U.S. has been devot­ed to Chi­na’s occu­pa­tion of unin­hab­it­ed atolls in the South Chi­na Sea and waters around Chi­na.

In addi­tion to fail­ure to under­stand this in the his­tor­i­cal con­text of Chi­na’s expe­ri­ence dur­ing the Opi­um Wars and the con­flict with the Japan­ese dur­ing World War II, the cov­er­age in the West has omit­ted dis­cus­sion of sim­i­lar occu­pa­tion and (in some cas­es) mil­i­ta­riza­tion of such islands in those waters by oth­er coun­tries in the region: ” . . . . Offi­cial­ly, Berlin jus­ti­fies the frigate Bay­ern’s deploy­ment to East Asia with its inten­tion to pro­mote the imple­men­ta­tion of inter­na­tion­al law. This per­tains par­tic­u­lar­ly to con­flicts over numer­ous islands and atolls in the South Chi­na Sea that are con­test­ed by the ripar­i­ans and where Chi­na claims 28 of them and uses some mil­i­tar­i­ly, accord­ing to the Cen­ter for Strate­gic and Inter­na­tion­al Stud­ies (CSIS). Accord­ing to CSIS, the Philip­pines con­trol nine, Malaysia, five and Tai­wan, one island, where­as Viet­nam has estab­lished around 50 out­posts of var­i­ous sorts. All four coun­tries also have a mil­i­tary pres­ence on some of the islands and atolls they are occu­py­ing. . . .”

As not­ed in the Ger­man For­eign Pol­i­cy arti­cle, the Ger­man (and U.S. and U.K.) posi­tion is bla­tant­ly hyp­o­crit­i­cal: ” . . . . The frigate Bay­ern, which set sail for East Asia yes­ter­day, will soon make a port call at Diego Gar­cia, an island under occu­pa­tion, in vio­la­tion of inter­na­tion­al law, and serv­ing mil­i­tary pur­pos­es. It is the main island of the Cha­gos Arch­i­pel­ago in the mid­dle of the Indi­an Ocean and the site of a strate­gi­cal­ly impor­tant US mil­i­tary base. The Cha­gos Arch­i­pel­ago is an old British colo­nial pos­ses­sion that had once belonged to Mau­ri­tius. It was detached, in vio­la­tion of inter­na­tion­al law, dur­ing the decol­o­niza­tion of Mau­ri­tius, to allow the Unit­ed States to con­struct a mil­i­tary base. The pop­u­la­tion was deport­ed to impov­er­ished regions on Mau­ri­tius. In the mean­time, sev­er­al inter­na­tion­al court rul­ings have been hand­ed down and a UN Gen­er­al Assem­bly res­o­lu­tion has been passed on this issue — all con­clud­ing that Mau­ri­tius has sov­er­eign­ty over Diego Gar­cia and call­ing on the Unit­ed King­dom to hand back the ille­gal­ly occu­pied Cha­gos Arch­i­pel­ago. To this day, Lon­don and Wash­ing­ton refuse to com­ply. . . .”

Anoth­er Ger­man For­eign Pol­i­cy arti­cle sets forth many of Mr. Emory’s fears and obser­va­tions con­cern­ing con­tem­po­rary Chi­na and the U.S.

Among those con­cerns and fears:

1.–” . . . . the major shift in the glob­al bal­ance of pow­er, shap­ing our present, with Chi­na’s rise and the USA seek­ing to hold the Peo­ple’s Repub­lic of Chi­na down, to pre­serve its glob­al dom­i­nance. The con­se­quences are a dan­ger­ous esca­la­tion of the con­flict, which could lead to a Third World War. . . .”
2.–” . . . . At the begin­ning of the 19th cen­tu­ry, the Mid­dle King­dom (Chi­na) — which had one-third of the world’s pop­u­la­tion — was still gen­er­at­ing a third of the world’s eco­nom­ic out­put. There­fore, it was the world’s great­est eco­nom­ic pow­er — as it had already been for many cen­turies. . . .”
3.–” . . . . Chi­na’s resur­gence, fol­low­ing the dev­as­ta­tion brought on par­tic­u­lar­ly by the west­ern colo­nial pow­ers was pos­si­ble, Baron explains, not least because ‘the polit­i­cal-eco­nom­ic sys­tem of the Peo­ple’s Repub­lic is pre­cise­ly that what no one expects, in the West — where agi­ta­tion­al report­ing usu­al­ly only con­firms resent­ful clichés about Chi­na. It is ‘high­ly flex­i­ble, adven­tur­ous, and adapt­able.’ Baron quotes Sebas­t­ian Heil­mann and Eliz­a­beth Per­ry, both experts on Chi­na, say­ing pol­i­tics is explic­it­ly under­stood as a ‘process of con­stant trans­for­ma­tions and con­flict man­age­ment, with tri­al runs and ad hoc adap­ta­tions.’ The Chi­nese sys­tem is a far cry from being a rigid, inflex­i­ble author­i­tar­i­an­ism. . . .”
4.–” . . . . Baron depicts the for­eign pol­i­cy the USA — at home increas­ing­ly decay­ing — has been indulging in since the end of the cold war: an extreme­ly aggres­sive approach toward Rus­sia, gru­el­ing wars — such as in Iraq — in addi­tion to ‘regime change oper­a­tions’ and unscrupu­lous extra-ter­ri­to­r­i­al sanc­tions. ‘The mil­i­tary-indus­tri­al-com­plex and the intel­li­gence ser­vices (...) have seized an enor­mous amount of pow­er,’ notes the pub­li­cist, and warns that only exter­nal aggres­sion can hold the coun­try togeth­er: ‘The con­vic­tion that Amer­i­ca must be at the top in the world,’ is, at the moment, ‘almost the only thing that the deeply antag­o­nis­tic Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans can still agree on.’ Baron speaks of ‘impe­r­i­al arro­gance.’ . . .”
5.–” . . . . ‘To defend its lost hege­mon­ic posi­tion’ the Unit­ed States ‘is not pri­mar­i­ly seek­ing to regain its com­pet­i­tive­ness,’ Baron observes, but rather it is striv­ing ‘by any means and on all fronts, to pre­vent — or at least restrain — Chi­na’s progress.’ . . . . Ulti­mate­ly, ‘the threat of a Third World War’ looms large. . . .”

One can­not under­stand con­tem­po­rary Chi­na and the polit­i­cal his­to­ry of that coun­try over the last cou­ple of cen­turies with­out a com­pre­hen­sive grasp of the effect of the Opi­um Wars on that nation and its peo­ple.

Indeed, one can­not grasp Chi­nese his­to­ry and pol­i­tics with­out an under­stand­ing of the nar­cotics trade’s cen­tral posi­tion in that country’s pol­i­tics.

A viable under­stand­ing of Chi­na’s past yields under­stand­ing of its present. 

Key points of analy­sis and dis­cus­sion of the Opi­um Wars include:

1.–The eco­nom­ic imper­a­tive for the con­flicts were the trade imbal­ance between Chi­na and Britain: “ . . . . In the 18th cen­tu­ry the demand for Chi­nese lux­u­ry goods (par­tic­u­lar­ly silk, porce­lain, and tea) cre­at­ed a trade imbal­ance between Chi­na and Britain. Euro­pean sil­ver flowed into Chi­na through the Can­ton Sys­tem, which con­fined incom­ing for­eign trade to the south­ern port city of Can­ton. . . .”
2.–To alter that dynam­ic, the British East India Com­pa­ny turned to the opi­um trade: “ . . . . To counter this imbal­ance, the British East India Com­pa­ny began to grow opi­um in Ben­gal and allowed pri­vate British mer­chants to sell opi­um to Chi­nese smug­glers for ille­gal sale in Chi­na. The influx of nar­cotics reversed the Chi­nese trade sur­plus, drained the econ­o­my of sil­ver, and increased the num­bers of opi­um addicts inside the coun­try, out­comes that seri­ous­ly wor­ried Chi­nese offi­cials. . . .”
3.–The Chi­nese attempt at inter­dict­ing the opi­um trade was coun­tered with force of arms: “ . . . . In 1839, the Daoguang Emper­or, reject­ing pro­pos­als to legal­ize and tax opi­um, appoint­ed ViceroyLin Zexu to go to Can­ton to halt the opi­um trade completely.[8] Lin wrote an open let­ter to Queen Vic­to­ria, which she nev­er saw, appeal­ing to her moral respon­si­bil­i­ty to stop the opi­um trade.[9] Lin then resort­ed to using force in the west­ern mer­chants’ enclave. He con­fis­cat­ed all sup­plies and ordered a block­ade of for­eign ships on the Pearl Riv­er. Lin also con­fis­cat­ed and destroyed a sig­nif­i­cant quan­ti­ty of Euro­pean opium.[10] The British gov­ern­ment respond­ed by dis­patch­ing a mil­i­tary force to Chi­na and in the ensu­ing con­flict, the Roy­al Navy used its naval and gun­nery pow­er to inflict a series of deci­sive defeats on the Chi­nese Empire,[11] a tac­tic lat­er referred to as gun­boat diplo­ma­cy.  . . .”
4.–Forced to sign the Treaty of Nanking, Chi­na expe­ri­enced: “ . . . . In 1842, the Qing dynasty was forced to sign the Treaty of Nanking—the first of what the Chi­nese lat­er called the unequal treaties—which grant­ed an indem­ni­ty  and extrater­ri­to­ri­al­i­ty to British sub­jects in Chi­na . . . . The 1842 Treaty of Nanking not only opened the way for fur­ther opi­um trade, but ced­ed the ter­ri­to­ry of Hong Kong . . . . ”
5.–The trade imbal­ance between Chi­na and Britain wors­ened, and the expense of main­tain new colo­nial territories—including Hong Kong (appro­pri­at­ed through the first Opi­um War)—led to the sec­ond Opi­um War. Note that the “extrater­ri­to­ri­al­i­ty” grant­ed to British sub­jects exempt­ed them from Chi­nese law, includ­ing the offi­cial pro­hi­bi­tion against opi­um traf­fick­ing: “ . . . . Despite the new ports avail­able for trade under the Treaty of Nanking, by 1854 Britain’s imports from Chi­na had reached nine times their exports to the coun­try. At the same time British impe­r­i­al finances came under fur­ther pres­sure from the expense of admin­is­ter­ing the bur­geon­ing colonies of Hong Kong and Sin­ga­pore in addi­tion to India. Only the lat­ter’s opi­um could bal­ance the deficit. [30]Along with var­i­ous com­plaints about the treat­ment of British mer­chants in Chi­nese ports and the Qing gov­ern­men­t’s refusal to accept fur­ther for­eign ambas­sadors, the rel­a­tive­ly minor ‘Arrow Inci­dent’ pro­vid­ed the pre­text the British need­ed to once more resort to mil­i­tary force to ensure the opi­um kept flow­ing. . . . Mat­ters quick­ly esca­lat­ed and led to the Sec­ond Opi­um War . . . .”
6.–As a result of the Sec­ond Opi­um War, Chi­na was oblig­ed to Cede No.1 Dis­trict of Kowloon (south of present-day Bound­ary Street) to Britain; grant “free­dom of reli­gion,” which led to an influx of West­ern Mis­sion­ar­ies, U.S. in par­tic­u­lar; British ships were allowed to car­ry inden­tured Chi­nese to the Amer­i­c­as; legal­iza­tion of the opi­um trade.”
7.–Fierce, elo­quent con­dem­na­tion of the Opi­um Wars was voiced by British Prime Min­is­ter Glad­stone: “ . . . . The opi­um trade incurred intense enmi­ty from the lat­er British Prime Min­is­ter William Ewart Gladstone.[34] As a mem­ber of Par­lia­ment, Glad­stone called it ‘most infa­mous and atro­cious’, refer­ring to the opi­um trade between Chi­na and British India in particular.[35] Glad­stone was fierce­ly against both of the Opi­um Wars, was ardent­ly opposed to the British trade in opi­um to Chi­na, and denounced British vio­lence against Chinese.[36] Glad­stone lam­bast­ed it as ‘Palmer­ston’s Opi­um War’ and said that he felt ‘in dread of the judg­ments of God upon Eng­land for our nation­al iniq­ui­ty towards Chi­na’ in May 1840.[37] A famous speech was made by Glad­stone in Par­lia­ment against the First Opi­um War.[38][39] Glad­stone crit­i­cized it as ‘a war more unjust in its ori­gin, a war more cal­cu­lat­ed in its progress to cov­er this coun­try with per­ma­nent dis­grace’. . . .”

FTR #1169 The Corporate Foundation of the Current Malaise

To com­pre­hend the polit­i­cal mael­strom engulf­ing the coun­try as 2020 and the Trump admin­is­tra­tion are draw­ing to a close, it is essen­tial to under­stand the transna­tion­al cor­po­rate landscape—the foun­da­tion of con­tem­po­rary pow­er polit­i­cal dynam­ics.

Begin­ning with an out­growth of the piv­otal­ly impor­tant car­tel agree­ments reached by Stan­dard Oil and I.G. Far­ben between the World Wars, we note the appar­ent “gentleman’s agree­ment” between U.S. and Ger­man busi­ness­men not to bomb the Third Reich’s syn­thet­ic fuel plants dur­ing the Sec­ond World War.

Those syn­thet­ic fuel plants were a direct out­growth of the Standard‑I.G. Agree­ment of 1929, high­light­ed in—among oth­er programs—FTR #’s 511, and 1108.

That appar­ent agree­ment exem­pli­fies and sig­ni­fies the deci­sive posi­tion of transna­tion­al cor­po­rate inter­ests in the man­i­fes­ta­tion of inter­na­tion­al pow­er pol­i­tics.

Next, we set forth the dom­i­nant posi­tion of the remark­able and dead­ly Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work in the glob­al “cor­poro­c­ra­cy.”

In addi­tion to con­trol of the Ger­man cor­po­rate estab­lish­ment and inter­locked Euro­pean inter­ests, the Bor­mann group has been buy­ing share in Blue Chip U.S. stocks for the bet­ter part of the last hun­dred years. This puts the net­work in a con­trol­ling posi­tion in the transna­tion­al cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ty.

With elec­tron­ic, com­put­er-con­trolled buy­ing and sell­ing of equi­ties in the world’s cap­i­tal mar­kets, a rel­a­tive­ly small share of cap­i­tal own­er­ship in one of the giant transna­tion­als is dis­pro­por­tion­al­ly impor­tant. Own­er­ship of 2% or more of the stock in one of the world’s giant cor­po­ra­tions con­sti­tutes a major posi­tion, in that when that num­ber of shares is sold at one time, such an event can kick-in an elec­tron­ic sell-off.

Illus­trat­ing the posi­tion of the Bor­mann net­work in U.S. eco­nom­ic life, we review the fact that Bor­mann drew funds on three demand accounts in New York banks in August of 1967. Noth­ing illus­trates the nature of transna­tion­al cor­po­rate pow­er and the posi­tion of the remark­able and dead­ly Bor­mann group in the cor­po­rate pan­theon.

We note, in pass­ing, that Bormann’s secu­ri­ty director—Gestapo chief Hein­rich Muller—worked with CIA and U.S. intel­li­gence in the post­war peri­od.
The Bor­mann trans­ac­tions took place in August of 1967. In April and June of the fol­low­ing year, Mar­tin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy were killed.

Bor­mann saw Fritz Thyssen as a pipeline to Allen Dulles.

In the con­clud­ing por­tion of the pro­gram, we present sup­ple­men­tal infor­ma­tion from an unpub­lished man­u­script. The author is well-known to vet­er­an researchers, but will remain anony­mous, since the work was nev­er for­mal­ly pub­lished.

In FTR #’s 1149 and 1150, we set forth por­tions of this man­u­script. In this pro­gram, we reca­pit­u­late those por­tions of the doc­u­ment, and include dis­cus­sion of the con­sum­mate influ­ence of the I.G. Far­ben inter­na­tion­al espi­onage orga­ni­za­tion in the U.S. between the World Wars.

In addi­tion to I.G.’s pro­found rela­tion­ship with John Fos­ter and Allen Dulles of Sul­li­van & Cromwell, I.G. has also man­i­fest­ed major influ­ence in Demo­c­ra­t­ic admin­is­tra­tions: Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal and JFK’s atten­u­at­ed post­war admin­is­tra­tion as well.

Beyond that, the author main­tains, cor­rect­ly in our opin­ion, that the transna­tion­al influ­ence of the I.G. net­works and the post­war polit­i­cal influ­ence-buy­ing of CIA and BND con­sti­tute a direct exten­sion of the OSS-SS col­lab­o­ra­tion dur­ing the clos­ing stages of World War II.

What was cre­at­ed in US. board­rooms and intel­li­gence head­quar­ters dur­ing and imme­di­ate­ly after World War II is now mor­ph­ing into a mass move­ment.
This is the cor­po­rate foun­da­tion of the cur­rent malaise!

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Review of the role of OSS (and lat­er CIA) offi­cers Allen Dulles, William Casey and Frank Wis­ner in paving the way for the incor­po­ra­tion of Nazi SS cadres into the embry­on­ic CIA; review of the role of 1948 GOP Pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Thomas Dewey in advis­ing the Mary Carter Paint Com­pa­ny (lat­er named Resorts Inter­na­tion­al) to pay Allen Dulles’s law part­ner David Peck to advise U.S. High Com­mis­sion­er for Ger­many John J. McCloy on the com­mu­ta­tion of sen­tences met­ed out to Nazi war crim­i­nals; review of the role of the Gehlen Org (as part of the then West Ger­man BND) in financ­ing East­ern Euro­pean fas­cist ele­ments in the U.S.; review of the over­lap between Resorts Inter­na­tion­al and William Casey’s Cap­i­tal Cities Incor­po­rat­ed; review of Casey’s role over­see­ing OSS activ­i­ties in Ger­many dur­ing 1944 and 1945.

FTR #1150 The Space Plane and Covid-19: The Paperclip Legacy, Part 5

This pro­gram com­pletes the line of inquiry we under­took in FTR #‘s 1146, 1147, 1148 and 1149. Most impor­tant­ly, we bring the evo­lu­tion of events and insti­tu­tions up to the present. Lis­ten­ers who digest the pro­grams in the future should bear in mind that these pro­grams were record­ed dur­ing, and in the imme­di­ate after­math of, the 2020 GOP con­ven­tion.

After review­ing infor­ma­tion about Nixon con­fi­dante Bebe Rebo­zo and the links of his bank to the dead­ly Bor­mann net­work, we con­tin­ue with the unpub­lished man­u­script from which we read in our last pro­gram. The broad­cast high­lights inter­ac­tions between the Nixon admin­is­tra­tion, Bebe Rebo­zo, a mys­te­ri­ous and alleged­ly orga­nized-crime con­nect­ed com­pa­ny called Resorts Inter­na­tion­al, an even more mys­te­ri­ous sub­sidiary of Resorts Inter­na­tion­al called the Par­adise Island Bridge Com­pa­ny and the Dewey, Dulles, Nazi, William Casey milieu that is cen­tral to this dis­cus­sion.

The Par­adise Island Bridge Com­pa­ny’s direc­tors are sug­ges­tive of a pos­si­ble Bor­mann link: ” . . . . It did, how­ev­er, name a num­ber of Ger­man and Swiss investors, One of these, for exam­ple, was Dr. Heinz Ros­terg of Lau­sanne, a for­mer ‘prin­ci­pal stock­hold­er’ and direc­tor of the Win­ter­shall potash con­cern; Win­ter­shall was one of the major sub­sidiaries of BASF, the largest sin­gle suc­ces­sor firm to I.G. Far­ben. . . . .”

The man­u­script sets forth spec­u­la­tion about the pos­si­bil­i­ty that Mary Carter Paint/Resorts Inter­na­tion­al may have gen­er­at­ed funds that greased the wheels for the release of many Nazi war crim­i­nals. ” . . . . Still unan­swered is the ques­tion of whether the sto­ry of the Dewey-Allen Dulles inter­est in Resorts should have referred to funds, not from the CIA itself, but from its Ger­man-Swiss part­ners in the Par­adise Island Bridge Com­pa­ny. Such a hypoth­e­sis might explain some of the many strange coin­ci­dences which sur­round the com­pa­ny’s con­tro­ver­sial his­to­ry. It might, for exam­ple, explain the ‘for­tune in legal fees’ that Mary Carter Paint, on the advice of Thomas Dewey, paid to Allen Dulles’ long­time law part­ner David Peck. (48) The SS-OSS con­nec­tion cer­tain­ly had rea­son to be grate­ful to David Peck. It was on the basis of Peck­’s rec­om­men­da­tion, as chair­man of a three-man advi­so­ry board to review all the Nurem­berg sen­tences, that John J. McCloy com­mut­ed to time served the sen­tence of Sko­rzeny’s post-war employ­er, Baron Alfried Krupp, and eight of his col­leagues, and also ordered Krup­p’s prop­er­ty to be restored. (49) The release of Krupp and oth­er indus­tri­al­ists ful­filled an ear­li­er demand to McCloy from Her­mann Abs, who him­self nar­row­ly escaped pros­e­cu­tion at Nurem­berg. Abs was the first post-war chair­man of BASF, the I.G. Far­ben suc­ces­sor com­pa­ny rep­re­sent­ed among the stock­hold­ers of the Par­adise Island Bridge Com­pa­ny. (50) . . . .”

William Casey

The author also engages in spec­u­la­tion about the rela­tion­ship between Resorts Inter­na­tion­al and Cap­i­tal Cities Broad­cast­ing. The lat­ter is the com­pa­ny that bought out ABC in the mid 1980’s and whose largest stock­hold­er was William Casey. ” . . . . Might not the OSS-SS con­nec­tion also throw light on the unex­plained inter­lock between James Cros­by’s com­pa­ny Resorts Inter­na­tion­al, tight­ly con­trolled by the relat­ed and dou­bly inter­mar­ried Cros­by-Mur­phy fam­i­lies, and Cap­i­tal Cities Broad­cast­ing, the major invest­ment of the CIA’s present direc­tor William Casey. (51) Casey would be the log­i­cal per­son to have estab­lished the orig­i­nal con­nec­tion between the Cros­by-Mur­phy fam­i­lies and their mys­te­ri­ous Ger­man-Swiss part­ners. For it was Casey who, in 1944–45, ‘was giv­en over­all oper­a­tional con­trol of [OSS] Ger­man projects,’ and ‘co-ordi­nat­ed . . . the over 150 men’ whom OSS sent into Ger­many. (52) With Dulles, Wis­ner, and For­gan, Casey was also one of the OSS vet­er­ans who lob­bied suc­cess­ful­ly for a CIA which could legit­i­mate­ly uti­lize the resources of the Gehlen Org. (53) . . .”

The “unex­plained inter­lock” between Resorts Inter­na­tion­al and Cap­i­tal Cities is described by the author: ” . . . . James Cros­by’s cousin and broth­er-in-law, Thomas S. Mur­phy, was in 1964, the Exec­u­tive Vice-Pres­i­dent and a direc­tor of Cap­i­tal Cities, as well as a direc­tor of Mary Carter Paint. Low­ell Thomas, a long-time radio broad­cast­er with intel­li­gence con­nec­tions, was a direc­tor of both com­pa­nies. At the time, William Casey was an offi­cer, direc­tor, and major stock­hold­er of Cap­i­tal Cities. . . .”

Trump kept a copy of this by his bed­side for late-night read­ing.

After James Cros­by’s “unex­pect­ed” death in April of 1986, Don­ald Trump–whose oper­a­tions are bankrolled by Deutsche Bank–purchased the com­pa­ny. Fol­low­ing lit­i­ga­tion with Merv Grif­fin, the assets were divid­ed with the tele­vi­sion per­son­al­i­ty. ”  . . . . Real estate devel­op­er Don­ald Trump, who owned two Atlantic City casi­nos, beat out sev­er­al oth­er bid­ders to pur­chase a con­trol­ling stake in the com­pa­ny from Cros­by’s fam­i­ly for $79 mil­lion in July 1987.[26] Trump was appoint­ed chair­man of Resorts Inter­na­tion­al, and said he would com­plete the Taj Mahal in about a year. . . . The two ulti­mate­ly reached a set­tle­ment, which was exe­cut­ed in Novem­ber 1988, with Grif­fin pur­chas­ing the com­pa­ny for $365 mil­lion, and Trump pur­chas­ing the Taj Mahal from the com­pa­ny for $273 mil­lion. . . .”

Pro­gram High­lights Include:

1.–Discussion of Cap­i­tal Cities Broad­cast­ing’s acqui­si­tion of ABC fol­low­ing the CIA’s fil­ing of a “fair­ness doc­trine” com­plaint against the com­pa­ny for their cov­er­age of Bish­op, Bald­win, Rewald, Dilling­ham and Wong. Ron Rewald alleged that he and the firm for which he worked front­ed for CIA. (At the time William Casey was head of CIA and Cap­i­tal Cities largest stock­hold­er.)
2.–The fact that Thomas Dewey, two time GOP can­di­date for Pres­i­dent, was one of the founders of Cap­i­tal Cities. The gen­e­sis of the Nazi branch of the GOP was Dewey’s 1948 cam­paign.
3.–Review of William Casey’s career, includ­ing the posi­tions he held in the Nixon admin­is­tra­tion and his involve­ment with the Black Eagle Trust, which evolved from the Gold­en Lily plun­der acquired by Japan after World War II.
4.–Discussion of Attor­ney Gen­er­al William Bar­r’s back­ground in the CIA, includ­ing his role in George H.W. Bush’s par­don of key play­ers in the Iran-Con­tra scan­dal.
5.–Analysis of Bar­r’s father Don­ald Barr and his work for the OSS in World War II, which may have inter­sect­ed with the machi­na­tions of Dulles, Dono­van, Casey and the Nazi “Oper­a­tion Sun­rise” par­tic­i­pants.
6.–Donald Bar­r’s hir­ing of col­lege dropout Jef­frey Epstein to teach at the Dal­ton School.
7.–Donald Bar­r’s author­ship of a sci­ence fic­tion novel–Space Relations–about a plan­et dom­i­nat­ed by oli­garchs and dri­ven by sex­u­al slav­ery.
8.–Review of a deci­sive strat­a­gem of the Under­ground Reich, enun­ci­at­ed by Army offi­cer Glenn Pinch­back in a let­ter to New Orleans D.A. Jim Gar­ri­son. Pinch­back wrote of a ” . . . . ‘Neo-Nazi plot to enslave Amer­i­ca in the name of anti-Com­mu­nism,’ . . .”
9.–In past pro­grams, we have briefly not­ed that mil­i­tary and [osten­si­bly] civil­ian pro­grams offi­cial­ly involved with “epi­dem­ic pre­ven­tion” might con­ceal clan­des­tine bio­log­i­cal war­fare appli­ca­tions designed to cre­ate epi­demics. The offi­cial dis­tinc­tion between “offen­sive” and “defen­sive” bio­log­i­cal war­fare research is aca­d­e­m­ic. In that con­text, one should note that the offi­cial title of Unit 731, the noto­ri­ous Japan­ese bio­log­i­cal war­fare unit was “the Epi­dem­ic Pre­ven­tion and Water Purifi­ca­tion Depart­ment of the Kwan­tung Army.” Unit 731’s research was incor­po­rat­ed into the U.S. bio­log­i­cal war­fare pro­gram at the end of World War II.
10.–Noteworthy in that gen­er­al con­text is the obser­va­tion by Jonathan King (pro­fes­sor of mol­e­c­u­lar biol­o­gy at MIT), that Pen­ta­gon research into the appli­ca­tion of genet­ic engi­neer­ing to bio­log­i­cal war­fare could be masked as vac­cine research, which sounds “defen­sive.”

FTR #1122 Bio-Psy-Op Apocalypse Now: Fireside Rant about the Covid-19 Outbreak

This broad­cast updates, in a admit­ted­ly stri­dent mode, the Covid-19 out­break. We begin with dis­cus­sion of Mod­er­na, Inc.

Mod­er­na Inc. is one of the DARPA-fund­ed com­pa­nies that has been autho­rized to begin test­ing of vac­cines. As dis­cussed by Whit­ney Webb, Mod­er­na Inc. is get­ting a green light to devel­op its mRNA vac­cine (mRNA 1273) for pre­vent­ing Covid-19 infec­tion. The West­ern Edi­tion of The New York Times con­tains infor­ma­tion NOT con­tained in the online man­i­fes­ta­tion of the arti­cle. 

Although vac­cines that inject nucle­ic acid–either DNA or mes­sen­ger RNA–into cells have been seen as promis­ing, they have NEVER been admin­is­tered to humans. The tri­als for the Mod­er­na vac­cine appear to be “fast-tracked.” 

We have done numer­ous pro­grams about the polio vac­cine and how that “fast-tracked” (and con­se­quent­ly insuf­fi­cient­ly vet­ted) vac­cine was con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed with the SV40 can­cer-caus­ing mon­key virus.

In the con­text of the desta­bi­liza­tion of Chi­na (cov­ered in many pro­grams and a key ele­ment of analy­sis in assess­ing the Covid-19 out­break), we note that the col­laps­ing of economies abroad, includ­ing the U.S., will sig­nif­i­cant­ly and adverse­ly affect Chi­na’s export-ori­ent­ed econ­o­my.

It may lead to the col­lapse of the Chi­nese econ­o­my eagerly–and financially–anticipated by J. Kyle Bass, Tom­my Hicks Jr. and Steve Ban­non.

An op-ed col­umn fur­ther devel­ops the poten­tial dan­ger to Chi­na’s econ­o­my posed by the Covid-19 out­break. ” . . . . While Chi­na is no longer cen­ter stage, as the virus spreads world­wide there are renewed fears that the cri­sis could cir­cle back to its shores by hurt­ing demand for exports. Over the last decade China’s cor­po­rate debt swelled four­fold to over $20 tril­lion — the biggest binge in the world. The Inter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund esti­mates that one-tenth of this debt is in zom­bie firms, which rely on gov­ern­ment-direct­ed lend­ing to stay alive. . . .”

Next, we tack­le the sub­ject of an esca­lat­ing media war between Chi­na and the U.S.

Trump’s label­ing of Covid-19 as “the Chi­nese virus” is appar­ent­ly in response to sug­ges­tions in Chi­nese social media and some pub­lished mate­r­i­al point­ing to the U.S. and/or nation­al secu­ri­ty ele­ments with­in and/or asso­ci­at­ed with it as the source of the virus.

In FTR #1109, we exam­ined Don­ald Trump’s deal­ings with Deutsche Bank, key “sui­cides” in con­nec­tion with the bank’s records on Trump and Jared Kush­n­er, Trump’s claims of exec­u­tive priv­i­lege in attempts to keep the records secret, the appar­ent destruc­tion of those records by Deutsche Bank and the track­ing of the case to a deci­sion by the Supreme Court.

Now, the Covid-19 out­break may delay that deci­sion indef­i­nite­ly.

As high­light­ed above, Don­ald Trump has been label­ing Covid-19 the “Chi­nese virus” in response to Chi­nese inti­ma­tions (cor­rect in their main con­tention in our opin­ion) that the U.S. is the point of ori­gin of the virus.

An arti­cle in The Asia Times pro­vides more depth on the grow­ing media war between the U.S. and Chi­na.

Key points of dis­cus­sion and analy­sis:

1.–China now open­ly views the U.S. as a threat: ” . . . . For the first time since the start of Deng Xiaoping’s reforms in 1978, Bei­jing open­ly regards the U.S. as a threat, as stat­ed a month ago by For­eign Min­is­ter Wang Yi at the Munich Secu­ri­ty Con­fer­ence dur­ing the peak of the fight against coro­n­avirus. . . .”
2.–President Xi Jin­ping has dropped ver­bal clues as to the Chi­nese view of the ori­gin of the Covid-19: ” . . . . Bei­jing is care­ful­ly, incre­men­tal­ly shap­ing the nar­ra­tive that, from the begin­ning of the coro­n­avirus attack, the lead­er­ship knew it was under a hybrid war attack. The ter­mi­nol­o­gy of Pres­i­dent Xi Jin­ping is a major clue. He said, on the record, that this was war. And, as a counter-attack, a ‘people’s war’ had to be launched. More­over, he described the virus as a demon or dev­il. Xi is a Con­fu­cian­ist. Unlike some oth­er ancient Chi­nese thinkers, Con­fu­cius was loath to dis­cuss super­nat­ur­al forces and judg­ment in the after­life. How­ev­er, in a Chi­nese cul­tur­al con­text, dev­il means ‘white dev­ils’ or ‘for­eign dev­ils’: guai­lo in Man­darin, gwei­lo in Can­tonese. This was Xi deliv­er­ing a pow­er­ful state­ment in code. . . .”
3.–A Chi­nese For­eign Min­istry offi­cial cit­ed the Mil­i­tary World Games in Wuhan as a pos­si­ble vec­tor­ing point. (We believe this is pos­si­ble, although we sus­pect the Shin­cheon­ji cult and a USAMRIID asso­ci­a­tion with a Wuhan viro­log­i­cal insti­tute as oth­er pos­si­ble vec­tors.) IF, for the sake of argu­ment, fas­cist ele­ments (CIA, Under­ground Reich or what­ev­er) chose the US mil­i­tary ath­letes as a vec­tor, it would have been alto­geth­er pos­si­ble to do so with­out attract­ing atten­tion. Mil­i­tary ath­letes are in superb con­di­tion and, if infect­ed with one of the milder strains of Covid-19, their robust immune sys­tems might well leave them asymp­to­matic, yet still con­ta­gious, or mild­ly ill at worst. They could then com­mu­ni­cate the virus to oth­er mil­i­tary ath­letes, who would then serve as a vec­tor for oth­er coun­tries. ” . . . . Zhao’s explo­sive con­clu­sion is that COVID-19 was already in effect in the U.S. before being iden­ti­fied in Wuhan – due to the by now ful­ly doc­u­ment­ed inabil­i­ty of the U.S. to test and ver­i­fy dif­fer­ences com­pared with the flu. . . .”
4.–Author Pepe Esco­bar reit­er­ates the con­tention that the vari­ants of the virus in Italy and Iran are dif­fer­ent from the vari­ants that infect­ed Wuhan, an inter­pre­ta­tion whose sig­nif­i­cance is debat­ed by sci­en­tists.
5.–The arti­cle high­lights the shut­ter­ing of Ft. Det­rick, which has now been par­tial­ly re-opened. ” . . . . Adding all that to the fact that coro­n­avirus genome vari­a­tions in Iran and Italy were sequenced and it was revealed they do not belong to the vari­ety that infect­ed Wuhan, Chi­nese media are now open­ly  ask­ing ques­tions and draw­ing a con­nec­tion with the shut­ting down in August last year of the “unsafe” mil­i­tary bioweapon lab at Fort Det­rick, the Mil­i­tary Games, and the Wuhan epi­dem­ic. Some of these ques­tions had been asked– with no response – inside the U.S. itself. . . .”
6.–Escobar also notes Event 201, which we high­light­ed in FTR #‘s 1111 and 1112: ” . . . . Extra ques­tions linger about the opaque Event 201 in New York on Octo­ber 18, 2019: a rehearsal for a world­wide pan­dem­ic caused by a dead­ly virus – which hap­pened to be coro­n­avirus. This mag­nif­i­cent coin­ci­dence hap­pened one month before the out­break in Wuhan. Event 201 was spon­sored by Bill & Melin­da Gates Foun­da­tion, the World Eco­nom­ic Forum (WEF), the CIA, Bloomberg, John Hop­kins Foun­da­tion and the UN.  The World Mil­i­tary Games opened in Wuhan on the exact same day. . . .”
7.–We note that, although we have not been able to con­clu­sive­ly prove that CIA was one of the spon­sors of the event, a for­mer Deputy Direc­tor of the Agency was a key par­tic­i­pant. Hav­ing reached such a lev­el of promi­nence with­in the agency, one nev­er “leaves” alto­geth­er. It is prob­a­ble that there was Agency par­tic­i­pa­tion.
8.–Further dis­cus­sion notes the pos­si­ble use of a coro­n­avirus as part of a psy-op: ” . . . . The work­ing hypoth­e­sis of coro­n­avirus as a very pow­er­ful but not Armaged­don-pro­vok­ing bio-weapon unveils it as a per­fect vehi­cle for wide­spread social con­trol — on a glob­al scale. . . .”
9.–Escobar alleges that Cuba has devel­oped an anti-viral that is promis­ing against the virus: ” . . . . The anti-viral Heberon – or Inter­fer­on Alpha 2b – a ther­a­peu­tic, not a vac­cine, has been used with great suc­cess in the treat­ment of coro­n­avirus. A joint ven­ture in Chi­na is pro­duc­ing an inhal­able ver­sion, and at least 15 nations are already inter­est­ed in import­ing the ther­a­peu­tic. . . .” 
10.–Quoting Ital­ian ana­lyst San­dro Mez­zadra, Esco­bar notes the Covid-19 out­break as a social Dar­win­ian psy-op: ” . . . .We are fac­ing a choice between a Malthu­sian strand – inspired by social Dar­win­ism – ‘led by the John­son-Trump-Bol­sonaro axis’ and, on the oth­er side, a strand point­ing to the “requal­i­fi­ca­tion of pub­lic health as a fun­da­men­tal tool,’ exem­pli­fied by Chi­na, South Korea and Italy. There are key lessons to be learned from South Korea, Tai­wan and Sin­ga­pore. The stark option, Mez­zadra notes, is between a ‘nat­ur­al pop­u­la­tion selec­tion,’ with thou­sands of dead, and ‘defend­ing soci­ety’ by employ­ing ‘vari­able degrees of author­i­tar­i­an­ism and social con­trol.’ . . .”
11.–Like many ana­lysts, Escobar–correctly in our opinion–notes that the Covid-19 out­break threat­ens the glob­al econ­o­my and may col­lapse the deriv­a­tive mar­ket. That this may be intend­ed to mask an over­val­ued equi­ties mar­ket seems prob­a­ble to us.

For The Record programs from 1100, Complete Audio

Com­plete FTR audio: 1–99 | 100–199 | 200–299 | 300–399 | 400–499 | 500–599 | 600–699 | 700–799 | 800–899 | 900–999 1000- 1100 | All files are MP3 for­mat.  FTR #1100 Fas­cism: 2019 World Tour, Part 10–The Inter­mar­i­um Con­ti­nu­ity FTR #1101 Fas­cism: 2019 World Tour, Part 11–The Inter­mar­i­um Con­ti­nu­ity, Part 2 (Reflec­tions on the Piv­ot Point) FTR #1102 Fas­cism: 2019 World Tour, Part 12–The Inter­mar­i­um Con­ti­nu­ity, Part 2 (Fur­ther […]

KriSSpy Kreme: “. . . . Father and son joined the Nazi party and donated to the SS even before Hitler came to power. . . .”

In FTR #1012, we dis­cussed the pow­er­ful Ger­man Reimann fam­i­ly (the coun­try’s sec­ond-wealth­i­est), their JAB hold­ing com­pa­ny and its many com­mer­cial prop­er­ties, not­ing the clan’s extreme secre­cy: ” . . . . The lack of involve­ment is alleged­ly part of the fam­i­ly pol­i­cy, which also includes sign­ing a codex on one’s 18th birth­day pledg­ing to stay out of the pub­lic as much as pos­si­ble, thus mak­ing them one of the most pri­vate bil­lion­aire fam­i­lies. . . .” We also spec­u­lat­ed about the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the Reimann indus­tri­al empire might be a com­po­nent of the remark­able and dead­ly flight cap­i­tal orga­ni­za­tion. A recent arti­cle in the Ger­man peri­od­i­cal “Bild” dis­closed the Reimann fam­i­ly’s mas­sive involve­ment with the Third Reich and numer­ous Amer­i­can pub­li­ca­tions high­light­ed that infor­ma­tion, reveal­ing that: 1) ” . . . . Albert Reimann Sr. and his son Albert Reimann Jr., who ran the com­pa­ny in the 1930s and 1940s, were enthu­si­as­tic Hitler sup­port­ers and anti-Semi­tes, who con­doned the abuse of forced labor­ers, not only in their indus­tri­al chem­i­cals com­pa­ny in south­ern Ger­many, but also in their own home. . . .” 2) ” . . . . Female work­ers from East­ern Europe were forced to stand at atten­tion naked in their fac­to­ry bar­racks. Those who refused were sex­u­al­ly abused. . . .” 3) ” . . . . The Reimann case stands out for the par­tic­u­lar bru­tal­i­ty detailed in some of the report­ed doc­u­ments, and the fact that father and son appear to have been involved in the abuse them­selves, said Andreas Wirsching, direc­tor of the Munich-based Leib­niz Insti­tute for Con­tem­po­rary His­to­ry. . . .” 4) ” . . . . Based on what has been revealed so far, Mr. Wirsching, the his­to­ri­an, said the Reimanns had most like­ly not just been oppor­tunists but also ‘com­mit­ted Nazis.’ Father and son joined the Nazi Par­ty and donat­ed to the SS even before Hitler came to pow­er. [In 1931, the same year they joined the NSDAP–D.E.] In July 1937, Albert Reimann Jr. wrote a let­ter to Hein­rich Himm­ler, the leader of the SS, who over­saw the Holo­caust. ‘We are a pure­ly Aryan fam­i­ly busi­ness that is over 100 years old,’ he wrote. ‘The own­ers are uncon­di­tion­al fol­low­ers of the race the­o­ry.’ . . .” 5) ” . . . . The Reimanns ini­tial­ly made their for­tune from a chem­i­cal com­pa­ny that became Reckitt Benckiser, the $58 bil­lion con­sumer prod­ucts giant whose brands include Lysol. They then chan­neled much of their wealth into JAB, a con­glom­er­ate that has become one of the biggest play­ers in the con­sumer world through a rapid-fire series of cor­po­rate takeovers. JAB has spent bil­lions to become a rival to the likes of Star­bucks and Nestlé by buy­ing chains like Peet’s Cof­fee & Tea, Krispy Kreme and Pret A Manger. Last year, it also helped the pod-cof­fee com­pa­ny Keurig Green Moun­tain buy Dr Pep­per Snap­ple for near­ly $19 bil­lion. It also con­trols the cos­met­ics giant Coty, own­er of Calvin Klein fra­grances, and pre­vi­ous­ly owned lux­u­ry fash­ion labels like Jim­my Choo. . . .”

FTR #1017 Supreme Court Trump Card: Family Trump, Family [Anthony] Kennedy and Peter Thiel

 Much has been said about Don­ald Trump’s nom­i­na­tion of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to become a Supreme Court jus­tice, replac­ing Antho­ny Kennnedy.

In this pro­gram, we high­light exten­sive net­work­ing between the Trump and Kennedy fam­i­lies and, in turn, some appar­ent “deep net­work­ing” between some of the indi­vid­u­als in the Trump/Kennedy nexus and insti­tu­tions linked to key ele­ments of the remark­able and dead­ly Bor­mann flight cap­i­tal net­work.

Deutsche Bank and the shad­ow of the I.G. Far­ben chem­i­cal com­plex fig­ure into the lat­ter part of this equa­tion.

The con­nec­tions between the fam­i­ly of Antho­ny Kennedy and the Trump milieu run deep. Antho­ny Kennedy’s son Justin was  Trump’s  banker at Deutsche Bank. In FTR #919, we ana­lyzed a New York Times arti­cle high­light­ing Don­ald Trump’s alto­geth­er opaque real estate devel­op­ments and evi­dence that those projects had sig­nif­i­cant links to ele­ments of the Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work.

In that pro­gram we set forth the pri­ma­ry role of Deutsche Bank in financ­ing Trump’s real estate projects.

” . . . While many big banks have shunned him, Deutsche Bank AG has been a stead­fast finan­cial backer of the Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial candidate’s busi­ness inter­ests. Since 1998, the bank has led or par­tic­i­pat­ed in loans of at least $2.5 bil­lion to com­pa­nies affil­i­at­ed with Mr. Trump, accord­ing to a Wall Street Jour­nal analy­sis of pub­lic records and peo­ple famil­iar with the mat­ter. That doesn’t include at least anoth­er $1 bil­lion in loan com­mit­ments that Deutsche Bank made to Trump-affil­i­at­ed enti­ties. The long-stand­ing con­nec­tion makes Frank­furt-based Deutsche Bank, which has a large U.S. oper­a­tion and has been grap­pling with rep­u­ta­tion­al prob­lems and an almost 50% stock-price decline, the finan­cial insti­tu­tion with prob­a­bly the strongest ties to the con­tro­ver­sial New York busi­ness­man. . . .”

The fact that Deutsche Bank is the pri­ma­ry finan­cial backer of “Trump Incor­po­rat­ed” is of pri­ma­ry impor­tance. The bank is cen­tral to the Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work.

The con­nec­tions between the fam­i­ly of Antho­ny Kennedy and the Trump milieu run deep. Antho­ny Kennedy’s son Justin was  Trump’s  banker at Deutsche Bank.

Fur­ther­more, jurists who clerked for Antho­ny Kennedy fig­ure promi­nent­ly in Trump’s judi­cial appoint­ments:

1.–” . . . . He [Trump] picked Jus­tice Neil M. Gor­such, who had served as a law clerk to Jus­tice Kennedy, to fill Jus­tice Scalia’s seat. . . .”
2.–” . . . . Then, after Jus­tice Gorsuch’s nom­i­na­tion was announced, a White House offi­cial sin­gled out two can­di­dates for the next Supreme Court vacan­cy: Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh of the Unit­ed States Court of Appeals for the Dis­trict of Colum­bia Cir­cuit and Judge Ray­mond M. Keth­ledge of the Unit­ed States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Cir­cuit, in Cincin­nati. The two judges had some­thing in com­mon: They had both clerked for Jus­tice Kennedy. . . .”
3.–” . . . . In the mean­time, as the White House turned to stock­ing the low­er courts, it did not over­look Jus­tice Kennedy’s clerks. Mr. Trump nom­i­nat­ed three of them to fed­er­al appeals courts: Judges Stephanos Bibas and Michael Scud­der, both of whom have been con­firmed, and Eric Mur­phy, the Ohio solic­i­tor gen­er­al, whom Mr. Trump nom­i­nat­ed to the Sixth Cir­cuit this month. . . .”
4.–” . . . . Jus­tice Kennedy’s son, Justin . . . . spent more than a decade at Deutsche Bank, even­tu­al­ly ris­ing to become the bank’s glob­al head of real estate cap­i­tal mar­kets, and he worked close­ly with Mr. Trump when he was a real estate devel­op­er, accord­ing to two peo­ple with knowl­edge of his role. Dur­ing Mr. Kennedy’s tenure, Deutsche Bank became Mr. Trump’s most impor­tant lender, dis­pens­ing well over $1 bil­lion in loans to him for the ren­o­va­tion and con­struc­tion of sky­scrap­ers in New York and Chica­go at a time oth­er main­stream banks were wary of doing busi­ness with him because of his trou­bled busi­ness his­to­ry. . . .”

After Kennedy left Deutsche Bank in 2009 he went on to become co-CEO LNR Prop­er­ty LLC. LNR Prop­er­ty saved Jared Kushner’s mid­town Man­hat­tan prop­er­ty in 2011:

1.–” . . . . from 2010–2013 Justin Kennedy was the co-CEO of LNR Prop­er­ty LLC with Tobin Cobb. . . .”
2.–” . . . . Accord­ing the New York Times, in 2007 Kush­n­er Com­pa­nies pur­chased ‘an alu­minum-clad office tow­er in Mid­town Man­hat­tan, for a record price of $1.8 bil­lion.’ At the time the NYT wrote that this deal was ‘con­sid­ered a clas­sic exam­ple of reck­less under­writ­ing. The trans­ac­tion was so high­ly lever­aged that the cash flow from rents amount­ed to only 65 per­cent of the debt ser­vice.’ . . .”
3.– ” . . . Who came to the res­cue? None oth­er than LNR Prop­er­ty, the com­pa­ny whose CEO at the time was Justin Kennedy. Accord­ing to the NYT and the Real Deal, Mr. Kush­n­er and LNR ‘reached a pos­si­ble agree­ment with LNR Prop­er­ty, a firm spe­cial­iz­ing in restruc­tur­ing trou­bled debt and which over­sees the mort­gage, that would allow him to retain con­trol of the tow­er by mod­i­fy­ing the terms of the $1.2 bil­lion mort­gage tied to the office por­tion of the build­ing.’ . . .”

The links between Trump­World and Antho­ny Kennedy’s sons is deep­er still. Kennedy’s oth­er son Gre­go­ry, has long-stand­ing ties to Trump Sil­i­con Val­ley advis­er Peter Thiel, whom we first ana­lyzed in FTR #718.

” . . . . . . . . Kennedy’s seat, mean­time, seemed des­tined to go to Kavanaugh, thanks in part to the glow­ing review of Kennedy, whose son, Justin, knows Don­ald Trump Jr. through New York real estate cir­cles, and whose oth­er adult child has con­nec­tions to Trump World via the president’s 2016 Sil­i­con Val­ley advis­er Peter Thiel, most recent­ly when the Kennedy firm Dis­rup­tive Tech­nol­o­gy Advis­ers worked with Thiel’s Palan­tir Tech­nolo­gies. . . .”

Gre­go­ry Kennedy’s DTA has an unusu­al­ly close rela­tion­ship with Palan­tir, a com­pa­ny that has helped the Trump admin­is­tra­tion.

Kennedy’s DTA has oth­er per­son­al con­nec­tions to Palan­tir. Alex Fish­man and Alex Davis, two oth­er DTA founders, “enjoyed a very close rela­tion­ship” with Palan­tir co-founder Alex Karp, accord­ing to the law­suit.

It should be not­ed that the alleged secre­cy with which Palan­tir treats its oper­at­ing and invest­ing infor­ma­tion is char­ac­ter­is­tic of Bor­mann orga­ni­za­tions. A clos­et­ed, insid­ers-only oper­at­ing eth­ic serves the need for this con­sum­mate­ly pow­er­ful orga­ni­za­tion to main­tain a rel­a­tive­ly low pro­file, even as it gains pow­er, influ­ence and wealth.

” . . . . Yet Palan­tir — whose stock changes hands only through pri­vate trades — goes to great lengths to keep any detailed infor­ma­tion about its busi­ness pri­vate. . . .”

A law­suit by Palan­tir investor KT4 Part­ners alleges that Palan­tir is ille­gal­ly block­ing investors from sell­ing shares in the com­pa­ny and that Kennedy’s Dis­rup­tive Tech­nol­o­gy Advi­sors (DTA) is a key part­ner and ben­e­fi­cia­ry of this strat­e­gy.

KT4 claims that when it tried to sell its shares of Palan­tir to a third-par­ty, Palan­tir would have DTA con­tact the third-par­ty and con­vince them to have Palan­tir sells them the shares direct­ly instead. DTA would then col­lect a com­mis­sion.

The cen­tral dynam­ic in the alle­ga­tions of plain­tiff (and Palan­tir investor) KT4 is set forth as fol­lows: ” . . . . But remark­ably, KT4 claims that when Palan­tir receives infor­ma­tion from an investor about a planned sale, it uses that infor­ma­tion to con­tact the buy­er and per­suade them instead to buy shares direct­ly from the com­pa­ny or from cer­tain Palan­tir insid­ers. One par­tic­u­lar bro­ker, Dis­rup­tive Tech­nol­o­gy Advis­ers, or DTA, repeat­ed­ly gets com­mis­sions from these sales, even when it ‘per­formed no legit­i­mate work,’ KT4 claims. KT4 says it expe­ri­enced inter­fer­ence by Palan­tir when it tried to sell shares to High­bridge Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment, a hedge fund that was owned by JPMor­gan Chase, in May 2015. After KT4 noti­fied Palan­tir of the planned sale, Palan­tir turned around and instruct­ed DTA to ‘take the oppor­tu­ni­ty, on Palantir’s behalf,‘and arrange a sale from Palan­tir to High­bridge instead, accord­ing to the law­suit. . . .”

In FTR #946, we exam­ined Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca, its Trump and Steve Ban­non-linked tech firm that har­vest­ed Face­book data on behalf of the Trump cam­paign.

Peter Thiel’s Palan­tir was appar­ent­ly deeply involved with Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca’s gam­ing of per­son­al data har­vest­ed from Face­book in order to engi­neer an elec­toral vic­to­ry for Trump, set­ting the GOP cam­paign to con­trol the Supreme Court in a deep­er, broad­er con­text.

Thiel was an ear­ly investor in Face­book, at one point was its largest share­hold­er and is still one of its largest share­hold­ers. ” . . . . It was a Palan­tir employ­ee in Lon­don, work­ing close­ly with the data sci­en­tists build­ing Cambridge’s psy­cho­log­i­cal pro­fil­ing tech­nol­o­gy, who sug­gest­ed the sci­en­tists cre­ate their own app — a mobile-phone-based per­son­al­i­ty quiz — to gain access to Face­book users’ friend net­works, accord­ing to doc­u­ments obtained by The New York Times. The rev­e­la­tions pulled Palan­tir — co-found­ed by the wealthy lib­er­tar­i­an Peter Thiel — into the furor sur­round­ing Cam­bridge, which improp­er­ly obtained Face­book data to build ana­lyt­i­cal tools it deployed on behalf of Don­ald J. Trump and oth­er Repub­li­can can­di­dates in 2016. Mr. Thiel, a sup­port­er of Pres­i­dent Trump, serves on the board at Face­book. ‘There were senior Palan­tir employ­ees that were also work­ing on the Face­book data,’ said Christo­pher Wylie, a data expert and Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca co-founder, in tes­ti­mo­ny before British law­mak­ers on Tues­day. . . . The con­nec­tions between Palan­tir and Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca were thrust into the spot­light by Mr. Wylie’s tes­ti­mo­ny on Tues­day. Both com­pa­nies are linked to tech-dri­ven bil­lion­aires who backed Mr. Trump’s cam­paign: Cam­bridge is chiefly owned by Robert Mer­cer, the com­put­er sci­en­tist and hedge fund mag­nate, while Palan­tir was co-found­ed in 2003 by Mr. Thiel, who was an ini­tial investor in Face­book. . . .”

Pro­gram High­lights Include:

1.–Review of Peter Thiel’s high regard for Carl Schmitt: “. . . . a Nazi and the Third Reich’s pre­em­i­nent legal the­o­rist. For Thiel, Schmitt is an inspir­ing throw­back to a pre-Enlight­en­ment age, who exalts strug­gle and insists that the dis­cov­ery of ene­mies is the foun­da­tion of pol­i­tics. . .” 
2.–Review of Peter Thiel’s ear­ly legal expe­ri­ence with Sul­li­van & Cromwell, the Dulles law firm.
3.–A recount­ing of the role of John Fos­ter Dulles and Sul­li­van & Cromwell’s roles in the for­ma­tion of I.G. Far­ben.
4.–Review of Thiel’s Ger­man her­itage and his father’s prob­a­ble role with one of the I.G. suc­ces­sor com­pa­nies.