FTR #896 Fara Mansoor on “The Deep October Surprise,” Part 1

This broad­cast begins sev­er­al pro­grams review­ing and high­light­ing mate­r­i­al first pre­sent­ed in ear­ly 1993, fea­tur­ing the land­mark research of Fara Man­soor, a long­time, hero­ic mem­ber of the Iran­ian resis­tance. Usu­al­ly, the term “Octo­ber Sur­prise” refers to an alleged deal between the Reagan/Bush cam­paign and the Khome­i­ni regime in Iran to with­hold the U.S. hostages tak­en from the Amer­i­can Embassy until after Jim­my Carter’s humil­i­a­tion and con­se­quent elec­tion defeat were assured. Fara’s research goes far­ther and deep­er, sug­gest­ing that the CIA learned of the Shah’s can­cer in 1974 (from for­mer CIA direc­tor Richard Helms), with­held the infor­ma­tion from Jim­my Carter, installed Khome­ini’s Islam­ic fun­da­men­tal­ists as an anti-com­mu­nist bul­wark on the Sovi­et Union’s South­ern flank and then micro-man­aged the hostage cri­sis to insure the ascen­sion of the Reagan/Bush/Casey forces. What has become known as the Iran-Con­tra Scan­dal was an out­growth of this dynam­ic. In this pro­gram, we begin our analy­sis with an overview of the covert oper­a­tion, both in the U.S. and Iran, high­light­ing the key play­ers and the net­work­ing in which they engaged to ensure Carter’s down­fall and Khome­ini’s rise to pow­er. Of par­tic­u­lar inter­est is the “deep-net­work­ing” between U.S. oper­a­tives such as Richard Cot­tam and Iran­ian agents such as Gen­er­al Hos­sein Far­doust and Vial­lol­lah Qarani. Cot­tam, Far­doust and Qarani’s asso­ci­a­tion stretch from the 1953 coup that installed the Shah and the 1979 “op” that installed Khome­i­ni in Iran and the Reagan/Bush team in the U.S. The pro­gram high­lights the extent to which Amer­i­can domes­tic pol­i­tics, nation­al secu­ri­ty pol­i­cy and over­seas diplo­ma­cy are con­trolled by what amounts to a “secret state.”

The New World Ordoliberalism, Part 8: A New MIC Becomes the EU’s New Austerity Loophole. Maybe.

Life on earth real­ly can’t afford anoth­er major mil­i­tary indus­tri­al com­plex (MIC). But that’s what’s com­ing. Or at least the financ­ing is get­ting worked out as Europe deals reels from the dam­age already inflict­ed on the Transat­lantic alliance in the open months of the sec­ond Trump admin­is­tra­tion. It’s urgent. A new era of secu­ri­ty inde­pen­dence has begun for the Euro­pean com­mu­ni­ty and there’s no time to spare in get­ting start­ed on build­ing it. Plans are already tak­ing shape. Plans to dra­mat­i­cal­ly increase EU-wide defense spend­ing by effec­tive­ly forc­ing each EU mem­ber to achieve at least 3% of GDP on defense spend­ing, well about the 2% NATO min­i­mum. Rough­ly 650 bil­lion euros in extra defense spend­ing over the next four years. But what about the EU’s strict debt and aus­ter­i­ty rules? There’s a plan for that too: extra defense spend­ing will not count towards the EU’s debt and deficit rules. At least for the next four years. And per­haps longer. And yet, all signs indi­cate that this extra debt will have be repaid even­tu­al­ly. So are we look­ing at the begin­ning of a new MIC? Or the largest aus­ter­i­ty trap in EU his­to­ry? Time will tell.

Oth­er plans include 150 bil­lion euros in direct loans from the EU to mem­ber states for approved mil­i­tary hard­ware pur­chas­es. Loans that, again, will have to be repaid. But the loans will also be pro­vid­ed at low­er-than-mar­ket inter­est rates from funds raised direct­ly by the EU Com­mis­sion. In oth­er words, joint­ly-backed bonds, some­thing pre­vi­ous­ly anath­e­ma to Ger­many and the rest of the EU’s wealth­i­er mem­bers. Remark­ably, Ger­many isn’t just strong­ly behind the loan plan but wants it expand­ed to poten­tial­ly include loans to non-EU mem­bers like Nor­way, Switzer­land, or Turkey. These big spend­ing plans keep get­ting big­ger, with Ger­man back­ing. It’s an his­toric shift. Beyond that, Ger­many is already plan­ning an 800 bil­lion euro defense spend­ing splurge of its own over the next decade and call­ing for the EU’s plan to be extend­ed well beyond the four year pro­pos­al. Yes, Ger­many is back­ing much high­er EU-wide debt lev­els for the indef­i­nite future. As long as that debt is spent on the mil­i­tary, of course. That’s the incred­i­ble sto­ry cur­rent unfold­ing. The kind of sto­ry that points towards a big new EU MIC, much high­er EU debt lev­els, and, per­haps, the biggest aus­ter­i­ty trap in EU his­to­ry. The dev­il in the details. Details yet t be ham­mered out, and pos­si­bly not ever ham­mered out until long after the EU has com­mit­ted itself to this path and the trap has already been set.

FTR#‘s 1362 & 1363 The Truth About Pearl Harbor, Parts 1 and 2

Intro­duc­tion: With the GOP tar­get­ing Social Secu­ri­ty (imple­ment­ed by FDR), the his­tor­i­cal and cog­ni­tive dis­cred­it­ing of the New Deal has fea­tured a fascis­tic revi­sion­ist his­to­ry of Pearl Har­bor.

Main­tain­ing that Roo­sevelt delib­er­ate­ly let the attack pro­ceed to bring the U.S. into World War II, this revi­sion­ism paints FDR as a trai­tor.

In this metic­u­lous­ly-researched and doc­u­ment­ed pre­sen­ta­tion, we not only refute this his­tor­i­cal slan­der and revi­sion­ism, but demon­strate con­clu­sive­ly that Admi­ral Kim­mel [in charge of Naval forces in Hawaii] and (per­haps to a less­er extent) Gen­er­al Short [in charge of Army forces in Hawaii] bear respon­si­bil­i­ty for the fail­ure.

Points of Dis­cus­sion and Analy­sis Include: The revi­sion­ist con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries about Pearl Har­bor, blam­ing FDR, Win­ston Churchill, Joseph Stal­in, Chief-of-Staff George C. Mar­shall among oth­ers for the fail­ure of the mil­i­tary high com­mand at Pearl Har­bor; Major Hen­ry Clausen’s pouch fea­tur­ing a mag­ne­sium bomb to car­ry the decrypt­ed mes­sages from the Japan­ese Pur­ple Code (a diplo­mat­ic code that was bro­ken by U.S. intel­li­gence per­son­nel); The secure office in which Hen­ry C. Clausen worked; The Army Board­’s self-serv­ing scape­goat­ing of Chief-of-Staff Mar­shall; Three of the offi­cers on the Army Board had been demot­ed by Gen­er­al Mar­shall; Among the shills attack­ing FDR was GOP Sen­a­tor (from Michi­gan) Homer Fer­gu­son, exposed as a pro­pa­gan­diz­ing fool by Major Clausen; 1944 GOP Pres­i­den­tial Can­di­date Thomas Dewey was among those who point­ed the accus­ing fin­ger at FDR for delib­er­ate­ly allow­ing the attack to pro­ceed; Warn­ing on 1/24/41 of “a sur­prise attack upon the fleet or the naval base at Pearl Har­bor. The dan­gers envis­aged, in order of their impor­tance and prob­a­bil­i­ty, are con­sid­ered to be (1) air bomb­ing attack, (2) air tor­pe­do plane attack, (3) sab­o­tage, (4) sub­ma­rine attack . . . .’ ”; A mes­sage sent to Admi­ral Kim­mel and seen by Gen­er­al Short–“The dis­patch sent by the Chief of Naval Oper­a­tions to Kim­mel began with the fate­ful words ‘THIS DISPATCH IS TO BE CONSIDERED A WAR WARNING . . . . “; After not­ing that the U.S. had bro­ken the Japan­ese Pur­ple Code (a diplo­mat­ic code) ” . . . . Wash­ing­ton knew from read­ing these mes­sages that war would have to break out, with Japan attack­ing some­where in the Pacif­ic. There­fore, the Navy in Wash­ing­ton alert­ed Kim­mel on Decem­ber 3 by send­ing two advi­so­ry mes­sages that para­phrased the inter­cepts . . . . War had to fol­low; it was inevitable. . . .”; GOP shill Fer­gu­son’s attempts to deflect blame toward Roo­sevelt: ” . . . . ‘But that was nev­er sent to Kim­mel and Short, was it?’ ‘It cer­tain­ly was,’ I [Clausen] replied. I had him stone cold dead. . . .”; The Hawai­ian news­pa­pers had ample warn­ing of the poten­tial attacks to come; FDR knew that the inter­cept­ed mes­sages meant that war was inevitable; Churchill and British intel­li­gence knew that the inter­cepts meant that war was com­ing and alert­ed the U.S.; The role of the Bletch­ley Park code­break­ers in com­mu­ni­cat­ing (to no avail) the Japan­ese immi­nent attack; The par­tic­i­pa­tion of one of those codebreakers–the late Colonel Har­ry Beckhough–on Mr. Emory’s web­site; Dis­cus­sion of the U.S.S. Antares, the destroy­er U.S.S. Ward and the warn­ing they pro­vid­ed to Admi­ral Kimmel–to no avail; The attack on Pearl Har­bor and the role in it played by Gen­er­al Minoru Gen­da, the even­tu­al head of the Japan­ese Air Self-Defense Force, and the recip­i­ent of a medal from the U.S. Air Force; The per­for­mance char­ac­ter­is­tics of the air­craft car­ri­ers in the Pacif­ic and the bat­tle­ships in Pearl Har­bor; The leak of the U.S. Navy’s code-break­ing secret to the Japan­ese via the Chica­go Tri­bune and its FDR-hat­ing pub­lish­er Robert McCormick; The com­mence­ment of the Gold­en Lily oper­a­tion with the Rape of Nanking in 1937; The fact that the break­ing of the Japan­ese code informed the U.S. of the nature of the car­go of their ships, pos­si­bly inform­ing today of the posi­tion of sunken Gold­en Lily trea­sure.

FTR#‘s 1360 & 1361: Byrds of A Feather, Parts 1 and 2

Intro­duc­tion: We begin with read­ing and analy­sis of an arti­cle by Jere­my Kuz­marov about David H. Byrd and his pur­chase of stock in LTV on the run-up to the Viet­nam War (that stock appre­ci­at­ed enor­mous­ly due to the Viet­nam War).

Byrd was also the founder of the Civ­il Air Patrol. A unit of the CAP was also the first asso­ci­a­tion between David Fer­rie and Lee Har­vey Oswald, as well as Iran-Con­tra drug smug­gler Bar­ry Seal, who may have been fly­ing a get­away plane from Dal­las on 11/22/1963.

Key points of dis­cus­sion and analy­sis include:

“. . . .Byrd’s right-wing sen­si­bil­i­ties were evi­dent when he trav­eled to Nazi Ger­many sev­er­al years before World War II and had a brief meet­ing with Hitler. When Byrd returned to the U.S. after that encounter, he spoke pos­i­tive­ly of Hitler’s ‘sin­cer­i­ty’ and ‘basi­cal­ly sound poli­cies.’. . .”
“. . . .Byrd sub­se­quent­ly devel­oped a close friend­ship with one of Hein­rich Himmler’s for­mer assas­sins, Wern­er von Alvensleben, a dou­ble agent in World War II who owned and oper­at­ed the big game hunt­ing com­pa­ny that Byrd alleged­ly trav­eled to Mozam­bique with at the time of the JFK assas­si­na­tion. . . .”
” . . . . Byrd was also friends with Ernest Udet, the #2 man at the Ger­man Nazi Luft­waffe appoint­ed by Her­man Goer­ing. Udet was in charge of research and devel­op­ment for the Luft­waffe dive-bomber [the JU87 or ‘Stu­ka,’ a favorite air­craft of Hans Ulrich Rudel–D.E.]. . . .”
Gen­er­aloberst Ernst Udet
Pho­to Cred­it: Wikipedia

Not includ­ed in the orig­i­nal broad­cast, we present excerpts of Luft­waffe Gen­er­al Ude­t’s Wikipedia entry. As out­landish as it might ini­tial­ly appear, the curi­ous deaths of high-rank­ing Luft­waffe offi­cers who were on their way to attend Ude­t’s funer­al fol­low­ing his Novem­ber, 1941 sui­cide should be viewed with sus­pi­cion. Was the “sui­cide” used to mask Ude­t’s pos­si­ble defection/collaboration with the West?

Note that Udet was accus­tomed to hunt­ing in East Africa, as were D.H. Byrd and the younger Wern­er von Alvensleben.

Note also Albensleben’s asso­ci­a­tion with Nazi cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Len Riefen­stahl and his pilot­ing of a Cur­tis air­craft. In AFA#1, we not­ed how the Navy tech­nique of dive bomb­ing was betrayed to the Axis through demon­stra­tions using such air­craft.

” . . . . Ernst Udet (26 April 1896 – 17 Novem­ber 1941) was a Ger­man pilot dur­ing World War I and a Luft­waffe Colonel-Gen­er­al (Gen­er­aloberst) dur­ing World War II. . . .”
” . . . . Udet and anoth­er wartime comrade—Suchocky—became pilots to an African film­ing expe­di­tion. The cam­era­man was anoth­er vet­er­an, Schnee­berg­er, whom Udet called ‘Flea,’ and the guide was Sieden­topf, a for­mer East African estate own­er. . . . Udet engaged in hunt­ing while in Africa. . . .”
” . . . . He appeared with Leni Riefen­stahl in three films: The White Hell of Pitz Palu (1929), Stürme über dem Mont Blanc (1930), and S.O.S. Eis­berg (1933). . . .”
” . . . . In the Berlin 1936 Sum­mer Olympics Udet entered the arts com­pe­ti­tion lit­er­a­ture cat­e­go­ry with his auto­bi­og­ra­phy, Mein Fliegerleben (My Fly­ing Life) (pub­lished 1935). . . .”
” . . . . Udet joined the Nazi par­ty in 1933 when Her­mann Göring promised to buy him two new U.S.-built Cur­tiss Hawk II biplanes (export des­ig­na­tion of the F11C‑2 Goshawk Hell­div­er). The planes were used for eval­u­a­tion pur­pos­es and thus indi­rect­ly influ­enced the Ger­man idea of dive bomb­ing aero­planes, such as the Junkers Ju 87 (Stu­ka) dive bombers. They were also used for aer­o­bat­ic shows held dur­ing the 1936 Sum­mer Olympics. . . .”
” . . . . Udet became a major pro­po­nent of the dive bomber, tak­ing cred­it for hav­ing intro­duced it to the Luft­waffe. On 9 June 1936 he had, through his polit­i­cal con­nec­tions, been named Chief of the Tech­ni­cal Office, T‑Amt, (the devel­op­ment wing of the Reich Min­istry of Avi­a­tion). . . .”
” . . . . On 17 Novem­ber 1941, Udet shot him­self in the head. . . . On their way to attend Ude­t’s funer­al, the World War II fight­er ace Wern­er Mölders died in a plane crash in Bres­lau, and the high Luft­waffe exec­u­tive Gen­er­al der Flieger Hel­muth Wilberg died in anoth­er plane crash near Dres­den. . . .”

Next, we present a mas­ter­ful analy­sis by the bril­liant Russ Bak­er decon­struct­ing D.H. (“Dry Hole”) Byrd’s cov­er sto­ry of being on Safari in Mozam­bique at the time of the JFK assas­si­na­tion.

We then excerpt a very impor­tant analy­sis by Dan Alcorn, link­ing David H. Byrd with a milieu involv­ing a for­mer assas­sin for the S.S. and David H. Byrd. Key points of analy­sis and dis­cus­sion include:

” . . . . The sec­ond [FOIA] request  is  Wern­er  von  Alvensleben,  who  had  been  an intel­li­gence asset – a dou­ble agent  for the  U.S.  OSS  in  World  War  II, and  who  was  asso­ci­at­ing  with  David  Harold  Byrd,  the  own­er  of  the  Book  Depos­i­to­ry  build­ing  around  the  time  of  the  assas­si­na­tion. . . .”
” . . . . We have  not  been  able  to  get  access  to  the  oper­a­tional  files  of  the  CIA;  they’ve  refused  to  give  us  access  to  any  of  the  oper­a­tional  files  about  these  three  sub­jects  of  the  inves­ti­ga­tion.  This  is  impor­tant  to  us  because  we  have  sourc­ing  from  the  Dal­las  Morn­ing  News  that  Wern­er  von  Alvensleben  was  in  Dal­las  in  late  1963  as  the  guest  of  David  Harold  Byrd. And  this  is  impor­tant  as  we  get  into  the  back­ground  of  Wern­er  von  Alvensleben  because  at  one  time,  ear­li­er  in  his  career  in  1933,  he  had  been  an  assas­sin  for  Hein­rich  Himm­ler,  the  Nazi  leader  in  Hitler’s  Ger­many,  and  that  makes  it  rel­e­vant  to  explor­ing  what  was  going  on  in  1963. . . .”
” . . . . Among oth­er  peo­ple,  our  research  has  found–  were  known  to  David  Harold  Byrd,  was  an  Ernst  Udet.  U ‑D ‑E ‑T, and he  was  the  num­ber  two  in  the  Luft­waffe  to  Her­mann  Göring  in  Nazi  Ger­many.  Byrd  describes  Udet  as  a  close  friend  in  Byrd’s  auto­bi­og­ra­phy,  and  Udet  was  in  charge  of research  and  devel­op­ment  for  the  Luft­waffe,  which  is  the  theme  that  seems  to  run  through  some  of  these  con­nec­tions:  the  for­ward ‑look­ing  research  and  devel­op­ment  process  for  avi­a­tion  and  aero­space.  Avi­a­tion  was  the  basis  for  the  rela­tion­ship  between  Byrd  and  Ernst  Udet  of  the  Luft­waffe. . . .”
” . . . . In  research­ing  Wern­er  von  Alvensleben  and  his  big  game  hunt­ing  oper­a­tion,  I  came  across  the  infor­ma­tion  that  von  Alvensleben ‘s  favorite  rifle  was  the  Mannlich­er-Schoe­nauer  rifle. Of  course,  I  was  famil­iar  with  the  Mannlich­er ‑Car­cano  because  that’s  the  rifle  said  to  have    been  used  to  kill  Pres­i­dent  Kennedy.  I  wasn’t  aware  of  the  Mannlich­er-Schonauer.  I  did  some  research  and  it  turns  out  that  the  Mannlich­er-Schonauer  was  the  finest  hunt­ing  rifle  of  that  era,  it  was  an  Aus­tri­an  rifle. . . .”
” . . . . It  was  said  on  numer­ous  sites  devot­ed  to  guns  and  ammu­ni­tion.  that  the  Mannlich­er-Schonauer  and  the  Mannlich­er-Car­cano  rifles  used  essen­tial­ly  iden­ti­cal  ammu­ni­tion. Very  dif­fi­cult  to  tell  the  two  car­tridges  apart.  There  are  sources  among  the  blogs  that  say  the  ammu­ni­tion, some  ammu­ni­tion  was  man­u­fac­tured  with  the  pur­pose  of  being  used  inter­change­ably  between  the  two  rifles.  Well, this  rifle  was  the  favorite  rifle  of  Wern­er  von  Alvensleben,  the  big  game  hunter.  It  was  also  favored  by  oth­er  big  game  hunters  of  the  time because  of  its  abil­i­ty  to  stop  large  ani­mals;  that  was  what  it  was  par­tic­u­lar­ly  effec­tive  for.  In  research­ing  the  Mannlich­er-Schoe­nauer  rifle  I  came  across  tes­ti­mo­ny  to  the  War­ren  Com­mis­sion; it came  up  before  the  War­ren  Com­mis­sion in the fol­low­ing way: War­ren  Com­mis­sion­er  John  McCloy  was  at  a  ses­sion  in  which  the  FBI  bal­lis­tics  expert, Robert  Fra­zier,  tes­ti­fied.  John  McCloy  inter­rupt­ed  the  ques­tion­ing  to  ask  his  own  ques­tion,  which  was  whether  the  three  hulls (car­tridges)  that  were  found  on  the  sixth  floor  of  the  Book  Depos­i­to­ry  build­ing  could  have  been  fired  by  a  Mannlich­er-Schonauer  rifle  rather  than  a  Mannlich­er-Car­cano  rifle.  . . .” 

The pro­gram con­cludes with an excerpt from Joseph McBride’s book Into the Night­mare: My Search for the Killers of John F. Kennedy and Offi­cer J.D. Tip­pit con­cern­ing the role of tele­vi­sion in cog­ni­tive­ly and polit­i­cal­ly shap­ing the pub­lic’s view of the JFK assas­si­na­tion.

FTR#‘s 1357, 1358 & 1359 Conversations with Monte: Conversations #‘s 31, 32 & 33

Intro­duc­tion: These pro­grams high­light aspects of Trump’s elec­tion:

Dis­cus­sion and Analy­sis Includes: Trump’s Madi­son Square Gar­den ral­ly short­ly before the election–“Nuremburg on the Hud­son;” Smed­ley But­ler’s grand­daugh­ter’s reflec­tion on his pos­si­ble stance on Trump’s 1/06/21 insur­rec­tion; Bomb threats direct­ed at Demo­c­ra­t­ic elec­toral strong­holds on Elec­tion Day, alleged­ly by “Rus­sia”; The fire­bomb­ing of bal­lot box­es on Elec­tion Day; Pro­pa­gan­dized man­i­fes­ta­tions of alleged Iran­ian plot­ting against Trump’s life; Pro­pa­gan­dized man­i­fes­ta­tions of alleged Russ­ian plot­ting of ter­ror­ist events against the U.S.; The pro­pa­gan­dized alle­ga­tions of “North Kore­an troops” fight­ing in Ukraine; The pro­found­ly anti-Russ­ian actions of Trump’s first admin­is­tra­tion, includ­ing sanc­tion­ing the Nord­stream 2 pipeline; Man­age­ment of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.‘s cam­paign by his “ex” CIA-offi­cer daugh­ter-in-law; The financ­ing of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.‘s cam­paign by Tim­o­thy Mel­lon (scion of the oli­garch Mel­lon fam­i­ly and Don­ald Trump’s largest finan­cial backer; Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.‘s junkie past; Covid-19’s ongo­ing destruc­tion of human health; Pres­sure by big busi­ness to declare the pan­dem­ic “over;” The destruc­tion of the very con­cept of main­tain­ing pub­lic health.

FTR#‘s 1347 & 1348 Conversations with Monte: Conversations #‘s 21 & 22

Intro­duc­tion: Tak­ing a respite from the pro­ject­ed long series of pro­grams on U.S. Asian pol­i­cy, these pro­grams begin with Mon­te’s dis­cus­sion of a link between Guy Ban­is­ter’s “detec­tive agency” and the coa­les­cence of the Process Church of the Final Judg­ment, a focal point of a four-part Mis­cel­la­neous Archive Series on “The Ulti­mate Evil.

A close for­mer asso­ciate of Ban­is­ter incor­po­rat­ed the Process Church, which appears to have served as an intel­li­gence front, to an extent.

The associate–Tommy Baumler–was a Nazi.

In this analy­sis, Monte uti­lized a book titled The Mad Bish­ops.

The bulk of the pro­grams con­sist of analy­sis of the lat­est “attempt” on Trump’s life, as well as the appar­ent Nazi gen­e­sis of the “Haitians eat­ing dogs and cats” meme.

It is our con­sen­sus that the “attempts” on Trump’s life are intend­ed to pro­voke vio­lence against Trump’s polit­i­cal oppo­nents.

Ryan Wes­ley Routh also net­worked with the Azov Bat­tal­ion.

FTR#‘s 1333 & 1334 Conversations with Monte: Conversations #‘s 7 and 8

Intro­duc­tion: Once again, Mr. Emory’s bril­liant new co-host Monte graces us with his on-air pres­ence.

These pro­grams exam­ine the career and activ­i­ties of Spas T. Raikin, the Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al of the Friends of the Anti-Bol­she­vik Bloc of Nations. Raikin was the man who met the Oswalds upon their return from the Sovi­et Union.

NB: More com­plete infor­ma­tion about the sources used in this pro­gram will be avail­able present­ly in the com­ments sec­tion for this pro­gram.

Key Points of Dis­cus­sion and Analy­sis Include: The ABN’s ori­gin as “The Com­mit­tee of Sub­ju­gat­ed Nations” when it was formed by Adolf Hitler in 1943; The direct links between Raikin, the assas­si­na­tion of JFK and the Ukraine War going on today; Raik­in’s work for the CIA; Raik­in’s work as an “inter­roga­tor” work­ing for CIA in Greece dur­ing that coun­try’s civ­il war in the imme­di­ate after­math of World War II; Raik­in’s work for the Bul­gar­i­an Nation­al Front; Raik­in’s work for the CIA; The Bul­gar­i­an Nation­al Fron­t’s links to the GOP; Analy­sis of Raikin as a poten­tial­ly dan­ger­ous fas­cist; The DRE and the Ukrain­ian fas­cist links to the dis­rup­tion of the Helsin­ki Social­ist Youth Con­fer­ence; Glo­ria Steinem’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in that dis­rup­tion.

FTR#1250 The Ukraine War Meets “The Oswald Institute of Virology,” Part 3

This is the third pro­gram in a short series updat­ing not only our inquiry into the Covid “op” but the over­lap­ping inquiry into the Metabiota/Pentagon bio­log­i­cal research/warfare pro­gram in Ukraine.

In our “Bio-Psy-Op Apoc­a­lypse Now” pro­grams, we not­ed Gilead Sci­ences’ devel­op­ment of the Tam­i­flu anti-viral devel­oped for use in the event of a human adap­ta­tion of H5N1 avian flu.

Pre­vi­ous­ly the chair­man of Gilead­’s board of direc­tors, Defense Sec­re­tary Don­ald Rums­feld had the Pen­ta­gon stock­pile Tam­i­flu, while retain­ing gen­er­ous amounts of Gilead stock–Rumsfeld prof­it­ed hand­some­ly there­by.

We have also dis­cussed the gain-of-func­tion research done on H5N1 to make it more infec­tive in numer­ous pro­grams.

This pro­gram explores the Ukraine pro­grams and the alle­ga­tion that weaponized H5N1 was being devel­oped in that coun­try.

Our research into Metabio­ta  and the Ukraine bio­log­i­cal lab­o­ra­to­ries is dis­cussed in–among oth­er programs–FTR#1239. 

Research into the alle­ga­tion of “dig­i­tized” migra­to­ry birds to be used as weapons is high­light­ed in FTR#1243.

In this and suc­ceed­ing pro­grams, we will ana­lyze a very impor­tant arti­cle pre­sent­ing depth on a num­ber of over­lap­ping con­sid­er­a­tions about bio­log­i­cal war­fare, the Covid “op” and the Ukraine war.

Recap­ping, under­scor­ing and detail­ing an impor­tant milieu involved for decades with bio­log­i­cal war­fare advo­ca­cy, gain-of-func­tion advo­ca­cy and manip­u­la­tion of H5N1 avian flu, and research­ing the rare human out­breaks of the dis­ease:

Two fig­ures at oppo­site tem­po­ral ends of this array are Antho­ny Fau­ci and Frank Mac­far­lane Bur­net. Fau­ci has chan­neled financ­ing to gain-of-func­tion manip­u­la­tions per­formed by Ron Fouch­i­er and Yoshi­hi­ro Kawao­ka. Kawo­ka and Fouch­i­er, in turn, are net­worked with Jan De Jong and Robert G. Web­ster.

Web­ster and Kennedy Short­ridge are both colleagues/proteges of Mac­far­lane Bur­net.

The decades long net­work of research projects and curi­ous out­breaks of H5N1 among both birds and humans is detailed below:

Key Points of Analy­sis and Dis­cus­sion Include:

1.–” . . . . The emer­gence of the virus in 1997 in Hong Kong was eeri­ly pre­dict­ed by Kennedy Short­ridge, the sci­en­tist who would dis­cov­er it. H5N1 didn’t infect humans until Short­ridge and his col­leagues had been study­ing its human infec­tion poten­tial in their labs for sev­er­al years. At the time, the nat­ur­al leap of a flu direct­ly from poul­try to humans was so improb­a­ble that sci­en­tists first sus­pect­ed that it was the result of con­t­a­m­i­na­tion from Shortridge’s lab. . . .”
3.–Normally, H5N1 human infec­tions are extreme­ly rare: ” . . . . H5N1 hard­ly ever infects peo­ple. News about high­ly path­o­gen­ic avian influen­za usu­al­ly leads with how dead­ly it is. Rarely is it men­tioned that the dis­ease hard­ly ever infects peo­ple. H5N1 kills more than half of the peo­ple who get it, but H5N1 has cir­cled the globe for decades and there have only ever been 860 human infec­tions world­wide. . . .”
4.–More about how rare human infec­tions are and the rise of avian infec­tions in 2022: ” . . . . There has nev­er been an H5N1 pan­dem­ic and no human infec­tion with H5N1 bird flu has ever been iden­ti­fied in the U.S. That’s an extra­or­di­nary safe­ty record, giv­en how filthy U.S. fac­to­ry farms and slaugh­ter­hous­es are and how fast the infec­tion spreads among crowd­ed birds. So far in 2022, 29 states have report­ed out­breaks of bird flu in 213 flocks result­ing in the culling of near­ly 31 mil­lion birds, includ­ing almost 5 per­cent of egg-lay­ing hens. In 2015, it was even worse with 50 mil­lion birds culled, but there wasn’t a sin­gle human case. . . .”
5.–” . . . . Antho­ny Fau­ci has made sig­nif­i­cant invest­ments in gain-of-func­tion research to give H5N1 pan­dem­ic poten­tial, mak­ing it eas­i­ly trans­mis­si­ble from per­son to person—and Bill Gates chipped in, too! . . .”
6.–” . . . . In Feb­ru­ary 2006, Fau­ci con­vened a one-day in-house ‘NIAID Influen­za Research Sum­mit’ to  iden­ti­fy influen­za research pri­or­i­ties. In Sep­tem­ber, he opened up the top­ic to a 35-mem­ber ‘Blue Rib­bon Pan­el on Influen­za Research’ that includ­ed Fouch­i­er and Kawao­ka. The Blue Rib­bon panel’s report doesn’t men­tion gain-of-func­tion exper­i­ments, but Fau­ci gave them grants to do just that. [Ron] Fouch­i­er and [Yoshi­hi­ro] Kawaoka’s now infa­mous gain-of-func­tion research showed that, through lab manip­u­la­tion, H5N1 could be altered to become high­ly trans­mis­si­ble among humans via air­borne infec­tion. . . .”
7.–” . . . . The first human H5N1 out­break occurred in Hong Kong in 1997, the year of what the British call the ‘Hong Kong han­dover,’ when sov­er­eign­ty over Hong Kong was trans­ferred from the U.K. to Chi­na. It was dur­ing this ‘polit­i­cal­ly sen­si­tive’ year that Kennedy Short­ridge, an Aus­tralian sci­en­tist who was the direc­tor of the World Health Organization’s ref­er­ence lab­o­ra­to­ry at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Hong Kong, con­firmed human cas­es of high­ly path­o­gen­ic bird flu. . . .”
8.–” . . . .The 1997 Hong Kong H5N1 virus was unique in every respect. Time mag­a­zine report­ed, ‘On the H gene at a point called the cleav­age site, [was] found a tell­tale muta­tion, the same kind of muta­tion found in oth­er high­ly path­o­gen­ic avian virus­es. …The virus … had regions that were iden­ti­cal to por­tions of [an] avian virus that struck Penn­syl­va­nia [chick­ens] in 1983.” The L.A. Times report­ed, ‘The H5 piece came from a virus in a goose. The N1 piece came from a sec­ond virus in a quail. The remain­ing flu genes came from a third virus, also in quail.’ . . . .”
9.–” . . . . Short­ridge had been study­ing how avian influen­za virus­es spread to humans since 1975. Pri­or to dis­cov­er­ing H5N1, Short­ridge eeri­ly pre­dict­ed its emer­gence. As Frank Ching report­ed in ‘Bird Flu, SARS and Beyond’: As ear­ly as 1982, Short­ridge had labeled south­ern Chi­na, where humans and domes­tic ani­mals lived in close prox­im­i­ty, ‘an epi­cen­ter for the ori­gin of pan­demics.’ Ten years lat­er, he called south­ern Chi­na a ‘virus soup’ and warned that pan­dem­ic influen­za was a zoono­sis, that is, it could be trans­mit­ted from ani­mals to humans and, in 1995, he warned that influen­za in south­ern Chi­na could not prop­er­ly be called an ’emerg­ing’ infec­tion because it was con­stant­ly lurk­ing. ‘Elu­sive might be more apt,’ he wrote. . . .”
10.–” . . . . An exam­ple of Shortridge’s pen­chant for such pre­dic­tions is his 1995 Lancet arti­cle “The next pan­dem­ic influen­za virus?” Curi­ous­ly, H5N1 emerged two years lat­er, in 1997, in the same city where Short­ridge worked, Hong Kong. . . .”
11.–” . . . . At the time, the nat­ur­al leap of a flu direct­ly from poul­try to humans was thought to be so unlike­ly that sci­en­tists first sus­pect­ed con­t­a­m­i­na­tion from Shortridge’s lab was the cause of the high­ly improb­a­ble H5N1 diag­no­sis. How would that con­t­a­m­i­na­tion hap­pen unless Short­ridge hadn’t already been work­ing with H5N1 in the lab? . . .”
12.–” . . . . H5N1 didn’t cause dis­ease in humans until this poten­tial had been stud­ied in a lab for sev­er­al years. Fau­ci had been fund­ing Kawao­ka and Fouchier’s efforts to get bird flu to leap to humans since 1990 and their work was con­nect­ed to what Short­ridge was doing in Hong Kong. For sev­en years pri­or to the first human H5N1 out­break in 1997, Fau­ci had been fund­ing Kawaoka’s gain-of-func­tion bird flu research at St. Jude Children’s Research Hos­pi­tal and Kawaoka’s men­tor there, Robert G. Web­ster, was work­ing and pub­lish­ing with Short­ridge. Every year, Web­ster spent three months work­ing with Short­ridge at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Hong Kong, accord­ing to this pro­file of Web­ster which men­tions Kawao­ka as his pro­tege. . . .”
13.–” . . . . The most eerie con­nec­tion between Short­ridge and Webster’s labs is that the clos­est known rel­a­tive of the 1997 Hong Kong H5N1 was the avian virus that struck Penn­syl­va­nia chick­ens in 1983—that Yoshi­hi­ro Kawao­ka had stud­ied. Accord­ing to Time mag­a­zine: Web­ster assigned a young sci­en­tist, Yoshi­hi­ro Kawao­ka, to try to fig­ure out how the [1983] virus trans­formed itself into such a ‘hot’ pathogen. Kawao­ka, now a pro­fes­sor of virol­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wis­con­sin, Madi­son, com­pared the genet­ic struc­ture of virus­es from the first and sec­ond waves and found only a sin­gle, extreme­ly sub­tle change in the H gene. The two virus­es dif­fered by just one nucleotide–one of 1,700 nucleotides that made up the gene. . . .”
14.–”. . . . There’s also a con­nec­tion to Fouch­i­er, through his men­tor at the Eras­mus Med­ical Cen­ter in Rot­ter­dam, the Nether­lands, Jan De Jong, also a col­league and col­lab­o­ra­tor of Short­ridge and Webster’s. . . .”
15.–” . . . . Kawaoka’s col­league and men­tor Robert G. Web­ster and Fouchier’s col­league and men­tor Jan De Jong were the first sci­en­tists out­side of Hong Kong to receive sam­ples of the 1997 H5N1 flu from Shortridge’s lab. . . .”
16.–” . . . . De Jong is often cred­it­ed with being the one who iden­ti­fied the 1997 Hong Kong flu as H5N1, but he did so with ‘a pan­el of reagents to every type of flu strain yet known’ that had been brought from Webster’s lab in Mem­phis to the Nation­al Influen­za Cen­tre in Rot­ter­dam. . . .”
17.–” . . . . Kawao­ka and Fouch­i­er are of post-Bio­log­i­cal Weapons Con­ven­tion era where the weaponiza­tion of pathogens is euphemisti­cal­ly called ‘gain-of-func­tion’ research, but their old­er col­leagues, De Jong, Short­ridge and Web­ster came of age pri­or to 1972 and their men­tors were of the pre-Bio­log­i­cal Weapons Con­ven­tion era when virol­o­gists know­ing­ly and open­ly engi­neered virus­es for mil­i­tary pur­pos­es. . . .”
18.–” . . . . Short­ridge and Web­ster were trained by Frank Mac­far­lane Bur­net who served on the Aus­tralian Depart­ment of Defence’s New Weapons and Equip­ment Devel­op­ment Com­mit­tee in the 1940s and 50s. The Fed­er­a­tion of Amer­i­can Sci­en­tists lists some of the most chill­ing things Bur­net rec­om­mend­ed: Bur­net … said Aus­tralia should devel­op bio­log­i­cal weapons that would work in trop­i­cal Asia with­out spread­ing to Aus­trali­a’s more tem­per­ate pop­u­la­tion cen­tres. . . .”
19.–Burnet’s obser­va­tions: ” . . . . ‘Specif­i­cal­ly to the Aus­tralian sit­u­a­tion, the most effec­tive counter-offen­sive to threat­ened inva­sion by over­pop­u­lat­ed Asi­at­ic coun­tries would be direct­ed towards the destruc­tion by bio­log­i­cal or chem­i­cal means of trop­i­cal food crops and the dis­sem­i­na­tion of infec­tious dis­ease capa­ble of spread­ing in trop­i­cal but not under Aus­tralian con­di­tions.’ . . .”
20.–The broad­cast notes a fright­en­ing rela­tion­ship between Metabio­ta and the selec­tion of Philip Zelikow to head a com­mis­sion to deter­mine the ori­gin of Covid-19: ” . . . . In 2008, Google.org com­mit­ted $30 mil­lion to virus hunt­ing and gain-of-func­tion research on poten­tial pan­dem­ic pathogens through a project it called Pre­dict and Pre­vent. At least $5.5 mil­lion of that went to Dr. Nathan Wolfe’s non-prof­it Glob­al Viral Fore­cast­ing Ini­tia­tive, which was soon to become the for-prof­it Metabio­ta. Oth­er GVFI fun­ders at the time includ­ed the Skoll Foun­da­tion, which also gave $5.5 mil­lion, the Bill & Melin­da Gates Foun­da­tion, Mer­ck Research Lab­o­ra­to­ries and the US Depart­ment of Defense. . . .”
21.–” . . . . When the GVFI became the for-prof­it Metabio­ta, Google Ven­tures con­tin­ued to invest. In addi­tion, it cre­at­ed a busi­ness part­ner­ship with Metabio­ta, ‘offer­ing its big-data exper­tise to help the com­pa­ny serve its customers–insurers, gov­ern­ment agen­cies and oth­er organizations–by offer­ing them fore­cast­ing and risk-man­age­ment tools.’ In oth­er words, they sell pan­dem­ic insur­ance. . . .”
22.–”. . . . Now that Metabio­ta has got­ten caught up in the COVID ori­gins scan­dal, its orig­i­nal investors, Eric Schmidt of Google, Jef­frey Skoll of EBay, Rajiv Shah of The Rock­e­feller Foun­da­tion (for­mer­ly USAID direc­tor, Bill & Melin­da Gates Foun­da­tion) chipped in to fund the COVID Com­mis­sion Plan­ning Group, a white-wash led by Philip Zelikow who gave us the 9–11 Com­mis­sion cov­er-up. . . .”
23.–In past pro­grams, we have not­ed that David Franz, for­mer head of the U.S.A.M.R.I.I.D at Fort Det­rick was a key advi­sor to Eco­HealthAl­liance. Franz helped pro­duce the encap­su­lat­ed, weapons-grade anthrax used in the 2001 anthrax attacks: ” . . . . One of Metabiota’s PREDICT part­ners is Eco­Health Alliance, whose sci­ence and pol­i­cy advi­sor, David Franz, pro­duced the anthrax used in the 2001 attacks while work­ing for South­ern Research and part­ner­ing with sci­en­tists at Bat­telle. . . .” 

Piv­ot­ing to the sub­ject of appar­ent Russ­ian dis­cov­er­ies of an advanced Amer­i­can-financed bio­log­i­cal war­fare pro­gram in Ukraine, we access the com­men­tary of M.K. Bhadraku­mar, a for­mer Indi­an diplo­mat.

Bhadraku­mar under­scores some ter­ri­fy­ing aspects of the appar­ent B.W. pro­gram, includ­ing “dig­i­tized” migra­to­ry birds, tracked by satel­lite and fit­ted with cap­sules of dead­ly microbes. When the birds are over a tar­get­ed coun­try, they can be killed, trig­ger­ing a pan­dem­ic.

” . . . . A mind-bog­gling ‘dis­cov­ery’ that Russ­ian forces in Ukraine stum­bled upon is the use of num­bered birds by the Pen­ta­gon-fund­ed labs. . . . On the basis of this data, groups of migra­to­ry birds are caught, dig­i­tized and cap­sules of germs are attached to them that car­ry a chip to be con­trolled through com­put­ers. . . . Dur­ing the long flight of the birds that have been dig­i­tized in the Pen­ta­gon bio-labs, their move­ment is mon­i­tored step by step by means of satel­lites and the exact loca­tions are deter­mined. . . . Dur­ing the long flight of the birds that have been dig­i­tized in the Pen­ta­gon bio-labs, their move­ment is mon­i­tored step by step by means of satel­lites and the exact loca­tions are deter­mined. . . . The idea is that if the Biden Admin­is­tra­tion (or the CIA) has a require­ment to inflict harm on, say, Rus­sia or Chi­na (or India for that mat­ter), the chip is destroyed when the bird is in their skies.  Plain­ly put, kill the bird car­ry­ing the epi­dem­ic. . . . once the ‘dig­i­tized’ bird is killed and the cap­sule of germs it car­ries is released, the dis­ease spreads in the ‘X’ or ‘Y’ coun­try. It becomes a high­ly cost-effec­tive method of harm­ing an ene­my coun­try with­out any need of war or coup d’état or col­or rev­o­lu­tion. The Rus­sians have made the shock­ing claim that they are actu­al­ly in pos­ses­sion of such migra­to­ry birds dig­i­tized in the Pentagon’s bio-labs. . . .”

A 2014 blog post details a 1960’s pro­gram in India that may have been a pre­cur­sor to the appar­ent “digitized/weaponized” migra­to­ry birds pro­gram in Ukraine. 

” . . . . It appeared that a unit of the U.S. Army called Migra­to­ry Ani­mal Patho­log­i­cal Sur­vey was inter­est­ed in the project. The Army’s inter­est lay in know­ing whether bac­te­ria were being trans­mit­ted by the migrat­ing birds. The project offered an excel­lent means of inves­ti­ga­tion and there­fore had acquired an omi­nous sig­nif­i­cance. . . .”

Anoth­er pos­si­ble 1960’s pre­cur­sor of the “migra­to­ry birds of mass destruc­tion” in Ukraine was a pro­gram to place vora­cious, dis­ease-car­ry­ing Lone Star ticks in the Atlantic Fly­way, through which migra­to­ry birds trav­el from Latin Amer­i­ca through to the Amer­i­can North­east.

” . . . . The sites were locat­ed on the Atlantic Fly­way, the migra­to­ry bird super­high­way that runs along the east­ern South Amer­i­can and North Amer­i­can coasts. . . . . . . . Lone star ticks have sev­er­al sur­vival advan­tages over their deer tick cousins. They don’t wait patient­ly on a stalk of grass for pass­ing prey; they are active hunters that crawl toward any car­bon diox­ide-emit­ting ani­mal, includ­ing birds. . . . But in the 1970s, these ticks began rapid­ly expand­ing their range. 7 The first lone star tick observed on Mon­tauk, Long Island, was in 1971, and as of 2018, estab­lished pop­u­la­tions have been observed as far north as Maine. 8 . . . .  All this begs the ques­tion: What is dri­ving this mass migra­tion of the lone star tick and its dis­ease-caus­ing hitch­hik­ers north­ward? . . . .”

Is this research in any way linked to the Russ­ian alle­ga­tions of weaponiza­tion of H5N1 avian flu detailed in FTR#‘s 1248 and 1249?

FTR#1245 How Many Lies Before You Belong to The Lie?, Part 18

The sec­ond of a pro­ject­ed four-part dis­cus­sion of the deci­sive­ly impor­tant work of for­mer Swiss intel­li­gence offi­cer Jacques Baud, this pro­gram presents and details fun­da­men­tals of the Ukraine war and the his­to­ry lead­ing up to it. This analy­sis will be sup­ple­ment­ed in the remain­ing pro­grams in the series.

His CV is pre­sent­ed below, and will be sup­ple­ment­ed by more detail in an inter­view pre­sent­ed with him.

The read­ing of this arti­cle is con­tin­ued from our last pro­gram. 

Baud points out that the pre­sen­ta­tion of the war in the West is bad­ly skewed, with politi­cians and media pur­su­ing ide­ol­o­gized fan­tasies, rather than sub­stan­tive analy­sis com­ing from intel­li­gence agen­cies.

The essence of Baud’s war analy­sis is pre­sen­ta­tion of com­pelling doc­u­men­ta­tion that the Ukraine war was begun by the West—the U.S. and NATO in particular—in order to weak­en Rus­sia.

Facil­i­tat­ing a mur­der­ous pro­gram of sys­tem­at­ic atroc­i­ty com­mit­ted by Ukraine’s gov­ern­ment against the Russ­ian-speak­ing minor­i­ty of Ukraine, it is the West and the Biden admin­is­tra­tion in par­tic­u­lar, that bear respon­si­bil­i­ty for the con­flict.

As will be seen, analy­sis of the actu­al con­flict itself is fun­da­men­tal­ly skewed in the U.S. and Europe. Far from being “incom­pe­tent,” Rus­sia quick­ly exe­cut­ed maneu­ver war­fare to cut-off the bulk of the Ukrain­ian army, which was poised for a lethal offen­sive against the Russ­ian-speak­ing East.

Russia’s pri­ma­ry objective—completely mis­un­der­stood in the West and sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly mis­rep­re­sent­ed by polit­i­cal and media inter­ests alike—was large­ly achieved with­in a short peri­od.

The Russ­ian forces occu­pied ter­ri­to­ry rough­ly equiv­a­lent to the U.K in a mat­ter of days, fix­ing Ukrain­ian forces with a diver­sion­ary move toward Kiev, elim­i­nat­ing Ukraine’s abil­i­ty to move large num­bers of troops and trap­ping the pri­ma­ry Ukrain­ian forces in the East.

This will be more com­plete­ly dis­cussed, ana­lyzed and pre­sent­ed in the remain­ing pro­grams fea­tur­ing Baud’s work.

 Key Points of Analy­sis and Dis­cus­sion Include: Baud’s first-hand involve­ment in NATO train­ing of the Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary; Baud’s for­mer posi­tion as chief of Swiss intelligence’s divi­sion on War­saw pact forces dur­ing the Cold War; Baud’s exten­sive UN expe­ri­ence on pro­lif­er­a­tion of small arms, their dis­tri­b­u­tion to civil­ian pop­u­la­tions and the dele­te­ri­ous effects of that dis­tri­b­u­tion; The fun­da­men­tal, insti­tu­tion­al­ized dis­tor­tion of the conflict—politicians and media ignor­ing real­i­ty (includ­ing and espe­cial­ly that pre­sent­ed by intel­li­gence pro­fes­sion­als) and incul­cat­ing the pub­lic (and them­selves) with an inflam­ma­to­ry, demon­stra­bly false nar­ra­tive that engen­ders a dan­ger­ous pol­i­cy of esca­la­tion; The essen­tial mis­un­der­stand­ing of the gen­e­sis of the Ukrain­ian con­flict; The cen­tral issue of the post-Maid­an government’s ban­ning of the Russ­ian lan­guage in Ukraine’s East­ern dis­tricts; The fun­da­men­tal mis­un­der­stand­ing of, and mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion of, the civ­il war in Ukraine’s East as a dynam­ic involv­ing “Russ­ian Sep­a­ratists” and “inter­fer­ence” by Putin; Putin’s advice to the Russ­ian-speak­ing East­ern dis­tricts NOT to seek a ref­er­en­dum on auton­o­my; The Ukrain­ian government’s launch of an ill-fat­ed mil­i­tary sup­pres­sion against those dis­tricts; The fun­da­men­tal cor­rup­tion and inep­ti­tude of the post-Maid­an Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary; The false nar­ra­tive dis­trib­uted in the west that Rus­sia was involved in any way with the civ­il war in East­ern Ukraine; The fail­ure of the civ­il war against the East­ern dis­tricts because of that inep­ti­tude; The defec­tion of large “maneu­ver” units of the Ukrain­ian armed forces—armor, artillery and mis­sile for­ma­tions; The mon­u­men­tal fail­ure to report for duty of the Ukrain­ian reserve per­son­nel; Ukraine’s piv­ot to NATO to form the Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary; Jacques Baud’s role in that attempt­ed for­ma­tion; NATO’s cre­ation of the fas­cist “reprisal units,” exem­pli­fied by the Azov Reg­i­ment; The Azov regiment’s sym­bol­ic, and his­tor­i­cal nos­tal­gia for the ”Das Reich” Division—2nd Waf­fen SS; The oper­a­tional strength of the NATO-cre­at­ed fas­cist ter­ri­to­r­i­al defense units—102,000; The real­i­ty behind a 2021” hijack­ing of a RyanAir flight in Belarus; the fact that the “journalist”—Roman Protassevitch—was a promi­nent mem­ber of the Azov reg­i­ment; the fact that the action was in keep­ing with the rules of force; The war’s gen­e­sis with a Ukrain­ian cam­paign to con­quer and dec­i­mate the Russ­ian-speak­ing regions of the East; the Duma’s advo­ca­cy of diplo­mat­ic recog­ni­tion for the Russ­ian-speak­ing regions; Putin’s ini­tial refusal to rec­og­nize the regions; France and the West’s refusal to imple­ment the Min­sk Agree­ments; France and the West’s insis­tence on direct con­fronta­tion between Ukraine and Rus­sia; The Ukraine’s ini­ti­a­tion of the con­flict by bom­bard­ing the Russ­ian-speak­ing dis­tricts and mass­ing their army for an all-out assault; Putin’s grant­i­ng of the Duma’s request and diplo­mat­ic recog­ni­tion of the inde­pen­dence of the Russ­ian-speak­ing regions; Those regions’ request for mil­i­tary assis­tance; Putin’s pos­i­tive response to that request, ini­ti­at­ing the con­flict; The Russ­ian strat­e­gy of using pres­sure on Kiev as a diver­sion, draw­ing Ukrain­ian forces around it and per­mit­ting the encir­clement of the bulk of the Ukrain­ian army in East­ern Ukraine; The West’s fun­da­men­tal mis­un­der­stand­ing of Putin’s and Russia’s war aims, due to their own strate­gic and oper­a­tional myopia; The “slow­down” of Russ­ian oper­a­tions, due to the fact that they have already achieved their objec­tive; The “reprisal” units’ delib­er­ate block­ing of civil­ian evac­u­a­tion cor­ri­dors, so that the civil­ians can be used to delib­er­ate­ly impede Russ­ian mil­i­tary progress; The West’s manip­u­la­tion of Zelen­sky and Ukraine, in essence brib­ing him with arms pur­chas­es to “bleed Rus­sia;” The dis­tri­b­u­tion of small arms to Ukrain­ian urban pop­u­la­tions, a devel­op­ment that Baud feels will lead to atroc­i­ties com­mit­ted against fel­low civil­ians; The strong prob­a­bil­i­ty that the Azov Reg­i­ment was using the Mar­i­upol mater­ni­ty hos­pi­tal as a strate­gic van­tage point, and that the Rus­sians fired on it as a legit­i­mate mil­i­tary tar­get; The West­’s using of that “War Crime” to jus­ti­fy fur­ther arms ship­ments; The West­’s sys­tem­at­ic dis­tor­tion and “weaponiza­tion” of war cov­er­age; The joint secu­ri­ty pro­vid­ed to the Cher­nobyl nuclear plant by BOTH Ukrain­ian and Russ­ian sol­diers to pre­vent sab­o­tage; Baud’s obser­va­tion that the West­’s pro­vid­ing of large amounts of small arms to the pop­u­la­tions of Kiev and Kharkov will lead to trou­ble; Baud’s obser­va­tion that polit­i­cal and media ele­ments in the West are pre­sent­ing infor­ma­tion at vari­ance with what intel­li­gence ser­vices have been able to ver­i­fy; The mur­der of Ukrain­ian diplo­mats and politi­cians who have been will­ing to nego­ti­ate with Rus­sia.

 In the ongo­ing series on the Ukraine war, Mr. Emory has advanced the metaphor of the war and its atten­dant cov­er­age as some­thing akin to the myth­i­cal Philoso­pher’s Stone of the alchemists. Instead of chang­ing lead into gold, it is chang­ing indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions in the West into the same fab­ric as Volodomyr Via­tro­vy­ch’s Ukrain­ian Insti­tute of Nation­al Mem­o­ry.

Recent­ly, Yahoo News has begun reg­u­lar­ly post­ing arti­cles from Ukrain­s­ka Prav­da.

This is part of a U.S.-funded media array in Ukraine, designed to com­mu­ni­cate open­ly pro­pa­gan­dized cov­er­age of things Ukrain­ian.

Yahoo’s pre­sen­ta­tion of Ukrayin­s­ka Prav­da exem­pli­fies Mr. Emory’s metaphor.

Part and par­cel to the white­wash­ing of the Nazi affil­i­a­tion of the Azov for­ma­tions in Ukraine, the Ukrain­ian Kalush Orchestra–winner of t he 2022 Euro­vi­sion song quest–capped off their per­for­mance with a call to release the Azov com­bat­ants holed up in the tun­nels beneath the Azovstal steel mill.

The absence of com­men­tary on the Nazi ori­en­ta­tion of the Azov units is rou­tine in the West at this point.

Also exem­pli­fy­ing the ide­o­log­i­cal and jour­nal­is­tic per­ver­sion of West­ern cov­er­age of Azov for­ma­tions is the New York Times piece about Azov wives req­ui­si­tion­ing inter­na­tion­al aid for the Azovstal com­bat­ants.

The arti­cle fea­tured mer­cy pleas from Katery­na Prokopenko–the wife of Azov com­man­der Colonel Denys Prokopenko.

Colonel Prokopenko’s per­spec­tive on the pos­si­ble “false flag” explo­sion on the Mar­i­upol Dra­ma The­ater is inter­est­ing. We can but won­der what he might dis­close to Russ­ian intel­li­gence offi­cers about the inci­dent.

1.–“ . . . . On March 7, an Azov Bat­tal­ion com­man­der named Denis Prokopenko appeared on cam­era from Mar­i­upol with an urgent mes­sage. Pub­lished on Azov’s offi­cial YouTube chan­nel and deliv­ered in Eng­lish over the sound of occa­sion­al artillery launch­es, Prokopenko declared that the Russ­ian mil­i­tary was car­ry­ing out a ‘geno­cide’ against the pop­u­la­tion of Mar­i­upol, which hap­pens to be 40 per­cent eth­nic Russ­ian. . . .”
2.–“ . . . . Prokopenko then demand­ed that West­ern nations ‘cre­ate a no fly zone over Ukraine support[ed] with the mod­ern weapons.’ It was clear from Prokopenko’s plea that Azov’s posi­tion was grow­ing more dire by the day. . . .”

Joe Biden man­i­fest­ed con­sum­mate hypocrisy with his con­dem­na­tion of Pay­ton Gen­dron, the appar­ent Buf­fa­lo shoot­er. Endors­ing the 14 words mint­ed by David Lane and uti­liz­ing the Sun Wheel sym­bol embraced by the Azov Bat­tal­ion, Gen­dron was align­ing him­self with the same forces the U.S. backs in Ukraine.

As dis­cussed in FTR #780, Svo­bo­da main­tains a street-fight­ing cadre called Com­bat 14. ” . . . . the name points to the num­ber ‘14.’ In fas­cist cir­cles this refers to the ‘four­teen word’ slo­gans of com­mit­ment to the ‘white race.’ As the leader of Svoboda’s ally ‘C14’ explained, his orga­ni­za­tion is in a ‘strug­gle’ with ‘eth­nic groups’ that are wield­ing, among oth­er things, ‘eco­nomic and polit­i­cal pow­er.’ The ‘eth­nic groups’ he is refer­ring to are ‘Rus­sians and Jews.’[6] . . . .”

Com­bat 14’s name derives from “the four­teen words” mint­ed by David Lane, a mem­ber of the Order that killed talk show host Alan Berg. (See excerpt below.) The words are: “We must secure the exis­tence of our peo­ple and a future for white chil­dren.”

Gen­dron’s man­i­festo ref­er­enced Bren­ton Tar­rant, the Christchurch, NZ shoot­er, who had appar­ent­ly vis­it­ed Ukraine and alleged­ly net­worked with the Azov Bat­tal­ion.

Even The New York Times not­ed the pos­si­ble con­tact between Azov and Tar­rant.

” . . . . In the wake of the New Zealand mosque attacks, links have emerged between the shoot­er, Brent Tar­rant, and a Ukrain­ian ultra-nation­al­ist, white suprema­cist para­mil­i­tary orga­ni­za­tion called the Azov Bat­tal­ion. . . .”

FTR#1244 How Many Lies Before You Belong to The Lie?, Part 17

First of a pro­ject­ed four-part dis­cus­sion of the deci­sive­ly impor­tant work of for­mer Swiss intel­li­gence offi­cer Jacques Baud, this pro­gram presents and details fun­da­men­tals of the Ukraine war and the his­to­ry lead­ing up to it. This analy­sis will be sup­ple­ment­ed in the remain­ing pro­grams in the series.

His CV is pre­sent­ed below, and will be sup­ple­ment­ed by more detail in an inter­view pre­sent­ed with him.

The read­ing of this arti­cle will be con­tin­ued in our next pro­gram. For the con­ve­nience and ben­e­fit of the audi­ence, the entire arti­cle is pre­sent­ed in this descrip­tion. 

Baud points out that the pre­sen­ta­tion of the war in the West is bad­ly skewed, with politi­cians and media pur­su­ing ide­ol­o­gized fan­tasies, rather than sub­stan­tive analy­sis com­ing from intel­li­gence agen­cies.

The essence of Baud’s war analy­sis is pre­sen­ta­tion of com­pelling doc­u­men­ta­tion that the Ukraine war was begun by the West—the U.S. and NATO in particular—in order to weak­en Rus­sia.

Facil­i­tat­ing a mur­der­ous pro­gram of sys­tem­at­ic atroc­i­ty com­mit­ted by Ukraine’s gov­ern­ment against the Russ­ian-speak­ing minor­i­ty of Ukraine, it is the West and the Biden admin­is­tra­tion in par­tic­u­lar, that bear respon­si­bil­i­ty for the con­flict.

As will be seen, analy­sis of the actu­al con­flict itself is fun­da­men­tal­ly skewed in the U.S. and Europe. Far from being “incom­pe­tent,” Rus­sia quick­ly exe­cut­ed maneu­ver war­fare to cut-off the bulk of the Ukrain­ian army, which was poised for a lethal offen­sive against the Russ­ian-speak­ing East.

Russia’s pri­ma­ry objective—completely mis­un­der­stood in the West and sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly mis­rep­re­sent­ed by polit­i­cal and media inter­ests alike—was large­ly achieved with­in a short peri­od.

The Russ­ian forces occu­pied ter­ri­to­ry rough­ly equiv­a­lent to the U.K in a mat­ter of days, fix­ing Ukrain­ian forces with a diver­sion­ary move toward Kiev, elim­i­nat­ing Ukraine’s abil­i­ty to move large num­bers of troops and trap­ping the pri­ma­ry Ukrain­ian forces in the East.

This will be more com­plete­ly dis­cussed, ana­lyzed and pre­sent­ed in the remain­ing pro­grams fea­tur­ing Baud’s work.

 Key Points of Analy­sis and Dis­cus­sion Include: Baud’s first-hand involve­ment in NATO train­ing of the Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary; Baud’s for­mer posi­tion as chief of Swiss intelligence’s divi­sion on War­saw pact forces dur­ing the Cold War; Baud’s exten­sive UN expe­ri­ence on pro­lif­er­a­tion of small arms, their dis­tri­b­u­tion to civil­ian pop­u­la­tions and the dele­te­ri­ous effects of that dis­tri­b­u­tion; The fun­da­men­tal, insti­tu­tion­al­ized dis­tor­tion of the conflict—politicians and media ignor­ing real­i­ty (includ­ing and espe­cial­ly that pre­sent­ed by intel­li­gence pro­fes­sion­als) and incul­cat­ing the pub­lic (and them­selves) with an inflam­ma­to­ry, demon­stra­bly false nar­ra­tive that engen­ders a dan­ger­ous pol­i­cy of esca­la­tion; The essen­tial mis­un­der­stand­ing of the gen­e­sis of the Ukrain­ian con­flict; The cen­tral issue of the post-Maid­an government’s ban­ning of the Russ­ian lan­guage in Ukraine’s East­ern dis­tricts; The fun­da­men­tal mis­un­der­stand­ing of, and mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion of, the civ­il war in Ukraine’s East as a dynam­ic involv­ing “Russ­ian Sep­a­ratists” and “inter­fer­ence” by Putin; Putin’s advice to the Russ­ian-speak­ing East­ern dis­tricts NOT to seek a ref­er­en­dum on auton­o­my; The Ukrain­ian government’s launch of an ill-fat­ed mil­i­tary sup­pres­sion against those dis­tricts; The fun­da­men­tal cor­rup­tion and inep­ti­tude of the post-Maid­an Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary; The false nar­ra­tive dis­trib­uted in the west that Rus­sia was involved in any way with the civ­il war in East­ern Ukraine; The fail­ure of the civ­il war against the East­ern dis­tricts because of that inep­ti­tude; The defec­tion of large “maneu­ver” units of the Ukrain­ian armed forces—armor, artillery and mis­sile for­ma­tions; The mon­u­men­tal fail­ure to report for duty of the Ukrain­ian reserve per­son­nel; Ukraine’s piv­ot to NATO to form the Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary; Jacques Baud’s role in that attempt­ed for­ma­tion; NATO’s cre­ation of the fas­cist “reprisal units,” exem­pli­fied by the Azov Reg­i­ment; The Azov regiment’s sym­bol­ic, and his­tor­i­cal nos­tal­gia for the ”Das Reich” Division—2nd Waf­fen SS; The oper­a­tional strength of the NATO-cre­at­ed fas­cist ter­ri­to­r­i­al defense units—102,000; The real­i­ty behind a 2021” hijack­ing of a RyanAir flight in Belarus; the fact that the “journalist”—Roman Protassevitch—was a promi­nent mem­ber of the Azov reg­i­ment; the fact that the action was in keep­ing with the rules of force; The war’s gen­e­sis with a Ukrain­ian cam­paign to con­quer and dec­i­mate the Russ­ian-speak­ing regions of the East; the Duma’s advo­ca­cy of diplo­mat­ic recog­ni­tion for the Russ­ian-speak­ing regions; Putin’s ini­tial refusal to rec­og­nize the regions; France and the West’s refusal to imple­ment the Min­sk Agree­ments; France and the West’s insis­tence on direct con­fronta­tion between Ukraine and Rus­sia; The Ukraine’s ini­ti­a­tion of the con­flict by bom­bard­ing the Russ­ian-speak­ing dis­tricts and mass­ing their army for an all-out assault; Putin’s grant­i­ng of the Duma’s request and diplo­mat­ic recog­ni­tion of the inde­pen­dence of the Russ­ian-speak­ing regions; Those regions’ request for mil­i­tary assis­tance; Putin’s pos­i­tive response to that request, ini­ti­at­ing the con­flict; The Russ­ian strat­e­gy of using pres­sure on Kiev as a diver­sion, draw­ing Ukrain­ian forces around it and per­mit­ting the encir­clement of the bulk of the Ukrain­ian army in East­ern Ukraine; The West’s fun­da­men­tal mis­un­der­stand­ing of Putin’s and Russia’s war aims, due to their own strate­gic and oper­a­tional myopia; The “slow­down” of Russ­ian oper­a­tions, due to the fact that they have already achieved their objec­tive; The “reprisal” units’ delib­er­ate block­ing of civil­ian evac­u­a­tion cor­ri­dors, so that the civil­ians can be used to delib­er­ate­ly impede Russ­ian mil­i­tary progress; The West’s manip­u­la­tion of Zelen­sky and Ukraine, in essence brib­ing him with arms pur­chas­es to “bleed Rus­sia;” The dis­tri­b­u­tion of small arms to Ukrain­ian urban pop­u­la­tions, a devel­op­ment that Baud feels will lead to atroc­i­ties com­mit­ted against fel­low civil­ians; The strong prob­a­bil­i­ty that the Azov Reg­i­ment was using the Mar­i­upol mater­ni­ty hos­pi­tal as a strate­gic van­tage point, and that the Rus­sians fired on it as a legit­i­mate mil­i­tary tar­get; The West­’s using of that “War Crime” to jus­ti­fy fur­ther arms ship­ments; The West­’s sys­tem­at­ic dis­tor­tion and “weaponiza­tion” of war cov­er­age; The joint secu­ri­ty pro­vid­ed to the Cher­nobyl nuclear plant by BOTH Ukrain­ian and Russ­ian sol­diers to pre­vent sab­o­tage.