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. 

FTR #1107 Deep Politics and the Death of Iris Chang, Part 1 and FTR #1108 Deep Politics and the Death of Iris Chang, Part 2

“The Sea­graves have uncov­ered one of the Biggest Secrets of the Twen­ti­eth Century”–Iris Chang, quot­ed on the front cov­er of Gold War­riors.

Late last year (2019), the city of San Jose (Cal­i­for­nia) opened a park ded­i­cat­ed to the mem­o­ry of the late author Iris Chang.

These broad­casts update and sup­ple­ment dis­cus­sion of Iris Chang’s alleged “sui­cide,” high­light­ed in FTR #509. Of par­tic­u­lar sig­nif­i­cance is the fact that the Gold­en Lily loot and the deci­sive polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic fac­tors stem­ming from the mate­r­i­al cov­ered in Gold War­riors, the oth­er books by Ster­ling and Peg­gy Sea­grave, and Ms. Chang’s “The Rape of Nanking” have enor­mous and ongo­ing sig­nif­i­cance.

(FTR #‘s 427, 428, 446, 451, 501, 509, 688, 689 deal with the sub­ject of the Gold­en Lily pro­gram suc­cess­ful­ly imple­ment­ed by the Japan­ese to loot Asia. That loot was merged with Nazi gold, became the Black Eagle Trust, which not only financed Cold War covert oper­a­tions but under­wrote much of the post-war glob­al econ­o­my. Philip­pine dic­ta­tor Fer­di­nand Mar­cos recov­ered a tremen­dous amount of the Gold­en Lily loot, some of which was shared with  the Japan­ese, some with  the U.S. and much of it kept by Mar­cos. The Mar­cos “Black Gold” fig­ures promi­nent­ly in the deep pol­i­tics sur­round­ing the death of Ms. Chang.)

In Novem­ber of 2004, author and inves­ti­ga­tor Iris Chang was found dead of an alleged­ly self-inflict­ed gun­shot wound. This pro­gram exam­ines the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing her death.

In her land­mark book “The Rape of Nanking,” Ms. Chang doc­u­ment­ed the Japan­ese atroc­i­ties which gave that occu­pa­tion its name. The rape of Nanking saw the begin­ning of the Japan­ese Gold­en Lily pro­gram, which yield­ed the spec­tac­u­lar loot­ed wealth and post­war eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal intrigue doc­u­ment­ed in the Sea­graves’ inci­sive text “Gold War­riors.”

The “Rape of Nanking” drew much hos­tile reac­tion from the Japan­ese right and relat­ed forces:  . . . . At the same time, tor­rents of hate mail came in, Brett [her hus­band] said. ‘Iris is sen­si­tive, but she got charged up,’ he recalled. ‘When any­body ques­tioned the valid­i­ty of what she wrote, she would respond with over­whelm­ing evi­dence to back it up. She’s very much a per­fec­tion­ist. It was hard for her not to react every sin­gle time.’ Most of the attacks came from Japan­ese ultra­na­tion­al­ists. ‘We saw car­toons where she was por­trayed as this woman with a great big mouth,‘Brett said. ‘She got used to the fact that there is a Web site called ‘Iris Chang and Her Lies.’ She would just laugh.’ But friends say Iris began to voice con­cerns for her safe­ty. She believed her phone was tapped. She described find­ing threat­en­ing notes on her car. She said she was con­front­ed by a man who said, ‘You will NOT con­tin­ue writ­ing this.’ She used a post office box, nev­er her home address, for mail. ‘There are a fair num­ber of peo­ple who don’t take kind­ly to what she wrote in The Rape of Nanking.’ Brett said, ‘so she’s always been very, very pri­vate about our fam­i­ly life.’ . . . .”

(As we have seen in–among oth­er programs–FTR #‘s 813, 905, 969, 970, the Japan­ese “ultra­na­tion­al­ists” were put right back in pow­er by the Amer­i­can occu­pa­tion forces, as the Sea­graves doc­u­ment in Gold War­riors, as well as The Yam­a­to Dynasty.)

At the time of her death, Ms. Chang was research­ing a book chron­i­cling the expe­ri­ences of sur­vivors of the Bataan Death March—the bru­tal per­se­cu­tion of Amer­i­can POW’s cap­tured in the siege of Bataan in the Philip­pines dur­ing World War II. Many of the sur­vivors were shipped to Japan to work as slave labor­ers for major Japan­ese cor­po­ra­tions.

Many of these cor­po­ra­tions have had pro­found con­nec­tions with their Amer­i­can transna­tion­al coun­ter­parts, and were the ben­e­fi­cia­ries of Amer­i­can invest­ment cap­i­tal in the run-up to World War II. More impor­tant­ly, many of these cor­po­ra­tions are a prin­ci­pal ele­ment of the US/Japanese com­mer­cial rela­tion­ship today.

Law­suits in Cal­i­for­nia tar­get­ed those Japan­ese cor­po­ra­tions for com­pen­sa­tion for the slave labor wrung from the Bat­taan POWs. The State Depart­ment sided with the Japan­ese and Judge Vaughn Walk­er ruled against the Bataan sur­vivors.

Per­haps most impor­tant­ly, in-depth cov­er­age of the Bataan Death March would uncov­er the Black Eagle Trust and the fun­da­men­tal role in post-World War II Amer­i­can and Japan­ese pol­i­tics of the vast wealth loot­ed by Japan dur­ing World War II. That pur­loined “black gold” is inex­tri­ca­bly linked with U.S. covert oper­a­tions and is at the epi­cen­ter of post­war Japan­ese pow­er pol­i­tics and econ­o­my.

In addi­tion to the Rape of Nanking and the Bataan Death March sur­vivors, Ms. Chang’s research cut across some deep polit­i­cal dynam­ics con­nect­ed to then-Pres­i­dent George W. Bush’s admin­is­tra­tion and his busi­ness deal­ings.

George W. Bush:

1.–Was using U.S. Naval forces to secure Japan­ese war gold from the Philip­pines for his per­son­al blind trust, as well as shoring up Amer­i­can reserves.
2.–Was deeply involved with Harken Ener­gy, which may well have been a cor­po­rate front for the acqui­si­tion and recy­cling of Gold­en Lily loot and Bor­mann mon­ey.
3.–Was heir to a deep polit­i­cal her­itage involv­ing, among oth­ers, the fam­i­ly of William Stamps Far­ish, the head of Stan­dard Oil of New Jer­sey dur­ing the time it man­i­fest­ed its car­tel agree­ments with I.G. Far­ben. Dubya ben­e­fit­ed from his father’s lega­cy of involve­ment with the milieu of Dou­glas MacArthur. George H.W. Bush’s deep polit­i­cal con­nec­tions in the Philip­pines include the involve­ment of both Trump cam­paign man­ag­er Paul Man­afort and Trump and GOP trick­ster Roger Stone with Fer­di­nand Mar­cos while the dic­ta­tor was involved with the recov­ery of Gold­en Lily loot.
4. Served as a direc­tor of Harken when the head of the firm was Alan Quasha, son of William Quasha, an attor­ney for the CIA-linked Nugan Hand Bank, a focal point of AFA #25. William had been Alien Prop­er­ty cus­to­di­an in the Philip­pines under Dou­glas MacArthur, which placed him in a posi­tion to great­ly influ­ence the “Alien Prop­er­ty” placed there by the Japan­ese under Gold­en Lily.

There is evi­dence to sug­gest that Ms. Chang’s death may have result­ed from mind con­trol, admin­is­tered to neu­tral­ize her as a threat to those clan­des­tine eco­nom­ic and nation­al secu­ri­ty rela­tion­ships that have gov­erned US/Japanese affairs in the post­war peri­od. Ms. Chang had received threats ever since the pub­li­ca­tion of her land­mark text The Rape of Nanking.

(For more about the gov­ern­men­t’s mind con­trol pro­grams, see, among oth­er broad­casts, AFA #‘s 5–7.)

She appears to have been under sur­veil­lance, and her “sui­cide” note alleged that a sus­pi­cious intern­ment in a psy­chi­atric hos­pi­tal may have been ini­ti­at­ed at the insti­ga­tion of the ele­ments opposed to a ruf­fling of the Japanese/US feath­ers. In addi­tion to threat­en­ing to expose a dom­i­nant fac­tor in U.S. covert oper­a­tions, a key ele­ment in the post­war Amer­i­can and glob­al econ­o­my, Ms. Chang’s inves­ti­ga­tion of Japan­ese war crimes was an irri­tant to the Japan­ese estab­lish­ment that had thrived on the gold and oth­er wealth loot­ed from occu­pied coun­tries since World War II.

Ms. Chang’s “sui­cide” note read, in part: “. . . .There are aspects of my expe­ri­ence in Louisville that I will nev­er under­stand. . . . . I can nev­er shake my belief that I was being recruit­ed, and lat­er per­se­cut­ed, by forces more pow­er­ful than I could have imag­ined. Whether it was the CIA or some oth­er orga­ni­za­tion I will nev­er know. As long as I am alive, these forces will nev­er stop hound­ing me. Days before I left for Louisville I had a deep fore­bod­ing about my safe­ty. I sensed sud­den­ly threats to my own life: an eerie feel­ing that I was being fol­lowed in the streets, the white van parked out­side my house, dam­aged mail arriv­ing at my P.O. Box. I believe my deten­tion at Nor­ton Hos­pi­tal was the gov­ern­men­t’s attempt to dis­cred­it me. . . .”

At the con­clu­sion of the pro­gram, we review Rita Katz’s expe­ri­ences after she helped break the inves­ti­ga­tion into the SAAR net­work that became known  as Oper­a­tion Green Quest. That inves­ti­ga­tion over­lapped George W. Bush’s firm Harken Ener­gy. Note the sim­i­lar­i­ty between Iris Chang’s expe­ri­ences and those  of Rita  Katz. ” . . . . White vans and SUV’s with dark win­dows appeared near all the homes of the SAAR inves­ti­ga­tors. All agents, some of whom were very expe­ri­enced with sur­veil­lance, knew they were being fol­lowed. So was I. I felt that I was being fol­lowed every­where and watched at home, in the super­mar­ket, on the way to work . . . and for what? . Now—I was being watched 24/7. It’s a ter­ri­ble sen­sa­tion to know that you have no pri­va­cy. . . . and no secu­ri­ty. That strange click­ing of the phones that wasn’t there before. . . the oh-so-crude­ly opened mail at home in the office. . . and the same man I spied in my neigh­bor­hood super­mar­ket, who was also on the train I took to Wash­ing­ton a week ago. . . Life can be mis­er­able when you know that someone’s always breath­ing down your neck. . . .”

In con­ver­sa­tions with friends, Ms. Chang not­ed that her prob­lems were “exter­nal,” not in her head. She also felt she was being “recruit­ed” to become a “Manchuri­an Can­di­date” for the CIA–i.e. being sub­ject­ed to mind con­trol. ” . . . . in her last year she became para­noid about every­thing from virus­es attack­ing her com­put­er to attempts by the gov­ern­ment to “recruit” her, a la The Manchuri­an Can­di­date. . . .

Pro­gram High­lights Include: The alleged role of Japan­ese war crim­i­nal Tsu­ji Masanobu in aid­ing the Mar­cos gold recov­er­ies in the Philip­pines; the role of Tsu­ji Masanobu in imple­ment­ing the Bataan Death March; William Stamps Far­ish III’s stew­ard­ship of Dubya’s blind trust, for which Philip­pines war gold was appar­ent­ly being sought; William Stamps Far­ish (II) and his stew­ard­ship of Stan­dard Oil of New Jer­sey, when it col­lab­o­rat­ed with I.G. Far­ben; George H.W. Bush’s asso­ci­a­tion with the descen­dants of Amer­i­can cor­po­rate fig­ures who col­lab­o­rat­ed with the Third Reich.

FTR #1106 Reflections on the Passing of Peggy and Sterling Seagrave

This broad­cast com­mem­o­rates the lives and pass­ing of Peg­gy and Ster­ling Sea­grave, inves­ti­ga­tors, jour­nal­ists, authors and heroes.

A periph­er­al inter­net search con­duct­ed while re-read­ing Gold War­riors yield­ed the sad news that both Peg­gy and Ster­ling Sea­grave had passed. Peg­gy passed away in 2016 and Ster­ling in the spring of 2017.

Authors of a num­ber of ground-break­ing and over­lap­ping historical/political expos­es, they cul­mi­nat­ed their remark­able careers with Gold War­riors, which Mr. Emory feels is as impor­tant a book as has ever been writ­ten and is a MUST read for any­one gen­uine­ly con­cerned with the state of world affairs, past, present and future.

More admirable than even their con­sum­mate inves­tiga­tive and lit­er­ary skills is the fact that they con­tin­ued their research and report­ing in the face of seri­ous death threats and attempts, as well as lethal con­se­quences vis­it­ed on some of the par­tic­i­pants in the “Black Gold” trans­ac­tions and, appar­ent­ly, on some of those inves­ti­gat­ing the machi­na­tions of the nations, com­mer­cial insti­tu­tions and indi­vid­u­als involved with the oper­a­tions.

(FTR #‘s 427, 428, 446, 451, 501, 509, 688, 689 deal with the sub­ject of the Gold­en Lily pro­gram suc­cess­ful­ly imple­ment­ed by the Japan­ese to loot Asia. That loot was merged with Nazi gold, became the Black Eagle Trust, which not only financed Cold War covert oper­a­tions but under­wrote much of the post-war glob­al econ­o­my.)

In FTR #‘s 446 and 509, we high­light­ed and reviewed the death threats and hands-on inter­fer­ence expe­ri­enced by the Sea­graves in response to their inves­ti­ga­tions. In 509, we also not­ed the sus­pi­cious cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the death of the hero­ic Iris Chang, who aid­ed the Sea­graves in their Gold War­riors project. Hav­ing authored a book on the Rape of Nanking and work­ing on anoth­er about the Bataan Death March, Ms. Chang had crossed the very pow­er struc­ture delin­eat­ed at length, depth and detail in the Sea­graves vol­ume.

In our last vis­it with the Sea­graves, a 2009 inter­view that was the focus of FTR #689, Ster­ling expressed anx­i­ety about the prox­im­i­ty of their res­i­dence in South­ern France to the Span­ish bor­der and the for­mi­da­ble pres­ence of Opus Dei in Fran­co’s for­mer domain.

(The Vat­i­can’s rela­tion­ship to fas­cism, includ­ing Opus Dei and the Ustachi in Croa­t­ia, is high­light­ed in, among oth­er pro­grams AFA #17.)

The remark­able Sev­eri­no San­ta Romana, prime mover in the Black Eagle Trust oper­a­tions in the Philip­pines and the gold recov­er­ies in those islands was, in addi­tion to his work for U.S. intel­li­gence, an oper­a­tive of the pow­er­ful Vat­i­can order Opus Dei. It appears that Opus Dei was San­ta Romana’s pri­ma­ry affil­i­a­tion and his U.S. intel­li­gence con­nec­tions were deriv­a­tive.

With strong con­nec­tions in Spain, dat­ing to the Fran­co fas­cist regime (which main­tains pow­er­ful pres­ence in con­tem­po­rary Spain), Opus Dei is a major fac­tor in the con­tem­po­rary polit­i­cal scene. Ster­ling opined in FTR #689 that his and Peg­gy’s prox­im­i­ty to the Span­ish bor­der might expose them to vio­lence.

His fear turned out to be pre­scient. On Christ­mas Day of 2011, he nar­row­ly escaped assas­si­na­tion while return­ing home. He felt that the attempt on his life may well have been moti­vat­ed by the pub­li­ca­tion of the Span­ish lan­guage edi­tion of Gold War­riors.

After detail­ing the attempt on his life, we set forth San­ta Romana’s rela­tion­ship with Opus Dei. San­ta Romana’s Opus Dei oper­a­tions were essen­tial for the fis­cal rein­force­ment of the Vat­i­can’s finan­cial insti­tu­tions, which ben­e­fit­ted from the Gold­en Lily-derived trea­sure from the Philip­pines.

We have dis­cussed the Vat­i­can bank in, among oth­er pro­grams, AFA #18.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

FTR #1103 Fascism, 2019 World Tour, Part 13: Goose-Hopping in Hong Kong with Pepe the Frog and the Azov Battalion

We have been high­light­ing the role of Ukraine as a “piv­ot point” for the Earth Island or World Island, and the evo­lu­tion of the Inter­mar­i­um con­cept in the appli­ca­tion of fas­cist con­trol of that unfor­tu­nate coun­try. 

Stretch­ing from the Straits of Gibral­tar, all across Europe, most of the Mid­dle East, Eura­sia, Rus­sia, Chi­na and India, that stretch of land: com­pris­es most of the world’s land mass; con­tains most of the world’s pop­u­la­tion and most of the world’s nat­ur­al resources (includ­ing oil and nat­ur­al gas.) Geopoliti­cians have long seen con­trol­ling that land mass as the key to world dom­i­na­tion.

Key to ana­lyz­ing the real­iza­tion of con­trol of the Ukrain­ian “piv­ot point” is the OUN milieu and its man­i­fes­ta­tion through the bet­ter part of the last cen­tu­ry. 

On our Fas­cism: 2019 World Tour, we have cov­ered the desta­bi­liza­tion of Chi­na and Hong Kong, as well as the oper­a­tions of the Ukrain­ian Nazi Azov milieu. Now, there has been some­thing of a con­ver­gence.

Aug­ment­ing the right-wing and fas­cist pres­ence in Hong Kong are vet­er­ans of the Azov Bat­tal­ion and Pravy Sek­tor. ” . . . . The lat­est col­lec­tion of extreme-right activists to rein­force the ranks of the Hong Kong sep­a­ratists are from Ukraine. They call them­selves Gonor and have tat­toos on their upper tor­sos with unde­ni­able sym­bols of white suprema­cy and neo-Nazism. These extrem­ists pre­vi­ous­ly fought in a noto­ri­ous­ly bru­tal neo-Nazi mili­tia called the Azov Bat­tal­ion, in Ukraine’s war against pro-Russ­ian mil­i­tants. . . .”

The Gonor con­tin­gent includes a for­mer leader of Pravy Sek­tor (Right Sec­tor). ” . . . . Jour­nal­ist Mor­gan Artyukhi­na iden­ti­fied anoth­er mem­ber of the far-right Ukrain­ian con­tin­gent in Hong Kong as Ser­hii Ster­nenko. Artyukhi­na not­ed that Ster­nenko is a for­mer leader of the Ukrain­ian fas­cist group Right Sec­tor, which burned down a trade union build­ing in Odessa dur­ing the 2014 coup, killing 42 peo­ple. . . .”

Of par­tic­u­lar sig­nif­i­cance is the fact that the Ukrain­ian fas­cists are in Hong Kong under the aus­pices of an EU-financed NGO. ” . . . . The Free Hong Kong Cen­ter is a project of an NGO called the Lib­er­al Demo­c­ra­t­ic League of Ukraine. In addi­tion to build­ing links with anti-Bei­jing forces in Hong Kong, the project says its mis­sion is to ‘counter Chi­nese threats to Ukraine.’ The Lib­er­al Demo­c­ra­t­ic League of Ukraine is a pro-Euro­pean Union advo­ca­cy orga­ni­za­tion which is a mem­ber of the Euro­pean Lib­er­al Youth and the Inter­na­tion­al Fed­er­a­tion of Lib­er­al Youth, both of which are fund­ed by the EU. . . .”

Key points of dis­cus­sion and analy­sis include:

1.–The Azov and Pravy Sek­tor vet­er­ans call them­selves Gonor and the NGO that facil­i­tat­ed their entry into Hong Kong white­washed the Nazi/fascist nature of the group.
2.–Members of the group sport­ed a vari­ety of Nazi and fas­cist tat­toos, includ­ing the “Vic­to­ry or Val­hal­la” slo­gan that was the title of a book by David Lane. Lane drove the get­away car for the mur­der of talk-show host Alan Berg and mint­ed the 14 Words—emblematic for the inter­na­tion­al Nazi move­ment. Svoboda’s C14 mili­tia takes its name from the 14 words.  ” . . . . Sev­er­al pho­tos show that at least two of the Ukrain­ian fas­cists in Hong Kong have tat­toos read­ing “Vic­to­ry or Val­hal­la,” the title of a com­pi­la­tion of writ­ings by the noto­ri­ous Amer­i­can white suprema­cist David Lane, whose neo-fas­cist ter­ror­ist group The Order mur­dered a lib­er­al Jew­ish radio host and planned more assas­si­na­tions of left-wing Jews. Lane, who was con­vict­ed to 190 years in a US prison for numer­ous crimes, cre­at­ed the most famous white suprema­cist slo­gan, known as the 14 Words — which inspired the name of anoth­er Ukrain­ian neo-Nazi group called C14. . . .”
3.–Gonor has embraced the slo­gan “Stand with Hong Kong.” ” . . . .  Stand With Hong Kong is also the name of a West­ern-backed orga­ni­za­tion that has been lob­by­ing the gov­ern­ments of the US, Britain, Ger­many, Cana­da, and Aus­tralia to impose sanc­tions and take puni­tive action against Chi­na. . . .”
4.–Gonor’s Telegram chan­nel has high­light­ed acts of vio­lence by the “pro-Democ­ra­cy” demon­stra­tors. ” . . . . Gonor’s Telegram chan­nel offers mem­bers a front row seat to an orgy of vio­lence. It has pub­lished dozens of videos of Hong Kong insur­gents, hero­iz­ing them for shoot­ing arrows and car­ry­ing out bru­tal attacks on state secu­ri­ty forces. . . .”
5.–The NGO—The Free Hong Kong Cen­ter (a sub­sidiary of the Lib­er­al Demo­c­ra­t­ic League of Ukraine) also white­washed the Nazi char­ac­ter of the Azov Bat­tal­ion.
6.–The Ukrain­ian Nazis had obtained press pass­es for their pres­ence in Hong Kong.
7.–The Ukrain­ian Nazis were emphat­ic about their pres­ence in Hong Kong being an exten­sion of the Maid­an coup.
8.–The pres­ence of the Ukrain­ian fas­cists in Hong Kong appears to be an exten­sion of Amer­i­can and EU Earth Island geo-polit­i­cal activism.
9.–Are the Azov and Pravy Sek­tor vet­er­ans in Hong Kong to pro­vide a vio­lent, mil­i­tary pres­ence as part of the Hong Kong desta­bi­liza­tion effort? Are we wit­ness­ing a “Hong Kong” Maid­an?

In FTR #1089, we not­ed the pres­ence of Pepe the Frog as an icon­ic pres­ence in the Hong Kong tur­moil. 

Steve Bannon–one of the lumi­nar­ies of the “Alt-Right,” and a for­mer key Trump aide is cen­tral­ly involved in the anti-Chi­na effort. This sug­gests that the pres­ence of Pepe the Frog’s image in Hong Kong might have some­thing to do with the “Alt-Right” after all.

As dis­cussed in–among oth­er programs–FTR #‘s 946 and 1077, Ban­non was at the epi­cen­ter of the Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca cyber-psy-op dur­ing the 2016 elec­tion. One of the prin­ci­pal oper­a­tors of Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca was Christo­pher Wylie. 

We won­der if the tech­niques used by Ban­non, Wylie, Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca, SCL et al might have been used in Hong Kong? The the lais­sez-faire econ­o­my of Hong Kong has seen a 300 per­cent increase in rents while income has stag­nat­ed, thus impov­er­ish­ing 20% of Hong Kong’s pop­u­la­tion. Many young peo­ple in Hong Kong might well be vul­ner­a­ble to the type of social media psy-op that Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca spe­cial­ized in.

Was such a tech­nique employed to help gen­er­ate the unrest in Hong Kong?

In our next pro­gram, we will review the rebirth of Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca, with a Hong Kong-based financier and busi­ness part­ner of Erik Prince (of Black­wa­ter fame and the broth­er of Trump Sec­re­tary of Edu­ca­tion Bet­sy DeVos) on the board of direc­tors.

Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca is rebrand­ing under a new com­pa­ny, Emer­da­ta. Intrigu­ing­ly, Cam­bridge Analytica’s trans­for­ma­tion into Emer­da­ta is note­wor­thy because  the fir­m’s direc­tors include John­son Ko Chun Shun, a Hong Kong financier and busi­ness part­ner of Erik Prince: ” . . . . But the company’s announce­ment left sev­er­al ques­tions unan­swered, includ­ing who would retain the company’s intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty — the so-called psy­cho­graph­ic vot­er pro­files built in part with data from Face­book — and whether Cam­bridge Analytica’s data-min­ing busi­ness would return under new aus­pices. . . . In recent months, exec­u­tives at Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca and SCL Group, along with the Mer­cer fam­i­ly, have moved to cre­at­ed a new firm, Emer­da­ta, based in Britain, accord­ing to British records. The new company’s direc­tors include John­son Ko Chun Shun, a Hong Kong financier and busi­ness part­ner of Erik Prince. . . . An exec­u­tive and a part own­er of SCL Group, Nigel Oakes, has pub­licly described Emer­da­ta as a way of rolling up the two com­pa­nies under one new ban­ner. . . . ”

The pro­gram con­cludes with dis­cus­sion of Wik­iLeaks’ links to Chi­nese and Tibetan dis­si­dent activists and spec­u­la­tion about the CIA’s Edward Snow­den’s activ­i­ties in Hong Kong–the first stop on his inter­na­tion­al odyssey. In Hong Kong, he net­worked with Wik­iLeaks, who then facil­i­tat­ed his decamp­ment to Moscow. That trip was the open­ing gam­bit in the New Cold War.

In our next pro­gram, we will fur­ther dis­cuss Chi­na’s role as an inter­na­tion­al leader in Green tech­nol­o­gy and the impli­ca­tions of this for the Lithi­um Coup in Bolivia.

FTR #1102 Fascism: 2019 World Tour, Part 12 (The Intermarium Continuity, Part 3–Further Reflections on The Pivot Point)

Full appre­ci­a­tion and analy­sis of the his­tor­i­cal and polit­i­cal depth of Ukraine as a piv­ot point–a nexus vital to con­trol of the Earth Island and, con­se­quent­ly, the world–can be gleaned from exam­i­na­tion of the extent of net­work­ing between Ukrain­ian fas­cists, oth­er Cen­tral and East­ern Euro­pean fas­cists and Third Reich intel­li­gence. Note the mas­sive pres­ence of a Ukrainian/Nazi Fifth Col­umn in the US, linked to and direct­ed by Third Reich intel­li­gence.

The Ukrain­ian nation­al­ist alliance with Nazi Ger­many had as its foun­da­tion the under­stand­ing that Hitler would invade the Sovi­et Union and enlist the Ukraini­ans as allies.

This por­tion of the dis­cus­sion over­laps mate­r­i­al pre­sent­ed in FTR #907.

Key Points of Dis­cus­sion and Analy­sis Include:

1.–The role of for­mer Czarist intel­li­gence agent Boris Bra­sol in the White Russian/fascist under­ground oper­at­ing in con­junc­tion with Axis intel­li­gence. [Note: in FTR #511–a recap of Mis­cel­la­neous Archive Show M11–we not­ed Boris Bra­sol’s role as a con­duit of funds between Amer­i­can indus­tri­al­ist Hen­ry Ford and Adolf Hitler.]
2.–The pres­ence in this milieu of Gen­er­al George Van Horn Mose­ley, who was: an aide to Dou­glas MacArthur; an aide to Sen­a­tor Joseph McCarthy; as dis­cussed in AFA #10, a plot­ter with Third Reich intel­li­gence to over­throw FDR.
3.–Harry Ben­net­t’s col­lab­o­ra­tion with Axis agent Father Couglin. Ben­nett was in charge of Hitler finan­cial backer Hen­ry Ford’s “Per­son­nel Ser­vice,” which used pro­fes­sion­al crim­i­nals to attack Ford employ­ees and union orga­niz­ers. Ben­nett was a key mem­ber of the Michi­gan parole board and got some of the most vicious crim­i­nals in that state’s cor­rec­tion­al sys­tem released into the ser­vice of Ford, where they con­tin­ued to ply their trade.
4.–The key pres­ence in this milieu of the OUN, which had a head­quar­ters in Rome. ” . . . . In late 1940, the Orga­ni­za­tion of Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists [OUN–D.E.] moved to Rome, where a cor­re­spon­dent of the offi­cial Ukrain­ian Fas­cist news­pa­per Svo­bo­da, of New Jer­sey, was the pay­mas­ter of funds sup­plied in the Unit­ed States. All mem­bers of the orga­ni­za­tion in Ger­many were in the Gestapo or the Reg­u­lar Army from the moment war broke out in Europe. They kept up con­stant con­tact with their Amer­i­can asso­ciates. . . .”

The Ukrain­i­nan fas­cist milieu was exposed in by Alex­ei Pelypenko. A Roman Catholic priest, Pelypenko turned against the Axis after the Hitler-Stal­in pact. No longer hav­ing con­fi­dence in Hitler’s plans to invade the Sovi­et Union and enlist the sup­port of the Ukrain­ian fas­cists as a polit­i­cal and mil­i­tary ally.

Pelypenko and oth­ers sought to ally them­selves with Britain and the U.S. in a Cen­tral Euro­pean alliance that listeners/readers will rec­og­nize as a man­i­fes­ta­tion of the Inter­mar­i­um. ” . . . . the action of the Moscow gov­ern­ment in mov­ing into East Poland and stop­ping the Ger­man advance and the sign­ing of the pact between Hitler and Stal­in caused him and his fel­low Ukraini­ans to lose faith in the Ger­mans’ car­ry­ing out their part of the agree­ment. He and his col­leagues felt that they should throw their lot in with the British and work for the for­ma­tion of a bloc of Slav­ic states, includ­ing Yugoslavia, Czecho­slo­va­kia, Roma­nia, Bul­gar­ia, and ‘Ukrainia.’ These col­leagues knew that it would be nec­es­sary to have British and Amer­i­can sup­port to form the bloc and defend the area from Russ­ian aggres­sion. . . .”

Note, also, that the OUN assas­si­nat­ed the Pol­ish Min­is­ter of the Inte­ri­or. The assas­sin was said by Pelypenko to have been tar­get­ing FDR on behalf of the Axis. ” . . . . he [Pelypenko] revealed that a White Russ­ian who had assas­si­nat­ed the Pol­ish Min­is­ter of the Inte­ri­or in 1934, was being import­ed to assas­si­nate Pres­i­dent Roo­sevelt. . . . ”

We con­clude the pro­gram with dis­cus­sion of the OUN’s mur­der of Pol­ish Min­is­ter of the Inte­ri­or Bro­nis­law Pier­ac­ki. Accord­ing to Pelypenko, the assas­sin was going to be brought into the Unit­ed States to kill FDR. Note that the assas­si­na­tion of Pier­ac­ki was planned at a meet­ing in Berlin.

” . . . . The assas­si­na­tion of Bro­nisław Pier­ac­ki, referred to as the War­saw process in the Ukrain­ian his­to­ri­og­ra­phy, was a well-orches­trat­ed tar­get killing of Poland’s top politi­cian of the inter­war peri­od, Min­is­ter of Inte­ri­or Bro­nisław Pier­ac­ki (1895–1934) by the Orga­ni­za­tion of Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists (OUN) as a retal­i­a­tion for the gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy of Paci­fi­ca­tion which was car­ried out by the police. OUN was formed in Poland as an amal­ga­ma­tion between a num­ber of extreme right-wing orga­ni­za­tions includ­ing the Union of Ukrain­ian Fascists.[2] From the moment of its found­ing in 1929, fas­cism played a cen­tral role in the orga­ni­za­tion, com­bin­ing extreme eth­no-nation­al­ism with ter­ror­ism, cor­po­ratism, and anti-Semitism.[2][3] The cho­sen assas­sin, Hry­horij Maciejko pseu­do­nym ‘Gon­ta’, was a trust­ed mem­ber of OUN.[4] The assas­si­na­tion plan was decid­ed at an OUN meet­ing in Berlin. Maciejko was sup­plied with a makeshift bomb and a 7.65mm cal­iber pis­tol from Bandera.[1] In the morn­ing of 15 June 1934 Maciejko (age 31) appeared at the Fok­sal Street in War­saw in front of a social club fre­quent­ed by Pier­ac­ki. He wait­ed there for sev­er­al hours unde­tect­ed. The min­is­ter arrived in his lim­ou­sine at 3:30 p.m.; how­ev­er, Maciejko’s bomb failed. He pulled the gun and shot the min­is­ter from behind twice in the back of his head.[4] Maciejko escaped suc­cess­ful­ly with the help of OUN emis­saries all the way to Czecho­slo­va­kia and fur­ther to Argenti­na. . . . ”

Ulti­mate­ly, OUN per­son­nel were involved in cov­er­ing-up the assas­si­na­tion of JFK by help­ing to cre­ate the “Sovi­ets did it” diver­sion. This was cov­ered at length in FTR #876.

FTR #1098, FTR #1099, FTR #1100 and FTR #1101– Fascism: 2019 World Tour, Part 8 (The Intermarium Concept), Fascism: 2019 World Tour, Part 9 (Intermarium Redux: “Will the National Socialist Revolution Begin in Ukraine?”), Fascism: 2019 World Tour, Part 10–The Intermarium Continuity, Fascism: 2019 World Tour, Part 11–The Intermarium Continuity, Part 2 (Reflections on The Pivot Point)

In these pro­grams, we con­tin­ue dis­cus­sion of the Azov milieu and its “Inter­mar­i­um” out­reach, in the con­text of Ukraine as a “piv­ot point” cen­tral to con­trol of the World Island or Earth Island. The evo­lu­tion of the Inter­mar­i­um con­cept is fun­da­men­tal to analy­sis of this phe­nom­e­non.

 Ukraine’s sig­nif­i­cance as a glob­al epi­cen­ter of bur­geon­ing fas­cism extends to the region’s online, ide­o­log­i­cal and icon­ic man­i­fes­ta­tion. Two recent Cana­di­an teens–Kam McLeod and Bry­er Schmegelsky–who appar­ent­ly killed three peo­ple in cold blood were influ­enced by Nazi cul­ture and Azov Bat­tal­ion man­i­fes­ta­tion in par­tic­u­lar. ” . . . . A Steam user con­firmed to The Globe and Mail that he talked to Mr. Schmegel­sky reg­u­lar­ly online. He recalled Mr. McLeod join­ing their chats as well. The user, whom The Globe is not iden­ti­fy­ing, pro­vid­ed pho­tos sent by an account believed to be owned by Mr. Schmegel­sky, show­ing him in mil­i­tary fatigues, bran­dish­ing what appears to be an air­soft rifle – which fires plas­tic pel­lets. Anoth­er pho­to shows a swasti­ka arm­band, and yet anoth­er fea­tures Mr. Schmegel­sky in a gas mask. The pho­tos were report­ed­ly sent in the fall of 2018, but the user said he stopped play­ing online games with Mr. Schmegel­sky ear­li­er this year after he con­tin­ued to praise Hitler’s Ger­many. One account con­nect­ed to the teens uses the logo of the Azov Bat­tal­ion, a far-right Ukrain­ian mili­tia that has been accused of har­bour­ing sym­pa­thies to neo-Nazis. . . .”

Dis­cussing Zbig­niew Brzezin­ski’s doc­trine of con­trol­ling Eura­sia by con­trol­ling the “piv­ot point” of Ukraine. Fun­da­men­tal to this analy­sis is the con­cept of the Earth Island or World Island as it is some­times known.

Brzezin­s­ki, in turn, draws on the geopo­lit­i­cal the­o­ries of Sir Hal­ford Mackinder, and, lat­er con­tem­po­rary Inter­mar­i­um adov­cates such as Alexan­dros Petersen.

Stretch­ing from the Straits of Gibral­tar, all across Europe, most of the Mid­dle East, Eura­sia, Rus­sia, Chi­na and India, that stretch of land: com­pris­es most of the world’s land mass; con­tains most of the world’s pop­u­la­tion and most of the world’s nat­ur­al resources (includ­ing oil and nat­ur­al gas.) Geopoliti­cians have long seen con­trol­ling that land mass as the key to world dom­i­na­tion.

Most of the three pro­grams high­light­ing the evo­lu­tion and appli­ca­tion of the Inter­mar­i­um con­cept con­sist of read­ing and analy­sis of a long aca­d­e­m­ic paper by Mar­lene Laru­elle and Ellen Rivera. Of para­mount sig­nif­i­cance in this dis­cus­sion is the piv­otal role of Ukrain­ian fas­cist orga­ni­za­tions in the Inter­mar­i­um and close­ly con­nect­ed Promethean net­works, from the post World War I peri­od, through the time between the World Wars, through the Cold War and up to and includ­ing the Maid­an coup.

Mil­i­tary, eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal net­work­ing has employed the Inter­mar­i­um idea, with what the paper terms the “ide­o­log­i­cal under­pin­nings” stem­ming from the evo­lu­tion of the Ukrain­ian fas­cist milieu in the twen­ti­eth and twen­ty-first cen­turies. Some of the most impor­tant U.S. think tanks and asso­ci­at­ed mil­i­tary indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions embody this con­ti­nu­ity: ” . . . . The con­ti­nu­ity of insti­tu­tion­al and indi­vid­ual tra­jec­to­ries from Sec­ond World War col­lab­o­ra­tionists to Cold War-era anti-com­mu­nist orga­ni­za­tions to con­tem­po­rary con­ser­v­a­tive U.S. think tanks is sig­nif­i­cant for the ide­o­log­i­cal under­pin­nings of today’s Inter­mar­i­um revival. . . .”

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Review of the incor­po­ra­tion of the Gehlen “Org” into the U.S. and West­ern intel­li­gence appa­ra­tus; the key pres­ence of the OUN/B and oth­er East­ern Euro­pean fas­cist groups into the Gehlen out­fit; approval giv­en to Gehlen for his deal with the Amer­i­cans by Admi­ral Doenitz (who suc­ceed­ed Hitler) and Gen­er­al Franz Halder (Gehlen’s “for­mer” chief of staff); the incor­po­ra­tion of the OUN/B/Gehlen/ABN milieu into the Repub­li­can Par­ty via the Cru­sade For Free­dom; the key roles in the CFF played by Richard Nixon, Ronald Rea­gan, William Casey and George H.W. Bush; Allen Dulles and William Dono­van’s wartime col­lu­sion with Nazi Ger­many to craft the Chris­t­ian West enti­ty; the for­ma­tion of the Black Eagle Trust by John J. McCloy, Robert Lovett and Robert B. Ander­son (this assured the con­ti­nu­ity of both Japan­ese fas­cism and Ger­man Nazism in the post­war peri­od).

FTR #1097 Fascism: 2019 World Tour, Part 7 (Azov on Our Mind, Part 3)

This pro­gram con­tin­ues analy­sis of the Azov milieu’s net­work­ing with fas­cist indid­vid­u­als and orga­ni­za­tions at an indi­vid­ual lev­el, at an orga­ni­za­tion­al lev­el and online.

Embrac­ing “lone wolf” fas­cists around the world, as well as net­work­ing with fas­cist orga­ni­za­tions and com­bat­ants who have joined the war in Ukraine’s East­ern provinces, Azov is reca­pit­u­lat­ing the “Inter­mar­i­um” con­cept, mint­ed by Pol­ish head of state Josef Pil­sud­s­ki in the peri­od between the World Wars. Work­ing with Croa­t­ians aligned with the “Neo-Ustachi’ milieu we have cov­ered in many past pro­grams, Azov is seek­ing to devel­op a nascent East­ern and Cen­tral Euro­pean alliance of fas­cist and reac­tionary ele­ments.

Of par­tic­u­lar inter­est is the sig­nif­i­cance of the Ukrain­ian and Croa­t­ian fas­cist alliance, which will be explored at greater length in future pro­grams.

Oth­er pro­grams high­light­ing the return of the Ustachi to pow­er in the “new” Croa­t­ia include: FTR #‘s 49, 154, 766, 901.

Next, we note that The FBI arrest­ed a US Army sol­dier for plan­ning domes­tic ter­ror attacks. Jar­rett William Smith–charged with one count of dis­trib­ut­ing infor­ma­tion relat­ed to explo­sives and weapons of mass destruc­tion.

Smith has been in con­tact with the Azov Bat­tal­ion. As ear­ly as 2016, he talked about trav­el­ing to Ukraine to join Azov. He joined the US mil­i­tary instead in June of 2017. After join­ing the mil­i­tary, Smith used Face­book to con­nect with anoth­er Amer­i­can who had trav­eled to Ukraine in 2017 to 2019 to fight with a group sim­i­lar to Azov, which appears to be Pravy Sek­tor. This Amer­i­can report­ed­ly act­ed as Smith’s men­tor.

Using the encrypt­ed mes­sag­ing app Telegram, Smith dis­cussed with an under­cov­er FBI agent his plans for a car bomb attack against an unnamed major cable news network’s head­quar­ters and dis­trib­uted bomb-mak­ing mate­ri­als. He also talked about attacks against mem­bers of antifa and inter­est­ed in find­ing like-mind­ed indi­vid­u­als to help him.

Look­ing ahead to oth­er arti­cles below, we note that: “. . . . Ear­li­er this month, for­mer FBI agent Ali Soufan, who runs the glob­al secu­ri­ty firm the Soufan Cen­ter, tes­ti­fied that 17,000 for­eign­ers, includ­ing from the U.S. have trav­eled to Ukraine in recent years to gain para­mil­i­tary skills there. They fought along­side far-right groups like Azov and were return­ing home with those new skills. . . .”

Updat­ing the sto­ry of Jar­rett William Smith, we note:

1.–Smith’s appar­ent men­tor is Craig Lang, anoth­er US Army vet.
2.–Craig Lang joined Right Sec­tor, and then the Geor­gian Nation­al Legion in the Ukrain­ian civ­il war.
3.–Lang, along with fel­low Army vet Alex Zwiefel­hofer, is accused of rob­bing and killing the cou­ple in an effort to get mon­ey to trav­el to Venezuela to “par­tic­i­pate in an armed con­flict against the Boli­var­i­an Repub­lic of Venezuela.”
4.–After leav­ing Right Sec­tor he joined the Geor­gian Nation­al Legion, which is also fight­ing in Ukraine.
5.–In pre­vi­ous pro­grams, we have high­light­ed the appar­ent role of Geor­gian snipers in the Maid­an provo­ca­tion, the tem­po­rary role of for­mer Geor­gian pres­i­dent Saakashvili as gov­er­nor of Odessa, as well as UNA-UNSO com­bat activ­i­ty in Geor­gia’s war with Rus­sia. (UNA-UNSO is a branch of the UNA.)
6.–Zwiefelhofer also fought with Right Sec­tor.
7.–The arti­cle below states that Lang and Smith were in con­tact in 2016, which is a year before Smith joined the US Army.
8.–The pre­vi­ous Vice arti­cle stat­ed that the FBI said Smith got into con­tact with Lang after he joined the US Army in June of 2017.
9.–According to a June 23, 2016, con­ver­sa­tion between Smith and Lang, Smith wrote, “No for­mer mil­i­tary expe­ri­ence, but if I can­not find a slot in Ukraine by Octo­ber I’ll be going into the Army … To fight is what I want to do. I’m will­ing to lis­ten, learn, and train. But to work on firearms is fine by me too.”
10.–Lang respond­ed, “Alright, I’ll for­ward you over to the guy that screens peo­ple he’ll most like­ly add you soon[ … ] Also as a pre-warn­ing if you come to this unit and the gov­ern­ment comes to shut down the unit you will be asked to fight. You may also be asked to kill cer­tain peo­ple who become on the bad graces of cer­tain groups.”
11.–It appears that Lang was prep­ping Smith both to fight against the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment, if nec­es­sary and to be pre­pared to com­mit assas­si­na­tions.
12.–Given every­thing we know about this case at this point, it appears that Right Sec­tor was send­ing a poten­tial recruit into the US Army to learn the kinds of skills that would be use­ful for neo-Nazi ter­ror cam­paigns and that recruit was arrest­ed for dis­sem­i­nat­ing those skills and plan­ning exact­ly that kind of ter­ror cam­paign.

Against the back­ground of 17,000 for­eign fight­ers gain­ing para­mil­i­tary expe­ri­ence in Ukraine, a Vice piece from July notes that Ukraine real­ly is becom­ing a nexus for the inter­na­tion­al far right. That is pre­cise­ly what the Azov Bat­tal­ion has been work­ing on doing.

In that con­text we note that:

1.–Foreign fight­ers have tak­en the com­bat skills honed in Ukraine’s war to oth­er Euro­pean nations. ” . . . . Researchers warn that Ukraine is rad­i­cal­iz­ing far-right for­eign fight­ers in the same way Syr­ia has with jihadis — albeit on a small­er scale — cre­at­ing a glob­al net­work of com­bat-test­ed extrem­ists who pose a secu­ri­ty threat that is now begin­ning to man­i­fest itself. . . .”
2.– ” . . . . [Kacper] Rekawek said Ukraine ful­filled the need, expressed by many ide­o­logues on the extreme right, for a ‘safe space’ for Nazis out­side the West, where they could net­work and orga­nize beyond the pry­ing eyes of domes­tic secu­ri­ty ser­vices. . . .”
3.–Russian fas­cists have fought on both sides of the conflict–a har­bin­ger of pos­si­ble fas­cist sub­ver­sion of Putin should they gain the upper hand in Rus­sia after their return.
4.–” . . . . Swedish neo-Nazis who joined on the Ukrain­ian side saw it as essen­tial­ly ‘the con­tin­u­a­tion of the Sec­ond World War on the east­ern front. You are white Europe and you’re fight­ing Asia, in the form of Rus­sia.’ . . . .”
5.–” . . . . Joachim Furholm, a Nor­we­gian neo-Nazi and recruiter for Azov said their efforts would also help white nation­al­ist forces in the one coun­try where he believed they had the best shot of com­ing to pow­er. . . .‘It’s like a Petri dish for fas­cism… and they do have seri­ous inten­tions of help­ing the rest of Europe in retak­ing our right­ful lands,’ he said. . . .”

We con­clude by not­ing that House Democ­rats are lob­by­ing that the Azov Bat­tal­ion be labeled a For­eign Ter­rotr Orga­ni­za­a­tion. This would facil­i­tate attempts to neu­tral­ize com­bat­ants who had served with Azov upon their return to this coun­try.

Good luck with that!

FTR #1096 Fascism: 2019 World Tour, Part 6 (Azov on Our Mind, Part 2)

We have cov­ered the ori­gin, activ­i­ties and expan­sion of the Ukrain­ian Nazi Azov Bat­tal­ion in numer­ous pro­grams. Part of the Ukrainain armed forces, this Nazi unit:

1.–Has spawned a civ­il mili­tia which achieved police pow­ers in many Ukrain­ian cities. “. . . . But Ukraine observers and rights groups are sound­ing the alarm, because this was not a typ­i­cal com­mence­ment, and the men are not police offi­cers. They are far-right ultra­na­tion­al­ists from the Azov move­ment, a con­tro­ver­sial group with a mil­i­tary wing that has open­ly accept­ed self-avowed neo-Nazis, and a civ­il and polit­i­cal fac­tion that has demon­strat­ed intol­er­ance toward minor­i­ty groups. . . .”
2.–Has as its spokesman Roman Zvarych. In the 1980’s, Zvarych was the per­son­al sec­re­tary to Jaroslav Stet­zko, the wartime head of the Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tionist gov­ern­ment in Ukraine. Stet­zko imple­ment­ed Nazi eth­nic cleans­ing in Ukraine dur­ing World War II.
3.–Wields influ­ence with in the Min­istry of the Inte­ri­or through Vadim Troy­an, the for­mer deputy com­man­der of Azov who is now deputy min­is­ter of the inte­ri­or. ” . . . . The deputy min­is­ter of the Interior—which con­trols the Nation­al Police—is Vadim Troy­an, a vet­er­an of Azov and Patri­ot of Ukraine. . . .  Today, he’s deputy of the depart­ment run­ning US-trained law enforce­ment in the entire nation. Ear­li­er this month, RFE report­ed on Nation­al Police lead­er­ship admir­ing Stepan Bandera—a Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tor and Fas­cist whose troops par­tic­i­pat­ed in the Holocaust—on social media. The fact that Ukraine’s police is pep­pered with far-right sup­port­ers explains why neo-Nazis oper­ate with impuni­ty on the streets. . . .”
4.–Gets arms and train­ing from the U.S., despite offi­cial restric­tions on such activ­i­ty. ” . . . . The research group Belling­cat proved that Azov had already received access to Amer­i­can grenade launch­ers, while a Dai­ly Beast inves­ti­ga­tion showed that US train­ers are unable to pre­vent aid from reach­ing white suprema­cists. And Azov itself had proud­ly post­ed a video of the unit wel­com­ing NATO rep­re­sen­ta­tives. . . .”
5.–Is ful­fill­ing their strat­e­gy of net­work­ing with Nazi and fas­cist ele­ments abroad, includ­ing the U.S. ” . . . . FBI Spe­cial Agent Scott Bier­wirth, in the crim­i­nal com­plaint unsealed Wednes­day, not­ed that Right Brand Clothing’s Insta­gram page con­tained a pho­to of RAM mem­bers meet­ing with Ole­na Semenya­ka, a lead­ing fig­ure with­in the fas­cist, neo-Nazi scene in East­ern Europe. In Ukraine, Semenya­ka is an impor­tant voice with­in the Mil­i­tant Zone and Nation­al Corps orga­ni­za­tions and the Pan-Euro­pean Recon­quista move­ment, all of which have ties to the noto­ri­ous Azov Bat­tal­ion. Bier­wirth said Azov Bat­tal­ion, now a piece of the Ukrain­ian Nation­al Guard, is known for neo-Nazi sym­bol­ism and ide­ol­o­gy and has par­tic­i­pat­ed in train­ing and rad­i­cal­iz­ing U.S.-based white suprema­cist orga­ni­za­tions. . . . .”
6.–Is net­work­ing with mem­bers of a group called RAM, some of whom were arrest­ed by the FBI upon their return from Europe. vio­lence.
7.–Is uti­liz­ing Ukraine’s visa-free sta­tus with the EU to net­work with oth­er Euro­pean fas­cist groups. ” . . . . ‘Their Eng­lish has got­ten bet­ter,’ Hryt­senko said, refer­ring to Azov mem­bers behind the group’s West­ern out­reach. . . . . Anoth­er thing that has helped, Hryt­senko not­ed, is that Ukraine’s break from Rus­sia and move toward the Euro­pean Union has allowed Ukraini­ans visa-free trav­el, mak­ing Azov’s out­reach eas­i­er logis­ti­cal­ly. . . . .”
8.–Is look­ing to con­nect with more “respectable” Euro­pean right-wing groups than they have in the past, this as a pos­si­ble vehi­cle for Ukraine’s entry into the EU. ” . . . . Skillt, the Swedish nation­al who fought as a sniper in the Azov Bat­tal­ion, is one of them [crit­ics]. ‘I don’t mind [Azov] reach­ing out, but the ones they reach out to… Jesus,’ he told RFE/RL, in an allu­sion to RAM. He added that he had recent­ly dis­tanced him­self from Azov because of that asso­ci­a­tion and oth­ers with far-right groups in Europe. Skillt, who runs a pri­vate intel­li­gence agency in Kyiv and said his clients ‘real­ly don’t enjoy bad com­pa­ny,’ argued that the group has made a mis­take by not reach­ing out more to right-wing con­ser­v­a­tives who could help with ‘influ­en­tial con­tacts in Europe [so] you don’t get brand­ed a neo-Nazi.’ But Semenya­ka described praise of Azov from for­eign ultra­na­tion­al­ist groups who are increas­ing­ly wel­com­ing it as evi­dence that the orga­ni­za­tion is tak­ing the right path. And she said it isn’t about to let up. Next, she said, Azov hopes to win over larg­er, more main­stream far-right and pop­ulist West­ern polit­i­cal forces who ‘can be our poten­tial sym­pa­thiz­ers.’ ‘If crises like Brex­it and the refugee prob­lem con­tin­ue, in this case, part­ner­ships with nation­al­ist groups in Europe can be a kind of plat­form for our entry into the Euro­pean Union.’ . . . ”
9.–Was award­ed the job of elec­tion mon­i­tor­ing by the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment in their recent elec­tions. ” . . . . They are the ultra­na­tion­al­ist Nation­al Mili­tia, street vig­i­lantes with roots in the bat­tle-test­ed Azov Bat­tal­ion that emerged to defend Ukraine against Rus­sia-backed sep­a­ratists but was also accused of pos­si­ble war crimes and neo-Nazi sym­pa­thies. Yet despite the con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing it, the Nation­al Mili­tia was grant­ed per­mis­sion by the Cen­tral Elec­tion Com­mis­sion to offi­cial­ly mon­i­tor Ukraine’s pres­i­den­tial elec­tion on March 31. . . .”

 In this pro­gram, we note the oper­a­tions and posi­tion­ing of the Azov milieu both in Ukraine and glob­al­ly.

Azov is among the fas­cist ele­ments oppos­ing Ukrain­ian pres­i­dent Volodomyr Zelen­sky’s efforts at bro­ker­ing a piece with sep­a­ratists in the eth­ni­cal­ly Russ­ian East­ern provinces of Ukraine. Amidst angry street demon­stra­tions against the peace plan with the sep­a­ratists, Zelen­sky met with some of the fas­cist groups, who have threat­ened to over­throw his gov­ern­ment if he goes for­ward with the peace plan. The fas­cists enjoy the sup­port of for­mer pres­i­dent Petro Poroshenko.

Ukrain­ian Prime Min­is­ter Hon­charuk and Min­is­ter of Vet­er­ans Affairs Oksana Kolia­ga attend­ed an event orga­nized by ele­ments asso­ci­at­ed with C14 (the street mili­tia of Svo­bo­da) and Azov. Fea­tur­ing Sokyra Pekurna–a Nazi met­al band–the ral­ly rep­re­sent­ed a fur­ther main­stream­ing of the OUN/B suc­ces­sor orga­ni­za­tions in Ukraine.

Fur­ther com­pli­cat­ing the issue is the fact that the Azov Bat­tal­ion has tak­en up posi­tions in the town of Zolo­toe, at the front of the ongo­ing war. They have said that they will not with­draw, a threat which, if borne out, will tor­pe­do the peace process.

Con­clud­ing the broad­cast, we “dol­ly [the cam­era] out” and begin an in-depth exam­i­na­tion of the Azov inter­na­tion­al milieu. Embrac­ing “lone wolf” fas­cists around the world, as well as net­work­ing with fas­cist orga­ni­za­tions and com­bat­ants who have joined the war in Ukraine’s East­ern provinces, Azov is reca­pit­u­lat­ing the “Inter­mar­i­um” con­cept, mint­ed by Pol­ish head of state Josef Pil­sud­s­ki in the peri­od between the World Wars. Work­ing with Croa­t­ians aligned with the “Neo-Ustachi’ milieu we have cov­ered in many past pro­grams, Azov is seek­ing to devel­op a nascent East­ern and Cen­tral Euro­pean alliance of fas­cist and reac­tionary ele­ments.

Of par­tic­u­lar inter­est is the sig­nif­i­cance of the Ukrain­ian and Croa­t­ian fas­cist alliance, which will be explored at greater length in future pro­grams.

Oth­er pro­grams high­light­ing the return of the Ustachi to pow­er in the “new” Croa­t­ia include: FTR #‘s 49, 154, 766, 901.

FTR #1095 The Destabilization of China, Part 6: Asian Deep Politics

In this pro­gram we present some of the deep polit­i­cal Asian his­to­ry that bears on Chi­nese his­to­ry and pol­i­tics. In par­tic­u­lar, the harm done to Chi­na by Gen­er­alis­si­mo Chi­ang Kai-shek’s drug-deal­ing Kuom­intang gov­ern­ment, its col­lab­o­ra­tion with the bru­tal Japan­ese occu­piers of Manchuria, as well as the Unit­ed States is impor­tant in under­stand­ing the Chi­nese polit­i­cal and his­tor­i­cal out­look.

In turn, the deep eco­nom­ic, polit­i­cal and mil­i­tary rela­tion­ship between the Japan­ese fas­cists and the U.S. is to be fac­tored in to any under­stand­ing of how the Chi­nese view this coun­try and the West.

In that con­text, we do NOT think Chi­na’s present gov­ern­ment will go down eas­i­ly in the face of an obvi­ous desta­bi­liza­tion effort by the U.S. and the West.

In addi­tion to the Euro­pean col­o­niza­tion of Chi­na and Britain’s vio­lent impo­si­tion of the opi­um drug trade through the Opi­um Wars, Chi­na’s polit­i­cal and his­tor­i­cal mem­o­ry is vivid­ly ani­mat­ed by the drug-financed fas­cist dic­ta­tor­ship of Nation­al­ist Chi­nese Gen­er­alis­si­mo Chi­ang Kai-shek. Dubbed “the Peanut” by Gen­er­al Joseph Stil­well dur­ing World War II, Chi­ang was com­pared by Stil­well (the chief Amer­i­can mil­i­tary advis­er and liai­son to the Kuom­intang forces dur­ing World War II) to Mus­soli­ni.

Chi­ang’s entire gov­ern­ment and bru­tal nation­al secu­ri­ty appa­ra­tus rest­ed on the foun­da­tion of the nar­cotics traf­fic, as was well known by the US Com­mis­sion­er Bureau of Nar­cotics, Har­ry Anslinger.

Key points of dis­cus­sion and analy­sis of this rela­tion­ship include: The deci­sive role of the Green Gang of Shang­hai crime lord Du (some­times ‘Tu”) Yue-sheng in both financ­ing Chi­ang’s forces and sup­ply­ing mus­cle and intel­li­gence to Tai Li, Chi­ang’s intel­li­gence chief and inte­ri­or min­is­ter, nick­named “The Himm­ler of Chi­na;” the impor­tant role of Chi­ang’s drug traf­fic in sup­ply­ing Amer­i­can t’ongs who, in turned, sup­plied the Mafia with their nar­cotics; the role of Chi­ang’s finance min­is­ter as Du Yue-sheng’s pro­tec­tor; the col­lab­o­ra­tion of Du and Chaing Kai-shek’s Kuom­intang appa­ra­tus with the Japan­ese occu­pa­tion gov­ern­ment of Manchuria in the nar­cotics traf­fic; the role of Chaing’s head of Nar­cotics Con­trol in sup­ply­ing Chi­nese offi­cials with drugs; the role of the Super­in­ten­dent of Mar­itime Cus­toms in Shang­hai in super­vis­ing the traf­fick­ing of drugs to the U.S.; Du Yueh-sheng’s flight to Hong Kong after the Japan­ese occu­pa­tion of Shang­hai; Du’s col­lab­o­ra­tion with Hong Kong-based British financiers in sell­ing drugs to the Chi­nese pop­u­la­tion; the delib­er­ate decep­tion on the part of Anslinger and king­pins in the US Chi­na Lob­by, who know­ing­ly mis­led the Amer­i­can pub­lic by blam­ing the U.S. drug traf­fic on the Com­mu­nist Chi­nese; the nar­cotics kick­backs to U.S. Chi­na Lob­by fig­ures by Chi­ang’s dope traf­fick­ing infra­struc­ture; the over­lap of the Kuom­intang dope trade with arms sales by Chi­na Lob­by lumi­nar­ies; the sup­port of the CIA for Chi­ang’s nar­cotics traf­fic; the destruc­tion of the career of For­eign Ser­vice offi­cer John Ser­vice, who not­ed that “the Nation­al­ists were total­ly depen­dent on opi­um and ‘inca­pable of solv­ing Chi­na’s prob­lems;’ ” the cen­tral role of Tai Li’s agents in the U.S. in fram­ing John Ser­vice.

Sup­ple­men­tal infor­ma­tion about these top­ics is con­tained in AFA #11 and AFA #24.

It is impos­si­ble to under­stand World War II and the glob­al and eco­nom­ic polit­i­cal land­scape that emerged from it with­out digest­ing the vital­ly impor­tant book Gold War­riors by Ster­ling and Peg­gy Sea­grave.

Cov­er­ing the Japan­ese equiv­a­lent of the Bor­mann flight cap­i­tal net­work, the vol­ume is a hero­ic, mas­ter­ful analy­sis and pen­e­tra­tion of the Asian wing of the car­tel sys­tem that spawned fas­cism, as well as the real­i­ties of the post-World War II eco­nom­ic land­scape. (FTR #‘s 427, 428, 446, 451, 501, 509, 688, 689 deal with the sub­ject of the Gold­en Lily pro­gram suc­cess­ful­ly imple­ment­ed by the Japan­ese to loot Asia.)

An inci­sive, elo­quent review and encap­su­la­tion of the book is pro­vid­ed by Doug Valen­tine, pro­vid­ing fur­ther insight into the polit­i­cal and his­tor­i­cal mem­o­ry of the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment and result­ing stance toward any pres­sure to be mount­ed against that nation by the U.S. and the West.

Of par­tic­u­lar note is the detailed analy­sis of the Japan­ese devel­op­ment of occu­pied Manchuria as an epi­cen­ter of the opi­um traf­fic with which to enrich their oper­a­tions and to help sub­ju­gate the Chi­nese. Chi­nese sen­si­tiv­i­ty to the Japan­ese, Kuom­intang, Amer­i­can and British roles in using drugs to enslave the Chi­nese peo­ple is very much in the fore­front of Japan­ese polit­i­cal con­scious­ness.

” . . . . .They [the Japan­ese] build roads and cre­ate indus­tries and, more impor­tant­ly, they work with cor­rupt war­lords and Chi­nese gang­sters asso­ci­at­ed with Chi­ang Kai-shek’s Kuom­intang Par­ty to trans­form Manchuria into a vast pop­py field. By 1937 the Japan­ese and their gang­ster and Kuom­intang asso­ciates are respon­si­ble for 90% of the world’s illic­it nar­cotics. They turn Manchu emper­or Pu Yi into an addict, and open thou­sands of opi­um dens as a way of sup­press­ing the Chi­nese. . . .”

Far from being a periph­er­al polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic con­sid­er­a­tion; the Gold­en Lily plun­der is fun­da­men­tal to post­war West­ern real­i­ty.

” . . . . The Sea­graves con­clude their excit­ing and excel­lent book by tak­ing us down the Mon­ey Trail, and explain­ing, in layman’s terms, how the Gold War­riors have been able to cov­er their tracks. Emper­or Hiro­hi­to, for exam­ple, worked direct­ly with Pope Pius XII to laun­der mon­ey through the Vat­i­can bank. In anoth­er instance, Japan’s Min­istry of Finance pro­duced gold cer­tifi­cates that were slight­ly dif­fer­ent than ordi­nary Japan­ese bonds. The Sea­graves inter­view per­sons defraud­ed in this scam, and oth­er scams involv­ing the Union Bank of Switzer­land and Citibank. . . . ”

” . . . . the banks that main­tain the US government’s stolen gold are above the law, and if they stonewall long enough, any­one try­ing to sue them will even­tu­al­ly fade away. The Sea­graves asked the Trea­sury Depart­ment, Defense Depart­ment, and the CIA for records on Yamashita’s gold in 1987, but were told the records were exempt from release. Dur­ing the 1990s, the records mys­te­ri­ous­ly went miss­ing. Oth­er records were destroyed in what the Sea­graves caus­ti­cal­ly call ‘his­to­ry laun­der­ing.’ . . . . .”

Key Points of Analy­sis and Dis­cus­sion Include: Dis­cus­sion of the war crimes com­mit­ted by the Japan­ese against the Chi­nese; the roles of the Japan­ese army, the Japan­ese roy­al fam­i­ly and yakuza gang­ster Kodama Yoshio (lat­er the CIA’s top con­tact in Japan and a key offi­cial with the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church) in extract­ing the liq­uid wealth of Chi­na; the restora­tion of the Japan­ese fas­cists in the “new,” post­war Japan­ese gov­ern­ment by Dou­glas MacArthur’s occu­pa­tion forces; the fusion of the Gold­en Lily loot with Nazi World War II plun­der to form the Black Eagle Trust; the use of the Gold­en Lily plun­der to finance funds to rein­force the renascent fas­cists in Japan, to finance U.S. covert oper­a­tions in the post­war peri­od and to sup­press polit­i­cal dis­si­dence in Japan; the use of the M‑Fund to finance the Japan­ese Lib­er­al Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty and Richard Nixon’s trans­fer of con­trol of that fund to the Japan­ese gov­ern­ment in exchange for clan­des­tine finan­cial help in his 1960 elec­tion cam­paign; the use of Gold­en Lily loot by the U.S. to pur­chase the sup­port of Pacif­ic ally nations for the Viet­nam War; the use of Gold­en Lily trea­sure by Philip­pine dic­ta­tor Fer­di­nand Mar­cos; the sup­pres­sion and crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion of indi­vid­u­als attempt­ing to pen­e­trate the elite, selec­tive use of Gold­en Lily gold by the world’s large banks.

We con­clude by high­light­ing Fred J. Cook’s ana­lyt­i­cal account of the McCarthy peri­od, The Night­mare Decade. One of the focal points of Cook’s book is McCarthy’s theme that State Depart­ment [Com­mu­nist] treach­ery had “lost” Chi­na to Mao and his forces.

Exploit­ing the meme that “pinko” State Depart­ment offi­cials were respon­si­ble for Mao’s ascen­dance, McCarthy and his team suc­cess­ful­ly purged the State Depart­ment of offi­cials whose out­look on Chi­ang Kai-shek was real­is­tic.

The fate of John Service–described in the excerpt of The CIA as Orga­nized Crime–illus­trates this kind of activ­i­ty.

In FTR #s 932 and 933 (among oth­er pro­grams), we not­ed the piv­otal influ­ence of Joe McCarthy’s right-hand man Roy Cohn on the pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment of Don­ald Trump. We won­der what influ­ence Cohn and the McCarthy lega­cy may have had on Trump’s pol­i­cy toward Chi­na.

Aside from the airy pre­sump­tion that Chi­na was “ours” to “lose,” McCarthy’s the­sis ignored the effects of U.S. pol­i­cy in that coun­try before, dur­ing and after, World War II. (This trans­gres­sion is, of course, sup­ple­men­tal to Tail­gun­ner Joe’s fab­ri­ca­tion of evi­dence against those he tar­get­ed.)

In addi­tion to sup­port for Chi­ang Kai-Shek, whom Gen­er­al Joseph Stil­well com­pared to Mus­soli­ni, U.S. pol­i­cy of using scores of thou­sands of Japan­ese sol­diers as anti-Com­mu­nist com­bat­ants was loath­some to the Chi­nese pop­u­la­tion, who had felt the full mea­sure of Japan­ese atroc­i­ty dur­ing years of war­fare.

Leaf­ing through Night­mare Decade for the first time in years, we came across a pas­sage read into the record in AFA #11.

More than 16 months after V‑J Day (the offi­cial con­clu­sion of the hos­til­i­ties of World War II in Asia) the U.S. was coun­te­nanc­ing the use of 80,000 Japan­ese troops (rough­ly eight divi­sions) as anti-Com­mu­nist com­bat­ants in east­ern and north­west­ern Manchuria alone!

Hav­ing been raised on Vic­to­ry at Sea and sim­i­lar fare, this pas­sage is yet anoth­er reminder that–70 + years or so after V‑J Day–“we’re not in Kansas any more, Toto.”

In ret­ro­spect, we nev­er were.

For more on the sub­ject of the Japan­ese fas­cism, see–among oth­er pro­grams–FTR #‘s 905, 969, 970.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Brief dis­cus­sion and overview of an arti­cle read in our pre­vi­ous pro­gram con­cern­ing HSBC and the bank’s his­tor­i­cal links to laun­der­ing nar­cotics mon­ey and jihadist financ­ing; the use of the racist term “shi­na” by the Hong Kong protesters–a term that had its gen­e­sis in the Sino-Japan­ese war.