Dave Emory’s entire life­time of work is avail­able on a flash dri­ve that can be obtained HERE. The new dri­ve is a 32-giga­byte dri­ve that is cur­rent as of the pro­grams and arti­cles post­ed by the fall of 2017. The new dri­ve (avail­able for a tax-deductible con­tri­bu­tion of $65.00 or more.)

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

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

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

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

Please con­sid­er sup­port­ing THE WORK DAVE EMORY DOES.

 This broad­cast was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment.

Intro­duc­tion: As indi­cat­ed by the title, this pro­gram both intro­duces and updates a num­ber of paths of inquiry:

1. The State Depart­men­t’s “Min­istry of Truth” is going to be head­ed by a Fox News and CIA vet­er­an, Lea Gabrielle. Designed to neu­tral­ize what the Pow­ers That Be deem to be for­eign pro­pa­gan­da, the bland­ly-named Glob­al Engage­ment Cen­ter has been exem­pli­fied by its attempts to por­tray as “Russ­ian dis­in­for­ma­tion” the ver­i­fi­ably Nazi char­ac­ter and polit­i­cal her­itage of the OUN/B suc­ces­sor orga­ni­za­tions wield­ing the police, edu­ca­tion­al and nation­al secu­ri­ty reins in Ukraine. ” . . . . Gabrielle, who begins her job on Feb. 11, was described to reporters by deputy spokesman Robert Pal­ladi­no on Thurs­day as ‘a for­mer CIA-trained human intel­li­gence oper­a­tions offi­cer, defense for­eign liai­son offi­cer, Unit­ed States Navy pro­gram direc­tor, Navy F/A‑18C fight­er pilot, and nation­al tele­vi­sion news cor­re­spon­dent and anchor at two dif­fer­ent net­works. . . .”
2. Fox News reject­ed a nation­al buy for an ad that was to run dur­ing Sean Hannity’s show. The ad pro­motes the Oscar-nom­i­nat­ed doc­u­men­tary A Night at the Gar­den, about a 1939 Nazi ral­ly in New York City. The ad includes the warn­ing “It Can Hap­pen Here” about the poten­tial dan­gers of Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s brand of pop­ulism. Han­ni­ty might be the most ‘Alt-Right’ of all the Fox News per­son­al­i­ties (although he has com­pe­ti­tion). The ad nev­er got to run, and was pre­clud­ed by break­ing news cov­er­age of Trump’s ral­ly in Texas–where Trump so riled up the audi­ence against ‘the media’ that a BBC cam­era­man was vio­lent­ly attacked by some­one wear­ing a MAGA hat.
3. The El Paso Trump ral­ly man­i­fest­ed a con­tem­po­rary iter­a­tion of A Night at the Gar­den. ” . . . . Trump’s ral­ly in El Paso was in sup­port of his bor­der wall. In his State of the Union address last week he claimed, false­ly, that bor­der fenc­ing that was built south of the city in 2010 trans­formed El Paso from a dan­ger­ous place into a safe one. Its Repub­li­can may­or lashed out at the pres­i­dent last week for his false­hood. El Paso’s declin­ing crime rate start­ed well before the bor­der fenc­ing was built. But Trump repeat­ed the lie Mon­day night. And for his audi­ence, the lie was now the truth. ‘Once they built that wall, it was amaz­ing how sta­tis­ti­cal­ly the vio­lence start­ed going down,’ 39-year-old El Paso res­i­dent Michael Blan­co, who owns an account­ing busi­ness, told Huff­Post out­side the col­i­se­um. ‘I’m a com­plete wit­ness of it. Seen it grow­ing up.’ Hen­ri Rafael, a 58-year-old El Pasoan wear­ing a black Trump 2020 hat, said that even though the may­or cor­rect­ed Trump, ‘I know for a fact that the crime was high back in the ’70s and ’80s, and when they built those walls, [crime] has dropped.’ In fact, vio­lent crime increased in El Paso in the two years after the wall was built, accord­ing to a study from the El Paso Times. Trump peri­od­i­cal­ly paused his speech Mon­day for chants of ‘Build the wall!’ and ‘USA!’ When he talked of the ‘fake news’ media, the crowd jeered. At one point, a par­tic­u­lar­ly inspired Trump sup­port­er attacked a BBC jour­nal­ist . . . .”
4. Next, we have an update on Data Pro­pria, the Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca off­shoot cre­at­ed by Brad Parscale’s com­pa­ny Cloud Com­merce. The GOP hired the ser­vices of Data Pro­pria for the 2018 mid-terms. Data Pro­pria employs four ex-Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca employ­ees, includ­ing Cam­bridge Analytica’s chief data sci­en­tist. Cam­bridge Analytica’s for­mer head of prod­uct, Matt Oczkows­ki, leads Data Propia. Oczkows­ki led the Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca team that worked for Trump’s 2016 cam­paign, and was report­ed­ly over­heard brag­ging to a prospec­tive client about how he’s already work­ing on Trump’s 2020 cam­paign (which he sub­se­quent­ly denied). Brad Parscale ran the Trump 2016 campaign’s exten­sive dig­i­tal oper­a­tions that includ­ed exten­sive micro-tar­get­ing of indi­vid­u­als out­side of the Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca efforts.
5. Matt Oczkows­ki is now the run­ning Parscale Dig­i­tal in addi­tion to Data Pro­pria. Parscale Dig­i­tal is the rebrand­ed ver­sion of Parscale’s old mar­ket­ing com­pa­ny. As the fol­low­ing arti­cle notes, Parscale sold his shares in Parscale Dig­i­tal in August 2017, at the same time he pur­chased $9 mil­lion in stock for Cloud Com­merce and took a seat on its board. August of 2017 is also the same month Parscale Dig­i­tal was sold to Cloud Com­merce. Thus, Parscale is a co-own­er of Cloud Com­merce which the own­er of Parscale Dig­i­tal. Now Matt Oczkows­ki, the for­mer head of prod­uct for Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca, is run­ning Parscale Dig­i­tal.
6. After a mem­ber of an “antifa” group was stabbed at a white suprema­cist ral­ly, the FBI inves­ti­gat­ed the pro­test­ers, rather than the KKK. ” . . . . Fed­er­al author­i­ties ran a sur­veil­lance oper­a­tion on By Any Means Nec­es­sary (Bamn), spy­ing on the left­ist group’s move­ments in an inquiry that came after one of Bamn’s mem­bers was stabbed at the white suprema­cist ral­ly, accord­ing to doc­u­ments obtained by the Guardian. The FBI’s Bamn files reveal: * The FBI inves­ti­gat­ed Bamn for poten­tial ‘con­spir­a­cy’ against the ‘rights’ of the ‘Ku Klux Klan’ and white suprema­cists. * The FBI con­sid­ered the KKK as vic­tims and the left­ist pro­test­ers as poten­tial ter­ror threats, and down­played the threats of the Klan, writ­ing: ‘The KKK con­sist­ed of mem­bers that some per­ceived to be sup­port­ive of a white suprema­cist agen­da.’ * The FBI’s mon­i­tor­ing includ­ed in-per­son sur­veil­lance, and the agency cit­ed Bamn’s advo­ca­cy against ‘rape and sex­u­al assault’ and ‘police bru­tal­i­ty’ as evi­dence in the ter­ror­ism inquiry. The FBI’s 46-page report on Bamn, obtained by the gov­ern­ment trans­paren­cy non-prof­it Prop­er­ty of the Peo­ple through a records request, pre­sent­ed an ‘aston­ish­ing’ descrip­tion of the KKK, said Mike Ger­man, a for­mer FBI agent and far-right expert who reviewed the doc­u­ments for the Guardian. . . . ”
7. The FBI inves­ti­ga­tion into the motive behind Stephen Paddock’s mas­sacre in Las Vegas has omit­ted Pad­dock­’s links with the Sov­er­eign Cit­i­zen move­ment, which we high­light­ed in FTR #1011. ” . . . . The high-stakes gam­bler respon­si­ble for the dead­liest mass shoot­ing in mod­ern U.S. his­to­ry sought noto­ri­ety in the attack but left his spe­cif­ic motive a mys­tery, the FBI said Tues­day as it con­clud­ed the inves­ti­ga­tion of the 2017 mas­sacre that killed 58 coun­try music fans. . . .”
8. This soci­ety has been sow­ing the Nazi and fas­cist winds for a long time. Fail­ing to come to terms with the Nazi and fas­cist sym­pa­thies of Amer­i­can indus­tri­al­ists who financed Hitler, the incor­po­ra­tion of the Nazi SS into the CIA via the Gehlen org, and the incor­po­ra­tion of East­ern and Cen­tral Euro­pean SS-allied fas­cists into the GOP has borne its inevitable fruit. Now it will be reap­ing the Nazi whirl­wind. An extreme­ly pop­u­lar chil­dren’s lip-synch­ing app called Tik­Tok has incor­po­rat­ed mur­der­ous­ly racist invec­tive against peo­ple of col­or and Jews, in addi­tion to shar­ing overt­ly Nazi pro­pa­gan­da.
9. Even as offi­cial­dom and the media down­play or out­right dis­miss the Junior Prom pho­to from Bara­boo High School, we should expect things to become dra­mat­i­cal­ly worse. Time grows short. Tik Tok! ” . . . . Police announced on Mon­day they were inves­ti­gat­ing after a pho­to emerged on social media show­ing dozens of pupils — most­ly 16 and 17 — from Bara­boo High School appar­ent­ly per­form­ing the ‘Sieg Heil’ greet­ing dur­ing their junior prom. One for­mer stu­dent at the school in Bara­boo, a town of around 12,000 peo­ple, said she knew some of the boys in the pho­to and that their behav­iour was ‘def­i­nite­ly not sur­pris­ing’. ‘Some of the boys in this pho­to are noto­ri­ous at our school for this kind of behav­iour,’ said the 19-year-old, who grad­u­at­ed ear­li­er this year and wished to remain anony­mous. . . .”
10. Announced Demo­c­ra­t­ic Pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Kamala Har­ris opposed the 2012 parole bid of demon­stra­bly inno­cent Sirhan Sirhan, the pat­sy for the RFK assas­si­na­tion.
11. With the New Cold War gath­er­ing momen­tum and Trump’s with­draw­al from the treaty on inter­me­di­ate range nuclear mis­siles point­ing the world toward war, it is worth reflect­ing on the his­to­ry and deep pol­i­tics that brought this about. Colonel L. Fletch­er Prouty has writ­ten about events in August of 1944 that are indica­tive of the coa­les­cence of the “Chris­t­ian West” con­cept that we dis­cussed in AFA #37 and fur­ther devel­oped in FTR #1009. Note that this was well before the offi­cial incor­po­ra­tion of the Gehlen “Org” into CIA. We note that it was in August of 1944 that the famous “Red House” meet­ing at which the Bor­mann flight cap­i­tal net­work real­ized under the aus­pices of Aktion Adler­flug was launched. ” . . . . On August 23, 1944, the Roma­ni­ans accept­ed Sovi­et sur­ren­der terms and in Bucharest the OSS round­ed up Nazi intel­li­gence experts and their volu­mi­nous East­ern Euro­pean intel­li­gence files and con­cealed them among a train­load of Amer­i­can POW’s who were being quick­ly evac­u­at­ed from the Balka­ns via Turkey. Once in “neu­tral” Turkey, the train con­tin­ued to a planned des­ti­na­tion at a site on the Syr­i­an bor­der, where it was stopped to per­mit the trans­fer of Nazis and POW’s to a fleet of U.S. [Army] Air Force planes for a flight to Cairo. I was the chief pilot of that flight of some thir­ty air­craft . . . . It was this covert fac­tion with­in the OSS, coor­di­nat­ed with a sim­i­lar British intel­li­gence fac­tion, and its poli­cies that encour­aged cho­sen Nazis to con­ceive of the divi­sive ‘Iron Cur­tain’ con­cept to dri­ve a wedge in the alliance with the Sovi­et Union as ear­ly as 1944–to save their own necks, to sal­vage cer­tain pow­er cen­ters and their wealth, and to stir up resent­ment against the Rus­sians, even at the time of their great­est mil­i­tary tri­umph. . . . .”

1. The State Depart­men­t’s “Min­istry of Truth” is going to be head­ed by a Fox News and CIA vet­er­an, Lea Gabrielle. Designed to neu­tral­ize what the Pow­ers That Be deem to be for­eign pro­pa­gan­da, the bland­ly-named Glob­al Engage­ment Cen­ter has been exem­pli­fied by its attempts to por­tray as “Russ­ian dis­in­for­ma­tion” the ver­i­fi­ably Nazi char­ac­ter and polit­i­cal her­itage of the OUN/B suc­ces­sor orga­ni­za­tions wield­ing the police, edu­ca­tion­al and nation­al secu­ri­ty reins in Ukraine.

” . . . . Gabrielle, who begins her job on Feb. 11, was described to reporters by deputy spokesman Robert Pal­ladi­no on Thurs­day as ‘a for­mer CIA-trained human intel­li­gence oper­a­tions offi­cer, defense for­eign liai­son offi­cer, Unit­ed States Navy pro­gram direc­tor, Navy F/A‑18C fight­er pilot, and nation­al tele­vi­sion news cor­re­spon­dent and anchor at two dif­fer­ent net­works.’ . . .Crit­ics in the diplo­mat­ic com­mu­ni­ty, how­ev­er, high­light­ed the Trump administration’s oth­er hires from Fox News: Heather Nauert as act­ing State Depart­ment

“State Depart­ment Names Fox News and Navy Vet­er­an to Counter Pro­pa­gan­da” by Charles S. Clark; Gov­ern­ment Exec­u­tive; 2/8/2019.

 Top State Depart­ment offi­cials on Thurs­day announced the long-rumored appoint­ment of Navy vet­er­an and for­mer Fox News cor­re­spon­dent Lea Gabrielle as a spe­cial envoy in charge of the department’s con­tro­ver­sial three-year-old Glob­al Engage­ment Cen­ter.

“The fight against pro­pa­gan­da and dis­in­for­ma­tion is one we must win,” Sec­re­tary of State Mike Pom­peo announced to staff. “Under Lea’s vision­ary lead­er­ship, Amer­i­ca will be bet­ter pro­tect­ed from those who would turn hearts and minds against us.”

Gabrielle, who begins her job on Feb. 11, was described to reporters by deputy spokesman Robert Pal­ladi­no on Thurs­day as “a for­mer CIA-trained human intel­li­gence oper­a­tions offi­cer, defense for­eign liai­son offi­cer, Unit­ed States Navy pro­gram direc­tor, Navy F/A‑18C fight­er pilot, and nation­al tele­vi­sion news cor­re­spon­dent and anchor at two dif­fer­ent net­works.”

» Get the best fed­er­al news and ideas deliv­ered right to your inbox. Sign up here.

Crit­ics in the diplo­mat­ic com­mu­ni­ty, how­ev­er, high­light­ed the Trump administration’s oth­er hires from Fox News: Heather Nauert as act­ing State Depart­ment spokes­woman and cur­rent nom­i­nee to be Unit­ed Nations ambas­sador, and Bill Shine, Deputy White House chief of staff for com­mu­ni­ca­tions.

For­eign Pol­i­cy mag­a­zine, which broke the sto­ry on Gabrielle’s appoint­ment and inter­viewed her this week, said the small office Gabrielle will run “became a polit­i­cal light­ning rod amid feuds between the Trump admin­is­tra­tion and Con­gress over how to address threats, includ­ing Russ­ian elec­tion med­dling, in the wake of the 2016 pres­i­den­tial elec­tions. The inter­nal fight reflects a broad­er chal­lenge the U.S. gov­ern­ment faces in how to con­front mis­in­for­ma­tion and pro­pa­gan­da from abroad,” wrote reporters Rob­bie Gramer and Elias Groll.

In their exclu­sive inter­view, Gabrielle said, “We have to real­ize that we are under attack by adver­sary coun­tries and inter­na­tion­al ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tions that are using pro­pa­gan­da and dis­in­for­ma­tion as a weapon. They’re doing it because it’s cheap, and it’s easy, and because they can.” . . . .

2a. Fox News reject­ed a nation­al buy for an ad that was to run dur­ing Sean Hannity’s show. The ad pro­motes the Oscar-nom­i­nat­ed doc­u­men­tary A Night at the Gar­den, about a 1939 Nazi ral­ly in New York City. The ad includes the warn­ing “It Can Hap­pen Here” about the poten­tial dan­gers of Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s brand of pop­ulism. Han­ni­ty might be the most ‘Alt-Right’ of all the Fox News per­son­al­i­ties (although he has com­pe­ti­tion).

The ad nev­er got to run, and was pre­clud­ed by break­ing news cov­er­age of Trump’s ral­ly in Texas–where Trump so riled up the audi­ence against ‘the media’ that a BBC cam­era­man was vio­lent­ly attacked by some­one wear­ing a MAGA hat.

Fox News Rejects Nation­al Ad for Oscar-Nom­i­nat­ed Anti-Nazi Doc­u­men­tary (Exclu­sive)” by Jere­my Barr; The Hol­ly­wood Reporter; 02/13/2019.

Fox News has reject­ed a nation­al adver­tis­ing buy for a 30-sec­ond spot that warns view­ers about the poten­tial dan­gers of Amer­i­can fas­cism after an ad sales rep­re­sen­ta­tive said net­work lead­er­ship deemed it inap­pro­pri­ate, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter has learned.

The spot was to dou­ble as a pro­mo­tion of this year’s Oscar-nom­i­nat­ed doc­u­men­tary short A Night at the Gar­den, which recounts a 1939 Nazi ral­ly in New York City, and a warn­ing — “It Can Hap­pen Here” — to Sean Hannity’s large­ly con­ser­v­a­tive view­ers about the poten­tial dan­gers of Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s brand of pop­ulism.

An ad was bought to air local­ly dur­ing Mon­day night’s edi­tion of Hannity’s prime­time show through a region­al adver­tis­ing buy on Char­ter Com­mu­ni­ca­tions’ Spec­trum ser­vice in Los Ange­les, but was pre­clud­ed by break­ing news — cov­er­age of Pres­i­dent Trump’s ral­ly in Texas.

The film’s dis­trib­u­tor, Field of Vision, then decid­ed to pur­chase a nation­al spot on Hannity’s show, but was rebuffed by the net­work, which con­trols nation­al adver­tis­ing.

A Fox News nation­al ad sales rep­re­sen­ta­tive told the distributor’s media-buy­ing agency on Wednes­day that CEO Suzanne Scott (“our CEO”) said the ad was “not appro­pri­ate for our air,” accord­ing to email cor­re­spon­dence viewed by THR.

Cable net­works like Fox News do not over­see local­ly bought ads but can reject nation­al adver­tis­ing spots. In August 2017, CNN declined to run a paid adver­tise­ment from the Trump re-elec­tion cam­paign because it por­trayed some of the network’s news per­son­al­i­ties as “ene­mies” of the pres­i­dent, a deci­sion the cam­paign decried as cen­sor­ship.

“The film shines a light on a time when thou­sands of Amer­i­cans fell under the spell of a dem­a­gogue who attacked the press and scape­goat­ed minori­ties using the sym­bols of Amer­i­can patri­o­tism,” Night at the Gar­den direc­tor Mar­shall Cur­ry said in a state­ment to THR.

He added, “It’s amaz­ing to me that the CEO of Fox News would per­son­al­ly inject her­self into a small ad buy just to make sure that Han­ni­ty view­ers weren’t exposed to this chap­ter of Amer­i­can his­to­ry.”

To ful­fill Monday’s abort­ed local ad buy, the documentary’s ad will run dur­ing Thurs­day night’s episode of Han­ni­ty in Los Ange­les, through Char­ter. The film’s back­ers also plan to adver­tise on oth­er nation­al cable news net­works.

Night at the Gar­den marks Curry’s third Oscar nom­i­na­tion, fol­low­ing nods for his 2005 doc­u­men­tary on now-Sen. Cory Book­er (Street Fight) and the 2011 film. If a Tree Falls: A Sto­ry of the Earth Lib­er­a­tion Front . . .

2b. The El Paso Trump ral­ly man­i­fest­ed a con­tem­po­rary iter­a­tion of Night at the Gar­den.

“Trump’s 2020 Cam­paign Kicks Off With A Car­ni­val Of Lies In El Paso” by Christo­pher Math­ias; The Huff­in­g­ton Post; 02/12/2019.

As thou­sands of Don­ald Trump sup­port­ers lined up out­side the El Paso Coun­ty Col­i­se­um Mon­day after­noon, wait­ing to see the pres­i­dent hold his first offi­cial re-elec­tion cam­paign ral­ly near the U.S.-Mexico bor­der, the MAGA mer­chants were in a fren­zy.

Some ven­dors pulled carts full of red or cam­ou­flage “Make Amer­i­ca Great Again” hats, yelling, “Ten dol­lars, cash or cred­it!” Oth­ers made elab­o­rate dis­plays of flags for sale. The new Trump 2020 flag was pop­u­lar. So was the flag with an illus­tra­tion of Trump hold­ing a gun, stand­ing atop a tank, in front of an Amer­i­can flag, next to a fly­ing bald eagle.

Then there were the T‑shirts: the new Trump/Pence 2020 shirt, the old “Hillary sucks but not like Mon­i­ca” shirt, and a “We are Q” shirt, a ref­er­ence to QAnon, the absurd and ever-evolv­ing pro-Trump con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry that holds that the pres­i­dent is on the verge of destroy­ing a pedophile ring that has been secret­ly run­ning the U.S. gov­ern­ment for years.

As Trump sup­port­ers poured into the gat­ed area out­side the col­i­se­um, music blared from the loud­speak­ers, a playlist that includ­ed Elton John’s “Can­dle in the Wind,” Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Free Bird” and “Mem­o­ry” from the Broad­way musi­cal “Cats.” The music was inter­rupt­ed inter­mit­tent­ly by announce­ments, includ­ing one plead­ing with Trump sup­port­ers to “not hurt any pro­test­ers” who might show up to ruin the night’s fun.

On the giant screen out­side the venue, a Trump cam­paign mes­sage implored fans to fol­low the pres­i­dent on Twit­ter, Insta­gram and Face­book. “Your source for Real News,” the mes­sage screamed.

Huff­Post was not grant­ed press cre­den­tials to report from inside the col­i­se­um. Out­side, an over­flow crowd of some 6,000 peo­ple stood in the cold desert night to watch the screen and cheer on Trump.

Trump’s ral­ly in El Paso was in sup­port of his bor­der wall. In his State of the Union address last week he claimed, false­ly, that bor­der fenc­ing that was built south of the city in 2010 trans­formed El Paso from a dan­ger­ous place into a safe one.

Its Repub­li­can may­or lashed out at the pres­i­dent last week for his false­hood. El Paso’s declin­ing crime rate start­ed well before the bor­der fenc­ing was built.

But Trump repeat­ed the lie Mon­day night. And for his audi­ence, the lie was now the truth.

“Once they built that wall, it was amaz­ing how sta­tis­ti­cal­ly the vio­lence start­ed going down,” 39-year-old El Paso res­i­dent Michael Blan­co, who owns an account­ing busi­ness, told Huff­Post out­side the col­i­se­um. “I’m a com­plete wit­ness of it. Seen it grow­ing up.”

Hen­ri Rafael, a 58-year-old El Pasoan wear­ing a black Trump 2020 hat, said that even though the may­or cor­rect­ed Trump, “I know for a fact that the crime was high back in the ’70s and ’80s, and when they built those walls, [crime] has dropped.”

In fact, vio­lent crime increased in El Paso in the two years after the wall was built, accord­ing to a study from the El Paso Times.

Trump peri­od­i­cal­ly paused his speech Mon­day for chants of “Build the wall!” and “USA!”

When he talked of the “fake news” media, the crowd jeered. At one point, a par­tic­u­lar­ly inspired Trump sup­port­er attacked a BBC jour­nal­ist:

Just attend­ed my first ?@realDonaldTrump? ral­ly where my col­league BBC cam­era­man Rob Skeans was attacked by a Trump sup­port­er. The crowd had been whipped up into a fren­zy against the media by Trump and oth­er speak­ers all night #TrumpEl­Pa­sopic.twitter.com/Oiw8osPms3— Eleanor Mon­tague (@EleanorMontague) Feb­ru­ary 12, 2019

The crowd also jeered Beto O’Rourke, the Demo­c­ra­t­ic El Paso native and for­mer con­gress­man who near­ly defeat­ed Sen. Ted Cruz in last year’s Sen­ate race. O’Rourke, a poten­tial pres­i­den­tial can­di­date, held a protest a few blocks from Trump’s ral­ly Mon­day night.

The pres­i­dent taunt­ed O’Rourke from the stage, claim­ing that the O’Rourke ral­ly attract­ed a pal­try few hun­dred atten­dees. El Paso police lat­er esti­mat­ed that well over 10,000 peo­ple attend­ed.

Trump spoke for over an hour — about spe­cial coun­sel Robert Mueller’s inves­ti­ga­tion, about Hillary Clin­ton, about the Green New Deal and about how “Amer­i­ca will nev­er be a social­ist coun­try.”

Nick Mar­tin, an inves­tiga­tive reporter at the South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter, watched the speech and noticed some­one he rec­og­nized sit­ting in the front row, wear­ing a base­ball hat and an eye patch: Elmer Stew­art Rhodes.

Rhodes is the founder of the far-right mili­tia group the Oath Keep­ers. The SPLC lists the Oath Keep­ers as an anti-gov­ern­ment extrem­ist group because of the wild con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries its mem­bers pro­mote. Rhodes recent­ly claimed he was set­ting up para­mil­i­tary train­ing camps across the U.S. to pre­pare to fight antifa, or anti-fas­cist, groups.

Stew­art Rhodes, leader of the antigov­ern­ment group the Oath Keep­ers, is in the front row for Trump’s ral­ly tonight in El Paso. (Rhodes is the one with the eye patch and ball cap.) pic.twitter.com/MO0cRcOz24— Nick Mar­tin (@nickmartin) Feb­ru­ary 12, 2019

(Also report­ed­ly stand­ing in the front row at the Trump ral­ly: a woman wear­ing a QAnon sym­bol over her shirt.)

Even­tu­al­ly, Trump fin­ished his speech and left the stage to cheers on his way to a sit-down inter­view with Lau­ra Ingra­ham of Fox News, who had trav­eled to Texas for the ral­ly.

The crowd fil­tered out through the gates of the col­i­se­um. There they were met by a small group of teenage pro­test­ers car­ry­ing signs read­ing “Trump is a lying cor­rupt racist” and “Abol­ish I.C.E.”

Many Trump sup­port­ers cursed at the teens, yelling, “Fu ck you,” and start­ed a loud chant of “Trump! Trump! Trump!” At least one Trump sup­port­er yelled, “Go back to Mex­i­co!” at the teens, most of whom were His­pan­ic.

Anoth­er Trump sup­port­er ripped the “Abol­ish I.C.E.” sign from a teen’s hands and ran off with it. Then anoth­er threw water at the teens’ faces.

Last night after the Trump ral­ly in #ElPa­so, a few teens stood out­side with protest signs and chant­ed abt Trump being racist. Grow­nass MAGA men yelled at them. Some Trump sup­port­ers yelled “fu ck you!” One yelled “Go back to Mex­i­co!” And then one stole a teen’s “ABOLISH ICE” sign pic.twitter.com/tF7hvhmRfW— Christo­pher Math­ias (@letsgomathias) Feb­ru­ary 12, 2019

…

A few hun­dred yards away, riot police announced over a mega­phone that a sep­a­rate group of 50 or so Trump pro­test­ers stand­ing on a street­corner need­ed to dis­perse. They refused. Trump sup­port­ers dipped in and out of the protest, taunt­ing them. One shout­ed to the crowd that they all need­ed to sub­scribe to Pewdiepie, refer­ring to the world’s most pop­u­lar YouTu­ber, who has pro­mot­ed white suprema­cist con­tent to his mil­lions of sub­scribers.

Antoine Williams, a 36-year-old MAGA ven­dor from South Car­oli­na, stood on the side­walk and packed up his mer­chan­dise, look­ing on at the may­hem. “They’re askin’ for it,” he said of the pro­test­ers, who even­tu­al­ly dis­persed.

He said he goes to every Trump ral­ly to sell his goods. Asked if he’s also a Trump sup­port­er, Williams respond­ed, “Till the death of me, bro.” . . . .

2c. Next, we have an update on Data Pro­pria, the Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca off­shoot cre­at­ed by Brad Parscale’s com­pa­ny Cloud Com­merce.

The GOP hired the ser­vices of Data Pro­pria for the 2018 mid-terms. Data Pro­pria employs four ex-Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca employ­ees, includ­ing Cam­bridge Analytica’s chief data sci­en­tist. Cam­bridge Analytica’s for­mer head of prod­uct, Matt Oczkows­ki, leads Data Propia. Oczkows­ki led the Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca team that worked for Trump’s 2016 cam­paign, and was report­ed­ly over­heard brag­ging to a prospec­tive client about how he’s already work­ing on Trump’s 2020 cam­paign (which he sub­se­quent­ly denied). Brad Parscale ran the Trump 2016 campaign’s exten­sive dig­i­tal oper­a­tions that includ­ed exten­sive micro-tar­get­ing of indi­vid­u­als out­side of the Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca efforts.

Matt Oczkows­ki is now the run­ning Parscale Dig­i­tal in addi­tion to Data Pro­pria. Parscale Dig­i­tal is the rebrand­ed ver­sion of Parscale’s old mar­ket­ing com­pa­ny. As the fol­low­ing arti­cle notes, Parscale sold his shares in Parscale Dig­i­tal in August 2017, at the same time he pur­chased $9 mil­lion in stock for Cloud Com­merce and took a seat on its board. August of 2017 is also the same month Parscale Dig­i­tal was sold to Cloud Com­merce. Thus, Parscale is a co-own­er of Cloud Com­merce which the own­er of Parscale Dig­i­tal. Now Matt Oczkows­ki, the for­mer head of prod­uct for Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca, is run­ning Parscale Dig­i­tal.

“Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca Alum To Run Anoth­er San Anto­nio-Based Firm” by Paul Flahive; Texas Pub­lic Radio; 02/05/2019

Parscale Dig­i­tal, a San Anto­nio-based dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing firm best known for its name­sake and for­mer own­er Brad Parscale, Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s 2020 cam­paign chair­man, is now being run by a for­mer exec­u­tive at Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca.

Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca, the now defunct data analy­sis com­pa­ny known for work­ing on Pres­i­dent Trump’s 2016 cam­paign, declared bank­rupt­cy in 2018 after news broke that data from more than 80 mil­lion Face­book users was shared with it.

Matt Oczkows­ki was head of prod­uct for Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca before form­ing Data Pro­pria in San Anto­nio with at least three oth­er Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca alums, includ­ing its chief data sci­en­tist, David Wilkin­son.

Oczkows­ki will take on the dual role run­ning Parscale and Data Pro­pria, which are both owned by Cloud­Com­merce.

Brad Parscale sits on the board of par­ent com­pa­ny Cloud Com­merce.

Cloud­Com­merce Pres­i­dent Andrew Van Noy announced the change Jan. 25. in an email obtained by TPR.

“Matt will con­tin­ue to lead the Data Pro­pria team and will now focus on stream­lin­ing the offer­ings and build­ing out the teams between the two brands,” he said.

Accord­ing to the email from Van Noy, Oczkows­ki will serve in an inter­im capac­i­ty.

Parscale Dig­i­tal has been with­out a leader since for­mer pres­i­dent Adam Brecht left the posi­tion in June 2018 after just a few months.

Data Pro­pria report­ed­ly assist­ed the Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee with midterm race polling last year and is work­ing on Trump’s 2020 cam­paign.

Brad Parscale sold his half of Giles Parscale, which would become Parscale Dig­i­tal, in August 2017. At the time he took $9 mil­lion in Cloud­Com­merce stock and a seat on the board for his com­pa­ny assets.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Cloud­Com­merce didn’t respond to repeat­ed requests for com­ment.

Accord­ing to fil­ings with the Secu­ri­ties and Exchange Com­mis­sion, Brad Parscale was invoiced more than $729,000 by Parscale Dig­i­tal for work done for the cam­paign manager’s polit­i­cal­ly ori­ent­ed con­sult­ing firm, Flori­da-based Parscale Strat­e­gy LLC.

Don­ald J. Trump For Pres­i­dent, Inc paid Parscale Strat­e­gy LLC more than $3.4 mil­lion in 2018 for dig­i­tal con­sult­ing and online adver­tis­ing, accord­ing to the Fed­er­al Elec­tion Com­mis­sion. . . .

3. After a mem­ber of an “antifa” group was stabbed at a white suprema­cist ral­ly, the FBI inves­ti­gat­ed the pro­test­ers, rather than the KKK.

“Revealed: FBI Inves­ti­gat­ed Civ­il Rights Group as ‘Ter­ror­ism’ Threat and Viewed KKK as Vic­tims” by Sam Levin in Oak­land; The Guardian; 02/01/2019

The FBI opened a “domes­tic ter­ror­ism” inves­ti­ga­tion into a civ­il rights group in Cal­i­for­nia, label­ing the activists “extrem­ists” after they protest­ed against neo-Nazis in 2016, new doc­u­ments reveal. Fed­er­al author­i­ties ran a sur­veil­lance oper­a­tion on By Any Means Nec­es­sary (Bamn), spy­ing on the left­ist group’s move­ments in an inquiry that came after one of Bamn’s mem­bers was stabbed at the white suprema­cist ral­ly, accord­ing to doc­u­ments obtained by the Guardian. The FBI’s Bamn files reveal:

* The FBI inves­ti­gat­ed Bamn for poten­tial “con­spir­a­cy” against the “rights” of the “Ku Klux Klan” and white suprema­cists.

* The FBI con­sid­ered the KKK as vic­tims and the left­ist pro­test­ers as poten­tial ter­ror threats, and down­played the threats of the Klan, writ­ing: “The KKK con­sist­ed of mem­bers that some per­ceived to be sup­port­ive of a white suprema­cist agen­da.”

* The FBI’s mon­i­tor­ing includ­ed in-per­son sur­veil­lance, and the agency cit­ed Bamn’s advo­ca­cy against “rape and sex­u­al assault” and “police bru­tal­i­ty” as evi­dence in the ter­ror­ism inquiry.

The FBI’s 46-page report on Bamn, obtained by the gov­ern­ment trans­paren­cy non-prof­it Prop­er­ty of the Peo­ple through a records request, pre­sent­ed an “aston­ish­ing” descrip­tion of the KKK, said Mike Ger­man, a for­mer FBI agent and far-right expert who reviewed the doc­u­ments for the Guardian.

The report ignored “100 years of Klan ter­ror­ism that has killed thou­sands of Amer­i­cans and con­tin­ues using vio­lence right up to the present day”, Ger­man said. “This descrip­tion of the KKK should be an embar­rass­ment to FBI lead­er­ship.”

Shan­ta Dri­ver, Bamn’s nation­al chair, crit­i­cized the inves­ti­ga­tion in a state­ment to the Guardian, say­ing, “The FBI’s inter­est in BAMN is part of a long-stand­ing pol­i­cy … Start­ing with their cam­paign to per­se­cute and slan­der Dr. Mar­tin Luther King, they have a racist his­to­ry of tar­get­ing peace­ful civ­il rights and anti-racist orga­ni­za­tions, while doing noth­ing to pros­e­cute the racists and fas­cists who attacked Dr. King and the move­ment he built.”

The FBI launched its ter­ror­ism inves­ti­ga­tion and sur­veil­lance of Bamn after white suprema­cists armed with knives faced off with hun­dreds of counter-pro­test­ers, includ­ing Bamn activists, at a June 2016 neo-Nazi ral­ly in Sacra­men­to. Although numer­ous neo-Nazis were sus­pect­ed of stab­bing at least sev­en anti-fas­cists in the melee, leav­ing some with life-threat­en­ing injuries, the FBI chose to launch a inquiry into the activ­i­ties of the left­wing pro­test­ers.

The doc­u­ments, though heav­i­ly redact­ed, did not include any con­clu­sions from the FBI that Bamn vio­lat­ed laws or posed a con­tin­u­ing threat. Its mem­bers have not faced fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tion. The FBI declined to com­ment on Bamn.

“It’s clear the FBI dropped the inves­ti­ga­tion hav­ing no evi­dence of wrong­do­ing. It nev­er should have been opened in the first place,” Dri­ver said.

The 2016 ral­ly was orga­nized by two white suprema­cist groups: the Tra­di­tion­al­ist Work­er par­ty (TWP) and an affil­i­at­ed Cal­i­for­nia enti­ty, the Gold­en State Skin­heads. Cal­i­for­nia law enforce­ment sub­se­quent­ly worked with the neo-Nazis to iden­ti­fy counter-pro­test­ers, pur­sued charges against stab­bing vic­tims and oth­er anti-fas­cists, and decid­ed not to pros­e­cute any men on the far-right for the stab­bings.

The FBI appeared to have adopt­ed a sim­i­lar approach. In a redact­ed Octo­ber 2016 doc­u­ment, the FBI labeled its Bamn inves­ti­ga­tion a “DT [domes­tic ter­ror­ism] – ANARCHIST EXTREMISM” case. The FBI’s San Fran­cis­co office wrote that it was inves­ti­gat­ing alle­ga­tions that “mem­bers of Bamn attend­ed a Ku Klux Klan ral­ly and assault­ed a Nazi sup­port­er”. It sum­ma­rized the Sacra­men­to inci­dent this way:

In 2016, law enforce­ment learned that the Ku Klux Klan would be hold­ing a ral­ly at the State Capi­tol Build­ing … The KKK con­sist­ed of mem­bers that some per­ceived to be sup­port­ive of a white suprema­cist agen­da. In response, a num­ber of groups mobi­lized to protest the ral­ly. Fly­ers were post­ed ask­ing peo­ple to attend in order to shut down the ral­ly.

The KKK and Tra­di­tion­al­ist Work­er par­ty have sim­i­lar ide­olo­gies but are dis­tinct groups. It’s unclear why the FBI labeled the ral­ly a KKK event.

The FBI’s report also appeared to obfus­cate details about the polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tions of stab­bing per­pe­tra­tors and vic­tims, say­ing: “Sev­er­al peo­ple were stabbed and hos­pi­tal­ized.” That’s despite the fact that Cal­i­for­nia police inves­ti­ga­tors report­ed that neo-Nazis were seen on cam­era hold­ing knives and fight­ing with counter-pro­test­ers (who suf­fered severe stab wounds).

The FBI file said its research into Bamn found that the group “law­ful­ly exer­cised their First Amend­ment rights by engag­ing in peace­ful protests”, but added that its “mem­bers engaged in oth­er activ­i­ty by refus­ing to dis­perse, tres­pass­ing in closed build­ings, obstruct­ing law enforce­ment, and shout­ing dur­ing and inter­rupt­ing pub­lic meet­ings so that the meet­ings could not con­tin­ue”.

Bamn has long advo­cat­ed for racial jus­tice and immi­grants’ rights, fre­quent­ly protest­ing at pub­lic events and orga­niz­ing ral­lies.

The FBI report said it was “pos­si­ble the actions of cer­tain BAMN mem­bers may exceed the bound­aries of pro­tect­ed activ­i­ty and could con­sti­tute a vio­la­tion of fed­er­al law”.

The “poten­tial vio­la­tions of fed­er­al law”, the FBI said, includ­ed “con­spir­a­cy against rights” and “riots”. The FBI cit­ed Bamn’s web­site, which encour­aged sup­port­ers to protest against the KKK, fea­tured slo­gans like “SMASH FASCISM!” and “NO ‘FREE SPEECH’ FOR FASCISTS!”, and cel­e­brat­ed the “mass, mil­i­tant demon­stra­tion” that “shut down” the neo-Nazi ral­ly. The FBI also includ­ed screen­shots of Bamn pages that ref­er­enced a num­ber of the group’s oth­er advo­ca­cy issues, includ­ing cam­paigns against “rape and sex­u­al assault” and “police bru­tal­i­ty”.

The FBI files fur­ther includ­ed men­tions of Yvette Felar­ca, a Bamn mem­ber who was stabbed at the ral­ly, but is now fac­ing state charges of assault and riot­ing. (Her lawyers have argued in court that the police inves­ti­ga­tors and pros­e­cu­tors were biased against anti-fas­cists and worked to pro­tect neo-Nazis).

Dri­ver, who is also Felarca’s attor­ney, said the FBI should have men­tioned that Felar­ca was “stabbed and blud­geoned by a fas­cist in Sacra­men­to”. She added: “Instead of find­ing the per­son who assault­ed anti-racist pro­test­ers, the FBI chose to tar­get BAMN, which by their own admis­sion holds demon­stra­tions that are pro­tect­ed by the First Amend­ment.”

The bureau’s jus­ti­fi­ca­tions of the inves­ti­ga­tion and sur­veil­lance were dis­turb­ing, said Ryan Shapiro, exec­u­tive direc­tor of Prop­er­ty of the Peo­ple. “The FBI dis­cov­ered that these pro­test­ers once shout­ed at a meet­ing and some­how that evi­dence was mobi­lized to sup­port a full-fledged ter­ror­ism inves­ti­ga­tion,” he not­ed.

In Novem­ber 2016, the FBI engaged in sur­veil­lance of a protest out­side the Berke­ley school dis­trict, accord­ing to the Bamn files. Due to the redac­tions, it’s unclear whom the FBI was watch­ing, though the report not­ed that the FBI observed “sev­er­al chil­dren … sit­ting out­side … with signs next to them”.

The FBI report said its inves­ti­ga­tion and sur­veil­lance were not “intend­ed to asso­ciate the pro­tect­ed activ­i­ty with crim­i­nal­i­ty or a threat to nation­al secu­ri­ty, or to infer that such pro­tect­ed activ­i­ty itself vio­lates fed­er­al law”. The report con­tin­ued:

How­ev­er, based on known intel­li­gence and/or spe­cif­ic, his­tor­i­cal obser­va­tions, it is pos­si­ble the pro­tect­ed activ­i­ty could invite a vio­lent reac­tion towards the sub­ject indi­vid­u­als or groups, or the activ­i­ty could be used as a means to tar­get law enforce­ment. In the event no vio­lent reac­tion occurs, FBI pol­i­cy and fed­er­al law dic­tates that no fur­ther record be made of the pro­tect­ed activ­i­ty.

Prop­er­ty of the People’s records requests broad­ly sought FBI doc­u­ments on anti-fas­cists. The FBI did not release addi­tion­al Bamn records beyond 2016.

The FBI’s insin­u­a­tion that Bamn’s actions could pro­voke vio­lence was odd, said Ger­man, the for­mer FBI agent, who is now a Bren­nan Cen­ter fel­low. He not­ed that it was white suprema­cists “who have used this tac­tic for decades” and said the vio­lent provo­ca­tions of rightwing groups were well known when he worked on domes­tic ter­ror­ism for the FBI in the 1990s. The Bamn report, he said, gave the “appear­ance of favoritism toward one of the old­est and most active ter­ror­ist groups in his­to­ry”.

He added that the report should have made clear that the “KKK con­sists of mem­bers who have a bloody his­to­ry of racial and anti­se­mit­ic vio­lence and intim­i­da­tion and is known for stag­ing pub­lic spec­ta­cles for the spe­cif­ic pur­pose of incit­ing immi­nent vio­lence”.

Asked whether the Bamn inves­ti­ga­tion was ongo­ing and whether the FBI had opened any equiv­a­lent inquiry into the neo-Nazis in Cal­i­for­nia, an FBI spokesper­son said the bureau does not con­firm or deny the exis­tence of spe­cif­ic inves­ti­ga­tions. “We can­not ini­ti­ate an inves­ti­ga­tion based sole­ly on an individual’s race, eth­nic­i­ty, nat­ur­al ori­gin, reli­gion, or the exer­cise of First Amend­ment rights,” the FBI said in a state­ment. “The FBI does not and will not police ide­ol­o­gy.”

…

The Bamn case fol­lows numer­ous recent con­tro­ver­sies sur­round­ing the FBI’s tar­get­ing of left­ist groups, includ­ing a ter­ror­ism inves­ti­ga­tion into Stand­ing Rock activists, sur­veil­lance of black activists, and spy­ing on peace­ful cli­mate change protest.

The jus­tice depart­ment inspec­tor gen­er­al pre­vi­ous­ly crit­i­cized the FBI for using non-vio­lent civ­il dis­obe­di­ence and spec­u­la­tion of future crimes to jus­ti­fy ter­ror­ism inves­ti­ga­tions against domes­tic advo­ca­cy groups, Ger­man not­ed, adding that the Bamn files sug­gest the FBI “seems to have learned noth­ing from these pre­vi­ous over­reach­es”.

Even know­ing the FBI’s lega­cy of going after activists, the report was still shock­ing, said Shapiro.

“A bunch of anti-fas­cists showed up at a Nazi ral­ly and were attacked by Nazis, and the response form the bureau was to launch a domes­tic ter­ror­ism inves­ti­ga­tion into the anti-fas­cists,” he said. “At its core, the FBI is, as it has always been, a polit­i­cal police force that pri­mar­i­ly tar­gets the left.”

4. The FBI inves­ti­ga­tion into the motive behind Stephen Paddock’s mas­sacre in Las Vegas has omit­ted Pad­dock­’s links with the Sov­er­eign Cit­i­zen move­ment, which we high­light­ed in FTR #1011.

“FBI Finds No Spe­cif­ic Motive in Vegas Attack that Killed 58” by Ken Rit­ter and Michael Bal­samo; Asso­ci­at­ed Press; 1/29/2019

The high-stakes gam­bler respon­si­ble for the dead­liest mass shoot­ing in mod­ern U.S. his­to­ry sought noto­ri­ety in the attack but left his spe­cif­ic motive a mys­tery, the FBI said Tues­day as it con­clud­ed the inves­ti­ga­tion of the 2017 mas­sacre that killed 58 coun­try music fans.

While the agency found no “sin­gle or clear moti­vat­ing fac­tor” to explain to explain why Stephen Pad­dock opened fire from his suite in a high-rise casi­no hotel, Pad­dock may have been seek­ing to fol­low in his father’s crim­i­nal foot­steps, the FBI said.

“It wasn’t about MGM, Man­dalay Bay or a spe­cif­ic casi­no or venue,” Aaron Rouse, the agent in charge of the FBI’s Las Vegas office, told The Asso­ci­at­ed Press. “It was all about doing the max­i­mum amount of dam­age and him obtain­ing some form of infamy.”

Paddock’s phys­i­cal and men­tal health was declin­ing. The 64-year-old’s wealth had dimin­ished, and he strug­gled with aging, fed­er­al agents said. The find­ings were con­tained in a long-await­ed report com­piled by the FBI’s Behav­ior Analy­sis Unit, a group of experts who spent months exam­in­ing sev­er­al fac­tors that might have led to the ram­page.

“This report comes as close to under­stand­ing the why as we’re ever going to get,” Rouse said.

Pad­dock, who act­ed alone, fatal­ly shot him­self as police closed in. Almost 900 peo­ple were hurt dur­ing the Oct. 1, 2017, attack on an out­door con­cert.

The gun­man was inspired in part by his father’s rep­u­ta­tion as a bank rob­ber who was once on the FBI’s most want­ed list, the report said. In many ways, he was sim­i­lar to oth­er active shoot­ers the FBI has stud­ied — moti­vat­ed by a com­plex merg­ing of devel­op­ment issues, stress and inter­per­son­al rela­tion­ships.

His “deci­sion to mur­der peo­ple while they were being enter­tained was con­sis­tent with his per­son­al­i­ty,” the report said.

The gun­man was not direct­ed or inspired by any group and was not seek­ing to fur­ther any agen­da. He did not leave a man­i­festo or sui­cide note, and fed­er­al agents believe he had planned to fatal­ly shoot him­self after the attack, accord­ing to the report.

Kim­ber­ly King, who along with her hus­band was hurt at the con­cert, said Pad­dock was “just a sick per­son.” She doesn’t care why he car­ried out the attack.

“How did he get the chance to do it? That’s what upsets me the most,” the Las Vegas woman said. “How could this have hap­pened and how could we have let this hap­pen?”

Pad­dock was a retired postal ser­vice work­er, accoun­tant and real estate investor who owned rental prop­er­ties and homes in Reno and in a retire­ment com­mu­ni­ty more than an hour’s dri­ve from Las Vegas. He also held a pri­vate pilot’s license and liked to gam­ble tens of thou­sands of dol­lars at a time play­ing video pok­er.

His younger broth­er, Eric Pad­dock, called him the “king of micro-aggres­sion” — nar­cis­sis­tic, detail-ori­ent­ed and maybe bored enough with life to plan an attack that would make him famous. His ex-wife told inves­ti­ga­tors that he grew up with a sin­gle mom in a finan­cial­ly unsta­ble home and he felt a need to be self-reliant.

Police char­ac­ter­ized him as a lon­er with no reli­gious or polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tions who began stock­pil­ing weapons about a year before the attack. He spent more than $1.5 mil­lion in the two years before the shoot­ing and dis­tanced him­self from his girl­friend and fam­i­ly.

He sent his girl­friend, Mar­ilou Dan­ley, to vis­it her fam­i­ly in the Philip­pines two weeks before the attack and wired her $150,000 while she was there. Dan­ley, a for­mer casi­no work­er in Reno, returned to the U.S. after the shoot­ing and told author­i­ties that Pad­dock had com­plained that he was sick and that doc­tors told him he had a “chem­i­cal imbal­ance” and could not cure him.

Dan­ley, who is Catholic, told inves­ti­ga­tors that Pad­dock often told her, “Your God doesn’t love me.”

A Reno car sales­man told police that in the months before the shoot­ing Pad­dock told him he was depressed and had rela­tion­ship trou­bles. Paddock’s doc­tor offered him anti­de­pres­sants, but told inves­ti­ga­tors that Pad­dock would only accept a pre­scrip­tion for anx­i­ety med­ica­tion.

Paddock’s gam­bling habits made him a sought-after casi­no patron. Man­dalay Bay employ­ees read­i­ly let him use a ser­vice ele­va­tor to take mul­ti­ple suit­cas­es to the $590-per-night suite he had been pro­vid­ed for free. Author­i­ties said he asked for the room, which had a com­mand­ing view of the Strip and the Route 91 Har­vest Fes­ti­val con­cert grounds across the street.

The night of the mas­sacre, Pad­dock used assault-style rifles to fire more than 1,000 rounds in 11 min­utes into the crowd of 22,000 music fans. Most of the rifles were fit­ted with rapid-fire “bump stock” devices and high-capac­i­ty mag­a­zines. Some had bipod braces and scopes. Author­i­ties said Paddock’s guns had been legal­ly pur­chased.

Las Vegas police closed their inves­ti­ga­tion last August, and Clark Coun­ty Sher­iff Joe Lom­bar­do declared the police work com­plete after hun­dreds of inter­views and thou­sands of hours of inves­tiga­tive work. Lom­bar­do vowed nev­er to speak Paddock’s name again in pub­lic. A Las Vegas police spokesman declined to com­ment on the FBI’s report.

A sep­a­rate report made pub­lic in August involv­ing the Fed­er­al Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency found that com­mu­ni­ca­tions were snarled dur­ing and after the shoot­ing. It said police, fire and med­ical respon­ders were over­whelmed by 911 calls, false reports of oth­er shoot­ings at Las Vegas casi­nos and the num­ber of vic­tims.

…

He left behind noth­ing that offered an expla­na­tion.

“He act­ed alone. He com­mit­ted a heinous act. He died by his own hand,” Rouse said. “If he want­ed to leave a mes­sage, he would have left a mes­sage. Bot­tom line is he didn’t want peo­ple to know.”

5a. This soci­ety has been sow­ing the Nazi and fas­cist winds for a long time. Fail­ing to come to terms with the Nazi and fas­cist sym­pa­thies of Amer­i­can indus­tri­al­ists who financed Hitler, the incor­po­ra­tion of the Nazi SS into the CIA via the Gehlen org, and the incor­po­ra­tion of East­ern and Cen­tral Euro­pean SS-allied fas­cists into the GOP has borne its inevitable fruit.

Now it will be reap­ing the Nazi whirl­wind.

An extreme­ly pop­u­lar chil­dren’s lip-synch­ing app called Tik­Tok has incor­po­rat­ed mur­der­ous­ly racist invec­tive against peo­ple of col­or and Jews, in addi­tion to shar­ing overt­ly Nazi pro­pa­gan­da.

“Tik­Tok Has a Nazi Prob­lem” by Joseph Cox; Vice Moth­er­board; 2/18/2018.

Users on mega pop­u­lar children’s lip-synch­ing app Tik­Tok are shar­ing calls for vio­lence against peo­ple of colour and Jews, as well as cre­at­ing and shar­ing neo-Nazi pro­pa­gan­da, Moth­er­board has found.

Some accounts ver­ba­tim read “kill all n*****,” “all jews must die,” and “killn******.” (The words are uncen­sored on the app, which is a sort of meld­ing of Vine and Insta­gram that allows users to cre­ate short videos synced to music.)

Moth­er­board found the con­tent on the Chi­nese-made app, which is used by hun­dreds of mil­lions peo­ple, many includ­ing teenagers and chil­dren in the Unit­ed States, with­in min­utes of start­ing a basic search.

“We’ve nev­er talked to Tik Tok, but clear­ly we need to,” Hei­di Beirich, direc­tor of the intel­li­gence project at the South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter (SPLC), told Moth­er­board in an email. “They need the site to be cleaned up—and now.”

The news sig­nals social media plat­forms’ con­tin­ued reck­on­ing with hate speech. But even with Face­book mis­han­dling its approach to white nation­al­ism, and Dis­cord pro­vid­ing a haven for seri­ous neo-Nazi groups, Tik­Tok is doing a par­tic­u­lar­ly bad job at mod­er­at­ing white suprema­cists on its plat­form.

The hate speech mate­r­i­al on Tik­Tok is var­ied. Some accounts sig­naled sup­port for Atom­waf­fen, a vio­lent neo-Nazi group linked to the mur­ders of sev­er­al Jew­ish peo­ple across the Unit­ed States. One account Moth­er­board found was called “Race War Now.” The user pro­file pho­to of anoth­er account was of an offen­sive car­i­ca­ture of a Jew­ish per­son, depict­ing a greedy rat.

One video con­tained a suc­ces­sion of users mak­ing Nazi salutes. Anoth­er video includ­ed the mes­sage, “I have a solu­tion; a final solu­tion,” refer­ring to the Holo­caust.

Hash­tags include 1488, a num­ber impor­tant to neo-Nazis, and Sieg Heil, the infa­mous Nazi slo­gan.

One Tik­Tok video Moth­er­board found, which encour­ages view­ers to read Siege, a book pop­u­lar with neo-Nazis, includ­ed the hash­tag #FreeDy­lan­nRoof. Roof was giv­en nine con­sec­u­tive life sen­tences for the mas­sacre of nine African Amer­i­cans at the his­tor­i­cal­ly Black Emanuel African Methodist Epis­co­pal Church in Charleston, South Car­oli­na in 2015.

“It’s just out­ra­geous and dan­ger­ous, giv­en how many young peo­ple, like Dylann Roof, have been rad­i­cal­ized online and then shift­ed to vio­lence,” Beirich said.

Tik­Tok merged with the app Musical.ly in August, after ByteDance pur­chased the lat­ter in 2017. The app has gar­nered wide praise both from its army of users and media out­lets; the New York Times recent­ly described Tik­Tok as “the only good app,” and the Verge called it “joy­ful.”

When con­tact­ed by Moth­er­board, Tik­Tok did not pro­vide a state­ment in time for pub­li­ca­tion.

Beirich said what Moth­er­board found “is hor­ri­fy­ing. That is espe­cial­ly true since this ser­vice tar­gets chil­dren and I can’t think of worse things to be putting in front of them.” Some of the peo­ple in and shar­ing the offen­sive videos appear to be chil­dren. Some of the accounts say that the posts are a “joke” or “iron­ic,” but as Moth­er­board has report­ed mul­ti­ple times, these “jokes” can and do rad­i­cal­ize real peo­ple and nonethe­less harm already mar­gin­al­ized groups.

Car­o­line Sin­ders, research fel­low with Dig­i­tal HKS, who has stud­ied online extrem­ism, told Moth­er­board in an online chat, “I don’t think it mat­ters even if some­thing is a humor­ous joke in meme cul­ture, I think it’s impor­tant to a cen­ter a platform’s poli­cies on harass­ment and hate speech.”

“‘killallni****s’ isn’t a joke; I would argue it is a form of hate speech,” she added.

Some accounts do com­plain about being report­ed by oth­er users. One user who com­plained as such host­ed a video of some­one in a Klu-Klux Klan style cloaks.

At the time of writ­ing, TikTok’s terms of use state that “Tik­Tok is an inclu­sive com­mu­ni­ty. It is not ok to attack or incite vio­lence against oth­er users.”

Moth­er­board has pre­vi­ous­ly found oth­er con­tent mod­er­a­tion issues with Tik­Tok. Ear­li­er this month, Moth­er­board found peo­ple were solic­it­ing nude images of young users on the plat­form.

ByteDance recent­ly said it would increase the num­ber of con­tent mod­er­a­tors on Tik­Tok from 6,000 to 10,000 peo­ple.

Cor­rec­tion: This arti­cle pre­vi­ous­ly said Tik­Tok merged with an app called Music.ly. The cor­rect name is Musical.ly. Moth­er­board regrets the error.

5b. Even as offi­cial­dom and the media down­play or out­right dis­miss the Junior Prom pho­to from Bara­boo High School, we should expect things to become dra­mat­i­cal­ly worse.

Time grows short. Tik Tok!

  “Wis­con­sin School­boys in Nazi Salute Pho­to ‘Shout­ed White Pow­er after Trump Elect­ed’, For­mer Stu­dent Claims” by Tom Embury-Den­nis [The Inde­pen­dent]; Yahoo News; 11/13/2018.

For­mer stu­dents at a Wis­con­sin school caught up in a Nazi salute storm have spo­ken out about a trou­bled his­to­ry of racism and intol­er­ance among stu­dents, and a will­ing­ness among staff to turn a blind eye.

Police announced on Mon­day they were inves­ti­gat­ing after a pho­to emerged on social media show­ing dozens of pupils — most­ly 16 and 17 — from Bara­boo High School appar­ent­ly per­form­ing the “Sieg Heil” greet­ing dur­ing their junior prom.

One for­mer stu­dent at the school in Bara­boo, a town of around 12,000 peo­ple, said she knew some of the boys in the pho­to and that their behav­iour was “def­i­nite­ly not sur­pris­ing”.

“Some of the boys in this pho­to are noto­ri­ous at our school for this kind of behav­iour,” said the 19-year-old, who grad­u­at­ed ear­li­er this year and wished to remain anony­mous. “The day after Don­ald Trump was elect­ed, some of the boys in the pho­to were shout­ing “white pow­er” in the hall­ways and telling the ESL (Eng­lish as a sec­ond lan­guage) stu­dents to go back to their own coun­tries.

“I went to a school offi­cial, the only one that would meet with me, and I was told to tough­en up, that there was noth­ing he could do because it was the boy’s first amend­ment right and he wasn’t harm­ing any­one.

“He then pro­ceed­ed to tell me to watch videos of Black Lives Mat­ter pro­tes­tors being hos­tile to police. I was stunned, and upset, and didn’t pur­sue it fur­ther because of the response I got when ask­ing for help.”

She con­tin­ued: “Basi­cal­ly, these boys use their priv­i­lege in hor­ri­ble ways, know­ing there will be no harsh con­se­quences for their actions.”

The image of the teenagers per­form­ing the Nazi salute first sur­faced on Twit­ter after it was shared by an account named “Wel­come to Bara­boo”. The post – now delet­ed – was cap­tioned: “We even got the black kid to throw it up.”

A for­mer stu­dent who grad­u­at­ed in 2016 told The Inde­pen­dent the Twit­ter account which post­ed the image was used to satirise the school and tra­di­tion­al­ly con­trolled by one or two senior stu­dents – includ­ing by him in his final year.

But this year, “essen­tial­ly the entire senior class was giv­en admin­is­tra­tive access to the page”, allow­ing any­one to post on the social media plat­form.

The fact the pho­to was tak­en on the steps of the coun­ty cour­t­house, he said, was “almost sym­bol­ic of the sys­temic prob­lem” Bara­boo is fac­ing.

Oth­er cur­rent and for­mer stu­dents shared their sto­ries of the school with jour­nal­ist Jules Suz­dalt­sev after he post­ed the pho­to on Twit­ter.

“The use of the n‑word was pret­ty com­mon among white stu­dents,” one said, while anoth­er who grad­u­at­ed this year said their four years at the school was “full of hear­ing the n‑word shout­ed down the hall and deal­ing with homo­pho­bia”.

In the pho­to, the huge major­i­ty of the group appear to be white, and all but a few appear to per­form­ing the salute.

Only one teenag­er in the pic­ture is nei­ther per­form­ing the salute, nor laugh­ing. He told Mr Suz­dalt­sev he felt “uncom­fort­able” when the pic­ture was tak­en and was unable to leave as it hap­pened too fast. He said the pho­tog­ra­ph­er asked the stu­dents to make the sign.

“I knew what my morals were and it was not to salute some­thing I firm­ly didn’t believe in,” he said. “I attend BHS (Bara­boo High School), these class­mates have bul­lied me since enter­ing mid­dle school, I have strug­gled with it my entire life and noth­ing has changed.”

Bara­boo High School and the com­pa­ny alleged­ly hired to take the pho­to­graph have been con­tact­ed for com­ment.

“Unfor­tu­nate­ly, based on what these stu­dents see com­ing from the White House, some of them may believe what they have done is accept­able,” Jon Erben­bach, a Demo­c­ra­t­ic Wis­con­sin sen­a­tor, said about the pho­to.

“It is absolute­ly not. Lead­ers, from the pres­i­dent on down, need to con­demn racism in all its forms and work toward a world where we learn from the mis­takes of his­to­ry.”

6. Announced Demo­c­ra­t­ic Pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Kamala Har­ris opposed the 2012 parole bid of demon­stra­bly inno­cent Sirhan Sirhan, the pat­sy for the RFK assas­si­na­tion.

“Why the RFK Case Must Be Reopened” by Mikko Alane; The Huff­in­g­ton Post; 2/03/2012.

On Feb­ru­ary 1, 2012, Cal­i­for­nia Attor­ney Gen­er­al Kamala Har­ris offi­cial­ly rec­om­mend­ed that the lat­est appeal of Sirhan Sirhan, con­vict­ed in the 1968 mur­der of Sen­a­tor Robert Kennedy, should be denied.

I respect­ful­ly dis­agree.

In 1997, I made a film called Voice of Dis­sent, argu­ing why the case should be reopened. Nar­rat­ed by renowned his­to­ri­an Philip Melan­son, the film exam­ined con­tro­ver­sies in the offi­cial account of the assas­si­na­tion that have endured since 1968.

One need not enter­tain strange-sound­ing the­o­ries about Sirhan Sirhan act­ing under mind con­trol to acknowl­edge that there are, in fact, very seri­ous and dis­qui­et­ing dis­crep­an­cies in the foren­sic evi­dence of the case that must be resolved.

That is why I made my film, and was lat­er involved in efforts to get the case reopened in the late 1990s.

I’ve always believed in Occam’s Razor, the pre­cept that the sim­plest expla­na­tion tends to be cor­rect.

Sirhan Sirhan was caught at the scene with a smok­ing gun in hand. Eye­wit­ness­es saw him fire it before he was wres­tled down.

What else is there to say?

Let’s start with a few facts not in dis­pute.

Accord­ing to the LAPD’s own account, Sirhan’s gun held eight bul­lets, and he had no oppor­tu­ni­ty to reload. Robert Kennedy was hit three times and five oth­er vic­tims were each hit by a bul­let.

That’s all eight shots. Evi­dence of a sin­gle addi­tion­al shot, there­fore, would strong­ly sug­gest the pres­ence of a sec­ond shoot­er.

Is there such evi­dence?

Yes.

Crime scene pho­tos show inves­ti­ga­tors point­ing to bul­let holes cir­cled in door frames and a ceil­ing pan­el. To explain their pres­ence with sev­en bul­lets already recov­ered from the vic­tims, the LAPD Crim­i­nol­o­gist on the case, DeWayne Wolfer, con­jured up not one, but five mag­ic bul­lets that ric­o­cheted around the room.

Still think Sirhan as the lone assas­sin is the most plau­si­ble expla­na­tion?

Even if we accept­ed the pres­ence of mag­ic bul­lets, the offi­cial autop­sy report, by Los Ange­les Coro­ner Thomas Noguchi, found that the fatal shot was fired from a dis­tance of one inch to con­tact from behind Sen­a­tor Kennedy.

This is com­plete­ly at odds with eye­wit­ness accounts of Sirhan’s move­ments dur­ing the shoot­ing. Wit­ness­es said Sirhan approached Kennedy from the front, and no wit­ness placed Sirhan clos­er than 3 feet before he was brought down. Oth­ers claimed they saw a sec­ond shoot­er.

A dis­turb­ing record also sur­vives of LAPD inves­ti­ga­tors pres­sur­ing wit­ness­es into chang­ing their sto­ries or sup­press­ing their accounts, and destroy­ing cru­cial case evi­dence. Before Sirhan’s tri­al even began, LAPD per­son­nel on the case burned over 2,400 pho­tographs from the crime scene and the inves­ti­ga­tion in a med­ical waste incin­er­a­tor. Among those pho­tos were the only pre-oper­a­tive pho­tographs ever tak­en of Sen­a­tor Kennedy. Oth­er phys­i­cal evi­dence, includ­ing a door­frame with bul­let holes, was also lat­er destroyed.

These facts alone cry out for a new tri­al and a thor­ough new inves­ti­ga­tion of the case.

We do not yet know the full truth about the death of Robert Kennedy.

The case must be reopened.

7. With the New Cold War gath­er­ing momen­tum and Trump’s with­draw­al from the treaty on inter­me­di­ate range nuclear mis­siles point­ing the world toward war, it is worth reflect­ing on the his­to­ry and deep pol­i­tics that brought this about.

Colonel L. Fletch­er Prouty has writ­ten about events in August of 1944 that are indica­tive of the coa­les­cence of the “Chris­t­ian West” con­cept that we dis­cussed in AFA #37 and fur­ther devel­oped in FTR #1009.

We note that it was in August of 1944 that the famous “Red House” meet­ing at which the Bor­mann flight cap­i­tal net­work real­ized under the aus­pices of Aktion Adler­flug was launched.

JFK: The CIA, Viet­nam, and the Plot to Assas­si­nate John F. Kennedy by Col. [Ret.] L. Fletch­er Prouty; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [HC]; Copy­right 2011 by L. Fletch­er Prouty; ISBN 978–1‑51073–876‑8; pp. 10–11.

How­ev­er, even before the sur­ren­der of Ger­many and Japan, we began to hear the first rum­blings of the Cold War. The Office of Strate­gic Ser­vices, and par­tic­u­lar­ly its agents Frank Wis­ner and Allen W. Dulles in Zurich, nur­tured the idea that the time had come to rejoin select­ed Nazi pow­er cen­ters in order to split the West­ern alliance from the Sovi­et Union. “Rejoin” is the prop­er word in this case. It was the Dulles-affil­i­at­ed New York law firm of Sul­li­van & Cromwell that had refused to close its offices in Nazi Ger­many after the start of WWII in 1939, even while Great Britain and France were locked in a los­ing strug­gle with Hitler’s invad­ing forces. There­fore, the Dulles OSS “intel­li­gence con­tacts” in Nazi Ger­many dur­ing the war were for the most part Ger­man busi­ness asso­ciates with whom he was acquaint­ed.

On August 23, 1944, the Roma­ni­ans accept­ed Sovi­et sur­ren­der terms and in Bucharest the OSS round­ed up Nazi intel­li­gence experts and their volu­mi­nous East­ern Euro­pean intel­li­gence files and con­cealed them among a train­load of Amer­i­can POW’s who were being quick­ly evac­u­at­ed from the Balka­ns via Turkey. Once in “neu­tral” Turkey, the train con­tin­ued to a planned des­ti­na­tion at a site on the Syr­i­an bor­der, where it was stopped to per­mit the trans­fer of Nazis and POW’s to a fleet of U.S. [Army] Air Force planes for a flight to Cairo.

I was the chief pilot of that flight of some thir­ty air­craft and was stunned by the dis­cov­ery of two things I would nev­er have sus­pect­ed: A num­ber of the Amer­i­cans had had one or both legs ampu­tat­ed at the knee by their Balkan cap­tors, sole­ly for the pur­pose of keep­ing them immo­bile (the plane I flew had air­line seats rather than can­vas “buck­et” seats, and the men on my plane had lost one or two legs in that bar­bar­ic man­ner), and con­cealed among these POW’s were a num­ber of Balkan Nazi intel­li­gence spe­cial­ists who were being tak­en out of the Balka­ns ahead of the Sovi­et armies by the OSS.

As far as I know, this was one of the first vis­i­ble clues to the emer­gence of the “East-West” Cold War struc­ture, even while we and the Rus­sians were still allies and remained part­ners in the great strug­gle against the Ger­mans.

It was this covert fac­tion with­in the OSS, coor­di­nat­ed with a sim­i­lar British intel­li­gence fac­tion, and its poli­cies that encour­aged cho­sen Nazis to con­ceive of the divi­sive “Iron Cur­tain” con­cept to dri­ve a wedge in the alliance with the Sovi­et Union as ear­ly as 1944–to save their own necks, to sal­vage cer­tain pow­er cen­ters and their wealth, and to stir up resent­ment against the Rus­sians, even at the time of their great­est mil­i­tary tri­umph.

I was only a pilot on that flight, and in no way involved in the diplo­mat­ic intri­ca­cies of that era, but I have always won­dered whose deci­sion it had been, back in mid-1944, a year before the end of World War II, to over­ride the present alliances and to ini­ti­ate a split between the West and our wartime part­ner the Sovi­et Union while we were still firm allies. . . . .