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

Check out the Chakrabar­ti YouTube seg­ment fea­tur­ing the Sub­has Chan­dra Bose T‑Shirt

” . . . . An analy­sis of FEC fil­ings shows that their [AOC and Chakrabarati’s] net­work of PACs, LLCs, board and staff nav­i­gate in the same legal and eth­i­cal grey area their entire ‘anti-dark mon­ey’ plat­form is based on com­bat­ting. . . .”

Intro­duc­tion: Resum­ing analy­sis of AOC’s high­ly ques­tion­able cre­den­tials, we note the shady cir­cum­stances of her vic­to­ry over long-time incum­bent Joe Crow­ley: ” . . . . she cap­i­tal­ized on an extreme­ly low pri­ma­ry turnout to eek out a 57% vs. 43% (15,897 vs. 11,761) vic­to­ry. And while it is true that the young can­di­date deployed an impres­sive grass­roots can­vass­ing strat­e­gy, the dev­il is in the details— includ­ing dirty local pol­i­tics, vit­ri­olic cam­paign rhetoric, far left agi­ta­tors, and an inten­sive Face­book adver­tis­ing blitz in the lead up to the pri­ma­ry. . . .”

She drew on the sup­port of dis­graced and con­vict­ed abuser Hiram Mon­ser­rate, and deflect­ed crit­i­cism with her stan­dard retreat into iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics: ” . . . . Part of the local con­tro­ver­sy revolved around the involve­ment of dis­graced ex-Queens politi­cian Hiram Mon­ser­rate. A domes­tic abuser who spent time in prison on a cor­rup­tion con­vic­tion, Mon­ser­rate has feud­ed with Crow­ley for years. Dur­ing their con­tentious pri­ma­ry, Crow­ley accused Oca­sio-Cortez of seek­ing sup­port from the ex-con, even speak­ing at an event held at a Demo­c­rat Club he runs in Queens. . . . Mon­ser­rate told the New York Post ‘there were a group of us, in the (club) and oth­er com­mu­ni­ty activists I have been work­ing with for years who under­stood that we would do our part to get rid of Joe Crowley…We were in sup­port of Alexandria’s cam­paign.’ . . . .”

In our series on Sur­veil­lance Val­ley (FTR #‘s 1075 through 1081) we not­ed that the Inter­net is an infor­ma­tion weapon, con­ceived in the con­text of coun­terin­sur­gency and solid­i­fied in appli­ca­tions of counter-democ­ra­cy. The rise and oper­a­tions of AOC are inex­tri­ca­bly linked with the Inter­net, social media, in par­tic­u­lar.

AOC’s cam­paign drew on Inter­net resources, and inter­ests out­side of her dis­trict: ” . . . . In fact, the vast major­i­ty of Oca­sio-Cortez cam­paign dona­tions have come from out-of-dis­trict and out-of-state. Of par­tic­u­lar note is Blue Amer­i­ca PAC, a “col­lab­o­ra­tion between the authors/publishers of DownWithTyranny.com, Hullabaloo.com and CrooksandLiars.com.” The PAC made an $11,000 inde­pen­dent expen­di­ture in oppo­si­tion to Joe Crow­ley, cre­at­ing the web­site QueensAgainstCrowley.com. . . . The meme-heavy social media pages for the PAC’s var­i­ous web­sites pushed out vit­ri­olic blog and social media posts dur­ing the pri­ma­ry, using bud­get graph­ics with British-Eng­lish copy to pro­mote hash­tags like #Abol­ishICE #Berniewould­have­won and #Mob­Boss­Crow­ley. . . .”

Draw­ing momen­tum, in part, from for­eign trolls and bots, AOC’s sig­na­ture “Abol­ish Ice” cam­paign plays right into the hands of Team Trump and the racist/xenophobic right. ” . . . . .  For any­one engag­ing with Oca­sio-Cortez’ social media posts, the for­eign bot and troll activ­i­ty is notice­ably syn­chro­nized and per­va­sive. There’s no bet­ter exam­ple than the #Abol­ishICE cam­paign she cham­pi­oned as her num­ber one pri­ma­ry issue and has helped take nation­al. Much of her social media con­tent has focused on the “Abol­ish ICE solu­tion” to immi­gra­tion reform while accus­ing “Boss Crow­ley” and oth­er Democ­rats of being “Pro-ICE”. In the one month lead up to the June pri­ma­ry, Oca­sio-Cortez’ cam­paign spent over $80,000 on Face­book adver­tis­ing — the largest of her expen­di­tures. . . .”

Next, we note AOC has quot­ed and defend­ed Eva Per­on. Although this may well just be anoth­er man­i­fes­ta­tion of iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics, it is worth not­ing that Eva Per­on (nee Eva Duarte) was a Nazi spy pri­or to, and dur­ing, World War II, and a Bormann/Vatican agent after that:

” . . . . . . . .The all-con­quer­ing Evi­ta left Spain for Rome on June 25, 1947. Father Ben­itez would smooth her way in the Vat­i­can with the aid of Bish­op Alois Hudal [one of the key mem­bers of the Vatican/Nazi “Rat­line”]. Two days after she arrived she was giv­en an audi­ence with pope Pius XII, spend­ing twen­ty min­utes with the Holy Father–“a time usu­al­ly allot­ted by Vat­i­can pro­to­col to queens.” How­ev­er, there was a more sin­is­ter side to the Rome trip. Using Bish­op Hudal as an inter­me­di­ary, she arranged to meet Bor­mann in an Ital­ian vil­la at Rapal­lo pro­vid­ed for her use by [Argen­tine ship­ping bil­lion­aire Alber­to] Dodero. The shipown­er was also present at the meet­ing, as was Eva’s broth­er Juan Duarte. There, she and her for­mer pay­mas­ter cut the deal that guar­an­teed that his Fuhrer’s safe haven would con­tin­ue to remain safe, and allowed Bor­mann to leave Europe at last for a new life in South Amer­i­ca. . . . ” 

Next, the dis­cus­sion turns to Peter Thiel and his Palan­tir firm, the  alpha preda­tor of the high-tech sur­veil­lance jun­gle. As we have seen and as we will review, there is rea­son to sus­pect that “Mr. AOC”–“Subhas Chan­dra” Chakrabarti–is a Thiel pro­tege.

Palan­tir is one of the firms piv­otal­ly involved with facil­i­tat­ing ICE’s activ­i­ties: ” . . . . The data­base cre­at­ed by Palan­tir uses infor­ma­tion pulled from the DHS, FBI and oth­er sources to build pro­files of peo­ple who have crossed the bor­der, includ­ing ‘school­ing, fam­i­ly rela­tion­ships, employ­ment infor­ma­tion, phone records, immi­gra­tion his­to­ry, for­eign exchange pro­gram sta­tus, per­son­al con­nec­tions, bio­met­ric traits, crim­i­nal records, and home and work address­es,’ the Inter­cept report­ed last year. . . . . Polic­ing soft­ware pro­vid­ed by Palan­tir and Foren­sic Logic’s COPLINK pro­gram enables Infor­ma­tion shar­ing between ICE and state and local law enforce­ment. . . . Palan­tir soft­ware has been imple­ment­ed by DHS fusion cen­ters across Cal­i­for­nia, as well as by police depart­ments in Los Ange­les, Long Beach, and Bur­bank; and sheriff’s depart­ments in Sacra­men­to, Ven­tu­ra, and Los Ange­les coun­ties. The com­pa­ny has received more than $50 mil­lion from these agen­cies since 2009, most­ly financed by DHS grants, the report shows. . . .”

We then review sub­stan­tive evi­dence of Thiel/Palantir/Chakrabarti net­work­ing:

1. Chakrabar­ti worked for Bridge­wa­ter Asso­ciates: ” . . . . After grad­u­at­ing from Har­vard, Mr. Chakrabar­ti worked for a year as a tech­nol­o­gy asso­ciate at the hedge fund Bridge­wa­ter Asso­ciates, and then moved to Sil­i­con Val­ley to help found the tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny Stripe. . . .”
2. Bridge­wa­ter Asso­ciates was a major source of the ven­ture cap­i­tal to launch Palan­tir.
3. For­mer FBI direc­tor James Comey was the chief coun­sel for Bridge­wa­ter Asso­ciates. As FBI direc­tor, Comey was instru­men­tal in han­dling the elec­tion to Trump.
4. It appears that Chakrabar­ti’s stint as head of prod­uct devel­op­ment at Stripe may well have been as a Thiel pro­tege.

Review­ing infor­ma­tion from past broad­casts, there are indi­ca­tions that the scape­goat­ing of ille­gal immi­grants by Team Trump is part of a “psy-op,” with AOC help­ing to gen­er­ate “black pro­pa­gan­da” by brand­ing the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty as “Ille­gal Immi­grants R Us.”

In FTR #718, we warned [back in 2010] that Face­book was not the cud­dly lit­tle enti­ty it was per­ceived to be but a poten­tial engine of fas­cism enabling. Momen­tum for the remark­ably timed immi­grant car­a­van that became a focal point for Trump/GOP/Fox News pro­pa­gan­da dur­ing the 2018 midterm elec­tions was gen­er­at­ed by a fake Face­book account, which mim­ic­ked a Hon­duran politician/human rights activist, Bar­to­lo Fuentes. Sig­nif­i­cant aspects of the event:

1. ” . . . . Face­book has admit­ted the account was an imposter account imper­son­at­ing a promi­nent Hon­duran politi­cian. But it is refus­ing to release infor­ma­tion about the account, who may have set it up or what coun­try it orig­i­nat­ed from. . . .”
2. ” . . . . In response to a query from Buz­zFeed News, a Face­book spokesper­son said the pho­ny account ‘was removed for vio­lat­ing [the company’s] mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion pol­i­cy,’ but declined to share any fur­ther infor­ma­tion, such as what coun­try it orig­i­nat­ed from, what email address was used to open it, or any oth­er details that might reveal who was behind it. Face­book added that, bar­ring a sub­poe­na or request from law enforce­ment, it does not share such infor­ma­tion out of respect for the pri­va­cy of its users. Fuentes said he believes it’s impor­tant to find out who was behind the rogue account — but hasn’t got­ten any answers from Face­book. ‘Who knows how many mes­sages could have been sent and who received them?’ . . . .”
3. ” . . . . Fuentes has been unable to get any infor­ma­tion from Face­book about the account, but one small detail stood out. Who­ev­er cre­at­ed it list­ed the Hon­duran cap­i­tal of Tegu­ci­gal­pa as Fuentes’s home­town, rather than the San Pedro Sula sub­urb of El Pro­gre­so. That might seem like a minor error, but it’s the sort of mis­take a for­eign­er — not a Hon­duran — would make about the well-known for­mer law­mak­er, whose left-wing par­ty stands in oppo­si­tion to the cur­rent president’s admin­is­tra­tion. . . . ”
4. ” . . . . It oper­at­ed entire­ly in Span­ish and pre­cise­ly tar­get­ed influ­encers with­in the migrant rights com­mu­ni­ty. And rather than crit­i­cize or under­mine the car­a­van — as oth­er online cam­paigns would lat­er attempt to do — it was used to legit­imize the event, mak­ing a loose­ly struc­tured grass­roots event appear to be a well-orga­nized effort by an estab­lished migrant group with a proven track record of suc­cess­ful­ly bring­ing Cen­tral Amer­i­can peo­ple to the US bor­der. . . .”
5. ” . . . . before the account got start­ed not many peo­ple seemed to be join­ing. Only after the account kicked into gear did enthu­si­asm and par­tic­i­pa­tion spike. The account also claimed false­ly that the car­a­van was being led by a migrant rights orga­ni­za­tion called Pueblo Sin Fron­teras. Lat­er, once the car­a­van swelled to a mas­sive scale, the Pueblo Sin Fron­teras did get involved, though in a sup­port rather than lead­er­ship role. . . .”
6. ” . . . . It appears that this account helped the car­a­van gain key momen­tum to the point where its size became a self-ful­fill­ing prophe­cy, spurring even more to join and groups which hadn’t been sup­port­ive to get involved. . . .”
7. ” . . . . It’s hard to believe one Face­book account could play that deci­sive a role. But the account seems to have been sophis­ti­cat­ed. And it is equal­ly dif­fi­cult to believe that a sophis­ti­ca­tor oper­a­tor or orga­ni­za­tion would have gone to such trou­ble and lim­it­ed their efforts to a sin­gle imposter account. . . .”

In the sum­mer of 2018, we high­light­ed the first degree mur­der charge laid against an “ille­gal” Mex­i­can migrant work­er fol­low­ing the dis­cov­ery of a deceased white Iowa col­lege girl Mol­lie Tib­betts. This became pro­pa­gan­da fod­der for Team Trump.

We note in this con­text that:

1. The announce­ment of River­a’s arrest for the Tib­betts mur­der hap­pened on the same day that Paul Man­afort’s con­vic­tion was announced and Michael Cohen plead­ed guilty. Might we be look­ing at an “op,” intend­ed to eclipse the neg­a­tive pub­lic­i­ty from the the Manafort/Cohen judi­cial events?
2. Rivera exhib­it­ed pos­si­ble symp­toms of being sub­ject­ed to mind con­trol, not unlike Sirhan Sirhan. ” . . . . Inves­ti­ga­tors say Rivera fol­lowed Mol­lie in his dark Chevy Mal­ibu as she went for a run around 7.30pm on July 18. He ‘blacked out’ and attacked her after she threat­ened to call the police unless he left her alone, offi­cers said. . . . It is not yet clear how Mol­lie died. . . . Rivera told police that after see­ing her, he pulled over and parked his car to get out and run with her. . . . Mol­lie grabbed her phone and threat­ened to call the police before run­ning off ahead. The sus­pect said that made him ‘pan­ic’ and he chased after her. That’s when he ‘blacked out.’ He claims he remem­bers noth­ing from then until he was back in his car, dri­ving. He then noticed one of her ear­phones sit­ting on his lap and blood in the car then remem­bered he’d stuffed her in the truck. . . . ‘He fol­lowed her and seemed to be drawn to her on that par­tic­u­lar day. For what­ev­er rea­son he chose to abduct her,’ Iowa Depart­ment of Crim­i­nal Inves­ti­ga­tion spe­cial agent Rick Ryan said on Tues­day after­noon. . . . ‘Rivera stat­ed that she grabbed her phone and said: ‘I’m gonna call the police.’ . . . . ‘Rivera said he then pan­icked and he got mad and that he ‘blocked’ his mem­o­ry which is what he does when he gets very upset and does­n’t remem­ber any­thing after that until he came to at an inter­sec­tion.’ . . .”
   
3. Just as Sirhan had been in a right-wing milieu pri­or to the Robert Kennedy assas­si­na­tion, so, too, was Rivera: ” . . . . The promi­nent Repub­li­can fam­i­ly which owns the farm where Mol­lie Tib­betts’ alleged killer worked have insist­ed that he passed back­ground checks for migrant work­ers. Christhi­an Rivera, 24, who is from Mex­i­co, was charged with first degree mur­der on Tues­day after lead­ing police to a corn field where Mol­lie’s body was dumped. Dane Lang, co-own­er of Yarrabee Farms along with Eric Lang, con­firmed that Rivera had worked there for four years and was an employ­ee ‘of good stand­ing.’ Dane’s broth­er is Craig Lang, for­mer pres­i­dent of the Iowa Farm Bureau Fed­er­a­tion and the Iowa Board of Regents, and a 2018 Repub­li­can can­di­date for state sec­re­tary of agri­cul­ture. . . .”
4. Trump cit­ed the Tib­betts mur­der in a Charleston, West Vir­ginia, ral­ly that day: ” . . . . Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump chirped in dur­ing his Tues­day address at a ral­ly in Charleston, West Vir­ginia, blam­ing immi­gra­tion laws for Mol­lie’s death. ‘You heard about today with the ille­gal alien com­ing in very sad­ly from Mex­i­co,’ he said. ‘And you saw what hap­pened to that incred­i­ble beau­ti­ful young woman. ‘Should’ve nev­er hap­pened, ille­gal­ly in our coun­try. We’ve had a huge impact but the laws are so bad. The immi­gra­tion laws are such a dis­grace. ‘We are get­ting them changed but we have to get more Repub­li­cans.’ Gov. Kim Reynolds com­plained about the ‘bro­ken’ immi­gra­tion sys­tem that allowed a ‘preda­tor’ to live in her state. . . .”

In a tran­si­tion to our next pro­gram, we under­score the deci­sive role of Glenn Green­wald in paving the legal road for the real­iza­tion of the “Lead­er­less Resis­tance” strat­e­gy that dom­i­nates the con­tem­po­rary polit­i­cal land­scape.

We note in this con­text:

1. Cit­i­zen Green­wald’s views on immi­gra­tion echo those of Don­ald Trump: “ . . . . ‘The parade of evils caused by ille­gal immi­gra­tion is wide­ly known,’ Green­wald wrote in 2005. The facts, to him, were indis­putable: ‘ille­gal immi­gra­tion wreaks hav­oc eco­nom­i­cal­ly, social­ly, and cul­tur­al­ly; makes a mock­ery of the rule of law; and is dis­grace­ful just on basic fair­ness grounds alone.’ Defend­ing the nativist con­gress­man Tom Tan­cre­do from charges of racism, Green­wald wrote of ‘unman­age­ably end­less hordes of peo­ple [who] pour over the bor­der in num­bers far too large to assim­i­late, and who con­se­quent­ly have no need, moti­va­tion or abil­i­ty to assim­i­late.’ Those hordes, Green­wald wrote, posed a threat to ‘mid­dle-class sub­ur­ban vot­ers.’ . . . .”
2. Green­wald ran legal inter­fer­ence for the Nation­al Alliance, which pub­lish­es books to serve as “How-To” man­u­als for lethal vio­lence against its self-pro­claimed racial ene­mies, includ­ing ille­gal immi­grants: “. . . . In 2002 he defend­ed a stri­dent anti-immi­gra­tion group, Nation­al Alliance, in a New York civ­il rights law­suit after two Mex­i­can day work­ers were beat­en and stabbed on Long Island by two men pos­ing as con­trac­tors in search of labor­ers. The vic­tims claimed that the anti-immi­gra­tion rhetoric of Nation­al Alliance, which urged racist vio­lence against Lati­no immi­grants and oth­er racial minori­ties, was part­ly to blame for the beat­ings. Green­wald argued that the case rep­re­sent­ed a mis­guid­ed attempt to impose lia­bil­i­ty and pun­ish­ment on groups because of their polit­i­cal and reli­gious views. . . .”
3. Cit­i­zen Green­wald was pur­pose­ly mis­lead­ing about his work in the case. The Nation­al Alliance was being held for civic lia­bil­i­ty, not crim­i­nal, and Green­wald was pur­pose­ful­ly oblique about this: ” . . . . ‘The law­suit was a very dan­ger­ous attempt to start impos­ing lia­bil­i­ty and pun­ish­ment on groups because of their polit­i­cal and reli­gious views,’ Glenn Green­wald, a Man­hat­tan attor­ney rep­re­sent­ing the Nation­al Alliance and oth­er groups, was quot­ed by Newsweek as say­ing. ‘If you can be liable for the actions of oth­er peo­ple who hear your views, then you would be afraid to ever express any views that were ever uncon­ven­tion­al.’ . . .”

1. In addi­tion to all the oth­er fishy aspects of AOC’s polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion, the cir­cum­stances of her defeat of Joe Crow­ley are alto­geth­er ques­tion­able. Her #Abol­ishICE cam­paign appears to be receiv­ing sup­port from abroad, includ­ing bot and troll activ­i­ty.

“NOT HERE FOR PROGRESS: Meet the Tea Par­ty-esque Insur­gency Seek­ing to ‘Rebuild the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty from Scratch’ ” by Portlus Glam; The Medi­um; 8/6/2018.

. . . . What real­ly hap­pened in the Bronx?

(O) Oca­sio-Cortez has talked a big game about her “upset” vic­to­ry over Joe Crow­ley, a ten-term con­gress­man on the short list to become next Speak­er of the House. In real­i­ty, she cap­i­tal­ized on an extreme­ly low pri­ma­ry turnout to eek out a 57% vs. 43% (15,897 vs. 11,761) vic­to­ry. And while it is true that the young can­di­date deployed an impres­sive grass­roots can­vass­ing strat­e­gy, the dev­il is in the details— includ­ing dirty local pol­i­tics, vit­ri­olic cam­paign rhetoric, far left agi­ta­tors, and an inten­sive Face­book adver­tis­ing blitz in the lead up to the pri­ma­ry.

℗ Part of the local con­tro­ver­sy revolved around the involve­ment of dis­graced ex-Queens politi­cian Hiram Mon­ser­rate. A domes­tic abuser who spent time in prison on a cor­rup­tion con­vic­tion, Mon­ser­rate has feud­ed with Crow­ley for years. Dur­ing their con­tentious pri­ma­ry, Crow­ley accused Oca­sio-Cortez of seek­ing sup­port from the ex-con, even speak­ing at an event held at a Demo­c­rat Club he runs in Queens.

In her trade­mark racial iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics offen­sive against Crow­ley, Oca­sio-Cortez denied the accu­sa­tion, say­ing she had sought the sup­port of the club “not Hiram Mon­ser­rate” and “was at the only Lati­no Demo­c­ra­t­ic Club in East Elmhurst and Coro­na. That’s where I was.” Yet after Oca­sio-Cortez secured the nom­i­na­tion, Mon­ser­rate told the New York Post “there were a group of us, in the (club) and oth­er com­mu­ni­ty activists I have been work­ing with for years who under­stood that we would do our part to get rid of Joe Crowley…We were in sup­port of Alexandria’s cam­paign.”

(Q) The sen­ti­ment to “get rid” of Joe Crow­ley was not just a local one, as far left agi­ta­tors from across the coun­try ral­lied online in sup­port of Oca­sio-Cortez. In fact, the vast major­i­ty of Oca­sio-Cortez cam­paign dona­tions have come from out-of-dis­trict and out-of-state. Of par­tic­u­lar note is Blue Amer­i­ca PAC, a “col­lab­o­ra­tion between the authors/publishers of DownWithTyranny.com, Hullabaloo.com and CrooksandLiars.com.” The PAC made an $11,000 inde­pen­dent expen­di­ture in oppo­si­tion to Joe Crow­ley, cre­at­ing the web­site QueensAgainstCrowley.com.

While Oca­sio-Cortez may claim this was an inde­pen­dent or unen­dorsed endeav­or, her NYC Cam­paign Finance Board pro­file lists Blue Amer­i­ca as an affil­i­at­ed orga­ni­za­tion. The meme-heavy social media pages for the PAC’s var­i­ous web­sites pushed out vit­ri­olic blog and social media posts dur­ing the pri­ma­ry, using bud­get graph­ics with British-Eng­lish copy to pro­mote hash­tags like #Abol­ishICE #Berniewould­have­won and #Mob­Boss­Crow­ley. It could not be deter­mined how much of this con­tent was pro­mot­ed through Face­book adver­tis­ing to tar­get spe­cif­ic demo­graph­ics liv­ing in the 14th dis­trict. . . .

. . . . ‘What is the point of a blue wave?’

It is a ques­tion Alexan­dria Oca­sio-Cortez posed on Twit­ter in the month before the pri­ma­ry. It’s also a haunt­ing­ly famil­iar sen­ti­ment that echoes the hos­tile, anti-Demo­c­rat rhetoric that defined Sanders’ 2016 pri­ma­ry cam­paign. . . .

(S) . . . . For any­one engag­ing with Oca­sio-Cortez’ social media posts, the for­eign bot and troll activ­i­ty is notice­ably syn­chro­nized and per­va­sive. There’s no bet­ter exam­ple than the #Abol­ishICE cam­paign she cham­pi­oned as her num­ber one pri­ma­ry issue and has helped take nation­al. Much of her social media con­tent has focused on the “Abol­ish ICE solu­tion” to immi­gra­tion reform while accus­ing “Boss Crow­ley” and oth­er Democ­rats of being “Pro-ICE”. In the one month lead up to the June pri­ma­ry, Oca­sio-Cortez’ cam­paign spent over $80,000 on Face­book adver­tis­ing — the largest of her expen­di­tures. . . .

2a. AOC has quot­ed and defend­ed Eva Per­on. Although this may just be anoth­er man­i­fes­ta­tion of iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics, it is worth not­ing that Eva Per­on (nee Eva Duarte) was a Nazi spy pri­or to and dur­ing World War II, and a Bormann/Vatican agent after that.

“AOC’s Chief-of-Staff Wears T‑Shirt Fea­tur­ing Nazi Col­lab­o­ra­tor” by Mary Oster; The For­ward; 7/10/2019.

. . . . The T‑shirt con­tro­ver­sy comes days after Oca­sio-Cortez quot­ed Evi­ta Perón, the first lady of Argenti­na who was a Nazi sym­pa­thiz­er, in a tweet in response to news that Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump had com­pared the two women.

“I know that, like every woman of the peo­ple, I have more strength than I appear to have,” Oca­sio-Cortez tweet­ed, quot­ing Per­on. She wrote in a sec­ond tweet quot­ing her: “I had watched for many years and seen how a few rich fam­i­lies held much of Argentina’s wealth and pow­er in their hands. So the gov­ern­ment brought in an eight hour work­ing day, sick­ness pay and fair wages to give poor work­ers a fair go.” . . . .

2b. “Evi­ta” Duarte, lat­er Eva Per­on, was a Nazi spy, even before she mar­ried Juan Per­on.

Grey Wolf: The Escape of Adolf Hitler by Simon Dun­stan and Ger­rard Williams; Ster­ling [HC]; Copy­right 2011 by Simon Dun­stan, Ger­rard Williams and Spit­fire Recov­ery Ltd.; ISBN 978–1‑4027–8139‑1; p. 198.

. . . . Mar­tin Bor­mann, as always, was entire­ly clear-sight­ed, and dur­ing that year he put in hand his plan to pre­pare and fund that refuge–Aktion Feur­land. The Nazi sym­pa­thiz­ers in Argenti­na enjoyed a vir­tu­al­ly free rein, con­tin­u­ing to oper­ate schools with Nazi sym­bols and ide­ol­o­gy and meet­ing reg­u­lar­ly (although by 1943, not as pub­licly as before), but the key con­spir­a­tors were few–a group lim­it­ed to peo­ple Bor­mann had rea­son to trust. These includ­ed a clique of pow­er­ful, venal bankers and indus­tri­al­ists such as Lud­wig Freude; a charis­mat­ic ambitouis army offi­cer, Juan Domin­go Per­on; and a beau­ti­ful, intel­li­gent acress, Eva Duarte. . . .

2c. More about Bor­mann and Eva Duarte (lat­er Eva Per­on):

Grey Wolf: The Escape of Adolf Hitler by Simon Dun­stan and Ger­rard Williams; Ster­ling [HC]; Copy­right 2011 by Simon Dun­stan, Ger­rard Williams and Spit­fire Recov­ery Ltd.; ISBN 978–1‑4027–8139‑1; p. 210.

. . . . Lud­wig Freude’s and Eva Duar­te’s involve­ment in the smug­gling oper­a­tion was made clear in an Argen­tine police doc­u­ment of April 18, 1945. This detailed the oper­a­tions of Freude, “agent of the Third Reich,” and his deal­ings with an Argen­tine agent, “Natalio.” This infor­mant report­ed that Freude had made very sub­stan­tial deposits in var­i­ous Buenos Aires banks in the name of the “well-known radio-the­atri­cal actress Maria Eva Duarte.” Freude told Natalio that on Feb­ru­ary 7, 1945, a U‑boat had brought huge funds to help in the recon­struc­tion of the Nazi empire. Sub­se­quent police inves­ti­ga­tions revealed that cas­es from the U‑boat with the words Geheime Reichssache (“Reich Top Secret”) sten­ciled on them, had been tak­en to a Lahusen ranch run by two “Nazi broth­ers, just out­side Buenos Aires.” Deposits of gold and var­i­ous cur­ren­cies were lat­er made in Eva’s name at the Ban­co Ale­man Transat­lanti­co, Ban­co Ger­man­i­co, and Ban­co Torn­quist. . . .

2d. After mar­ry­ing Juan Per­on, Evi­ta helped final­ize Bor­man­n’s decamp­ment to Argenti­na:

Grey Wolf: The Escape of Adolf Hitler by Simon Dun­stan and Ger­rard Williams; Ster­ling [HC]; Copy­right 2011 by Simon Dun­stan, Ger­rard Williams and Spit­fire Recov­ery Ltd.; ISBN 978–1‑4027–8139‑1; p. 258.

. . . .The all-con­quer­ing Evi­ta left Spain for Rome on June 25, 1947. Father Ben­itez would smooth her way in the Vat­i­can with the aid of Bish­op Alois Hudal [one of the key mem­bers of the Vatican/Nazi “Rat­line”]. Two days after she arrived she was giv­en an audi­ence with pope Pius XII, spend­ing twen­ty min­utes with the Holy Father–“a time usu­al­ly allot­ted by Vat­i­can pro­to­col to queens.” How­ev­er, there was a more sin­is­ter side to the Rome trip. Using Bish­op Hudal as an inter­me­di­ary, she arranged to meet Bor­mann in an Ital­ian vil­la at Rapal­lo pro­vid­ed for her use by [Argen­tine ship­ping bil­lion­aire Alber­to] Dodero. The shipown­er was also present at the meet­ing, as was Eva’s broth­er Juan Duarte. There, she and her for­mer pay­mas­ter cut the deal that guar­an­teed that his Fuhrer’s safe haven would con­tin­ue to remain safe, and allowed Bor­mann to leave Europe at last for a new life in South Amer­i­ca. How­ev­er, she and her team had one shock­ing dis­ap­point­ment for Bor­mann. . . .  

3.  Palan­tir was con­tract­ed to a case man­age­ment sys­tem that allows ICE to sur­veil, track, and deport immi­grants across the US, draw­ing on infor­ma­tion from sources like the DHS, FBI and oth­er gov­ern­ment data­bas­es to build pro­files in immi­grants.

“Tech Com­pa­nies Are Prof­it­ing Off ICE Depor­ta­tions, Report Shows” by Erin Cor­bett; For­tune: 10/23/2018.

Tech and data com­pa­nies are building—and prof­it­ing from—the Trump administration’s depor­ta­tion machine, pro­vid­ing local, state, and fed­er­al law enforce­ment agen­cies with the data analy­sis and track­ing soft­ware nec­es­sary for a mas­sive web of sur­veil­lance, a new report shows. . . .

. . . . The “Who’s Behind ICE? The tech and data com­pa­nies fuel­ing depor­ta­tions” report, pre­pared by Empow­er LLC and com­mis­sioned by the Lati­no and immi­gra­tion rights orga­ni­za­tions Mijente, the Nation­al Immi­gra­tion Project, and the Immi­grant Defense Project, details an expan­sive net­work, and shows that key tech companies—including Ama­zon, Palan­tir Tech­nolo­gies, and Foren­sic Logic—are prof­it­ing from it. . . .

. . . . ICE col­lects data, which it uses to build pro­files of undoc­u­ment­ed per­sons, with the intent to arrest, detain, and deport them. Infor­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy (IT) spend­ing accounts for near­ly 10% of DHS’s bud­get, or $6.8 bil­lion, mak­ing it the largest IT bud­get in the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, accord­ing to data from the DHS Con­gres­sion­al Bud­get Jus­ti­fi­ca­tion FY 2019.

Mijente has pres­sured Palan­tir to drop its $51 mil­lion con­tract with ICE to build a web case man­age­ment sys­tem that helps the agency sur­veil, track, and deport immi­grants across the coun­try. . . .

. . . . The data­base cre­at­ed by Palan­tir uses infor­ma­tion pulled from the DHS, FBI and oth­er sources to build pro­files of peo­ple who have crossed the bor­der, includ­ing “school­ing, fam­i­ly rela­tion­ships, employ­ment infor­ma­tion, phone records, immi­gra­tion his­to­ry, for­eign exchange pro­gram sta­tus, per­son­al con­nec­tions, bio­met­ric traits, crim­i­nal records, and home and work address­es,” the Inter­cept report­ed last year.

Mean­while, Ama­zon receives mil­lions of dol­lars to host Palan­tir, as well as back­ups of DHS’s vast data­base of bio­met­ric infor­ma­tion on its web servers, accord­ing to the report. The two com­pa­nies are dom­i­nat­ing the mar­ket to meet the fed­er­al government’s data stor­age needs, build­ing an increas­ing­ly effec­tive depor­ta­tion and incar­cer­a­tion infra­struc­ture for the Trump admin­is­tra­tion, activists say. . . .

. . . . Polic­ing soft­ware pro­vid­ed by Palan­tir and Foren­sic Logic’s COPLINK pro­gram enables Infor­ma­tion shar­ing between ICE and state and local law enforce­ment. Many of the cities with Palan­tir con­tracts across Cal­i­for­nia are sanc­tu­ary cities, accord­ing to Gon­za­lez, who says there have been more and more poli­cies intro­duced to pro­hib­it this kind of data shar­ing by pri­vate par­ties.

Palan­tir soft­ware has been imple­ment­ed by DHS fusion cen­ters across Cal­i­for­nia, as well as by police depart­ments in Los Ange­les, Long Beach, and Bur­bank; and sheriff’s depart­ments in Sacra­men­to, Ven­tu­ra, and Los Ange­les coun­ties. The com­pa­ny has received more than $50 mil­lion from these agen­cies since 2009, most­ly financed by DHS grants, the report shows.

Fusion cen­ters were cre­at­ed to cen­tral­ize intel­li­gence gath­er­ing, analy­sis, and dis­sem­i­na­tion into a sin­gle inte­grat­ed sys­tem, acces­si­ble to law enforce­ment agen­cies from the local lev­el up to the fed­er­al intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty. They are one of the largest tools for DHS and ICE infor­ma­tion shar­ing, and ICE’s largest data source. Fusion cen­ters have been used to mon­i­tor and tar­get immi­grants, as well as activists. . . .

4a. Online pay­ment com­pa­ny Stripe was a point of pro­fes­sion­al rela­tion­ship between “Mr. AOC”–Saikat Chakrabarti–and Peter Thiel. (As we have seen, Chakrabar­ti was AOC’s cam­paign man­ag­er, is her chief of staff, found­ed both PAC’s back­ing AOC and heads a polit­i­cal con­sult­ing com­pa­ny that received almost a mil­lion dol­lars from Chakrabar­ti’s two PACs.)

Again, as high­light­ed in the series “Social­ists for Trump and Hitler, (The “Assis­tance”)”, Chakrabar­ti is an appar­ent polit­i­cal acolyte of Sub­has Chan­dra Bose–“The Duce of Ben­gal.” He host­ed a YouTube video defend­ing AOC, wear­ing his Sub­has Chan­dra Bose T‑shirt.

Accord­ing to Chakrabarti’s LinkedIn pro­file, he joined Stripe, the online pay­ment com­pa­ny, as a “Found­ing Engi­neer” in Feb­ru­ary of 2011 and worked there until May 2013. He built up the prod­uct team at Stripe dur­ing this peri­od accord­ing to the Politi­co pro­file on Chakrabar­ti, so he was clear­ly a very impor­tant per­son at the com­pa­ny at this ear­ly stage.

Here’s the pos­si­ble Thiel con­nec­tion: Stripe was start­ed in 2010 by Patrick and John Col­li­son in 2010. Accord­ing to a linked arti­cle on the begin­nings of the com­pa­ny, the broth­ers start­ed work­ing on Stripe in ear­ly 2010, spent about six months devel­op­ing the core idea, and at that point they real­ized they were on to some­thing big but need­ed insti­tu­tion­al back­ing. The broth­ers went to Y Com­bi­na­tor to raise their cap­i­tal. Y Com­bi­na­tor is a ‘start­up accel­er­a­tor’ that Patrick had already used to start an ear­li­er com­pa­ny, Auc­tomat­ic. Y‑Combinator only invest­ed $20,000-$30,000.

Accord­ing to the linked arti­cle, it was that next sum­mer (the sum­mer of 2011) that the Col­li­son broth­ers met with Peter Thiel after Thiel spoke at a Y‑Combinator din­ner. Thiel, who co-found­ed Pay­Pal with Elon Musk, had a num­ber of insights into the online pay­ment mar­ket­place and offered to invest in Stripe. Thiel brought in Elon Musk, Sequoia Cap­i­tal, and Andreeseen Horowitz as investors and they raised $2 mil­lion.

So–offi­cial­ly– Chakrabar­ti joins Stripe in Feb­ru­ary of 2011 and in the sum­mer of 2011 they meet Thiel who brings in a num­ber of new investors.

In fact, that meet­ing with Thiel and the new invest­ments must have hap­pened well before the sum­mer of 2011 because there is a Tech Crunch arti­cle from the end of March 2011 talk­ing about Thiel and the rest of the new investors rais­ing $2 mil­lion for Stripe. And in the actu­al inter­view that fol­low­ing arti­cle is based on, Patrick Col­li­son makes it sound like Strip got its $2 mil­lion invest­ment in the fall of 2010.

This sug­gests the dis­tinct pos­si­bil­i­ty that Chakrabar­ti came on board Stripe after Thiel and the rest of his team of investors got involved.

IF Chakrabar­ti got involved after Thiel invest­ed, that rais­es the ques­tions of: a) whether Chakrabar­ti already knew Thiel before join­ing Stripe and b) the ques­tion of what his rela­tion­ship with Thiel was after join­ing Stripe and before jump­ing into left-wing pol­i­tics.

The fol­low­ing arti­cle is based on a rough­ly 60-minute inter­view with Patrick Col­li­son. At  rough­ly 36 min­utes into the inter­view, Patrick recounts that ear­ly fundrais­ing and puts a time frame of receipt of the fund­ing by “Team Thiel” at the end of the sum­mer of 2010. The peri­od from August 2010-Sep­tem­ber 2011 was appar­ent­ly involved with build­ing the ini­tial Stripe prod­uct. Based on that chronol­o­gy, the hir­ing of Chakrabar­ti as the head of prod­uct devel­op­ment hap­pened after this team of investors got involved:

“Start­up Grind Hosts Patrick Col­li­son of Stripe, 6 Months In – Full Inter­view” by Fran­cis­co Cruz; The Start­up Grind; 02/19/2012.

. . . . Grow­ing and Scal­ing Stripe

[00:35:46.5] Patrick Col­li­son: Friends told oth­er friends, this kind of stuff. We couldn’t have them use Stripe because I mean the prob­lem is I told you how the account pay­ment process actu­al­ly hap­pened in the bank, and so we sort of con­vinced our­selves that there might be some­thing inter­est­ing here, but now we had to actu­al­ly go try and build the infra­struc­ture and make it work. And so we decid­ed at the end of that sum­mer that we would go and take this seri­ous­ly and we would go and build that infra­struc­ture and fig­ure out what­ev­er it is that we need to learn and actu­al­ly launch it prop­er­ly. So we took some invest­ment and Y Com­bi­na­tor, Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Sequoia and There­sean Hard­woods invest­ed in our c brand.

[00:36:26.9] Any­body we’ve heard of?

[00:36:27.6] Patrick Col­li­son: Then we basi­cal­ly spent the next four­teen months build­ing the infra­struc­ture that could actu­al­ly make this work. Some­thing from like August 2010 to the end of Sep­tem­ber 2011, it was build­ing infra­struc­ture. We final­ly launched it to the pub­lic I think it was 30th Sep­tem­ber 2011. Just over six months ago.

4b. Based on the inter­view tran­script, it sounds like that 14 month peri­od of build­ing the Stripe infra­struc­ture start­ed in August of 2010 and took place after they raised their cap­i­tal. That’s a lit­tle mys­te­ri­ous and then it gets weird­er: Accord­ing to the fol­low­ing arti­cle from March 28, 2011, the $2 mil­lion was raised by that point, but Stripe at that point wouldn’t com­ment on whether or not the financ­ing hap­pened at all. We can be con­fi­dent that the $2 mil­lion invest­ment was made before the end of March 2011, but we don’t know pre­cise­ly  when it hap­pened in part because Stripe wouldn’t even con­firm it hap­pened at all at that point.

Why the mys­tery?

We’re left with a range of time when this invest­ment led by Peter Thiel hap­pened: some time between August of 2010 and March of 2011. And Chakrabar­ti joined Stripe in Feb­ru­ary 2011. So the avail­able evi­dence strong­ly sug­gests Chakrabar­ti was one of the first peo­ple brought on board after this $2 mil­lion invest­ment.

The fact that Chakrabar­ti was appar­ent­ly a key employ­ee in this ear­ly phased of Strip sug­gests that Chakrabar­ti like­ly got to know Peter Thiel as a result of work­ing there if he didn’t already know him. And giv­en Thiel’s role as a key financier of far right pol­i­tics in the US and Chakrabarti’s clear enthu­si­asm for Sub­has Chan­dra Bose, the ques­tion of what kind of rela­tion­ship Chakrabar­ti had with Thiel in the lead up to his deci­sion to drop every­thing and jump into left-wing pol­i­tics is a pret­ty rel­e­vant ques­tion.

“Stealth Pay­ment Start­up Stripe Backed By Pay­Pal Founders” by Michael Arring­ton; Tech Crunch; 03/28/2011.

There isn’t much infor­ma­tion out there about Stripe, a new pay­ments start­up cofound­ed by broth­ers Patrick Col­li­son and John Col­li­son (last seen sell­ing their start­up Auc­tomat­ic to Live Cur­rent Media for $5 mil­lion).

It’s an online busi­ness to busi­ness and busi­ness to con­sumer pay­ments provider, we’ve con­firmed. “How is it dif­fer­ent than Pay­Pal or Google Check­out?” I asked some­one who’s seen the prod­uct. Their answer – “It doesn’t suck.”

Devel­op­ers have a lot of trou­ble get­ting the var­i­ous pay­ments parts to work prop­er­ly – from get­ting a mer­chant account to mak­ing the soft­ware work prop­er­ly on your web­site. And then there is fee goug­ing. Stripe is said to make the process very, very easy for devel­op­ers.

Appar­ent­ly Stripe real­ly doesn’t suck, because the com­pa­ny has tak­en approx­i­mate­ly $2 mil­lion in a ven­ture round from Pay­Pal founders Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, as well as Sequoia Cap­i­tal, Andreesen Horowitz and SV Angel. Stripe was val­ued at around $20 mil­lion in the round, we’ve heard but haven’t con­firmed. The com­pa­ny wouldn’t com­ment on whether or not the financ­ing occurred at all. . . . .

2a. In our last pro­gram, we not­ed that Chakrabar­ti worked for Bridge­wa­ter Asso­ciates. James Comey was the fir­m’s gen­er­al coun­sel and the com­pa­ny helped cap­i­tal­ize Palan­tir.

For­mer FBI direc­tor James Comey was the for­mer gen­er­al coun­sel for Bridge­wa­ter Asso­ciates, the world’s largest hedge fund, which pro­vid­ed a big chunk of start-up cap­i­tal for Palan­tir.

2b. In FTR #718, we warned [back in 2010] that Face­book was not the cud­dly lit­tle enti­ty it was per­ceived to be but a poten­tial engine of fas­cism enabling. Momen­tum for the remark­ably timed immi­grant car­a­van that became a focal point for Trump/GOP/Fox News pro­pa­gan­da dur­ing the recent­ly-con­clud­ed midterm elec­tions was gen­er­at­ed by a fake Face­book account, which mim­ic­ked a Hon­duran politician/human rights activist, Bar­to­lo Fuentes. Sig­nif­i­cant aspects of the event:

1. ” . . . . Face­book has admit­ted the account was an imposter account imper­son­at­ing a promi­nent Hon­duran politi­cian. But it is refus­ing to release infor­ma­tion about the account, who may have set it up or what coun­try it orig­i­nat­ed from. . . .”
2. ” . . . . In response to a query from Buz­zFeed News, a Face­book spokesper­son said the pho­ny account ‘was removed for vio­lat­ing [the company’s] mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion pol­i­cy,’ but declined to share any fur­ther infor­ma­tion, such as what coun­try it orig­i­nat­ed from, what email address was used to open it, or any oth­er details that might reveal who was behind it. Face­book added that, bar­ring a sub­poe­na or request from law enforce­ment, it does not share such infor­ma­tion out of respect for the pri­va­cy of its users. Fuentes said he believes it’s impor­tant to find out who was behind the rogue account — but hasn’t got­ten any answers from Face­book. ‘Who knows how many mes­sages could have been sent and who received them?’ . . . .”
3. ” . . . . Fuentes has been unable to get any infor­ma­tion from Face­book about the account, but one small detail stood out. Who­ev­er cre­at­ed it list­ed the Hon­duran cap­i­tal of Tegu­ci­gal­pa as Fuentes’s home­town, rather than the San Pedro Sula sub­urb of El Pro­gre­so. That might seem like a minor error, but it’s the sort of mis­take a for­eign­er — not a Hon­duran — would make about the well-known for­mer law­mak­er, whose left-wing par­ty stands in oppo­si­tion to the cur­rent president’s admin­is­tra­tion. . . . ”
4. ” . . . . It oper­at­ed entire­ly in Span­ish and pre­cise­ly tar­get­ed influ­encers with­in the migrant rights com­mu­ni­ty. And rather than crit­i­cize or under­mine the car­a­van — as oth­er online cam­paigns would lat­er attempt to do — it was used to legit­imize the event, mak­ing a loose­ly struc­tured grass­roots event appear to be a well-orga­nized effort by an estab­lished migrant group with a proven track record of suc­cess­ful­ly bring­ing Cen­tral Amer­i­can peo­ple to the US bor­der. . . .”
5. ” . . . . before the account got start­ed not many peo­ple seemed to be join­ing. Only after the account kicked into gear did enthu­si­asm and par­tic­i­pa­tion spike. The account also claimed false­ly that the car­a­van was being led by a migrant rights orga­ni­za­tion called Pueblo Sin Fron­teras. Lat­er, once the car­a­van swelled to a mas­sive scale, the Pueblo Sin Fron­teras did get involved, though in a sup­port rather than lead­er­ship role. . . .”
6. ” . . . . It appears that this account helped the car­a­van gain key momen­tum to the point where its size became a self-ful­fill­ing prophe­cy, spurring even more to join and groups which hadn’t been sup­port­ive to get involved. . . .”
7. ” . . . . It’s hard to believe one Face­book account could play that deci­sive a role. But the account seems to have been sophis­ti­cat­ed. And it is equal­ly dif­fi­cult to believe that a sophis­ti­cat­ed oper­a­tor or orga­ni­za­tion would have gone to such trou­ble and lim­it­ed their efforts to a sin­gle imposter account. . . .”

3. In the sum­mer of 2018, we high­light­ed the first degree mur­der charge laid against an “ille­gal” Mex­i­can migrant work­er fol­low­ing the dis­cov­ery of a deceased white Iowa col­lege girl Mol­lie Tib­betts. This became pro­pa­gan­da fod­der for Team Trump.

We note in this con­text that:

1. The announce­ment of River­a’s arrest for the Tib­betts mur­der hap­pened on the same day that Paul Man­afort’s con­vic­tion was announced and Michael Cohen plead­ed guilty. Might we be look­ing at an “op,” intend­ed to eclipse the neg­a­tive pub­lic­i­ty from the the Manafort/Cohen judi­cial events?
2. Rivera exhib­it­ed pos­si­ble symp­toms of being sub­ject­ed to mind con­trol, not unlike Sirhan Sirhan. ” . . . . Inves­ti­ga­tors say Rivera fol­lowed Mol­lie in his dark Chevy Mal­ibu as she went for a run around 7.30pm on July 18. He ‘blacked out’ and attacked her after she threat­ened to call the police unless he left her alone, offi­cers said. . . . It is not yet clear how Mol­lie died. . . . Rivera told police that after see­ing her, he pulled over and parked his car to get out and run with her. . . . Mol­lie grabbed her phone and threat­ened to call the police before run­ning off ahead. The sus­pect said that made him ‘pan­ic’ and he chased after her. That’s when he ‘blacked out.’ He claims he remem­bers noth­ing from then until he was back in his car, dri­ving. He then noticed one of her ear­phones sit­ting on his lap and blood in the car then remem­bered he’d stuffed her in the truck. . . . ‘He fol­lowed her and seemed to be drawn to her on that par­tic­u­lar day. For what­ev­er rea­son he chose to abduct her,’ Iowa Depart­ment of Crim­i­nal Inves­ti­ga­tion spe­cial agent Rick Ryan said on Tues­day after­noon. . . . ‘Rivera stat­ed that she grabbed her phone and said: ‘I’m gonna call the police.’ . . . . ‘Rivera said he then pan­icked and he got mad and that he ‘blocked’ his mem­o­ry which is what he does when he gets very upset and does­n’t remem­ber any­thing after that until he came to at an inter­sec­tion.’ . . .”
   
3. Just as Sirhan had been in a right-wing milieu pri­or to the Robert Kennedy assas­si­na­tion, so, too, was Rivera: ” . . . . The promi­nent Repub­li­can fam­i­ly which owns the farm where Mol­lie Tib­betts’ alleged killer worked have insist­ed that he passed back­ground checks for migrant work­ers. Christhi­an Rivera, 24, who is from Mex­i­co, was charged with first degree mur­der on Tues­day after lead­ing police to a corn field where Mol­lie’s body was dumped. Dane Lang, co-own­er of Yarrabee Farms along with Eric Lang, con­firmed that Rivera had worked there for four years and was an employ­ee ‘of good stand­ing.’ Dane’s broth­er is Craig Lang, for­mer pres­i­dent of the Iowa Farm Bureau Fed­er­a­tion and the Iowa Board of Regents, and a 2018 Repub­li­can can­di­date for state sec­re­tary of agri­cul­ture. . . .”
4. Trump cit­ed the Tib­betts mur­der in a Charleston, West Vir­ginia, ral­ly that day: ” . . . . Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump chirped in dur­ing his Tues­day address at a ral­ly in Charleston, West Vir­ginia, blam­ing immi­gra­tion laws for Mol­lie’s death. ‘You heard about today with the ille­gal alien com­ing in very sad­ly from Mex­i­co,’ he said. ‘And you saw what hap­pened to that incred­i­ble beau­ti­ful young woman. ‘Should’ve nev­er hap­pened, ille­gal­ly in our coun­try. We’ve had a huge impact but the laws are so bad. The immi­gra­tion laws are such a dis­grace. ‘We are get­ting them changed but we have to get more Repub­li­cans.’ Gov. Kim Reynolds com­plained about the ‘bro­ken’ immi­gra­tion sys­tem that allowed a ‘preda­tor’ to live in her state. . . .”

“Promi­nent Iowa Repub­li­can Fam­i­ly which Owns Farm where Mol­lie Tib­betts’ Alleged Killer Worked say he PASSED Gov­ern­men­t’s Migrant Back­ground Check as the 24-year-old Is Charged with Her Mur­der after Admit­ting to ‘Chas­ing Her Down while Jog­ging’” by Ben Ash­ford, Chris Pleas­ance, Jen­nifer Smith and Han­nah Par­ry; Dai­ly Mail [UK]; 8/21/2018.

The promi­nent Repub­li­can fam­i­ly which owns the farm where Mol­lie Tib­betts’ alleged killer worked have insist­ed that he passed back­ground checks for migrant work­ers.

Christhi­an Rivera, 24, who is from Mex­i­co, was charged with first degree mur­der on Tues­day after lead­ing police to a corn field where Mol­lie’s body was dumped.

Dane Lang, co-own­er of Yarrabee Farms along with Eric Lang, con­firmed that Rivera had worked there for four years and was an employ­ee ‘of good stand­ing.’

Dane’s broth­er is Craig Lang, for­mer pres­i­dent of the Iowa Farm Bureau Fed­er­a­tion and the Iowa Board of Regents, and a 2018 Repub­li­can can­di­date for state sec­re­tary of agri­cul­ture.

Dane’s state­ment said: ‘First and fore­most, our thoughts and prayers are with the fam­i­ly and friends of Mol­lie Tib­betts.

‘This is a pro­found­ly sad day for our com­mu­ni­ty. All of us at Yarrabee Farms are shocked to hear that one of our employ­ees was involved and is charged in this case.

‘This indi­vid­ual has worked at our farms for four years, was vet­ted through the gov­ern­men­t’s E‑Verify sys­tem, and was an employ­ee in good stand­ing.

‘On Mon­day, the author­i­ties vis­it­ed our farm and talked to our employ­ees. We have coop­er­at­ed ful­ly with their inves­ti­ga­tion.’

The E‑Verify site allows employ­ers to estab­lish the eli­gi­bil­i­ty of employ­ees, both US or for­eign, by com­par­ing a work­er’s Employ­ment Eli­gi­bil­i­ty Ver­i­fi­ca­tion Form I‑9 with data held by the gov­ern­ment.

The employ­ee is eli­gi­ble to work in the US if the data match­es. If it does­n’t, the work­er has only eight fed­er­al gov­ern­ment work days to resolve the issue.

Despite the Lang fam­i­ly using the sys­tem, police say Rivera had been in the US ille­gal­ly for between four and sev­en years.

Inves­ti­ga­tors say Rivera fol­lowed Mol­lie in his dark Chevy Mal­ibu as she went for a run around 7.30pm on July 18.

He ‘blacked out’ and attacked her after she threat­ened to call the police unless he left her alone, offi­cers said. 

Rivera was iden­ti­fied by sur­veil­lance footage obtained in the last cou­ple of weeks from some­one’s home.

It showed him fol­low­ing the stu­dent in his car and Mol­lie run­ning ahead of him.  It is not yet clear how Mol­lie died. 

Ear­li­er Mon­day a mem­ber of the Lang fam­i­ly which runs Yarrabee Farms told DailyMail.com he was a per­son­al friend of Mol­lie and her broth­ers and was ‘dev­as­tat­ed’ by the news of her death.

It’s under­stood the com­pa­ny hires around 15 migrant work­ers, most of whom are believed to be Mex­i­can.

Rivera is believed to have lived with a num­ber of oth­er migrant work­ers on a seclud­ed farm­house in Brook­lyn owned by their employ­er.

Work­ers asso­ci­at­ed with the farm told DailyMail.com that they bare­ly knew Rivera but con­firmed that he lived there with a girl­friend named Iris Monar­rez and their baby.

They said Iris had gone to stay with her moth­er after Rivera was arrest­ed in Mol­lie’s mur­der.

Neigh­bors told DailyMail.com they had seen a black Chevy Mal­ibu just like the one Rivera was dri­ving when he abduct­ed Mol­lie reg­u­lar­ly dri­ving to and from the prop­er­ty for the past cou­ple of years. 

Mol­lie’s autop­sy is planned for Wednes­day but the results may not be released for weeks.

Rivera told police that after see­ing her, he pulled over and parked his car to get out and run with her. 

Mol­lie grabbed her phone and threat­ened to call the police before run­ning off ahead. The sus­pect said that made him ‘pan­ic’ and he chased after her.

That’s when he ‘blacked out.’  

He claims he remem­bers noth­ing from then until he was back in his car, dri­ving. 

He then noticed one of her ear­phones sit­ting on his lap and blood in the car then remem­bered he’d stuffed her in the truck. 

Rivera drove her then to a corn field where he hauled her body out of the truck and hid her beneath corn stalks.

He was arrest­ed on Fri­day after police honed in on his vehi­cle by view­ing sur­veil­lance footage obtained from a pri­vate res­i­den­t’s home sur­veil­lance cam­eras.

‘He fol­lowed her and seemed to be drawn to her on that par­tic­u­lar day. For what­ev­er rea­son he chose to abduct her,’ Iowa Depart­ment of Crim­i­nal Inves­ti­ga­tion spe­cial agent Rick Ryan said on Tues­day after­noon. 

But it’s still unclear what the motive behind the killing was, Rahn said.

Rivera told police he had seen her in the area before. She is friends on Face­book with the moth­er of his daugh­ter but it is not clear if he and Mol­lie knew each oth­er.

Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump chirped in dur­ing his Tues­day address at a ral­ly in Charleston, West Vir­ginia, blam­ing immi­gra­tion laws for Mol­lie’s death.

‘You heard about today with the ille­gal alien com­ing in very sad­ly from Mex­i­co,’ he said. ‘And you saw what hap­pened to that incred­i­ble beau­ti­ful young woman.

‘Should’ve nev­er hap­pened, ille­gal­ly in our coun­try. We’ve had a huge impact but the laws are so bad. The immi­gra­tion laws are such a dis­grace. 

‘We are get­ting them changed but we have to get more Repub­li­cans.’

Gov. Kim Reynolds com­plained about the ‘bro­ken’ immi­gra­tion sys­tem that allowed a ‘preda­tor’ to live in her state.

‘I spoke with Mol­lie’s fam­i­ly and passed on the heart­felt con­do­lences of a griev­ing state,’ Reynolds said. ‘I shared with them my hope that they can find com­fort know­ing that God does not leave us to suf­fer alone. Even in our dark­est moments, He will com­fort and heal our bro­ken hearts.’

At 3pm on Mon­day, law enforce­ment arrived at the farm­house where Rivera worked, accord­ing to a neigh­bor.

FBI agents were still search­ing the house and a num­ber of near­by trail­ers on Tues­day after­noon.

Neigh­bors said the build­ing housed a ‘revolv­ing door’ of hired migrant work­ers but that they had nev­er caused any prob­lems.

FBI agents attend­ed anoth­er near­by prop­er­ty belong­ing to the farm overnight Mon­day to quiz River­a’s co-work­ers, most of whom claim only to under­stand Span­ish.

‘There was a pan­ic when they arrived because they thought at first that it was ICE launch­ing a raid,’ a local source told DailyMail.com.

‘A lot of these peo­ple arrive with forged doc­u­ments. But it turned it was the FBI and it was about Mol­lie.’

Accord­ing to pub­lic records the prop­er­ty being searched is owned by Mary and Craig Lang, whose fam­i­ly own the near­by Yarrabee Farms.

Mol­lie was stay­ing alone overnight in her boyfriend’s home the night she went miss­ing and was last seen going for a jog in the neigh­bor­hood at around 8pm but what hap­pened after­wards has remained a com­plete mys­tery for weeks. 

Her boyfriend opened a Snapchat pho­to­graph from her at 10pm which appeared to sug­gest that she was indoors but it is not known what time Mol­lie sent it.

In his arrest war­rant, police describe River­a’s chill­ing con­fes­sion.

‘Rivera admit­ted to mak­ing con­tact with the female run­ning in Brook­lyn and that he pur­sued her in his vehi­cle in an area east of Brook­lyn. Defen­dant Rivera stat­ed he parked the vehi­cle, got out and was run­ning behind her and along­side of her.

‘Rivera stat­ed that she grabbed her phone and said: ‘I’m gonna call the police.’

‘Rivera said he then pan­icked and he got mad and that he ‘blocked’ his mem­o­ry which is what he does when he gets very upset and does­n’t remem­ber any­thing after that until he came to at an inter­sec­tion.

‘Rivera stat­ed he then made a u‑turn, drove back to an entrance to a field and then drove into a dri­ve­way to a corn­field.

‘He noticed there was an ear piece from head­phones in his lap and that this is how he real­ized he put her in the trunk.

‘He went to get her out of the trunk and he noticed blood on the side of her head.

‘He described the female’s cloth­ing, what she was wear­ing includ­ing an ear phone or head phone set.

‘He described that he dragged Tib­betts on foot from his vehi­cle to a seclud­ed loca­tion in a corn­field.

‘He put her over his shoul­der and took her about 20 meters into the corn­field and he left her cov­ered in some corn leaves and that he left her there, face up.

‘The Defen­dant was able to use his phone to deter­mine the route he trav­eled from Brook­lyn.

‘Rivera then lat­er guid­ed law enforce­ment to her loca­tion from mem­o­ry,’ the affi­davit con­tin­ues.

River­a’s arrest and the dis­cov­ery of the stu­den­t’s body brings an end to five weeks of tire­less inves­ti­ga­tion by the FBI, the Iowa Divi­sion of Crim­i­nal Inves­ti­ga­tion and local sher­iffs.

River­a’s ini­tial court appear­ance is sched­uled for 1pm Wednes­day in Mon­tezu­ma.

If con­vict­ed of first-degree mur­der he faces a manda­to­ry sen­tence of life in prison with­out parole.

Last week, the FBI said it believed she had been abduct­ed by some­one she knew.

They warned that the per­son was ‘hid­ing in plain sight’ and had even attend­ed vig­ils held in her hon­or but no arrests were made.

A $400,000 fund for her safe return was estab­lished but it did not pro­duce any leads either.

Greg Wil­ley of Crime Stop­pers of Cen­tral Iowa said her fam­i­ly and inves­ti­ga­tors would ded­i­cate their resources to catch­ing her killer ‘once they catch their breath’.

The Iowa Depart­ment of Crim­i­nal Inves­ti­ga­tion refused to share details of the dis­cov­ery on Tues­day when con­tact­ed by DailyMail.com.

The only per­son who had been vis­i­bly scru­ti­nized by police after she went miss­ing was pig farmer Wayne Cheney.

He was grilled by offi­cers more than once and had his prop­er­ty searched twice after search crews found a red t‑shirt that was sim­i­lar to one owned by the stu­dent near his land.

It was nev­er estab­lished if the t‑shirt did in fact belong to Mol­lie.

Mol­lie’s father Rob went back to Cal­i­for­nia, where he lives, last week for what he called a much need­ed ‘break’ from the inves­ti­ga­tion

He said he had been urged by author­i­ties to do so and that it was a ‘half way’ point in the inves­ti­ga­tion.

Rob was not in the state when his daugh­ter dis­ap­peared.

Her boyfriend, Dal­ton Jack, was away for work when she dis­ap­peared as was his old­er broth­er Blake.

The young­sters lived togeth­er in a home in Brook­lyn with Blake’s fiancee who was also cleared.

As the hunt for her inten­si­fied,  author­i­ties set up a web­site that was ded­i­cate to find­ing her.

It pro­vid­ed a map detail­ing five loca­tions police con­sid­ered to be sig­nif­i­cant. The web­site also offered a tips page which gen­er­at­ed hun­dreds of clues about what may have hap­pened to her.

The news of her death shook the small town of Brook­lyn where most res­i­dents are known to each oth­er.

The Rev. Joyce Proc­tor at Grace Unit­ed Methodist Church said she’d been pray­ing for Tib­betts’ ene­mies ‘to do the right thing... and release her.’

Sad­ly that nev­er hap­pened.

Proc­tor, who said she heard Tib­betts ‘was a won­der­ful young lady’, said peo­ple were in shock their lit­tle town isn’t as safe as they first believed it was, the Des Moines Reg­is­ter report­ed.

‘I told the ladies at our prayer group this morn­ing that if it’s not safe in Brook­lyn it’s not safe any­where,’ she said. ‘And I think that’s been a hard thing to real­ize for a lot of peo­ple here.’

4a. Anoth­er icon of the so-called “pro­gres­sive” sector–Glenn Greenwald–harbors views on immi­gra­tion which have a Trumpian tone:

“Would You Feel Dif­fer­ent­ly About Snow­den, Green­wald, and Assange If You Knew What They Real­ly Thought?” by Sean Wilentz; The New Repub­lic; 1/19/2014.

. . . . Greenwald’s oth­er clients includ­ed the neo-Nazi Nation­al Alliance, who were impli­cat­ed in an espe­cial­ly hor­ri­ble crime. Two white suprema­cists on Long Island had picked up a pair of unsus­pect­ing Mex­i­can day labor­ers, lured them into an aban­doned ware­house, and then clubbed them with a crow­bar and stabbed them repeat­ed­ly. The day labor­ers man­aged to escape, and when they recov­ered from their injuries, they sued the Nation­al Alliance and oth­er hate groups, alleg­ing that they had inspired the attack­ers. . . .

. . . . On cer­tain issues, though, his [Green­wald’s] prose was suf­fused with right-wing con­ceits and catch­phras­es. One exam­ple was immi­gra­tion, on which Green­wald then held sur­pris­ing­ly hard-line views. “The parade of evils caused by ille­gal immi­gra­tion is wide­ly known,” Green­wald wrote in 2005. The facts, to him, were indis­putable: “ille­gal immi­gra­tion wreaks hav­oc eco­nom­i­cal­ly, social­ly, and cul­tur­al­ly; makes a mock­ery of the rule of law; and is dis­grace­ful just on basic fair­ness grounds alone.” Defend­ing the nativist con­gress­man Tom Tan­cre­do from charges of racism, Green­wald wrote of “unman­age­ably end­less hordes of peo­ple [who] pour over the bor­der in num­bers far too large to assim­i­late, and who con­se­quent­ly have no need, moti­va­tion or abil­i­ty to assim­i­late.” Those hordes, Green­wald wrote, posed a threat to “mid­dle-class sub­ur­ban vot­ers.” . . . .

4b. In addi­tion to Matthew Hale, Green­wald also rep­re­sent­ed a con­sor­tium of neo-Naz­i/White Suprema­cist groups, includ­ing the Nation­al Alliance.

Being sued for incit­ing two white suprema­cists to attack Lati­no day-labor­ers, they were rep­re­sent­ed by Green­wald. It was Green­wald’s con­tention that he was moti­vat­ed by the need to pre­serve the free speech rights of these groups.

“The Day the Blog­gers Won” by Eric Boehlert; salon.com; 5/19/2007.

. . . . His work was at times polit­i­cal in the sense that he took on unpop­u­lar clients in free speech cas­es that spot­light­ed the prac­ti­cal ten­sions between the rights of indi­vid­u­als and the col­lec­tive urges of the com­mu­ni­ty. In 2002 he defend­ed a stri­dent anti-immi­gra­tion group, Nation­al Alliance, in a New York civ­il rights law­suit after two Mex­i­can day work­ers were beat­en and stabbed on Long Island by two men pos­ing as con­trac­tors in search of labor­ers. The vic­tims claimed that the anti-immi­gra­tion rhetoric of Nation­al Alliance, which urged racist vio­lence against Lati­no immi­grants and oth­er racial minori­ties, was part­ly to blame for the beat­ings. Green­wald argued that the case rep­re­sent­ed a mis­guid­ed attempt to impose lia­bil­i­ty and pun­ish­ment on groups because of their polit­i­cal and reli­gious views. A fed­er­al judge threw out the case. . . .

4c. More about the attack on the Mex­i­can day-labor­ers and Green­wald’s defense of the Nation­al Alliance.

“Anti-Immi­grant Groups Can’t Be Held Liable for Attack” [AP]; First Amend­ment Cen­ter; 9/16/2002.

A fed­er­al judge has dis­missed a civ­il rights law­suit that held sev­en anti-immi­gra­tion orga­ni­za­tions part­ly respon­si­ble for the bru­tal Sep­tem­ber 2000 attack on a pair of Mex­i­can day labor­ers.

But work­ers Israel Perez and Mag­daleno Estra­da can still pur­sue civ­il rights claims against the two men con­vict­ed of beat­ing them, U.S. Dis­trict Judge Joan­na Sey­bert ruled on Sept. 13.

In her deci­sion, Sey­bert said the sev­en groups did not vio­late the two immi­grants’ civ­il rights by mak­ing anti-immi­grant state­ments. A lawyer for one of the groups, the Farm­ingville-based Sachem Qual­i­ty of Life, praised the rul­ing. . . .

. . . Perez and Estra­da were beat­en and stabbed by Christo­pher Slavin and Ryan Wag­n­er in Sep­tem­ber 2000. The pair had posed as con­trac­tors look­ing for day labor­ers.

Both attack­ers were con­vict­ed of attempt­ed mur­der, and sen­tenced to 25 years in prison. . . .

. . . . The news­pa­per also report­ed that the law­suit claimed that the phi­los­o­phy of white suprema­cist orga­ni­za­tions — includ­ing the West Vir­ginia-based Nation­al Alliance and Amer­i­can Patrol in Sher­man Oaks, Calif. — urged racist vio­lence against Lati­no immi­grants and oth­er racial minori­ties. News­day report­ed that Brew­ing­ton said the group’s urg­ings prompt­ed the attacks.

“The law­suit was a very dan­ger­ous attempt to start impos­ing lia­bil­i­ty and pun­ish­ment on groups because of their polit­i­cal and reli­gious views,” Glenn Green­wald, a Man­hat­tan attor­ney rep­re­sent­ing the Nation­al Alliance and oth­er groups, was quot­ed by Newsweek as say­ing. “If you can be liable for the actions of oth­er peo­ple who hear your views, then you would be afraid to ever express any views that were ever uncon­ven­tion­al.”