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

Intro­duc­tion: Sup­ple­ment­ing pre­vi­ous lines of inquiry and intro­duc­ing new ones, this pro­gram begins with dis­cus­sion of so-called “fly­ing saucers,” not­ing that disc-shaped air­craft have been devel­oped by our nation­al secu­ri­ty estab­lish­ment.

For­mer Air Force Sergeant Robert Vinson–an eye­wit­ness to an Oswald dou­ble fly­ing out of Dal­las on 11/22/1963–was post­ed to Site 51 (“Area 51”) out­side of Las Vegas. While at the base, he learned of saucer-shaped air­craft being flown by the CIA at the base.

The devel­op­ment of so-called “fly­ing saucers” may well have evolved from Project Paper­clip and the incor­po­ra­tion of Third Reich rock­et and avi­a­tion spe­cial­ists, as well as advanced tech­nol­o­gy, into the U.S. nation­al secu­ri­ty estab­lish­ment.

Turn­ing to the sub­ject of the Boston Marathon bomb­ing, we note that bomber Tamer­lan Tsar­naev’s heav­i­ly-redact­ed immi­gra­tion files rein­force the sus­pi­cion that, if his back­ground were more ful­ly revealed, it would prove embar­rass­ing and/or dam­ag­ing to the pow­ers that be.

In FTR #773, among oth­er pro­grams and posts, we not­ed that the Boston Marathon bomb­ing appears to have been blow­back from ongo­ing covert “ops” using Islamist proxy war­riors in the Earth Island.

Piv­ot­ing to the back­ground of anoth­er jihadist oper­at­ing in Chech­nya, we note that Mohamed Atta asso­ciate Mohame­dou Ould Slahi–like Atta himself–was a ben­e­fi­cia­ry of the Carl Duis­berg Soci­ety.

In FTR #911, we not­ed the Third Reich’s use of Crimean Tatars and the incor­po­ra­tion of those proxy war­riors into the West­ern intel­li­gence establishment–especially the CIA and Gehen “Org”–after the con­clu­sion of World War II.

Sup­ple­ment­ing that infor­ma­tion, we note that Ger­hard von Mende worked for Frank Wis­ner’s OPC.

Against the back­ground of the use of jihad­sts as proxy war­riors and armed her­alds of cor­po­ratist eco­nom­ics, we note a very strange inci­dent in San Bernardi­no coun­ty. After reports of sev­en­teen Mus­lim men “chant­i­ng” and fir­ing “hun­dreds of shots,” the FBI let the men go with­out charg­ing them, a devel­op­ment that rais­es more ques­tions than than it answers.

Turn­ing to the sub­ject of the sus­pi­cious­ly high mor­tal­i­ty among finan­cial indus­try exec­u­tives, we note the sui­cide of Mar­tin Senn. In FTR #‘s 772, 792 and 823, we not­ed the remark­able num­ber of sus­pi­cious deaths in the glob­al finan­cial indus­try, usu­al­ly dis­missed as “sui­cides,” often despite over­whelm­ing evi­dence to the con­trary. Now, Mar­tin Senn, has joined his for­mer CFO (Pierre Wau­thi­er), alleged­ly tak­ing his own life.

The deaths of Senn and Wau­thi­er are the lat­est in what some see as an unusu­al num­ber of sui­cides in the realm of Swiss finance–” . . . . He [Mar­tin Nav­ille] knew Senn, who was pres­i­dent of the cham­ber, as well as Wau­thi­er, who had British-French dual cit­i­zen­ship. He also knew Carsten Schlot­er, the Ger­man-born head of tele­coms group Swiss­com, who took his life in 2013, and Alex Wid­mer, head of bank Julius Baer, who com­mit­ted sui­cide in 2008. . . .. . . . Staid for most of its near­ly 150 years, Zurich Insur­ance rose to promi­nence in the 1990s with a series of takeovers. But its for­tunes turned in 2001, when the Sept. 11 attacks in the Unit­ed States left it with heavy loss­es, while run­away expens­es at its head­quar­ters hit the bot­tom line – and share­hold­er trust. . . .”

Next, we turn to an inter­est­ing devel­op­ment in U.S.–Asian rela­tions con­cerns Philip­pine pres­i­dent-elect Rodri­go Duterte’s resent­ment of the U.S. over a pos­si­ble covert oper­a­tion that appears to over­lap the decades-long U.S. intel­li­gence involve­ment with the vast amount of Gold­en Lily loot secret­ed in the Philip­pines and accessed by Japan, Amer­i­can intel­li­gence and right-wing oper­a­tives to finance their activ­i­ties.

An Amer­i­can who called him­self Michael Ter­rence Meir­ing and made oblique jokes about being with the CIA was seri­ous­ly injured in an explo­sion in the Philip­pines city of Davao, whose may­or at the time was Duterte.

IF Meir­ing was, in fact, work­ing for the Agency, it may well have been in con­nec­tion with the decades-old search for and use of the Gold­en Lily trea­sure stashed by the Japan­ese dur­ing the clos­ing phase of World War II.

Con­clud­ing with recent devel­op­ments in Israel, the pro­gram quotes for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Ehud Barak say­ing some­thing that would get most jour­nal­ists and researchers in A LOT of trou­ble. In FTR #834, among oth­er pro­grams and posts, we not­ed the pres­ence in Israel and the Zion­ist move­ment a sig­nif­i­cant fas­cist ele­ment. That ele­ment is rapid­ly gain­ing pow­er, draw­ing the com­ment from for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Ehud Barak that Israel “had been infect­ed by the seeds of fas­cism.” We will fur­ther ana­lyze the growth of fas­cism in Israel in a future pro­gram.

Pro­gram High­lights Include:

• Review of the his­to­ry of Third Reich and Amer­i­can spon­sor­ship of Islamist com­bat­ants as proxy war­riors.
• A high­ly spec­u­la­tive ele­ment rumi­nat­ing about the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the mus­lim men fir­ing shots in San Bernardi­no Coun­ty may turn up as assas­sins of Don­ald Trump, if in fact “The Don­ald” proves too incen­di­ary and idio­syn­crat­ic for the tastes of the pow­er elite. That would make Oba­ma and the Democ­rats look “weak on ter­ror­ism,” and inflame Trump’s sup­port­ers, while afford­ing the GOP to field a more “con­ven­tion­al” can­di­date.
• Review of some of the “col­lat­er­al­ized death oblig­a­tions” that have beset the finan­cial indus­try.
• Review of the var­i­ous facets of the Gold­en Lily oper­a­tion.

1. For­mer Air Force Sergeant Robert Vinson–an eye­wit­ness to an Oswald dou­ble fly­ing out of Dal­las on 11/22/1963–was post­ed to Site 51 (“Area 51”) out­side of Las Vegas.

While at the base, he learned of saucer-shaped air­craft being flown by the CIA at the base.

For more on the sub­ject of so-called UFO’s, see FTR #‘s 66, 67, 68, 167, 178, 588, 639, 873, 874,  as well as L‑1 and L‑2.

The devel­op­ment of so-called “fly­ing saucers” may well have evolved from Project Paper­clip and the incor­po­ra­tion of Third Reich rock­et and avi­a­tion spe­cial­ists, as well as advanced tech­nol­o­gy, into the U.S. nation­al secu­ri­ty estab­lish­ment.

JFK and the Unspeak­able: Why He Died and Why It Mat­ters by James W. Dou­glass; Touch­stone Books [SC]; Copy­right 2008 by James W. Dou­glas; ISBN 978–1‑4391–9388‑4; p. 301.

 . . . . On his new assign­ment, Vin­son would soon learn that the CIA’s projects out of Site 51 includ­ed exper­i­men­tal air­craft shaped like saucers. The same was true at the CIA’s oth­er base at Roswell, New Mex­i­co, where the C‑54 car­ry­ing the sec­ond Oswald had land­ed. Both Site 51 and Roswell were home to “fly­ing saucers” that peo­ple saw peri­od­i­cal­ly in the area. They in fact came not from out­er space but from the CIA, which encour­aged the fly­ing saucer reports as a con­ve­nient cov­er sto­ry for U.S. exper­i­men­tal air­craft. . . .

2. In FTR #773, among oth­er pro­grams and posts, we not­ed that the Boston Marathon bomb­ing appears to have been blow­back from ongo­ing covert “ops” using Islamist proxy war­riors in the Earth Island. The heavy cen­sor­ship of Tamer­lan Tsar­naev’s immi­gra­tion files rein­forces the sus­pi­cion that there is infor­ma­tion about the bombers that is too sen­si­tive to be released.

Only 206 of the 751 pages of the immi­gra­tion file on Tsar­naev and his friend Ibrag­im Toda­shev were released in their entire­ty!

“Fed­eral Files Leave Ques­tions about Marathon bomber, Friend” by Maria Sac­chetti; Boston Globe; 2/29/2016.

Gov­ern­ment says it han­dled their immi­gra­tion cas­es prop­erly; files are heav­ily edit­ed

Tamer­lan Tsar­naev passed the US cit­i­zen­ship test three months before he and his younger broth­er det­o­nated two bombs at the Boston Marathon, accord­ing to fed­eral immi­gra­tion records obtained under the Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act.

His test results, with cor­rect answers to ques­tions about slav­ery, the Con­sti­tu­tion, and the Louisiana Pur­chase, are in 651 pages of pre­vi­ously con­fi­den­tial files on the bomber and his friend Ibrag­im Toda­shev. Both men were killed in sep­a­rate inci­dents after the April 15, 2013, bomb­ings.

The Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­rity pro­vided redact­ed files to The Boston Globe after mul­ti­ple requests span­ning three years. Only 206 pages were released in their entire­ty, so it remains unclear why the gov­ern­ment grant­ed the friends legal res­i­dency and put them on the path toward US cit­i­zen­ship.

But the records show that months before the bomb­ings, Tsar­naev went to the John F. Kennedy Fed­eral Build­ing in Boston, swore his alle­giance to the Unit­ed States, and denied any links to ter­ror­ism. The records also show that Toda­shev told immi­gra­tion offi­cials he had left Mass­a­chu­setts in Sep­tem­ber 2011, the same month he alleged­ly helpedTsar­naev kill three men in Waltham.

Until now, the gov­ern­ment had declined to release the files, cit­ing ongo­ing crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tions. But the mys­tery stirred debate about why immi­gra­tion offi­cials grant­ed Tsar­naev and Toda­shev refuge in the first place, and whether offi­cials missed warn­ing signs about their crim­i­nal activ­ity as their cas­es pro­gressed through US Cit­i­zen­ship and Immi­gra­tion Ser­vices.

On Sun­day, the agency issued a state­ment say­ing the cas­es were processed cor­rect­ly.

...

If fed­eral offi­cials raised secu­rity con­cerns about Tamer­lan Tsar­naev or Toda­shev, they did not dis­close them in the heav­ily redact­ed immi­gra­tion files. Instead, the files sketch a por­trait of Tsar­naev and Toda­shev, both eth­nic Chechens from Rus­sia, as men strug­gling with unem­ploy­ment and pover­ty while try­ing to cement their ties to the Unit­ed States, Tsar­naev through cit­i­zen­ship and Toda­shev through a green card. They had so lit­tle income that the gov­ern­ment waived their immi­gra­tion appli­ca­tion fees, offi­cials said.

Tamer­lan Tsar­naev came to Amer­ica as a teenag­er in 2003, after secur­ing a visa in Turkey. His fam­ily had bounced between Kyr­gyzs­tan, Kaza­khstan, and Dages­tan in south­ern Rus­sia before set­tling in Cam­bridge.

In August 2012, after a 178-day trip to Rus­sia, Tsar­naev stopped by the Cam­bridge office of Cen­tro Lati­no, a now-defunct non­profit, for help in apply­ing for cit­i­zen­ship. He did not stand out; the orga­ni­za­tion helped hun­dreds of immi­grants of all back­grounds fill out the forms every year.

...

In his appli­ca­tion, Tsar­naev wrote that he want­ed to change his first name to that of an ear­ly Islam­ic schol­ar, Muaz— a move crit­ics lat­er said should have spurred the gov­ern­ment to inves­ti­gate fur­ther. He also dis­closed a 2009 arrest for assault­ing a for­mer girl­friend, and that he was receiv­ing gov­ern­ment ben­e­fits and had recent­ly trav­eled over­seas.

On Jan. 23, 2013, immi­gra­tion offi­cer David McCor­mack inter­viewed Tsar­naev and test­ed his Eng­lish and knowl­edge of US his­tory and gov­ern­ment. He answered six civics ques­tions cor­rectly to pass: He knew that Africans had been slaves, that there are 27 con­sti­tu­tional amend­ments, and that the Unit­ed States bought Louisiana from the French in 1803. He also iden­ti­fied “Joe Biden” as the vice pres­i­dent, said Con­gress makes fed­eral laws, and that the colonists fought the British over “high tax­es.” He cor­rectly read a ques­tion about vot­ing and wrote the answer: “Cit­i­zens can vote.”

His sole error was to say that the fed­eral court, and not the Supreme Court, is the high­est court in the Unit­ed States.

After­ward, the immi­gra­tion offi­cer checked the box next to the sen­tence that said: “You passed the tests of Eng­lish and US his­tory and gov­ern­ment.”

But instead of mark­ing the box that said, “Con­grat­u­la­tions! Your appli­ca­tion has been rec­om­mended for approval,” the offi­cer checked the next box, which said, “A deci­sion can­not yet be made about your appli­ca­tion.”

Rea­sons for the delay are unclear in the file pro­vided to the Globe. Ear­lier, a fed­eral report had saidthat Tsarnaev’s cit­i­zen­ship appli­ca­tion was delayed because the gov­ern­ment did not have his crim­i­nal court records from the 2009 case.

But those records are in the file pro­vided to the Globe. Home­land Secu­rity con­firmed on Sun­day that records in the file obtained by the Globe show that Tsar­naev fur­nished those records to the immi­gra­tion offi­cer and that the offi­cer had rec­om­mended him for cit­i­zen­ship, pend­ing a supervisor’s review because of his crim­i­nal his­to­ry.

All that stood between him and US cit­i­zen­ship was a supervisor’s approval, which was required, and a final swear­ing-in cer­e­mo­ny.

Todashev’s file shows he applied for a green card twice. He received asy­lum short­ly after arriv­ing in the Unit­ed States in 2008 from Rus­sia. The file shows he lived in Penn­syl­va­nia, Geor­gia, and Mass­a­chu­setts, stay­ing in Chelsea, Water­town, Cam­bridge, and final­ly All­ston before mov­ing to Flori­da.

In May 2011, a top immi­gra­tion offi­cial in Atlanta, Paul Onyan­go, denied his green card appli­ca­tion because Toda­shev had not pro­vided court records from a crim­i­nal road-rage inci­dent in Boston. The offi­cial said he would not refer Toda­shev for depor­ta­tion, how­ever, which Home­land Secu­rity said was typ­i­cal in such sit­u­a­tions.

The next year, Toda­shev tried again. He was issued a green card on Feb. 5, 2013, accord­ing to Home­land Secu­rity. But short­ly after the bomb­ings, a top immi­gra­tion offi­cial sent the Boston immi­gra­tion office a memo titled “with­hold­ing of adju­di­ca­tion” — sug­gest­ing a shift in his case.

The rea­son is unclear, because the record is redact­ed.

3. In dis­cus­sion about Guan­tanamo detainee Mohame­dou Ould Slahi, the fact that he–like Mohamed Atta–was the ben­e­fi­cia­ry­of a schol­ar­ship from the Carl Duis­berg Soci­ety. He also worked with three mem­bers of the Ham­burg cell and coun­seled them to receive train­ing in Afghanistan before wag­ing jihad in Chech­nya.

One won­ders to what extent the appar­ent­ly on going effort to sup­port jihadis in the Cau­ca­sus helped pre­cip­i­tate the sup­pres­sion of the facts con­cern­ing 9/11.

” Mohame­dou Ould Slahi;” wikipedia.org

Mohame­dou Ould Slahi (Ara­bic: محمد ولد صلاحي‎‎) (born Decem­ber 31, 1970) is a Mau­ri­tan­ian who has been detained at Guan­tá­namo Bay deten­tion camp since 2002. He is being held under the author­i­ty of Autho­riza­tion for Use of Mil­i­tary Force Against Ter­ror­ists (AUMF), alleged by the U.S. gov­ern­ment to be “part of” al Qae­da at the time of his arrest in Novem­ber 2001.

Slahi trav­eled to Afghanistan in Decem­ber 1990 “to sup­port the mujahideen.”^[4](p4) At that time, the mujahideen in Afghanistan were attempt­ing to top­ple the com­mu­nist gov­ern­ment of Moham­mad Najibul­lah. The Unit­ed States also opposed Najibul­lah and sup­port­ed the mujahideen against him. Slahi trained in an al Qae­da camp and swore bay­at to the orga­ni­za­tion in March 1991. He returned to Ger­many soon after but trav­eled back to Afghanistan for two months in ear­ly 1992. Slahi states that, after leav­ing Afghanistan that time, that he “sev­ered all ties with ... al-Qae­da.”^[4](p5) The U.S. gov­ern­ment main­tains that Slahi “recruit­ed for al-Qae­da and pro­vid­ed it with oth­er sup­port” since then.^{[4](p5) . . . .}

. . . . Slahi was an excep­tion­al stu­dent in high school in Mau­ri­ta­nia. In 1988 he received a schol­ar­ship from the Carl Duis­berg Soci­ety to study in Ger­many, where he earned an elec­tri­cal engi­neer­ing degree from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Duis­burg.^[2][5][17] In 1991, Slahi trav­eled to Afghanistan to join the muja­hed­din fight­ing against the com­mu­nist cen­tral gov­ern­ment.^[17] He trained for sev­er­al weeks at the al Farouq train­ing camp near Khost.^[18] At the end of his train­ing in March 1991, he swore bay­at to al Qae­da and was giv­en the kun­ya (nom de guerre) of “Abu Musab.”^[6][19] He returned to Ger­many. . . .

. . . . The 9/11 Com­mis­sion Report report­ed that in 1999, Slahi advised three mem­bers of the Ham­burg Cell to trav­el to Afghanistan to obtain train­ing before wag­ing jihad in Chech­nya.

4. In FTR #721, we exam­ined the devel­op­ment of West­ern intel­li­gence uti­liza­tion of Islamists and the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in par­tic­u­lar. Much of the pro­gram cen­tered on Ger­hardt von Mende, a Third Reich intel­li­gence oper­a­tive who used his Third Reich Islamists on behalf of the Fed­er­al Repub­lic of Ger­many.

In A Mosque in Munich: Nazis, the CIA and the Rise of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in the West, Ian John­son writes about von Mende, main­tain­ing that he had numer­ous offers from U.S. intel­l­li­gence.

In Amer­i­ca’s Nazi Secret, John  Lof­tus informs us that von Mende did indeed go to work for U.S. intel­li­gence, report­ing direct­ly to CIA offi­cial Frank Wis­ner. (FTR #731 fea­tures an inter­view with Lof­tus about the book.)

Amer­i­ca’s Nazi Secret by John Lof­tus; Trine­Day [SC]; p. 81.

. . . The third man to sup­ply infor­ma­tion to Wis­ner was Pro­fes­sor Ger­hardt von Mende, a deputy in the Nazi Min­istry for the Occu­pied East­ern Ter­ri­to­ries,  who had favored using Islam­ic col­lab­o­ra­tionist politi­cians to estab­lish a net­work of Nazi pup­pet gov­ern­ments as a wall against the Rus­sians. . . .

5. An arti­cle that rais­es ques­tions graced The Los Ange­les Times in late March. A group of 17 “Mid­dle East­ern men” fired “hun­dreds of shots” and were heard “chant­i­ng.” No arrests were made.

This in San Bernardi­no Coun­ty!

Although one of the rifles lacked ser­i­al num­bers, hav­ing been assem­bled from spare parts, offi­cial­dom has been dis­mis­sive, although an FBI inves­ti­ga­tion appar­ent­ly con­tin­ues.

In an atmos­phere in which peo­ple speak­ing in Ara­bic have been removed from com­mer­cial air­line flights, we have no answers, but lot of ques­tions in this regard:

•  With the transnational/GOP/Underground Reich fac­tion of U.S. intel­li­gence fund­ing jihadists as proxy war­riors and armed her­alds of cor­po­ratist eco­nom­ics, we won­der if these men might have been trainees, with pro­tec­tion by covert action spon­sors?
• Will a ter­ror­ist inci­dent be allowed to take place in order to make Oba­ma look “weak” and “soft on ter­ror­ism?”
• In a vari­a­tion of the pre­vi­ous point, we won­der about Don­ald Trump. Scorned by the GOP estab­lish­ment, he has opined that the U.S. should lessen its NATO com­mit­ment and refrain from “nation build­ing.” This can­not sit well with dom­i­nant ele­ments of the nation­al secu­ri­ty estab­lish­ment. With the Cal­i­for­nia pri­ma­ry upcom­ing, we won­der if “Islam­ic terrorists/ISIS” will be allowed to do to Trump what was done to Robert F. Kennedy in 1968 and George Wal­lace in 1972? This would make Oba­ma look “weak” and “soft on ter­ror­ism,” at the same time as elim­i­nat­ing Trump, enrag­ing his fol­low­ers and chan­nel­ing them toward the GOP can­di­date of choice.

“FBI Inves­ti­gat­ing Reports of Mid­dle East­ern Men Fir­ing Hun­dreds of Shots in Apple Val­ley” by Richard Win­ston; Los Ange­les Times; 3/29/2016.

The FBI on Tues­day was con­tin­u­ing to ques­tion peo­ple after receiv­ing reports from campers that a group of armed men in a remote part of Apple Val­ley fired hun­dreds of shots Sun­day morn­ing.

San Bernardi­no Coun­ty sheriff’s deputies and an FBI agent respond­ed to the area known as Deep Creek Hot Springs after reports of gun­shots and chant­i­ng in the predawn hours, offi­cials said. Accord­ing to law enforce­ment sources, 17 men of Mid­dle East­ern descent were detained.

But none were arrest­ed or charged in con­nec­tion with shoot­ing firearms and they coop­er­at­ed with deputies, author­i­ties said.

San Bernardi­no Coun­ty sher­if­f’s spokes­woman Jodi Miller said the men were released after author­i­ties found no evi­dence of a spe­cif­ic crime or out­stand­ing war­rants.

“None of the per­sons inter­viewed yes­ter­day were iden­ti­fied as ter­ror­ists,” she said.

One rifle did not have a ser­i­al num­ber because it was bought in parts, Miller said. But it was deemed to be legal in Cal­i­for­nia. She said the FBI may be con­duct­ing addi­tion­al inter­views with the men.

FBI spokes­woman Lau­ra Eimiller said agents are work­ing with local author­i­ties to deter­mine if crimes were com­mit­ted.

A caller to 911 report­ed hear­ing more than 100 shots fired and see­ing sev­er­al men wear­ing tur­bans in the area of the shoot­ing.

With the assis­tance of a sheriff’s heli­copter, deputies locat­ed the men walk­ing away from a creek car­ry­ing back­packs and oth­er items.

A search found sev­er­al hand­guns, a rifle and a shot­gun, accord­ing to a sheriff’s state­ment.

“A records check of the sub­jects, their weapons, and their vehi­cles was com­plet­ed,” the state­ment said. “The records check revealed none of the sub­jects had a crim­i­nal his­to­ry or out­stand­ing war­rants, the weapons were reg­is­tered with the Depart­ment of Jus­tice except for the rifle, and the vehi­cles were also reg­is­tered.”

Sheriff’s inves­ti­ga­tors con­tact­ed sev­er­al hik­ers, but none wit­nessed the guns being fired. “There was no evi­dence found that a crime had been com­mit­ted by any of the sub­jects who were detained, and they were released,” the depart­ment said.

A pho­to­graph tak­en at the scene shows the men hand­cuffed as sev­er­al deputies exam­ine their back­packs and equip­ment.

6. In FTR #‘s 772, 792 and 823, we not­ed the remark­able num­ber of sus­pi­cious deaths in the glob­al finan­cial indus­try, usu­al­ly dis­missed as “sui­cides,” often despite over­whelm­ing evi­dence to the con­trary. Now, the for­mer CEO of Zurich Insur­ance Group, Mar­tin Senn, has joined his for­mer CFO (Pierre Wau­thi­er), alleged­ly tak­ing his own life.

The deaths of Senn and Wau­thi­er are the lat­est in what some see as an unusu­al num­ber of sui­cides in the realm of Swiss finance–” . . . . He [Mar­tin Nav­ille] knew Senn, who was pres­i­dent of the cham­ber, as well as Wau­thi­er, who had British-French dual cit­i­zen­ship. He also knew Carsten Schlot­er, the Ger­man-born head of tele­coms group Swiss­com, who took his life in 2013, and Alex Wid­mer, head of bank Julius Baer, who com­mit­ted sui­cide in 2008. . . .. . . . Staid for most of its near­ly 150 years, Zurich Insur­ance rose to promi­nence in the 1990s with a series of takeovers. But its for­tunes turned in 2001, when the Sept. 11 attacks in the Unit­ed States left it with heavy loss­es, while run­away expens­es at its head­quar­ters hit the bot­tom line – and share­hold­er trust. . . .”

We note in pass­ing that the 9/11 attacks inflict­ed heavy loss­es on Zurich Insur­ance. Whether or not that had any­thing to do with the deaths remains to be deter­mined.

“A Sec­ond Zurich Insur­ance Exec­u­tive Has Com­mit­ted Sui­cide” by Alan­na Petroff; CNN Mon­ey; 5/30/2016.

The for­mer CEO of Zurich Insur­ance Group, Mar­tin Senn, has tak­en his own life just months after leav­ing the com­pa­ny.
Sen­n’s death comes less than three years after the com­pa­ny’s for­mer CFO, Pierre Wau­thi­er, also com­mit­ted sui­cide.

“It is with great shock and sad­ness that we must inform you of the sud­den death of Mar­tin Senn,” Zurich Insur­ance said in a state­ment on Mon­day. “His fam­i­ly informed us that Mar­tin took his life last Fri­day.”

Senn, 59, was a long-time employ­ee of the insur­er, serv­ing as its chief exec­u­tive for six years before step­ping down in Decem­ber.
Senn said he was con­fi­dent that Zurich was well posi­tioned to meet its tar­gets at the time of his res­ig­na­tion, but did acknowl­edge some “set­backs.”

The com­pa­ny had been plan­ning a large acqui­si­tion of the U.K. insur­ance firm RSA Group, but the deal was scup­pered in Sep­tem­ber due to a “dete­ri­o­ra­tion in the trad­ing per­for­mance of Zurich’s gen­er­al insur­ance busi­ness,” accord­ing to an RSA state­ment.

That part of the com­pa­ny’s busi­ness was under pres­sure after it was forced to pay out $275 mil­lion in claims relat­ed to a major port explo­sion in Tian­jin, Chi­na.
Wau­thi­er, who worked under Senn, was found dead at his home in Switzer­land in August 2013.

The exec­u­tive had writ­ten a note before his death that men­tioned Zurich’s well-known for­mer chair­man, Josef Ack­er­mann, who sub­se­quent­ly resigned from his post. . . .

7. An inter­est­ing devel­op­ment in U.S.–Asian rela­tions con­cerns Philip­pine pres­i­dent-elect Rodri­go Duterte’s resent­ment of the U.S. over a pos­si­ble covert oper­a­tion that appears to over­lap the decades-long U.S. intel­li­gence involve­ment with the vast amount of Gold­en Lily loot secret­ed in the Philip­pines and accessed by Japan, Amer­i­can intel­li­gence and right-wing oper­a­tives to finance their activ­i­ties.

An Amer­i­can who called him­self Michael Ter­rence Meir­ing and made oblique jokes about being with the CIA was seri­ous­ly injured in an explo­sion in the Philip­pines city of Davao, whose may­or at the time was Duterte.

IF Meir­ing was, in fact, work­ing for the Agency, it may well have been in con­nec­tion with the decades-old search for and use of the Gold­en Lily trea­sure stashed by the Japan­ese dur­ing the clos­ing phase of World War II.

(FTR #‘s 427, 428, 446, 451, 501, 509, 688, 689 deal with the sub­ject of the Gold­en Lily pro­gram suc­cess­ful­ly imple­ment­ed by the Japan­ese to loot Asia.)

Mr. Duterte has made state­ments that would make us VERY ner­vous if we were pro­vid­ing his med­ical insur­ance. It will be inter­est­ing to see if CIA does some “health alter­ation” on him.

“Mys­te­ri­ous Blast in Philip­pines Fuels Rodri­go Duterte’s ‘Hatred’ of U.S.” by Richard C. Pad­dock; The New York Times; 5/13/2016.

. . . . In an inter­view last year before he announced his can­di­da­cy, Mr. Duterte went so far as to acknowl­edge “hatred” for the Unit­ed States stem­ming from the obscure episode, when an Amer­i­can named Michael Ter­rence Meir­ing was charged with pos­ses­sion of explo­sives but man­aged to flee the Philip­pines.

Mr. Meir­ing called him­self a trea­sure hunter and joked about being with the C.I.A., mean­ing “Christ in Action.” He told the hotel staff not to touch a met­al box in his room, appar­ent­ly with good rea­son. On May 16, 2002, the box explod­ed, man­gling his legs and dam­ag­ing the hotel.

But three days lat­er, despite severe injuries and the charges against him, Mr. Meir­ing van­ished from his hos­pi­tal room. Philip­pine offi­cials lat­er said that men wav­ing F.B.I. badges had tak­en him in the dark of night and flown him out of the coun­try with­out their per­mis­sion.

Mr. Duterte expressed out­rage that the Unit­ed States would help a crim­i­nal sus­pect leave the coun­try with­out regard to Philip­pine law. He also fanned spec­u­la­tion that Mr. Meir­ing was involved in covert oper­a­tions con­duct­ed by the Unit­ed States in the Philip­pines. . . .

. . . . In the state­ment, accord­ing to pub­lished reports, the embassy acknowl­edged that F.B.I. agents went to the Ever­green Hotel to inves­ti­gate the explo­sion but “cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly” denied that the agency “had any role in Mr. Meiring’s depar­ture.”

The Meir­ing affair has long been the sub­ject of con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries in the Philip­pines. Much remains unex­plained, includ­ing why there were explo­sives in Mr. Meiring’s room and who mount­ed the oper­a­tion that helped him escape.

“Why should the U.S. take him out of the coun­try? That’s the puz­zle,” said a for­mer high-rank­ing Philip­pine intel­li­gence offi­cial who declined to be iden­ti­fied because he was not direct­ly involved in the case.

Accord­ing to news reports, Mr. Meir­ing had been going to Davao City on the island of Min­danao for many years, usu­al­ly stay­ing in the same suite at the Ever­green. He had doc­u­ments allow­ing him to hunt for trea­sure — which was believed to have been left by occu­py­ing Japan­ese forces dur­ing World War II — and an iden­ti­ty card allow­ing him to trav­el in ter­ri­to­ry held by sep­a­ratist Islam­ic rebels. . . .

“Is Fas­cism Ris­ing in Israel?” by Luke Bak­er [Reuters]; The Chris­t­ian Sci­ence Mon­i­tor; 5/23/2016. 

For­mer Prime Min­is­ter Ehud Barak warns of “the seeds of fas­cism.” Moshe Arens, who served as defense min­is­ter three times, sees it as a turn­ing point in Israeli pol­i­tics and expects it to cause a “polit­i­cal earth­quake.”

The past five days have pro­duced tumult in Israeli pol­i­tics, since con­ser­v­a­tive Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Netanyahu unex­pect­ed­ly turned his back on a deal to bring the cen­ter-left into his coali­tion and instead joined hands with far-right nation­al­ist Avig­dor Lieber­man, one of his most vir­u­lent crit­ics. . . .

. . . . The deci­sion to jet­ti­son Yaalon in favor of Lieber­man was all too much for Roni Daniel, a vet­er­an mil­i­tary affairs com­men­ta­tor on Chan­nel 2.

“I can­not urge my chil­dren to stay here, because it is a place that is not nice to be in,” he said in his monolog, going on to name a num­ber of far-right politi­cians. . . .

. . . . “What has hap­pened is a hos­tile takeover of the Israeli gov­ern­ment by dan­ger­ous ele­ments,” Ehud Barak, Israel’s most dec­o­rat­ed sol­dier and a for­mer defense min­is­ter fol­low­ing his spell as head of gov­ern­ment, told Chan­nel 10 TV.

Israel has been “infect­ed by the seeds of fas­cism,” he said, adding that it should be “a red light for all of us regard­ing what’s going on in the gov­ern­ment.” . . . .