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FTR#1366 This pro­gram was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment.

FTR#1367 This pro­gram was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment.

Peter Thiel
Pho­to Cred­it: Wikipedia.org

NB: This descrip­tion con­tains mate­r­i­al not con­tained or ref­er­enced in the orig­i­nal pro­grams.

Intro­duc­tion: Bring­ing up to date a num­ber of points of inquiry, the pro­gram details the pro­found role of Peter Thiel’s pro­fes­sion­al orbit in the make-up of Team Trump.

Pro­found­ly influ­enced by the writ­ings and views of Third Reich the­o­reti­cian Carl Schmitt, Thiel is at least as well-posi­tioned as for­mer Pay­Pal bud­dy Elon Musk to prof­it from the incom­ing Trump admin­is­tra­tion.

Of par­tic­u­lar sig­nif­i­cance is the ABN milieu’s craft­ing of a cur­ricu­lum to be taught to school chil­dren!

“. . . . The Vic­tims of Com­mu­nism Memo­r­i­al Foun­da­tion is an out­growth of the Nation­al Cap­tive Nations Com­mit­tee, a group found­ed by Ukrain­ian nation­al­ist Lev Dobri­an­sky to lob­by against any effort for detente with the Sovi­et Union. Its co-chair­man, Yaroslav Stet­sko, was a top leader of the fas­cist OUN‑B mili­tia that fought along­side Nazi Ger­many dur­ing its occu­pa­tion of Ukraine in World War Two. Togeth­er, the two helped found the World Anti-Com­mu­nist League that was described by jour­nal­ist Joe Cona­son as ‘the orga­ni­za­tion­al haven for neo-Nazis, fas­cists, and anti-Semit­ic extrem­ists from two dozen coun­tries.’. . .”

The cur­ricu­lum man­i­fests fas­cist ide­ol­o­gy: ” . . . . Its method­ol­o­gy was also uni­ver­sal­ly panned, with many point­ing out that the tens of mil­lions of Sovi­et and Nazi loss­es dur­ing World War II were attrib­uted to com­mu­nist ide­ol­o­gy. This means that both Adolf Hitler him­self and many of his vic­tims are count­ed towards the vast­ly over­in­flat­ed fig­ure. . . . The prin­ci­pal orga­ni­za­tion pro­mot­ing the 100 mil­lion fig­ure today is the Vic­tims of Com­mu­nism Memo­r­i­al Foun­da­tion . . . . The group, set up by the U.S. gov­ern­ment in 1993, added all world­wide Covid-19 deaths to the vic­tims of com­mu­nism list, argu­ing that the coro­n­avirus was a com­mu­nist dis­ease because it orig­i­nat­ed in Chi­na. . . .”

Ante Pavel­ic
Pho­to Cred­it: Wikipedia.org

The Vic­tims of Com­mu­nism Memo­r­i­al Foun­da­tion lion­izes fas­cists and Nazis: ” . . . . Those includ­ed Roman Shukhevych, a Ukrain­ian nation­al­ist and Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tor, as well as Ante Pavelić who ran a Nazi pup­pet regime in Croa­t­ia and is con­sid­ered a chief per­pe­tra­tor of the Holo­caust in the Balka­ns . . . .”

Dis­cus­sion and Analy­sis Includes: An alleged Chi­nese hack that will ben­e­fit Elon Musk’s Star­link; A recent post by Pter­rafractyl about cyber­hacks; A Musk asso­ciate named by Trump to head NASA; The found­ing of a firm called Sauron by a Thiel asso­ciate; Spec­u­la­tion about the pos­si­ble effects of Lui­gi Man­gione’s alleged mur­der of Unit­ed­Health Care CEO Thomp­son; The pos­si­ble appoint­ment of RFK, Jr’s cam­paign man­ag­er “ex” CIA agent Amaryl­lis Fox to be a Deputy Direc­tor of CIA; Fox’s long, close asso­ci­a­tion with Tul­si Gab­bard; Elon Musk’s social media sup­port of the AfD; The pro-AfD posts of the accused Magde­burg Christ­mas mas­sacre “perp;” The chron­i­cling of the ascent of Mr. Julani (Al-Qae­da, ISIS) in Syr­ia in Sep­tem­ber of 2018; Mr. Julani’s being mint­ed as Syr­i­an head of state fol­low­ing the fall of Asad; The assas­si­na­tion of Russ­ian Gen­er­al Kir­illov, who opined that Covid was an Amer­i­can BW weapon.

1.   “How Peter Thiel’s net­work of right-wing techies is infil­trat­ing Don­ald Trump’s White House” by Jes­si­ca Math­ews; msn.com.

It was Pay­Pal cofounder and ven­ture cap­i­tal­ist Peter Thiel who intro­duced his mentee, JD Vance, to Pres­i­dent-elect Don­ald Trump at Mar-a-Lago in 2021. Three years later—with Trump and Vance just weeks from the White House—it’s Thiel who is sit­ting pret­ty as many peo­ple with­in his net­work head for offi­cial or advi­so­ry posi­tions in the next admin­is­tra­tion.

David Sacks—who worked with Thiel at Pay­Pal and wrote for the Stan­ford Review, the stu­dent news­pa­per Thiel found­ed as an under­grad­u­ate at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty in 1987—was named as the White House’s incom­ing “AI and cryp­to czar” on Wednes­day. Jim O’Neill, for­mer CEO of Thiel’s per­son­al foun­da­tion, has been picked as deputy sec­re­tary of the Depart­ment of Health and Human Ser­vices. Elon Musk, whose finan­cial and vocal sup­port helped elect Trump, will be run­ning the so-called Depart­ment of Gov­ern­ment Effi­cien­cy, or DOGE. Musk had worked close­ly with Thiel at Pay­Pal; and Thiel’s ven­ture fund, Founders Fund, was an ear­ly investor in sev­er­al of Musk’s com­pa­nies, includ­ing space car­go busi­ness SpaceX, tun­nel­ing firm the Bor­ing Com­pa­ny, and brain-chip start­up Neu­ralink.

Carl Schmitt
Pho­to Cred­it: Wikiedia.org

Trae Stephens,  a gen­er­al part­ner at Founders Fund, is report­ed­ly being con­sid­ered for deputy sec­re­tary of defense, accord­ing to the Wall Street Jour­nal. And Michael Krat­sios, Thiel Capital’s for­mer chief of staff and a direc­tor at Founders Fund–backed Scale AI, is report­ed­ly han­dling tech pol­i­cy dur­ing the Trump tran­si­tion.

Then, of course, there is Vance, who worked for Thiel at one of his funds, Mithril Cap­i­tal, then launched a ven­ture fund that Thiel backed. Founders Fund still lists Vance’s ven­ture firm, Narya Cap­i­tal, as an “affil­i­ate” on reg­u­la­to­ry fil­ings.

All of these indi­vid­u­als, includ­ing the vice president–elect, sit with­in pow­er­ful Sil­i­con Val­ley net­works with one man at their cen­ter: Thiel. There’s the Pay­Pal Mafia, the group of ear­ly employ­ees of the dig­i­tal pay­ments com­pa­ny that includes Thiel and Musk. There’s the con­ser­v­a­tive stu­dent paper, the Stan­ford Review. There’s Founders Fund, the $12 bil­lion ven­ture cap­i­tal firm that has invest­ed in the major star­tups work­ing most close­ly with the U.S. Depart­ment of Defense—SpaceX, Palan­tir, and Anduril. And then there’s also Thiel’s per­son­al endeav­ors, like his fam­i­ly office, foun­da­tion, or oth­er funds.

Trump pulled peo­ple from these same net­works dur­ing his first pres­i­den­cy, when Thiel was the sole voice of Trump sup­port in Sil­i­con Valley—donating more than $1 mil­lion and speak­ing at the Repub­li­can Nation­al Con­ven­tion in 2016. Dur­ing that first admin­is­tra­tion, Trump select­ed Ken How­ery, a Stan­ford Review and Pay­Pal alum, as the U.S. ambas­sador to Swe­den (How­ery was also report­ed­ly at Mar-a-Lago dur­ing the 2024 elec­tion night). Trump also appoint­ed Krat­sios, Thiel Capital’s for­mer chief of staff, as the White House’s deputy chief tech­nol­o­gy offi­cer. And Mark Wool­way, who was an ear­ly employ­ee at Pay­Pal and now works at Sacks’ Craft Ven­tures, was on Trump’s tran­si­tion team for the Trea­sury Depart­ment in 2016.

While Thiel still describes him­self as pro-Trump, he’s tak­en a step back com­pared with pre­vi­ous elec­tion cycles. By the time of the 2024 elec­tion, Thiel had made a deci­sion not to donate to any cam­paign, which he told For­tune was because he was no longer con­vinced mon­ey mat­tered at the fed­er­al lev­el and hadn’t been per­suad­ed that this elec­tion would focus on “end­ing our decades-long tech­no­log­i­cal and eco­nom­ic stag­na­tion.”

But while Thiel is no longer a finan­cial sup­port­er, his close­ness to those who will soon wield pow­er and influ­ence, includ­ing the vice pres­i­dent, is notable—and his long­time invest­ments in com­pa­nies that work close­ly with the U.S. gov­ern­ment are like­ly to ben­e­fit.

Thiel’s pol­i­tics are com­pli­cat­ed and have evolved—and it’s dif­fi­cult to place him in a par­tic­u­lar buck­et, though he’s been described as a con­ser­v­a­tive lib­er­tar­i­an, and is also known for hav­ing nation­al­ist ten­den­cies. He is a backer of cryp­to and cryp­to com­pa­nies and has warned against gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the field of AI.

Thiel seems to already be think­ing ahead. In an inter­view with The Free Press founder Bari Weiss short­ly after the elec­tion, Thiel gave advice about what Vice President–elect Vance could do to be elect­ed pres­i­dent in 2028, after Trump’s term ends.

2. “Chi­nese Hack Means Bei­jing Read­ing and Hear­ing All US Mil­i­tary and Intel­li­gence Clas­si­fied Phone Com­mu­ni­ca­tions” by Lar­ry C. John­son; Sonar21.com; 10/12/2024.

. . . . This is going to have an eco­nom­ic effect — very neg­a­tive for the telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions giants, who are like­ly to lose prof­itable USG con­tracts, and is lucra­tive for Elon Musk. Why Musk? His net­work of satel­lites han­dling clas­si­fied com­mu­ni­ca­tions — i.e., StarShield — is, I am told, seen by the Defense Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems Agency (DISA) as the ONLY solu­tion to secure the com­pro­mised mil­i­tary and intel­li­gence net­works. Musk may be on his way to becom­ing the first Tril­lion Dol­lar man. . . .

3. The CIA’s hack­ing tools are specif­i­cal­ly craft­ed to mask CIA author­ship of the attacks. Most sig­nif­i­cant­ly, for our the pur­pos­es of the present dis­cus­sion, is the fact that the Agen­cy’s hack­ing tools are engi­neered in such a way as to per­mit the authors of the event to rep­re­sent them­selves as Chi­nese.

Pter­rafractyl has done a char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly excel­lent job on cyber­hacks, attri­bu­tion for same and the use of those attacks as provo­ca­tions: https://spitfirelist.com/news/cyber-attribution-the-mega-hacks-of-2021-and-the-existential-threat-of-blind-faith-in-bad-faith/

” . . . . These tools could make it more dif­fi­cult for anti-virus com­pa­nies and foren­sic inves­ti­ga­tors to attribute hacks to the CIA. Could this call the source of pre­vi­ous hacks into ques­tion? It appears that yes, this might be used to dis­guise the CIA’s own hacks to appear as if they were Russ­ian, Chi­nese, or from spe­cif­ic oth­er coun­tries. . . . This might allow a mal­ware cre­ator to not only look like they were speak­ing in Russ­ian or Chi­nese, rather than in Eng­lish, but to also look like they tried to hide that they were not speak­ing Eng­lish . . . .”

“Wik­iLeaks Vault 7 Part 3 Reveals CIA Tool Might Mask Hacks as Russ­ian, Chi­nese, Ara­bic” by Stephanie Dube Dwil­son; Heavy; 4/3/2017.

This morn­ing, Wik­iLeaks released part 3 of its Vault 7 series, called Mar­ble. Mar­ble reveals CIA source code files along with decoy lan­guages that might dis­guise virus­es, tro­jans, and hack­ing attacks. These tools could make it more dif­fi­cult for anti-virus com­pa­nies and foren­sic inves­ti­ga­tors to attribute hacks to the CIA. Could this call the source of pre­vi­ous hacks into ques­tion? It appears that yes, this might be used to dis­guise the CIA’s own hacks to appear as if they were Russ­ian, Chi­nese, or from spe­cif­ic oth­er coun­tries. These tools were in use in 2016, Wik­iLeaks report­ed.

It’s not known exact­ly how this Mar­ble tool was actu­al­ly used. How­ev­er, accord­ing to Wik­iLeaks, the tool could make it more dif­fi­cult for inves­ti­ga­tors and anti-virus com­pa­nies to attribute virus­es and oth­er hack­ing tools to the CIA. Test exam­ples weren’t just in Eng­lish, but also Russ­ian, Chi­nese, Kore­an, Ara­bic, and Far­si. This might allow a mal­ware cre­ator to not only look like they were speak­ing in Russ­ian or Chi­nese, rather than in Eng­lish, but to also look like they tried to hide that they were not speak­ing Eng­lish, accord­ing to Wik­iLeaks. This might also hide fake error mes­sages or be used for oth­er pur­pos­es. . . .

4. “Fear­ful of crime, the tech elite trans­form their homes into mil­i­tary bunkers” by Nitasha Tiku; msn.com.

In the future, your home will feel as safe from intrud­ers as a state-of-the-art mil­i­tary base.

Cam­eras and sen­sors sur­veil the perime­ter, scan­ning bystanders’ faces for poten­tial threats. Drones from a “deter­rence pod” scare off tres­passers by pro­ject­ing a search­light over any sus­pi­cious move­ments. A vir­tu­al view of the home is ren­dered in 3D and updat­ed in real time, just like a Tesla’s dig­i­tal dis­play. And pri­vate secu­ri­ty agents mon­i­tor alerts from a cen­tral hub.

By incor­po­rat­ing tech­nol­o­gy devel­oped for autonomous vehi­cles, robot­ics and bor­der secu­ri­ty, Sauron has built a super­charged bur­glar alarm, Hartz argued.

The con­cept has res­onat­ed in Bay Area tech cir­cles, where crime in San Fran­cis­co is a con­stant sub­ject on tech pod­casts, social media and exec­u­tive group chats. While sta­tis­tics from the San Fran­cis­co Police Depart­ment from Octo­ber show that prop­er­ty crime and car theft has dropped in 2024 and that the homi­cide rate sits at a five-year low, the data has done lit­tle to appease the public’s fears.

Last month, San Fran­cis­co elect­ed a may­or who ran on a plat­form of enhanc­ing pub­lic safe­ty and passed a propo­si­tion allow­ing the police more lee­way to sur­veil res­i­dents. Around the coun­try, vot­ers have respond­ed to sim­i­lar per­cep­tions of dan­ger by rolling back police reforms insti­tut­ed dur­ing the George Floyd protests.

. . . . This is the vision of home secu­ri­ty pitched by Sauron, a Sil­i­con Val­ley start-up boast­ing a wait­ing list of tech CEOs and ven­ture cap­i­tal­ists.

Co-founder Kevin Hartz, a tech entre­pre­neur and for­mer part­ner at Peter Thiel’s ven­ture firm Founders Fund, named the com­pa­ny after the vil­lain in J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings,” a dis­em­bod­ied evil spir­it depict­ed as a fiery, all-see­ing eye in the sky. . . .

5. “Trump Picks Jared Isaac­man, an Entre­pre­neur and Pri­vate Astro­naut, to Lead NASA” by Ken­neth Chang; The New York Times; 04/12/2024.

Pres­i­dent-elect Don­ald J. Trump will nom­i­nate Jared Isaac­man, a bil­lion­aire entre­pre­neur who led two pri­vate mis­sions to orbit on SpaceX rock­ets, as the next NASA admin­is­tra­tor.

Mr. Isaac­man, the chief exec­u­tive of the pay­ment pro­cess­ing com­pa­ny Shift4 Pay­ments, is a close asso­ciate of Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX, and, if con­firmed to the post by the Sen­ate, would bring the per­spec­tive of an out­sider to the space agency and its $25 bil­lion bud­get. . . .

6.“Trump Con­sid­ers Kennedy’s Daugh­ter-in-Law for C.I.A. Deputy Direc­tor” by Julian E. Barnes, Mag­gie Haber­man and Jonathan Swan; The New York Times; 11/12/2024.

Amaryl­lis Fox Kennedy, a for­mer C.I.A. offi­cer who is mar­ried to the son of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., raised alarms for pub­lish­ing a book about her work at the agency with­out going through a review process.

Pres­i­dent-elect Don­ald J. Trump is con­sid­er­ing Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s daugh­ter-in-law to serve as the deputy direc­tor at the C.I.A., accord­ing to four peo­ple briefed on the mat­ter.

Amaryl­lis Fox Kennedy, 44, a for­mer C.I.A. offi­cer who is mar­ried to Mr. Kennedy’s son, met with Mr. Trump last week to dis­cuss the job, the peo­ple said. The posi­tion does not require Sen­ate con­fir­ma­tion, unlike the direc­tor job.

Mr. Kennedy, who is the president-elect’s choice to lead the Depart­ment of Health and Human Ser­vices, is among those encour­ag­ing Mr. Trump to hire her, accord­ing to two peo­ple close to the Trump tran­si­tion team. Like oth­ers inter­viewed for this arti­cle, they spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty to dis­cuss pri­vate delib­er­a­tions.

In an inter­view in 2023, Mr. Kennedy said it was “beyond a rea­son­able doubt” that the C.I.A. was involved in the assas­si­na­tion of his uncle, Pres­i­dent John F. Kennedy, in 1963.

Ms. Fox Kennedy, who served as her father-in-law’s cam­paign man­ag­er, has raised alarms with­in the agency and among some law­mak­ers, in part because she pub­lished a book about her time in the C.I.A. in 2019 — while Mr. Trump was pres­i­dent — with­out going through the lengthy gov­ern­ment review process required to check that clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion is not made pub­lic.

Some for­mer offi­cials ques­tioned details in the book about Ms. Fox Kennedy’s meet­ings in Pak­istan with Islam­ic extrem­ists.

Anoth­er book, writ­ten by the for­mer admin­is­tra­tion offi­cial John R. Bolton, was also pub­lished with­out a sign-off, and the Trump admin­is­tra­tion tried to seize his book advance.

The dis­cus­sions about Ms. Fox Kennedy being con­sid­ered for the C.I.A. role were report­ed ear­li­er by Axios.

The Wash­ing­ton Post report­ed ear­li­er this year that Ms. Fox Kennedy had been crit­i­cal of Mr. Trump’s abil­i­ty to man­age the nuclear arse­nal, as well as Pres­i­dent Biden’s abil­i­ty to per­form the job at his age, in an email to Democ­rats. She lat­er played a key role in nego­ti­at­ing Mr. Kennedy’s endorse­ment of Mr. Trump.

Edi­tors’ Picks

Ms. Fox Kennedy has said she worked for the C.I.A. from 2002 to 2010, at one point pos­ing as an art deal­er in a for­eign coun­try under “unof­fi­cial cov­er,” mean­ing she did not have diplo­mat­ic immu­ni­ty.

She has made com­ments on for­eign pol­i­cy that are at odds with how Repub­li­cans, includ­ing Mr. Trump, have approached adver­saries in the Mid­dle East. In an inter­view with Al Jazeera in 2016, she seemed to sug­gest that a prob­lem in U.S. nation­al secu­ri­ty pol­i­cy was that gov­ern­ment lead­ers had not spent enough time lis­ten­ing to America’s ene­mies, includ­ing orga­ni­za­tions that have spon­sored ter­ror­ism, although agree­ment with them isn’t required.

“I think the ques­tion we need to be ask­ing as Amer­i­cans exam­in­ing our for­eign pol­i­cy is whether we’re pour­ing kerosene on a can­dle,” she said, sug­gest­ing that the idea is to go beyond car­i­ca­tures and more ful­ly under­stand what moti­vates them. “The only real way to dis­arm your ene­my is to lis­ten to them.”

The inter­view was giv­en at a time when Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma had broad­ened the drone pro­gram he had relied on for coun­tert­er­ror­ism oper­a­tions, which led to large num­bers of civil­ian deaths. She is crit­i­cal of the agency’s post‑9/11 empha­sis on coun­tert­er­ror­ism and asym­met­ri­cal war­fare more gen­er­al­ly and wants to see a rebuild­ing of human intel­li­gence gath­er­ing capac­i­ty in rival pow­ers like Chi­na, Rus­sia and Iran, accord­ing to a per­son with knowl­edge of her think­ing.

Ms. Fox Kennedy is liked by a num­ber of peo­ple in Mr. Trump’s orbit, and she is close with Tul­si Gab­bard, Mr. Trump’s choice to serve as direc­tor of nation­al intel­li­gence. She has been dis­cussed for oth­er jobs in the admin­is­tra­tion, includ­ing an ambas­sador­ship, but she has want­ed a role at the C.I.A. for some time, accord­ing to one of the peo­ple briefed on the mat­ter.

Ms. Fox Kennedy is expect­ed to meet with John Rat­cliffe, Mr. Trump’s choice for C.I.A. direc­tor, this week.

Through a spokes­woman, both Mr. Kennedy and Ms. Fox Kennedy declined to com­ment. Through an aide, Mr. Rat­cliffe declined to com­ment.

Karo­line Leav­itt, the incom­ing White House press sec­re­tary, declined to address ques­tions about Ms. Fox and the C.I.A. role, say­ing only that Mr. Trump is choos­ing “the best and the bright­est indi­vid­u­als” and will announce appoint­ments when they’re ready.

It is not clear how seri­ous Mr. Trump is about choos­ing her for the role. While some deputy direc­tors are cho­sen by the head of the C.I.A., oth­ers are tapped by the pres­i­dent. David Cohen, the cur­rent deputy direc­tor, was the sug­ges­tion of the White House and then endorsed by William J. Burns, who took the top job.

Ms. Fox Kennedy’s ties to Ms. Gab­bard will put some­one trust­ed by an out­spo­ken crit­ic of the U.S. intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty and mil­i­tary in a piv­otal posi­tion at the C.I.A. In late Octo­ber, Ms. Fox Kennedy wrote on social media that she had known Ms. Gab­bard for rough­ly a decade.

“Don­ald Trump has sur­round­ed him­self with the pre­cious few Amer­i­can lead­ers who still speak the truth at great per­son­al cost,” she wrote, count­ing Ms. Gab­bard among them.

John Maguire, a for­mer C.I.A. offi­cer who became known for catch­ing a spy named Harold “Jim” Nichol­son, spoke in favor of Ms. Fox Kennedy.

“She’s infi­nite­ly qual­i­fied for the job,” he said. “She’s a very tal­ent­ed woman.”

7a. “Musk Express­es Sup­port for Far-Right Par­ty in Germany’s Election“by Christo­pher F. Schuet­ze and Mark Landler; The New York Times; 20/12/2024.

It was not the first online inter­ven­tion by Elon Musk, the entre­pre­neur and advis­er to Don­ald Trump, on behalf of once-fringe anti-immi­grant par­ties in Europe.

Elon Musk, the world’s rich­est man and a close advis­er to Pres­i­dent-elect Don­ald J. Trump, on Fri­day endorsed Germany’s far-right par­ty, a group with ties to neo-Nazis whose youth wing has been clas­si­fied as “con­firmed extrem­ist” by Ger­man domes­tic intel­li­gence.

“Only the AfD can save Ger­many,” Mr. Musk post­ed to X, refer­ring to the anti-immi­grant par­ty, the Alter­na­tive for Ger­many, by its Ger­man ini­tials.

In doing so, he is wad­ing into Ger­man pol­i­tics at a moment of acute tur­moil, and at the very same time that he has wield­ed his influ­ence in Wash­ing­ton to help blow up a bipar­ti­san spend­ing deal that was meant to avoid a gov­ern­ment shut­down over Christ­mas. The Ger­man gov­ern­ment recent­ly col­lapsed, result­ing in ear­ly elec­tions, which are planned for next year. . . .

. . . . News that mem­bers of the AfD attend­ed a secret meet­ing with the Aus­tri­an extreme-right provo­ca­teur Mar­tin Sell­ner, who has admit­ted to once being a mem­ber of a neo-Nazi group and has called for deport­ing migrants en masse, led to large protests ear­ly this year. Then, start­ing in May, a lead­ing light of the par­ty was twice giv­en a hefty fine for using Nazi-era slo­gans dur­ing cam­paign stops. . . .

. . . . Last month in the east­ern state of Sax­ony, police arrest­ed eight peo­ple sus­pect­ed of being mem­bers of what they called a right-wing extrem­ist ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion, which they said had been plot­ting to over­throw the gov­ern­ment. Three of the eight were AfD mem­bers; one was an elect­ed local offi­cial. . . .

. . . . It also echoed in Wash­ing­ton, where Democ­rats and even a few Repub­li­cans raised alarms, point­ing out Mr. Musk’s heavy influ­ence on Mr. Trump.

“Lit­er­al­ly is a neo-Nazi par­ty. Not even jok­ing,” Adam Kinzinger, a Repub­li­can for­mer con­gress­man from Illi­nois and long­time crit­ic of Mr. Trump, post­ed on X.

Sen­a­tor Chris Mur­phy, Demo­c­rat of Con­necti­cut, said in an inter­view with CNN, ”This is not nor­mal.” He added, “What Elon Musk thinks tends to even­tu­al­ly be what the pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States thinks. And if the Unit­ed States takes an offi­cial posi­tion in favor of neo-Nazis in Ger­many, I mean, it is absolute­ly cat­a­stroph­ic.”. . . .

7b. Insane Anti-Mus­lim Jihadist Ter­ror­izes Christ­mas Mar­ket; Moon of Alabama.org; 12/2024.

Yes­ter­day Elon Musk laud­ed the Ger­man right wing (but in my opin­ion not rad­i­cal) AfD par­ty as the only one “that can save Ger­many”.

A few hours lat­er a Sau­di man, liv­ing in Ger­many, drove a car into a crowd attend­ing a Christ­mas mar­ket in Magde­burg:

Ger­mans on Sat­ur­day mourned both the vic­tims and their shak­en sense of secu­ri­ty after a Sau­di doc­tor inten­tion­al­ly drove into a Christ­mas mar­ket teem­ing with hol­i­day shop­pers, killing at least five peo­ple, includ­ing a small child, and wound­ing at least 200 oth­ers.

Author­i­ties arrest­ed a 50-year-old man at the site of the attack in Magde­burg on Fri­day evening and took him into cus­tody for ques­tion­ing. He has lived in Ger­many since 2006, prac­tic­ing med­i­cine in Bern­burg, about 40 kilo­me­ters (25 miles) south of Magde­burg. offi­cials said.

The state gov­er­nor, Rein­er Haseloff, told reporters that the death toll rose to five from a pre­vi­ous fig­ure of two and that more than 200 peo­ple in total were injured.

Before details were known fol­low­ers of the AfD and oth­er famous anti-immi­gra­tion politi­cians, jumped onto the case with tirades against Mus­lims and immi­grants.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly for them the facts of the case were not in their favor.

The cul­prit is nei­ther an Islamist, nor an ille­gal immi­grant or asy­lum seek­er. He in fact is a sup­port­er of the AfD’s and Elon Musk’s opin­ions.

Dr. Taleb Al Abdul­mohsen, a Sau­di cit­i­zen of Shia her­itage, had come to Ger­many eigh­teen years ago to learn his med­ical spe­cial­ty, psy­chi­a­try. He had stayed in Ger­many and worked at a local men­tal hos­pi­tal.

Over time he had dis­avowed Islam. A few years ago he had launched a web forum, WeAreSaudis.net, which helped peo­ple from Islam­ic coun­tries, who were alleged­ly endan­gered for repu­di­at­ing their faith, to find asy­lum:

Describ­ing him­self as a for­mer Mus­lim, the sus­pect shared dozens of tweets and retweets dai­ly focus­ing on anti-Islam themes, crit­i­ciz­ing the reli­gion and con­grat­u­lat­ing Mus­lims who left the faith.

He also accused Ger­man author­i­ties of fail­ing to do enough to com­bat what he said was the “Islamism of Europe.” Some described him as an activist who helped Sau­di women flee their home­land. He has also voiced sup­port for the far-right and anti-immi­grant Alter­na­tive for Ger­many (AfD) par­ty.

The man was well know. The BBC as well as the Ger­man broad­sheet FAZ had inter­viewed him.

In a very long Twit­ter thread, writ­ten in Ara­bic on August 20 2024 and pinned to his account, Tal­ib Al Abdul­mohsen describes his years-long fight with oth­er athe­ist activists in Ger­many who were also try­ing to arrange refuge for Sau­di asy­lum seek­ers.

He alleged that some of them were active­ly prey­ing on female Sau­di asy­lum seek­ers who were liv­ing with them. He went to the police and filed com­plains with sev­er­al pros­e­cu­tors to get the Ger­man state to act against those he accused.

He how­ev­er did not present evi­dence to sup­port his claims. Asked by the police the female Sau­di asy­lum seek­ers reject­ed to file claims.

A civ­il suit for defama­tion launched by the oth­er activists against him was suc­cess­ful.

Some three years ago Taleb Al Abdul­mohsen began to show signs of per­se­cu­tion mania. He claimed that let­ters from a pros­e­cu­tor had van­ished from his mail box. Two lawyers he had hired soon reject­ed to work on his cas­es. He start­ed to accuse the Ger­man and Sau­di gov­ern­ment of work­ing against him.

In mid 2023 there were first signs and warn­ings that he might go berserk.

He again and again filed his ‘evi­dence’ against oth­er athe­ist activists to which the pros­e­cu­tion did not react with the urgency he had thought was required. (machine trans­la­tion):

Do you know where the biggest con­tra­dic­tion is? If a Sau­di cit­i­zen blows up a Ger­man embassy or ran­dom­ly slaugh­ters Ger­man cit­i­zens, they call him a ter­ror­ist. But when a Sau­di cit­i­zen uses all peace­ful means to pro­tect him­self and Sau­di cit­i­zens, you find the police and the pros­e­cu­tion tram­pling on the law as if there is no law in the first place!

His out­rage got ever stranger (machine trans­la­tion):

This is a pic­ture of a let­ter writ­ten by the Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tor the next day, in which he says, “Yes­ter­day they brought me the file because the whistle­blow­er (Tal­ib Al-Abdul Mohsen) is at the ser­vice cen­ter.” Then he briefly recounts what hap­pened between me and him, and then asks the police to inves­ti­gate the mat­ter through the file and even through social media.

But the police refused to inves­ti­gate the mat­ter!!!

After that, the pros­e­cu­tor sus­pend­ed the inves­ti­ga­tion again!!

What is this farce?!

If they act like this, why is it that when a Sau­di cit­i­zen blows up a Ger­man embassy or ran­dom­ly slaugh­ters Ger­man cit­i­zens, they call him a ter­ror­ist??? What is the alter­na­tive to bomb­ing and slaugh­ter­ing when seek­ing jus­tice in Ger­many? Where is the peace­ful alter­na­tive?

I need to know the peace­ful alter­na­tive, please tell me about it.

Taleb Al Abdul­mohsen could not grasp that he sim­ply had no legal case to make. His mind wan­dered off into con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries:

British Pak­istani Index @PakistaniIndex — 22:29 UTC · Dec 21, 2024

(2/2) ⬆️ A video inter­view fea­tur­ing Dr. Taleb Al Abdul­mohsen, the sus­pect in the Magde­burg Christ­mas mar­ket attack, has sur­faced, spark­ing fur­ther ques­tions about his motives.

In the 45-minute video, pub­lished eight days before the attack on the US-based Islam­o­pho­bic blog RAIR Foun­da­tion, found­ed by Amy Mek, Dr. Taleb claimed that the Ger­man gov­ern­ment was con­duct­ing a “covert secret oper­a­tion” to “hunt down Sau­di ex-Mus­lims and destroy their lives” glob­al­ly. He also alleged that Syr­i­an jihadists were being grant­ed asy­lum in Ger­many.
...

The not so peace­ful alter­na­tive Taleb Al Abdul­mohsen found for him­self was to imi­tate ISIS Jihadis and to dri­ve a car into a crowd at a Christ­mas mar­ket .

His rants, fil­ings and acts do not sup­port the anti-Islam, anti-immi­grant claims Elon Musk, the AfD and oth­er such types have made.

Tal­ib Al-Abdul Mohsen has in fact long sup­port­ed them:

Taleb Al Abdul­mohsen @DrTalebJawad — 13:40 UTC · Jun 18, 2016

Ich und AfD bekämpfen den gle­ichen Feind um Deutsch­land zu schützen.
I and AfD are fight­ing the same ene­my to pro­tect Ger­many.

The anti-Mus­lim, pro Israel ‘activist’ com­mit­ted a ter­ror­ist act in Europe because, he alleged, the ‘left’ wants to ‘destroy Europe with Islam’.

There are of course a lot of polit­i­cal points one could make about this case.

But to me this sim­ply looks like a sad sto­ry of some­one who’s mind got seri­ous­ly dis­lo­cat­ed when he moved from the stric­tures of his own soci­ety into a more lib­er­al one he was unable to real­ly under­stand.

8. “US Con­gress Revives Cold War Tac­tics With New Anti-Com­mu­nism School Cur­ricu­lum” by Alan Mcleod; Con­sor­tium News; 12/08/2024.

Alan MacLeod on the “Cru­cial Com­mu­nism Teach­ing Act,” which is now being read in the U.S. Sen­ate, where it is all but cer­tain to pass.

Con­gress has just passed a bill that will see the U.S. spend huge sums of mon­ey redesign­ing much of the pub­lic school sys­tem around the ide­ol­o­gy of anti-com­mu­nism.

The “Cru­cial Com­mu­nism Teach­ing Act” is now being read in the Sen­ate, where it is all but cer­tain to pass. The move comes amid grow­ing pub­lic anger at the eco­nom­ic sys­tem and increased pub­lic sup­port for social­ism.

The Cru­cial Com­mu­nism Teach­ing Act, in its own words, is designed to teach chil­dren that

“cer­tain polit­i­cal ide­olo­gies, includ­ing com­mu­nism and total­i­tar­i­an­ism … con­flict with the prin­ci­ples of free­dom and democ­ra­cy that are essen­tial to the found­ing of the Unit­ed States.”

Although spon­sored by Repub­li­cans, it enjoys wide­spread sup­port from Democ­rats and is focused on Chi­na, Venezuela, Cuba and oth­er tar­gets of U.S. empire. The word­ing of the bill has many wor­ried that this will be a cen­ter­piece of a new era of anti-com­mu­nist hys­te­ria, sim­i­lar to pre­vi­ous McCarthy­ist peri­ods.

The cur­ricu­lum will be designed by the con­tro­ver­sial Vic­tims of Com­mu­nism Memo­r­i­al Foun­da­tion and will ensure all Amer­i­can high school stu­dents “under­stand the dan­gers of com­mu­nism and sim­i­lar polit­i­cal ide­olo­gies” and “learn that com­mu­nism has led to the deaths of over 100,000,000 vic­tims world­wide.” It will also devel­op a series titled “Por­traits in Patri­o­tism,” that will expose stu­dents to indi­vid­u­als who are “vic­tims of the polit­i­cal ide­olo­gies” in ques­tion.

A Dis­cred­it­ed Book

The 100 mil­lion fig­ure orig­i­nates with the noto­ri­ous pseu­do­science text, The Black Book of Com­mu­nism. A col­lec­tion of polit­i­cal essays, the book’s cen­tral claim is that 100 mil­lion peo­ple have per­ished as a result of the com­mu­nist ide­ol­o­gy.

How­ev­er, even many of its con­trib­u­tors and co-writ­ers have dis­tanced them­selves from it, claim­ing that the lead author was “obsessed” with reach­ing the 100 mil­lion fig­ure, to the point that he sim­ply con­jured mil­lions of deaths from nowhere.

Its method­ol­o­gy was also uni­ver­sal­ly panned, with many point­ing out that the tens of mil­lions of Sovi­et and Nazi loss­es dur­ing World War II were attrib­uted to com­mu­nist ide­ol­o­gy. This means that both Adolf Hitler him­self and many of his vic­tims are count­ed towards the vast­ly over­in­flat­ed fig­ure.

The book was con­demned by Holo­caust remem­brance groups as white­wash­ing and even lion­iz­ing geno­ci­dal fas­cist groups as anti-com­mu­nist heroes.

The prin­ci­pal orga­ni­za­tion pro­mot­ing the 100 mil­lion fig­ure today is the Vic­tims of Com­mu­nism Memo­r­i­al Foun­da­tion, which has shown a sim­i­lar lev­el of both anti-com­mu­nist devo­tion and method­olog­i­cal rig­or.

The group, set up by the U.S. gov­ern­ment in 1993, added all world­wide Covid-19 deaths to the vic­tims of com­mu­nism list, argu­ing that the coro­n­avirus was a com­mu­nist dis­ease because it orig­i­nat­ed in Chi­na.

It is these peo­ple who will be design­ing the new cur­ricu­lum that will be taught in social stud­ies, gov­ern­ment, his­to­ry, and eco­nom­ics class­es across the Unit­ed States.

Chi­na Hawks

One of the cen­tral goals of the bill is also to “ensure that high school stu­dents in the Unit­ed States under­stand that 1,500,000,000 peo­ple still suf­fer under com­mu­nism.” This is a clear ref­er­ence to Chi­na, a rapid­ly devel­op­ing coun­try that, in just two gen­er­a­tions, has gone from one of the poor­est on Earth to a glob­al super­pow­er, chal­leng­ing and even sur­pass­ing the Unit­ed States on many qual­i­ty-of-life indi­ca­tors.

The bill goes on to detail how the school cur­ricu­lum will “focus on ongo­ing human rights abus­es by such regimes, such as the treat­ment of Uyghurs in the Xin­jiang Uyghur Autonomous Region” by the Chi­nese “regime” and its “aggres­sion” towards “pro-democ­ra­cy protests in Hong Kong,” and Tai­wan, who it labels “a demo­c­ra­t­ic friend of the Unit­ed States.”

Fur­ther­more, many of the Vic­tims of Com­mu­nism Memo­r­i­al Foundation’s “Wit­ness Project” case stud­ies – like­ly the source for the “Por­traits in Patri­o­tism” series – are from Chi­na.

This includes Rushan Abbas, the founder and exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Cam­paign for Uyghurs, a pres­sure group fund­ed by C.I.A. front orga­ni­za­tion, the Nation­al Endow­ment for Democ­ra­cy. Abbas was also pre­vi­ous­ly employed as a trans­la­tor at the noto­ri­ous Guan­tá­namo Bay tor­ture camp.

The U.S. is cur­rent­ly engaged in a quick­ly-esca­lat­ing Cold War against Chi­na that includes chan­nel­ing mon­ey and sup­port to sep­a­ratist move­ments, includ­ing those in Xin­jiang, Hong Kong and Tai­wan, as Mint­Press News has report­ed.

In Sep­tem­ber, the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives passed a bill that autho­rized $1.6 bil­lion to be spent on anti-Chi­nese mes­sag­ing world­wide.

Latin Amer­i­ca: Mod­el & Tar­get

The oth­er major tar­get of the bill will like­ly be social­ist or com­mu­nist-led gov­ern­ments in Latin Amer­i­ca. The act’s spon­sor is Maria Elvi­ra Salazar, a Repub­li­can Con­gressper­son rep­re­sent­ing Mia­mi.

A part of Florida’s famous­ly con­ser­v­a­tive Cuban-Amer­i­can com­mu­ni­ty, in 2023, she intro­duced the FORCE Act, which attempt­ed to block any U.S. pres­i­dent from nor­mal­iz­ing rela­tions with Cuba unless its gov­ern­ment is over­thrown. She has repeat­ed­ly con­demned Pres­i­dent Biden for eas­ing the (ille­gal) U.S. sanc­tions on Venezuela.

And in July, she denounced what she described as the “social­ist curse in Cen­tral Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean,” sin­gling out Cuban, Venezuela, Hon­duras and Nicaragua as coun­tries requir­ing regime change.

She is, how­ev­er, an avid sup­port­er of the far-right pres­i­dent of Argenti­na, Javier Milei, accept­ing his invi­ta­tion to attend his inau­gu­ra­tion. Argenti­na, she said,

“is going to set the course and point of ref­er­ence for the rest of Latin Amer­i­ca as to the way that a coun­try should be gov­erned… Free mar­ket econ­o­my, small gov­ern­ment, indi­vid­ual lib­er­ties, free­dom, pri­vate sec­tor, no cor­rup­tion, that’s what we’re try­ing to do.”

Per­haps the only for­eign coun­try she prais­es more than Argenti­na is Israel, whose actions she has sup­port­ed at every step, even going so far as to denounce what she called the “one-sided pres­sure for a cease­fire” in Gaza.

Salazar’s bill passed eas­i­ly, 327–62, with lim­it­ed oppo­si­tion from Democ­rats or Repub­li­cans, who vot­ed for and against it in rough­ly equal mea­sures. Even many mem­bers of the Pro­gres­sive Cau­cus vot­ed in favor, prov­ing that anti-com­mu­nism is as pop­u­lar on the left as it is on the right.

A New McCarthy­ism?

The immi­nent pass­ing of the Cru­cial Com­mu­nism Teach­ing Act harkens back to ear­li­er anti-com­mu­nist peri­ods in Amer­i­can his­to­ry, name­ly the Red Scare of the 1910s and the McCarthy­ist era of the 1940s and 1950s.

Dur­ing those times, orga­nized labor move­ments were ruth­less­ly attacked, work­ers from all pro­fes­sions, includ­ing pro­fes­sors, gov­ern­ment offi­cials, and teach­ers, were fired en masse, and some of America’s bright­est minds had their careers derailed due to their polit­i­cal lean­ings. This includ­ed singer Paul Robe­son, actors like Char­lie Chap­lain and Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe, play­wright Arthur Miller and sci­en­tist Albert Ein­stein.

The point of these oper­a­tions was to break any oppo­si­tion to the pow­er of the state and big busi­ness and ensure the Unit­ed States main­tained its cap­i­tal­ist course. Today, how­ev­er, few­er Amer­i­cans than ever are hap­py with the cur­rent polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic sys­tem.

1977: Roy Cohn, chief coun­sel to Sen. Joseph McCarthy dur­ing the McCarthy hear­ings, debates Amer­i­can author Gore Vidal on McCarthy­ism.

A recent Gallup study found that only 22 per­cent of the pub­lic are sat­is­fied with how things are going, with a major­i­ty respond­ing that they are “very dis­sat­is­fied.” Liv­ing stan­dards have been stag­nat­ing or drop­ping for decades, and alter­na­tive eco­nom­ic sys­tems are becom­ing more desir­able.

A 2019 poll from Axios found that 48 per­cent of adults under 35 pre­fer social­ism to cap­i­tal­ism, includ­ing 57 per­cent of female respon­dents.

There are some signs that Wash­ing­ton is slow­ly mov­ing towards a new McCarthy­ist era. Pres­i­dent-elect Don­ald Trump [whose lawyer in the 1970s and 80s was McCarthy coun­sel Roy Cohn], for exam­ple, has promised to car­ry out mass depor­ta­tions of left­ists once he becomes pres­i­dent, stat­ing:

“I will order my gov­ern­ment to deny entry to all com­mu­nists and all Marx­ists. Those who come to join our coun­try must love our coun­try. We don’t want them if they want to destroy our coun­try … So we’re going to be keep­ing for­eign Chris­t­ian-hat­ing com­mu­nists, social­ists, and Marx­ists out of Amer­i­ca.”

“At the end of the day, either the com­mu­nists destroy Amer­i­ca, or we destroy the com­mu­nists,” he explained. But he also stat­ed that Amer­i­can cit­i­zens espous­ing anti-cap­i­tal­ist views would be purged. “My ques­tion is, what are we going to do with the ones that are already here, that grew up here? I think we have to pass a new law for them,” he said.

That Trump would actu­al­ly deport mil­lions of Amer­i­can cit­i­zens en masse appears like too dras­tic a step right now, but it is clear that both Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans are seri­ous in their anti-com­mu­nist con­vic­tions. There­fore, the Cru­cial Com­mu­nism Teach­ing Act will like­ly only be the start of this cam­paign.

9. “Vic­tims of Com­mu­nism faces call to remove over 330 names linked to Nazis, fas­cists” by David Pugliese; Ottawa Cit­i­zen; 7/10/2024.

The memo­r­i­al was sup­posed to be unveiled in Novem­ber 2023 but that was put on hold after ques­tions sur­faced about many of te names list­ed.

The Depart­ment of Cana­di­an Her­itage is being told that more than half of the 550 names on the Memo­r­i­al to the Vic­tims of Com­mu­nism should be removed because of poten­tial links to the Nazis or ques­tions about affil­i­a­tions with fas­cist groups, accord­ing to gov­ern­ment records.

As orig­i­nal­ly planned, there were to be 553 entries on the Ottawa memorial’s Wall of Remem­brance.

The depart­ment had deter­mined that 50 to 60 of the names or orga­ni­za­tions were like­ly direct­ly linked to the Nazis, accord­ing to the doc­u­ments obtained by the Ottawa Cit­i­zen through an access to infor­ma­tion request.

A 2023 report for Cana­di­an Her­itage rec­om­mend­ed more than 330 names be exclud­ed to be on the safe side, the records not­ed. The exclu­sions were rec­om­mend­ed because of the lack of infor­ma­tion about the indi­vid­u­als or orga­ni­za­tions and whether they might have links to fas­cist orga­ni­za­tions or the Nazis. Some of the entries could also be removed because they have no direct link to Cana­da.

The memo­r­i­al, which is locat­ed near the cor­ner of Welling­ton and Bay streets, is sup­posed to hon­our those who suf­fered under com­mu­nism.

But con­cerns have been raised over the years by Jew­ish orga­ni­za­tions and his­to­ri­ans that names of east­ern Euro­peans who col­lab­o­rat­ed with the Nazis in the Holo­caust have been put for­ward in an attempt to white­wash their past.

The memo­r­i­al was sup­posed to be unveiled in Novem­ber 2023 but that was put on hold after mem­bers of Par­lia­ment hon­oured Yaroslav Hun­ka, a Ukrain­ian sol­dier with the Waf­fen-SS Gali­cia Divi­sion, a vol­un­tary unit that was under the com­mand of the Nazis. That inci­dent became an inter­na­tion­al embar­rass­ment for Cana­da.

Cana­di­an Her­itage spokesper­son Car­o­line Cza­jkows­ki told the Ottawa Cit­i­zen that a new date for the memo­r­i­al unveil­ing has not yet been set. Asked whether the more than 330 entries on the Wall of Remem­brance will be removed, Cza­jkows­ki replied “the review of the com­mem­o­ra­tive ele­ments is ongo­ing.”

The main spokesper­son for Trib­ute to Lib­er­ty, the orga­ni­za­tion which advo­cat­ed for the memo­r­i­al, did not respond to a request for com­ment.

Jaime Kirzn­er-Roberts, a senior direc­tor at the Friends of Simon Wiesen­thal Cen­tre, said her Holo­caust edu­ca­tion orga­ni­za­tion has been rais­ing con­cerns for years with Cana­di­an Her­itage regard­ing the poten­tial inclu­sion of Nazi war crim­i­nals in the memo­r­i­al.

“In 2021, we dis­cov­ered that one par­tic­u­lar Nazi leader was being hon­oured by the Memo­r­i­al and it took us more than a year of very active advo­ca­cy efforts before his name was final­ly removed,” she said. “We told offi­cials repeat­ed­ly that we believed there could be a great num­ber of Nazis being com­mem­o­rat­ed but sad­ly this prob­lem did not appear to be a pri­or­i­ty for the depart­ment.”

Kirzn­er-Roberts said the recent report com­mis­sioned by the depart­ment con­firmed her organization’s worst fears. “It finds that more half of the indi­vid­u­als com­mem­o­rat­ed in the memo­r­i­al may have been Nazis or Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tors,” she said. “It is total­ly unac­cept­able for Nazis and col­lab­o­ra­tors to be hon­oured by a Cana­di­an pub­lic memo­r­i­al, espe­cial­ly one meant to rec­og­nize vic­tims of state vio­lence and tyran­ny.”

Fed­er­al offi­cials in oth­er depart­ments have con­tin­ued to warn Cana­di­an Her­itage that the inclu­sion of Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tors on the memo­r­i­al will cause inter­na­tion­al embar­rass­ment.

“It is impor­tant to note that many anti-com­mu­nist and anti-Sovi­et advo­cates and fight­ers were also active Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tors, who com­mit­ted doc­u­ment­ed mas­sacres,” Glob­al Affairs Cana­da offi­cials warned their coun­ter­parts at Cana­di­an Her­itage in 2021.

Pri­vate dona­tions had already been made to the mon­u­ment in the names of Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tors, the CBC report­ed in July 2021. Those includ­ed Roman Shukhevych, a Ukrain­ian nation­al­ist and Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tor, as well as Ante Pavelić who ran a Nazi pup­pet regime in Croa­t­ia and is con­sid­ered a chief per­pe­tra­tor of the Holo­caust in the Balka­ns, the CBC report­ed.

Cana­di­an Her­itage offi­cials were also voic­ing their own con­cerns in inter­nal mes­sages.

“It has come to our atten­tion that a num­ber of entries that have been put for­ward for recog­ni­tion may have been affil­i­at­ed in some capac­i­ty to fas­cist and Nazi orga­ni­za­tions,” wrote Tristan‑E. Landry, a deputy direc­tor at the depart­ment. “For exam­ple, some of pro­posed indi­vid­u­als were linked to the Orga­ni­za­tion of Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists and its mil­i­tary, the Ukrain­ian Insur­gent Army….and to a less­er extent with Baltic nation­al­ist groups (i.e. mem­bers of the Lat­vian SS).”

Kirzn­er-Roberts said the Friends of Simon Wiesen­thal Cen­tre is urg­ing the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment to imple­ment new, rig­or­ous vet­ting pro­ce­dures so this type of sit­u­a­tion does not hap­pen again.

The Memo­r­i­al to the Vic­tims of Com­mu­nism has already been the focus of mul­ti­ple con­tro­ver­sies over its exact pur­pose, loca­tion, size and cost over the last 15 years. The price tag for the project has bal­looned to an esti­mat­ed $7.5 mil­lion — includ­ing $6 mil­lion in pub­lic funds — from an orig­i­nal bud­get of $1.5 mil­lion that was sup­posed to be fund­ed entire­ly through pri­vate dona­tions from Trib­ute to Lib­er­ty.

9.“Ju st Say No: Con­gress Con­sid­ers Neo­con Les­son Plans to Keep Kids Off Com­mu­nism” by Noah Hurowitz; The Inter­cept; 12/05/2024

. . . . Under the guise of pro­mot­ing free­dom, orga­ni­za­tions like the Anti-Bol­she­vik Bloc of Nations often act­ed as a vehi­cle for fas­cist emi­gres to regroup and exploit Cold War ten­sions . . . . in the West to rewrite his­to­ry in a way that would equate com­mu­nist atroc­i­ties with the Holo­caust, Boeck­n­er said.

“They basi­cal­ly brain poi­soned an entire gen­er­a­tion or two of Cana­di­ans into think­ing that the Sovi­ets were the bad guys dur­ing World War II,” Boeck­n­er told The Inter­cept. . . .

10. “Chi­na detain­ing mil­lions of Uyghurs? Seri­ous prob­lems with claims by US-backed NGO and far-right researcher ‘led by God’ against Bei­jing” by Ajit Singh and Max Blu­men­thal; The Gray Zone; Decem­ber 21, 2019.

. . . . ‘Lead­ing expert’ on Xin­jiang relies on spec­u­la­tion and one ques­tion­able media report . . . .

The sec­ond key source for claims that Chi­na has detained mil­lions of Uyghur Mus­lims is Adri­an Zenz. He is a senior fel­low in Chi­na stud­ies at the far-right Vic­tims of Com­mu­nism Memo­r­i­al Foun­da­tion, which was estab­lished by the US gov­ern­ment in 1983.

The Vic­tims of Com­mu­nism Memo­r­i­al Foun­da­tion is an out­growth of the Nation­al Cap­tive Nations Com­mit­tee, a group found­ed by Ukrain­ian nation­al­ist Lev Dobri­an­sky to lob­by against any effort for detente with the Sovi­et Union. Its co-chair­man, Yaroslav Stet­sko, was a top leader of the fas­cist OUN‑B mili­tia that fought along­side Nazi Ger­many dur­ing its occu­pa­tion of Ukraine in World War Two. Togeth­er, the two helped found the World Anti-Com­mu­nist League that was described by jour­nal­ist Joe Cona­son as “the orga­ni­za­tion­al haven for neo-Nazis, fas­cists, and anti-Semit­ic extrem­ists from two dozen coun­tries.”

Today, Dobriansky’s daugh­ter, Paula, sits on the board of the Vic­tims of Com­mu­nism Memo­r­i­al Foun­da­tion. A for­mer Rea­gan and George HW Bush offi­cial and sig­na­to­ry of the orig­i­nal Project for a New Amer­i­can Cen­tu­ry doc­u­ment, Paula Dobri­an­sky has become a fix­ture in neo­con­ser­v­a­tive cir­cles on Capi­tol Hill.

11. “Alleged Killer of Gen­er­al Kir­illov Arrest­ed, But Holes Remain in the Sto­ry” by Lar­ry C. John­son; sonar21.com; 12/18/2024.

Akhmad Kur­banov is sus­pect­ed of mur­der­ing Lt. Gen. Igor Kir­illov, the head of the Radi­o­log­i­cal, Chem­i­cal, and Bio­log­i­cal Defense Troops of the Russ­ian Armed Forces. He was locat­ed and detained short­ly after plant­i­ng the bomb that killed Kir­illov and his aide. In the pho­to above, report­ed­ly lift­ed from social media by the FSB, Kur­banov is chant­i­ng, “I’m num­ber one.” (Okay, that’s a joke.)

Russ­ian author­i­ties made quick work of scour­ing sur­veil­lance video feeds to iden­ti­fy the sus­pect car and cap­ture Mr. Kur­banov. With­in 24 hours, with no signs of tor­ture or duress, Kur­banov was spilling his guts:

“I came to Moscow on instruc­tions from the Ukrain­ian spe­cial ser­vices”: inter­ro­ga­tion of Igor Kir­illov, the head of the RKhBZ troops, and his assis­tant Ilya Polikar­pov, detained for the mur­der. The cit­i­zen of Uzbek­istan faces pun­ish­ment up to life impris­on­ment, the FSB report­ed.

“Why did I do this, for what? They offered me 100 thou­sand dol­lars and a Euro­pean pass­port”

On instruc­tions from the Ukrain­ian spe­cial ser­vices, a native of Uzbek­istan installed a high-pow­er IED on an elec­tric scoot­er, which he parked near the entrance to Kirillov’s house. For obser­va­tion, I rent­ed a car shar­ing car and installed a Wi-Fi video cam­era there – the film­ing was broad­cast online to the city of Dnepr. When the offi­cers left the entrance, the con­trac­tor remote­ly acti­vat­ed the IED.

Here is a video of Kurbanov’s con­fes­sion:

Here is what we do not know: How did the Ukrain­ian SBU iden­ti­fy and recruit Kur­banov to car­ry out this attack? I doubt that the SBU adver­tised it as a job open­ing on social media. Kur­banov report­ed­ly has ties to an ISIS group based in Uzbek­istan. The most like­ly expla­na­tion is that the SBU has reg­u­lar con­tact with Uzbek­istan mil­i­tants and con­sult­ed with the lead­ers of Kurbanov’s Islam­ic group in com­ing up with a vol­un­teer to car­ry out the oper­a­tion, i.e., Mr. Kur­banov and his accom­plice.

There are oth­er per­ti­nent ques­tions. Did Kur­banov have pri­or train­ing in build­ing and plant­i­ng an impro­vised explo­sive device (IED) and wiring it cor­rect­ly to be remote­ly det­o­nat­ed? Did Kur­banov build the bomb or was it pre­pared by some­one else and deliv­ered to him? How did Kur­banov ver­i­fy that the video cam­era used to trans­mit images of the entrance to Kirillov’s apart­ment build­ing was func­tion­ing and point­ed in the right direc­tion? At a min­i­mum, Kur­banov had to do a com­mu­ni­ca­tions check with his SBU han­dlers to ensure all sys­tems were func­tion­ing prop­er­ly pri­or to the attack. Rus­sia, like the Unit­ed States, is able to inter­cept such com­mu­ni­ca­tions.

I am sur­prised that some­one in Kirillov’s posi­tion did not have bet­ter secu­ri­ty. At a min­i­mum, he should have had secu­ri­ty sur­veil­lance cov­er­ing the entry and exit points to his build­ing. That would have alert­ed author­i­ties when the scoot­er was parked adja­cent to the entry. Even bet­ter, a per­ma­nent assign­ment of secu­ri­ty guards to patrol out­side the build­ing. None of those mea­sures were in place.

Press reports reveal that Gen­er­al Kir­illov believed he was a tar­get, not just of Ukraine, but by the West, because of his role in reveal­ing the nefar­i­ous work of more than 40 US-fund­ed bio­log­i­cal lab­o­ra­to­ries in Ukraine and his belief that the US used COVID as a bio­log­i­cal weapon. In mak­ing this charge, he also accused US phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies of being col­lab­o­ra­tors . . . .

12. “Al Qaeda’s Res­ur­rec­tion” by Bruce Hoff­man; Coun­cil on For­eign Rela­tions; 3/6/2018.

Next, we excerpt of an arti­cle by CFR mem­ber Bruce Hoff­man. Not­ing Al Qaeda’s resur­gence and Al Qaeda’s empha­sis on the Syr­i­an con­flict, Hoff­man cites the so-called “Arab Spring” as the key event in Al Qaeda’s resur­gence. ” . . . . The thou­sands of hard­ened al-Qae­da fight­ers freed from Egypt­ian pris­ons in 2012–2013 by Pres­i­dent Mohammed Mor­si gal­va­nized the move­ment at a crit­i­cal moment, when insta­bil­i­ty reigned and a hand­ful of men well-versed in ter­ror­ism and sub­ver­sion could plunge a coun­try or a region into chaos. Whether in Libya, Turkey, Syr­ia, or Yemen, their arrival was prov­i­den­tial in terms of advanc­ing al-Qaeda’s inter­ests or increas­ing its influ­ence. . . . It was Syr­ia where al-Qaeda’s inter­ven­tion proved most con­se­quen­tial. One of Zawahiri’s first offi­cial acts after suc­ceed­ing bin Laden as emir was to order a Syr­i­an vet­er­an of the Iraqi insur­gency named Abu Moham­mad al-Julani to return home and estab­lish the al-Qae­da fran­chise that would even­tu­al­ly become Jab­hat al-Nus­ra. . . .”

Hoff­man notes that Al-Qae­da and the Islam­ic State were, at one time, part of a uni­fied orga­ni­za­tion: ” . . . . Al-Qaeda’s cho­sen instru­ment was Jab­hat al-Nus­ra, the prod­uct of a joint ini­tia­tive with al-Qaeda’s Iraqi branch, which had rebrand­ed itself as the Islam­ic State of Iraq (ISI). But as Nus­ra grew in both strength and impact, a dis­pute erupt­ed between ISI and al-Qae­da over con­trol of the group. In a bold pow­er grab, ISI’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Bagh­da­di, announced the forcible amal­ga­ma­tion of al-Nus­ra with ISI in a new orga­ni­za­tion to be called the Islam­ic State of Iraq and Syr­ia (ISIS). Julani refused to accede to the uni­lat­er­al merg­er and appealed to Zawahiri. The quar­rel inten­si­fied, and after Zawahiri’s attempts to medi­ate it col­lapsed, he expelled ISIS from the al-Qae­da net­work. . . .”

13. “Biden Admin­is­tra­tion Admits that Glob­al War on Ter­ror­ism is Total B.S.” by Lar­ry C. John­son; sonar21.com; 20/12/2024.

After today’s events in Syr­ia, US cred­i­bil­i­ty as a major play­er in the glob­al war on ter­ror­ism — Islam­ic ter­ror­ism to be pre­cise — is destroyed. Despite spend­ing ten years on the US list of bad ter­ror­ists and earn­ing a $10 mil­lion boun­ty on his head, Abu Muham­mad al-Jawlani wel­comed a US del­e­ga­tion, led by Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of State for Near East­ern Affairs Bar­bara Leaf, to Dam­as­cus.

She was accom­pa­nied by for­mer U.S. envoy to Syr­ia Daniel Rubin­stein who will stay in Syr­ia as the top U.S. diplo­mat on the ground.

Leaf greet­ed Jawlani with the news that the US was lift­ing the $10 mil­lion boun­ty as long as Jawlani pinky-swore “to not allow ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tions to oper­ate with­in Syr­i­an ter­ri­to­ry or pose threats to the US or neigh­bor­ing coun­tries.”

What a dif­fer­ence two years makes! I guess the fol­low­ing US pol­i­cy to, “defeat ISIS,” is no longer in effect. . .