This week, Dave detailed the pow­er­ful his­tor­i­cal res­o­nance of past U.S. “Nation-build­ing” in Latin Amer­i­ca, the illic­it drug busi­ness and what Tex­ans call “The Ahl Bid­ness.” Dis­cussing Smed­ley But­ler’s career in the Marines, he set forth the Amer­i­can inva­sion of Ver­acruz, Mex­i­co in 1914 to secure Amer­i­can oil inter­ests, how U.S. pol­i­cy there spawned the ear­ly Mex­i­can drug-impor­ta­tion dynam­ics, trac­ing those dynam­ics straight through the Iran-Con­tra scan­dal, the failed poli­cies of Mex­i­can Pres­i­dent Obrador and the rise of Don­ald Trump.

Piv­ot­ing to Chi­na in the 1920’s, we once again see But­ler and the Marines pro­tect­ing Amer­i­can oil inter­ests and safe­guard­ing the polit­i­cal gang­ster­ism of the Green Gang of Shang­hai. The Green Gang had gained con­trol of Wham­poa, the Chi­nese mil­i­tary acad­e­my (the Chi­nese equiv­a­lent of West Point) and all of the senior offi­cers of Chi­ang Kai-Shek’s Kuom­intang were simul­ta­ne­ous­ly oper­a­tives of the Green Gang. Chi­ang Kai-Shek (com­pared to Mus­soli­ni by Gen­er­al Still­well, U.S. advis­er to Chaing dur­ing World War II) head­ed a regime con­trolled by the nar­cotics trade and col­lab­o­rat­ing with the invad­ing Japan­ese.

What has become known as “The New Fourth Army Inci­dent” illus­trates Chi­ang’s and the Green Gang’s col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Japan­ese.

In his third talk, Mr. Emory reviewed the pow­er­ful, ongo­ing links between the Euro­pean aris­toc­ra­cies of Europe, pri­mar­i­ly Spain and Por­tu­gal and their coun­ter­parts in Latin Amer­i­ca, one of the dynam­ics of his­tor­i­cal and con­tem­po­rary fas­cism fun­da­men­tal to an under­stand­ing of the con­tem­po­rary pow­er polit­i­cal land­scape. The Nazi/Fascist her­itage of the von Storch fam­i­ly, how the AfD evolved from the Nazi gov­ern­ment are front and cen­ter in this analy­sis. The mint­ing of Cold War rhetoric and ide­ol­o­gy in the clos­ing days of the Third Reich is an echo from the past and a glimpse into the future.