In a previous post, we set forth excerpts from “The Bormann Brotherhood” documenting the Third Reich genesis of the terms “Iron Curtain” and “Better Dead Than Red”–the latter the propaganda battle cry of Germany’s Radio Werewolf. Near the end of WWII, Gehlen set up the Werewolf guerilla organization, which recruited from the ranks of the UPA: “. . . . Gehlen provided [SS Obergruppenfuhrer Hans] Prutzmann with a detailed blue-print for the organization of the Werewolves . . . . Prutzmann and his sub-commanders resorted to enlisting to enlisting members of the rapidly dissolving Vlassov Army and the Ukrainian UPA . . . . Gehlen had produced the original scheme for Werewolf . . . .” UPA combatants continued guerilla warfare until 1952, jumping to CIA: “. . . . In south-west Ukraine and eastern Poland bands of the nationalist UPA many still with their German SS officers, harassed the Soviet Army, the Polish militia of the communist-dominated Warsaw government and the local authorities set up in the liberated territories. . . . Trained in guerilla warfare by the Germans, they ambushed Soviet road convoys, used hit-and-run tactics, and carried out innumerable sabotage actions. Indeed, some of the Ukrainian insurgents held out in the forests of the Carpathian mountains until 1952. . . .” WFMU-FM is podcasting For The Record–You can subscribe to the podcast HERE. Mr. Emory emphatically recommends that listeners/readers get the 32GB flash drive containing all of Mr. Emory’s 43 years on the air, plus a library of old anti-fascist books on easy-to-download PDF files.
For years, we have exhaustively documented the return to power of the Third Reich-allied OUN/B in Ukraine. A revealing vote at the UN shone a rare spotlight on the pro-fascist and Nazi strategic agenda that the US and much of the rest of the West has pursued since before the guns of World War II fell silent. With the EU and UK abstaining from the vote, the US and Ukraine were the only nations voting against the resolution condemning the glorification of Nazism. WFMU-FM is podcasting For The Record–You can subscribe to the podcast HERE.
To comprehend the political maelstrom engulfing the country as 2020 and the Trump administration are drawing to a close, it is essential to understand the transnational corporate landscape—the foundation of contemporary power political dynamics.
Beginning with an outgrowth of the pivotally important cartel agreements reached by Standard Oil and I.G. Farben between the World Wars, we note the apparent “gentleman’s agreement” between U.S. and German businessmen not to bomb the Third Reich’s synthetic fuel plants during the Second World War.
Those synthetic fuel plants were a direct outgrowth of the Standard‑I.G. Agreement of 1929, highlighted in—among other programs—FTR #’s 511, and 1108.
That apparent agreement exemplifies and signifies the decisive position of transnational corporate interests in the manifestation of international power politics.
Next, we set forth the dominant position of the remarkable and deadly Bormann capital network in the global “corporocracy.”
In addition to control of the German corporate establishment and interlocked European interests, the Bormann group has been buying share in Blue Chip U.S. stocks for the better part of the last hundred years. This puts the network in a controlling position in the transnational corporate community.
With electronic, computer-controlled buying and selling of equities in the world’s capital markets, a relatively small share of capital ownership in one of the giant transnationals is disproportionally important. Ownership of 2% or more of the stock in one of the world’s giant corporations constitutes a major position, in that when that number of shares is sold at one time, such an event can kick-in an electronic sell-off.
Illustrating the position of the Bormann network in U.S. economic life, we review the fact that Bormann drew funds on three demand accounts in New York banks in August of 1967. Nothing illustrates the nature of transnational corporate power and the position of the remarkable and deadly Bormann group in the corporate pantheon.
We note, in passing, that Bormann’s security director—Gestapo chief Heinrich Muller—worked with CIA and U.S. intelligence in the postwar period.
The Bormann transactions took place in August of 1967. In April and June of the following year, Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy were killed.
Bormann saw Fritz Thyssen as a pipeline to Allen Dulles.
In the concluding portion of the program, we present supplemental information from an unpublished manuscript. The author is well-known to veteran researchers, but will remain anonymous, since the work was never formally published.
In FTR #’s 1149 and 1150, we set forth portions of this manuscript. In this program, we recapitulate those portions of the document, and include discussion of the consummate influence of the I.G. Farben international espionage organization in the U.S. between the World Wars.
In addition to I.G.’s profound relationship with John Foster and Allen Dulles of Sullivan & Cromwell, I.G. has also manifested major influence in Democratic administrations: Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal and JFK’s attenuated postwar administration as well.
Beyond that, the author maintains, correctly in our opinion, that the transnational influence of the I.G. networks and the postwar political influence-buying of CIA and BND constitute a direct extension of the OSS-SS collaboration during the closing stages of World War II.
What was created in US. boardrooms and intelligence headquarters during and immediately after World War II is now morphing into a mass movement.
This is the corporate foundation of the current malaise!
Program Highlights Include: Review of the role of OSS (and later CIA) officers Allen Dulles, William Casey and Frank Wisner in paving the way for the incorporation of Nazi SS cadres into the embryonic CIA; review of the role of 1948 GOP Presidential candidate Thomas Dewey in advising the Mary Carter Paint Company (later named Resorts International) to pay Allen Dulles’s law partner David Peck to advise U.S. High Commissioner for Germany John J. McCloy on the commutation of sentences meted out to Nazi war criminals; review of the role of the Gehlen Org (as part of the then West German BND) in financing Eastern European fascist elements in the U.S.; review of the overlap between Resorts International and William Casey’s Capital Cities Incorporated; review of Casey’s role overseeing OSS activities in Germany during 1944 and 1945.
Concluding the discussion contained in part of FTR #1147 and all of FTR #1148, we finish the presentation of a very important article by the brilliant Peter Dale Scott, written almost 35 years ago. With the GOP convention in full swing as these programs were being recorded, the symbiosis between Allen Dulles and the Nazi SS is fundamental to understanding not only the genesis of the U.S. intelligence establishment, but how that institution is inextricably linked with the Republican Party.
The link to this article permits the listener/reader to download (for free) the entire issue of Covert Action Quarterly. Mr. Emory strongly recommends that they do so, as the other articles in this excellent issue will supplement the analysis beautifully.
Due to the length and complexity of this article, we are not transcribing it, but will summarize important points of information.
Key Points of Analysis:
1.–Dulles’s negotiations with the SS preceded by months the official story of the contact between U.S. intelligence and the Gehlen team. ” . . . . It is interesting to note that Gehlen knew of Wolff’s contacts with Dulles s early as January 1945, the month in which they were initiated. From this same period he began to consolidate his networks for survival after Hitler’s downfall, which is to say he already expected to reach a modus vivendi with the Americans. In April 1945, one month before the war ended, Dulles asked Frank Wisner to begin talks with Gehlen, who was not taken into U.S. custody until May 20. On the Gehlen side, a plan ‘to gain contact with the Americans’ was approved on April 9. . . .”
2.–Dulles’s negotiations with the SS, involving Walter Rauff–who devised the mobile gas chambers used on the Eastern Front–were conducted as part of Operation Sunrise. ” . . . . Despite the [U.S.] Army interrogator’s pleas that Rauff ‘is considered a menace if ever set free, and failing actual elimination, is recommended for life-long internment,’ Dulles kep his bargain and Rauff was released. According to usually reliable intelligence sources. Dulles then employed Rauff on anti-communist operations in Italy, which was Rauff’s specialty under the Nazis. . . .”
3.–Although the Vatican was deeply involved with the SS/OSS negotiations, Dulles’ team was the primary component. ” . . . It was Dulles’s contacts, not the Vatican, who handled the smuggling of Nazis. According to top secret State Department documents, the Italian police provided the false passports for allied agents; the visas came from the Argentine consulate in the allied intelligence unit based at Trieste;and the embarkation paperwork was handled by a U.S. State Department officer in Genoa. Genoa, incidentally was Rauff’s area of jurisdiction. All of them worked for Dulles. . . .”
Supplementing the information in the Peter Dale Scott article, we present information about Mengele’s work in Paraguay in conjunction with the CIA and Pentagon: ” . . . . In the last named country, the son of a Bavarian cavalry officer, President Stroessner, cooperates with the United States military authorities and the CIA, as he does with Bormann and his representatives. During the Vietnam war, President Stroessner permitted the U.S. Army Chemical Corps and the CIA to send in teams of 2,500 men to carry out field tests, in the Matto Grosso jungle, of chemicals for use in Vietnam. In one instance, several American soldiers became casualties when they accidentally were sprayed with the gas. They were taken to a Paraguayan military field hospital; the doctor who treated them was Josef Mengele, now a Paraguayan citizen and an officer in the Paraguayan Army Medical Corps. Under Mengele’s treatment, all soldiers recovered. None, of course, knew the true identity of their medical benefactor. . . .”
Of paramount importance in the context of this presentation, is the fact that it was William Casey who was in charge of OSS operations in Germany in late 1944 and 1945, as Dulles, Donovan, and the SS were forging their alliance!! This places Casey’s role in the Crusade For Freedom and the derivative Reagan campaign and administration in perspective.
Placing the co-evolution of the Crusade For Freedom, the GOP and the Gehlen “Org” in context, we note that:
1.–The Gehlen organization was a direct extension of the Third Reich’s national security establishment, coalescing with the approval of a German chain of command that was still in effect after the formal conclusion of hostilities.
2.–The OUN/B, Iron Guard, Croatian Ustachis and other Eastern European fascist groups were part of the Gehlen organization. They were the primary elements in the GOP’s Ethnic Heritage Outreach Council.
3.–This places William Casey’s central role in the GOP Nazi branch as an element in the perpetuation of the Third Reich’s national security establishment.
Next, we review analysis of the Crusade For Freedom–the covert operation that brought Third Reich alumni into the country and also supported their guerilla warfare in Eastern Europe, conducted up until the early 1950’s. Conceived by Allen Dulles, overseen by Richard Nixon, publicly represented by Ronald Reagan and realized in considerable measure by William Casey, the CFF ultimately evolved into a Nazi wing of the GOP.
While serving as chairman of the Republican National Committee, the elder George Bush shepherded the Nazi émigré community into position as a permanent branch of the Republican Party.
Note that the rise of the Reagan administration was essentially the ascent of the Nazified GOP, embodied in the CFF milieu. Reagan (spokesman for CFF) was President; George H.W. Bush (for whom CIA headquarters is named) was the Vice President; William Casey (who handled the State Department machinations to bring these people into the United States) was Reagan’s campaign manager and later his CIA director.
Central to understanding the merging of the U.S. with Nazi Germany in an anti-Soviet alliance–is the understanding of what globalization really is and how it precipitated fascism and the Second World War.
Also central to an understanding of the realization of the consummate manifestation of both globalization and fascism/Nazism–is analysis of the machinations of the Bush family. The heroic Justice Department investigator (later author) John Loftus delineated the Bush family’s role in the laundering of Nazi funds between the Thyssen Bank in Berlin, the Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart, N.V. and the Union Bank in the U.S.
The networking of the Bush family with the Thyssens, and the Rockefellers, in turn, is inextricably linked with the coalescence and operation of the remarkable and deadly Bormann flight capital network, highlighted in FTR #305, among other programs.
Of paramount importance is the role of the two institutions in which Prescott Bush served–Brown Brothers Harriman and the Union Bank–as a fundamental vehicle for laundering money from the consummately powerful Rockefeller family and related interests in Nazi Germany. ” . . . . But what did the Bush family know about their Nazi connection and when did they know it? As senior managers of Brown Brothers Harriman, they had to have known that their American clients, such as the Rockefellers, were investing heavily in German corporations, including Thyssen’s giant Vereinigte Stahlwerke. As noted historian Christopher Simpson repeatedly documents, it is a matter of public record that Brown Brother’s investments in Nazi Germany took place under the Bush family stewardship. . . . It should be recalled that in January 1937, he hired Allen Dulles to ‘cloak’ his accounts. But cloak from whom? Did he expect that happy little Holland was going to declare war on America? The cloaking operation only makes sense in anticipation of a possible war with Nazi Germany. If Union Bank was not the conduit for laundering the Rockefeller’s Nazi investments back to America, then how could the Rockefeller-controlled Chase Manhattan Bank end up owning 31% of the Thyssen group after the war? It should be noted that the Thyssen group (TBG) is now the largest industrial conglomerate in Germany, and with a net worth of more than $50 billion dollars, one of the wealthiest corporations in the world. TBG is so rich it even bought out the Krupp family, famous arms makers for Hitler, leaving the Thyssens as the undisputed champion survivors of the Third Reich. Where did the Thyssens get the start-up money to rebuild their empire with such speed after World War II? . . . . A fortune this size could only have come from the Thyssen profits made from rearming the Third Reich, and then hidden, first from the Nazi tax auditors, and then from the Allies. The Bushes knew perfectly well that Brown Brothers was the American money channel into Nazi Germany, and that Union Bank was the secret pipeline to bring the Nazi money back to America from Holland. The Bushes had to have known how the secret money circuit worked because they were on the board of directors in both directions: Brown Brothers out, Union Bank in. . . .”
Further solidifying the continuity between the Third Reich, the Gehlen Org and the GOP, we note that, while it was the BND (the intelligence service of the Federal Republic) the “Org” was financing the Eastern European fascist groups that were part of the Ethnic Heritage Outreach Council.
Fleshing out information about the BND financing of groups linked to the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations, we present supplemental information from an unpublished manuscript. The author is well-known to veteran researchers, but will remain anonymous, since the work was never formally completed or published.
Providing background to discussion of the relationship between the milieu of Resorts International, Nixon, his banking associate Bebe Rebozo and William Casey, we note that Rebozo’s banking of funds from the deadly Bormann network, the institution that Mr. Emory feels will prove to be the decisive element on this earth.
Continuing with discussion from the unpublished manuscript referenced above, the broadcast highlights interactions between the Nixon administration, Bebe Rebozo, a mysterious and allegedly organized-crime connected company called Resorts International, an even more mysterious subsidiary of Resorts International called the Paradise Island Bridge Company and the Dewey, Dulles, Nazi, William Casey milieu that is central to this discussion.
Note that Donald Trump was a suitor for the ownership of Resorts International (after the 1986 death of James Crosby), ultimately purchasing the Taj Mahal Casino from the firm after a lawsuit with television star Merv Griffin.
In these programs, we continue discussion of the Azov milieu and its “Intermarium” outreach, in the context of Ukraine as a “pivot point” central to control of the World Island or Earth Island. The evolution of the Intermarium concept is fundamental to analysis of this phenomenon.
Ukraine’s significance as a global epicenter of burgeoning fascism extends to the region’s online, ideological and iconic manifestation. Two recent Canadian teens–Kam McLeod and Bryer Schmegelsky–who apparently killed three people in cold blood were influenced by Nazi culture and Azov Battalion manifestation in particular. ” . . . . A Steam user confirmed to The Globe and Mail that he talked to Mr. Schmegelsky regularly online. He recalled Mr. McLeod joining their chats as well. The user, whom The Globe is not identifying, provided photos sent by an account believed to be owned by Mr. Schmegelsky, showing him in military fatigues, brandishing what appears to be an airsoft rifle – which fires plastic pellets. Another photo shows a swastika armband, and yet another features Mr. Schmegelsky in a gas mask. The photos were reportedly sent in the fall of 2018, but the user said he stopped playing online games with Mr. Schmegelsky earlier this year after he continued to praise Hitler’s Germany. One account connected to the teens uses the logo of the Azov Battalion, a far-right Ukrainian militia that has been accused of harbouring sympathies to neo-Nazis. . . .”
Discussing Zbigniew Brzezinski’s doctrine of controlling Eurasia by controlling the “pivot point” of Ukraine. Fundamental to this analysis is the concept of the Earth Island or World Island as it is sometimes known.
Brzezinski, in turn, draws on the geopolitical theories of Sir Halford Mackinder, and, later contemporary Intermarium adovcates such as Alexandros Petersen.
Stretching from the Straits of Gibraltar, all across Europe, most of the Middle East, Eurasia, Russia, China and India, that stretch of land: comprises most of the world’s land mass; contains most of the world’s population and most of the world’s natural resources (including oil and natural gas.) Geopoliticians have long seen controlling that land mass as the key to world domination.
Most of the three programs highlighting the evolution and application of the Intermarium concept consist of reading and analysis of a long academic paper by Marlene Laruelle and Ellen Rivera. Of paramount significance in this discussion is the pivotal role of Ukrainian fascist organizations in the Intermarium and closely connected Promethean networks, from the post World War I period, through the time between the World Wars, through the Cold War and up to and including the Maidan coup.
Military, economic and political networking has employed the Intermarium idea, with what the paper terms the “ideological underpinnings” stemming from the evolution of the Ukrainian fascist milieu in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Some of the most important U.S. think tanks and associated military individuals and institutions embody this continuity: ” . . . . The continuity of institutional and individual trajectories from Second World War collaborationists to Cold War-era anti-communist organizations to contemporary conservative U.S. think tanks is significant for the ideological underpinnings of today’s Intermarium revival. . . .”
Program Highlights Include: Review of the incorporation of the Gehlen “Org” into the U.S. and Western intelligence apparatus; the key presence of the OUN/B and other Eastern European fascist groups into the Gehlen outfit; approval given to Gehlen for his deal with the Americans by Admiral Doenitz (who succeeded Hitler) and General Franz Halder (Gehlen’s “former” chief of staff); the incorporation of the OUN/B/Gehlen/ABN milieu into the Republican Party via the Crusade For Freedom; the key roles in the CFF played by Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, William Casey and George H.W. Bush; Allen Dulles and William Donovan’s wartime collusion with Nazi Germany to craft the Christian West entity; the formation of the Black Eagle Trust by John J. McCloy, Robert Lovett and Robert B. Anderson (this assured the continuity of both Japanese fascism and German Nazism in the postwar period).
We emphasize the treatment afforded Yasha Levine. As might be expected, Levine received the Jim Garrison/Gary Webb treatment. The retribution directed at Yasha Levine epitomizes why Mr. Emory refers to the so-called progressive sector as “so-called.”
” . . . . The threats and attacks had begun sometime overnight while I slept. By morning, they had reached a vicious and murderous pitch. There were calls for my death—by fire, by suffocation, by having my throat slit by razor blades. People I had never met called me a rapist, and alleged that I took delight in beating women and forcing people to have sex with me. I was accused of homophobia. Anonymous people filed bogus claims with my editor. Allegations that I was a CIA agent poured in, as did claims that I worked with British intelligence. The fact that I had been born in the Soviet Union didn’t do me any favors; naturally, I was accused of being an FSB spy and of working for Russia’s successor to the KGB. I was informed that my name was added to a dark net assassination list—a site where people could place anonymous bids for my murder. The roaming eye of the Internet hate machine had suddenly fixed on me. . . .”
In addition to online bullying, slander and veiled and direct threats, the so-called “privacy activists” joined in pillorying Yasha Levine: ” . . . . Micah Lee, the former EFF technologist who helped Edward Snowden communicate securely with journalists and who now works at The Intercept, attacked me as a conspiracy theorist and accused me and my colleagues at Pando of being sexist bullies, he claimed that my reporting was motivated not by a desire to get at the truth but by a malicious impulse to harass a female Tor developer. Although Lee conceded that my information about Tor’s government funding was correct, he counter intuitively argued that it didn’t matter. . . .
” . . . . Journalists, experts, and technologists from groups like the ACLU, the EFF, Freedom of the Press Foundation and The Intercept and employees of the Tor Project joined in to attack my reporting. Unlike Lee, most did not attempt to engage my reporting but employed a range of familiar PR smear tactics—tactics you usually see used by corporate flacks, not principled privacy activists. They took to social media, telling anyone who showed interest in my articles that they should ignore them instead. Then, when that didn’t work, they tried to discredit my reporting with ridicule, misdirection, and crude insults. . . .
” . . . . A respected ACLU privacy expert, who now works as a congressional staffer, called me “a conspiracy theorist who sees black helicopters everywhere” and compared my reporting about Tor to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. As someone who escaped state-sponsored anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union, I found the comparison extremely offensive, especially coming from the ACLU. The Protocols were an anti-Semitic forgery disseminated by the Russian Tsar’s secret police that unleashed waves of deadly pogroms against Jews across the Russian Empire in the early twentieth century. Tor employees put forth a torrent of childish insults, calling me a ‘dumb Stalinist state-felcher’ and a ‘fucktard’s fucktard.’ They accused me of being funded by spies to undermine faith in cryptography. One of them claimed that I was a rapist, and hurled homophobic insults about the various ways in which I had supposedly performed sexual favors for a male colleague.
“In the way that these Internet hazing sessions, go, the campaign evolved and spread. Strange people began threatening me and my colleagues on social media. Some accused me of having blood on my hands and of racking up an “activist body count”–that people were actually dying because of my reporting undermined trust in Tor.The attacks widened to include regular readers and social media users, anyone who had the nerve to ask questions about Tor’s funding sources. An employee of the Tor Project went so far as to dox an anonymous Twitter user, exposing his real identity and contacting his employer in the hopes of getting him fired from his job as a junior pharmacist.
It was bizarre. I watched all this unfold in real time but had no idea how to respond. Even more disconcerting was that the attacks soon expanded to include libelous stories placed in reputable media outlets. The Guardian published a story by a freelancer accusing me of running an online sexual harassment and bullying campaign. The Los Angeles Review of Books, generally a good journal of arts and culture, ran an essay by a freelancer alleging that my reporting was funded by the CIA. Paul Carr, my editor at Pando, lodged official complaints and demanded to know how these reporters came to their conclusions. Both publications ultimately retracted their statements and printed corrections. An editor at the Guardian apologized and described the article as a ‘fuck up.’ But the online attacks continued. . . .”
Program Highlights Include:
1.–The role of Eddie Snowden in misattributing the Shadow Brokers non-hack to Russia.
2.–Snowden’s foreshadowing of the alleged Russian “hack” of the Macron campaign”: ” . . . . ‘That could have significant foreign policy consequences,’ Snowden wrote on Twitter. ‘Particularly if any of those operations targeted US allies. Particularly if any of those operations targeted elections.’ . . .”
3.–James Bamford’s analysis of WikiLeaker/Tor promoter/BBG associate Jacob Apelbaum as the most likely source of the Shadow Brokers non-hack.
The ludicrous nature of the “Russia-did it” hypothesis concerning the Macron hacks: ” . . . . The hacked documents in the ‘Macron hack’ not only contained Cyrillic text in the metadata, but also contained the name of the last person to modify the documents. That name, ‘Roshka Georgiy Petrovichan’, is an employee at Evrika, a large IT company that does work for the Russian government, including the FSB (Russian intelligence.) Also found in the metadata is the email of the person who uploaded the files to ‘archive.org’, and that email address, frankmacher1@gmx.de, is registered with a German free webmail provider used previously in 2016 phishing attacks against the CDU in Germany that have been attributed to APT28. It would appear that the ‘Russian hackers’ not only left clues suggesting it was Russian hackers behind the hack, but they decided to name names this time–their own names. . . .”
4.–Neo-Nazi and Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras associate Andrew Auerenheimer’s role in modifying the documents in the Macron hack: ” . . . . Shortly after an anonymous user of the 4chan.org discussion forum posted fake documents purporting to show Mr. Macron had set up an undisclosed shell company in the Caribbean, the user directed people to visit nouveaumartel.com for updates on the French election. That website, according to research by web-security provider Virtualroad.org, is registered by ‘Weevlos,’ a known online alias of Andrew Auernheimer, an American hacker who gained notoriety three years ago when a U.S. appeals court vacated his conviction for computer fraud. The site also is hosted by a server in Latvia that hosts the Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi news site that identifies its administrator as ‘Weev,’ another online alias of Mr. Aeurnheimer, Virtualroad.org says. ‘We strongly believe that the fake offshore documents were created by someone with control of the Daily Stormer server,’ said Tord Lundström, a computer forensics investigator at Virtualroad.org. . . .”
5.–French cybersecurity chief Guillaume Poupard negated the assertion that Russia hacked the Macron campaign: ” . . . . The head of the French government’s cyber security agency, which investigated leaks from President Emmanuel Macron’s election campaign, says they found no trace of a notorious Russian hacking group behind the attack. . . . ”
Continuing the discussion from FTR #1076, the broadcast recaps key aspects of analysis of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
In our last program, we noted that both the internet (DARPA projects including Project Agile) and the German Nazi Party had their origins as counterinsurgency gambits. Noting Hitler’s speech before The Industry Club of Dusseldorf, in which he equated communism with democracy, we highlight how the Cambridge Analytica scandal reflects the counterinsurgency origins of the Internet, and how the Cambridge Analytica affair embodies anti-Democracy/as counterinsurgency.
Key aspects of the Cambridge Analytica affair include:
1.–The use of psychographic personality testing on Facebook that is used for political advantage: ” . . . . For several years, a data firm eventually hired by the Trump campaign, Cambridge Analytica, has been using Facebook as a tool to build psychological profiles that represent some 230 million adult Americans. A spinoff of a British consulting company and sometime-defense contractor known for its counterterrorism ‘psy ops’ work in Afghanistan, the firm does so by seeding the social network with personality quizzes. Respondents — by now hundreds of thousands of us, mostly female and mostly young but enough male and older for the firm to make inferences about others with similar behaviors and demographics — get a free look at their Ocean scores. Cambridge Analytica also gets a look at their scores and, thanks to Facebook, gains access to their profiles and real names. . . .”
2.–The parent company of Cambridge Analytica–SCL–was deeply involved with counterterrorism “psy-ops” in Afghanistan, embodying the essence of the counterinsurgency dynamic at the root of the development of the Internet. The use of online data to subvert democracy recalls Hitler’s speech to the Industry Club of Dusseldorf, in which he equated democracy with communism: ” . . . . Cambridge Analytica was a company spun out of SCL Group, a British military contractor that worked in information operations for armed forces around the world. It was conducting research on how to scale and digitise information warfare – the use of information to confuse or degrade the efficacy of an enemy. . . . As director of research, Wylie’s original role was to map out how the company would take traditional information operations tactics into the online space – in particular, by profiling people who would be susceptible to certain messaging. This morphed into the political arena. After Wylie left, the company worked on Donald Trump’s US presidential campaign . . . .”
3.–Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Christopher Wylie’s observations on the anti-democratic nature of the firm’s work: ” . . . . It was this shift from the battlefield to politics that made Wylie uncomfortable. ‘When you are working in information operations projects, where your target is a combatant, the autonomy or agency of your targets is not your primary consideration. It is fair game to deny and manipulate information, coerce and exploit any mental vulnerabilities a person has, and to bring out the very worst characteristics in that person because they are an enemy,’ he says. ‘But if you port that over to a democratic system, if you run campaigns designed to undermine people’s ability to make free choices and to understand what is real and not real, you are undermining democracy and treating voters in the same way as you are treating terrorists.’ . . . .”
4.–Wylie’s observations on how Cambridge Analytica’s methodology can be used to build a fascist political movement: ” . . . . One of the reasons these techniques are so insidious is that being a target of a disinformation campaign is ‘usually a pleasurable experience’, because you are being fed content with which you are likely to agree. ‘You are being guided through something that you want to be true,’ Wylie says. To build an insurgency, he explains, you first target people who are more prone to having erratic traits, paranoia or conspiratorial thinking, and get them to ‘like’ a group on social media. They start engaging with the content, which may or may not be true; either way ‘it feels good to see that information’. When the group reaches 1,000 or 2,000 members, an event is set up in the local area. Even if only 5% show up, ‘that’s 50 to 100 people flooding a local coffee shop’, Wylie says. This, he adds, validates their opinion because other people there are also talking about ‘all these things that you’ve been seeing online in the depths of your den and getting angry about’. People then start to believe the reason it’s not shown on mainstream news channels is because ‘they don’t want you to know what the truth is’. As Wylie sums it up: ‘What started out as a fantasy online gets ported into the temporal world and becomes real to you because you see all these people around you.’ . . . .”
5.–Wylie’s observation that Facebook was “All In” on the Cambridge Analytica machinations: ” . . . . ‘Facebook has known about what Cambridge Analytica was up to from the very beginning of those projects,” Wylie claims. “They were notified, they authorised the applications, they were given the terms and conditions of the app that said explicitly what it was doing. They hired people who worked on building the app. I had legal correspondence with their lawyers where they acknowledged it happened as far back as 2016.’ . . . .”
6.–The decisive participation of “Spy Tech” firm Palantir in the Cambridge Analytica operation: Peter Thiel’s surveillance firm Palantir was apparently deeply involved with Cambridge Analytica’s gaming of personal data harvested from Facebook in order to engineer an electoral victory for Trump. Thiel was an early investor in Facebook, at one point was its largest shareholder and is still one of its largest shareholders. In addition to his opposition to democracy because it allegedly is inimical to wealth creation, Thiel doesn’t think women should be allowed to vote and holds Nazi legal theoretician Carl Schmitt in high regard. ” . . . . It was a Palantir employee in London, working closely with the data scientists building Cambridge’s psychological profiling technology, who suggested the scientists create their own app — a mobile-phone-based personality quiz — to gain access to Facebook users’ friend networks, according to documents obtained by The New York Times. The revelations pulled Palantir — co-founded by the wealthy libertarian Peter Thiel — into the furor surrounding Cambridge, which improperly obtained Facebook data to build analytical tools it deployed on behalf of Donald J. Trump and other Republican candidates in 2016. Mr. Thiel, a supporter of President Trump, serves on the board at Facebook. ‘There were senior Palantir employees that were also working on the Facebook data,’ said Christopher Wylie, a data expert and Cambridge Analytica co-founder, in testimony before British lawmakers on Tuesday. . . . The connections between Palantir and Cambridge Analytica were thrust into the spotlight by Mr. Wylie’s testimony on Tuesday. Both companies are linked to tech-driven billionaires who backed Mr. Trump’s campaign: Cambridge is chiefly owned by Robert Mercer, the computer scientist and hedge fund magnate, while Palantir was co-founded in 2003 by Mr. Thiel, who was an initial investor in Facebook. . . .”
7.–The use of “dark posts” by the Cambridge Analytica team. (We have noted that Brad Parscale has reassembled the old Cambridge Analytica team for Trump’s 2020 election campaign. It seems probable that AOC’s millions of online followers, as well as the “Bernie Bots,” will be getting “dark posts” crafted by AI’s scanning their online efforts.) ” . . . . One recent advertising product on Facebook is the so-called ‘dark post’: A newsfeed message seen by no one aside from the users being targeted. With the help of Cambridge Analytica, Mr. Trump’s digital team used dark posts to serve different ads to different potential voters, aiming to push the exact right buttons for the exact right people at the exact right times. . . .”
Supplementing the discussion about Cambridge Analytica, the program reviews information from FTR #718 about Facebook’s apparent involvement with elements and individuals linked to CIA and DARPA: ” . . . . Facebook’s most recent round of funding was led by a company called Greylock Venture Capital, who put in the sum of $27.5m. One of Greylock’s senior partners is called Howard Cox, another former chairman of the NVCA, who is also on the board of In-Q-Tel. What’s In-Q-Tel? Well, believe it or not (and check out their website), this is the venture-capital wing of the CIA. After 9/11, the US intelligence community became so excited by the possibilities of new technology and the innovations being made in the private sector, that in 1999 they set up their own venture capital fund, In-Q-Tel, which ‘identifies and partners with companies developing cutting-edge technologies to help deliver these solutions to the Central Intelligence Agency and the broader US Intelligence Community (IC) to further their missions’. . . .”
More about the CIA/DARPA links to the development of Facebook: ” . . . . The second round of funding into Facebook ($US12.7 million) came from venture capital firm Accel Partners. Its manager James Breyer was formerly chairman of the National Venture Capital Association, and served on the board with Gilman Louie, CEO of In-Q-Tel, a venture capital firm established by the Central Intelligence Agency in 1999. One of the company’s key areas of expertise are in ‘data mining technologies’. Breyer also served on the board of R&D firm BBN Technologies, which was one of those companies responsible for the rise of the internet. Dr Anita Jones joined the firm, which included Gilman Louie. She had also served on the In-Q-Tel’s board, and had been director of Defence Research and Engineering for the US Department of Defence. She was also an adviser to the Secretary of Defence and overseeing the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which is responsible for high-tech, high-end development. . . .”
Program Highlights Include: Review of Facebook’s plans to use brain-to-computer technology to operate its platform, thereby the enabling of recording and databasing people’s thoughts; Review of Facebook’s employment of former DARPA head Regina Dugan to implement the brain-to-computer technology; Review of Facebook’s building 8–designed to duplicate DARPA; Review of Facebook’s hiring of the Atlantic Council to police the social medium’s online content; Review of Facebook’s partnering with Narendra Modi’s Hindutva fascist government in India; Review of Facebook’s emloyment of Ukrainian fascist Kateryna Kruk to manage the social medium’s Ukrainian content.
This program supplements past coverage of Facebook in FTR #‘s 718, 946, 1021, 1039 noting how Facebook has networked with the very Hindutva fascist Indian elements and OUN/B successor organizations in Ukraine. This networking has been–ostensibly to combat fake news. The reality may well highlight that the Facebook/BJP-RSS/OUN/B links generates fake news, rather than interdicting it. The fake news so generated, however, will be to the liking of the fascists in power in both countries, manifesting as a “Serpent’s Walk” revisionist scenario.
Key elements of discussion and analysis include:
1.–Indian politics has been largely dominated by fake news, spread by social media: ” . . . . In the continuing Indian elections, as 900 million people are voting to elect representatives to the lower house of the Parliament, disinformation and hate speech are drowning out truth on social media networks in the country and creating a public health crisis like the pandemics of the past century. This contagion of a staggering amount of morphed images, doctored videos and text messages is spreading largely through messaging services and influencing what India’s voters watch and read on their smartphones. A recent study by Microsoft found that over 64 percent Indians encountered fake news online, the highest reported among the 22 countries surveyed. . . . These platforms are filled with fake news and disinformation aimed at influencing political choices during the Indian elections. . . . ”
2.–Narendra Modi’s Hindutva fascist BJP has been the primary beneficiary of fake news, and his regime has partnered with Facebook: ” . . . . The hearing was an exercise in absurdist theater because the governing B.J.P. has been the chief beneficiary of divisive content that reaches millions because of the way social media algorithms, especially Facebook, amplify ‘engaging’ articles. . . .”
3.–Rajesh Jain is among those BJP functionaries who serve Facebook, as well as the Hindutva fascists: ” . . . . By the time Rajesh Jain was scaling up his operations in 2013, the BJP’s information technology (IT) strategists had begun interacting with social media platforms like Facebook and its partner WhatsApp. If supporters of the BJP are to be believed, the party was better than others in utilising the micro-targeting potential of the platforms. However, it is also true that Facebook’s employees in India conducted training workshops to help the members of the BJP’s IT cell. . . .”
4.–Dr. Hiren Joshi is another of the BJP operatives who is heavily involved with Facebook. ” . . . . Also assisting the social media and online teams to build a larger-than-life image for Modi before the 2014 elections was a team led by his right-hand man Dr Hiren Joshi, who (as already stated) is a very important adviser to Modi whose writ extends way beyond information technology and social media. . . . Joshi has had, and continues to have, a close and long-standing association with Facebook’s senior employees in India. . . .”
5.–Shivnath Thukral, who was hired by Facebook in 2017 to be its Public Policy Director for India & South Asia, worked with Joshi’s team in 2014. ” . . . . The third team, that was intensely focused on building Modi’s personal image, was headed by Hiren Joshi himself who worked out of the then Gujarat Chief Minister’s Office in Gandhinagar. The members of this team worked closely with staffers of Facebook in India, more than one of our sources told us. As will be detailed later, Shivnath Thukral, who is currently an important executive in Facebook, worked with this team. . . .”
6.–An ostensibly remorseful BJP politician–Prodyut Bora–highlighted the dramatic effect of Facebook and its WhatsApp subsidiary have had on India’s politics: ” . . . . In 2009, social media platforms like Facebook and WhatsApp had a marginal impact in India’s 20 big cities. By 2014, however, it had virtually replaced the traditional mass media. In 2019, it will be the most pervasive media in the country. . . .”
7.–A concise statement about the relationship between the BJP and Facebook was issued by BJP tech office Vinit Goenka: ” . . . . At one stage in our interview with [Vinit] Goenka that lasted over two hours, we asked him a pointed question: ‘Who helped whom more, Facebook or the BJP?’ He smiled and said: ‘That’s a difficult question. I wonder whether the BJP helped Facebook more than Facebook helped the BJP. You could say, we helped each other.’ . . .”
In Ukraine, as well, Facebook and the OUN/B successor organizations function symbiotically:
(Note that the Atlantic Council is dominant in the array of individuals and institutions constituting the Ukrainian fascist/Facebook cooperative effort. We have spoken about the Atlantic Council in numerous programs, including FTR #943. The organization has deep operational links to elements of U.S. intelligence, as well as the OUN/B milieu that dominates the Ukrainian diaspora.)
Overlapping cybersecurity outfit CrowdStrike, the Atlantic Council has been at the forefront of the “Russia” was behind the high-profile hacks meme:
CrowdStrike–at the epicenter of the supposed Russian hacking controversy is noteworthy. Its co-founder and chief technology officer, Dmitry Alperovitch is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, financed by elements that are at the foundation of fanning the flames of the New Cold War: “In this respect, it is worth noting that one of the commercial cybersecurity companies the government has relied on is Crowdstrike, which was one of the companies initially brought in by the DNC to investigate the alleged hacks. . . . Dmitri Alperovitch is also a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. . . . The connection between [Crowdstrike co-founder and chief technology officer Dmitri] Alperovitch and the Atlantic Council has gone largely unremarked upon, but it is relevant given that the Atlantic Council—which is is funded in part by the US State Department, NATO, the governments of Latvia and Lithuania, the Ukrainian World Congress, and the Ukrainian oligarch Victor Pinchuk—has been among the loudest voices calling for a new Cold War with Russia. As I pointed out in the pages of The Nation in November, the Atlantic Council has spent the past several years producing some of the most virulent specimens of the new Cold War propaganda. . . . ”
In May of 2018, Facebook decided to effectively outsource the work of identifying propaganda and misinformation during elections to the Atlantic Council, so choosing someone like Kruk who already has the Atlantic Council’s stamp of approval is in keeping with that trend:
” . . . . Facebook is partnering with the Atlantic Council in another effort to combat election-related propaganda and misinformation from proliferating on its service. The social networking giant said Thursday that a partnership with the Washington D.C.-based think tank would help it better spot disinformation during upcoming world elections. The partnership is one of a number of steps Facebook is taking to prevent the spread of propaganda and fake news after failing to stop it from spreading on its service in the run up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election. . . .”
Since autumn 2018, Facebook has looked to hire a public policy manager for Ukraine. The job came after years of Ukrainians criticizing the platform for takedowns of its activists’ pages and the spread of [alleged] Russian disinfo targeting Kyiv. Now, it appears to have one: @Kateryna_Kruk.— Christopher Miller (@ChristopherJM) June 3, 2019
Kateryna Kruk:
1.–Is Facebook’s Public Policy Manager for Ukraine as of May of this year, according to her LinkedIn page.
2.–Worked as an analyst and TV host for the Ukrainian ‘anti-Russian propaganda’ outfit StopFake. StopFake is the creation of Irena Chalupa, who works for the Atlantic Council and the Ukrainian government and appears to be the sister of Andrea and Alexandra Chalupa.
3.–Joined the “Kremlin Watch” team at the European Values think-tank, in October of 2017.
4.–Received the Atlantic Council’s Freedom award for her communications work during the Euromaidan protests in June of 2014.
5.–Worked for OUN/B successor organization Svoboda during the Euromaidan protests. “ . . . ‘There are people who don’t support Svoboda because of some of their slogans, but they know it’s the most active political party and go to them for help, said Svoboda volunteer Kateryna Kruk. . . . ”
6.–Also has a number of articles on the Atlantic Council’s Blog. Here’s a blog post from August of 2018 where she advocates for the creation of an independent Ukrainian Orthodox Church to diminish the influence of the Russian Orthodox Church.
7.–According to her LinkedIn page has also done extensive work for the Ukrainian government. From March 2016 to January 2017 she was the Strategic Communications Manager for the Ukrainian parliament where she was responsible for social media and international communications. From January-April 2017 she was the Head of Communications at the Ministry of Health.
8.–Was not only was a volunteer for Svoboda during the 2014 Euromaidan protests, but openly celebrated on twitter the May 2014 massacre in Odessa when the far right burned dozens of protestors alive. Kruk’s twitter feed is set to private now so there isn’t public access to her old tweet, but people have screen captures of it. Here’s a tweet from Yasha Levine with a screenshot of Kruk’s May 2, 2014 tweet where she writes: “#Odessa cleaned itself from terrorists, proud for city fighting for its identity.glory to fallen heroes..” She even threw in a “glory to fallen heroes” at the end of her tweet celebrating this massacre. Keep in mind that it was month after this tweet that the Atlantic Council gave her that Freedom Award for her communications work during the protests.
9.–In 2014, . . . tweeted that a man had asked her to convince his grandson not to join the Azov Battalion, a neo-Nazi militia. “I couldn’t do it,” she said. “I thanked that boy and blessed him.” And he then traveled to Luhansk to fight pro-Russian rebels.
10.–Lionized a Nazi sniper killed in Ukraine’s civil war. In March 2018, a 19-year neo-Nazi named Andriy “Dilly” Krivich was shot and killed by a sniper. Krivich had been fighting with the fascist Ukrainian group Right Sector, and had posted photos on social media wearing Nazi German symbols. After he was killed, Kruk tweeted an homage to the teenage Nazi. (The Nazi was also lionized on Euromaidan Press’ Facebook page.)
11.–Has staunchly defended the use of the slogan “Slava Ukraini,”which was first coined and popularized by Nazi-collaborating fascists, and is now the official salute of Ukraine’s army.
12.–Has also said that the Ukrainian fascist politician Andriy Parubiy, who co-founded a neo-Nazi party before later becoming the chairman of Ukraine’s parliament the Rada, is “acting smart,” writing, “Parubiy touche.” . . . .
In the context of Facebook’s institutional level networking with fascists, it is worth noting that social media themselves have been cited as a contributing factor to right-wing domestic terrorism. ” . . . The first is stochastic terrorism: ‘The use of mass, public communication, usually against a particular individual or group, which incites or inspires acts of terrorism which are statistically probable but happen seemingly at random.’ I encountered the idea in a Friday thread from data scientist Emily Gorcenski, who used it to tie together four recent attacks. . . . .”
The program concludes with review (from FTR #1039) of the psychological warfare strategy adapted by Cambridge Analytica to the political arena. Christopher Wylie–the former head of research at Cambridge Analytica who became one of the key insider whistle-blowers about how Cambridge Analytica operated and the extent of Facebook’s knowledge about it–gave an interview to Campaign Magazine. (We dealt with Cambridge Analytica in FTR #‘s 946, 1021.) Wylie recounts how, as director of research at Cambridge Analytica, his original role was to determine how the company could use the information warfare techniques used by SCL Group – Cambridge Analytica’s parent company and a defense contractor providing psy op services for the British military. Wylie’s job was to adapt the psychological warfare strategies that SCL had been using on the battlefield to the online space. As Wylie put it:
“ . . . . When you are working in information operations projects, where your target is a combatant, the autonomy or agency of your targets is not your primary consideration. It is fair game to deny and manipulate information, coerce and exploit any mental vulnerabilities a person has, and to bring out the very worst characteristics in that person because they are an enemy…But if you port that over to a democratic system, if you run campaigns designed to undermine people’s ability to make free choices and to understand what is real and not real, you are undermining democracy and treating voters in the same way as you are treating terrorists. . . . .”
Wylie also draws parallels between the psychological operations used on democratic audiences and the battlefield techniques used to be build an insurgency.
Reviewing past material in order to refresh and reinforce understanding of the historical context and foundation of the recent Jim DiEugenio interviews, this program reviews information relevant to the concept of the Christian West. “The Christian West” is explained in the description for AFA #37: ” . . . . When it became clear that the armies of the Third Reich were going to be defeated, it opened secret negotiations with representatives from the Western Allies. Representatives on both sides belonged to the transatlantic financial and industrial fraternity that had actively supported fascism. The thrust of these negotiations was the establishment of The Christian West. Viewed by the Nazis as a vehicle for surviving military defeat, ‘The Christian West’ involved a Hitler-less Reich joining with the U.S., Britain, France and other European nations in a transatlantic, pan-European anti-Soviet alliance. In fact, The Christian West became a reality only after the cessation of hostilities. The de-Nazification of Germany was aborted. Although a few of the more obvious and obnoxious elements of Nazism were removed, Nazis were returned to power at virtually every level and in almost every capacity in the Federal Republic of Germany. . . .”
Against the background of Allen and John Foster Dulles’ long, overlapping careers as lawyers for Sullivan & Cromwell, as well as government operatives, we note the decisive role of cartels in precipitating fascism and the position in the political and macro-economic landscape of the events stemming from that.
Program Highlights Include: American recruitment of Nazi Eastern Front intelligence officers in August of 1944 (far earlier than generally supposed); The Gehlen “Org“ ‘s incorporation into the CIA with the consent of a Nazi chain of command that was still in existence; the role in the Gehlen Org of Eastern European fascist organizations including the OUN/B, the Romanian Iron Guard, the Croatian Ustachi, the Bulgarian National Front and the SS Baltic Legion; the incorporation of those same Gehlen-controlled Eastern European fascists into the GOP via the Crusade For Freedom (CFF); the pivotal role of Gehlen/Nazi/CFF personnel in the postwar GOP (Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, William Casey and George H.W. Bush); the re-institution of Nazis in the “New” Federal Republic of Germany; the control of the “New” Federal Republic of Germany by an underground Nazi fuehringsring and a command center in Madrid; the role of Canadian nickel interests in John Foster Dulles’ cobbling together of I.G. Farben; Garrison investigative target Clay Shaw’s networking with Canadian nickel interests; the role of both Dulles brothers in frustrating the interdiction of the Bormann flight capital program; the [apparently successful] negotiations between OSS chief William Donovan, his aide Allen Dulles and representative of the SS to realize the Christian West concept; the role of Crusade For Freedom personnel in the assassination of President Kennedy; Garrison investigative target Clay Shaw’s friendship with Nazi Finance Minister Hjalmar Schacht; Foster Dulles’ professional intimacy with Schacht; Shaw’s links to Permindex and the SS-linked Schroeder banking empire; the decisive role of Allen Dulles, George Herbert Walker (W’s great grandfather and the grandfather of George H.W. Bush), Prescott Bush, Sr. (the father of George H.W. Bush and the grandfather of W) in laundering U.S. capital investment in Nazi Germany and the return of those Nazi monies to the U.S.; Nazi steel magnate Fritz Thyssen’s close relationship to: Allen Dulles, Prescott Bush, Martin Bormann and the Schroeder banking interests; Allen Dulles’ “go-to” relationship with Senator Prescott Bush (senior) while serving as head of the CIA.
The Future: Technology, Theocracy and the Thousand Year Reich The shape of things to come. Read more »