FTR #1025 The So-Called “Arab Spring” Revisited, Part 1

In this pro­gram, we review and present infor­ma­tion about the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and the phe­nom­e­non that became known as “The Arab Spring.”

The Mus­lim Broth­er­hood is an Islam­ic fas­cist orga­ni­za­tion, allied with the Axis in World War II. After the war, the orga­ni­za­tion grav­i­tat­ed to ele­ments of West­ern intel­li­gence, where it proved to be a bul­wark against Com­mu­nism in the Mus­lim world.

It is our view that the Broth­er­hood was seen as use­ful because of its mil­i­tary off­shoots (Al-Qae­da in par­tic­u­lar) were use­ful proxy war­riors in places like the Cau­ca­sus and the Balka­ns and because the Broth­er­hood’s cor­po­ratist, neo-lib­er­al eco­nom­ic doc­trine was in keep­ing with the desires and goals of the trans-nation­al cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ty.

(The Afghan Muja­hedin were a direct off­shoot of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and the suc­cess­ful war con­duct­ed by that group was a suc­cess­ful man­i­fes­ta­tion of “Broth­er­hood” as proxy war­riors. Of course, Al-Qae­da grew direct­ly from the Afghan jihadists.)

In FTR #‘s 733 through 739, we pre­sent­ed our view that the so-called Arab Spring was a U.S. intel­li­gence oper­a­tion, aimed at plac­ing the Broth­er­hood in pow­er in Mus­lim coun­tries dom­i­nat­ed either by a sec­u­lar dic­ta­tor or absolute monar­chy.

In FTR #787, we solid­i­fied our analy­sis with defin­i­tive con­fir­ma­tion of our work­ing hypoth­e­sis pre­sent­ed years ear­li­er.

About the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood’s eco­nom­ic doc­trine: ” . . . . . . . In Mus­lim litur­gy, the deals cut in the souk become a metaphor for the con­tract between God and the faith­ful. And the busi­ness mod­el Muham­mad pre­scribed, accord­ing to Mus­lim schol­ars and econ­o­mists, is very much in the lais­sez-faire tra­di­tion lat­er embraced by the West. Prices were to be set by God alone—anticipating by more than a mil­len­nium Adam Smith’s ref­er­ence to the ‘invis­i­ble hand’ of mar­ket-based pric­ing. . . . The Mus­lim Broth­er­hood hails 14th cen­tury philoso­pher Ibn Khal­dun as its eco­nomic guide. Antic­i­pat­ing sup­ply-side eco­nom­ics, Khal­dun argued that cut­ting tax­es rais­es pro­duc­tion and tax rev­enues, and that state con­trol should be lim­ited to pro­vid­ing water, fire and free graz­ing land, the util­i­ties of the ancient world. The World Bank has called Ibn Khal­dun the first advo­cate of pri­va­ti­za­tion. His found­ing influ­ence is a sign of mod­er­a­tion. If Islamists in pow­er ever do clash with the West, it won’t be over com­merce. . . .”

Ronald Rea­gan res­onat­ed with the Broth­er­hood’s eco­nom­ic doc­trine when pro­mot­ing his sup­ply-side eco­nom­ics: “Pres­i­dent Rea­gan, in his news con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, cit­ed a 14th cen­tu­ry Islam­ic schol­ar as an ear­ly expo­nent of the ”sup­ply-side” eco­nom­ic the­o­ry on which his Admin­is­tra­tion bases many of its poli­cies. An author­i­ty on the schol­ar lat­er said that the ref­er­ence seemed accu­rate. . . . Respond­ing to a ques­tion about the effects of tax and spend­ing cuts that began tak­ing effect yes­ter­day, Mr. Rea­gan said the sup­ply-side prin­ci­ple dat­ed at least as far back as Ibn Khal­dun, who is gen­er­al­ly regard­ed as the great­est Arab his­to­ri­an to emerge from the high­ly devel­oped Ara­bic cul­ture of the Mid­dle Ages. . . .”

The U.S. view on the Broth­er­hood and Islamism in gen­er­al was epit­o­mized by CIA offi­cer Gra­ham Fuller, who ran the Afghan Muja­hadin: ” . . . . . . . Fuller comes from that fac­tion of CIA Cold War­riors who believed (and still appar­ently believe) that fun­da­men­tal­ist Islam, even in its rad­i­cal jiha­di form, does not pose a threat to the West, for the sim­ple rea­son that fun­da­men­tal­ist Islam is con­ser­v­a­tive, against social jus­tice, against social­ism and redis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth, and in favor of hier­ar­chi­cal socio-eco­nom­ic struc­tures. Social­ism is the com­mon ene­my to both cap­i­tal­ist Amer­ica and to Wah­habi Islam, accord­ing to Fuller. . . .‘There is no main­stream Islam­ic organization...with rad­i­cal social views,’ he wrote. ‘Clas­si­cal Islam­ic the­ory envis­ages the role of the state as lim­ited to facil­i­tat­ing the well-being of mar­kets and mer­chants rather than con­trol­ling them. Islamists have always pow­er­fully object­ed to social­ism and communism....Islam has nev­er had prob­lems with the idea that wealth is uneven­ly dis­trib­uted.’ . . . .”

Next, we present the read­ing 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. . . .”

An Egypt­ian news­pa­per pub­lished what were said to be inter­cept­ed record­ings of Mor­si com­mu­ni­cat­ing con­spir­a­to­ri­al­ly with Muham­mad al-Zawahiri, the the broth­er of Ayman al-Zawahiri, the head of Al-Qae­da. Much of this checks out with infor­ma­tion that is already on the pub­lic record.

The Egypt­ian gov­ern­ment sen­tenced more than 500 mem­bers of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, to the resound­ing con­dem­na­tion of West­ern coun­tries, includ­ing the U.S. What we were not told was why. THIS appears to be why. Note the pro­found con­nec­tion between the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood gov­ern­ment of Mor­si and Al Qae­da, infor­ma­tion that sup­ple­ments what the Bruce Hoff­man paper dis­cuss­es: ” . . . . Mor­si informed Zawahiri that the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood sup­ports the mujahidin (jihadis) and that the mujahidin should sup­port the Broth­er­hood in order for them both, and the Islamist agen­da, to pre­vail in Egypt. This makes sense in the con­text that, soon after Mor­si came to pow­er, the gen­er­al pub­lic did become increas­ing­ly crit­i­cal of him and his poli­cies, includ­ing the fact that he was plac­ing only Broth­er­hood mem­bers in Egypt’s most impor­tant posts, try­ing quick­ly to push through a pro-Islamist con­sti­tu­tion, and, as Egyp­tians called it, try­ing in gen­er­al to ‘Broth­er­hood­ize’ Egypt. This sec­ond phone call being longer than the first, Zawahiri took it as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­grat­u­late Mor­si on his recent pres­i­den­tial victory—which, inci­den­tal­ly, from the start, was por­trayed by some as fraudulent—and expressed his joy that Morsi’s pres­i­den­cy could only mean that ‘all sec­u­lar infi­dels would be removed from Egypt.’ Then Zawahiri told Mor­si: ‘Rule accord­ing to the Sharia of Allah [or ‘Islam­ic law’], and we will stand next to you.  Know that, from the start, there is no so-called democ­ra­cy, so get rid of your oppo­si­tion.’ . . .”

Note the net­work­ing of GOP Sen­a­tors John McCain and Lind­say Gra­ham with Khairat El-Shater of the Egypt­ian Mus­lim Broth­er­hood while he was in prison. ” . . . . The call end­ed in agree­ment that al-Qae­da would sup­port the Broth­er­hood, includ­ing its inter­na­tion­al branch­es, under the under­stand­ing that Mor­si would soon imple­ment full Sharia in Egypt.  After this, Muham­mad Zawahiri and Khairat al-Shater, the num­ber-two man of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood orga­ni­za­tion, report­ed­ly met reg­u­lar­ly. It is inter­est­ing to note here that, pri­or to these rev­e­la­tions, U.S. ambas­sador Anne Pat­ter­son was seen vis­it­ing with Khairat al-Shater—even though he held no posi­tion in the Mor­si government—and after the oust­ing and impris­on­ment of Mor­si and lead­ing Broth­er­hood mem­bers, Sens. John McCain and Lind­say Gra­ham made it a point to vis­it the civil­ian Shater in his prison cell and urged the Egypt­ian gov­ern­ment to release him. . . .”

Might there be some rela­tion­ship between the Gra­ham, McCain/Shater con­tacts and the evo­lu­tion of the Benghazi/Clinton emails/Trump elec­tion nexus?

Note, also, that Mor­si and Zawahir­i/Al-Qae­da jihadis were alleged­ly involved in the Behg­hazi attack that, ulti­mate­ly, led to the Beng­hazi hear­ings, the  Hillary Clin­ton e‑mail non-scan­dal and Don­ald Trump’s ascent: ” . . . . Along with say­ing that the Broth­er­hood intend­ed to form a ‘rev­o­lu­tion­ary guard’ to pro­tect him against any coup, Mor­si added that, in return for al-Qaeda’s and its affil­i­ates’ sup­port, not only would he allow them to have such train­ing camps, but he would facil­i­tate their devel­op­ment in Sinai and give them four facil­i­ties to use along the Egypt­ian-Libyan bor­der. That Libya is men­tioned is inter­est­ing.  Accord­ing to a Libyan Ara­bic report I trans­lat­ed back in June 2013, those who attacked the U.S. con­sulate in Beng­hazi, killing Amer­i­cans, includ­ing Ambas­sador Chris Stevens, were from jiha­di cells that had been formed in Libya through Egypt­ian Mus­lim Broth­er­hood sup­port.  Those inter­ro­gat­ed named Mor­si and oth­er top Broth­er­hood lead­er­ship as accom­plices. . . .”

FTR #1024 Ukrainian Fascism, Maidan Snipers and Implications for the Syrian War, Part 2

On the 17th anniver­sary of the Sep­tem­ber 11th attacks, we con­tin­ue with analy­sis of the Maid­an shootings–an appar­ent “false flag” operation–and muse about the impli­ca­tions of that for the con­flict in Syr­ia, as well as Russ­ian and Amer­i­can polit­i­cal life.

In the first part of the pro­gram, we fin­ish read­ing the poster pre­sen­ta­tion that pro­fes­sor Ivan Katchanovs­ki, PhD of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ottawa pre­sent­ed at The 2018 Con­fer­ence of Amer­i­can Polit­i­cal Sci­ence Asso­ciates.

Katchanovs­ki has done a deep, detailed foren­sic study of the evi­dence in the Maid­an sniper attacks. He has a rig­or­ous, suc­cinct dig­i­tal mul­ti­me­dia ‘poster’ (an ‘iPoster’) for his find­ing that the Maid­an sniper attacks were a false flag oper­a­tion. That poster was pre­sent­ed dur­ing the 2018 Amer­i­can Polit­i­cal Sci­ence Asso­ci­a­tion con­fer­ence in Boston. It gives a high lev­el overview of his research and is heav­i­ly embed­ded with sub­stan­tive, doc­u­men­tary videos. Here are the con­tents of the poster. Be sure to check out the numer­ous images and videos includ­ed in the actu­al iPoster online.

He con­cludes his pre­sen­ta­tion with: “ . . . . Maid­an mas­sacre tri­al and inves­ti­ga­tion evi­dence have revealed var­i­ous evi­dence that at least the absolute major­i­ty of 49 killed and 157 wound­ed Maid­an pro­test­ers on Feb­ru­ary 20, 2014 were mas­sa­cred by snipers in Maid­an-con­trolled build­ings. Such evi­dence includes tes­ti­monies of the major­i­ty of wound­ed pro­test­ers and many wit­ness­es, foren­sic med­ical and bal­lisitic exam­i­na­tions, and inves­ti­ga­tion own find­ing that about half of Maid­an pro­test­ers were wound­ed from oth­er loca­tions than the Berkut police. Var­i­ous indi­ca­tions of stonewalling of the Maid­an mas­sacre inves­ti­ga­tions and the tri­als by the Maid­an gov­ern­ment offi­cials and by far right orga­ni­za­tions. Var­i­ous indi­ca­tions of the cov­er-up of much of the key evi­dence of the mas­sacre. Such rev­e­la­tions from the Maid­an mas­sacre tri­als and inves­ti­ga­tions cor­rob­o­rate pre­vi­ous stud­ies find­ings that this mas­sacre was a false flag mass killing with involve­ment of ele­ments of Maid­an lead­er­ship and the far right and that it includ­ed the mas­sacre of the police. The puz­zling mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the Maid­an mas­sacre, its inves­ti­ga­tion, and the tri­al by West­ern media and gov­ern­ments require fur­ther research con­cern­ing rea­sons for such mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion . . . . ”

Note: Since FTR #1023 was record­ed pro­fes­sor Katchanovs­ki has post­ed a 59-minute-long video of the Maid­an shoot­ings. The video fea­tures TV footage from that day, with many clips clear­ly show­ing snipers oper­at­ing from Maid­an-con­trolled build­ings. It also includes Eng­lish sub­ti­tles and foren­sic descrip­tions of scenes. The footage includes a num­ber of peo­ple being shot and killed–a griz­zly 59-min­utes, but absolute­ly invalu­able in terms of estab­lish­ing what actu­al­ly hap­pened.

The pre­sen­ta­tion of pro­fes­sor Katchanovski’s research in this pro­gram begins with the sec­tion titled “Cov­er-Up and Stonewalling.”

Addi­tion­al per­spec­tive on the appar­ent non-inves­ti­ga­tion of the Maid­an sniper shoot­ings is pro­vid­ed by Ana­toliy Matios, Ukraine’s Deputy Pros­e­cu­tor and Chief Mil­i­tary Pros­e­cu­tor:

Matios, Ukraine’s chief mil­i­tary pros­e­cu­tor, gave an exten­sive inter­view where he said that Jews are behind all wars and want to “drown eth­nic Slavs in blood.”

Also recall the cryp­tic state­ment Matios made back in 2016 about the iden­ti­ty of the peo­ple involved with the 2014 sniper attacks: “When pub­lic learns who is involved in this, peo­ple will be very sur­prised.” In FTR #‘s 982, 993,  1004, 1023, we exam­ined evi­dence that Ukrain­ian fas­cists may well have exe­cut­ed those sniper attacks. It is omi­nous that the chief mil­i­tary pros­e­cu­tor who is involved in that inves­ti­ga­tion is a neo-Nazi. ” . . . . In an exten­sive inter­view with the Ukrain­ian news out­let Insid­er, Ana­toliy Matios, Ukraine’s chief mil­i­tary pros­e­cu­tor, espoused anti-Semit­ic con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries in which he implied that Jews want to drown eth­nic Slavs in blood. . . .”

Return­ing to pro­fes­sor Katchanovski’s thought-pro­vok­ing con­clu­sion to his online poster: “ . . . . The puz­zling mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the Maid­an mas­sacre, its inves­ti­ga­tion, and the tri­al by West­ern media and gov­ern­ments require fur­ther research con­cern­ing rea­sons for such mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion . . . . ”

With the Syr­i­an gov­ern­ment appar­ent­ly com­menc­ing an offen­sive to van­quish Al-Qae­da jihadis in Idlib province (with Russ­ian mil­i­tary sup­port), the stage is set for a pos­si­ble Russian‑U.S./Western mil­i­tary con­flict.

Against the back­ground of the Maid­an snip­ing as a prob­a­ble false flag provo­ca­tion, the impend­ing Syr­i­an offen­sive to re-cap­ture the last ter­ri­to­r­i­al enclave of the Islamists in Syr­ia should be viewed with appre­hen­sion. As not­ed in the arti­cle we present, the so-called “rebels” are Al-Qae­da off­shoots. Omi­nous­ly, they have appar­ent­ly suc­cess­ful­ly exe­cut­ed false-flag chem­i­cal weapons attacks before, includ­ing in Idlib province.

Rus­sia has warned that such a provo­ca­tion is in the wings–an unre­mark­able deduc­tion in light of past his­to­ry. In turn, the West has warned of retal­ia­to­ry action if such actions are under­tak­en.

The stage appears set for an Islamist/Al-Qae­da chem­i­cal weapons false flag/provocation, upon which U.S., British and French mil­i­tary inter­ven­tion will be pred­i­cat­ed.

In this con­text, one should not lose sight of the fact that Chech­nyan Islamist vet­er­ans of the Syr­i­an war have already made their appear­ance in the com­bat in East­ern Ukraine, part­ner­ing with Pravy Sek­tor in their deploy­ments. (The Chechen/Right Sector/Islamist link is dis­cussed in FTR #‘s 857, 862, 863, 872, 878, 893, 911.)

We note pos­si­ble out­comes of U.S./Western Russ­ian com­bat:

1.–If the Western/U.S. forces are vic­to­ri­ous, this will cov­er Trump’s rump  with regard to the “Rus­sia-Gate” so-called inves­ti­ga­tion and bol­ster the GOP’s posi­tion in upcom­ing 2018 midterm elec­tions.
2.–If the Western/U.S. forces pre­vail, it will weak­en Putin polit­i­cal­ly, which is a goal of the West.
The last part of the pro­gram con­sists of a par­tial read­ing 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. . . .”

In FTR #‘s 733 through 739, we pre­sent­ed our view that the so-called Arab Spring was a U.S. intel­li­gence oper­a­tion, aimed at plac­ing the Broth­er­hood in pow­er in Mus­lim coun­tries dom­i­nat­ed either by a sec­u­lar dic­ta­tor or absolute monar­chy.

It is our view that the Broth­er­hood was seen as use­ful because of its mil­i­tary off­shoots (Al-Qae­da in par­tic­u­lar) were use­ful proxy war­riors in places like the Cau­ca­sus and the Balka­ns and because the Broth­er­hood’s cor­po­ratist, neo-lib­er­al eco­nom­ic doc­trine was in keep­ing with the desires and goals of the trans-nation­al cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ty.

In FTR #787, we solid­i­fied our analy­sis with defin­i­tive con­fir­ma­tion of our work­ing hypoth­e­sis pre­sent­ed years ear­li­er.

About the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood’s eco­nom­ic doc­trine: ” . . . . The Mus­lim Broth­er­hood hails 14th cen­tury philoso­pher Ibn Khal­dun as its eco­nomic guide. Antic­i­pat­ing sup­ply-side eco­nom­ics, Khal­dun argued that cut­ting tax­es rais­es pro­duc­tion and tax rev­enues, and that state con­trol should be lim­ited to pro­vid­ing water, fire and free graz­ing land, the util­i­ties of the ancient world. The World Bank has called Ibn Khal­dun the first advo­cate of pri­va­ti­za­tion. [Empha­sis added.] His found­ing influ­ence is a sign of mod­er­a­tion. If Islamists in pow­er ever do clash with the West, it won’t be over com­merce. . . .”

Stephen Glain’s cita­tion of Ibn Khal­dun res­onates with Ronald Rea­gan’s pre­sen­ta­tion of “sup­ply-side eco­nom­ics.” ” . . . . Respond­ing to a ques­tion about the effects of tax and spend­ing cuts that began tak­ing effect yes­ter­day, Mr. Rea­gan said the sup­ply-side prin­ci­ple dat­ed at least as far back as Ibn Khal­dun, who is gen­er­al­ly regard­ed as the great­est Arab his­to­ri­an to emerge from the high­ly devel­oped Ara­bic cul­ture of the Mid­dle Ages. . . .”

FTR #1023 Ukrainian Fascism, The Maidan Snipers and Possible Implications for the Syrian War

In this pro­gram we con­tin­ue and expand analy­sis of the Euro­Maid­an sniper killings which led to the ouster of the Yanuukovych gov­ern­ment. A sto­ry from BNE Intellinews, since tak­en down but avail­able via the Way Back Machine, details Paul Man­afort’s net­work­ing with the Haps­burg Group milieu, pro­vid­ing more details that sup­ple­ment pre­vi­ous dis­cus­sion of the rela­tion­ship.

Most impor­tant­ly, how­ev­er, the arti­cle pro­vides impor­tant infor­ma­tion on Man­afort’s post-Maid­an doings in Ukraine! He spent more time in post-Maid­an Ukraine than before the coup.

Even more impor­tant­ly, the arti­cle pro­vides sig­nif­i­cant details on Man­afort’s pos­si­ble col­lab­o­ra­tors in arrang­ing the vio­lence that led to Yanukovy­ch’s ouster.

Before dis­cussing the sig­nif­i­cant details of Man­afort and his asso­ciates’ pos­si­ble roles in the vio­lence that led to Yanukovy­ch’s ouster, we present the first part of the arti­cle, in order to flesh out the Man­afort-Haps­burg net­work­ing.

Key points of infor­ma­tion include:

1.-Manafort’s close rela­tion­ship with Ser­hiy Lovochkin, a key aide to Vik­tor Yanukovich and own­er of a pre­mier Ukrain­ian TV sta­tion, and his sis­ter Yulia Lovochk­i­na, who owns an air­line whose planes fer­ried Man­afort in his deal­ings with the Haps­burg group.
2.-The impor­tant role of Ser­hiy Lovochkin and his sis­ter in pro­mot­ing the EU Asso­ci­a­tion Agree­ment. It was Yanukovich’s even­tu­al rejec­tion of that agree­ment that led to the demon­stra­tions that led up to the Maid­an coup.
3.-The dual role played by Haps­burg Group mem­ber Alexan­der Kras­niews­ki, who was ran the EU’s Ukraine Obser­va­tion Group.
4.-The pro­found degree of involve­ment of Man­afort with the Haps­burg Group.
5.-Of para­mount sig­nif­i­cance for our pur­pos­es, is the behav­ior of Man­afort, Lovochkin, Lovochk­i­na, Dmytro Fir­tash and Vic­to­ria Nuland.

Not­ing the pro­found rela­tion­ship between Man­afort, Ser­hii Lovochkin, Yulia Lovochk­i­na, the Haps­burg Group and the EU, it is impor­tant to eval­u­ate the Manafort/Lovochkin rela­tion­ship in the con­text of the Maid­an snipers. (In FTR #‘s 982, 993, we not­ed evi­dence that the Maid­an shoot­ings may have been a provo­ca­tion.)

1.-” . . . . The pri­vate jet flights and per­son­al con­nec­tions show that Manafort’s part­ner in this lob­by­ing effort was Yanukovych’s chief of staff Lovochkin. . . . Manafort’s Ukraine engage­ments actu­al­ly increased fol­low­ing Yanukovych’s ouster in Feb­ru­ary 2014. In March to June 2014, he spent a total of 27 days in Ukraine, where­as dur­ing the four pre­ced­ing Euro­maid­an months, Novem­ber-Feb­ru­ary 2014, Man­afort only vis­it­ed Ukraine three times for a total of nine days. . . .”
2.-” . . . . Lovochkin is the junior part­ner of bil­lion­aire oli­garch Dmytro Fir­tash . . . . Lovochkin and Fir­tash togeth­er also con­trol Ukraine’s largest TV chan­nel, Inter. . . .”
3.-” . . . . Manafort’s con­tin­ued par­tic­i­pa­tion in post-Yanukovych Ukraine also points to his ties to Lovochkin and Fir­tash. While most mem­bers of the Yanukovych admin­is­tra­tion fled to Rus­sia or were arrest­ed after Feb­ru­ary 2014, Lovochkin has con­tin­ued his polit­i­cal career with impuni­ty, despite hav­ing served at the heart of Yanukovych’s regime for four years. . . .”
4.-” . . . . Euro­maid­an was trig­gered by events in Kyiv on the night of Novem­ber 29, when police vio­lent­ly dis­persed a small demon­stra­tion of pro-EU stu­dents who were protest­ing after Yanukovych refused to sign the Asso­ci­a­tion Agree­ment. The vio­lence prompt­ed a huge demon­stra­tion occu­py­ing the heart of Kyiv on Decem­ber 1. . . .”
5.-” . . . . Accord­ing to mes­sages between the sis­ters dis­cussing Manafort’s actions in Ukraine, it was Manafort’s idea ‘to send those peo­ple out and get them slaugh­tered. Do you know whose strat­e­gy that was to cause that Revolts [sic] and what not […] As a tac­tic to out­rage the world and get focus on Ukraine.’ Manafort’s daugh­ter called her father’s mon­ey ‘blood mon­ey.’ . . .”
6.-” . . . . The remarks were made by those privy to the deep­est secrets of Manafort’s per­son­al life. They evoke the sus­pi­cion that Man­afort manip­u­lat­ed the Maid­an protests and the police vio­lence to influ­ence inter­na­tion­al opin­ion. The appear­ance of the Man­afort mes­sages in 2016 reignit­ed spec­u­la­tion in Ukraine that none oth­er than Lovochkin insti­gat­ed the attack on the stu­dents’ demon­stra­tion on Novem­ber 29, 2013, to trig­ger out­rage against Yanukovych. . . .”
7.-” . . . . Some of the time­line fits this inter­pre­ta­tion: On the day before the police attack, reporters not­ed Yulia Lovochk­i­na open­ly frater­nising with the stu­dents on the Maid­an. Lovochkin’s TV crews cov­ered the 4am events close­ly, and Lovochkin imme­di­ate­ly ten­dered his res­ig­na­tion in protest at the police vio­lence. . . .”
8.-” . . . . The next day, Lovochkin’s TV chan­nel played footage of the worst of the police vio­lence on heavy rota­tion on prime time news. News anchors intoned that Yanukovych had ‘shed the blood of Ukrain­ian chil­dren.’ Where­as the stu­dent protests had attract­ed hun­dreds, protests on Sun­day Decem­ber 1 against the police vio­lence attract­ed hun­dreds of thou­sands. This was the start of Euro­maid­an. . . .”

Of great sig­nif­i­cance as well, is the maneu­ver­ing around a war­rant for the arrest of Ukrain­ian oli­garch and Lovochkin part­ner Dmytro Fir­tash. The role of Vic­to­ria Nuland in this maneu­ver­ing is par­tic­u­lar­ly sig­nif­i­cant: ” . . . . On Octo­ber 30 2013 — as Yanukovych was waver­ing over the Asso­ci­a­tion Agree­ment with the EU — the US issued an arrest war­rant for Fir­tash. The US with­drew the arrest war­rant four days lat­er — after US deputy sec­re­tary of state Vic­to­ria Nuland met Yanukovych in Kyiv, and received assur­ances that Yanukovych would sign the Asso­ci­a­tion Agree­ment, Fir­tash said dur­ing extra­di­tion hear­ings in Vien­na in 2015 that first revealed the details of the case. But come the Vil­nius Sum­mit, Yanukovych failed to sign. The arrest war­rant was reis­sued in March 2014, and Fir­tash was arrest­ed in Vien­na on March 12, 2014. . . . .”

Cana­di­an aca­d­e­m­ic Ivan Katchanovs­ki has done a deep, detailed foren­sic study of the evi­dence in the Maid­an sniper attacks. He has a rig­or­ous, suc­cinct dig­i­tal mul­ti­me­dia ‘poster’ (an ‘iPoster’) for his find­ing that the Maid­an sniper attacks were a false flag oper­a­tion. That poster was pre­sent­ed dur­ing the 2018 Amer­i­can Polit­i­cal Sci­ence Asso­ci­a­tion con­fer­ence in Boston. It gives a high lev­el overview of his research and is heav­i­ly embed­ded with sub­stan­tive, doc­u­men­tary videos. Here are the con­tents of the poster. Be sure to check out the numer­ous images and videos includ­ed in the actu­al iPoster online.

“ . . . . Maid­an mas­sacre tri­al and inves­ti­ga­tion evi­dence have revealed var­i­ous evi­dence that at least the absolute major­i­ty of 49 killed and 157 wound­ed Maid­an pro­test­ers on Feb­ru­ary 20, 2014 were mas­sa­cred by snipers in Maid­an-con­trolled build­ings. Such evi­dence includes tes­ti­monies of the major­i­ty of wound­ed pro­test­ers and many wit­ness­es, foren­sic med­ical and bal­lisitic exam­i­na­tions, and inves­ti­ga­tion own find­ing that about half of Maid­an pro­test­ers were wound­ed from oth­er loca­tions than the Berkut police. Var­i­ous indi­ca­tions of stonewalling of the Maid­an mas­sacre inves­ti­ga­tions and the tri­als by the Maid­an gov­ern­ment offi­cials and by far right orga­ni­za­tions. Var­i­ous indi­ca­tions of the cov­er-up of much of the key evi­dence of the mas­sacre. Such rev­e­la­tions from the Maid­an mas­sacre tri­als and inves­ti­ga­tions cor­rob­o­rate pre­vi­ous stud­ies find­ings that this mas­sacre was a false flag mass killing with involve­ment of ele­ments of Maid­an lead­er­ship and the far right and that it includ­ed the mas­sacre of the police. The puz­zling mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the Maid­an mas­sacre, its inves­ti­ga­tion, and the tri­al by West­ern media and gov­ern­ments require fur­ther research con­cern­ing rea­sons for such mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion . . . . ”

Note: Since FTR #1023 was record­ed pro­fes­sor Katchanovs­ki has post­ed a 59-minute-long video of the Maid­an shoot­ings. The video fea­tures TV footage from that day, with many clips clear­ly show­ing snipers oper­at­ing from Maid­an-con­trolled build­ings. It also includes Eng­lish sub­ti­tles and foren­sic descrip­tions of scenes. The footage includes a num­ber of peo­ple being shot and killed–a griz­zly 59-min­utes, but absolute­ly invalu­able in terms of estab­lish­ing what actu­al­ly hap­pened.

This descrip­tion con­cludes with mate­r­i­al that will be dis­cussed in future pro­grams. It is pre­sent­ed here for perusal and con­sid­er­a­tion by the read­ers in light of con­tin­ued alarm­ing devel­op­ments in Syr­ia.

Against the back­ground of the Maid­an snip­ing as a prob­a­ble false flag provo­ca­tion, the impend­ing Syr­i­an offen­sive to re-cap­ture the last ter­ri­to­r­i­al enclave of the Islamists in Syr­ia should be viewed with appre­hen­sion. As not­ed in the arti­cle below, the so-called “rebels” are Al-Qae­da off­shoots. Omi­nous­ly, they have appar­ent­ly suc­cess­ful­ly exe­cut­ed false-flag chem­i­cal weapons attacks before, includ­ing in Idlib province.

Rus­sia has warned that such a provo­ca­tion is in the wings–an unre­mark­able deduc­tion in light of past his­to­ry. In turn, the West has warned of retal­ia­to­ry action if such actions are under­tak­en.

The stage appears set for an Islamist/Al-Qae­da chem­i­cal weapons false flag/provocation, upon which U.S., British and French mil­i­tary inter­ven­tion will be pred­i­cat­ed.

In this con­text, one should not lose sight of the fact that Chech­nyan Islamist vet­er­ans of the Syr­i­an war have already made their appear­ance in the com­bat in East­ern Ukraine, part­ner­ing with Pravy Sek­tor in their deploy­ments. (The Chechen/Right Sector/Islamist link is dis­cussed in FTR #‘s 857, 862, 863, 872, 878, 893, 911.)

FTR #1006 Robert Mueller and the Subversion of Operation Green Quest

This pro­gram is a “pre­quel” to upcom­ing analy­sis of the fun­da­men­tal dynam­ics of the “Rus­sia-Gate” psy-op, which is inex­tri­ca­bly linked with the Ukraine cri­sis, the deep pol­i­tics of U.S. “black-ops,” the Under­ground Reich, the 9/11 attacks and the House of Haps­burg [or Habsburg–one will find both spellings.]

As can be read­i­ly imag­ined, this will be quite a bicy­cle ride, and will take a cou­ple of pro­grams, plus some dili­gent fol­low­ing of linked infor­ma­tion, to absorb.

Robert Mueller is a very, very “spe­cial” pros­e­cu­tor indeed. In fact, he is not a “pros­e­cu­tor” at all–he is a fix­er. Charged with the legal untan­gling of numer­ous, over­lap­ping crim­i­nal con­spir­a­cies involv­ing pow­er­ful ele­ments of the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty deal­ing drugs and engag­ing in, or enabling ter­ror­ism, Mueller has been “less than vig­or­ous” in his inves­ti­ga­tions.

Most sig­nif­i­cant­ly for our pur­pos­es, the inves­ti­ga­tions he has overseen–read “overlooked”–are pro­gres­sive­ly over­lapped. From Iran-Con­tra relat­ed inves­ti­ga­tions into the Bank of Com­merce and Cred­it Inter­na­tion­al, the crim­i­nal career of Manuel Nor­ie­ga and the bomb­ing of Pan Am 103, to indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions fig­ur­ing in the nascent ener­gy ven­tures of George W. Bush, to the financ­ing of Al-Qae­da, Mueller’s judi­cial provinces lead direct­ly to the Rus­sia-Gate psy-op, whose ele­ments fig­ure in the mosa­ic of the 9/11 attacks.

The pro­gres­sion of scan­dals obfus­cat­ed by Mueller include:

1.–BCCI–Dubbed by wags “The Bank of Crooks and Crim­i­nals,” BCCI was used by Oliv­er North and the Iran-Con­tra milieu for some of their oper­a­tions, in addi­tion to serv­ing as a finan­cial vehi­cle for the financ­ing of ter­ror­ism. Mueller did not pur­sue the U.S./Reagan admin­is­tra­tion ele­ments involved in the Bank’s oper­a­tions.
2.–Manuel Noriega–Another of the play­ers in the Iran-Con­tra drug deal­ing, Nor­ie­ga’s pros­e­cu­tion cir­cum­nav­i­gat­ed the Pana­man­ian dic­ta­tor’s oper­a­tions on behalf of the U.S. nation­al estab­lish­ment that orig­i­nal­ly placed him in pow­er.
3.–The bomb­ing of Pan Am 103–alleged by the insur­ance inves­ti­ga­tor’s report to have been exe­cut­ed by Monz­er Al-Kas­sar, the bomb­ing killed a team of mil­i­tary intel­li­gence offi­cers who had come across some of the Iran-Con­tra play­ers and their deal­ings with ter­ror­ists. Al-Kas­sar was report­ed by the DEA to bring 20% of the hero­in into the Unit­ed States. Al-Kas­sar was used by Oliv­er North for some of his ship­ments of weapons to the Con­tras.
4.–Operation Green Quest–The inves­ti­ga­tion into the financ­ing of Al-Qae­da, the inquest pro­duced the raids of 3/20/2002. These raids tar­get­ed indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions over­lap­ping both the Bank Al-Taqwa and the Islam­ic Free Mar­ket Insti­tute of Grover Norquist. The Bank Al-Taqwa held an account with an unlim­it­ed line of cred­it for Al-Qae­da. Incor­po­rat­ed in Liecht­en­stein, Al-Taqwa was head­ed by a for­mer Nazi intel­li­gence offi­cer named Youssef Nada. The dri­ving force behind the Bank Al-Taqwa was Fran­cois Genoud, the heir to the polit­i­cal last will and tes­ta­ment and col­lect­ed lit­er­ary works of Adolf Hitler, Mar­tin Bor­mann and Joseph Goebbels. Talat Oth­man, the oper­at­ing direc­tor of Norquist’s Islam­ic Free Mar­ket Insti­tute and pro­tege of BCCI king­pin Gaith Pharaon, inter­ced­ed with then Trea­sury Sec­re­tary Paul O’Neill on behalf of the indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions tar­get­ed by the 3/20/2002 raids. O’Neill was fired lat­er that year. The Oper­a­tion Green Quest inves­ti­ga­tion went nowhere and then FBI direc­tor Robert Mueller did not pur­sue any of the above leads.

This con­cate­na­tion is com­plex and, with­out research, opaque. For more about Oper­a­tion Green Quest, the role of Robert Mueller’s FBI in the sub­ver­sion of Oper­a­tion Green Quest, see FTR #‘s 356, 357, 415, 433, 454, 456, 462, 464, 467, 498, 499, 513, 569, 603.

In our next two pro­grams, we will be look­ing at the Al Taqwa com­plex and Liecht­en­stein, where it was incor­po­rat­ed. It was head­ed by Youssef Nada, whose CV we review for con­ve­nience. ” . . . . . . . . But Yussef Nada is even bet­ter-known to the Egypt­ian [intel­li­gence] ser­vices, who have evi­dence of his mem­ber­ship in the armed branch of the fra­ter­ni­ty of the Mus­lim Broth­ers in the 1940’s. At that time, accord­ing to the same sources, he was work­ing for the Abwehr under Admi­ral Canaris and took part in a plot against King Farouk. Mr. This was not the first time that the path of the Mus­lim Broth­ers crossed that of the ser­vants of the Third Reich. . . . ”

We will also be look­ing at the polit­i­cal envi­ron­ment of the Carl Duis­berg Soci­ety, which is allied with the Alfa Fel­low­ship, which appears to be some­thing of an MBA pro­gram for the Alfa Con­glom­er­ate and the Alfa Bank, major focal points of our upcom­ing inquiry.

The Carl Duis­berg Soci­ety, which shep­herd­ed Atta into the U.S. is now part of the Cul­tur­al Vis­tas orga­ni­za­tion, which includes the Alfa Fel­low­ship. ” . . . . In the 1920’s, Carl Duis­berg, Gen­er­al Direc­tor of Bay­er AG in Ger­many, envi­sioned send­ing Ger­man stu­dents to the Unit­ed States on work-study pro­grams. Duis­berg was con­vinced that inter­na­tion­al prac­ti­cal train­ing was crit­i­cal to the growth of Ger­man indus­try. Many of the return­ing trainees lat­er rose to promi­nent posi­tions at AEG, Bay­er, Bosch, Daim­ler Benz, and Siemens, bring­ing with them new meth­ods for mass pro­duc­tion, new ideas, and new busi­ness prac­tices. [This places them in the heart of Third Reich indus­try and war production–D.E.] Fol­low­ing World War II, alum­ni from the first exchanges found­ed the Carl Duis­berg Gesellschaft (CDG) in 1949 to help engi­neers, busi­ness­men and farm­ers gain inter­na­tion­al work expe­ri­ence nec­es­sary for the rebuild­ing of Ger­many . . . .”

Of the incor­po­ra­tion of CDS into cul­tur­al Vis­tas and the sub­se­quent devel­op­ment of the orga­ni­za­tion, we read: ” . . . . The orga­ni­za­tion was offi­cial­ly incor­po­rat­ed as a non­prof­it in 1963. In Jan­u­ary 2011, Cul­tur­al Vis­tas was formed after a non­prof­it merg­er between two long­stand­ing exchange orga­ni­za­tions: the Asso­ci­a­tion for Inter­na­tion­al Prac­ti­cal Train­ing (AIPT) and CDS Inter­na­tion­al. . . .”

. . . . In 1968, the Carl Duis­berg Soci­ety was found­ed in New York City as a non-prof­it orga­ni­za­tion designed to rekin­dle Duisberg’s orig­i­nal exchanges and to facil­i­tate inter­na­tion­al career train­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties for Amer­i­cans and Ger­mans. The name was offi­cial­ly changed to CDS Inter­na­tion­al in 1987 to reflect the organization’s increas­ing­ly inter­na­tion­al nature of its pro­grams beyond Ger­many to include part­ners in oth­er Euro­pean coun­tries, Asia and Latin Amer­i­ca. . . .’

It comes as no sur­prise that, accord­ing to the BKA, Mohamed Atta’s asso­ciates in South Flori­da includ­ed the chil­dren of promi­nent Ger­man indus­tri­al­ists.

Alternative Hypotheses in the “Chemical Warfare” Strike Meme

The alleged chem­i­cal weapons attack and the response was fore­shad­owed by Russ­ian chief-of-staff Valery Gerasi­mov a month before the alleged attack!
Vet­er­an jour­nal­ist Robert Fisk has writ­ten in The Lon­don Inde­pen­dent that there was no chem­i­cal weapons attack at all. Rather, Fisk wrote, a strong wind kicked up a dust storm in the ruins of the bombed city and that cloud caused res­pi­ra­to­ry prob­lems in refugees shel­ter­ing in under­ground clin­ics. ” . . . . A few days ago, Fisk vis­it­ed the Syr­i­an town of Douma and spoke to a doc­tor, who works in a sub­ter­ranean clin­ic, in which vic­tims of the alleged April 7th gas attack were being treat­ed. The doc­tor explained that on that day a strong wind blew a huge dust cloud into the city’s destroyed base­ments and cel­lars where numer­ous peo­ple were seek­ing refuge. Many were there­fore suf­fer­ing from acute oxy­gen loss and came for treat­ment to his clin­ic. ‘Then some­one at the door, a ‘White Hel­met,’ shout­ed ‘Gas!,’ and a pan­ic began.’ This can be seen on a video being used in the West as ‘proof’ for the use of poison-gas.[1] . . . ” The Syr­i­an Sci­en­tif­ic Stud­ies and Research Cen­ter (SSRC) in Barzah, destroyed in the West­ern retal­ia­to­ry strike, does not appear to have been a chem­i­cal weapons pro­duc­tion facil­i­ty at all: ” . . . . It has also become known that the Syr­i­an Sci­en­tif­ic Stud­ies and Research Cen­ter (SSRC) in Barzah, which was destroyed dur­ing Sat­ur­day’s air strikes, had been inspect­ed last Novem­ber by the Orga­ni­za­tion for the Pro­hi­bi­tion of Chem­i­cal Weapons (OPCW). Accord­ing to the OPCW, the SSRC had not served for research on chem­i­cal weapons, as has been alleged to jus­ti­fy the bomb­ings. On the con­trary, the Orga­ni­za­tion found no sus­pi­cious sub­stances, nor did it observe any sus­pi­cious activ­i­ties, accord­ing to its report that was pub­lished on March 23 — three weeks before the bombing.[2] . . . .”
The White Helmets–at the cen­ter of the chem­i­cal weapons attack charges–have been financed by ele­ments of West­ern intel­li­gence: ” . . . . Reporter and author Max Blu­men­thal has tracked the role of the White Hel­mets in the Syr­i­an con­flict. He report­ed that the White Hel­mets were cre­at­ed in Turkey by James Le Mesuri­er, a for­mer British MI5 agent. The group has received at least $55 mil­lion from the British For­eign Office and $23 mil­lion from the U.S. Agency for Inter­na­tion­al Devel­op­ment as well as mil­lions from the King­dom of Qatar, which has backed a vari­ety of extrem­ist groups in Syr­ia includ­ing Al Qae­da. . . .”

Game of Thrones: Saudis Funding Taliban as Trump Gives Nod to Increased Military Support for Afghans

As Trump plans increas­ing and pro­long­ing U.S. troop com­mit­ment to Afghanistan, it is worth not­ing that–surprise, surprise–the Saud­is are fund­ing the Tal­iban, much as they have done with Al-Qae­da.

FTR #966 Dramatis Personae of the Russia-Gate Psy-Op

Devel­op­ing infor­ma­tion about the cast of char­ac­ters in the “Rus­sia-Gate” psy-op, we high­light the polit­i­cal alle­giance of “Team Trump”–the oper­a­tives involved with Trump’s cam­paign and busi­ness deal­ings with Rus­sia, as well as Robert Mueller, for­mer FBI chief and a very spe­cial pros­e­cu­tor indeed.

Although Trump cer­tain­ly had links to Russ­ian mob fig­ures, they are by no means the prime movers in this dra­ma.

Most impor­tant­ly, we detail the polit­i­cal resumes and deep pol­i­tics under­ly­ing the cast of char­ac­ters in this dra­ma, track­ing the oper­a­tional links back to Joe McCarthy and the red-bait­ing spe­cial­ists from the first Cold War.

Joe McCarthy legal point man Roy Cohn is, to a con­sid­er­able extent, the spi­der at the cen­ter of this web. Cohn:

1.-Was Trump’s attor­ney for much of “The Don­ald’s” pro­fes­sion­al life.
2.-Introduced Trump cam­paign man­ag­er and dirty tricks spe­cial­ist Roger Stone to the seat­ed Pres­i­dent.
3.-Was instru­men­tal in arrang­ing for a bribe which made “inde­pen­dent” Repub­li­can John Ander­son the Pres­i­den­tial can­di­date for the Lib­er­al Par­ty in New York. This gam­bit gave Rea­gan a key vic­to­ry in New York. Cohn and Stone’s asso­ciate in this oper­a­tion was Antho­ny “Fat Tony” Salerno–one of Cohn’s mob clients and among Don­ald Trump’s orga­nized crime asso­ciates as well.
4.-Was the point man for intro­duc­ing Rupert Mur­doch to Ronald Rea­gan and forg­ing the right-wing media attack machine that dom­i­nates today, the most promi­nent ele­ment of which is Fox News.

Roger Stone is anoth­er fig­ure who weaves through­out this con­cate­na­tion. Stone:

1.-Was Don­ald Trump’s cam­paign man­ag­er and lat­er dirty tricks oper­a­tive, who net­worked with Wik­iLeaks go-between for the Trump/Alt-right crew.
2.-Was tout­ing Lib­er­tar­i­an Par­ty can­di­date Gary John­son. John­son and Jill Stein were advo­cat­ed for by Stone as par­tic­i­pants in the debates between Hillary Clin­ton and Trump. (John­son and Stein’s com­bined vote total helped Trump win in sev­er­al key states.)
3.-Worked with Roy Cohn to put “inde­pen­dent” Repub­li­can John Ander­son the Pres­i­den­tial can­di­date for the Lib­er­al Par­ty in New York. This gam­bit gave Rea­gan a key vic­to­ry in New York, as not­ed above.

The point man for the Trump busi­ness inter­ests in their deal­ings with Rus­sia is Felix Sater. A Russ­ian-born immi­grant, Sater is a pro­fes­sion­al crim­i­nal and a con­vict­ed felon with his­tor­i­cal links to the Mafia. Beyond that, and more impor­tant­ly, Sater is an FBI infor­mant and a CIA con­tract agent. As the media firestorm around “Rus­sia-gate” builds, it is impor­tant not to lose sight of Sater. ” . . . . He [Sater] also pro­vid­ed oth­er pur­port­ed nation­al secu­ri­ty ser­vices for a report­ed fee of $300,000. Sto­ries abound as to what else Sater may or may not have done in the are­na of nation­al secu­ri­ty. . . .” We won­der if help­ing the “Rus­sia-Gate” op may have been one of those.

Beyond Sater, oth­er key play­ers in this con­cate­na­tion do not track back to “Kremlin/Putin/FSB/KGB.” Rob Goldstone–the pub­li­cist whose over­ture to Don­ald Trump, Jr. ini­ti­at­ed the lat­est “Rus­sia-gate jour­nal­is­tic feed­ing fren­zy in the media, began his career a jour­nal­is­tic foot sol­dier for Rupert Mur­doch, the very same Rupert Mur­doch whose chris­ten­ing as a GOP/right-wing pro­pa­gan­dist was ini­ti­at­ed by Roy Cohn.

Gold­stone con­tact­ed Don­ald Trump Jr., dan­gling the bait that there might be dirt on Hillary avail­able if he met with some asso­ciates. Fore­most among those is a Russ­ian attor­ney, Natal­ie Vesel­nit­skaya. Her appar­ent pur­pose in this meet­ing was not to offer up dirt on Hillary Clin­ton but to work toward eas­ing a media lock­down on a doc­u­men­tary about the Mag­nit­sky affair.

Spun in the West, the U.S. in par­tic­u­lar, as a clas­sic exam­ple of ham-fist­ed Russ­ian cor­rup­tion and vio­lence, the Mag­nit­sky affair was revealed in the film doc­u­men­tary to be an exam­ple of U.S. cor­rup­tion, not Russ­ian.

Craft­ed by Putin polit­i­cal oppo­nent Andrei Nekrasov, the film revealed an unex­pect­ed dynam­ic: ” . . . . Nekrasov dis­cov­ered that a woman work­ing in Browder’s com­pa­ny was the actu­al whistle­blow­er and that Mag­nit­sky – rather than a cru­sad­ing lawyer – was an accoun­tant who was impli­cat­ed in the scheme. . . .”

Attempt­ing to lift the media black­out on Nekrasov’s film was Vesel­nit­skaya’s goal, not dis­sem­i­nat­ing dirt on Hillary Clin­ton.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: the financ­ing of Joe McCarthy’s career by Nazi sym­pa­thiz­er Wal­ter Har­nischfeger, part of the Ger­man-Amer­i­can Fifth Col­umn in this coun­try which was at the fore­front of the dis­cus­sion in FTR #‘s 918, 919; McCarthy’s use of a post­war Nazi net­work head­ed by Gen­er­al Karl Wolff, SS chief Hein­rich Himm­ler’s per­son­al adju­tant; Spe­cial Pros­e­cu­tor Robert Mueller’s role in cov­er­ing up the BCCI scan­dal and the over­lap­ping Oper­a­tion Green Quest inves­ti­ga­tion pur­suant to 9/11.

FTR #955 Syrian Chemical Weapons Attack? Not So Fast, Part 2

Sup­ple­ment­ing FTR #954, this broad­cast con­tin­ues analy­sis of the alleged Assad gov­ern­ment chem­i­cal weapons attack. Key points of dis­cus­sion include:

1. Fur­ther analy­sis by MIT expert Theodore Pos­tol, who sees the pho­to­graph­ic evi­dence alleged to sup­port the Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s alle­ga­tions as ques­tion­able. ” . . . ‘This adden­dum pro­vides data that unam­bigu­ous­ly shows that the assump­tion in the WHR that there was no tam­per­ing with the alleged site of the sarin release is not cor­rect. This egre­gious error rais­es ques­tions about every oth­er claim in the WHR. … The impli­ca­tion of this obser­va­tion is clear – the WHR was not reviewed and released by any com­pe­tent intel­li­gence expert unless they were moti­vat­ed by fac­tors oth­er than con­cerns about the accu­ra­cy of the report. . . .”

2. Par­tic­u­lar­ly sus­pi­cious (laugh­able?) is a pic­ture show­ing per­son­nel exam­in­ing the pur­port­ed sarin attack site with woe­ful­ly inad­e­quate pro­tec­tive cloth­ing. ” . . . . ‘If there were any sarin present at this loca­tion when this pho­to­graph was tak­en every­body in the pho­to­graph would have received a lethal or debil­i­tat­ing dose of sarin. The fact that these peo­ple were dressed so inad­e­quate­ly either sug­gests a com­plete igno­rance of the basic mea­sures need­ed to pro­tect an indi­vid­ual from sarin poi­son­ing, or that they knew that the site was not seri­ous­ly con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed. This is the crater that is the cen­ter­piece evi­dence pro­vid­ed in the WHR for a sarin attack deliv­ered by a Syr­i­an air­craft.’ . . . . ”

3. Ques­tion­able analy­sis in the alleged chlo­rine gas attacks also attrib­uted to the al-Assad regime. ” . . . In one of the chlo­rine cas­es, how­ev­er, Syr­i­an eye­wit­ness­es came for­ward to tes­ti­fy that the rebels had staged the alleged attack so it could be blamed on the gov­ern­ment. In that inci­dent, the U.N. team reached no con­clu­sion as to what had real­ly hap­pened, but nei­ther did the inves­ti­ga­tors – now alert­ed to the rebels’ tac­tic of stag­ing chem­i­cal attacks – apply any addi­tion­al skep­ti­cism to the oth­er cas­es. In one case, the rebels and their sup­port­ers also claimed to know that an alleged ‘bar­rel bomb’ con­tained a can­is­ter of chlo­rine because of the sound that it made while descend­ing. There was no expla­na­tion for how that sort of detec­tion was even pos­si­ble. . . .”

4. A British doc­tor who was a focal point of PR cov­er­age of the alleged sarin attack has a jihadist back­ground. ” . . . . A British doc­tor who doc­u­ment­ed a sus­pect­ed chem­i­cal weapons attack in Syr­ia was con­sid­ered a ‘com­mit­ted jihadist’ by MI6 and was struck off the Gen­er­al Med­ical Coun­cil in 2016. Sha­jul Islam, 31, post­ed sev­er­al videos on Twit­ter in the after­math of the Tues­day’s (4 April) attack where he appeared to be treat­ing patients in Khan Sheikhoun. He appeared on sev­er­al tele­vi­sion net­works such as NBC to dis­cuss what he saw, but it has now emerged Islam was pre­vi­ous­ly charged on ter­ror offences in the UK. . . .”

4. The under­ly­ing strate­gic rea­son for some of the Trump/Russian inter­face, one that dove­tails with the Syr­i­an provocation/escalation: ” . . . . The Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates arranged a secret meet­ing in Jan­u­ary between Black­wa­ter founder Erik Prince and a Russ­ian close to Pres­i­dent Vladi­mir Putin as part of an appar­ent effort to estab­lish a back-chan­nel line of com­mu­ni­ca­tion between Moscow and Pres­i­dent-elect Don­ald Trump, accord­ing to U.S., Euro­pean and Arab offi­cials. The meet­ing took place around Jan. 11 — nine days before Trump’s inau­gu­ra­tion — in the Sey­chelles islands in the Indi­an Ocean, offi­cials said. Though the full agen­da remains unclear, the UAE agreed to bro­ker the meet­ing in part to explore whether Rus­sia could be per­suad­ed to cur­tail its rela­tion­ship with Iran, includ­ing in Syr­ia, a Trump admin­is­tra­tion objec­tive . . . .”

5. George W. Bush admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials are con­fi­dent anoth­er ter­ror­ist attack is com­ing appear to be con­cerned that the Trump could use ter­ror to grab and abuse exec­u­tive pow­ers. We present some of their thoughts against the back­ground of our dis­cus­sion in FTR #953 about Bernie Sanders’ paving the way for Mus­lim Broth­er­hood-linked ele­ments: ” . . . . ‘We can assume there will be anoth­er ter­ror­ist attack in the U.S. If the exec­u­tive order is in place, he will point to the attack as sup­port for the exec­u­tive order and the need to expand it to oth­er coun­tries with bad dudes (Mus­lims). If the exec­u­tive order has been struck down, Trump will blame judges and Democ­rats for the attack. . . .‘We both whol­ly believe that Trump needs a bogey­man. But, more impor­tant­ly, he needs dis­trac­tion and a blame source. In ter­ror­ists, he has his bogey­man. In his con­trol of the pre­vail­ing press nar­ra­tive via tweet, he has dis­trac­tion. And, in the judi­cia­ry, he has a source of blame for why his way was right from the begin­ning.’ . . . . ‘I am ful­ly con­fi­dent that an attack is exact­ly what he wants and needs.’ . . . .”

Where­as the Syr­i­an alleged sarin inci­dent appears to have been effect­ed by some of the West­’s al-Qae­da sur­ro­gates in the con­flict, past provo­ca­tions have involved more direct involve­ment by ele­ments of the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty. In May of 1963, with then South Viet­namese pres­i­dent Diem push­ing for a reduc­tion in U.S. forces in Viet­nam (against Amer­i­can wish­es), a bomb­ing occurred at a Hue radio sta­tion that was the focal point of Bud­dhist protests of the gov­ern­men­t’s pol­i­cy toward Bud­dhists. The author­ship of that attack and a 1952 Saigon bomb­ing, was not the Viet­cong.

Key points of analy­sis:

1. The May, 1963 attack in Hue: “ . . . . As Dang Sy and his secu­ri­ty offi­cers were approach­ing the area in armored cars about fifty meters away, two pow­er­ful explo­sions blast­ed the peo­ple on the veran­da of the sta­tion, killing sev­en on the spot and fatal­ly wound­ing a child. At least fif­teen oth­ers were injured. . . .”

2. Foren­sic analy­sis of the wounds of the vic­tims: “ . . . Dr. Le Khac Quyen, the hos­pi­tal direc­tor at Hue, said after exam­in­ing the vic­tims’ bod­ies that he had nev­er seen such injuries. The bod­ies had been decap­i­tat­ed. He found no met­al in the corpses, only holes. There were no wounds below the chest. In his offi­cial find­ing, Dr. Quyen ruled that ‘the death of the peo­ple was caused by an explo­sion which took place in mid-air, blow­ing off their heads and muti­lat­ing their bod­ies.’ . . . ”

3. Dr. Quyen’s con­clu­sions about the source of the vic­tims’ wounds in the 1963 attack: “ . . . . The absence of any met­al in the bod­ies or on the radio sta­tion’s veran­da point­ed to pow­er­ful plas­tic bombs as the source of the explo­sions. . . .”

4. Analy­sis of the 1952 bomb­ing in Saigon: “ . . . . Who did pos­sess such pow­er­ful plas­tic bombs? An answer is pro­vid­ed by Gra­ham Greene’s prophet­ic nov­el The Qui­et Amer­i­can, based on his­tor­i­cal events that occurred in Saigon eleven years before the bomb­ing in Hue. Greene was in Saigon on Jan­u­ary 9, 1952, when two bombs explod­ed in the city’s cen­ter, killing ten and injur­ing many more. A pic­ture of the scene, show­ing a man with his legs blown off, appeared in Life mag­a­zine as the ‘Pic­ture of the Week.’ The Life cap­tion said the Saigon bombs had been ‘plant­ed by Viet Minh Com­mu­nists’ and ‘sig­naled gen­er­al inten­si­fi­ca­tion of the Viet Minh vio­lence.’ In like man­ner, the New York Times head­lined: ‘Reds’ Time Bombs Rip Saigon Cen­ter.’ . . .”

5. In the 1952 bomb­ing, the oper­a­tional coor­di­na­tion between U.S. media out­lets and the per­pe­tra­tors of the attack is note­wor­thy for our pur­pos­es: “ . . . . Gen­er­al The’s bomb­ing mate­r­i­al, a U.S. plas­tic, had been sup­plied to him by his spon­sor, the Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Agency. Greene observed in his mem­oir, Ways of Escape, it was no coin­ci­dence that ‘the Life pho­tog­ra­ph­er at the moment of the explo­sion was so well placed that he was able to take an aston­ish­ing and hor­ri­fy­ing pho­to­graph which showed the body of a trishaw dri­ver still upright after his legs had been blown off.’ The CIA had set the scene, alert­ing the Life pho­tog­ra­ph­er and Times reporter so they could con­vey the ter­ror­ist bomb­ing as the work of ‘Viet Minh Com­mu­nists’ to a mass audi­ence. . . .”

6. South Viet­namese inves­ti­ga­tion of the May, 1963 attack, arrived at a con­clu­sion sim­i­lar to Gra­ham Greene’s dis­cov­ery in the 1952 attack: “ . . . . Accord­ing to an inves­ti­ga­tion car­ried by the Catholic news­pa­per Hoa Binh. . . . a Cap­tain Scott . . . . had come to Hue from Da Nang on May 7, 1963. He admit­ted he was the Amer­i­can agent respon­si­ble for the bomb­ing at the radio sta­tion the next day. He said he used ‘an explo­sive that was still secret and known only to cer­tain peo­ple in the Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Agency, a charge no larg­er than a match­box with a tim­ing device.’. . . .”

FTR #954 Syrian Chemical Weapons Attack? Not So Fast

In the wake of the alleged sarin attack by Bashar al-Assad’s gov­ern­ment and the cruise mis­sile strike on a Syr­i­an air base by the U.S., we exam­ine some of the rel­e­vant issues in the cri­sis, includ­ing and espe­cial­ly intel­li­gence eval­u­a­tions sharply diver­gent from the offi­cial ver­sion:

a). We begin with analy­sis of the area (Idlib) where the alleged Syr­i­an gov­ern­ment sarin attack took place. It is dom­i­nat­ed by the Al-Nus­ra Front, the name giv­en to Al-Qae­da in Iraq when it oper­ates in Syr­ia. Note that the top cler­ic in the Al-Qae­da held area is Abdul­lah Muhaysi­ni, a Sau­di cler­ic: ” . . . . who was a stu­dent [25] of Sulay­man Al-Alwan, the Wah­habi cler­ic who over­saw what his Mus­lim crit­ics have called a ‘ter­ror­ist fac­to­ry [26]’ in Sau­di Arabia’s Al-Qas­sim Province. Al-Alwan was also the instruc­tor of the 9/11 hijack­er Abdu­laz­iz Alo­mari. . . .”

b.) Sad­dam and bin Laden worked out an arrange­ment in which Iraq—in order to pro­vide for a pay­back capa­bil­i­ty if the U.S. oust­ed him—gave infor­ma­tion about WMD’s to bin Laden’s peo­ple. Al Qae­da, in turn, was to act as a back-up unit for Saddam’s Iraq, strik­ing at the Unit­ed States if it knocked out Sad­dam. ” . . . . Accord­ing to Arab sources, in antic­i­pa­tion of a fore­see­able rever­sal of alliances in Kab­ul, bin Laden had been in dis­creet con­tact since Sep­tem­ber 2000 with asso­ciates of Oudai Hus­sein. . . . Bin Laden and the Iraqis are said to have exchanged infor­ma­tion about chem­i­cal and bio­log­i­cal weapons, despite the oppo­si­tion of some of the Bagh­dad lead­er­ship, includ­ing Tarik Aziz. . . .”

c). Robert Par­ry notes in Con­sor­tium News that ele­ments in the U.S. intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty do not agree with the Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s assess­ment of the sit­u­a­tion. ” . . . . Alarm with­in the U.S. intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty about Trump’s hasty deci­sion to attack Syr­ia rever­ber­at­ed from the Mid­dle East back to Wash­ing­ton, where for­mer CIA offi­cer Philip Giral­di report­ed hear­ing from his intel­li­gence con­tacts in the field that they were shocked at how the new poi­son-gas sto­ry was being dis­tort­ed by Trump and the main­stream U.S. news media. Giral­di told Scott Horton’s Web­cast: ‘I’m hear­ing from sources on the ground in the Mid­dle East, peo­ple who are inti­mate­ly famil­iar with the intel­li­gence that is avail­able who are say­ing that the essen­tial nar­ra­tive that we’re all hear­ing about the Syr­i­an gov­ern­ment or the Rus­sians using chem­i­cal weapons on inno­cent civil­ians is a sham.’ . . .”

d.) Par­ry also notes that some ana­lysts are report­ing a strike by a drone launched from a joint Sau­di-Israeli base that sup­ports Syr­i­an rebels. ” . . . Despite some tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ties in trac­ing its flight path, ana­lysts even­tu­al­ly came to believe that the flight was launched in Jor­dan from a Sau­di-Israeli spe­cial oper­a­tions base for sup­port­ing Syr­i­an rebels, the source said, adding that the sus­pect­ed rea­son for the poi­son gas was to cre­ate an inci­dent that would reverse the Trump administration’s announce­ment in late March that it was no longer seek­ing the removal of Pres­i­dent Bashar al-Assad. . . .”

e.) Par­ry con­cludes one of his arti­cles with a scathing analy­sis of the Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s claims by a MIT researcher: ” . . . . In a sep­a­rate analy­sis of the four-page dossier, Theodore Pos­tol, a nation­al secu­ri­ty spe­cial­ist at the Mass­a­chu­setts Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy, con­clud­ed that the White House claims were clear­ly bogus, writ­ing: ‘I have reviewed the doc­u­ment care­ful­ly, and I believe it can be shown, with­out doubt, that the doc­u­ment does not pro­vide any evi­dence what­so­ev­er that the US gov­ern­ment has con­crete knowl­edge that the gov­ern­ment of Syr­ia was the source of the chem­i­cal attack in Khan Shaykhun, Syr­ia at rough­ly 6 to 7 a.m. on April 4, 2017. In fact, a main piece of evi­dence that is cit­ed in the doc­u­ment points to an attack that was exe­cut­ed by indi­vid­u­als on the ground, not from an air­craft, on the morn­ing of April 4. This con­clu­sion is based on an assump­tion made by the White House when it cit­ed the source of the sarin release and the pho­tographs of that source. My own assess­ment, is that the source was very like­ly tam­pered with or staged, so no seri­ous con­clu­sion could be made from the pho­tographs cit­ed by the White House.’ . . . ”

f.) Detailed analy­sis of an August, 2013 sarin attack, orig­i­nal­ly thought to have been per­pe­trat­ed by Bashar Al-Assad, was pre­sent­ed by Sey­mour Hersh in the Lon­don Review of Books. The sarin turns out not to have come from Syr­i­an gov­ern­ment stock­piles. “. . . . Obama’s change of mind had its ori­gins at Por­ton Down, the defence lab­o­ra­to­ry in Wilt­shire. British intel­li­gence had obtained a sam­ple of the sarin used in the 21 August attack and analy­sis demon­strat­ed that the gas used didn’t match the batch­es known to exist in the Syr­i­an army’s chem­i­cal weapons arse­nal. The mes­sage that the case against Syr­ia wouldn’t hold up was quick­ly relayed to the US joint chiefs of staff. . . .”

g.) Al-Nus­ra (Al-Qae­da), on the oth­er hand, was pro­duc­ing Sarin and look­ing to ramp up pro­duc­tion through a sup­ply pipeline run­ning through Turkey. ” . . . . The Amer­i­can and British intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ties had been aware since the spring of 2013 that some rebel units in Syr­ia were devel­op­ing chem­i­cal weapons. On 20 June ana­lysts for the US Defense Intel­li­gence Agency issued a high­ly clas­si­fied five-page ‘talk­ing points’ brief­ing for the DIA’s deputy direc­tor, David Shedd, which stat­ed that al-Nus­ra main­tained a sarin pro­duc­tion cell: its pro­gramme, the paper said, was ‘the most advanced sarin plot since al-Qaida’s pre‑9/11 effort’. . . .”

h.) The 2013 con­clu­sions of gen­er­al Mar­tin Dempsey are worth exam­in­ing in the con­text of the cur­rent cri­sis: ” . . . . From the begin­ning of the cri­sis, the for­mer intel­li­gence offi­cial said, the joint chiefs had been skep­ti­cal of the administration’s argu­ment that it had the facts to back up its belief in Assad’s guilt. They pressed the DIA and oth­er agen­cies for more sub­stan­tial evi­dence. ‘There was no way they thought Syr­ia would use nerve gas at that stage, because Assad was win­ning the war,’ the for­mer intel­li­gence offi­cial said. . . .”

Pro­gram High­lights Include:

1. Review of the cor­po­ratist eco­nom­ic foun­da­tion of Mus­lim Broth­er­hood devel­op­men­tal the­o­ry. “. . . . The Mus­lim Broth­er­hood hails 14th cen­tu­ry philoso­pher Ibn Khal­dun as its eco­nom­ic guide. Antic­i­pat­ing sup­ply-side eco­nom­ics, Khal­dun argued that cut­ting tax­es rais­es pro­duc­tion and tax rev­enues . . . The World Bank has called Ibn Khal­dun the first advo­cate of pri­va­ti­za­tion. . . .”

2. Review of Gra­ham E. Fuller’s sup­port for the eco­nom­ic val­ues of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and his strange sup­port for Bernie Sanders, whose val­ues are the oppo­site of those espoused by Fuller.

3. The fact that war in the Mid­dle East rais­es oil prices–this to be seen against the back­ground of Rex Tiller­son being Sec­re­tary of State (pre­vi­ous­ly CEO of Exxon/Mobil). ” . . . . For investors like Mr. Abdul­lah, con­flict in the Mid­dle East means one thing: high­er oil prices. ‘It’s always good for us,’ he says. . . .”

4. Robert Par­ry’s view that the omis­sion of CIA direc­tor Mike Pom­peo and oth­er top U.S. intel­li­gence offi­cials from a pho­to of Trump’s top advi­sors is indica­tive of dis­sent with­in the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty from the offi­cial ver­sion of the attack.

FTR #953 Saint Bernard: Rebel Without A Clue

Against the back­ground of Trumpian polit­i­cal volatil­i­ty made man­i­fest in Syr­ia, we look at St. Bernard [Sanders] and the impli­ca­tions of actions he has tak­en. This pro­gram is pre­sent­ed in the con­text of the “shock to the sys­tem” that Steve Ban­non and oth­er Trump advis­ers see as nec­es­sary and immi­nent.

After detail­ing more about the Hun­gar­i­an fas­cist man­i­fes­ta­tions of Sebas­t­ian Gor­ka, the Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s point man for counter-jihadism, the pro­gram turns to the pos­si­ble use of the Sanders cam­paign as a vehi­cle for the GOP to infil­trate and/or maneu­ver jihadist ele­ments into promi­nence in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty.

In numer­ous pro­grams, we have not­ed the sup­pres­sion of Oper­a­tion Green Quest, which tar­get­ed indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions linked to the Al-Taqwa/­Mus­lim Broth­er­hood milieu on the one hand, and to the Karl Rove/Grover Norquist-gen­er­at­ed Islam­ic Free Mar­ket Insti­tute on the oth­er. Karl Rove, Grover Norquist and Gra­ham E. Fuller, the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood’s and jihadis’ most sig­nif­i­cant backer in the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty, fac­tor into this analy­sis:

1. Rove financed Sanders cam­paign through the Amer­i­can Cross­roads super-PAC. ” . . . Amer­i­can Crossroads—founded by for­mer Bush advis­er Karl Rove—and sev­er­al oth­er con­ser­v­a­tive-backed super PACs have spent the last month inten­tion­al­ly fuel­ing the Bern, but their zeal has more to do with an effort to weak­en Hillary Clin­ton, whom they still see as the like­ly Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­nee and hard­er to defeat in the gen­er­al elec­tion. . . . Cross­roads is one of sev­er­al groups that has released ads that have been aimed at brand­ing Sanders as the only true pro­gres­sive in the race—a strat­e­gy the Ver­mont senator’s cam­paign also embraces. . . .”

2. Gra­ham E. Fuller says that he was ” . . . . gal­va­nized at watch­ing the spec­ta­cle of Bernie Sanders pro­claim­ing issues in his cam­paign that had been vir­tu­al­ly off lim­its for polit­i­cal dis­cus­sion for decades: gap between rich and poor, rapa­cious inter­na­tion­al trade deals, a fair wage, free uni­ver­si­ty edu­ca­tion, the call for US bal­ance (gasp!) in han­dling the Arab-Israeli, issue, etc. The great thing about Bernie — even if he prob­a­bly won’t get nom­i­nat­ed — is that he has pushed hawk­ish, friend-of-Wall-Street Hillary to the left. . . .”

3. Fuller’s actu­al views are the oppo­site of Sanders pol­i­cy points: “. . . Fuller comes from that fac­tion of CIA Cold War­riors who believed (and still appar­ently believe) that fun­da­men­tal­ist Islam, even in its rad­i­cal jiha­di form, does not pose a threat to the West, for the sim­ple rea­son that fun­da­men­tal­ist Islam is con­ser­v­a­tive, against social jus­tice, against social­ism and redis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth, and in favor of hier­ar­chi­cal socio-eco­nom­ic struc­tures. Social­ism is the com­mon ene­my to both cap­i­tal­ist Amer­ica and to Wah­habi Islam, accord­ing to Fuller. . . ‘There is no main­stream Islam­ic organization...with rad­i­cal social views,’ he wrote. ‘Clas­si­cal Islam­ic the­ory envis­ages the role of the state as lim­ited to facil­i­tat­ing the well-being of mar­kets and mer­chants rather than con­trol­ling them. Islamists have always pow­er­fully object­ed to social­ism and communism....Islam has nev­er had prob­lems with the idea that wealth is uneven­ly dis­trib­uted.’ . . . .”

4. Faisal Gill, a for­mer oper­a­tions direc­tor for Norquist’s Islam­ic Free Mar­ket Insti­tute and offi­cial with George W. Bush’s Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty is now the head of Ver­mon­t’s Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty, a post he has used to join Bernie Sanders and Tul­si Gab­bard to pro­mote Kei­th Elli­son as head of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Com­mit­tee. Elli­son is now the deputy chair of the DNC, the post for­mer­ly held by Gab­bard. ” . . . . Yet some offi­cials remain con­cerned that Gill appar­ent­ly enjoys the polit­i­cal pro­tec­tion of Norquist, the archi­tect of the 1994 Repub­li­can elec­tion sweep that brought Geor­gia Repub­li­can Newt Gin­grich to pow­er as House speak­er. Norquist speaks of ‘crush­ing’ his polit­i­cal oppo­nents and dis­miss­es those who don’t agree with his anti-tax, anti-gov­ern­ment agen­da as ‘Bol­she­viks.’ His pow­er derives from a for­mi­da­ble coali­tion of evan­gel­i­cal, busi­ness and oth­er con­ser­v­a­tive groups that he con­trols to push favored GOP issues, as well as from his close rela­tion­ship with White House polit­i­cal chief Karl Rove. . . .”

The pro­gram also notes a num­ber of oth­er things about the Sanders cam­paign:

1. He was pro­mot­ing open pri­maries for the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty, which would enable Karl Rove and the Repub­li­cans to choose the Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­nee.

2. Sanders was a Pres­i­den­tial elec­tor for the Social­ist Work­ers Par­ty, embrac­ing a stance which would have made him ter­mi­nal­ly vul­ner­a­ble had he got­ten the Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­na­tion. ” . . . . In 1980, Sanders served as an elec­tor for the Social­ist Work­ers Par­ty, which was found­ed on the prin­ci­ples of Leon Trot­sky. Accord­ing to the New York Times, that par­ty called for abol­ish­ing the mil­i­tary bud­get. It also called for “sol­i­dar­i­ty” with the rev­o­lu­tion­ary regimes in Iran, Nicaragua, Grena­da, and Cuba; this was in the mid­dle of the Iran­ian hostage cri­sis. . . .”

3. The SWP was a vehi­cle for infil­tra­tion and the acqui­si­tion of a “left cov­er” by Nazis and spooks, includ­ing Lee Har­vey Oswald.

4. The Third Reich saw Leon Trot­sky’s method­ol­o­gy as wor­thy of emu­la­tion. (The SWP is a Trot­skyite polit­i­cal par­ty.) ” . . . . ‘You should read his books,’ he [Hitler] barked. ‘We can learn a lot from him.’ . . .”

5. To what extent have the GOP and the over­lap­ping Under­ground Reich focused on Sanders (with­out his knowl­edge) as a vehi­cle for infil­trat­ing the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty? In FTR #‘s 941, 942 and 945, we not­ed the numer­ous fas­cist con­nec­tions of Tul­si Gab­bard, one of the dri­ving forces behind Sanders’ ascent. To what extent has the Trot­skyite tem­plate served as a vehi­cle for Gab­bard, and, per­haps, Elli­son to infil­trate the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty?