John Roberts Gives Bad Faith Blessing to Hyper-Partisan Gerrymandering, Paving Way for the Kochstitution.

There was an omi­nous warn­ing about the direc­tion Amer­i­can Democ­ra­cy was head­ing When David Frum warned, “If con­ser­v­a­tives become con­vinced that they can­not win demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly, they will not aban­don con­ser­vatism. They will reject democ­ra­cy.” It was a warn­ing about what might hap­pen, but as we’re going to see, the corporate/billionaire wing com­po­nent of the Repub­li­can par­ty has already con­clud­ed that it can’t get the pub­lic behind its agen­da and has already turned against democ­ra­cy. And John Roberts just hand­ed this bil­lion­aire fac­tion a mas­sive legal vic­to­ry in Rucho vs Com­mon Cause: fed­er­al courts can’t rule on whether or not dis­trict lines are drawn in an over­ly-par­ti­san man­ner. It’s up to each state on its own. And as we’re going to see, Repub­li­cans already dom­i­nate the con­trol of state gov­ern­ments and now state leg­is­la­tures can ger­ry­man­der their own dis­tricts with­out fear of fed­er­al med­dling. Beyond that, the Kochs and ALEC are work­ing on remov­ing state courts from over­see­ing redis­trict­ing maps too. And to top it off, the Kochs are aggres­sive­ly push­ing for a con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion that could eas­i­ly turn into a ‘run­away’ con­ven­tion. And if there’s a con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion, whichev­er par­ty con­trols the most states is going to con­trol the out­come of the con­ven­tion. So the Supreme Court just tur­bocharged the Kochs’ cap­ture of state assem­blies, the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, and even­tu­al­ly the Con­sti­tu­tion.

Good Evening Mr. Bush! I’ll Be Your Server Tonight!

Exem­pli­fy­ing the grotesque, orgias­tic hagiog­ra­phy to which the media have been sub­ject­ing us since George H.W. Bush died is a reput­ed con­ver­sa­tion between the dying George H.W. Bush and Dubya, as report­ed by James Bak­er. After speak­ing to oth­er off­spring and rel­a­tives, the dying Pop­py report­ed­ly spoke with Shrub, who alleged­ly said: “I’ll see you in Heav­en, Dad!” Sup­pos­ed­ly, Pop­py spoke no more before going on to his Eter­nal Reward. If, in fact, such a ren­dezvous does take place, we do not expect it to occur in the Celes­tial Here­after. Exem­pli­fy­ing the mur­der­ous real­i­ties of George H.W. Bush’s tenure on earth is his super­vi­sion of the Afghan Muja­hadin and the birth of Al-Qae­da: “ . . . . More to the point, now, in the Afghanistan War, Vice Pres­i­dent Bush’s inter­ests and Osama bin Laden’s con­verged. In using bin Laden’s Arab Afghans as proxy war­riors against the Sovi­ets, Bush advo­cat­ed a pol­i­cy that was ful­ly in line with Amer­i­can inter­ests at that time. But he did not con­sid­er the long-term impli­ca­tions of sup­port­ing a net­work of Islam­ic fun­da­men­tal­ist rebels. . . . . Specif­i­cal­ly, as Vice Pres­i­dent in the mid-eight­ies, Bush sup­port­ed aid­ing the mujahideen in Afghanistan through the Mak­tab al-Khi­damat (MAK) or Ser­vices Offices, which sent mon­ey and fight­ers to the Afghan resis­tance in Peshawar. ‘Bush was in charge of the covert oper­a­tions that sup­port­ed the MAK,’ says John Lof­tus, a Jus­tice Depart­ment offi­cial in the eight­ies. ‘They were essen­tial­ly hir­ing a ter­ror­ist to fight ter­ror­ism. . . . Cofound­ed by Osama bin Laden and Abdul­lah Azzam, the MAK was the pre­cur­sor to bin Laden’s glob­al ter­ror­ist net­work, Al Qae­da. It sent mon­ey and fight­ers to the Afghan resis­tance in Peshawar, Pak­istan, and even the Unit­ed States to bring thou­sands of war­riors to Afghanistan to fight the Sovi­et Union. The MAK was lat­er linked to the 1993 bomb­ing of the World Trade Cen­ter in New York through an office in Brook­lyn known as the Al-Kifah Refugee Cen­ter. It is not clear how much con­tact he had with bin Laden, but Sheikh Omar Abdel Rah­man, the ‘Blind Sheikh,’ who mas­ter­mind­ed the 1993 bomb­ing of the World Trade Cen­ter, also appeared in Peshawar on occa­sion. . . . ”

FTR #1030 Walkin’ the Snake from Ukraine, to the United States and Around the World

We have spo­ken repeat­ed­ly about the Nazi tract “Ser­pen­t’s Walk,” in which the Third Reich goes under­ground, buys into the opin­ion-form­ing media and, even­tu­al­ly, takes over.

Hitler, the Third Reich and their actions are glo­ri­fied and memo­ri­al­ized.

Some­thing sim­i­lar is hap­pen­ing today in Ukraine.

In 2015, a book was pub­lished exam­in­ing the life of Stepan (also translit­er­at­ed as “Stephan”) Ban­dera, the Ukrain­ian fas­cist and Third Reich ally whose polit­i­cal heirs ascend­ed to pow­er in Ukraine through the Maid­an coup. CORRECTION: Mr. Emory, work­ing from mem­o­ry, misiden­ti­fied the pub­li­ca­tion in which Daniel Lazare’s arti­cle  appeared. It was “Jacobin Mag­a­zine,” not “Coun­ter­punch.” 

We have repeat­ed­ly made the point that the dimen­sions of offi­cial lying in the West were of tru­ly Orwellian proportions–documented World War II his­to­ry was being dis­missed as “Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da” or “Krem­lin pro­pa­gan­da.”

” . . . But thanks to Grze­gorz Rossolinski-Liebe’s Stepan Ban­dera: The Life and After­life of a Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ist, it now seems clear: those ter­ri­ble Rus­sians were right. . . Although Ban­dera and his fol­low­ers would lat­er try to paint the alliance with the Third Reich as no more than ‘tac­ti­cal,’ an attempt to pit one total­i­tar­ian state against anoth­er, it was in fact deep-root­ed and ide­o­log­i­cal. Ban­dera envi­sioned the Ukraine as a clas­sic one-par­ty state with him­self in the role of führer, or provid­nyk, and expect­ed that a new Ukraine would take its place under the Nazi umbrel­la, much as Jozef Tiso’s new fas­cist regime had in Slo­va­kia or Ante Pavelic’s in Croa­t­ia. . . .”

Indeed. This is the point we have been mak­ing for many years.

The Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues its rever­sal of the doc­u­ment­ed his­to­ry of World War II: An exhib­it cel­e­brat­ing “Ukrain­ian inde­pen­dence” rev­els in the OUN/B, Nazi-allied forces that ascend­ed in Ukraine after the Third Reich’s inva­sion of the Sovi­et Union.

” . . . . An exhi­bi­tion inside the Ukrain­ian par­lia­ment, the Rada last week glo­ri­fied the lead­ing Ukrain­ian Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tors of World War II. . . . ‘The orga­niz­ers of the exhi­bi­tion: All-Ukrain­ian char­i­ta­ble Sobor­nist foun­da­tion, Inter­na­tion­al char­i­ta­ble Jaroslav Stezko foun­da­tion, MP Jury Shuchevich.’ Jaroslav Stezko was leader of Stepan Bandera’s Orga­ni­za­tion of the Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists (OUN) mil­i­tary brigades from 1968 until his death. A fer­vent Ukrain­ian Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tor, in 1941 dur­ing the Nazi Ger­man inva­sion of the Sovi­et Union, he was self-pro­claimed tem­po­rary head of the osten­si­bly inde­pen­dent Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment declared by Stepan Ban­dera. Stet­sko was the head of the Anti-Bol­she­vik Bloc of Nations from the time of its foun­da­tion until 1986, the year of his death. MP Jury Shuchevich is the octo­ge­nar­i­an son of Roman Shuchevich, who was the one of the lead­ers of the infa­mous the SS Nachti­gall bat­tal­ion. SS Cap­tain Roman Shuchevich was award­ed the Nazi Iron Cross for his “exploits” dur­ing the Sec­ond World War in Ukraine and was an Abwehr agent from 1926. ‘The fact that the son of the polit­i­cal leader of the SS Nachti­gall bat­tal­ion and the bear­er of the Nazi Iron Cross is the most respect­ed – accord­ing to Ukrain­ian author­i­ties – mem­ber of their par­lia­ment is telling all by itself,” wrote co-founder and Pres­i­dent of the Rogatchi Foun­da­tion Dr. Inna Rogatchi. . . .”

World War II-era mon­u­ment in mem­o­ry of UPA free­dom fight­ers with inscrip­tion “Glo­ry to Ukraine! Glo­ry to the heroes!”, in place of the Janowa Dolina mas­sacre, Bazal­tove, Ukraine
In addi­tion, the offi­cial salute of the OUN/B is set to become the offi­cial salute of the Ukrain­ian army. ” . . . . ‘Glo­ry to Ukraine! – Glo­ry to the Heroes!’ is a slo­gan of the UPA, the Ukraine Rebel Army who fought on the side of the Nazis. The slo­gans, their ori­gin, and his­to­ry are well known in Ukraine. . . . Present neo-Nazi Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary for­ma­tions estab­lished by order of the Ukrain­ian author­i­ties appro­pri­at­ed the slo­gan from the end of 2013 onward. Now, the Ukrain­ian Nazi collaborator’s greet­ing will become the offi­cial salute in that country’s army. . . .”

Not only has the UPA salute become the offi­cial salute of the Ukrain­ian army, but it has become the offi­cial salute of the police as well. ”  . . . . Also, the law on the Nation­al Police was amend­ed. Accord­ing to it, when the police offi­cers are in line for the greet­ing of the leader or senior offi­cer, when they hear the salute ‘Glo­ry to Ukraine!’ they reply ‘Glo­ry to Heroes’. The same actions take place dur­ing the part­ing. . . .”

As dis­cussed in FTR #‘s 1004 and 1014, the fas­cist Svo­bo­da Par­ty’s mili­tia, C14, and the Nazi Azov Bat­tal­ion’s Nation­al Druzhy­na mili­tia have been incor­po­rat­ed into the Ukrain­ian police estab­lish­ment. This is not sur­pris­ing since Vadim Troy­an, the for­mer Deputy Com­man­der of the Azov Bat­tal­ion became: head of the Kyiv police, act­ing head of the Nation­al Police and then Deputy Inte­ri­or Min­is­ter to OUN/B acolyte Arsen Avakov, the main patron of the Azov Bat­tal­ion.

C14’s police cadre has con­duct­ed anoth­er eth­nic cleans­ing raid against Roma, while receiv­ing favor­able cov­er­age from major Ukrain­ian media: ” . . . . Mem­bers of the neo-Nazi C14 move­ment, togeth­er with the ‘Kyiv Munic­i­pal Watch’ civic orga­ni­za­tion which is led by C14 activist Ser­hiy Bon­dar, have car­ried out anoth­er raid, dri­ving Roma cit­i­zens out of the area around the South­ern Rail­way Sta­tion in Kyiv. The raid does not appear to have been accom­pa­nied by shock­ing images of vio­lence like some five oth­ers this year, but that is the only pos­i­tive dif­fer­ence. What is much more dis­turb­ing is that the action appears to have been with the coop­er­a­tion of the police, and was essen­tial­ly giv­en glow­ing cov­er­age on a nation­al tele­vi­sion news broad­cast. . . . the pre­sen­ter of the fea­ture vir­tu­al­ly par­rots parts of the C14 video, with only two Roma peo­ple dri­ven out shown in a neg­a­tive light. There is one telling detail, name­ly that the tele­vi­sion pro­gram is care­ful­ly not to eth­ni­cal­ly label the peo­ple dri­ven out, with the fea­ture enti­tled: ‘Police and civic activists tried to clean the capital’s sta­tion of thieves’. It does, how­ev­er, show the activists wear­ing cam­ou­flage gear and chevrons clear­ly show­ing the C14 sym­bol, and lit­tle effort would be required to find out how C14 presents its vig­i­lante activ­i­ties, and why this orga­ni­za­tion has gained noto­ri­ety over recent months. . . .”  

Addi­tion­al per­spec­tive on the phys­i­cal, polit­i­cal and his­tor­i­cal real­i­ty under­ly­ing the salute “Glo­ry to Ukraine–Glory to the Heroes” is the slo­gan’s dis­play on a mon­u­ment to the mas­sacre of the 600 res­i­dents of the Pol­ish town of Janowa Dolina by the UPA. ” . . . . On the night of April 22–23 (Good Fri­day), 1943, the Ukraini­ans from the Ukrain­ian Insur­gent Army, togeth­er with local peas­ants, attacked Janowa Dolina. Some 600 peo­ple, includ­ing chil­dren and the elder­ly, were bru­tal­ly mur­dered (see Mas­sacres of Poles in Vol­hy­nia). Most homes were burned to the ground and the set­tle­ment desert­ed. The per­pe­tra­tors, com­mand­ed by Ivan Lytwynchuk (aka Dubowy) exer­cised rare cru­el­ty. Poles, unpre­pared and caught by sur­prise, were hacked to death with axes, burned alive, and impaled (includ­ing chil­dren). The mur­der­ers did not spare any­one, regard­less of age and sex. Ger­man gar­ri­son, num­ber­ing around 100 sol­diers, did not act and remained in its bar­racks. After the first wave of mur­ders, the Ukrain­ian nation­al­ists start­ed search­ing the hos­pi­tal. They car­ried its Ukrain­ian patients away from the build­ing, while Pol­ish patients were burned alive.[2] Dr Alek­sander Baki­nows­ki, togeth­er with his assis­tant Jan Borysow­icz, were hacked to death on the square in front of the hos­pi­tal. In sev­er­al cas­es, Ukraini­ans were mur­dered for try­ing to hide their Pol­ish neigh­bours. Petro Mirchuk, Ukrain­ian his­to­ri­an, count­ed sev­er­al hun­dred mas­sa­cred Poles, with only eight UPA mem­bers killed. . . .”

 To put the salute of the bru­tal mur­der­ers of the res­i­dents of the town on a mon­u­ment com­mem­o­rat­ing the mas­sacre is sur­re­al.

It is stun­ning to take stock of the open cel­e­bra­tion of the OUN/B’s Nazi alliance by the insti­tu­tions of the Maid­an gov­ern­ment, includ­ing cel­e­bra­tions of atroc­i­ties like Janowa Dolina:

1.–President Petro Poroshenko laid a wreath at the site of the Babi Yar Mas­sacre, hon­or­ing the OUN/B. The Schutz­mannschaft, who did much of the dirty work at Babi Yar, were culled from the ranks of the UPA, the mil­i­tary wing of the OUN/B.
2.–The city of Lviv (Lvov) in West­ern Ukraine has estab­lished Skhukhevy­ch­fest, to hon­or Roman Schukhevych, who led the Nachti­gall Bat­tal­ion in their mas­sacre of the Jew­ish cit­i­zens of that city. The “fest” coin­cides with the date of the com­mence­ment of the exe­cu­tion.
3.–Ukraine has estab­lished a gov­ern­ment min­istry to stand World War II his­to­ry on its head–the Orwellian-titled Insti­tute of Nation­al Mem­o­ry.
4.–The lus­tra­tion laws for­bid neg­a­tive com­men­tary about the UPA or the OUN/B.

Key Ukrain­ian nation­al secu­ri­ty per­son­nel have giv­en hard proof of their Nazi ori­en­ta­tion, includ­ing:

1.–Former Ukrain­ian intel­li­gence offi­cer Vasi­ly Vovk, who called for the exter­mi­na­tion of Ukraine’s Jews on his Face­book page. (Vovk was in charge of the “inves­ti­ga­tion” of the down­ing of Malaysian Air­lines flight MH17.)
2.–In FTR #1024, we not­ed that Ana­toliy Matios–Ukraine’s top mil­i­tary pros­e­cu­tor and piv­otal­ly involved in the inves­ti­ga­tion of the Maid­an sniper attacks, has man­i­fest­ed Nazi-style anti-Semi­tism.

The pro­gram con­cludes with two items that exem­pli­fy the focus of FTR #1021 Fas­cis­Book: (In Your Face­book, Part 3–part‑3/A Vir­tu­al Panop­ti­con, Part 3.)

Mar­jana Batjuk, post­ed birth­day greet­ings to Adolf Hitler on her Face­book page on April 20 (Hitler’s birth­day). She also taught her stu­dents the Nazi salute and even took some of her stu­dents to meet far right activists who had par­tic­i­pat­ed in a march wear­ing the uni­form of the the 14th Waf­fen Grenadier Divi­sion of the SS. ” . . . A pub­lic school teacher in Ukraine alleged­ly post­ed birth­day greet­ings to Adolf Hitler on Face­book and taught her stu­dents the Nazi salute. Mar­jana Batjuk, who teach­es at a school in Lviv and also is a coun­cil­woman, post­ed her greet­ing on April 20, the Nazi leader’s birth­day . . . . She also took some of her stu­dents to meet far-right activists who over the week­end marched on the city’s streets while wear­ing the uni­form of the 14th Waf­fen Grenadier Divi­sion of the SS, an elite Nazi unite with many eth­nic Ukraini­ans also known as the 1st Gali­cian. . . .”

That was back in April. Flash for­ward to today and we find a sud­den will­ing­ness by Face­book to ban peo­ple for post Nazi con­tent . . . except it’s Eduard Dolin­sky get­ting banned for mak­ing peo­ple aware of the pro-Nazi graf­fi­ti that has become ram­pant in Ukraine: ” . . . . He says that some locals are try­ing to silence him because he is crit­i­cal of the way Ukraine has com­mem­o­rat­ed his­tor­i­cal nation­al­ist fig­ures, ‘which is actu­al­ly deny­ing the Holo­caust and try­ing to white­wash the actions of nation­al­ists dur­ing the Sec­ond World War.’ . . . . Iron­i­cal­ly, the activist oppos­ing anti­semitism is being tar­get­ed by anti­semites who label the anti­se­mit­ic exam­ples he reveals as hate speech. ‘They are specif­i­cal­ly com­plain­ing to Face­book for the con­tent, and they are com­plain­ing that I am vio­lat­ing the rules of Face­book and spread­ing hate speech. So Face­book, as I under­stand [it, doesn’t] look at this; they are ban­ning me and block­ing me and delet­ing these posts.’ . . . .”

Face­book’s pol­i­cy on such issues should be more care­ful­ly scru­ti­nized: ” . . . . Face­book has been under scruti­ny recent­ly for who it bans and why. In July founder Mark Zucker­berg made con­tro­ver­sial remarks appear­ing to accept Holo­caust denial on the site. ‘I find it offen­sive, but at the end of the day, I don’t believe our plat­form should take that down because I think there are things that dif­fer­ent peo­ple get wrong. I don’t think they’re doing it inten­tion­al­ly.’ . . . .”

FTR #964 Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics

As we have not­ed in many pre­vi­ous broad­casts and posts, cyber attacks are eas­i­ly dis­guised. Per­pe­trat­ing a “cyber false flag” oper­a­tion is dis­turbing­ly easy to do.

This is of para­mount sig­nif­i­cance in eval­u­at­ing the increas­ing­ly neo-McCarthyite New Cold War pro­pa­gan­da about “Russ­ian inter­fer­ence” in the U.S. elec­tion.

Com­pound­ing the sit­u­a­tion are some recent dis­clo­sures and devel­op­ments:

1.–We learn that the CIA’s hack­ing tools are specif­i­cal­ly craft­ed to mask CIA author­ship of the attacks. Most sig­nif­i­cant­ly, for our pur­pos­es, is the fact that the Agen­cy’s hack­ing tools are engi­neered in such a way as to per­mit the authors of the event to rep­re­sent them­selves as Russ­ian.

2.–The NSA’s elite hack­ing tech­nol­o­gy has been made wide­ly avail­able to the hack­ing com­mu­ni­ty, cour­tesy of “The Shad­ow Bro­kers.”

3.–During the 2016 Pres­i­den­tial cam­paign, Michael Fly­nn was pro­fes­sion­al­ly involved with numer­ous cyber-secu­ri­ty and cyber arms man­u­fac­tur­ing firms: “ . . . . The month before Fly­nn joined the advi­so­ry board of OSY Tech­nolo­gies, NSO Group opened up a new arm called West­Bridge Tech­nolo­gies, Inc., in the D.C. region. (The com­pa­ny was orig­i­nal­ly reg­is­tered in Delaware in 2014, but formed in Mary­land in April 2016.) Led by NSO Group co-founder Lavie, West­Bridge is vying for fed­er­al gov­ern­ment con­tracts for NSO Group’s prod­ucts. Hir­ing Fly­nn would pro­vide NSO Group with a well-con­nect­ed fig­ure in Wash­ing­ton, to help get its foot in the door of the noto­ri­ous­ly insu­lar world of secret intel­li­gence bud­get­ing. . . .When you’re try­ing to build up your busi­ness, you need some­one who has con­nec­tions, some­one who is seen as an author­i­ty and a legit­i­mate pres­ence,” John­son said. Hir­ing some­one with Flynn’s back­ground in intel­li­gence would ‘open up doors that they wouldn’t have had access to,’ John­son said.Throughout 2016, Fly­nn worked for a num­ber of cyber­se­cu­ri­ty firms per­son­al­ly and through his con­sult­ing firm, Fly­nn Intel Group. In addi­tion to his advi­so­ry board seat at OSY Tech­nolo­gies, he sat on the board of Adobe Sys­tems, a large soft­ware com­pa­ny with Pen­ta­gon con­tracts, and the boards of the cyber­se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­nies Green­Zone Sys­tems and HALO Pri­va­cy. (Though Fly­nn described him­self as an Adobe advi­so­ry board mem­ber in his finan­cial dis­clo­sure paper­work, the group said in a state­ment that he pro­vid­ed only “peri­od­ic coun­sel to Adobe’s pub­lic sec­tor team.”) . . .”

4.–NSO Group and OSY Tech­nolo­gies spe­cial­ize in spear-fish­ing attacks, one of the method­olo­gies used in the hacks of U.S. elec­tion com­put­ers. Is there any link between Fly­n­n’s cyber-secu­ri­ty/­cy­ber arms links and the high-pro­file hacks dur­ing the cam­paign?

5.–A GOP tech database–Deep Root–Exposed the data of almost two hun­dred mil­lion Amer­i­can vot­ers to wide­spread scruti­ny. Is there any con­nec­tion between Deep Root, the GOP and the alleged Russ­ian hack­ing of U.S. vot­ing com­put­ers?

Fol­low­ing a Bloomberg report about wide­spread Russ­ian hack­ing of Amer­i­can elec­tions sys­tems: “ . . . . Kay Stim­son, spokes­woman for the Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Sec­re­taries of State, said the mem­bers of her group — which rep­re­sents the chief elec­tion offi­cials in 40 states — were tak­en aback by the alle­ga­tion that 39 states were hacked. ‘We can­not ver­i­fy any infor­ma­tion in that report,’ Stim­son told Ben­zin­ga. “It has some claims that have raised some red flags. I don’t know where they’re get­ting it. We’re not able to assess to the cred­i­bil­i­ty.’ She said that some cyber­se­cu­ri­ty firms were engag­ing in scare tac­tics at the state and local lev­els. ‘There are cyber­se­cu­ri­ty firms mak­ing some wild claims,’ she said. ‘It is a very aggres­sive indus­try.’ . . .”

With the high-pro­file hacks being attributed–almost cer­tain­ly falsely–to Rus­sia, there are omi­nous devel­op­ments tak­ing place that may well lead to a Third World War. Dur­ing the clos­ing days of his Pres­i­den­cy, Oba­ma autho­rized the plant­i­ng of cyber weapons on Russ­ian com­put­er net­works. Oba­ma did this after talk­ing with Putin on the Hot Line, estab­lished to pre­vent a Third World War. Putin denied inter­fer­ing in the U.S. elec­tion.

The con­clu­sion that Rus­sia hacked the U.S. elec­tion on Putin’s orders appears to have been based on a CIA source in the Krem­lin. Even when that intel­li­gence was deliv­ered, oth­er agen­cies weren’t ready to accept the CIA’s con­clu­sion and it took intel­li­gence from anoth­er nation (not named) to pro­vide the final intel­li­gence tip­ping point that led to a broad-based con­clu­sion the not only was the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment behind the cyber­at­tacks but that Vladimir Putin him­self ordered it.

That ally’s intel­li­gence is described as “the most crit­i­cal tech­ni­cal intel­li­gence on Rus­sia,” how­ev­er the NSA still wasn’t con­vinced based on what sounds like a lack of con­fi­dence in that source. Thus, it looks like a CIA Krem­lin source and an unnamed for­eign intel­li­gence agency with ques­tion­able cre­den­tials are the basis of what appears to be a like­ly future full-scale US/Russian cyber­war.

Of para­mount sig­nif­i­cance is the fact that IF, on Putin’s orders (and we are to believe such) Rus­sia con­tin­ued to hack U.S. com­put­er sys­tems to influ­ence the elec­tion, Putin would have to have gone utter­ly mad. Those hacks would have pre­clud­ed any rap­proche­ment between Rus­sia and the Unit­ed States under a Pres­i­dent Trump. There is not indi­ca­tion that Putin went off the deep end.

Also augur­ing a Third World War are two devel­op­ments in Syr­ia. Sey­mour Hersh pub­lished an arti­cle in Die Welt reveal­ing that, not only was the April 4 alleged Sarin attack NOT a chem­i­cal weapons attack but there was wide­spread knowl­edge of this in Amer­i­can mil­i­tary and intel­li­gence cir­cles.

Omi­nous­ly, the Trump White House is claim­ing they have advance knowl­edge of an impend­ing Syr­i­an chem­i­cal weapons strike and will pun­ish Syr­ia heav­i­ly, and hold Rus­sia account­able.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: The fact that the bulk of activ­i­ty detect­ed by the DHS on U.S. elec­tion sys­tems was “scanning”–standard oper­at­ing pro­ce­dure for hack­ing; a for­mer NSA hack­ing specialist–Jake Williams–said that spear-phish­ing oper­a­tion was of “medi­um sophis­ti­ca­tion” that “prac­ti­cal­ly any hack­er can pull off”; the ques­tion of whether or not GOP Sec­re­taries of State might have delib­er­ate­ly respond­ed to the spear-phish­ing e‑mails that per­mit­ted the “hit” on U.S. elec­tion sys­tems; the Russ­ian autho­riza­tion of the use by the Syr­i­an air force of a smart bomb to elim­i­nate Al-Qae­da-linked jihadists; the release of a chem­i­cal cloud as a result of that strike that was caused by sec­ondary explo­sions; Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca’s hir­ing of GOP online data-bas­ing king­pin Dar­ren Bold­ing.

FTR #950 Shock to the System: Further Reflections on the Breitbart Axis

This broad­cast updates cov­er­age of key aspects of the Nazi/fascist, oops, we mean “alt-right,” milieu that moved into gov­ern­ment cour­tesy of the Trumpenkampfver­bande and Bre­it­bart.

Fur­ther devel­op­ing the ter­ri­fy­ing real­i­ty of what Arti­fi­cial Intel­l­li­gence (AI) can accom­plish for the ded­i­cat­ed fas­cist, oops, we mean “alt-right” adher­ent, we note an impor­tant address giv­en at SXSW. Microsoft researcher Kate Craw­ford gave a speech titled “Dark Days: AI and the Rise of Fas­cism.” The pre­sen­ta­tion high­light­ed the social impact of machine learn­ing and large-scale data sys­tems. The take home mes­sage? By del­e­gat­ing pow­ers to Bid Data-dri­ven AIs, those AIs could become fascist’s dream: Incred­i­ble pow­er over the lives of oth­ers with min­i­mal account­abil­i­ty: ” . . . .‘This is a fascist’s dream,’ she said. ‘Pow­er with­out account­abil­i­ty.’ . . . .”

Turn­ing next to the polit­i­cal phi­los­o­phy of Steve Ban­non and the sem­i­nal influ­ences on its devel­op­ment, we refresh our acquain­tance with Cur­tis Yarvin, aka “Men­cius Mold­bug,” a her­ald of the Dark Enlight­ment.

Cur­tis Yarvin has actu­al­ly opened a backchan­nel advi­so­ry con­nec­tion to the White House.

Note that the Ban­non influ­ences all seem to agree that what is need­ed is “a shock to the sys­tem.” We may very well expe­ri­ence just that. ” . . . . . . . . Bannon’s read­ings tend to have one thing in com­mon: the view that tech­nocrats have put West­ern civ­i­liza­tion on a down­ward tra­jec­to­ry and that only a shock to the sys­tem can reverse its decline. . . . ”

Fas­cist philoso­pher Julius Evola is anoth­er of the key influ­ences on Ban­non. Evola was an ear­ly occult fas­cist, with strong con­nec­tions with Mus­solin­i’s Italy. Even­tu­al­ly Evola estab­lished strong, last­ing con­nec­tions with the Nazi SS, both oper­a­tional­ly and ide­o­log­i­cal­ly.

He is anoth­er advo­cate of the “shock to the system”/“blow it up” approach to the sta­tus quo. ” . . . Chang­ing the sys­tem, Evola argued, was ‘not a ques­tion of con­test­ing and polemi­ciz­ing, but of blow­ing every­thing up.’ . . . .”

A reveal­ing influ­ence on Ban­non is a French nov­el The Camp of the Saints by Jean Ras­pail. “. . . . The Camp of the Saints — which draws its title from Rev­e­la­tion 20:9 — is noth­ing less than a call to arms for the white Chris­t­ian West, to revive the spir­it of the Cru­sades and steel itself for bloody con­flict against the poor black and brown world with­out and the trai­tors with­in. The novel’s last line links past humil­i­a­tions tight­ly to its own grim para­ble about mod­ern migra­tion. ‘The Fall of Con­stan­tino­ple,’ Raspail’s unnamed nar­ra­tor says, ‘is a per­son­al mis­for­tune that hap­pened to all of us only last week.’ . . . . ”

In FTR #947, we high­light­ed Sebas­t­ian Gor­ka, a Bre­it­bart alum­nus and Hun­gar­i­an fas­cist. Gor­ka is now the Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s point man work­ing against Islam­ic ter­ror­ism. His view (and Ban­non’s) that we are engaged in an his­toric clash of civ­i­liza­tions. That is pre­cise­ly the point of view expressed by ISIS (and The Camp of the Saints) and will play into their hands.

That, in turn, will help pro­pel the U.S. into more end­less wars on the periph­ery of our empire, ulti­mate­ly sap­ping the nation’s vital­i­ty and lead­ing to the fall of the U.S. in a man­ner delin­eat­ed in FTR #944.

After review­ing Gorka’s anti-Semi­tism, his pro­found con­nec­tions to three gen­er­a­tions of Hun­gar­i­an fas­cism dat­ing to the pre-World War II peri­od and con­fir­ma­tion of his alle­giance to the Order of Vitezi Rend, we high­light the fact that Gor­ka is part of the Strate­gic Ini­tia­tives Group, some­thing of a par­al­lel NSC formed by Steve Ban­non. It reminds us of Hitler’s cre­ation of a par­al­lel gen­er­al staff, born of a mis­trust of his own senior offi­cers and a desire to have a trust­ed cadre to obey his orders.

” . . . . In the Unit­ed States, Gor­ka, who was appoint­ed deputy assis­tant to the pres­i­dent on Jan­u­ary 20, is known as a tele­vi­sion com­men­ta­tor, a pro­fes­sor and an “alt-right” writer who describes him­self as a coun­tert­er­ror­ism expert. A close asso­ciate of Stephen Ban­non, Trump’s chief strate­gist, Gor­ka is now part of Bannon’s key in-house White House think tank, the Strate­gic Ini­tia­tives Group. The new­ly formed group con­sists of fig­ures close to Trump and is seen by some as a rival to the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil in for­mu­lat­ing poli­cies for the pres­i­dent. . . .”

The con­clu­sion of the pro­gram fore­shad­ows dis­cus­sion in our next broad­cast, which will crit­i­cal­ly exam­ine Bernie Sanders cam­paign and dis­turb­ing indi­ca­tions that his can­di­da­cy may have been gen­er­at­ed by the Under­ground Reich as a vehi­cle for infil­trat­ing and desta­bi­liz­ing the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty.

In FTR #941, we high­light­ed the push by Bernie Sanders and his promi­nent backer Tul­si Gab­bard to have Kei­th Elli­son, an African-Amer­i­can Mus­lim to be head of the DNC. He was not elect­ed head of the DNC, but is now deputy chair of the DNC, the posi­tion for­mer­ly held by Gab­bard.

Elli­son is net­worked with the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, and the Nation of Islam as well. ” . . . . Indeed, the June 21, 1998 arti­cle states that at that time – that is, three years after Farrakhan’s march – Elli­son was a mem­ber of the Nation of Islam: ‘Elli­son has been active in the com­mu­ni­ty, but not with­in the estab­lished DFL par­ty [the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty in Min­neso­ta]. A mem­ber of the Nation of Islam, Elli­son was the coor­di­na­tor of the Min­neso­ta par­tic­i­pants in the Mil­lion Man March and the sub­se­quent com­mu­ni­ty group that formed.’ . . . .”

In a point of dis­cus­sion that will be con­duct­ed at greater length in our next pro­gram, we con­clude by not­ing that anoth­er of Kei­th Ellison’s sup­port­ers to head the DNC was Faisal Gill, a Grover Norquist pro­tege whom we cov­ered in FTR #467.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: review of Gorka’s for­ma­tion of a fas­cist par­ty in Hun­gary in the last decade; review of Gorka’s doc­tri­naire anti-Semi­tism; review of Gorka’s net­work­ing with mem­bers of the Job­bik Par­ty in Hun­gary; review of Gorka’s sup­port­ive atti­tude toward the Arrow Cross Par­ty, which allied with Hitler; review of Job­bik’s affin­i­ty with Julius Evola; review of Karl Rove’s and Grover Norquist’s sem­i­nal sup­port for the cre­ation of a Mus­lim Broth­er­hood branch of the GOP.

FTR #947 Evola on Our Minds

The entry point to our explo­ration of Julius Evola is top Trump advis­er and first tier NSC mem­ber Steve Ban­non. Evola is a key influ­ence on Ban­non. Evola was an ear­ly occult fas­cist, with strong con­nec­tions with Mus­solin­i’s Italy. Even­tu­al­ly Evola estab­lished strong, last­ing con­nec­tions with the Nazi SS, both oper­a­tional­ly and ide­o­log­i­cal­ly.

Evola has also influ­enced Alexan­der Dug­in, a promi­nent Russ­ian ide­o­logue and politi­cian.

The broad­cast recaps FTR #233, which details Evola’s work for the SS and Kevin Coogan’s the­o­ry that Evola was involved with an SS occult net­work incor­po­rat­ing impor­tant peo­ple and insti­tu­tions in both the West and behind the so-called “Iron Cur­tain.” Lat­er in the pro­gram, we fur­ther devel­op the sto­ry of Alexan­der Dug­in, a Russ­ian “Alt-right” thinker and politi­cian promi­nent in the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment. As men­tioned above, Dug­in, like Ban­non, has been influ­enced by Evola.

We won­der if, in the per­sons of Ban­non and Dug­in, we are see­ing “West­ern” and “East­ern” man­i­fes­ta­tions of what Kevin con­cep­tu­al­izes as “The Order.”

Draw­ing on mate­r­i­al from Kev­in’s sem­i­nal work Dream­er of the Day: Fran­cis Park­er Yock­ey and The Post­war Fas­cist Inter­na­tion­al (soft cov­er, Autono­me­dia, copy­right 1999, ISBN I‑57027–039‑2), the pro­gram sets forth a hypo­thet­i­cal con­struct advanced in the book. Hypoth­e­siz­ing an inter­na­tion­al fas­cist milieu orig­i­nat­ing from (though not coter­mi­nous with) the ide­o­log­i­cal ori­en­ta­tion of the Waf­fen SS, Kevin terms this milieu “The Order.” (This enti­ty is not to be con­fused with the 1980’s Amer­i­can Nazi orga­ni­za­tion of the same name.)

Begin­ning with analy­sis of Kev­in’s dis­cus­sion of the work of fas­cist occultist Julius Evola in Vien­na dur­ing the con­clu­sion of World War II, the pro­gram doc­u­ments Evola’s oper­a­tions on behalf of the SD (the SS intel­li­gence ser­vice.)

Like SS chief Himm­ler, Evola saw the SS as the suc­ces­sors to the Ksha­triya class (the Hin­du war­rior caste.) See­ing Ger­many and Europe as suc­cumb­ing to “bar­bar­ian inva­sion,” Evola saw a pagan, anti-Chris­t­ian mys­ti­cism as nec­es­sar­i­ly anti­thet­i­cal to the Judeo-Chris­t­ian cul­ture which, he felt, had led the West to decline before the “Bol­she­vik hordes” of the Sovi­et Union and the “chew­ing gum impe­ri­al­ism” of the Unit­ed States.

Kevin felt that this orga­ni­za­tion (reflect­ing the ide­o­log­i­cal stance of an ele­ment of the Waf­fen SS) would be pan-Euro­pean in scope and ori­en­ta­tion, and not nec­es­sar­i­ly entire­ly chau­vin­is­tic from a Nordic or Ger­man­ic racial and nation­al stand­point. Nour­ished by bank accounts secret­ed abroad, this hypo­thet­i­cal orga­ni­za­tion func­tions in an under­ground fash­ion. (The funds that nour­ished this insti­tu­tion would nec­es­sar­i­ly have derived from the Bor­mann Orga­ni­za­tion.) The Order appears to have estab­lished osten­si­bly friend­ly rela­tions with the West.

This orga­ni­za­tion may very well have begun work­ing with the U.S. intel­li­gence appa­rat after the war, as evi­denced by, among oth­er things, the col­lab­o­ra­tion between post-war SS ele­ments and the CIA. Coogan hypoth­e­sizes that CIA direc­tor Allen Dulles may have played a pri­ma­ry role in such an accord.

Anoth­er influ­ence on a Dulles/Order col­lab­o­ra­tive rela­tion­ship may have been psy­chol­o­gist Carl Jung, who was con­nect­ed to Dulles and to the Third Reich.

Sig­nif­i­cant­ly, the Order appears to have over­lapped, and also worked with, ele­ments of the East Bloc, includ­ing for­mer Sovi­et and East Ger­man nation­al secu­ri­ty offi­cials. The orga­ni­za­tion also main­tained con­tacts with “anti-impe­ri­al­ist,” Third World lib­er­a­tion move­ments.

Steve Ban­non’s dis­cus­sion of Alexan­der Dug­in gains sig­nif­i­cance in this con­text.

The Order appears to have exploit­ed its con­tacts with­in both East and West blocs to fur­ther its own fascis­tic and elit­ist agen­da, play­ing both sides against the mid­dle dur­ing the Cold War.

The Dugin/Evola affil­i­a­tion and the Bannon/Evola affil­i­a­tion may be sig­nif­i­cant in that con­text.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Sebas­t­ian Gorka’s man­i­fes­ta­tion of the her­aldry of the order of Vitezi Rend, close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with Nazi Ger­many’s Hun­gar­i­an allies;
Adbusters mag­a­zine’s pub­li­ciz­ing of Alexan­der Dugin–we review the fact that Adbusters appears to have played a key role in jump­start­ing the “Occu­py” move­ment.

FTR #944 Fireside Rant: WTF Is Going On? The Caligulization of America and the End of the American Century

This broad­cast is a (prob­a­bly part­ly unsuc­cess­ful) sum­ma­ry attempt at explain­ing what will be the results of the ascen­dance of the Trumpenkampfver­bande in the U.S. It is to be hoped that this descrip­tion will go fur­ther toward explain­ing what is going on than the orig­i­nal pro­gram. In addi­tion to the excerpts of arti­cles pre­sent­ed in the pro­gram, we will sum­ma­rize some of the cen­tral argu­ments in the broad­cast, with links to oth­er pro­grams and lec­tures, where pos­si­ble.

In AFA #37, we dis­cussed the Gehlen “Org” and relat­ed ele­ments as a Tro­jan Horse, using anti-com­mu­nism to infil­trate the Unit­ed States and, ulti­mate­ly, destroy it from with­in. In this pro­gram we devel­op that analy­sis fur­ther, adding the role of the House of Hab­s­burg and asso­ciates to the Tro­jan Horse metaphor. When the U.S. frus­trat­ed the de-Naz­i­fi­ca­tion of Ger­many, opt­ed to ally with the remark­able and dead­ly Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work and the asso­ci­at­ed Hab­s­burg roy­al fam­i­ly, and returned the Japan­ese and Ital­ian fas­cists to pow­er (with a civil­ian facade), this coun­try signed its own death war­rant.

Amer­i­ca’s entry into two World Wars, after the com­bat had pro­ceed­ed for years, decid­ed both con­flicts against Ger­many. The Amer­i­can rev­o­lu­tion was the first suc­cess­ful revolt of a Euro­pean colo­nial pow­er against its colo­nial mas­ter. Both Ger­many and the House of Hab­s­burg vowed nev­er again! Nev­er!

In this con­text, we observe that the Hab­s­burgs (roy­al house of the Aus­tro-Hun­gar­i­an Empire) ruled for six hun­dred years. Six hun­dred years ago–1417–was three quar­ters of a cen­tu­ry before Colum­bus sailed. To the Hab­s­burgs, Amer­i­ca is a blip. Democ­ra­cy is a blip. They see things in an entire­ly dif­fer­ent way. Because the U.S. was an unas­sail­able mil­i­tary pow­er and the most pow­er­ful econ­o­my on earth, the coun­try could only be brought down by sub­ver­sion from with­in. We gave the Under­ground Reich and the Hab­s­burgs the keys to the king­dom, not unlike the Prae­to­ri­an Guard–Germanic mer­ce­nary troops appoint­ed to guard the Roman Emper­or. Even­tu­al­ly they con­trolled the throne and pre­served the Roman Empire for as long as it could make lucra­tive pay­ments to the Ger­man­ic tribes who even­tu­al­ly defeat­ed and sacked Rome.

The thrust of the broad­cast is that the ascen­sion of Trump–an Amer­i­can Caligula–is indeed the end of what Hen­ry Luce called “The Amer­i­can Cen­tu­ry.” The author of our first arti­cle is a for­mer edi­tor for Time mag­a­zine and a for­mer State Depart­ment offi­cer, so his lit­er­al take on Luce’s pro­nounce­ment is not sur­pris­ing. What Sten­gel is talk­ing about is the end of “Brand Amer­i­ca,” to coin a phrase–the suc­cess­ful PR mar­ket­ing of this coun­try as the Land of the Free, Home of the Brave, etc.

That polit­i­cal mythol­o­gy, which com­pelled much of Mr. Emory’s ini­tial involve­ment in this research when he began in the ear­ly ’70s, will evap­o­rate. That dis­si­pa­tion, how­ev­er, will be eclipsed by the dev­as­tat­ing eco­nom­ic, envi­ron­men­tal, social and polit­i­cal dev­as­ta­tion that will sure­ly fol­low Trump’s poli­cies.

As Mr. Emory fore­cast in FTR #‘s 918 and 919, among oth­er pro­grams in the “Trumpenkampfver­bande” series, Trump’s anti-NATO rhetoric and gen­er­al dis­parag­ing of the Atlanti­cist alliances that have held sway dur­ing the bet­ter part of “The Amer­i­can Cen­tu­ry” are focused on pre­cip­i­tat­ing the Under­ground Reich goals of: an all-EU army replac­ing NATO, a Ger­man-dom­i­nate Europe assum­ing cen­ter stage in world affairs, and the forg­ing of an eco­nom­ic alliance with Rus­sia (fol­low­ing Russ­ian con­ces­sions on Ukraine) that will give “Cor­po­rate Ger­many” eco­nom­ic dom­i­na­tion over the Earth Island. A trade war with Chi­na, cou­pled with pos­si­ble mil­i­tary adven­tur­ism against that grow­ing giant, will sim­ply enhance its com­mer­cial and diplo­mat­ic grav­i­tas. Germany/EU will fill the vac­u­um, enhanc­ing their eco­nom­ic ascen­sion.

Our next arti­cle her­alds Mr. Emory’s prog­nos­ti­ca­tions. We do not feel Trump is nec­es­sar­i­ly con­scious of his role. In the age of mind con­trol, what goes on between a giv­en indi­vid­u­al’s ears is impos­si­ble to gauge, past a point. Among the var­i­ous and sundry dis­as­trous out­comes of Trump’s poli­cies may well be a cyber-ter­ror­ist inci­dent from a nation-state actor or a lone male­fac­tor, this the result of a fed­er­al hir­ing freeze. ” . . . On his first offi­cial day in office after inau­gu­ra­tion, Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump has made good on his plan to insti­tute a fed­er­al hir­ing freeze—part of his effort to slash the fed­er­al work­force. Details are sparse: Trump has said there would be excep­tions for the mil­i­tary, and a White House memo notes the freeze would be waived ‘when nec­es­sary to meet nation­al or pub­lic safe­ty respon­si­bil­i­ties.’ Some experts fear a tem­po­rary hir­ing freeze could exac­er­bate a chron­ic prob­lem in the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment: a wide­spread short­age of cyber­se­cu­ri­ty tal­ent. A hir­ing freeze could sig­nal to essen­tial cyber­se­cu­ri­ty talent—especially those who might con­sid­er join­ing the pub­lic sec­tor from high­er-pay­ing indus­try jobs—that there’s no need or desire for them in the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, Alan Chvotkin, exec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent of the Pro­fes­sion­al Ser­vices Coun­cil, told Nextgov. . . .”

Exem­pli­fy­ing a dis­con­nect that is sure to help bring our econ­o­my down, Labor Sec­re­tary Puzder lauds the val­ue of machines over humans. While he is cor­rect that machines do not do many things that he sees as counter-pro­duc­tive, he ignores the fact that machines don’t by food at Car­l’s Junior or Hard­ees, the food chains for which he is chief exec­u­tive. No machine has ever bought any­thing. ” . . . Fast food exec­u­tive Andrew Puzder, who Pres­i­dent-elect Don­ald Trump is expect­ed to tap as labor sec­re­tary, has advo­cat­ed replac­ing some human work­ers with machines as a way for busi­ness­es to reduce costs asso­ci­at­ed with ris­ing wages and health-care expens­es. While machines require reg­u­lar main­te­nance and can some­times mal­func­tion, Puzder said, they are also eas­i­er to man­age than humans and don’t pose the same legal risks. “They’re always polite, they always upsell, they nev­er take a vaca­tion, they nev­er show up late, there’s nev­er a slip-and-fall, or an age, sex, or race dis­crim­i­na­tion case,” Puzder told Busi­ness Insid­er in March. Puzder serves as the chief exec­u­tive of CKE Restau­rants, the cor­po­rate par­ent behind fast food chains Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr. . . .”

When automa­tion, infla­tion of the price of con­sumer goods that are import­ed and have had tar­iffs slapped on them by “The Don­ald,” lack of health care forc­ing work­ing peo­ple to devote increas­ing­ly scarce resources toward main­tain­ing their and/or their fam­i­lies’ health, the sub­ver­sion of min­i­mum wage, over­time and union­iza­tion laws and statutes and increas­ing con­cen­tra­tion of eco­nom­ic own­er­ship have brought Amer­i­can con­sumers to their knees, our con­sumer-based econ­o­my will col­lapse.

Last­ly, we note some­thing that her­alds poor­ly for the response of the Amer­i­can peo­ple to the chaos that is sure to enve­lope this coun­try after the envi­ron­men­tal, eco­nom­ic and social chaos that will inevitably result from Trump’s roll­back of decades of nec­es­sary reg­u­la­tion, enor­mous bud­get deficits from the GOP’s tax cuts, neu­tral­iza­tion of decades of progress on health care and roll­back of the New Deal.

With Bet­sy De Vos appoint­ed as Sec­re­tary of Edu­ca­tion, the already dis­mal, fright­en­ing civic aware­ness of our pub­lic school stu­dents fig­ures to get worse. In and of itself, that is cause for extreme pes­simism. As our soci­ety dis­in­te­grates from the inter­play of var­i­ous eco­nom­ic, polit­i­cal and mil­i­tary fac­tors, the calls for “some­one to do some­thing” to repair our dys­func­tion­al soci­ety are like­ly to increase expo­nen­tial­ly.

“. . . . When, 2011, the World Val­ues Sur­vey asked US cit­i­zens in their late teens and ear­ly 20s whether democ­ra­cy was a good way to run a coun­try, about a quar­ter said it was ‘bad’ or ‘very bad,’ an increase of one-third since the late 1990s. Among cit­i­zens of all ages, 1 in 6 now say in would be fine for the ‘army to rule,’ up from 1 in 16 in 1995. In a dif­fer­ent nation­al sur­vey, about two-thirds of Amer­i­cans could not name all three branch­es of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment or which par­ty con­trolled the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives. In a third study, almost half of the respon­dents said the gov­ern­ment should be per­mit­ted to pro­hib­it a peace­ful march. . . .”

Pro­gram High­lights Include: review of the Hab­s­burg role in Ukraine; review of Karl von Hab­s­burg and his UNPO; review of Karl von Hab­s­burg’s mar­riage to Francesca Thyssen-Borne­misza and, through that, the Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work; review of the inti­mate prox­im­i­ty of the House of Hab­s­burg and the House of Liecht­en­stein; review of House of Liecht­en­stein cousin Mar­tin Wachter’s stew­ard­ship of a Bank al-Taqwa sub­sidiary; review of the Hab­s­burg prox­im­i­ty to the death of Antonin Scalia, which may have helped to solid­i­fy the GOP behind Trump.

FTR #911 The Crimean Tatars, Ukraine and The Underground Reich: Update on the Earth Island Boogie

Keyed by the vic­to­ry of a Crimean Tatar singer in the Euro­vi­sion song contest–she sang about their depor­ta­tion by Stal­in in 1944–the Crimean Tatars are in the polit­i­cal spot­light again.

Agi­tat­ing and con­spir­ing along­side OUN/B fas­cist heirs Pravy Sek­tor in Ukraine, the Crimean Tatars have become some­thing of a cause cele­bre in the course of col­lab­o­rat­ing to desta­bi­lize Crimea and Rus­sia. What has been eclipsed by the cur­rent con­tro­ver­sy is the long his­to­ry of Crimean Tatar col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Third Reich, ini­tial­ly, and then West­ern intel­li­gence.

Uti­lized as a wedge against the for­mer Sovi­et Union, the Crimean Tatars were enlist­ed in the anti-Sovi­et Promethean League in the peri­od between the two world wars and sub­se­quent­ly turned to the Third Reich as spon­sors and allies, see­ing the Nazi armies as their tick­et to auton­o­my. Through­out this almost cen­tu­ry-long odyssey, the Crimean Tatars have served along­side the Ukrain­ian fas­cists of the OUN/B and its suc­ces­sor orga­ni­za­tions. ” . . . Berlin began forg­ing plans for win­ning over Sovi­et lin­guis­tic minori­ties (‘Volks­grup­pen’) to col­lab­o­rate with the Nazis in the war against Moscow. The atten­tion of strate­gists in the Ger­man For­eign Min­istry and in the Reich Min­istry for the Occu­pied East­ern Ter­ri­to­ries fell on the approx. 200,000 Crimean Tatars. The idea was encour­aged by the hope that, with the Tatar’s help, offi­cial­ly neu­tral Turkey could also be won over to enter the war. Ankara saw itself as the pro­tec­tive pow­er for Tur­kic-speak­ing minori­ties, includ­ing the Tatar lin­guis­tic group on the Crimean Penin­su­la. . . . The Bat­tle Group D began imme­di­ate­ly to recruit Crimean Tatar vol­un­teers for the war against the Sovi­et Union. In Decem­ber 1941, this bat­tle group had mas­sa­cred more than 13,000 peo­ple — 11,000 Jews and over 800 Roma — in Sim­fer­opol (Crimea). . . .”

Fol­low­ing mil­i­tary defeat in the Sec­ond World War, the Crimean Tatars and their pri­ma­ry spon­sor in the Ostministerium–Gerhard von Mende–continued their work apace under the aus­pices of Frank Wis­ner and Allen Dulles’s CIA and the Gehlen orga­ni­za­tion, both in its CIA incar­na­tion and after it’s incor­po­ra­tion as the BND, the intel­li­gence ser­vice of the Fed­er­al Repub­lic of Ger­many. The Crimean Tatar/Ukrainian fas­cist col­lab­o­ra­tion has con­tin­ued into the post-Maid­an peri­od.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Review of Crimean Tatar/Pravy Sek­tor blockad­ing of road traf­fic into Crimea; review of Crimean Tatar/Pravy Sek­tor col­lab­o­ra­tion in the sab­o­tage of Crimea’s elec­tric grid; con­tem­po­rary Ger­man polit­i­cal liai­son with dis­si­dent Crimean Tatars; Turkey’s ongo­ing sup­port for the Crimean Tatars, part of Erdo­gan’s “neo-Ottoman”/Pan-Turkic pol­i­cy; von Mende’s use of Third Reich col­lab­o­ra­tor Edi­ge Kir­i­mal dur­ing the Cold War; review of the UNA-UNSO’s col­lab­o­ra­tion with Chechens and oth­er Cau­casian Islamists fol­low­ing the breakup of the Sovi­et Union.

FTR #860 Walkin’ the Snake in Ukraine, Part 7 (All’s Well That’s Orwell, Part 3)

In a recent appear­ance before a Jew­ish audi­ence (while drum­ming up sup­port for the Iran nuclear deal), Pres­i­dent Oba­ma not­ed that Iran was a coun­try that denied the Holo­caust. Oba­ma’s remarks were deeply iron­ic in light of the fact that the OUN/B redux gov­ern­ment in pow­er in Ukraine (with Amer­i­can mil­i­tary, polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic sup­port) con­tin­ues to man­i­fest a pro­found Holo­caust revi­sion­ism. Polit­i­cal and mil­i­tary allies of the Third Reich, the OUN/B under Stephan Ban­dera and Jaroslav Stet­sko imple­ment­ed eth­nic cleans­ing mas­sacres against Jews, Poles, Rus­sians Roma and oth­er “polit­i­cal unde­sir­ables” dur­ing the Sec­ond World War. Nur­tured with­in ele­ments of West­ern intel­li­gence and incor­po­rat­ed into the Repub­li­can Par­ty after World War II, the OUN/B were pro­ject­ed back into Ukraine fol­low­ing the breakup of the U.S.S.R. Imple­ment­ing a law crim­i­nal­iz­ing crit­i­cism of the OUN/B and its mil­i­tary wing the UPA, the Ukrain­ian regime is insti­tu­tion­al­iz­ing a fun­da­men­tal per­ver­sion of that region’s his­to­ry dur­ing World War II. The Ukrain­ian per­spec­tive is being echoed in West­ern media and polit­i­cal pro­nounce­ments. Pro­gram High­lights Include: the Nazi Azov Bat­tal­ion’s devel­op­ment of a youth wing; the white­wash­ing of the mur­der­ous career of Symon Petliu­ra, a Ukrain­ian pogromist and antecedent of the OUN/B; the role of OUN/B oper­a­tive Volodomyr Via­tro­vych in imple­ment­ing Ukraine’s his­tor­i­cal revi­sion­ism; con­tin­ued cov­er-up of the facts con­cern­ing the shoot­down of Malaysian Air­lines flight MH-17; review of “Yuschenkoism”–Viktor Yuschenko’s revi­sion­ist poli­cies that set the stage for Poroshenko’s per­pet­u­a­tion of those poli­cies; review of Ukrain­ian pres­i­dents Yuschenko and Poroshenko hon­or­ing the OUN/B exe­cu­tion­ers at Babi Yar; Symon Pet­lyu­ra’s abortive alliance with Vladimir Jabotin­sky, which has been used to deny Petli­u­ra’s anti-Semi­tism.

FTR #855: Greek Tragedy, Part 3

Fol­low­ing Ger­many’s imple­men­ta­tion of an aus­ter­i­ty pro­gram on Greece that offi­cial­ly and as a mat­ter of course negates Greek nation­al sov­er­eign­ty and democ­ra­cy, we exam­ine that agree­ment and the his­to­ry that led up to it. Even rel­a­tive­ly con­ser­v­a­tive Amer­i­can and Euro­pean observers are label­ing the devel­op­ment a “coup” against Greek democ­ra­cy. We would call it a for­eign occu­pa­tion by Ger­many. The events in Europe can only be under­stood in terms of the exe­cu­tion of a con­sum­mate­ly bril­liant, cyn­i­cal plan to imple­ment Ger­man polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic hege­mo­ny through a series of wars and what Von Clause­witz called “Post-wars.” The con­ti­nu­ity of Ger­man polit­i­cal, mil­i­tary and eco­nom­ic pol­i­cy through decades and across a chal­leng­ing diver­si­ty of events is far-sight­ed and rig­or­ous. Pro­gram High­lights Include: Ger­man Finance Min­is­ter Wolf­gang Schauble’s use of Third Reich cross-bor­der sub­ver­sion spe­cial­ist Theodor Veit­er as a key advis­er on Euro­pean eco­nom­ic affairs; the explic­it con­trol of Greece’s eco­nom­ic affairs by “the insti­tu­tions” [of Ger­many and the EU]; Schauble’s appar­ent goal of dri­ving Greece out of the Euro­zone; Ger­many’s suc­cess­ful eva­sion of its World War II debt; an overview of the evo­lu­tion of Friedrich List’s blue­print for eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal con­trol of Europe and the world; review of the troika’s impo­si­tion of a 2011 Greek coali­tion gov­ern­ment that includ­ed the fas­cist LAOS par­ty; the fun­da­men­tal­ly dif­fer­ent approach of Ger­man cor­po­ra­tions to car­tel agree­ments from that of their inter­na­tion­al partners/competitors.