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FTR #1094 The Destabilization of China, Part 5: Pan-Turkism, Islamism and The Earth Island Boogie

This pro­gram con­tin­ues with exam­i­na­tion of cen­trifu­gal polit­i­cal and geo-polit­i­cal forces at work in the appar­ent­ly ongo­ing desta­bi­liza­tion of Chi­na.

This is a com­plex top­ic, involv­ing sub­jects dealt with at great length in past pro­grams over the years. We rec­om­mend using the search func­tion on this web­site (using quo­ta­tion marks) to gain a deep­er under­stand­ing of what Mr. Emory calls “The Earth Island Boo­gie.”

By the same token, under­stand­ing that con­cept involves obtain­ing a grasp of Pan-Turk­ism and some of its man­i­fes­ta­tions in the Uighur milieu inside Chi­na.

This descrip­tion has links to key pro­grams that will flesh out the lis­ten­ers’ under­stand­ing.

We begin an analy­sis of the use of the Turko­phone, Mus­lim Uighurs as a desta­bi­liz­ing ele­ment in Chi­na’s min­er­al and petro­le­um-rich Xin­jiang semi­au­tonomous region.

Linked to Al-Qae­da, the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and con­tribut­ing to the jihadist milieu in Syr­ia, the Uighurs also fig­ure into the Pan-Turk­ist milieu cov­ered in, among oth­er pro­grams: AFA #14, as well as FTR #‘s 720, 723, 819, 857, 862, 863, 878, 879, 884, 885, 886, 911.

Note that the geo­graph­i­cal focal point of the Uighur separatist/jihadist activ­i­ty not only encom­pass­es min­er­al and resource-rich Xin­jiang province, but lies in the area Chi­na has des­ig­nat­ed as an impor­tant area for their “Belt and Road Ini­tia­tive.” That ini­tia­tive is a pro­gram designed to build rail con­nec­tions across what is known as “The Earth Island,” a project which appears to entail deep alarm on the part of inter­ests in the West.

” . . . . The Uighur sep­a­ratist spec­trum is over­lapped by the Uighur jiha­di milieu, who link the issue of Xin­jiang’s seces­sion from Chi­na to that of form­ing a Salafist theoc­ra­cy. Uighur jihadis have long since expand­ed their radius of actions beyond Chi­na’s bor­ders. This first drew pub­lic atten­tion, when it was report­ed that, in ‘the war on ter­ror,’ which began in 2002, the Unit­ed States had been hold­ing more than 20 Uighurs in their tor­ture cham­bers at Guan­taná­mo. The last of the pris­on­ers were released only in late 2013. Uighur jihadis have long since expand­ed beyond their Afghanistan engage­ment to oth­er regions of the world. . . . Uighur jihadis’ activ­i­ties have also been reg­is­tered in oth­er South­east Asian coun­tries, such as Malaysia and Indone­sia — from where quite a few con­tin­ue on to Turkey, to sup­port the IS or al Qae­da. Last year, Chi­na had esti­mat­ed that up to 300 Uighurs are fight­ing in the ranks of IS, while Syr­i­an gov­ern­ment offi­cials set the fig­ures at up to 5,000 Uighurs who are oper­at­ing in var­i­ous jiha­di mili­tias in Syr­ia. Regard­less of the accu­ra­cy of these esti­mates, experts are cer­tain that a large con­tin­gent of Uighur mili­tias are fight­ing with­in the ranks of IS and al Qae­da. An analy­sis pub­lished by the Inter­na­tion­al Cen­ter for Counter-Ter­ror­ism in The Hague warns that the Uighur jiha­di threat is large­ly under­es­ti­mat­ed in the West.[9] . . . . For Chi­na, this ter­ror­ism is that much more seri­ous, because Xin­jiang is a strate­gi­cal­ly impor­tant region. That autonomous region com­pris­es cen­tral sec­tors of the ‘New Silk Road’ (‘Belt and Road Ini­tia­tive,’ BRI) project, cur­rent­ly Bei­jing’s most impor­tant for­eign pol­i­cy mega-project. Unrest in Xin­jiang threat­ens not only the Peo­ple’s Repub­lic of Chi­na’s domes­tic tran­quil­i­ty, but also its rise in world pol­i­cy. This unrest is being sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly fanned from abroad. Turkey, under Pres­i­dent Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has assumed a promi­nent role. While still may­or of Istan­bul and long before becom­ing Turkey’s pres­i­dent, Erdoğan had declared that ‘East Turkestan is not only the home­land of the Tur­kic peo­ples, but also the cra­dle of Tur­kic his­to­ry, civ­i­liza­tion, and cul­ture. The mar­tyrs of East Turkestan are our martyrs.’[10] Uighur jihadis have reg­u­lar­ly used Turkey as a safe haven. In his talk with german-foreign-policy.com, the Ger­man expert on intel­li­gence ser­vices, Erich Schmidt-Een­boom con­firmed that Ankara’s intel­li­gence ser­vice has repeat­ed­ly ‘sought to sup­port seces­sion­ist attempts’ in Xinjiang.[11] . . . .”

The Uighur/Al Qaeda/Muslim Brotherhood/jihadist milieu is also dis­cussed in, among oth­er pro­grams, FTR #‘s 348, 549, 550, 615.

Next, we detail the long his­to­ry of NATO and relat­ed ele­ments using the Uighurs to desta­bi­lize Chi­na, with Ger­many as an epi­cen­ter of Uighur activ­i­ty.

We review the ter­ror­ism against mem­bers of the Han Chi­nese major­i­ty in Xin­jiang by Uighurs.

” . . . . Already since the 1990s, Xin­jiang has been faced with ter­ror­ist attacks by mem­bers of the Tur­kic-speak­ing Uighur minor­i­ty, fight­ing to secede this autonomous region from Chi­na, to found “East Turkestan.” Some seek an even­tu­al fusion with the Tur­kic-speak­ing coun­tries of Cen­tral Asia. The attacks that became known in the West includ­ed a Uighur ter­ror­ist attack at a coal mine in Xin­jiang in Sep­tem­ber 2015. The assailants delib­er­ate­ly tar­get­ed non-Tur­kic-speak­ing work­ers — espe­cial­ly those of Chi­na’s major­i­ty Han pop­u­la­tion — slaugh­ter­ing them with long knives. Accord­ing to west­ern media reports, at least 50 peo­ple died in the attack.[7] March 1, 2014 eight Uighur ter­ror­ists armed also with knives attacked civil­ian trav­el­ers in a train sta­tion of Kun­ming, the cap­i­tal of Yun­nan Province, killing 31 and wound­ing around 150, some seri­ous­ly. There have also been recur­ring pogroms tar­get­ing Han Chi­nese. For exam­ple, in July 2009, sev­er­al thou­sand Uighur in Xin­jiang’s cap­i­tal, Urumqi, attacked Han Chi­nese. Accord­ing to offi­cial fig­ures, 197 peo­ple were killed; how­ev­er, observers cal­cu­late the actu­al body count to be much high­er. . . .

As high­light­ed in, among oth­er pro­grams, FTR #‘s 547, 548, 549, 550, the Uighurs are part of a cen­tripetal desta­bi­liza­tion effort against Chi­na, uti­liz­ing the Dalai Lama’s SS-linked milieu, ele­ments of CIA, and the Haps­burg-con­trolled UNPO to effect the par­tial dis­mem­ber­ment of that coun­try.

We con­clude with dis­cus­sion about the Hong Kong Shang­hai Bank­ing Cor­po­ra­tion. A major British bank, the growth of its largesse was inex­tri­ca­bly linked with the opi­um trade Britain forced on Chi­na through the Opi­um Wars.

The bank per­pet­u­at­ed it’s involve­ment with major nar­cotics traf­fick­ing, laun­der­ing funds for con­tem­po­rary drug car­tels.

Ulti­mate­ly, the bank became a vehi­cle for the financ­ing of ele­ments of Al-Qae­da and jihadism. We won­der if per­haps jihadist ele­ments of the Uighurs may be receiv­ing fund­ing through the insti­tu­tion?

The US Falls Down the GOP’s Tax Scam Memory Hole. Again.

When is a tax cut more than just a tax cut? When it’s a GOP tax cut. Because when the GOP cuts tax­es, it’s nev­er just an attempt to cut tax­es because tax cuts are just one ele­ment of the GOP’s much larg­er agen­da of cre­at­ing a soci­ety run by and for the super-rich. And mas­sive amounts of pro­pa­gan­da and decep­tion are part of the tax cut pack­age too. It’s why GOP tax cuts tend to be so much more than just tax cuts for the rich. They’re Big Lies designed to fool soci­ety into dis­man­tling itself. So it should come as a sur­prise to no one that the cur­rent GOP tax cut plans are hor­ri­ble abom­i­na­tion being sold to the pub­lic by a web of lies. But what is gen­uine­ly sur­pris­ing about the cur­rent GOP tax push is just how shod­dy that web of lies is turn­ing out to be this time. As we’re going to see, it’s almost as if the fail­ure to pass Trump­care only increased the resolve of Amer­i­ca’s right-wing oli­garchs to final­ly pass leg­is­la­tion that’s even more polit­i­cal­ly awful than Trump­care. But as we’re also going to see, even if the tax cuts turn into a polit­i­cal dis­as­ter for the GOP that will still be fine for the GOP as long as the pub­lic for­gets to remem­ber that we’ve been here before.

The New World Ordoliberalism, Part 7: To QE, or Not to QE, That is the Ominous Question

As the Euro­pean Cen­tral Bank (ECB) con­tin­ues to wres­tle with the deci­sion of when and how quick­ly to wind down its quan­ti­ta­tive eas­ing (QE) pro­gram while infla­tion remains stub­born­ly below the 2 per­cent tar­get and like­ly to stay well below 2 per­cent for the fore­see­able future, it’s worth not­ing that there’s a new night­mare to add to the equa­tion: The euro has surged in val­ue this year, a move that not only depress­es exports in recov­ery economies like Spain and Por­tu­gal but also depress­es infla­tion. And one of the things hold­ing down the val­ue of the euro is the ECB’s QE pro­gram. So if the ECB tapers off the QE too ear­ly and quick­ly it’s going to make an over­ly-strong euro even stronger while drag­ging infla­tion even low­er, poten­tial­ly derail­ing frag­ile recov­er­ies in the aus­ter­i­ty-inflict­ed mem­ber states. And that means not send­ing the wrong sig­nals is a key goal of the ECB is things are going to go smooth­ly. Guess which sig­nals are being sent.

Trumplandian Feudalism: Employ the Unemployed While Still Starving Them

Did Trump sud­den­ly drop his oft-repeat­ed crit­i­cism of tra­di­tion unem­ploy­ment report­ing and asser­tions that in real­i­ty its 42 per­cent and 94 mil­lion Amer­i­can adults are out of work? Well, as we’re going to see, prob­a­bly not because his admin­is­tra­tion is still plan­ning on redefin­ing the “offi­cial” unem­ploy­ment rate to be much “loos­er” and his claims that 42 per­cent if Amer­i­can adults are out of work are nec­es­sary to achieve a long-held GOP goal cham­pi­oned by House Speak­er Paul Ryan: con­vert­ing the US safe­ty-net — includ­ing Medicare, Med­ic­aid, and Social Secu­ri­ty — into a “work for a pit­tance to get a pit­tance of gov­ern­ment support”-net that traps the poor in sys­tem where if you have to find full time work to get any help at all. Maybe even for the elder­ly. And the help you get in return for that work-require­ment will keep shrink­ing year after year. It’s a plan that can’t hap­pen unless almost all non-work­ing adults are defined as “unem­ployed”. So, no, Trump did­n’t change his mind. He just still thinks we’re all stu­pid (maybe).

FTR #946 In Your Facebook: A Virtual Panopticon, Part 2

In FTR #718 (record­ed on Inde­pen­dence Day week­end of 2010), we not­ed that the new social medium–Facebook-might very well be the oppo­site of the lib­er­at­ing, empow­er­ing enti­ty many believed it to be.

On the con­trary, we said–it received finan­cial back­ing from the CIA, per­mits unprece­dent­ed gath­er­ing and data­bas­ing of users’ per­son­al infor­ma­tion, and might very well be a “panopticon”–a type of prison in which the interned can nev­er see his or her jail­ers, but their keep­ers can see the interned at all times.

In par­tic­u­lar, we not­ed the promi­nent posi­tion of major Face­book investor Peter Thiel in “Mon­do Zucker­berg.” Of Ger­man (and prob­a­ble I.G. Far­ben) ori­gins, we opined that Thiel was Under­ground Reich. Opposed to democ­ra­cy because he feels it is inim­i­cal to wealth cre­ation and does­n’t believe women should be allowed to vote, Thiel has now emerged as one of the most promi­nent of Don­ald Trump’s sup­port­ers, tran­si­tion team cre­ators and influ­en­tial pol­i­cy wonks.

Where­as we explored the “vir­tu­al panop­ti­con” con­cept of Face­book with a ques­tion mark in 2010, we now feel affir­ma­tive­ly on the issue.

A very impor­tant sto­ry from New York mag­a­zine sets forth Face­book’s role in the just-con­clud­ed elec­tion. ” . . . . Facebook’s size, reach, wealth, and pow­er make it effec­tive­ly the only one that mat­ters. And, boy, does it mat­ter. At the risk of being hyper­bol­ic, I think there are few events over the last decade more sig­nif­i­cant than the social network’s whole­sale acqui­si­tion of the tra­di­tion­al func­tions of news media (not to men­tion the polit­i­cal-par­ty appa­ra­tus). Trump’s ascen­dan­cy is far from the first mate­r­i­al con­se­quence of Facebook’s con­quer­ing inva­sion of our social, cul­tur­al, and polit­i­cal lives, but it’s still a brac­ing reminder of the extent to which the social net­work is able to upend exist­ing struc­ture and trans­form soci­ety — and often not for the bet­ter. . . .

” . . . . Facebook’s enor­mous audi­ence, and the mech­a­nisms of dis­tri­b­u­tion on which the site relies — i.e., the emo­tion­al­ly charged activ­i­ty of shar­ing, and the show-me-more-like-this feed­back loop of the news feed algo­rithm — makes it the only site to sup­port a gen­uine­ly lucra­tive mar­ket in which shady pub­lish­ers arbi­trage traf­fic by entic­ing peo­ple off of Face­book and onto ad-fes­tooned web­sites, using sto­ries that are alter­nate­ly made up, incor­rect, exag­ger­at­ed beyond all rela­tion­ship to truth, or all three. . . .

” . . . . And at the heart of the prob­lem, any­way, is not the moti­va­tions of the hoax­ers but the struc­ture of social media itself. Tens of mil­lions of peo­ple, invig­o­rat­ed by insur­gent out­sider can­di­dates and anger at per­ceived polit­i­cal ene­mies, were served up or shared emo­tion­al­ly charged news sto­ries about the can­di­dates, because Facebook’s sort­ing algo­rithm under­stood from expe­ri­ence that they were seek­ing such sto­ries. Many of those sto­ries were lies, or ‘par­o­dies,’ but their appear­ance and place­ment in a news feed were no dif­fer­ent from those of any pub­lish­er with a com­mit­ment to, you know, not lying. As those peo­ple and their fol­low­ers clicked on, shared, or oth­er­wise engaged with those sto­ries — which they did, because Trump dri­ves engage­ment extreme­ly bigly — they were served up even more of them. The engage­ment-dri­ving feed­back loop reached the heights of Face­book itself, which shared fake news to its front page on more than one occa­sion after fir­ing the small team of edi­to­r­i­al employ­ees tasked with pass­ing news judg­ment. . . .

” . . . . Some­thing like 170 mil­lion peo­ple in North Amer­i­ca use Face­book every day, a num­ber that’s not only sev­er­al orders of mag­ni­tude larg­er than even the most opti­mistic cir­cu­la­tion reck­on­ings of major news out­lets but also about one-and-a-half times as many peo­ple as vot­ed on Tues­day. Forty-four per­cent of all adults in the Unit­ed States say they get news from Face­book . . . ”

Symp­to­matic of Face­book’s fil­ter of what its users see con­cerns the social medi­um’s recent non-cov­er­age of the wom­en’s march:

” . . . . We don’t usu­al­ly post on Pan­do at the week­end, but this is too top­i­cal and too shame­ful to wait until Mon­day. As you cer­tain­ly know, today is the day of the Women’s March on Wash­ing­ton in protest of Don­ald Trump. The main event is in DC, where some­thing close to 500,000 pro­test­ers of all gen­ders and ages have packed the streets — but there are also major protests in Chica­go, New York and around the world. Includ­ing Antarc­ti­ca.

You cer­tain­ly know this because the protest march is the top sto­ry on every major news out­let, and because updates and pho­tos from the event are flood­ing your Twit­ter and Face­book feeds.

And yet, here’s what Facebook’s trend­ing news feed looked like at the height of the march…

And here’s its trend­ing pol­i­tics feed…

Notice any­thing miss­ing?

Like, say, a half mil­lion women? . . .

In case you think I’m see­ing some­thing dif­fer­ent from the rest of the world, be assured I’m not….”

Face­book has changed its algo­rithm, no longer fac­tor­ing in “likes” and oth­er per­son­al pref­er­ences in deter­min­ing its news feed.

This, how­ev­er, does not bode as well as Face­book would like us to believe. Face­book has pro­mot­ed, among oth­ers, Camp­bell Brown, to an impor­tant posi­tion in struc­tur­ing its news feed: ” . . . . Brown has long­stand­ing ties not just to the tra­di­tion­al news media, but also to con­ser­v­a­tive pol­i­tics, although she describes her­self as a polit­i­cal inde­pen­dent. She is a close per­son­al friend of Bet­sy DeVos, the Repub­li­can megadonor who is Don­ald Trump’s nom­i­nee for Edu­ca­tion Sec­re­tary, and is mar­ried to Dan Senor, a for­mer top advi­sor to Mitt Rom­ney who also served as spokesper­son for the Coali­tion Pro­vi­sion­al Author­i­ty in the wake of the 2003 inva­sion of Iraq. . . .

. . . . And along­side her main­stream media expe­ri­ence, Brown is famil­iar with the world of non-tra­di­tion­al news out­lets spring­ing up online. In 2014, she found­ed a non­prof­it news site, The 74, which bills itself as non­par­ti­san but which crit­ics have said func­tions as advo­ca­cy jour­nal­ism, tilt­ed in favor of char­ter schools and against teach­ers’ unions. The site was launched with mon­ey from donors includ­ing the foun­da­tion run by DeVos, Trump’s pro­posed Edu­ca­tion Sec­re­tary. When the nom­i­na­tion was announced, Brown said she would recuse her­self from The 74’s cov­er­age of DeVos. . .”

Brown is joined by Tuck­er Bounds, a for­mer John McCain advis­er and spokesman for the McCain/Palin cam­paign.

Exem­pli­fy­ing the ter­ri­fy­ing pos­si­bil­i­ties of the vir­tu­al panop­ti­con, we exam­ine the nexus of Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca, its prin­ci­pal investors, Robert and Rebekah Mer­cer and Steve Ban­non, a key mem­ber of the fir­m’s board of direc­tors and a polit­i­cal guru to Rebekah. ” . . . . For sev­er­al years, a data firm even­tu­al­ly hired by the Trump cam­paign, Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca, has been using Face­book as a tool to build psy­cho­log­i­cal pro­files that rep­re­sent some 230 mil­lion adult Amer­i­cans. A spin­off of a British con­sult­ing com­pa­ny and some­time-defense con­trac­tor known for its coun­tert­er­ror­ism ‘psy ops’ work in Afghanistan, the firm does so by seed­ing the social net­work with per­son­al­i­ty quizzes. Respon­dents — by now hun­dreds of thou­sands of us, most­ly female and most­ly young but enough male and old­er for the firm to make infer­ences about oth­ers with sim­i­lar behav­iors and demo­graph­ics — get a free look at their Ocean scores. Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca also gets a look at their scores and, thanks to Face­book, gains access to their pro­files and real names.

“Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca worked on the ‘Leave’ side of the Brex­it cam­paign. In the Unit­ed States it takes only Repub­li­cans as clients: Sen­a­tor Ted Cruz in the pri­maries, Mr. Trump in the gen­er­al elec­tion. Cam­bridge is report­ed­ly backed by Robert Mer­cer, a hedge fund bil­lion­aire and a major Repub­li­can donor; a key board mem­ber is Stephen K. Ban­non, the head of Bre­it­bart News who became Mr. Trump’s cam­paign chair­man and is set to be his chief strate­gist in the White House. . .

” . . . . Their [the Mer­cers] data firm, Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca, was hired by the Cruz cam­paign. They switched to sup­port Trump short­ly after he clinched the nom­i­na­tion, and he even­tu­al­ly hired Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca, as well. Their top polit­i­cal guru is Steve Ban­non, the for­mer Bre­it­bart News chair­man and White House chief strate­gist. They’re close, too, with Trump’s cam­paign man­ag­er Kellyanne Con­way, who also has a senior role in the White House. They nev­er speak to the press and hard­ly ever even release a pub­lic state­ment. Like Trump him­self, they’ve flout­ed the stan­dard play­book for how things are done in pol­i­tics. . . .”

Ban­non’s influ­ence on Rebekah Mer­cer is par­tic­u­lar­ly strong: ” . . . Anoth­er of the Repub­li­can oper­a­tives described Ban­non as the ‘Obi-Wan Keno­bi’ to Rebekah Mer­cer, and a third was even more point­ed: ‘Sven­gali.’ Ban­non is ‘real­ly, real­ly, real­ly influ­en­tial’ with Mer­cer, said the for­mer Bre­it­bart employ­ee. The Mer­cers, the for­mer employ­ee said, made their wish­es known through Ban­non, who would some­times cite the company’s finan­cial back­ers as a rea­son for Bre­it­bart not to do a sto­ry. Ban­non didn’t respond to a request for com­ment about this. . . .”

In turn, the influ­ence of Steve Ban­non with­in the Face­book vir­tu­al panop­ti­con is even more sin­is­ter con­sid­er­ing Ban­non’s polit­i­cal out­look: ” . . . . But, said the source, who request­ed anonymi­ty to speak can­did­ly about Ban­non, ‘There are some things he’s only going to share with peo­ple who he’s tight with and who he trusts.’

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. And they tend to have a dark, apoc­a­lyp­tic tone that at times echoes Bannon’s own pub­lic remarks over the years—a sense that human­i­ty is at a hinge point in his­to­ry. . . .”

One of the influ­ences on Ban­non is Cur­tis Yarvin, aka Men­cius Mold­bug, who has actu­al­ly opened a backchan­nel advi­so­ry con­nec­tion to the White House: ” . . . . Before he emerged on the polit­i­cal scene, an obscure Sil­i­con Val­ley com­put­er pro­gram­mer with ties to Trump backer and Pay­Pal co-founder Peter Thiel was explain­ing his behav­ior. Cur­tis Yarvin, the self-pro­claimed ‘neo­re­ac­tionary’ who blogs under the name ‘Men­cius Mold­bug,’ attract­ed a fol­low­ing in 2008 when he pub­lished a wordy trea­tise assert­ing, among oth­er things, that ‘non­sense is a more effec­tive orga­niz­ing tool than the truth.’ When the orga­niz­er of a com­put­er sci­ence con­fer­ence can­celed Yarvin’s appear­ance fol­low­ing an out­cry over his blog­ging under his nom de web, Ban­non took note: Bre­it­bart News decried the act of cen­sor­ship in an arti­cle about the programmer-blogger’s dis­missal.

Moldbug’s dense, dis­cur­sive mus­ings on history—‘What’s so bad about the Nazis?’ he asks in one 2008 post that con­demns the Holo­caust but ques­tions the moral supe­ri­or­i­ty of the Allies—include a belief in the util­i­ty of spread­ing mis­in­for­ma­tion that now looks like a tem­plate for Trump’s approach to truth. ‘To believe in non­sense is an unforge­able [sic] demon­stra­tion of loy­al­ty. It serves as a polit­i­cal uni­form. And if you have a uni­form, you have an army,’ he writes in a May 2008 post.‘It’s been a while since I post­ed any­thing real­ly con­tro­ver­sial and offen­sive here,’ he begins in a July 25, 2007, post explain­ing why he asso­ciates democ­ra­cy with ‘war, tyran­ny, destruc­tion and pover­ty.’

Mold­bug, who does not do inter­views and could not be reached for this sto­ry, has report­ed­ly opened up a line to the White House, com­mu­ni­cat­ing with Ban­non and his aides through an inter­me­di­ary, accord­ing to a source. Yarvin said he has nev­er spo­ken with Ban­non. . . .”

After dis­cussing Face­book’s new AI tech­nol­o­gy being employed to search users’ pho­tos, the pro­gram con­cludes with the shift of Sil­i­con Val­ley mon­ey to the GOP.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: review of Steve Ban­non’s role on the NSC; review of the mar­tial law con­tin­gency plans drawn up by Oliv­er North dur­ing the Rea­gan admin­is­tra­tion, involv­ing the dep­u­tiz­ing of para­mil­i­tary right-wingers; review of Erik Prince’s rela­tion­ship to the Trump admin­is­tra­tion and Bet­sy De Vos, Trump’s edu­ca­tion sec­re­tary.

The New World Ordoliberalism Part 6: The QE Taper Caper and the Portuguese Squeeze

In this chap­ter of our explo­ration of what’s wrong with the euro­zone we’re going to take a look at the evolv­ing nature of the Euro­pean Cen­tral Bank’s (ECB’s) quan­ti­ta­tive eas­ing (QE) pro­gram. Specif­i­cal­ly, how the QE pro­gram was fac­ing a set of obsta­cles that was going to require some tweak­ing to the pro­gram and how the solu­tion to the obsta­cle was to basi­cal­ly choose the tweaks that harmed the weak, in par­tic­u­lar Por­tu­gal. In favor of Ger­many, of course. Keep in mind that Por­tu­gal recent­ly formed a left-wing anti-aus­ter­i­ty gov­ern­ment and has done rel­a­tive­ly eco­nom­i­cal­ly well since com­ing into pow­er . Also keep in mind that Por­tu­gal is one of the few euro­zone nations not fac­ing a ris­ing far-right “pop­ulist” move­ment as a response to its harsh aus­ter­i­ty pro­gram. So you might say the tim­ing is “right” for some pref­er­en­tial treat­ment of Por­tu­gal. Pref­er­en­tial­ly bad treat­ment.

FTR #921 The Trumpenkampfverbande, Part 4: Trump on the Stump (The Underground Reich Emerges Into Plain View, Part 2)

Con­tin­u­ing analy­sis of Don­ald Trump’s can­di­da­cy, this pro­gram high­lights Trump’s suc­cess­ful use of Hitler’s rhetor­i­cal style and prin­ci­ples. Blog­ger Josh Mar­shall not­ed: ” . . . This was as wild and as unbri­dled a speech as I’ve seen from Trump. Even if you couldn’t under­stand Eng­lish, it would be stun­ning to watch the slash­ing hand ges­tures, the red face, the yelling. . . . Watch­ing this speech, com­pared to the press con­fer­ence today in Mex­i­co City, what kept com­ing to my mind was the con­trast between Hitler’s uni­formed ral­ly speech­es from the hus­tings and the suit­ed, states­man Hitler we see in the old news reels in Munich and at oth­er icon­ic moments in the late 1930s. . . . the dem­a­gog­ic style, the fren­zied invo­ca­tion of famil­ial blood sac­ri­ficed to bar­bar­ic out­siders – these are not unique to him [Hitler]. When we see this lurid, stab-in-the-back incite­ment, the wild hyper­bole, the febrile rail­ing against out­siders who will make us no longer a coun­try – the sim­i­lar­i­ties are real. More than any­thing, per­haps the most chill­ing part of this day is the con­trast between the two men – a mea­sured, calm states­man fig­ure we saw this after­noon and this rail­ing, angry dem­a­gogue fig­ure who cap­tured the emo­tion­al tenor of a Klan ral­ly. . . .” The sim­i­lar­i­ty does not appear to be coin­ci­den­tal: “. . . . Don­ald Trump appears to take aspects of his Ger­man back­ground seri­ous­ly. John Wal­ter works for the Trump Orga­ni­za­tion, and when he vis­its Don­ald in his office, Ivana told a friend, he clicks his heels and says, ‘Heil Hitler,’ pos­si­bly as a fam­i­ly joke. . . . Ivana Trump told her lawyer Michael Kennedy that from time to time her hus­band reads a book of Hitler’s col­lect­ed speech­es, ‘My New Order,’ which he keeps in a cab­i­net by his bed. . . .” The prin­ci­ples of the book have been put into action: “. . . . But it appears that one way or anoth­er, much of the con­tent in ‘My New Order’ about how Hitler says pro­pa­gan­da works, and how he struc­tures his speak­ing style, and how Hitler tar­gets the low­est-com­mon denom­i­na­tor as his intend­ed audi­ence, has seeped into Trump: the way he speaks, argues, rages and responds in pub­lic. . . .” Trump’s rhetor­i­cal rein­car­na­tion of Hitler cor­re­sponds to polit­i­cal sup­port from a bevy of fas­cists and white suprema­cists, old and new, as dis­cussed in FTR #‘s 882 and 920. Fur­ther­more, the financ­ing for his com­plex, mys­te­ri­ous­ly opaque real estate oper­a­tions comes from insti­tu­tions and indi­vid­u­als linked to the remark­able and dead­ly Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work, as high­light­ed in FTR #920. Con­tin­u­ing to man­i­fest “dog whis­tles” direct­ed at the Nazi faith­ful, Trump’s cam­paign pre­sent­ed the unlike­ly num­ber of 88 high-rank­ing mil­i­tary offi­cers who sup­port his can­di­da­cy, chan­nel­ing the “88” device used by post­war Nazis to code “Heil Hitler.” (“H” is the 8th let­ter of the alpha­bet.) One of the few observers to cor­rect­ly ana­lyze the scan­dalous role of the media in their cov­er­age of Trump’s cam­paign is for­mer CNN host Soledad O’Brien: ” . . . ‘If you look at Hillary Clinton’s speech where she basi­cal­ly point­ed out that what Don­ald Trump has done — actu­al­ly quite well — has nor­mal­ized white suprema­cy,’ O’Brien explained to CNN host Bri­an Stel­ter on Sun­day. ‘I think she made a very good argu­ment, almost like a lawyer. . . . The for­mer CNN host argued that the ques­tion that jour­nal­ists should be ask­ing is if Trump is ‘soft­en­ing the ground for peo­ple — who are white suprema­cists, who are white nation­al­ists, who would self-iden­ti­fy that way — to feel com­fort­able with their views being brought into the nation­al dis­course to the point where they can do a five minute inter­view hap­pi­ly on nation­al tele­vi­sion? And the answer is yes, clear­ly,’ she said. ‘And there is lots of evi­dence of that.’ . . .” The pro­gram con­cludes with a read­ing from “They Thought They Were Free: The Ger­mans 1933–1945”–listeners should com­pare their sub­jec­tive expe­ri­ence of the present with that of a pro­fes­sor who lived through Hitler’s ascen­sion. Pro­gram High­lights Include: review of Deutsche Bank’s pri­ma­ry role in back­ing Trump’s busi­ness oper­a­tions; review of George Soros’ back­ing of Trump’s busi­ness deal­ings; review of Soros’s role in “Aryaniz­ing” Jew­ish prop­er­ty dur­ing the Holo­caust; review of the links of the Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work’s piv­otal role in Deutsche Bank and the Union Bank of Switzer­land, anoth­er financier of Trump prop­er­ties; an ear­ly man­i­fes­ta­tion of Ger­man “Ost­poli­tik,” in which the SS intel­li­gence ser­vice float­ed the idea to Allen Dulles that Ger­many would ally with Rus­sia.

FTR #920 The Trumpenkampfverbande, Part 3: The Underground Reich Emerges Into Plain View

QUICK: How many Pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates can you name who kept a book of Adolf Hitler’s speech­es by their bed­side? Don­ald Trump does. For many years, what Mr. Emory terms “The Under­ground Reich” has been a fun­da­men­tal point of dis­cus­sion and analy­sis in these broad­casts and posts. In the third pro­gram ana­lyz­ing the Don­ald Trump cam­paign, we exam­ine the “Trumpenkampfver­bande,” its polit­i­cal antecedents and adher­ents. Exem­pli­fy­ing, and net­work­ing with, gen­er­a­tions of fas­cists and fas­cist orga­ni­za­tions, the Trumpenkampfver­bande embod­ies the emer­gence of the Under­ground Reich into plain view. A sig­na­ture ele­ment of Trump’s cam­paign is his resus­ci­ta­tion of the “Amer­i­ca First” slo­gan and con­cept, a man­i­fes­ta­tion both of his thin­ly-veiled appeal to Nazi and white suprema­cist ele­ments and his will­ing­ness to cede dom­i­nance over world affairs to a Ger­man-dom­i­nat­ed “third pow­er bloc.” The Amer­i­ca First con­cept mobi­lizes pow­er­ful feel­ings among those feel­ing over­whelmed and left behind by polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic devel­op­ments glob­al­ly and in the Unit­ed States. We note that the “orig­i­nal” Amer­i­ca First was financed by Nazi Ger­many. Trump’s invo­ca­tion of Amer­i­ca First exem­pli­fies the nature of his polit­i­cal her­itage and alle­giances. One of his top advis­ers Joseph E. Schmitz, “obsessed with all things Ger­man” and, accord­ing to asso­ciates, some­one who “fired the Jews” (from the Pen­ta­gon) and man­i­fest­ed Holo­caust denial. This is not atyp­i­cal of “Team Trump.” One of the most impor­tant fig­ures in main­stream­ing “alt right” (i.e. Nazi, white nation­al­ist and anti-Semit­ic) atti­tudes has been Breitbart’s Steve Ban­non, now essen­tial­ly run­ning the Trump cam­paign. Trump and his cam­paign have a habit of re-tweet­ing infor­ma­tion from “alt right” web­sites and mes­sage boards. Of pri­ma­ry sig­nif­i­cance in ana­lyz­ing Trump con­cerns the main finan­cial backer of his real estate projects–Deutsche Bank. In addi­tion to the fact that this places a poten­tial Pres­i­dent in the posi­tion of owing upwards of $100 mil­lion to an insti­tu­tion that has open­ly defied U.S. reg­u­la­to­ry posi­tions, Deutsche Bank is a pri­ma­ry ele­ment of the remark­able and dead­ly Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work, about which we speak so often. Pro­gram High­lights Include: Analy­sis of the pos­si­bil­i­ty that Trump’s father was in the Ku Klux Klan; review of Trump’s asso­ci­a­tion with for­mer Axis spy Nor­man Vin­cent Peale; review of Trump’s counsel–Senator Joe McCarthy aide Roy Cohn; Trump’s addi­tion­al finan­cial back­ing from George Soros, who got his start in busi­ness “Aryaniz­ing” Jew­ish prop­er­ty dur­ing the Holo­caust; Trump’s tweet­ing of a cam­paign ad fea­tur­ing Waf­fen SS-clad World War II re-enac­tors; The enthu­si­as­tic sup­poprt Trump has received from David Duke.

FTR #917 WikiFascism, Part #4: Weighing In for the Trumpenkampfverbande (Technocratic Fascism in Action)

In FTR #‘s 724, 725, 732, 745 and 755, we have detailed the fas­cist and far right-wing ide­ol­o­gy, asso­ci­a­tions and pol­i­tics of Julian Assange and Wik­iLeaks. Lion­ized by the so-called pro­gres­sive sec­tor, as well as main­stream media sources like “The New York Times” and “Der Spiegel,” Assange’s true col­ors and fas­cist pol­i­tics and asso­ci­a­tions have emerged on a larg­er stage. As the Trump cam­paign evolves, a major alliance between Trump and the Assange orga­ni­za­tion has devel­oped. Obvi­ous­ly serv­ing as a dirty-tricks cadre for the GOP, Assange is work­ing hard to destroy Hillary Clin­ton with leaked doc­u­ments intend­ed to tor­pe­do her cam­paign. Assange–not even an Amer­i­can citizen–is man­i­fest­ing what we termed “tech­no­crat­ic fas­cism,” arro­gat­ing to him­self the right to deter­mine the results of the Amer­i­can Pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. Quot­ing from a sem­i­nal arti­cle by David Golum­bia: ” . . . Hack­ers (“civic,” “eth­i­cal,” “white” and “black” hat alike), hack­tivists, Wik­iLeaks fans [and Julian Assange et al–D. E.], Anony­mous “mem­bers,” even Edward Snow­den him­self walk hand-in-hand with Face­book and Google in telling us that coders don’t just have good things to con­tribute to the polit­i­cal world, but that the polit­i­cal world is theirs to do with what they want, and the rest of us should stay out of it: the polit­i­cal world is bro­ken, they appear to think (right­ly, at least in part), and the solu­tion to that, they think (wrong­ly, at least for the most part), is for pro­gram­mers to take polit­i­cal mat­ters into their own hands. . . .” Assange is net­work­ing with Trump’s dirty tricks oper­a­tor Roger Stone and res­onat­ing with the right-wing GOP/Trump play­book in his activ­i­ties against Clin­ton. A major por­tion of the pro­gram high­lights the sub­stan­tive evi­dence that the DNC hack was NOT done by Rus­sia, but by some­one try­ing to make it look like Rus­sia did it. Assange is now strong­ly hint­ing that the source was Seth Rich, a Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Com­mit­tee vol­un­teer who was mur­dered. Assange is oblique­ly sug­gest­ing that Clin­ton was behind the mur­der. (Rich’s fam­i­ly dis­putes this canard and is urg­ing the pub­lic to dis­re­gard Assange’s claims.) The Wik­iLeaks Clin­ton e‑mail dump: ” . . . . The emails include unen­crypt­ed, plain-text list­ings of donor emails address­es, home address­es, phone num­bers, social secu­ri­ty num­bers, pass­port num­bers, and cred­it card infor­ma­tion. . . .” Might this have had some­thing to do with the mur­der of Seth Rich? Pro­gram High­lights Include: Wik­iLeaks’ dis­clo­sure of the Social Secu­ri­ty and cred­it card num­ber of Demo­c­ra­t­ic con­trib­u­tors; Wik­iLeaks anti-Semit­ic tweet, label­ing its crit­ics as Jews; Assange’s oblique endorse­ment of Trump; Assange’s embrace of a syn­the­sis of Chica­go school and Aus­tri­an school neo-lib­er­al eco­nom­ic the­o­ry; Assange’s oper­a­tional res­o­nance with Koch broth­ers asso­ciate Peter Schweitzer; review of Assange’s piv­otal asso­ci­a­tions with fas­cists and anti-Semi­tes like Carl Lund­strom and Joran Jer­mas (aka “Israel Shamir”); review of David Duke’s links to the Wik­iLeaks milieu and to Ron Paul (Snow­den and Assange’s Pres­i­den­tial can­di­date of choice); David Duke’s sup­port of Trump; ide­o­log­i­cal and rhetor­i­cal res­o­nance between Ron Paul, Glenn Green­wald and Don­ald Trump; a bul­let-point analy­sis that con­nects the dots between ele­ments of this com­plex analy­sis.

FTR #890 Tracking from the Far Right: Update on the Adventures of Eddie the Friendly Spook

QUICK: Who said this?: “ ‘It seems like the [Unit­ed States Dol­lar] and [Great Britain’s Pound] are both like­ly to go the way of the zim­babwe dol­lar,’ he sug­gested in March 2009. ‘Espe­cially with that cock­bag Bernanke decid­ing to mag­i­cally print 1.2T more dol­lars.’ . . . Oba­ma was ‘plan­ning to deval­ue the cur­rency absolute­ly as fast as the­o­ret­i­cally pos­si­ble,’ he wrote. . . .” Ted Cruz? Don­ald Trump? Mar­co Rubio? Paul Ryan? Rand Paul? No, it is Edward Snow­den. Note how this jibes with Paul Krug­man’s descrip­tion of the GOP pri­ma­ry field: ” . . . . After all, Paul Ryan, the speak­er of the House, not only berat­ed Ben Bernanke, Ms. Yellen’s pre­de­ces­sor, for poli­cies that alleged­ly risked infla­tion (which nev­er mate­ri­al­ized), but he also dab­bled in con­spir­a­cy the­o­riz­ing, accus­ing Mr. Bernanke of act­ing to “bail out fis­cal pol­i­cy.” . . . But Wall Street isn’t the only source of malign pres­sure on the Fed, and in the actu­al­ly exist­ing U.S. polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion, such a bill would essen­tial­ly empow­er the cranks — the gold-stan­dard-lov­ing, hyper­in­fla­tion-is-com­ing types who dom­i­nate the mod­ern G.O.P., and have spent the past five or six years try­ing to bul­ly mon­e­tary pol­i­cy mak­ers into ceas­ing and desist­ing from their efforts to pre­vent eco­nom­ic dis­as­ter.” This pro­gram high­lights the far-right, fascis­tic forces under­ly­ing Eddie the Friend­ly Spook. Much of the pro­gram con­sists of excerpts of past pro­grams, stretch­ing back to the late 1990’s. The elec­tron­ic “vac­u­um clean­er” approach of NSA and GCHQ has been on the pub­lic record for years. In the 1990’s NSA, GCHQ and the ECHELON/Five Eyes net­work came under joint assault by Ger­many and the Free Con­gress Foun­da­tion. The lat­ter is very close to Nazi alum­ni of the Third Reich, the OUN/B in par­tic­u­lar, and is an ele­ment deeply involved in pro­ject­ing the Anti-Bol­she­vik Bloc of Nations back into the for­mer U.S.S.R. and East­ern Europe. GOP big­wig Grover Norquist has been a vocif­er­ous oppo­nent of NSA spy­ing, as well as shep­herd­ing Mus­lim Broth­er­hood-linked ele­ments in the Unit­ed States. Pro­gram High­lights Include: Mr. Emory’s first post on “L’Af­faire Snow­den,” in which he won­dered aloud what all the fuss was about, since this has been on the pub­lic record for years; review of the fact that oth­er Euro­pean coun­tries do the same thing as NSA/GCHQ; Review of Snow­den’s views on Social Secu­ri­ty: ” . . . Snow­den wrote that the elder­ly ‘wouldn’t be fuck­ing help­less if you weren’t send­ing them fuck­ing checks to sit on their ass and lay in hos­pi­tals all day.’ ”

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