John Perry Barlow (Grateful Dead Lyricist, Dick Cheney Campaign Manager, George Wallace Voter), the CIA, and the Genesis of Social Media

In FTR #854, we not­ed John Per­ry Bar­low’s back­ground as Dick Cheney’s cam­paign man­ag­er and George Wal­lace sup­port­er in 1968. In FTR #895, we dis­cussed the fact that the Elec­tron­ic Fron­tier Foun­da­tion embraced tech­nolo­gies devel­oped by CIA-linked insti­tu­tions. Bar­low found­ed the EFF. It turns out that Bar­low was invit­ed to CIA head­quar­ters in 1992 and advanced con­cepts that may well have lead to the devel­op­ment of social media–”. . . Let’s cre­ate a process of infor­ma­tion diges­tion in which inex­pen­sive data are gath­ered from large­ly open sources and con­densed, through an open process . . . The enti­ty I envi­sion would be small, high­ly net­worked, and gen­er­al­ly vis­i­ble. It would be open to infor­ma­tion from all avail­able sources . . . It would rely heav­i­ly on the Inter­net, pub­lic media, the aca­d­e­m­ic press, and an infor­mal world­wide net­work of volunteers–a kind of glob­al Neigh­bor­hood Watch–that would sub­mit on-the-ground reports. . . . It would use off-the-shelf tech­nol­o­gy, and use it less for gath­er­ing data than for col­lat­ing and com­mu­ni­cat­ing them. Being off-the-shelf, it could deploy tools while they were still state-of-the-art. . . .”

FTR #930 The Trumpenkampfverbande, Part 9: Alfa Males, Part 3 (German Ostpolitik, Part 3)

With the (jus­ti­fi­able) out­rage swirling around FBI direc­tor (and Mitt Rom­ney backer) James Comey’s pub­lic dis­cus­sion of the dis­cov­ery of more of Hillary Clin­ton’s e‑mails hav­ing been dis­cov­ered, anoth­er elec­tion-relat­ed inves­ti­ga­tion has gone large­ly unex­am­ined. Indeed, the impor­tance of the inves­ti­ga­tion has been down­played.

Com­put­er experts dis­cov­ered a link between a serv­er reg­is­tered to the Trump orga­ni­za­tion and two servers reg­is­tered to the Alfa Bank in Moscow, a bank that is part of the Alfa con­glom­er­ate dis­cussed in FTR #‘s 530 and 573.

In the Foer piece, and in attempt­ed dis­cred­it­ing arti­cles of same, it is appar­ent that the inves­ti­ga­tors do not under­stand the nature of the enti­ty they are inves­ti­gat­ing. The jour­nal­is­tic “spin” put on Alfa in the cov­er­age is “Russia/Putin/Kremlin” new Cold War con­text. Alfa is very, very dif­fer­ent.

In FTR #‘s 530, 573 we examnined the nature of Alfa’s his­to­ry, oper­a­tions and insti­tu­tion­al and eco­nom­ic foun­da­tions. It is any­thing BUT “Kremlin/Putin/Russia.”

It appears to be Under­ground Reich, all the way, with evi­den­tiary trib­u­taries run­ning in the direc­tion of: the Iran-Con­tra scan­dal; the Iraq­gate scan­dal; the oil-for-food scam vis a vis Iraq; malfeasanace by a coterie of GOP big­wigs includ­ing Dick Cheney and oth­ers close to George W. Bush, and Haley Bar­bour; mon­ey-laun­der­ing by pow­er­ful inter­na­tion­al drug syn­di­cates; Chechen war­lords and drug-traf­fick­ing syn­di­cates; the Roy­al fam­i­ly of Liecht­en­stein; the Bank al-Taqwa (which helped finance al-Qae­da); the Marc Rich oper­a­tions; East­ern Euro­pean and Russ­ian asso­ciates of Wolf­gang Bohringer, one of Mohamed Atta’s close asso­ciates in South Flori­da; and the Carl Duis­berg Fel­low­ship, which brought Mohamed Atta to Ger­many from Egypt and may have helped him into the U.S.

The pro­gram high­lights major aspects of the inves­ti­ga­tion into the Alfa/Trump link:

The Trump/Alfa link was not a mal­ware attack, as some of the com­put­er sci­en­tists ini­tial­ly thought: ” . . . . The researchers quick­ly dis­missed their ini­tial fear that the logs rep­re­sent­ed a mal­ware attack. The com­mu­ni­ca­tion wasn’t the work of bots. The irreg­u­lar pat­tern of serv­er lookups actu­al­ly resem­bled the pat­tern of human conversation—conversations that began dur­ing office hours in New York and con­tin­ued dur­ing office hours in Moscow. It dawned on the researchers that this wasn’t an attack, but a sus­tained rela­tion­ship between a serv­er reg­is­tered to the Trump Orga­ni­za­tion and two servers reg­is­tered to an enti­ty called Alfa Bank. . . .”

The set-up was high­ly unusu­al: ” . . . . The researchers had ini­tial­ly stum­bled in their diag­no­sis because of the odd con­fig­u­ra­tion of Trump’s serv­er. ‘I’ve nev­er seen a serv­er set up like that,’ says Christo­pher Davis, who runs the cyber­se­cu­ri­ty firm HYAS InfoS­ec Inc. and won a FBI Direc­tor Award for Excel­lence for his work track­ing down the authors of one of the world’s nas­ti­est bot­net attacks. ‘It looked weird, and it didn’t pass the sniff test.’ The serv­er was first reg­is­tered to Trump’s busi­ness in 2009 and was set up to run con­sumer mar­ket­ing cam­paigns. It had a his­to­ry of send­ing mass emails on behalf of Trump-brand­ed prop­er­ties and prod­ucts. Researchers were ulti­mate­ly con­vinced that the serv­er indeed belonged to Trump. (Click here to see the server’s reg­is­tra­tion record.) But now this capa­cious serv­er han­dled a strange­ly small load of traf­fic, such a small load that it would be hard for a com­pa­ny to jus­ti­fy the expense and trou­ble it would take to main­tain it. ‘I get more mail in a day than the serv­er han­dled,’ Davis says. . . .”
The arti­cle details more unusu­al aspects of the link: ” . . . . That wasn’t the only odd­i­ty. When the researchers pinged the serv­er, they received error mes­sages. They con­clud­ed that the serv­er was set to accept only incom­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion from a very small hand­ful of IP address­es. . . . Eighty-sev­en per­cent of the DNS lookups involved the two Alfa Bank servers. ‘It’s pret­ty clear that it’s not an open mail serv­er,’ Camp told me. ‘These orga­ni­za­tions are com­mu­ni­cat­ing in a way designed to block oth­er peo­ple out.’ . . . .”

Paul Vixie–one of the pre­mier experts in the field–felt the con­nec­tion was high­ly unusu­al: ” . . . . Ear­li­er this month, the group of com­put­er sci­en­tists passed the logs to Paul Vix­ie. In the world of DNS experts, there’s no high­er author­i­ty. Vix­ie wrote cen­tral strands of the DNS code that makes the inter­net work. After study­ing the logs, he con­clud­ed, ‘The par­ties were com­mu­ni­cat­ing in a secre­tive fash­ion. The oper­a­tive word is secre­tive. This is more akin to what crim­i­nal syn­di­cates do if they are putting togeth­er a project.’ Put dif­fer­ent­ly, the logs sug­gest­ed that Trump and Alfa had con­fig­ured some­thing like a dig­i­tal hot­line con­nect­ing the two enti­ties, shut­ting out the rest of the world, and designed to obscure its own exis­tence. . . .”

The avail­able evi­dence indi­cates that the hookup indi­cat­ed “human-lev­el com­mu­ni­ca­tion”: ” . . . I put the ques­tion of what kind of activ­i­ty the logs record­ed to the Uni­ver­si­ty of California’s Nicholas Weaver, anoth­er com­put­er sci­en­tist not involved in com­pil­ing the logs. ‘I can’t attest to the logs them­selves,’ he told me, ‘but assum­ing they are legit­i­mate they do indi­cate effec­tive­ly human-lev­el com­mu­ni­ca­tion.’ . . . ”

More about the nature of the com­mu­ni­ca­tion, from the sci­en­tist using the code-name “Tea Leaves”: ” . . . . Tea Leaves and his col­leagues plot­ted the data from the logs on a time­line. What it illus­trat­ed was sug­ges­tive: The con­ver­sa­tion between the Trump and Alfa servers appeared to fol­low the con­tours of polit­i­cal hap­pen­ings in the Unit­ed States. ‘At elec­tion-relat­ed moments, the traf­fic peaked,’ accord­ing to Camp. There were con­sid­er­ably more DNS lookups, for instance, dur­ing the two con­ven­tions. . . .”

The sci­en­tists attempt­ed to get the pub­lic to pay atten­tion to their inves­ti­ga­tion and New York Times writ­ers turned their atten­tion to the case: ” . . . In Sep­tem­ber, the sci­en­tists tried to get the pub­lic to pay atten­tion to their data. One of them post­ed a link to the logs in a Red­dit thread. Around the same time, the New York Times’ Eric Licht­blau and Steven Lee Myers began chas­ing the sto­ry.* (They are still pur­su­ing it.) Licht­blau met with a Wash­ing­ton rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Alfa Bank on Sept. 21, and the bank denied hav­ing any con­nec­tion to Trump. . . .”

Things got “inter­est­ing” after that. Accord­ing to the com­put­er sci­en­tists, the Trump Orga­ni­za­tion shut down the serv­er! As the bril­liant Berke­ley researcher Peter Dale Scott not­ed, in a dif­fer­ent con­text, “The cov­er-up obvi­ates the con­spir­a­cy. ” . . . . In Sep­tem­ber, the sci­en­tists tried to get the pub­lic to pay atten­tion to their data. One of them post­ed a link to the logs in a Red­dit thread. Around the same time, the New York Times’ Eric Licht­blau and Steven Lee Myers began chas­ing the sto­ry.* (They are still pur­su­ing it.) Licht­blau met with a Wash­ing­ton rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Alfa Bank on Sept. 21, and the bank denied hav­ing any con­nec­tion to Trump. . . . The com­put­er sci­en­tists believe there was one log­i­cal con­clu­sion to be drawn: The Trump Orga­ni­za­tion shut down the serv­er after Alfa was told that the Times might expose the con­nec­tion. Weaver told me the Trump domain was ‘very slop­pi­ly removed.’ Or as anoth­er of the researchers put it, it looked like ‘the knee was hit in Moscow, the leg kicked in New York.’. . . . Four days lat­er, on Sept. 27, the Trump Orga­ni­za­tion cre­at­ed a new host name, trump1.contact-client.com, which enabled com­mu­ni­ca­tion to the very same serv­er via a dif­fer­ent route. When a new host name is cre­at­ed, the first com­mu­ni­ca­tion with it is nev­er ran­dom. To reach the serv­er after the reset­ting of the host name, the sender of the first inbound mail has to first learn of the name some­how. It’s sim­ply impos­si­ble to ran­dom­ly reach a renamed serv­er. ‘That par­ty had to have some kind of out­bound mes­sage through SMS, phone, or some non­in­ter­net chan­nel they used to com­mu­ni­cate [the new con­fig­u­ra­tion],’ Paul Vix­ie told me. The first attempt to look up the revised host name came from Alfa Bank. ‘If this was a pub­lic serv­er, we would have seen oth­er traces,’ Vix­ie says. ‘The only look-ups came from this par­tic­u­lar source.‘According to Vix­ie and oth­ers, the new host name may have rep­re­sent­ed an attempt to estab­lish a new chan­nel of com­mu­ni­ca­tion. But media inquiries into the nature of Trump’s rela­tion­ship with Alfa Bank, which sug­gest­ed that their com­mu­ni­ca­tions were being mon­i­tored, may have deterred the par­ties from using it. Soon after the New York Times began to ask ques­tions, the traf­fic between the servers stopped cold. . . .”

Not sur­pris­ing­ly, the FBI has dis­missed the rel­e­vance of the com­put­er link.

This dis­missal comes against the back­ground of sev­er­al late-break­ing devel­op­ments:

The unsuc­cess­ful attempt by Alfa sub­sidiary Crown Resources to buy Marc Rich’s com­modi­ties firm: ” . . . A deal to sell the Swiss-based com­modi­ties oper­a­tion of for­mer U.S. fugi­tive financier Marc Rich to Rus­sia-owned ener­gy trad­ing group Crown Resources is off. . . . Crown is owned by the Alfa Group con­glom­er­ate. . . . .”

The sub­se­quent suc­cess­ful attempt by Alfa play­er Mikhail Frid­man to pur­chase the Marc Rich firm: ” . . . Mikhail Frid­man: ‘Defen­dant Mikhail Frid­man cur­rent­ly serves as Chair­man of the Board of Direc­tors of co-con­spir­a­tor Alfa Bank and as Chair­man of the Board of Direc­tors of Defen­dant Con­sor­tium Alfa Group. Frid­man fur­ther served on the Board of Vim­pel­Com, a NYSE com­pa­ny, and has con­trol over Gold­en Tele­com, a NASDAQ com­pa­ny ... pur­chased the Unit­ed States trad­ing firm owned by Amer­i­can, Mark Rich, the one time com­modi­ties baron par­doned by Pres­i­dent Clin­ton with much con­tro­ver­sy. . . .”

The FBI’s long-dor­mant Twit­ter account began tweet­ing files about Bill Clin­ton’s par­don of Marc Rich, short­ly after the offi­cial dis­missal of inves­ti­ga­tions into the Alfa/Trump link: ” . . . . Now, a new inter­a­gency mys­tery is rais­ing ques­tions about whether the F.B.I. has become politi­cized, just days before the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. On Sun­day, a long-dor­mant F.B.I. Twit­ter account sud­den­ly sprung to life, blast­ing out a series of links to case files that cast the Clin­tons in a decid­ed­ly neg­a­tive light. . . . Then, on Tues­day, the “FBI Records Vault” account—which had not tweet­ed at all between Octo­ber 2015 and Sunday—published a link to records relat­ed to the 15-year-old, long-closed inves­ti­ga­tion into for­mer Pres­i­dent Bill Clinton’s par­don­ing of one­time com­modi­ties trad­er turned fugi­tive Marc Rich. The post, which was quick­ly retweet­ed thou­sands of times, links to a heav­i­ly redact­ed doc­u­ment that repeat­ed­ly ref­er­ences the agency’s “Pub­lic Cor­rup­tion” unit—less-than-ideal optics for Hillary Clin­ton, who has spent her entire cam­paign fight­ing her image as a cor­rupt politi­cian. . . .”

FBI Direc­tor James Comey was in charge of the orig­i­nal Marc Rich inves­ti­ga­tion and the par­don of Rich by Bill Clin­ton. Is there a con­nec­tion between the offi­cial dis­missal of the inves­ti­ga­tion into the Alfa/Trump link by the FBI, the tweet­ing by the FBI of the files on the Clin­ton par­don of Marc Rich and the fact that it was Comey who presided over the Marc Rich inves­ti­ga­tions? ” . . . . In 2002, Comey, then a fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tor, took over an inves­ti­ga­tion into Pres­i­dent Bill Clin­ton’s 2001 par­don of financier Marc Rich, who had been indict­ed on a laun­dry list of charges before flee­ing the coun­try. The deci­sion set off a polit­i­cal firestorm focused on accu­sa­tions that Rich’s ex-wife Denise made dona­tions to the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty, the Clin­ton Library and Hillary Clin­ton’s 2000 Sen­ate cam­paign as part of a plan to get Rich off the hook. Comey ulti­mate­ly decid­ed not to pur­sue the case. The kick­er: Comey him­self had over­seen Rich’s pros­e­cu­tion between 1987 and 1993. . . .”

Pro­gram High­lights Include: details of the Carl Duis­berg Soci­ety’s links to Atta and to major Ger­man cor­po­ra­tions; dis­cus­sion of the Alfa Fel­lowhip against the back­ground of Ger­man Ost­poli­tik dis­cussed in FTR #‘s 918 and 919; detailed analy­sis of Vik­tor Kozeny asso­ciates Frid­man and (Pyotr) Aven (Kozeny employed Bohringer as a pilot); a sum­ma­ry analy­sis of the major points in FTR #‘s 530 and 573.

Still Supporting Jihadis After All These Years

Al-Qae­da linked jihadists con­tin­ue to dom­i­nate the so-called “mod­er­ate” oppo­si­tion in Syr­ia. The U.S. and West­ern tac­tic of using Mus­lim Broth­er­hood-linked com­bat­ants as proxy war­riors and armed her­alds of cor­po­ratist eco­nom­ics began well before the 9/11 attacks and has con­tin­ued apace ever since. Fail­ure to pur­sue the Oper­a­tion Green Quest inves­ti­ga­tion looms ever larg­er.

FTR #913 Miscellaneous Articles and Updates

Bring­ing up to date top­ics cov­ered in pre­vi­ous pro­grams and posts, this broad­cast begins with fur­ther cov­er­age of the devel­op­ment of UFOs–so-called “fly­ing saucers.” They were observed at the Roswell and Area 51 mil­i­tary bases and described as hav­ing been devel­oped by the CIA, not “space aliens.”

In numer­ous posts and pro­grams, we have not­ed that the GOP/Underground Reich ele­ment of U.S. intel­li­gence has used Mus­lim Broth­er­hood-derived jihadis as proxy war­riors and armed her­alds of cor­po­ratist eco­nom­ics. In that con­text, we high­light the frankly sus­pi­cious release of Boston Marathon bomber Tamer­lan Tsar­naev’s immi­gra­tion file–only 206 of 651 pages were released in their entire­ty.

The use of Islamists as proxy war­riors also bears con­sid­er­a­tion in light of law enforce­men­t’s casu­al atti­tude toward 17 Mus­lim men who fired “hun­dreds of shots” and were “chant­i­ng” in the ear­ly morn­ing hours in a park in San Bernardi­no Coun­ty in Cal­i­for­nia. Why was­n’t the FBI more con­cerned?

With ten­sions ris­ing in the West­ern Pacif­ic between the U.S. and Chi­na, new­ly-elect­ed Philip­pines pres­i­dent Rodri­go Duterte har­bors deep resent­ment of the U.S. over the extrac­tion of a self-pro­claimed CIA agent who incurred crim­i­nal charges in Min­danao while appar­ent­ly look­ing for Gold­en Lily loot in the Islands.

After detail­ing yet anoth­er “sui­cide” of a key exec­u­tive of Swiss Re, we present a sig­nif­i­cant analy­sis of the recent replace­ment of the head of the Israeli Defense Force with Avig­dor Lieber­man, the head of a far-right wing Israeli polit­i­cal par­ty: “Israel has been ‘infect­ed by the seeds of fas­cism,’ he [for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Ehud Barak] said.”

Pro­gram High­lights Include: The CIA’s use of Ger­hard von Mende, Nazi Ger­many’s top offi­cial coor­di­nat­ing Islamist forces work­ing for the Third Reich; The Carl Duis­berg Soci­ety’s spon­sor­ship of Mohamed Atta asso­ciate and Chechen jiha­di Mohame­dou Ould Slahi.

FTR #910 The ISIS File, Part 2: The Belgian Muslim Brotherhood and The Brussels Bombings (The Killer B’s)

As Amer­i­cans process the Orlan­do night­club shoot­ing, we high­light the Brus­sels attacks by ISIS devo­tees. Against the back­ground of deep and long­stand­ing Mus­lim Broth­er­hood infil­tra­tion of Bel­gian and Euro­pean civ­il soci­ety and polit­i­cal infra­struc­ture, we once again under­score that ele­ments of West­ern intel­li­gence, includ­ing ele­ments of CIA, con­tin­ue to use jihadist groups as proxy war­riors and armed her­alds of cor­po­rate eco­nom­ics.

In addi­tion to the Cau­ca­sus, where Chechen jihadis have emi­grat­ed to Iraq and Syr­ia and have formed a major foun­da­tion­al ele­ment of ISIS, Syr­ia has been a major the­ater of oper­a­tions for U.S., Sau­di, Turk­ish and Qatari-backed Islamist fight­ers. Per­haps the most ter­ri­fy­ing aspect of the Brus­sels attacks is the fact that the assaults appear to have been a “plan B,” put into effect when oth­er plans to attack Bel­gian nuclear facil­i­ties fell through. Bel­gian nuclear facil­i­ties are poor­ly secured and have been infil­trat­ed by ISIS-linked indi­vid­u­als.

In addi­tion to video footage sur­veilling per­son­nel from Bel­gian nuclear facil­i­ties, a secu­ri­ty guard at one of them was found mur­dered and his secu­ri­ty badge had been stolen. This comes as King Abdul­lah of Jor­dan has charged that Turkey is delib­er­ate­ly send­ing ISIS fight­ers to Europe, where their actions have pre­cip­i­tat­ed the kid-glove treat­ment the EU has afford­ed Erdo­gan and his bur­geon­ing Islam­ic fas­cist gov­ern­men­t’s sup­pres­sion of jour­nal­is­tic and polit­i­cal free­dom.

In Syr­ia, the U.S. refrained from bomb­ing ISIS fight­ers when they were engag­ing Assad’s troops and has con­tin­ued to back a vari­ety of jiha­di groups, includ­ing the Al-Qae­da-linked Al Nus­ra Front. Telling­ly, it was not until the U.S. began bomb­ing ISIS at all that the group’s fight­ers in Europe began launch­ing ter­ror­ist attacks, appar­ent­ly feel­ing betrayed by their “allies.”

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Turkey’s alleged back­ing of Islamists in Libya and Soma­lia; sup­port for ISIS expressed by Haikan Fidan, the chief of Turk­ish intel­li­gence; the pres­ence in the Syr­i­an con­flict of Has­sem Bata­het, the most impor­tant Bel­gian Mus­lim Broth­er; U.S. sup­port for a con­stel­la­tion of jihadist groups in Syr­ia. ” . . . Sim­i­lar­ly, the U.S. resist­ed clas­si­fy­ing a Salafist army known as Ahrar al-Sham as ter­ror­ist even though it col­lab­o­rates close­ly with Al Nus­ra and its ide­ol­o­gy is vir­tu­al­ly iden­ti­cal, as Stephen Gowans recent­ly not­ed at the Glob­al Research web­site. . . . The same goes for a Free Syr­i­an Army unit known as the 13th Divi­sion, which the US has long backed even though it main­tains “a tac­it col­lab­o­ra­tion with Nus­ra” accord­ing to The Wall Street Jour­nal “and even shared with the group some of its ammu­ni­tion sup­plies. . . . Moham­mad Alloush, who enjoys strong US back­ing as the chief rebel nego­tia­tor at the Gene­va peace talks, is a leader of yet anoth­er Salafist group called Jaysh al-Islam, which issued a blood-cur­dling call to exter­mi­nate Syria’s Alaw­ite com­mu­ni­ty in July 2013. . . . But while one might think this would place Jaysh al-Islam beyond the pale, for­mer Ambas­sador to Syr­ia Robert S. Ford praised it a year lat­er as one of the “mod­er­ate” rebel forces that were mak­ing life “par­tic­u­lar­ly painful” for the Dam­as­cus gov­ern­ment. . . .”

FTR #886 What the Hell Does Dave Emory Mean by “The Earth Island Boogie?,” Part 3: Geopolitical Quicksand

Ana­lyz­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty that Amer­i­can use of Mus­lim Broth­er­hood Islamists as proxy war­riors and armed her­alds of cor­po­ratist free-mar­ket eco­nom­ic val­ues might back­fire on the Unit­ed States, we look at the devel­op­ment of ISIS, the curi­ous Turk­ish about-face on the Fetul­lah Gulen orga­ni­za­tion and fall­out from the so-called “Arab Spring.” Begin­ning with dis­cus­sion of a “dooms­day” con­tin­gency plan con­coct­ed by al-Qae­da and Sad­dam Hus­sein to back each oth­er up mil­i­tar­i­ly in the event either or both were over­thrown by the U.S., we exam­ine the promi­nent role of for­mer mem­bers of Sad­dam’s offi­cer corps in admin­is­ter­ing ISIS. ISIS and al-Qae­da are hold­ing forth in Libya, which is serv­ing as a base for spread­ing their oper­a­tions into Africa. Like the bloody Syr­i­an civ­il war, the over­throw of Khadafy (which set the stage for the Islamist pres­ence in Libya) is an out­growth of the so-called “Arab Spring”–one of the “con­ga-line ops” we high­light­ed in FTR #885. Much of the pro­gram high­lights the oper­a­tions of the Fetul­lah Gulen orga­ni­za­tion in Turkey. Alleged to be a CIA front orga­ni­za­tion and Islam­ic extrem­ist in nature, the Gulen orga­ni­za­tion was for­mer­ly an ally of Tayyip Erdo­gan. Now, it is among his most bit­ter oppo­nents. Pro­gram High­lights Include: review of Hitler’s view that Islamists were a cru­cial Third Reich ally; review of a crit­i­cal meet­ing in Switzer­land at which promi­nent Euro-fas­cists and al-Taqwa direc­tor Ahmed Huber met; spec­u­la­tion that the Swiss “Euro-fas­cist” sum­mit may have helped gen­er­ate the intel­li­gence dis­in­for­ma­tion that helped lure the Bush admin­is­tra­tion into the ill-advised Iraq war; “ex” CIA offi­cer Gra­ham Fuller’s ridicule of the alle­ga­tion that the Gulen orga­ni­za­tion is a CIA front orga­ni­za­tion; the close con­nec­tions between Erdo­gan’s AKP Par­ty, Ger­many and the EU.

Extremism in the Defense of Stupidity is a Vice, Part 3: The Bundy Brigade’s Doomed Manifest Destiny

Ammon Bundy’s stand­off at the Mal­heur Nation­al Wildlife Refuge head­quar­ters is prov­ing to be as zany, dan­ger­ous, and gen­er­al­ly harm­ful to the pub­lic good as we might expect at this point giv­en the nature of the Bundy fam­i­ly’s for­ay into pol­i­tics and pol­i­cy-mak­ing in recent years. The Com­mit­tee of Safe­ty was set up last month, and is formed by indi­vid­u­als close­ly affil­i­at­ed with Bundy who sup­port cit­i­zen grand juries that can put on tri­al pub­lic offi­cials for trea­son and imple­ment the death penal­ty. And the Pacif­ic Patri­ots Net­work just decid­ed they were going to pro­tect both the gov­ern­ment and Bundy Brigade from each oth­er. With guns at the gates of the refuge head­quar­ters. And oth­er vets are declar­ing fraud, feds, and folks about to freak out have filled the whole oper­a­tion. And Ammon Bundy con­tin­ues to demand he’ll leave..but only after all his demands were met. Sher­iff Ward has had a rough month.

FTR #880 The ISIS File: The Myth of the Moderates

Con­tin­u­ing our analy­sis of an over­lap­ping series of mas­sive covert oper­a­tions in the Earth Island uti­liz­ing Mus­lim Broth­er­hood-based Sun­ni jihadists and inter­sect­ing Pan-Turk­ist ele­ments, we ana­lyze the gen­e­sis of ISIS. Stem­ming from a covert oper­a­tion in which ele­ments of CIA, Sau­di Ara­bia, Turkey and Qatar and the Syr­i­an Mus­lim Broth­er­hood are oper­at­ing in South­ern Turkey to enable jihadists in Syr­ia, ISIS appears to be some­thing of a Franken­stein’s mon­ster. Envi­sioned as a Salafist prin­ci­pal­i­ty in East­ern Syr­ia to desta­bi­lize the Assad regime, the Islam­ic State used AQI (Al-Qae­da in Iraq) infra­struc­ture to spread into Iraq, threat­en­ing the “gains” of the mis­guid­ed U.S. inva­sion of that coun­try. Now, this Islamist Franken­stein’s mon­ster is attack­ing the West, dri­ving the polit­i­cal spec­trum in Europe and the Unit­ed States right­ward. That reac­tion, in turn, is fuel­ing Mus­lim alien­ation to the delight and ben­e­fit of ISIS. Pro­gram High­lights Include: ISIS chief Al-Baghradi’s “for­mer” mem­ber­ship in the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood; the deci­sive role of Chechen fight­ers in ISIS; the alliance of UNA-UNSO fight­ers (Pravy Sek­tor) in Chech­nya and Geor­gia; ISIS’s use of Bit­coin to stash their finan­cial assets; ISIS’s use of an encrypt­ed Berlin-based mes­sag­ing ser­vice for its com­mu­niques; an oblique endorse­ment of ISIS by the chief of Turk­ish intel­li­gence; review of the re-direc­tion of the anti-Sovi­et jihadist effort in Afghanistan to anti-Russ­ian com­bat in Chech­nya; review of Zbig­niew Brzezin­ski’s endorse­ment of using jihadists against Rus­sia in the Cau­ca­sus and Chi­na in cen­tral Asia.

FTR #863 9/11, The Muslim Brotherhood and the Earth Island Boogie, Part 2

Stretch­ing from the Straits of Gibral­tar, all across Europe, most of the Mid­dle East, Eura­sia, Rus­sia, Chi­na and India, that stretch of land known as the “Earth Island”: com­pris­es most of the world’s land mass; con­tains most of the world’s pop­u­la­tion and most of the world’s nat­ur­al resources (includ­ing oil and nat­ur­al gas.) Geopoliti­cians have long seen con­trol­ling that land mass as the key to world dom­i­na­tion. In this broad­cast, we exam­ine what might be termed polit­i­cal strange bed­fel­lows grouped togeth­er against Rus­sia and Chi­na and advanc­ing an appar­ent Under­ground Reich and cor­po­ratist agen­da in parts of Rus­sia and Chi­na. In addi­tion to the Tibetan Bud­dhist milieu of the Dalai Lama, Uighur Mus­lims asso­ci­at­ed with Al Qae­da and the Pan-Turk­ist move­ment are ranked togeth­er under the ban­ner of the UNPO and the House of Hab­s­burg. Active in Ukraine, part of the Aus­tro-Hun­gar­i­an Empire for cen­turies, the Hab­s­burgs appear to be a coor­di­nat­ing exec­u­tive ele­ment mobi­liz­ing the diverse eth­nic groups work­ing against Rus­sia and Chi­na. Pro­gram High­lights Include: OUN/B oper­a­tive Paula Dobri­an­sky’s con­trol of the Tibet Desk at the State Depart­ment; Uighur links to Al Qae­da and oth­er Mus­lim Broth­er­hood off­shoots; review of the Dalai Lama’s his­tor­i­cal rela­tion­ships with the SS and the CIA; review of Peter Lev­en­da’s con­cept of “weaponized reli­gion;” sup­port for the Uighurs by the Pan-Turk­ist and fas­cist Nation­al Action Par­ty; Erkin Altep­kin’s alliances with the Hab­s­burg milieu, the Dalai Lama and ele­ments of West­ern intel­li­gence; the grow­ing pres­ence of ISIS-affil­i­at­ed fight­ers from Chech­nya in the Ukrain­ian con­flict.

FTR #862 9/11, The Muslim Brotherhood and the Earth Island Boogie, Part 1

Dis­cus­sion of Islamist ter­ror­ists has point­ed­ly omit­ted the per­pe­tra­tors’ links to the Mus­lim Brotherhood–the Islam­ic fas­cist orga­ni­za­tion that spawned groups like Al Qae­da and ISIS. Por­trayed in the West as a “mod­er­ate’ orga­ni­za­tion, the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood was allied with the Axis in World War II and nur­tured as anti-com­mu­nist cadre by West­ern Intel­li­gence (CIA in par­tic­u­lar) dur­ing the Cold War. Much of the pro­gram reviews and details the cor­po­ratist and free mar­ket eco­nom­ic phi­los­o­phy of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, an ide­ol­o­gy that endears the Ikhwan to pow­er­ful polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic inter­ests in the U.S. and else­where in the West. Among the events that has been obscured by the pas­sage of time is the open oppo­si­tion to the Trea­sury Depart­men­t’s attempts at inter­dict­ing ter­ror­ist financ­ing mon­ey, on the grounds that it would “restrict” the free-flow of inter­na­tion­al cap­i­tal. Broth­er­hood ele­ments con­tin­ue to be used as proxy war­riors by ele­ments of West­ern and Sau­di intel­li­gence in places like Syr­ia, the Cau­ca­sus and Chi­na’s Xin­jiang Province. Pro­gram High­lights Include: The use of ISIS-linked Chechen fight­ers in Ukraine; Sau­di Bin Laden Group’s use of Sul­li­van and Cromwell as its gen­er­al coun­sel; Sul­li­van & Cromwell’s work on behalf of the finan­cial insti­tu­tions that were (suc­cess­ful­ly) resist­ing the Trea­sury Depart­men­t’s attempts at inter­dict­ing ter­ror­ist financ­ing; review of the forced res­ig­na­tion of Trea­sury Sec­re­tary Paul O’Neill fol­low­ing the 3/20/2002 Oper­a­tion Green Quest raids.