Trump’s New Federal Reserve Appointee: Chairman of the National Endowment for Democracy

We have discussed the National Endowment for Democracy–a “kinder, gentler” covert action front–in past programs. ” . . . . the NED’s story speaks for itself: The brain­child of Reagan’s CIA direc­tor Bill Casey, the National Endow­ment for Democ­racy was set up as an intel­li­gence cutout to sup­port US geopo­lit­i­cal power and under­mine unfriendly regimes. One of the NED co-founders, Allen Wein­stein, explained its pur­pose to the Wash­ing­ton Post: ‘A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.’ . . . .” Trump’s latest nominee to the board of the Federal Reserve Bank, gold bug Dr. Judy Shelton (above, right), is the Chairman of the NED, making a prominent player in the covert action milieu a prominent player in setting monetary and economic policy, as well.

FTR #1039 Miscellaneous Articles and Updates

In FTR #718, we warned [back in 2010] that Facebook was not the cuddly little entity it was perceived to be but a potential engine of fascism enabling. Momentum for the remarkably timed immigrant caravan that became a focal point for Trump/GOP/Fox News propaganda during the recently-concluded midterm elections was generated by a fake Facebook account, which mimicked a Honduran politician/human rights activist, Bartolo Fuentes. Significant aspects of the event:

1.–” . . . . Facebook has admitted the account was an imposter account impersonating a prominent Honduran politician. But it is refusing to release information about the account, who may have set it up or what country it originated from. . . .”
2.–” . . . . In response to a query from BuzzFeed News, a Facebook spokesperson said the phony account ‘was removed for violating [the company’s] misrepresentation policy,’ but declined to share any further information, such as what country it originated from, what email address was used to open it, or any other details that might reveal who was behind it. Facebook added that, barring a subpoena or request from law enforcement, it does not share such information out of respect for the privacy of its users. Fuentes said he believes it’s important to find out who was behind the rogue account — but hasn’t gotten any answers from Facebook. ‘Who knows how many messages could have been sent and who received them?’ . . . .”
3.–” . . . . Fuentes has been unable to get any information from Facebook about the account, but one small detail stood out. Whoever created it listed the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa as Fuentes’s hometown, rather than the San Pedro Sula suburb of El Progreso. That might seem like a minor error, but it’s the sort of mistake a foreigner — not a Honduran — would make about the well-known former lawmaker, whose left-wing party stands in opposition to the current president’s administration. . . . ”
4.–” . . . . It operated entirely in Spanish and precisely targeted influencers within the migrant rights community. And rather than criticize or undermine the caravan — as other online campaigns would later attempt to do — it was used to legitimize the event, making a loosely structured grassroots event appear to be a well-organized effort by an established migrant group with a proven track record of successfully bringing Central American people to the US border. . . .”
5.–” . . . . before the account got started not many people seemed to be joining. Only after the account kicked into gear did enthusiasm and participation spike. The account also claimed falsely that the caravan was being led by a migrant rights organization called Pueblo Sin Fronteras. Later, once the caravan swelled to a massive scale, the Pueblo Sin Fronteras did get involved, though in a support rather than leadership role. . . .”
6.–” . . . . It appears that this account helped the caravan gain key momentum to the point where its size became a self-fulfilling prophecy, spurring even more to join and groups which hadn’t been supportive to get involved. . . .”
7.–” . . . . It’s hard to believe one Facebook account could play that decisive a role. But the account seems to have been sophisticated. And it is equally difficult to believe that a sophisticator operator or organization would have gone to such trouble and limited their efforts to a single imposter account. . . .”

Christopher Wylie–the former head of research at Cambridge Analytica who became one of the key insider whistle-blowers about how Cambridge Analytica operated and the extent of Facebook’s knowledge about it–gave an interview last month to Campaign Magazine. (We dealt with Cambridge Analytica in FTR #’s 946, 1021.)

Wylie recounts how, as director of research at Cambridge Analytica, his original role was to determine how the company could use the information warfare techniques used by SCL Group – Cambridge Analytica’s parent company and a defense contractor providing psy op services for the British military. Wylie’s job was to adapt the psychological warfare strategies that SCL had been using on the battlefield to the online space. As Wylie put it:

“ . . . . When you are working in information operations projects, where your target is a combatant, the autonomy or agency of your targets is not your primary consideration. It is fair game to deny and manipulate information, coerce and exploit any mental vulnerabilities a person has, and to bring out the very worst characteristics in that person because they are an enemy…But if you port that over to a democratic system, if you run campaigns designed to undermine people’s ability to make free choices and to understand what is real and not real, you are undermining democracy and treating voters in the same way as you are treating terrorists. . . . .”

Wylie also draws parallels between the psychological operations used on democratic audiences and the battlefield techniques used to be build an insurgency. It starts with targeting people more prone to having erratic traits, paranoia or conspiratorial thinking, and get them to “like” a group on social media. The information you’re feeding this target audience may or may not be real. The important thing is that it’s content that they already agree with so that “it feels good to see that information.” Keep in mind that one of the goals of the ‘psychographic profiling’ that Cambridge Analytica was to identify traits like neuroticism.

Wylie goes on to describe the next step in this insurgency-building technique: keep building up the interest in the social media group that you’re directing this target audience towards until it hits around 1,000-2,000 people. Then set up a real life event dedicated to the chosen disinformation topic in some local area and try to get as many of your target audience to show up. Even if only 5 percent of them show up, that’s still 50-100 people converging on some local coffee shop or whatever. The people meet each other in real life and start talking about about “all these things that you’ve been seeing online in the depths of your den and getting angry about”. This target audience starts believing that no one else is talking about this stuff because “they don’t want you to know what the truth is”. As Wylie puts it, “What started out as a fantasy online gets ported into the temporal world and becomes real to you because you see all these people around you.”

In FTR #1028, we highlighted the killing of Mollie Tibbetts noting that:

1.–The killing may have been a provocation, directed at focusing the electorate’s ire toward illegal immigrants and away from Donald Trump.
2.–The announcement about the location and arrest of the suspected perpetrator–Christhian Rivera–came on the same day that Michael Cohen copped a plea and Paul Manafort was found guilty. Was Rivera’s arrest timed as a distraction?
3.–There are superficial indications that Christhian Rivera may have been subjected to mind control, a la Sirhan Sirhan.
4.–Rivera worked at a dairy facility controlled by the Lang family, prominent Iowa Republicans.

Now, we learn that Eric Lang, Craig Lang’s brother–is married to Nicole Schlinger, a prominent GOP fundraiser with strong operational and historical links to the Koch brothers’ networks and other GOP post-Citizens United dark money networks.

High-tech may be the future of Trump’s much-ballyhooed wall with Mexico, with a technology dubbed AVATAR seen by some as the future of border security: “A virtual border agent kiosk was developed to interview travelers at airports and border crossings and it can detect deception to flag human security agents. The U.S., Canada and European Union have tested the technology, and one researcher says it has a deception detection success rate of up to 80 percent — better than human agents. The technology relies on sensors and biometrics, and its lie-detection capabilities are based on eye movements or changes in voice, posture and facial gestures. . . .”

Futurist philosopher and author Yuval Noah Harari appears to be a dystopian futurist, envisioning a future where democracy is seen as obsolete and a techno-elite ruling class run companies with the capacity to essentially control the minds of masses. Those masses that will increasingly be seen obsolete and useless. Harari even gave a recent TED Talk called “Why fascism is so tempting — and how your data could power it. So how do Silicon Valley’s CEO view Mr. Harari’s views? They apparently can’t get enough of him:

We conclude with a look at how the SCL/Cambridge Analytica dynamic has manifested in the Russia-gate Psy-Op.

Adding further perspective to the utterly fantastic nature of the Russia-Gate “psy-op” is analysis of a recent New York Times propaganda piece hyping Russia’s manipulation of Facebook to influence the U.S. election. “. . . . The further research into an earlier Consortium News article shows that a relatively paltry 80,000 posts from the private Russian company Internet Research Agency (IRA) were engulfed in literally trillions of posts on Facebook over a two-year period before and after the 2016 vote. [Just HOW a post generated after the election was supposed to influence the election was not explained by The Gray Lady–D.E.]. . . . The newspaper [The New York Times] failed to tell their readers that Facebook account holders in the United States had been “served” 33 trillion Facebook posts during that same period — 413 million times more than the 80,000 posts from the Russian company. . . .”

FTR #1028 Miscellaneous Articles and Updates

Updating previous paths of inquiry, as well as introducing new ones, the program begins with a bit of both–discussion of the murder of Saudi journalist and possible Saudi and U.S. intelligence officer Jamal Khashoggi. A development which resonates strongly with previous discussion of the so-called “Arab Spring” (read “Muslim Brotherhood Spring”), the corporatist economics of Ibn Khaldun and the Brotherhood, and Grover Norquist and Karl Rove’s Islamic Free Market Institute (which figures prominently in the post-9/11 Operation Green Quest investigation into al-Qaeda and terrorist financing), Khashoggi’s death has occasioned howls of outrage, much beating of breasts and tearing of hair in normally Saudi-friendly confines both inside, and outside of the U.S.

Khashoggi’s many connections and personal and institutional relationships are important and pivotal in a number of ways. They include:

1.–Khashoggi’s long-standing advocacy of the Muslim Brotherhood. Note the mainstream media’s misrepresentation of the Muslim Brotherhood as “democratic.” In FTR #’s 787, 1025 and 1026, we noted how fundamentally undemocratic the Brotherhood is: ” . . . . In his penultimate column, Mr. Khashoggi said democracy in the Middle East couldn’t happen without the inclusion of the Muslim Brotherhood. ‘The eradication of the Muslim Brotherhood is nothing less than an abolition of democracy and a guarantee that Arabs will continue living under authoritarian and corrupt regimes,’ Mr. Khashoggi wrote Aug. 28. ‘There can be no political reform and democracy in any Arab country without accepting that politicalIslam is a part of it.’. . . .”  
2.–Allegedly actual membership in the Muslim Brotherhood: ” . . . .  Several of his friends say that early on Mr. Khashoggi also joined the Muslim Brotherhood. . . .”
3.–A working professional relationship with Khaled Saffuri, the co-founder of Grover Norquist and Karl Rove’s Islamic Free Market Institute. This institution was, in effect, an American nexus for the Muslim Brotherhood and its laissez-faire/corporatist economics, as well as being a central element in the Operation Green Quest investigation. We covered Operation Green Quest at length in numerous programs, including FTR #’s 356, 357, 462, 464, 513, 1006 : ” . . . . Jamal Khashoggi, a prolific writer and commentator, was working quietly with intellectuals, reformists and Islamists to launch a group called Democracy for the Arab World Now. . . . Khashoggi had incorporated his democracy advocacy group, DAWN, in January in Delaware, said Khaled Saffuri, another friend. The group was still in the planning stages, and Khashoggi was working on it quietly, likely concerned it could cause trouble for associates, including activists in the Gulf, Saffuri said. . . .”
4.–Turkey’s Tayyip Erdogan, who might be described as a fascist wishbone, with one foot in the Islamic fascist Muslim Brotherhood and the other in the secular Pan-Turkist fascism of the National Action Party and the Grey Wolves. ” . . . . Mr. Khashoggi was close to the government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose ties with Saudi Arabia had become increasingly strained in recent years. Turkey backed Qatar in its diplomatic spat with Saudi Arabia last year, and like Qatar, Turkey also differs with Saudi Arabia over its view of the Muslim Brotherhood. Mr. Khashoggi knew President Erdogan personally and was a friend to some of his closest advisers, say people who knew him. . . .”
5.–Prince Turki al-Faisal, the head of Saudi intelligence, who, as discussed in numerous shows, including FTR #’s 347 and 358, basically ran Osama bin Laden. Khashoggi was also close to Prince al-Waleed bin Talal, at one time the second largest stockholder in Newscorp (behind the Murdochs) and someone “20th hijacker” Zacarias Moussaoui named as one of the prominent Saudis who financed al-Qaeda. Immediately after being named by Moussaoui, al-Waleed announced that he was donating all of his billions to charity. ” . . . . Through it all, he maintained close ties to some of Saudi Arabia’s most powerful princes. In the early 2000s, he served as an adviser to Prince Turki al-Faisal, a former head of Saudi intelligence, during the prince’s time as ambassador to the U.K. and the U.S. He was a friend of the billionaire Prince al-Waleed bin Talal. . . .”
5.–Osama bin Laden and support for the Afghan Mujahadeen, who morphed into al-Qaeda. ” . . . . He traveled to Afghanistan as a journalist, where he became the first Arab journalist to interview Osama bin Laden in the late 1980s. ‘A lot of them went to fight. He went to report,’ said Peter Bergen, an American journalist and academic who knew Mr. Khashoggi. . . .”
7.–Khashoggi was the nephew of Saudi weapons dealer Adnan Khashoggi, who was pivotally involved with the Iran-Contra scandal, the support effort for the Afghan Mujahadeen, Al-Qaeda and the so-called “Truther” movement. ” . . . . His uncle was Adnan Khashoggi, a famous arms dealer. . . .”
8.– His relationship with Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki (who “ran” Osama bin Laden for a time), his role in the Afghan war covering bin Laden and the Mujahadeen and his work for the CIA-connected Washington Post suggest the distinct possibility that the late Jamal Khashoggi was a spook-journalist, working for both the Saudis and elements of CIA.

In FTR #1015, we noted the issuing of school textbooks glorifying Nazism while Narendra Modi headed the Indian state of Gujarat.

In FTR #998, among other programs, we noted John Conyers’ active opposition to the OUN/B successor organizations in power in Ukraine, and his ouster by the #MeToo movement, which displays symptomatic features of an “op.” Of particular interest is the apparent role of Far right blogger Mike “Misogyny Gets You Laid” Cernovich. An interesting person to signal the destruction of one of the few actively anti-fascist lawmakers by on ostensibly “progressive” political movement.

It is interesting and significant that Conyers also co-sponsored a House Resolution condemning Modi’s support for Nazi racism and ideology.

” . . . . The sponsor, Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) said the State Department ‘has discussed the role of Modi and his government in promoting attitudes of racial supremacy, racial hatred, and the legacy of Nazism through his government’s support of school textbooks in which Nazism is glorified.’ The resolution said Modi revised school textbooks, which mentioned the ‘charismatic personality of Hitler the Supremo’ and failed to acknowledge the horrors of the Holocaust. . . .”

Worth noting in this context is the fact that Pierre Omidyar actively assisted the rise of both the OUN/B fascists in Ukraine and Modi’s BJP/RSS fascists in India, as discussed in FTR #889.

The rest of the program consists of discussion of the intersection of eugenics, white supremacy and anti-immigration fervor, This will be examined at greater length in our next program.
Key points of analysis include:
1.–Similarity between the title of a DHS posting and the 14 words slogan minted by Nazi David Lane.
2.–The resignation of a DHS Trump appointee due to links to white supremacists.
3.–Other Trump appointees with links to the Federation of Immigration Reform.
4.–A possible mind control link to the murder of Iowa college student Mollie Tibbetts.
5.-Review of the Sirhan Sirhan link to the “girl in the polka dot dress.”

FTR #1022 “Edwin” Manafort, the Coming of Fascism to Ukraine and the “Russia-Gate” Psy-Op

In the wake of the high-profile conviction of former Trump campaign aide Paul Manafort, we present information which greatly fleshes out his dealings with the Ukrainian government of Viktor Yanukovich and the “Hapsburg Group” of European politicians that were working to tease Ukraine from the Russian sphere of influence into the Western orbit.

For purposes of this program, we have nicknamed Manafort “Edwin Manafort,” citing him in the context of the operations of Edwin Wilson, whose exploits we analyzed at length in AFA #4.

Far from being the “rogue” criminal he was reported as being, Wilson was actually operating on behalf of elements of the CIA in his terrorist support operations. Shortly before Wilson’s death, a judge supported that conclusion and Wilson was eventually released from prison.

Far from being a “Russian agent,” Paul Manafort is a U.S. spook who was working with a group of European politicians known as the Hapsburg Group, as discussed in FTR #1008.

A story from BNE Intellinews, since taken down but available via the Way Back Machine, details Manafort’s networking with the Hapsburg Group milieu, providing more details that supplement previous discussion of the relationship.

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

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

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

Key points of information include:

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

Of paramount significance for our purposes, is the behavior of Manafort, Lovochkin, Lovochkina, Dmytro Firtash and Victoria Nuland.

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

1.–” . . . . The private jet flights and personal connections show that Manafort’s partner in this lobbying effort was Yanukovych’s chief of staff Lovochkin. . . . Manafort’s Ukraine engagements actually increased following Yanukovych’s ouster in February 2014. In March to June 2014, he spent a total of 27 days in Ukraine, whereas during the four preceding Euromaidan months, November-February 2014, Manafort only visited Ukraine three times for a total of nine days. . . .”
2.–” . . . . Lovochkin is the junior partner of billionaire oligarch Dmytro Firtash . . . . Lovochkin and Firtash together also control Ukraine’s largest TV channel, Inter. . . .”
3.–” . . . . Manafort’s continued participation in post-Yanukovych Ukraine also points to his ties to Lovochkin and Firtash. While most members of the Yanukovych administration fled to Russia or were arrested after February 2014, Lovochkin has continued his political career with impunity, despite having served at the heart of Yanukovych’s regime for four years. . . .”
4.–” . . . . Euromaidan was triggered by events in Kyiv on the night of November 29, when police violently dispersed a small demonstration of pro-EU students who were protesting after Yanukovych refused to sign the Association Agreement. The violence prompted a huge demonstration occupying the heart of Kyiv on December 1. . . .”
5.–” . . . . According to messages between the sisters discussing Manafort’s actions in Ukraine, it was Manafort’s idea ‘to send those people out and get them slaughtered. Do you know whose strategy that was to cause that Revolts [sic] and what not […] As a tactic to outrage the world and get focus on Ukraine.’ Manafort’s daughter called her father’s money ‘blood money.’ . . .”
6.–” . . . . The remarks were made by those privy to the deepest secrets of Manafort’s personal life. They evoke the suspicion that Manafort manipulated the Maidan protests and the police violence to influence international opinion. The appearance of the Manafort messages in 2016 reignited speculation in Ukraine that none other than Lovochkin instigated the attack on the students’ demonstration on November 29, 2013, to trigger outrage against Yanukovych. . . .”
7.–” . . . . Some of the timeline fits this interpretation: On the day before the police attack, reporters noted Yulia Lovochkina openly fraternising with the students on the Maidan. Lovochkin’s TV crews covered the 4am events closely, and Lovochkin immediately tendered his resignation in protest at the police violence. . . .”
8.–” . . . . The next day, Lovochkin’s TV channel played footage of the worst of the police violence on heavy rotation on prime time news. News anchors intoned that Yanukovych had ‘shed the blood of Ukrainian children.’ Whereas the student protests had attracted hundreds, protests on Sunday December 1 against the police violence attracted hundreds of thousands. This was the start of Euromaidan. . . .”
8.–Of great significance as well, is the maneuvering around a warrant for the arrest of Ukrainian oligarch and Lovochkin partner Dmytro Firtash. The role of Victoria Nuland in this maneuvering is particularly significant: ” . . . . On October 30 2013 — as Yanukovych was wavering over the Association Agreement with the EU — the US issued an arrest warrant for Firtash. The US withdrew the arrest warrant four days later — after US deputy secretary of state Victoria Nuland met Yanukovych in Kyiv, and received assurances that Yanukovych would sign the Association Agreement, Firtash said during extradition hearings in Vienna in 2015 that first revealed the details of the case. But come the Vilnius Summit, Yanukovych failed to sign. The arrest warrant was reissued in March 2014, and Firtash was arrested in Vienna on March 12, 2014. . . . .”

We also review (in the description only) the relationship between members of the Hapsburg family and European integration, the Cold War against the Soviet Union, contemporary Ukraine and the OUN/B.

FTR #1021 FascisBook: (In Your Facebook, Part 3–A Virtual Panopticon, Part 3)

This program follows up FTR #’s 718 and 946, we examined Facebook, noting how it’s cute, warm, friendly public facade obscured a cynical, reactionary, exploitative and, ultimately “corporatist” ethic and operation.

The UK’s Channel 4 sent an investigative journalist undercover to work for one of the third-party companies Facebook pays to moderate content. This investigative journalist was trained to take a hands-off approach to far right violent content and fake news because that kind of content engages users for longer and increases ad revenues. ” . . . . An investigative journalist who went undercover as a Facebook moderator in Ireland says the company lets pages from far-right fringe groups ‘exceed deletion threshold,’ and that those pages are ‘subject to different treatment in the same category as pages belonging to governments and news organizations.’ The accusation is a damning one, undermining Facebook’s claims that it is actively trying to cut down on fake news, propaganda, hate speech, and other harmful content that may have significant real-world impact.The undercover journalist detailed his findings in a new documentary titled Inside Facebook: Secrets of the Social Network, that just aired on the UK’s Channel 4. . . . .”

Next, we present a frightening story about AggregateIQ (AIQ), the Cambridge Analytica offshoot to which Cambridge Analytica outsourced the development of its “Ripon” psychological profile software development, and which later played a key role in the pro-Brexit campaign. The article also notes that, despite Facebook’s pledge to kick Cambridge Analytica off of its platform, security researchers just found 13 apps available for Facebook that appear to be developed by AIQ. If Facebook really was trying to kick Cambridge Analytica off of its platform, it’s not trying very hard. One app is even named “AIQ Johnny Scraper” and it’s registered to AIQ.

The article is also a reminder that you don’t necessarily need to download a Cambridge Analytica/AIQ app for them to be tracking your information and reselling it to clients. Security researcher stumbled upon a new repository of curated Facebook data AIQ was creating for a client and it’s entirely possible a lot of the data was scraped from public Facebook posts.

” . . . . AggregateIQ, a Canadian consultancy alleged to have links to Cambridge Analytica, collected and stored the data of hundreds of thousands of Facebook users, according to redacted computer files seen by the Financial Times.The social network banned AggregateIQ, a data company, from its platform as part of a clean-up operation following the Cambridge Analytica scandal, on suspicion that the company could have been improperly accessing user information. However, Chris Vickery, a security researcher, this week found an app on the platform called ‘AIQ Johnny Scraper’ registered to the company, raising fresh questions about the effectiveness of Facebook’s policing efforts. . . .”

In addition, the story highlights a forms of micro-targeting companies like AIQ make available that’s fundamentally different from the algorithmic micro-targeting associated with social media abuses: micro-targeting by a human who wants to specifically look and see what you personally have said about various topics on social media. This is a service where someone can type you into a search engine and AIQ’s product will serve up a list of all the various political posts you’ve made or the politically-relevant “Likes” you’ve made.

Next, we note that Facebook is getting sued by an app developer for acting like the mafia and turning access to all that user data as the key enforcement tool:

“Mark Zuckerberg faces allegations that he developed a ‘malicious and fraudulent scheme’ to exploit vast amounts of private data to earn Facebook billions and force rivals out of business. A company suing Facebook in a California court claims the social network’s chief executive ‘weaponised’ the ability to access data from any user’s network of friends – the feature at the heart of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.  . . . . ‘The evidence uncovered by plaintiff demonstrates that the Cambridge Analytica scandal was not the result of mere negligence on Facebook’s part but was rather the direct consequence of the malicious and fraudulent scheme Zuckerberg designed in 2012 to cover up his failure to anticipate the world’s transition to smartphones,’ legal documents said. . . . . Six4Three alleges up to 40,000 companies were effectively defrauded in this way by Facebook. It also alleges that senior executives including Zuckerberg personally devised and managed the scheme, individually deciding which companies would be cut off from data or allowed preferential access. . . . ‘They felt that it was better not to know. I found that utterly horrifying,’ he [former Facebook executive Sandy Parakilas] said. ‘If true, these allegations show a huge betrayal of users, partners and regulators. They would also show Facebook using its monopoly power to kill competition and putting profits over protecting its users.’ . . . .”

The above-mentioned Cambridge Analytica is officially going bankrupt, along with the elections division of its parent company, SCL Group. Apparently their bad press has driven away clients.

Is this truly the end of Cambridge Analytica?

No.

They’re rebranding under a new company, Emerdata. Intriguingly, Cambridge Analytica’s transformation into Emerdata is noteworthy because  the firm’s directors include Johnson Ko Chun Shun, a Hong Kong financier and business partner of Erik Prince: ” . . . . But the company’s announcement left several questions unanswered, including who would retain the company’s intellectual property — the so-called psychographic voter profiles built in part with data from Facebook — and whether Cambridge Analytica’s data-mining business would return under new auspices. . . . In recent months, executives at Cambridge Analytica and SCL Group, along with the Mercer family, have moved to created a new firm, Emerdata, based in Britain, according to British records. The new company’s directors include Johnson Ko Chun Shun, a Hong Kong financier and business partner of Erik Prince. . . . An executive and a part owner of SCL Group, Nigel Oakes, has publicly described Emerdata as a way of rolling up the two companies under one new banner. . . . ”

In the Big Data internet age, there’s one area of personal information that has yet to be incorporated into the profiles on everyone–personal banking information.  ” . . . . If tech companies are in control of payment systems, they’ll know “every single thing you do,” Kapito said. It’s a different business model from traditional banking: Data is more valuable for tech firms that sell a range of different products than it is for banks that only sell financial services, he said. . . .”

Facebook is approaching a number of big banks – JP Morgan, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, and US Bancorp – requesting financial data including card transactions and checking-account balances. Facebook is joined byIn this by Google and Amazon who are also trying to get this kind of data.

Facebook assures us that this information, which will be opt-in, is to be solely for offering new services on Facebook messenger. Facebook also assures us that this information, which would obviously be invaluable for delivering ads, won’t be used for ads at all. It will ONLY be used for Facebook’s Messenger service.  This is a dubious assurance, in light of Facebook’s past behavior.

” . . . . Facebook increasingly wants to be a platform where people buy and sell goods and services, besides connecting with friends. The company over the past year asked JPMorgan Chase & Co., Wells Fargo & Co., Citigroup Inc. and U.S. Bancorp to discuss potential offerings it could host for bank customers on Facebook Messenger, said people familiar with the matter. Facebook has talked about a feature that would show its users their checking-account balances, the people said. It has also pitched fraud alerts, some of the people said. . . .”

Peter Thiel’s surveillance firm Palantir was apparently deeply involved with Cambridge Analytica’s gaming of personal data harvested from Facebook in order to engineer an electoral victory for Trump. Thiel was an early investor in Facebook, at one point was its largest shareholder and is still one of its largest shareholders. ” . . . . It was a Palantir employee in London, working closely with the data scientists building Cambridge’s psychological profiling technology, who suggested the scientists create their own app — a mobile-phone-based personality quiz — to gain access to Facebook users’ friend networks, according to documents obtained by The New York Times. The revelations pulled Palantir — co-founded by the wealthy libertarian Peter Thiel — into the furor surrounding Cambridge, which improperly obtained Facebook data to build analytical tools it deployed on behalf of Donald J. Trump and other Republican candidates in 2016. Mr. Thiel, a supporter of President Trump, serves on the board at Facebook. ‘There were senior Palantir employees that were also working on the Facebook data,’ said Christopher Wylie, a data expert and Cambridge Analytica co-founder, in testimony before British lawmakers on Tuesday. . . . The connections between Palantir and Cambridge Analytica were thrust into the spotlight by Mr. Wylie’s testimony on Tuesday. Both companies are linked to tech-driven billionaires who backed Mr. Trump’s campaign: Cambridge is chiefly owned by Robert Mercer, the computer scientist and hedge fund magnate, while Palantir was co-founded in 2003 by Mr. Thiel, who was an initial investor in Facebook. . . .”

Program Highlights Include:

1.–Facebook’s project to incorporate brain-to-computer interface into its operating system: ” . . . Facebook wants to build its own “brain-to-computer interface” that would allow us to send thoughts straight to a computer. ‘What if you could type directly from your brain?’ Regina Dugan, the head of the company’s secretive hardware R&D division, Building 8, asked from the stage. Dugan then proceeded to show a video demo of a woman typing eight words per minute directly from the stage. In a few years, she said, the team hopes to demonstrate a real-time silent speech system capable of delivering a hundred words per minute. ‘That’s five times faster than you can type on your smartphone, and it’s straight from your brain,’ she said. ‘Your brain activity contains more information than what a word sounds like and how it’s spelled; it also contains semantic information of what those words mean.’ . . .”
2.–” . . . . Brain-computer interfaces are nothing new. DARPA, which Dugan used to head, has invested heavily in brain-computer interface technologies to do things like cure mental illness and restore memories to soldiers injured in war. But what Facebook is proposing is perhaps more radical—a world in which social media doesn’t require picking up a phone or tapping a wrist watch in order to communicate with your friends; a world where we’re connected all the time by thought alone. . . .”
3.–” . . . . Facebook’s Building 8 is modeled after DARPA and its projects tend to be equally ambitious. . . .”
4.–” . . . . But what Facebook is proposing is perhaps more radical—a world in which social media doesn’t require picking up a phone or tapping a wrist watch in order to communicate with your friends; a world where we’re connected all the time by thought alone. . . .”
5.–” . . . . Facebook hopes to use optical neural imaging technology to scan the brain 100 times per second to detect thoughts and turn them into text. Meanwhile, it’s working on ‘skin-hearing’ that could translate sounds into haptic feedback that people can learn to understand like braille. . . .”
6.–” . . . . Worryingly, Dugan eventually appeared frustrated in response to my inquiries about how her team thinks about safety precautions for brain interfaces, saying, ‘The flip side of the question that you’re asking is ‘why invent it at all?’ and I just believe that the optimistic perspective is that on balance, technological advances have really meant good things for the world if they’re handled responsibly.’ . . . .”
7.–Some telling observations by Nigel Oakes, the founder of Cambridge Analytica parent firm SCL: ” . . . . . . . . The panel has published audio records in which an executive tied to Cambridge Analytica discusses how the Trump campaign used techniques used by the Nazis to target voters. . . .”
8.–Further exposition of Oakes’ statement: ” . . . . Adolf Hitler ‘didn’t have a problem with the Jews at all, but people didn’t like the Jews,’ he told the academic, Emma L. Briant, a senior lecturer in journalism at the University of Essex. He went on to say that Donald J. Trump had done the same thing by tapping into grievances toward immigrants and Muslims. . . . ‘What happened with Trump, you can forget all the microtargeting and microdata and whatever, and come back to some very, very simple things,’ he told Dr. Briant. ‘Trump had the balls, and I mean, really the balls, to say what people wanted to hear.’ . . .”
9.–Observations about the possibilities of Facebook’s goal of having AI governing the editorial functions of its content: As noted in a Popular Mechanics article: ” . . . When the next pow­er­ful AI comes along, it will see its first look at the world by look­ing at our faces. And if we stare it in the eyes and shout ‘we’re AWFUL lol,’ the lol might be the one part it doesn’t understand. . . .”
10.–Microsoft’s Tay Chatbot offers a glimpse into this future: As one Twitter user noted, employing sarcasm: “Tay went from ‘humans are super cool’ to full nazi in <24 hrs and I’m not at all concerned about the future of AI.”

FTR #1017 Supreme Court Trump Card: Family Trump, Family [Anthony] Kennedy and Peter Thiel

 Much has been said about Donald Trump’s nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to become a Supreme Court justice, replacing Anthony Kennnedy.

In this program, we highlight extensive networking between the Trump and Kennedy families and, in turn, some apparent “deep networking” between some of the individuals in the Trump/Kennedy nexus and institutions linked to key elements of the remarkable and deadly Bormann flight capital network.

Deutsche Bank and the shadow of the I.G. Farben chemical complex figure into the latter part of this equation.

The connections between the family of Anthony Kennedy and the Trump milieu run deep. Anthony Kennedy’s son Justin was  Trump’s  banker at Deutsche Bank. In FTR #919, we analyzed a New York Times article highlighting Donald Trump’s altogether opaque real estate developments and evidence that those projects had significant links to elements of the Bormann capital network.

In that program we set forth the primary role of Deutsche Bank in financing Trump’s real estate projects.

” . . . While many big banks have shunned him, Deutsche Bank AG has been a steadfast financial backer of the Republican presidential candidate’s business interests. Since 1998, the bank has led or participated in loans of at least $2.5 billion to companies affiliated with Mr. Trump, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of public records and people familiar with the matter. That doesn’t include at least another $1 billion in loan commitments that Deutsche Bank made to Trump-affiliated entities. The long-standing connection makes Frankfurt-based Deutsche Bank, which has a large U.S. operation and has been grappling with reputational problems and an almost 50% stock-price decline, the financial institution with probably the strongest ties to the controversial New York businessman. . . .”

The fact that Deutsche Bank is the primary financial backer of “Trump Incorporated” is of primary importance. The bank is central to the Bormann capital network.

The connections between the family of Anthony Kennedy and the Trump milieu run deep. Anthony Kennedy’s son Justin was  Trump’s  banker at Deutsche Bank.

Furthermore, jurists who clerked for Anthony Kennedy figure prominently in Trump’s judicial appointments:

1.–” . . . . He [Trump] picked Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, who had served as a law clerk to Justice Kennedy, to fill Justice Scalia’s seat. . . .”
2.–” . . . . Then, after Justice Gorsuch’s nomination was announced, a White House official singled out two candidates for the next Supreme Court vacancy: Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and Judge Raymond M. Kethledge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, in Cincinnati. The two judges had something in common: They had both clerked for Justice Kennedy. . . .”
3.–” . . . . In the meantime, as the White House turned to stocking the lower courts, it did not overlook Justice Kennedy’s clerks. Mr. Trump nominated three of them to federal appeals courts: Judges Stephanos Bibas and Michael Scudder, both of whom have been confirmed, and Eric Murphy, the Ohio solicitor general, whom Mr. Trump nominated to the Sixth Circuit this month. . . .”
4.–” . . . . Justice Kennedy’s son, Justin . . . . spent more than a decade at Deutsche Bank, eventually rising to become the bank’s global head of real estate capital markets, and he worked closely with Mr. Trump when he was a real estate developer, according to two people with knowledge of his role. During Mr. Kennedy’s tenure, Deutsche Bank became Mr. Trump’s most important lender, dispensing well over $1 billion in loans to him for the renovation and construction of skyscrapers in New York and Chicago at a time other mainstream banks were wary of doing business with him because of his troubled business history. . . .”

After Kennedy left Deutsche Bank in 2009 he went on to become co-CEO LNR Property LLC. LNR Property saved Jared Kushner’s midtown Manhattan property in 2011:

1.–” . . . . from 2010–2013 Justin Kennedy was the co-CEO of LNR Property LLC with Tobin Cobb. . . .”
2.–” . . . . According the New York Times, in 2007 Kushner Companies purchased ‘an aluminum-clad office tower in Midtown Manhattan, for a record price of $1.8 billion.’ At the time the NYT wrote that this deal was ‘considered a classic example of reckless underwriting. The transaction was so highly leveraged that the cash flow from rents amounted to only 65 percent of the debt service.’ . . .”
3.– ” . . . Who came to the rescue? None other than LNR Property, the company whose CEO at the time was Justin Kennedy. According to the NYT and the Real Deal, Mr. Kushner and LNR ‘reached a possible agreement with LNR Property, a firm specializing in restructuring troubled debt and which oversees the mortgage, that would allow him to retain control of the tower by modifying the terms of the $1.2 billion mortgage tied to the office portion of the building.’ . . .”

The links between TrumpWorld and Anthony Kennedy’s sons is deeper still. Kennedy’s other son Gregory, has long-standing ties to Trump Silicon Valley adviser Peter Thiel, whom we first analyzed in FTR #718.

” . . . . . . . . Kennedy’s seat, meantime, seemed destined to go to Kavanaugh, thanks in part to the glowing review of Kennedy, whose son, Justin, knows Donald Trump Jr. through New York real estate circles, and whose other adult child has connections to Trump World via the president’s 2016 Silicon Valley adviser Peter Thiel, most recently when the Kennedy firm Disruptive Technology Advisers worked with Thiel’s Palantir Technologies. . . .”

Gregory Kennedy’s DTA has an unusually close relationship with Palantir, a company that has helped the Trump administration.

Kennedy’s DTA has other personal connections to Palantir. Alex Fishman and Alex Davis, two other DTA founders, “enjoyed a very close relationship” with Palantir co-founder Alex Karp, according to the lawsuit.

It should be noted that the alleged secrecy with which Palantir treats its operating and investing information is characteristic of Bormann organizations. A closeted, insiders-only operating ethic serves the need for this consummately powerful organization to maintain a relatively low profile, even as it gains power, influence and wealth.

” . . . . Yet Palantir — whose stock changes hands only through private trades — goes to great lengths to keep any detailed information about its business private. . . .”

A lawsuit by Palantir investor KT4 Partners alleges that Palantir is illegally blocking investors from selling shares in the company and that Kennedy’s Disruptive Technology Advisors (DTA) is a key partner and beneficiary of this strategy.

KT4 claims that when it tried to sell its shares of Palantir to a third-party, Palantir would have DTA contact the third-party and convince them to have Palantir sells them the shares directly instead. DTA would then collect a commission.

The central dynamic in the allegations of plaintiff (and Palantir investor) KT4 is set forth as follows: ” . . . . But remarkably, KT4 claims that when Palantir receives information from an investor about a planned sale, it uses that information to contact the buyer and persuade them instead to buy shares directly from the company or from certain Palantir insiders. One particular broker, Disruptive Technology Advisers, or DTA, repeatedly gets commissions from these sales, even when it ‘performed no legitimate work,’ KT4 claims. KT4 says it experienced interference by Palantir when it tried to sell shares to Highbridge Capital Management, a hedge fund that was owned by JPMorgan Chase, in May 2015. After KT4 notified Palantir of the planned sale, Palantir turned around and instructed DTA to ‘take the opportunity, on Palantir’s behalf,’and arrange a sale from Palantir to Highbridge instead, according to the lawsuit. . . .”

In FTR #946, we examined Cambridge Analytica, its Trump and Steve Bannon-linked tech firm that harvested Facebook data on behalf of the Trump campaign.

Peter Thiel’s Palantir was apparently deeply involved with Cambridge Analytica’s gaming of personal data harvested from Facebook in order to engineer an electoral victory for Trump, setting the GOP campaign to control the Supreme Court in a deeper, broader context.

Thiel was an early investor in Facebook, at one point was its largest shareholder and is still one of its largest shareholders. ” . . . . It was a Palantir employee in London, working closely with the data scientists building Cambridge’s psychological profiling technology, who suggested the scientists create their own app — a mobile-phone-based personality quiz — to gain access to Facebook users’ friend networks, according to documents obtained by The New York Times. The revelations pulled Palantir — co-founded by the wealthy libertarian Peter Thiel — into the furor surrounding Cambridge, which improperly obtained Facebook data to build analytical tools it deployed on behalf of Donald J. Trump and other Republican candidates in 2016. Mr. Thiel, a supporter of President Trump, serves on the board at Facebook. ‘There were senior Palantir employees that were also working on the Facebook data,’ said Christopher Wylie, a data expert and Cambridge Analytica co-founder, in testimony before British lawmakers on Tuesday. . . . The connections between Palantir and Cambridge Analytica were thrust into the spotlight by Mr. Wylie’s testimony on Tuesday. Both companies are linked to tech-driven billionaires who backed Mr. Trump’s campaign: Cambridge is chiefly owned by Robert Mercer, the computer scientist and hedge fund magnate, while Palantir was co-founded in 2003 by Mr. Thiel, who was an initial investor in Facebook. . . .”

Program Highlights Include:

1.–Review of Peter Thiel’s high regard for Carl Schmitt: “. . . . a Nazi and the Third Reich’s preeminent legal theorist. For Thiel, Schmitt is an inspiring throwback to a pre-Enlightenment age, who exalts struggle and insists that the discovery of enemies is the foundation of politics. . .” 
2.–Review of Peter Thiel’s early legal experience with Sullivan & Cromwell, the Dulles law firm.
3.–A recounting of the role of John Foster Dulles and Sullivan & Cromwell’s roles in the formation of I.G. Farben.
4.–Review of Thiel’s German heritage and his father’s probable role with one of the I.G. successor companies.

FTR #1013 Fascism and the Politics of Immigration

In The Hitler Legacy, Peter Levenda noted anti-immigrant sentiment and xenophobia as part of “The Hitler Legacy.”

“. . . Xenophobia is at an all-time high in Europe and increasingly in America. The Internet has provided new and improved means of communication. As the political life of every country becomes more and more polarized between “right” and “left,” the men of ODESSA can only laugh at our discomfort. . . .”

Fear of “the other” has been a staple of fascist thought and is dominating much of the political discourse on both sides of the Atlantic.

In FTR #838, Levenda discoursed on how immigration from Europe, both Catholic  and Jewish,  melded with other events in the post-World War I period to mobilize fascist sentiment and activism.

Reacting to the advent of the Soviet Union, abortive Marxist revolutions in Germany and elsewhere in Europe, large scale immigration of Catholics from Ireland and Italy and Jews from Eastern Europe, powerful elements of the U.S. power elite embraced fascism and eugenics ideology.

With the onset of the Great Depression, the potential threat of Communism was magnified in the eyes of many powerful American industrialists, financiers and corporate lawyers. Germany’s success in putting down the Marxist revolutions within its own borders, as well as the business relationships between corporate Germany and its cartel partners in the U.S. business community inclined many influential American reactionaries to support fascism.

By the same token, these same elements came to despise Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his “Jew Deal,” as it was called by his enemies. American Jews were seen as hiring Jewish immigrants and thus denying “real Americans” jobs and economic well-being.

Attacking Roosevelt as a Jew and a Communist, American fascists embraced a cognitive and rhetorical position not unlike the view of Barack Obama as a “Kenyan Muslim,” and, consequently, a “traitor.”

Some key points in Peter’s analysis are explored a section of the book titled the “Origins of 21st Century Conflict.” Highlights of this part of the program include:

1.–Analyzing the abortive socialist revolutions that took place in Germany at the end of the First World War, Peter notes the role of the Freikorps and related institutions in suppressing those revolts. In particular, a number of overlapping Pan-German occult organizations, including the Thule Gesellschaft, contributed to the substance of German reaction in the post-World War I period.
2.–In the United States, the Bolshevik Revolution produced a spate of anti-Communist organizations that saw Marxism’s advocacy of a workers’ revolution as a fundamental threat to the existing order.
3.–Marx’s Jewish background–in tandem with large Jewish emigration from Eastern Europe–fed a doctrinaire anti-Semitism which fused with anti-Communism to become a key element of fascist ideology in the U.S. and the rest of the world.
4.–The program set forth how Bolshevism, immigration and anti-Semitism fused to become a theory of “global conspiracy.”
5.–We highlight the role in the formation of this ideology of Darwin’s theories and eugenics, both in the U.S. and in Germany. (In particular, we discuss the impact of Irish and Italian Catholic immigration as well as Jewish immigration on the consciousness of elements of the American power elite.) We also detail how National Socialists came to view their role in shaping the evolution of homo sapiens.
6.–The Depression and FDR’s New Deal and their effects on many of those same elements of the Power Elite.
7.–Hate-mongering that labeled FDR as a “Jew” and a “Communist”–similar to anti-Obama rhetoric portraying him as a Muslim and a traitor.
8.–Atavism–the longing for a “simpler time” and its manifestations both in the 1930’s and presently.

In FTR #864, recorded in September of 2015, Peter updated the context of our discussion from March of that year in the context of Donald Trump’s lead in the GOP primary struggle and the reaction sweeping Europe.

Immigration dominated the news that fall and has continued to do so. The flood of refugees from the wars in the Middle East threatened to overwhelm European infrastructure and the phenomenon dominated the political debate in the GOP primary election campaign. Donald Trump capitalized on anti-immigrant xenophobia during the primary and then the presidential campaign.

Of course, he continues to do so today.

In The Hitler Legacy, Peter noted anti-immigrant sentiment and xenophobia as part of “The Hitler Legacy.”

Fear of “the other” has been a staple of fascist thought and has dominated much of the political discourse on both sides of the Atlantic.

Next, we turn to a more recent development.

Melania Trump garnered considerable media attention when she visited a detention center for immigrants, including children, wearing a jacket that said “I Really Don’t Care. Do U?”

Tasteless on its surface, the statement assumes added significance when we factor in the fact that  “I don’t care” (“Me Ne Frego” in Italian) was an important fascist slogan.

Furthermore, the Zara company that made Melania’s jacket has a history of marketing garments with fascist/racist overtones. It marketed a shirt that mimicked a concentration camp inmate’s garb and a swastika-enlaid handbag. It also marketed a Pepe The Frog skirt.

Recent comments by Trump disparaging Haiti as a “shithole” country and pining for immigration from Norway instead warrant a fresh look at the Crusade For Freedom.

During Trump’s brief tenure as President, the media have consistently lamented his actions as idiosyncrasies. Trump’s policies are not his alone, but follow in a linear path, along which the GOP has traveled for decades.

In this post, we review the Crusade For Freedom–the covert operation that brought Third Reich alumni into the country and also supported their guerrilla warfare in Eastern Europe, conducted up until the early 1950’s. Conceived by Allen Dulles, overseen by Richard Nixon, publicly represented by Ronald Reagan and realized in considerable measure by William Casey, the CFF ultimately evolved into a Nazi wing of the GOP.

“. . . . Vice President Nixon’s secret political war of Nazis against Jews in American politics was never investigated at the time. The foreign language-speaking Croatians and other Fascist émigré groups had a ready-made network for contacting and mobilizing the Eastern European ethnic bloc. There is a very high correlation between CIA domestic subsidies to Fascist ‘freedom fighters’ during the 1950’s and the leadership of the Republican Party’s ethnic campaign groups. The motive for the under-the-table financing was clear: Nixon used Nazis to offset the Jewish vote for the Democrats. . . .

. . . . In 1952, Nixon had formed an Ethnic Division within the Republican National Committee. Displaced fascists, hoping to be returned to power by an Eisenhower-Nixon ‘liberation’ policy signed on with the committee. In 1953, when Republicans were in office, the immigration laws were changed to admit Nazis, even members of the SS. They flooded into the country. Nixon himself oversaw the new immigration program. . . .”

FTR #1011 Miscellaneous Articles and Updates

This broadcast updates and highlights previous topics of discussion, focusing largely on online/Alt-Right/Nazi fascism and some of the malevolent communities that coalesce around various ideological manifestations of that phenomenon.

There has been little public recognition that many of the mass shooters whose activities have dominated much of the news cycle in recent years,have been immersed in one form or extremist far right ideology or another.

The release of ~1,200 pages of documents related to the Las Vegas shooting reveals that Stephen Paddock appears to have been “a sovereign citizen.” . . . . In the documents, those who encountered gunman Stephen Paddock say he expressed conspiratorial, anti-government beliefs characteristic of the far right . . . . But tantalizingly, people who encountered Paddock before his shooting say that he expressed conspiratorial, anti-government beliefs, which are characteristic of the far right. . . .”

Paddock’s actions are not unexpected for someone with his ideological mindset: ” . . . . In surveys conducted in 2014 and 2015, representatives of US law-enforcement ranked the risk of terrorism from the sovereign-citizen movement higher than the risk from Islamic extremism.”

Nazi/alt-right culture was a primary influence on accused Santa Fe (Texas) gunman Dimitrios Pagourtzis. ” . . . . Dimitrios Pagourtzis, the suspected gunman who opened fire at a Texas high school on Friday morning, apparently posted photos of neo-Nazi iconography online, according to social media accounts flagged by classmates and reviewed by The Daily Beast. . . . Other images on Pagourtzis’ now-deleted Facebook page suggest a possible interest in white supremacist groups. Pagourtzis uploaded a number of T-shirts that feature Vaporwave-style designs. Vaporwave, a music and design movement, has spawned a related movement called Fashwave, which borrows the same aesthetic but applies them to neo-Nazi subjects. Pagourtzis’ Facebook header image was the cover of an album by musician Perturbator. Perturbator’s music has been co-opted by members of the Fashwave movement, BuzzFeed previously reported. Neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer frequently includes Perturbator’s music in “Fashwave Fridays” posts. . . . .”

Initial press reports about the Santa Fe shooting discuss possible accomplices of Pagourtzis. Was he part of a group of some kind? “. . . . On Friday, authorities intended to question two other people: One was at the scene and had “suspicious reactions,” according to the governor, and another had drawn the scrutiny of investigators. . . .”

Pagourtzis, as we saw above, had taken to wearing a trench coat, even in 90 degree weather. Press reports have described him as a “copy-cat” killer, having imitated Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris of Columbine shooting fame. (Pagourtzis was too young to have memories of the incident, though he may well have absorbed information about the Columbine perpetrators.)

The media have, for the most part, not mentioned that Harris and Klebold were heavily influenced by Nazi culture. “. . . . Nineteen days before they were to graduate, Harris and Klebold seemed inseparable and troublesome. In Columbine’s hallways, they spoke broken German and referred often to ‘4-20,’ Hitler’s birthday and the day they chose for their assault. . . . Some Columbine students said the violent side of Harris and Klebold became more obvious in recent months. They became obsessively interested in World War II, Nazi imagery, Adolf Hitler. John House, 17, a Columbine senior, told reporters that when he went bowling with Klebold, ‘when he would do something good, he would shout ‘Heil Hitler’ and throw up his hand. It just made everyone mad.’ . . . .”

In FTR #995, we examined the Atomwaffen Neo-Nazi group. Atomwaffen member Andrew Oneschuk was about to join Ukraine’s neo-Nazi Azov Battalion. ” . . . . . . . Andrew, who was one-eighth Ukrainian, took to the cause, chatting with fighters and their allies. He began formulating a plan to join the Azov Battalion, a notoriously brutal band of international fighters helping in the resistance against the Russians. . . . Andrew took it further, eventually adopting the online handle “Borovikov,” after a famous Russian neo-Nazi gang leader. That spring, he hung an SS flag in his bedroom as well as a giant swastika. . . .”

Online networking between resentful, sex-deprived men who call themselves “incels” (a contraction of  “involuntary celibates”) overlap Nazi/Alt-Right elements. The ideological collision of the online “incels” and the #MeToo movement may well generate some truly pathological violence. “. . . . The alt-right, right-wing populism, men’s rights groups and a renewed white supremacist movement have capitalized on many white men’s feeling of loss in recent years. The groups vary in how they diagnose society’s ills and whom they blame, but they provide a sense of meaning and place for their followers. And as different extremist groups connect online, they draw on one another’s membership bases, tactics and worldviews, allowing membership in one group to become a gateway to other extremist ideologies as well. Today, for example, posts on Incel.me, an incel forum, debate joining forces with the alt-right and argue that Jews are to blame for incels’ oppression. On one thread, users fantasized that if they were dictators, they would not only create harems and enslave women, but also ‘gas the Jews.’ . . . . By dividing the world into us-versus-them and describing vast injustice at the hands of the supposedly powerful, these groups, experts say, can prime adherents for violence. . . .”

Incel culture is metastasizing into “lone-wolf”/leaderless resistance terrorism. ” . . . . In 2014, a gaming award ceremony set to honor the feminist critic Anita Sarkeesian received a bomb threat; an anonymous harasser threatened to detonate a device unless her award was rescinded. Before Milo Yiannopoulos was a well-known alt-right figure, feminists knew him as one of the primary architects of Gamergate, a movement of young men who harassed and threatened women in the videogaming industry. Two fans of Mr. Yiannopoulos were charged with shooting a protester outside of one of his speeches. . . .”

Nazi killer Anders Breivik embodied the overlap between Alt-Right white supremacy and institutionalized misogyny: ” . . . . On July 22, Breivik slaughtered 77 of his countrymen, most of them teenagers, in Oslo and at a summer camp on the island of Utøya, because he thought they or their parents were the kinds of ‘politically correct’ liberals who were enabling Muslim immigration. But Breivik was almost as voluble on the subjects of feminism, the family, and fathers’ rights as he was on Islam. ‘The most direct threat to the family is ‘divorce on demand,’ ‘ he wrote in the manifesto he posted just before he began his deadly spree. ‘The system must be reformed so that the father will be awarded custody rights by default.’ The manosphere lit up. Said one approving poster at The Spearhead, an online men’s rights magazine for the ‘defense of ourselves, our families and our fellow men’: ‘What could be more ‘an eye for an eye’ than to kill the children of those who were so willing to destroy men’s families and destroy the homeland of men?’ . . . .”

The “psycho-political” polarization of the #MeToo movement and the “incels” misogynist community holds devastating potential.

Program Highlights Include:

1.–Journalist Ronan Farrow’s authorship of the New Yorker article that took down Harvey Weinstein. (For more discussion of the #MeToo Movement and weaponized feminism, see FTR #’s 998, 999, 1000, 1001.)
2.–Farrow’s State Department work suggestive of involvement with the intelligence community.  “. . . .  Post-law school: Lands a job at the State Department, as a special advisor focusing on conflict in Afghanistan and Pakistan. . . .”
3.–Farrow’s co-authorship of the New Yorker article that took down former New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, a major Trump nemesis, who was also criticizing and investigating other individuals and institutions associated with the Trump/GOP power elite.  “. . . . Schneiderman had already been declared ‘the man the banks fear most’ by the liberal magazine ‘The American Prospect.’ . . . . In the days since November 9, Schneiderman fired off a letter warning Trump not to drop White House support of Obama’s Clean Power Plan, introduced a bill in the state Legislature to give New Yorkers cost-free contraception if the Affordable Care Act is dismantled, threatened to sue after Trump froze EPA funding of clean air and water programs, and joined a lawsuit that argues that Trump’s executive order on immigration is not just unconstitutional and un-American, but it brings profound harm to the residents of New York State. . . . He’s on the opposite side of the Clean Power Plan fight from Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, since named head of the EPA, and who Schneiderman labeled a ‘dangerous and unqualified choice.’ . . . ”
4.–Schneiderman was also investigating the powerful, well-connected NXIVM cult, one of whose associates was Roger Stone, the long-time Trump/GOP dirty trickster who signaled the #MeToo takedown of Senator Al Franken.

Alternative Hypotheses in the “Chemical Warfare” Strike Meme

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

Walkin’ the Snake in India: Supplement to the Hindutva Fascism Series

In numerous programs, we have highlighted the Nazi tract Serpent’s Walk, which deals, in part, with the rehabilitation of the Third Reich’s reputation and the transformation of Hitler into a hero. In FTR #’s 988 and 989, 990, 991, and 992, we detailed the Hindutva fascism of Narendra Modi, his BJP Party and supportive elements, tracing the evolution of Hindutva fascism through the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi and up to the present. It appears that a Serpent’s Walk scenario is indeed unfolding in India. A recent book a picture of both Adolf Hitler and Narendra Modi standing next to Barack Obama, Mahatma Gandhi, and Nelson Mandela, A similar, Hitler-glorifying book was marketed to Gujarati school children when Modi governed the region. Hitler is well-regarded in segments of Indian society, in part due to the efforts of Bal Thackeray and his Shriv Sena party. For many years, Shriv Sena was an ally of Modi’s Hindutva fascist BJP. All of the contents of this website as of 12/19/2014–Dave Emory’s 37+ years of research and broadcasting–as well as hours of videotaped lectures are available on a 32GB flash drive. Dave offers his programs and articles for free–your support is very much appreciated.