FTR #958 Miscellaneous Articles and Updates

Updat­ing var­i­ous paths of inquiry and open­ing new ones, this pro­gram high­lights some ter­ri­fy­ing pos­si­bil­i­ties, present and future.

After set­ting forth Yale his­to­ri­an Tim­o­thy Sny­der’s opin­ion that Trump would try to stage a Reich­stag Fire type event, we chron­i­cle Trump’s desire to amend or elim­i­nate the First Amend­ment of the Con­sti­tu­tion and “loosen” the libel laws.

Much of the pro­gram updates ter­ri­fy­ing devel­op­ments in the area of what we have called “tech­no­crat­ic fas­cism,” includ­ing Face­book’s plans to imple­ment brain-to-com­put­er inter­face that would per­mit Face­book (and oth­ers) to tap into the net­work’s users thoughts. This tech­nol­o­gy is being over­seen and devel­oped by Face­book’s head of R & D–Regina Dugan–the for­mer head of DARPA. Face­book’s Build­ing 8 R & D pro­gram is pat­terned after DARPA.

Ama­zon is intro­duc­ing the new Echo Look, which will put a cam­era, con­nect­ed to an arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, in peo­ple’s bed­rooms, osten­si­bly to pro­vide them with real-time fash­ion cri­tique.

Next, we high­light the fact that arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence quick­ly absorbs human racial and gen­der bias­es, which bodes poor­ly for our future.

The broad­cast con­cludes with a look at the lat­est alleged “Russ­ian” hack–that of French pres­i­dent Emanuel Macron. The hacked doc­u­ments con­tained Cyril­lic meta­da­ta, some­thing Russ­ian intel­li­gence would NOT have done.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Face­book’s com­mu­ni­ca­tion of inti­mate data on stressed and trou­bled teenagers to adver­tis­ers and oth­er third par­ties; the com­plete lack of civ­il lib­er­ties and pri­va­cy over­sight of the impend­ing Face­book and Ama­zon tech­nolo­gies; review of the analy­sis of the alleged “Russ­ian” hacks, doc­u­ment­ing the ludi­crous nature of the asser­tions; the lat­est alleged hack by the Shad­ow Bro­kers, involv­ing the com­mu­ni­ca­tion of white suprema­cist ide­ol­o­gy and an asser­tion that the cul­prits are pro-Trump U.S. Deep State insid­ers.

What Was This Guy Doing at Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras’ Party?

In FTR #888, we detailed Glenn Green­wald’s years-long (pre-“journalist”) career run­ning pro-bono legal inter­fer­ence for Nazi killers and the lead­er­less resis­tance strat­e­gy. At their par­ty cel­e­brat­ing receipt of the pres­ti­gious Polk Award, Green­wald and Lau­ra Poitras had Nazi troll/hacker Andrew Aueren­heimer as a guest. Aueren­heimer (pic­tured at right) is also the site archi­tect for the “Dai­ly Stormer,” arguably the lead­ing white suprema­cist blog/website. 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.

FTR #952 Be Afraid, Be VERY Afraid: Update on Technocratic Fascism

One of the illu­sions har­bored by many–in par­tic­u­lar, young peo­ple who have grown up with the inter­net, social net­works and mobile technology–sees dig­i­tal activ­i­ty as pri­vate. Noth­ing could be fur­ther from the truth. Even before the cyber-lib­er­tar­i­an poli­cies advo­cat­ed by indi­vid­u­als like John Per­ry Bar­low, Eddie Snow­den, Julian Assange and oth­ers became man­i­fest in the Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s were imple­ment­ed by the Trump admin­is­tra­tion and the GOP-con­trolled con­gress, dig­i­tal affairs were sub­ject to an extra­or­di­nary degree of manip­u­la­tion by a mul­ti­tude of inter­ests.

We begin our exam­i­na­tion of tech­no­crat­ic fas­cism with a look at the cor­po­rate foun­da­tion of Poke­mon Go. Infor­ma­tion about the back­ground of Poke­mon Go’s devel­op­er (Niantic) and the devel­op­ment of the firm is detailed in an arti­cle from Net­work World. In addi­tion to the for­mi­da­ble nature of the intel­li­gence agen­cies involved with gen­er­at­ing the cor­po­rate foun­da­tion of Poke­mon Go (Key­hole, Inc.; Niantic), note the unnerv­ing nature of the infor­ma­tion that can be gleaned from the Android phone of any­one who down­loads the “app.”

Poke­mon Go was seen as enhanc­ing the “Cool Japan Strat­e­gy” of Prime Min­is­ter Shin­zo Abe. The “Cool Japan Pro­mo­tion Fund” was imple­ment­ed by Abe (the grand­son of Nobo­suke Kishi, a Japan­ese war crim­i­nal who signed Japan’s dec­la­ra­tion of war against the U.S. and became the coun­try’s first post­war Prime Min­is­ter) to “raise the inter­na­tion­al pro­file of the country’s mass cul­ture.”

The Finance Min­is­ter of Japan is Taro Aso, one of the enthu­si­asts of Nazi polit­i­cal strat­e­gy high­light­ed below. The “Cool Japan pro­mo­tion Fund” would have been under his admin­is­tra­tion, with Tomo­mi Ina­da func­tion­ing as his admin­is­tra­tor for the pro­gram. Now serv­ing as Japan’s Defense Min­is­ter, Ina­da is anoth­er advo­cate of Nazi polit­i­cal strat­e­gy.

Next, we turn to anoth­er man­i­fes­ta­tion of Poke­mon Go. The “Alt-Right” (read “Nazi”) move­ment is using Poke­mon Go to recruit kids to the Nazi cause. Con­sid­er this against the back­ground of Niantic, the Cool Japan strat­e­gy and the pro-Nazi fig­ures involved with it. Con­sid­er this also, in con­junc­tion with the Naz­i­fied AI devel­oped and deployed by Robert and Rebekah Mer­cer, Steve Ban­non, Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca and the “Alt-Right” milieu with which they asso­ciate.

A recent “New York­er” arti­cle by Jane May­er con­cern­ing Robert Mer­cer keys some inter­est­ing thoughts about Mer­cer, Ban­non, the Alt-Right Wik­iLeaks and the Naz­i­fied AI we spoke of in FTR #‘s 948 and 949. In FTR #946, we not­ed this con­cate­na­tion’s cen­tral place in the Face­book con­stel­la­tion, a posi­tion that has posi­tioned them to act deci­sive­ly on the polit­i­cal land­scape.

We note sev­er­al things about the May­er piece:

She writes of Mer­cer’s sup­port for the Alt-Right–Mercer helps fund Ban­non’s Bre­it­bart: “. . . . In Feb­ru­ary, David Mager­man, a senior employ­ee at Renais­sance, spoke out about what he regards as Mercer’s wor­ri­some influ­ence. Mager­man, a Demo­c­rat who is a strong sup­port­er of Jew­ish caus­es, took par­tic­u­lar issue with Mercer’s empow­er­ment of the alt-right, which has includ­ed anti-Semit­ic and white-suprema­cist voic­es. . . .”

Mer­cer is racist, feel­ing that racism only exists in con­tem­po­rary black cul­ture: “. . . . Mer­cer, for his part, has argued that the Civ­il Rights Act, in 1964, was a major mis­take. Accord­ing to the one­time Renais­sance employ­ee, Mer­cer has assert­ed repeat­ed­ly that African-Amer­i­cans were bet­ter off eco­nom­i­cal­ly before the civ­il-rights move­ment. (Few schol­ars agree.) He has also said that the prob­lem of racism in Amer­i­ca is exag­ger­at­ed. The source said that, not long ago, he heard Mer­cer pro­claim that there are no white racists in Amer­i­ca today, only black racists. . . .”

His work at IBM was fund­ed in part by DARPA, strong­ly imply­ing that the DOD has applied some of the Mer­cer tech­nol­o­gy: “. . . . Yet, when I.B.M. failed to offer ade­quate sup­port for Mer­cer and Brown’s trans­la­tion project, they secured addi­tion­al fund­ing from DARPA, the secre­tive Pen­ta­gon pro­gram. Despite Mercer’s dis­dain for ‘big gov­ern­ment,’ this fund­ing was essen­tial to his ear­ly suc­cess. . . .”

In a 2012 anti-Oba­ma pro­pa­gan­da film fund­ed by Cit­i­zens Unit­ed, Steve Ban­non bor­rowed from “The Tri­umph of the Will: “. . . . Many of these [dis­il­lu­sioned Oba­ma] vot­ers became the cen­tral fig­ures of ‘The Hope & the Change,’ an anti-Oba­ma film that Ban­non and Cit­i­zens Unit­ed released dur­ing the 2012 Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Con­ven­tion. After Cad­dell saw the film, he point­ed out to Ban­non that its open­ing imi­tat­ed that of ‘Tri­umph of the Will,’ the 1935 ode to Hitler, made by the Nazi film­mak­er Leni Riefen­stahl. Ban­non laughed and said, ‘You’re the only one that caught it!’ In both films, a plane flies over a blight­ed land, as omi­nous music swells; then clouds in the sky part, augur­ing a new era. . . .”

Next, we return to the sub­ject of Bit­coin and cyber-lib­er­tar­i­an pol­i­cy. We have explored Bit­coin in a num­ber of programs–FTR #‘s 760, 764, 770 and 785.

An impor­tant new book by David Golum­bia sets forth the tech­no­crat­ic fas­cist pol­i­tics under­ly­ing Bit­coin. Known to vet­er­an listeners/readers as the author of an oft-quot­ed arti­cle deal­ing with tech­no­crat­ic fas­cism, Golum­bia has pub­lished a short, impor­tant book about the right-wing extrem­ism under­ly­ing Bit­coin. (Pro­grams on tech­no­crat­ic fas­cism include: FTR #‘s 851, 859, 866, 867.)

In an excerpt from the book, we see dis­turb­ing ele­ments of res­o­nance with the views of Stephen Ban­non and some of the philo­soph­i­cal influ­ences on him. Julius Evola, “Men­cius Mold­bug” and Ban­non him­self see our civ­i­liza­tion as in decline, at a crit­i­cal “turn­ing point,” and in need of being “blown up” (as Evola put it) or need­ing a “shock to the sys­tem.”

Note that the Cypher­punk’s Man­i­festo (pub­lished by the Elec­tron­ic Fron­tier Foun­da­tion) and the 1996 “Dec­la­ra­tion of the Inde­pen­dence of Cyber­space” writ­ten by the lib­er­tar­i­an activist, Grate­ful Dead lyri­cist, Elec­tron­ic Fron­tier Foun­da­tion founder John Per­ry Bar­low decry gov­ern­men­tal reg­u­la­tion of the dig­i­tal sys­tem. (EFF is a lead­ing “dig­i­tal rights” and tech­nol­o­gy indus­try advo­ca­cy orga­ni­za­tion.)

The libertarian/fascist eth­ic of the dig­i­tal world was artic­u­lat­ed by Bar­low.

Note how the “free­dom” advo­cat­ed by Bar­low et al has played out: the Trump admin­is­tra­tion (imple­ment­ing the desires of cor­po­rate Amer­i­ca) has “dereg­u­lat­ed” the inter­net. All this in the name of “free­dom.”

In FTR #854, we not­ed the curi­ous pro­fes­sion­al resume of Bar­low, con­tain­ing such dis­parate ele­ments as–lyricist for the Grate­ful Dead (“Far Out!”); Dick Cheney’s cam­paign man­ag­er (not so “Far Out!”); a vot­er for white supremacist/segregationist George Wal­lace in the 1968 Pres­i­den­tial cam­paign (very “Un-Far Out!”).

For our pur­pos­es, his most note­wor­thy pro­fes­sion­al under­tak­ing is his found­ing of the EFF–The Elec­tron­ic Fron­tier Foun­da­tion. A lead­ing osten­si­ble advo­cate for inter­net free­dom, the EFF has endorsed tech­nol­o­gy and embraced per­son­nel inex­tri­ca­bly linked with a CIA-derived milieu embod­ied in Radio Free Asi­a’s Open Tech­nol­o­gy Fund. (For those who are, under­stand­ably, sur­prised and/or skep­ti­cal, we dis­cussed this at length and in detail in FTR #‘s 891 and 895.)

Next, we present an arti­cle that brings to the fore some inter­est­ing ques­tions about Bar­low, the CIA and the very gen­e­sis of social media.

We offer Ms. Sun­der­son­’s obser­va­tions, stress­ing that Bar­low’s fore­shad­ow­ing of the com­mu­ni­ca­tion func­tions inher­ent in social media and his pres­ence at CIA head­quar­ters (by invi­ta­tion!) sug­gest that Bar­low not only has strong ties to CIA but may have been involved in the con­cep­tu­al gen­e­sis that spawned CIA-con­nect­ed enti­ties such as Face­book.

In FTR #951, we observed that Richard B. Spencer, one of Trump’s Nazi back­ers, has begun a web­site with Swedish Alt-Righter Daniel Friberg, part of the Swedish fas­cist milieu to which Carl Lund­strom belongs. In FTR #732 (among oth­er pro­grams), we not­ed that it was Lund­strom who financed the Pirate Bay web­site, on which Wik­iLeaks held forth for quite some time. In FTR #745, we doc­u­ment­ed that top Assange aide and Holo­caust-denier Joran Jer­mas (aka “Israel Shamir”) arranged the Lundstrom/WikiLeaks liai­son. (Jer­mas han­dles Wik­iLeaks Russ­ian oper­a­tions, a point of inter­est in the wake of the 2016 cam­paign.)

It is a good bet that Lundstrom/Pirate Bay/WikiLeaks et al were data min­ing the many peo­ple who vis­it­ed the Wik­iLeaks site.

Might Lundstrom/Jermas/Assange et al have shared the volu­mi­nous data they may well have mined with Mercer/Cambridge Analytica/Bannon’s Naz­i­fied AI?

We con­clude with recap of Microsoft researcher Kate Craw­ford’s obser­va­tions at the SXSW event. Craw­ford gave a speech about her work titled “Dark Days: AI and the Rise of Fas­cism,” the pre­sen­ta­tion high­light­ed the social impact of machine learn­ing and large-scale data sys­tems. The take home mes­sage? By del­e­gat­ing pow­ers to Bid Data-dri­ven AIs, those AIs could become fascist’s dream: Incred­i­ble pow­er over the lives of oth­ers with min­i­mal account­abil­i­ty: ” . . . .‘This is a fascist’s dream,’ she said. ‘Pow­er with­out account­abil­i­ty.’ . . . .”

We reit­er­ate, in clos­ing, that ” . . . . Palan­tir is build­ing an intel­li­gence sys­tem to assist Don­ald Trump in deport­ing immi­grants. . . .”

In FTR #757 we not­ed that Palan­tir is a firm dom­i­nat­ed by Peter Thiel, a main backer of Don­ald Trump.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Wik­iLeaks’ con­tin­ued prop­a­ga­tion of Alt-Right style Anti-Semit­ic pro­pa­gan­da: ” . . . . Now it is the dar­ling of the alt-right, reveal­ing hacked emails seem­ing­ly to influ­ence a pres­i­den­tial con­test, claim­ing the US elec­tion is ‘rigged.’ and descend­ing into con­spir­a­cy. Just this week on Twit­ter, it described the deaths by nat­ur­al caus­es of two of its sup­port­ers as a ‘bloody year for Wik­iLeaks.’ and warned of media out­lets ‘con­trolled by’ mem­bers of the Roth­schild fam­i­ly – a com­mon anti-Semit­ic trope. . . .”; assess­ing all of the data-min­ing poten­tial (cer­tain­ty) of Wik­iLeaks, Poke­mon Go and the (per­haps) Bar­low-inspired Social Media world against the back­ground of the Mercer/Bannon/Cambridge ana­lyt­i­ca Naz­i­fied AI.

“The Politics of Bitcoin: Software as Right-Wing Extremism” by David Golumbia

In pre­vi­ous pro­grams, we have high­light­ed tech­no­crat­ic fas­cism, embod­ied in a text excerpt­ed from an excel­lent arti­cle by David Golum­bia. In oth­er pro­grams, we have detailed the anarcho/fascist pol­i­tics under­ly­ing Bit­coin. Now, Mr. Golum­bia has pub­lished a book about Bit­coin, as excel­lent as it is short (77 pages of text.) It should be not­ed that the apoc­a­lyp­tic, dystopi­an view of our civ­i­liza­tion epit­o­mized by the Bit­coin crowd is embraced by Steve Ban­non and the philo­soph­i­cal influ­ences on him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And here’s its trend­ing pol­i­tics feed…

Notice any­thing miss­ing?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bannon’s read­ings tend to have one thing in com­mon: the view that tech­nocrats have put West­ern civ­i­liza­tion on a down­ward tra­jec­to­ry and that only a shock to the sys­tem can reverse its decline. And they tend to have a dark, apoc­a­lyp­tic tone that at times echoes Bannon’s own pub­lic remarks over the years—a sense that human­i­ty is at a hinge point in his­to­ry. . . .”

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

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

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

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

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

Supplement to the Tulsi Gabbard Analysis

In FTR #‘s 941 and 942 we exam­ined the polit­i­cal his­to­ry and milieu of Tul­si Gab­bard (D‑HI), a “ris­ing star” in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty, one of the dri­ving forces behind the Bernie Sanders phe­nom­e­non, and net­worked with Naren­dra Mod­i’s BJP and the RSS, the Hin­du fascist/organization that assas­si­nat­ed Gand­hi. A “Huff­in­g­ton Post” arti­cle from “Civ­il Beat” seemed curi­ous­ly unable to find a pub­lic state­ment by Gab­bard about her mem­ber­ship in a Hare Krish­na cult off­shoot head­ed by Chris But­ler. She states her asso­ci­a­tion with But­ler, aka aka Jagad Guru Sid­dhaswaru­panan­da Parama­ham­sa, in a read­i­ly avail­able video. “Civ­il Beat” is a pub­li­ca­tion found­ed by Pierre Omid­yar (of “First Look Media”), who helped to finance Mod­i’s elec­tion.

FTR #943 The Gehlen Gang, the High-Profile Hacks and the New Cold War

With a new Cold War gain­ing momen­tum and charges of Russ­ian inter­fer­ence in the U.S. elec­tion, this pro­gram takes stock of infor­ma­tion point­ing in the oth­er direc­tion. After review­ing pre­vi­ous dis­cus­sion of why the DNC, John Podes­ta and NSA “hacks” do not with­stand scruti­ny, the broad­cast sets forth infor­ma­tion indi­cat­ing that Ukrain­ian fas­cists and relat­ed ele­ments may well be the authors of a “cyber false-flag” oper­a­tion.

Not only is the so-called “evi­dence” char­ac­ter­is­tic of a rel­a­tive­ly clum­sy false-flag operation–albeit one con­duct­ed on the internet–but the so-called “experts,” link to the milieu of the Rein­hard Gehlen “Org.”

The joint CIA/FBI/NSA declas­si­fied ver­sion of the Intel­li­gence Report on Russ­ian hack­ing came out. There is no sub­stan­tive detail in the report:“ . . . . To sum­ma­rize, the report says that the CIA, FBI, and Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Agency believe that Russ­ian hackers—directed ulti­mate­ly by Vladimir Putin—hacked email accounts belong­ing to the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Com­mit­tee and to Clin­ton cam­paign chair­man John Podes­ta and then passed the mate­r­i­al they obtained on to Wik­iLeaks through a third par­ty. This was done, the report asserts, because the Rus­sians believed that Don­ald Trump would be friend­lier to their country’s inter­ests, as pres­i­dent, than Hillary Clin­ton. And … that’s about it. Not count­ing intro pages or appen­dices, the report is five pages long and does not include any descrip­tion of the actu­al evi­dence that Russ­ian actors were respon­si­ble for the DNC/Podesta hacks (an asser­tion that’s sup­port­ed by pub­licly avail­able evi­dence ana­lyzed by third par­ties) or the asser­tion that Putin ulti­mate­ly direct­ed the release of hacked mate­r­i­al in order to help elect Don­ald Trump (an asser­tion that’s hard­er to ver­i­fy inde­pen­dent­ly). . . . .”

The Bit­ly tech­nol­o­gy used in the hacks enabled the entire world to see what was going on! This strong­ly indi­cates a cyber-false flag oper­a­tion: ” . . . . Using Bit­ly allowed ‘third par­ties to see their entire cam­paign includ­ing all their tar­gets— some­thing you’d want to keep secret,’ Tom Finney, a researcher at Secure­Works, told Moth­er­board. It was one of Fan­cy Bear’s ‘gravest mis­takes,’ as Thomas Rid, a pro­fes­sor at King’s Col­lege who has close­ly stud­ied the case, put it in a new piece pub­lished on Thurs­day in Esquire, as it gave researchers unprece­dent­ed vis­i­bil­i­ty into the activ­i­ties of Fan­cy Bear, link­ing dif­fer­ent parts of its larg­er cam­paign togeth­er. . . .”

It should be not­ed that while this report is signed off on by the CIA, NSA, and FBI, the FBI nev­er exam­ined the DNC’s hacked serv­er. Instead, accord­ing to the DNC, the job was out­sourced to Crowd­Strike! Nei­ther the FBI, nor any oth­er U.S. gov­ern­ment enti­ty has run an inde­pen­dent foren­sic analy­sis on the sys­tem! ” . . . Six months after the FBI first said it was inves­ti­gat­ing the hack of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Committee’s com­put­er net­work, the bureau has still not request­ed access to the hacked servers, a DNC spokesman said. No US gov­ern­ment enti­ty has run an inde­pen­dent foren­sic analy­sis on the sys­tem, one US intel­li­gence offi­cial told Buz­zFeed News. . . .The FBI has instead relied on com­put­er foren­sics from a third-par­ty tech secu­ri­ty com­pa­ny, Crowd­Strike, which first deter­mined in May of last year that the DNC’s servers had been infil­trat­ed by Rus­sia-linked hack­ers, the U.S. intel­li­gence offi­cial told Buz­zFeed News. . .‘Crowd­Strike is pret­ty good. There’s no rea­son to believe that any­thing that they have con­clud­ed is not accu­rate,’ the intel­li­gence offi­cial said, adding they were con­fi­dent Rus­sia was behind the wide­spread hacks. . . It’s unclear why the FBI didn’t request access to the DNC servers, and whether it’s com­mon prac­tice when the bureau inves­ti­gates the cyber­at­tacks against pri­vate enti­ties by state actors, like when the Sony Cor­po­ra­tion was hacked by North Korea in 2014. Buz­zFeed News spoke to three cyber­se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­nies who have worked on major breach­es in the last 15 months, who said that it was “par for the course” for the FBI to do their own foren­sic research into the hacks. None want­ed to com­ment on the record on anoth­er cyber­se­cu­ri­ty company’s work, or the work being done by a nation­al secu­ri­ty agency. . . .”

The FBI claims that the DNC denied them access to the servers! Right! Note the promi­nence of Crowd­Strike in this imbroglio. More about them below. ” . . . . The FBI struck back at the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Com­mit­tee on Thurs­day, accus­ing it of deny­ing fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tors access to its com­put­er sys­tems and ham­string­ing its inves­ti­ga­tion into the infil­tra­tion of DNC servers by Rus­sia-backed hack­ers. ‘The FBI repeat­ed­ly stressed to DNC offi­cials the neces­si­ty of obtain­ing direct access to servers and data, only to be rebuffed until well after the ini­tial com­pro­mise had been mit­i­gat­ed. This left the FBI no choice but to rely upon a third par­ty for infor­ma­tion,’ a senior law enforce­ment offi­cial told Buz­zFeed News in a state­ment. ‘These actions caused sig­nif­i­cant delays and inhib­it­ed the FBI from address­ing the intru­sion ear­li­er.’ . . . The war­ring state­ments are the lat­est twists in an extra­or­di­nary stand­off between the Democ­rats and fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tors that reached a fever pitch over the bureau’s probe into Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­nee Hillary Clinton’s pri­vate email serv­er. . . . The FBI announced it was inves­ti­gat­ing the hack of the DNC’s servers in July, after a third-par­ty com­put­er secu­ri­ty firm, Crowd­strike, said it had evi­dence of Krem­lin-backed hack­ers infil­trat­ing its sys­tem. . . .”

The DNC respond­ed to the FBI’s counter-asser­tion by reassert­ing that it’s giv­ing the FBI full access to what­ev­er it request­ed. If there’s a prob­lem with the FBI get­ting access to that serv­er, it’s a prob­lem between the FBI and Crowd­strike: ” . . . The FBI had pre­vi­ous­ly told law­mak­ers on the Hill that the DNC had not allowed fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tors to access their servers. After Buz­zFeed News report­ed on Wednes­day that the DNC claimed FBI agents had nev­er asked for the servers, con­gres­sion­al offi­cials pres­sured the FBI for answers. A senior law enforce­ment offi­cial issued a pub­lic state­ment on the mat­ter Thurs­day night. ‘Some­one is lying their ass off,’ a US intel­li­gence offi­cial said of the war­ring state­ments. But offi­cials with the DNC still assert they’ve ‘coop­er­at­ed with the FBI 150%.They’ve had access to any­thing they want. Any­thing that they desire. Any­thing they’ve asked, we’ve coop­er­at­ed,’ the DNC offi­cial said. ‘If any­body con­tra­dicts that it’s between Crowd­strike and the FBI.’ . . .With­out direct access to the com­put­er net­work, anoth­er US intel­li­gence offi­cial told Buz­zFeed, fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tors had been forced to rely on the find­ings of the pri­vate cyber­se­cu­ri­ty firm Crowd­strike for com­put­er foren­sics. From May through August of 2016, the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Com­mit­tee paid Crowd­strike $267,807 dol­lars for main­te­nance, data ser­vices and con­sult­ing, among oth­er things, accord­ing to fed­er­al records. . . .”

An impor­tant arti­cle under­scores that many tech experts dis­agree with the gov­ern­men­t’s so-called analy­sis: ” . . . . Yet despite the scores of breath­less media pieces that assert that Russia’s inter­fer­ence in the elec­tion is ‘case closed,‘might some skep­ti­cism be in order? Some cyber experts say ‘yes.’ . . . Cyber-secu­ri­ty experts have also weighed in. The secu­ri­ty edi­tor at Ars Tech­ni­ca observed that ‘Instead of pro­vid­ing smok­ing guns that the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment was behind spe­cif­ic hacks,’ the gov­ern­ment report ‘large­ly restates pre­vi­ous pri­vate sec­tor claims with­out pro­vid­ing any sup­port for their valid­i­ty.’ Robert M. Lee of the cyber-secu­ri­ty com­pa­ny Dra­gos not­ed that the report ‘reads like a poor­ly done ven­dor intel­li­gence report string­ing togeth­er var­i­ous aspects of attri­bu­tion with­out evi­dence.’ Cyber­se­cu­ri­ty con­sul­tant Jef­frey Carr not­ed that the report ‘mere­ly list­ed every threat group ever report­ed on by a com­mer­cial cyber­se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­ny that is sus­pect­ed of being Russ­ian-made and lumped them under the head­ing of Russ­ian Intel­li­gence Ser­vices (RIS) with­out pro­vid­ing any sup­port­ing evi­dence that such a con­nec­tion exists.’ . . .”

CrowdStrike–at the epi­cen­ter of the sup­posed Russ­ian hack­ing con­tro­ver­sy is note­wor­thy. Its co-founder and chief tech­nol­o­gy offi­cer, Dmit­ry Alper­ovitch is a senior fel­low at the Atlantic Coun­cil, financed by ele­ments that are at the foun­da­tion of fan­ning the flames of the New Cold War: “In this respect, it is worth not­ing that one of the com­mer­cial cyber­se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­nies the gov­ern­ment has relied on is Crowd­strike, which was one of the com­pa­nies ini­tial­ly brought in by the DNC to inves­ti­gate the alleged hacks. . . . Dmitri Alper­ovitch is also a senior fel­low at the Atlantic Coun­cil. . . . The con­nec­tion between [Crowd­strike co-founder and chief tech­nol­o­gy offi­cer Dmitri] Alper­ovitch and the Atlantic Coun­cil has gone large­ly unre­marked upon, but it is rel­e­vant giv­en that the Atlantic Council—which is is fund­ed in part by the US State Depart­ment, NATO, the gov­ern­ments of Latvia and Lithua­nia, the Ukrain­ian World Con­gress, and the Ukrain­ian oli­garch Vic­tor Pinchuk—has been among the loud­est voic­es call­ing for a new Cold War with Rus­sia. As I point­ed out in the pages of The Nation in Novem­ber, the Atlantic Coun­cil has spent the past sev­er­al years pro­duc­ing some of the most vir­u­lent spec­i­mens of the new Cold War pro­pa­gan­da. . . . ”

There was an update back in Decem­ber from the Ger­man gov­ern­ment regard­ing its assess­ment of the 2015 Bundgestag hacks (attrib­uted to “Fan­cy Bear” and “Cozy Bear,” as men­tioned in the San­dro Gay­ck­en post above) that it attrib­uted to APT28 and Rus­sia: while it asserts the hacks did indeed take place, the leaked doc­u­ments were lat­er deter­mined to be an insid­er leak (via Google trans­late). “ . . . . Accord­ing to the report, fed­er­al secu­ri­ty author­i­ties are con­vinced that not hack­ers had stolen the 2420 doc­u­ments pub­lished by the Inter­net plat­form Wik­ileaks in ear­ly Decem­ber. There was cer­tain­ly no evi­dence that the mate­r­i­al had been stolen in the cyber attack on the Bun­destag in 2015, it was called into secu­ri­ty crises. . . . ”

Anoth­er arti­cle details at length the skep­ti­cism and out­right scorn many cyber­se­cu­ri­ty experts feel con­cern­ing the report. ” . . . . Did the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment hack the DNC and feed doc­u­ments to Wik­iLeaks? There are real­ly two ques­tions here: who hacked the DNC, and who released the DNC doc­u­ments? These are not nec­es­sar­i­ly the same. An ear­li­er intru­sion into Ger­man par­lia­ment servers was blamed on the Rus­sians, yet the release of doc­u­ments to Wik­iLeaks is thought to have orig­i­nat­ed from an insid­er. [35] Had the Rus­sians hacked into the DNC, it may have been to gath­er intel­li­gence, while anoth­er actor released the doc­u­ments. But it is far from cer­tain that Russ­ian intel­li­gence ser­vices had any­thing to do with the intru­sions. Julian Assange says that he did not receive the DNC doc­u­ments from a nation-state. It has been point­ed out that Rus­sia could have used a third par­ty to pass along the mate­r­i­al. Fair enough, but for­mer UK diplo­mat Craig Mur­ray asserts: ‘I know who the source is… It’s from a Wash­ing­ton insid­er. It’s not from Rus­sia.’ [We won­der if it might have been Tul­si Gabbard–D.E.] [36] . . . .”

Exem­pli­fy­ing some of the points of dis­sen­sion in the above-linked sto­ry: ” . . . . Cyber­se­cu­ri­ty ana­lyst Robert Gra­ham was par­tic­u­lar­ly blis­ter­ing in his assess­ment of the government’s report, char­ac­ter­iz­ing it as “full of garbage.” The report fails to tie the indi­ca­tors of com­pro­mise to the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment. ‘It con­tains sig­na­tures of virus­es that are pub­licly avail­able, used by hack­ers around the world, not just Rus­sia. It con­tains a long list of IP address­es from per­fect­ly nor­mal ser­vices, like Tor, Google, Drop­box, Yahoo, and so forth. Yes, hack­ers use Yahoo for phish­ing and mal­ad­ver­tis­ing. It doesn’t mean every access of Yahoo is an ‘indi­ca­tor of com­pro­mise’.’ Gra­ham com­pared the list of IP address­es against those accessed by his web brows­er, and found two match­es. ‘No,’ he con­tin­ues. ‘This doesn’t mean I’ve been hacked. It means I just had a nor­mal inter­ac­tion with Yahoo. It means the Griz­zly Steppe IoCs are garbage. . . .”

The source code used in the attacks traces back to Ukraine! ” . . . . In con­junc­tion with the report, the FBI and Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty pro­vid­ed a list of IP address­es it iden­ti­fied with Russ­ian intel­li­gence ser­vices. [22] Word­fence ana­lyzed the IP address­es as well as a PHP mal­ware script pro­vid­ed by the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty. In ana­lyz­ing the source code, Word­fence dis­cov­ered that the soft­ware used was P.A.S., ver­sion 3.1.0. It then found that the web­site that man­u­fac­tures the mal­ware had a site coun­try code indi­cat­ing that it is Ukrain­ian. [Note this!–D.E.] The cur­rent ver­sion of the P.A.S. soft­ware is 4.1.1, which is much new­er than that used in the DNC hack, and the lat­est ver­sion has changed ‘quite sub­stan­tial­ly.’ Word­fence notes that not only is the soft­ware ‘com­mon­ly avail­able,’ but also that it would be rea­son­able to expect ‘Russ­ian intel­li­gence oper­a­tives to devel­op their own tools or at least use cur­rent mali­cious tools from out­side sources.’ To put it plain­ly, Word­fence con­cludes that the mal­ware sam­ple ‘has no appar­ent rela­tion­ship with Russ­ian intel­li­gence.’ . . .”

The pro­gram con­cludes with a fright­en­ing piece of leg­is­la­tion signed into law by Barack Oba­ma in Decem­ber. It is an omi­nous por­tent of the use of gov­ern­ment and mil­i­tary pow­er to sup­press dis­sent­ing views as being “Russ­ian” pro­pa­gan­da tools! “. . . . The new law is remark­able for a num­ber of rea­sons, not the least because it merges a new McCarthy­ism about pur­port­ed dis­sem­i­na­tion of Russ­ian ‘pro­pa­gan­da’ on the Inter­net with a new Orwellian­ism by cre­at­ing a kind of Min­istry of Truth – or Glob­al Engage­ment Cen­ter – to pro­tect the Amer­i­can peo­ple from ‘for­eign pro­pa­gan­da and dis­in­for­ma­tion.’ . . . As part of the effort to detect and defeat these unwant­ed nar­ra­tives, the law autho­rizes the Cen­ter to: ‘Facil­i­tate the use of a wide range of tech­nolo­gies and tech­niques by shar­ing exper­tise among Fed­er­al depart­ments and agen­cies, seek­ing exper­tise from exter­nal sources, and imple­ment­ing best prac­tices.’ (This sec­tion is an appar­ent ref­er­ence to pro­pos­als that Google, Face­book and oth­er tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies find ways to block or brand cer­tain Inter­net sites as pur­vey­ors of ‘Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da’ or ‘fake news.’) . . .”

Pro­gram High­lights Include: review of infor­ma­tion from pre­vi­ous pro­grams link­ing the dis­in­for­ma­tion about the high-pro­file hacks to the milieu of Ukrain­ian fas­cism; review of Alexan­dra Chalu­pa’s role in dis­sem­i­nat­ing the “Rus­sia did it” meme; review of “Eddie the Friend­ly Spook” Snow­den’s role in the dis­in­for­ma­tion about the high-pro­file hacks; the imple­men­ta­tion of a fright­en­ing new law autho­riz­ing the Pen­ta­gon and oth­er gov­ern­ment agen­cies to act to counter any infor­ma­tion seen as “Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da.”

FTR #938 The Trumpenkampfverbande, Part 12: Settling In, Part 2 (The Underground Reich Comes Into Plain View, Part 5)

In FTR #‘s 891 and 895, we high­light­ed the Broad­cast­ing Board of Gov­er­nors, a Con­gres­sion­al fig leaf insti­tut­ed to dilute CIA con­trol over Amer­i­can for­eign broad­cast out­lets such as Radio Free Europe, Voice of Amer­i­ca and Radio Free Asia. In addi­tion to the broad­cast out­lets dis­cussed in the sto­ry that fol­lows, we note that the change from a “board of gov­er­nors” to a “CEO” to be appoint­ed by Trump also gives the nom­i­nee pow­er over Radio Free Asi­a’s Open Tech­nol­o­gy Fund, devel­op­er of numer­ous apps and oth­er tech­no­log­i­cal method­olo­gies favored by the so-called “pri­va­cy advo­cates.”

The replace­ment of the gov­er­nors is seen as a poten­tial boon to the Trump admin­is­tra­tion. “ . . . . ‘There’s some fear among the folks here, that the fire­wall will get dimin­ished and attacked and this could fall vic­tim to pro­pa­gan­da,’ the Repub­li­can offi­cial said. ‘They will hire the per­son they want, the cur­rent CEO does not stand a chance. This will pop up on Steve Bannon’s radar quick­ly. They are going to put a friend­ly per­son in that job.’ . . . . ”

The change will affect domes­tic broad­cast media as well. ” . . . . Because of the mod­i­fi­ca­tion of the Smith-Mundt Act in 2013, the BBG can now broad­cast in the U.S., too. But the influ­ence on the domes­tic mar­ket could be even more sub­tle, the Repub­li­can offi­cial warned. A BBG CEO influ­enced by the admin­is­tra­tion could pen­e­trate estab­lished media out­lets with pack­ages, series or oth­er news prod­ucts pro­duced by the BBG’s net­works but picked up and aired by tra­di­tion­al media like Fox News or Bre­it­bart. Many U.S. out­lets cur­rent­ly use con­tent from VOA. ‘No mon­ey would even change hands, you’ve had no effect on the bud­get,’ the offi­cial said. ‘But it will den­i­grate the prod­uct. . . . ’ ”

In the con­text of the changes made to the BBG, we review the polit­i­cal incli­na­tions of Ban­non: ” . . . The late Andrew Bre­it­bart, founder of the web­site Ban­non went on to lead, called Ban­non the “Leni Riefen­stahl of the Tea Par­ty movement”—a ref­er­ence to the infa­mous cre­ator of Nazi pro­pa­gan­da films. While insist­ing to a Wall Street Jour­nal reporter in 2011 that his work isn’t pro­pa­gan­da, Ban­non went on to cite Riefen­stahl among his main influ­ences . . . ”

Next, we turn to the sub­ject of free trade, on which Trump has had much to say, bash­ing Chi­na and Mex­i­co as coun­tries the U.S. should “put right” in their trade rela­tions with the U.S. It’s worth not­ing we haven’t heard Trump men­tion a trade war with Ger­many despite all his tirades against Chi­na and Mex­i­co. It rais­es the ques­tion of why, since Germany’s unprece­dent­ed and dam­ag­ing sur­plus­es make it such an obvi­ous trade war tar­get.

” . . . . There is one poten­tial trade war, how­ev­er, that few peo­ple have so far noticed — but which could soon be his eas­i­est tar­get. Ger­many. Giv­en the size of its pop­u­la­tion, it runs a far larg­er trade sur­plus than Chi­na — and a mas­sive sur­plus with the U.S. in par­tic­u­lar. Even bet­ter, the indus­tries to pick off are rel­a­tive­ly sim­ple to iden­ti­fy, and would actu­al­ly have a chance of cre­at­ing well-paid Amer­i­can jobs. . . .

“. . . . Germany’s trade sur­plus is absolute­ly mas­sive, and unprece­dent­ed in mod­ern indus­tri­al his­to­ry. Last year it hit 8.9% of gross domes­tic prod­uct, and it is like­ly to break through 9% before the end of 2016. Glob­al­ly, it is sec­ond in size only to China’s, but giv­en that Ger­many is a far small­er coun­try, it is only fair to mea­sure it on a per capi­ta basis — and when you look at it that way, Germany’s sur­plus is sev­en times big­ger than China’s. . . . Much of Germany’s trade sur­plus is clear­ly the result of cur­ren­cy manip­u­la­tion. The euro has depressed the real val­ue of the country’s exports, allow­ing it rack up those huge exports. You can argue about whether China’s cur­ren­cy is real­ly at its fair val­ue or not — but no one can real­ly dis­pute that Germany’s cur­ren­cy is way, way below what it would be if it still had the deutschemark. . . .”

Obvi­ous­ly, part of the answer lies in the fact that Deutsche Bank–a key ele­ment of the Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work and the Under­ground Reich–is owed hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars by Trump. Trump’s oth­er con­nec­tions run in the direc­tion of the Under­ground Reich as well. (The Trump/Deutsche Bank con­nec­tion is dis­cussed, in among oth­er pro­grams, FTR #‘s 920, 921, 922 and 927.)

We note in pass­ing that Ger­many is prepar­ing for a trade war with the U.S.–we don’t think one will real­ly take place, but we may be treat­ed to Trumpian “fake news” and/or pro­pa­gan­da. Ger­many is assert­ing that the fac­tors behind its enor­mous trade sur­plus can not be altered, because it is due to nat­u­ral­ly occur­ring cir­cum­stances like a rapid­ly aging pop­u­la­tion.

” . . . There are plen­ty of rea­sons for that. Germany’s cur­rent account sur­plus has nev­er been as high as it is this year and nev­er before has that sur­plus rep­re­sent­ed such a sig­nif­i­cant share of the country’s gross domes­tic prod­uct. Mak­ing mat­ters worse is the fact that the US is the largest con­sumer of Ger­man exports. . . .

“. . . . As high as it is, though, the cur­rent sur­plus is like­ly to con­tin­ue grow­ing. The recent fall in the euro’s val­ue rel­a­tive to the dol­lar fol­low­ing Trump’s elec­tion makes Ger­man prod­ucts and ser­vices even more com­pet­i­tive. And many econ­o­mists believe that the val­ue of the dol­lar will con­tin­ue to climb, which means that the val­ue of the euro against the dol­lar will shrink cor­re­spond­ing­ly. Their pre­dic­tions are based on recent indi­ca­tions that Trump’s announced eco­nom­ic stim­u­lus poli­cies will push up both America’s sov­er­eign debt load and its inter­est rates. . . .”

The pro­gram con­cludes with analy­sis of how Trump’s con­tin­ued involve­ment in his busi­ness empire (through his chil­dren) leaves him open to manip­u­la­tion. The Philip­pines is a good exam­ple: “ . . . . So, under the deal, Trump’s chil­dren will be paid mil­lions of dol­lars through­out their father’s pres­i­den­cy by Jose E.B. Anto­nio, the head of Cen­tu­ry Prop­er­ties.

“Duterte recent­ly named Anto­nio the spe­cial gov­ern­ment envoy to the Unit­ed States. The con­flicts here could not be more trou­bling or more bla­tant: Pres­i­dent Trump will be dis­cussing U.S. pol­i­cy in South­east Asia with one of his (or his children’s) busi­ness part­ners, a man who is the offi­cial rep­re­sen­ta­tive of a for­eign leader who likens him­self to Hitler. Also note that the Trump fam­i­ly has an enor­mous finan­cial inter­est in Duterte’s dead­ly cam­paign: Root­ing out crime in the Philip­pines is good for the real estate val­ues. . . . Duterte recent­ly named Anto­nio the spe­cial gov­ern­ment envoy to the Unit­ed States. The con­flicts here could not be more trou­bling or more bla­tant: Pres­i­dent Trump will be dis­cussing U.S. pol­i­cy in South­east Asia with one of his (or his children’s) busi­ness part­ners, a man who is the offi­cial rep­re­sen­ta­tive of a for­eign leader who likens him­self to Hitler. Also note that the Trump fam­i­ly has an enor­mous finan­cial inter­est in Duterte’s dead­ly cam­paign: Root­ing out crime in the Philip­pines is good for the real estate val­ues. . . . .”

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Trump’s busi­ness deal­ings in India, where mem­bers of the BJP par­ty fig­ure in the dis­po­si­tion of the oper­a­tions in that coun­try; Trump’s con­sid­er­a­tion of Bernie Sanders sup­port­er Tul­si Gab­bard for a cab­i­net posi­tion; “Alt-Right” king­pin Steve Ban­non’s high regard for Gab­bard; Gab­bard’s strong sup­port for Modi and net­work­ing with the BJP; Gab­bard’s net­work­ing with the RSS, the Indi­an fas­cist orga­ni­za­tion for which the BJP serves as a front.

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 #928 The Trumpenkampfverbande, Part 7: Locker Room Eclipse, Part 2

Con­tin­u­ing analy­sis of aspects of Don­ald Trump’s can­di­da­cy that have been eclipsed by his boor­ish atti­tude and behav­ior toward women, we note Trump’s use of thin­ly-veiled anti-Semit­ic rhetoric inti­mat­ing that Hillary Clin­ton is in bed with an inter­na­tion­al Jew­ish cabal. ” . . . . The speech was hinged to the orig­i­nal pur­pose of his cam­paign: to trade on the resent­ments of a restive rem­nant of white America—angry white men and the women who love them—and set the stage for may­hem in the wake of his like­ly elec­toral defeat. This was not your stan­dard, off-the-cuff Trump rant. This was a script­ed speech, deliv­ered with a teleprompter. It was craft­ed. It fea­tured the key words of right-wing com­plaints: “sov­er­eign,” “glob­al bankers” and “slan­der.” Real­ly, it came right out of a Nazi pro­pa­gan­da play­book. And when one con­sid­ers the themes com­mon between Nazi pro­pa­gan­da films and the films made by top Trump cam­paign staffers Stephen K. Ban­non and David Bossie (as ana­lyzed by Alter­Net), we should hard­ly be sur­prised. . . . The agen­da of the “media estab­lish­ment,” Trump said, was to elect “crooked” Hillary Clin­ton, in the ser­vice of “spe­cial glob­al inter­ests rig­ging the sys­tem.” There are a lot of ways in the land of Wingnut­tia to tele­graph that your tar­get is Jews, and these are two of them. Remem­ber them: You’ll be hear­ing a lot in com­ing days about the “media estab­lish­ment,” “glob­al spe­cial inter­ests,” oh, and “bankers.” . . . .”

Trump is also rhetor­i­cal­ly invok­ing the prospect of turn­ing to vio­lence to right the wrongs of the “rigged” elec­tion he has bruit­ed about. “ . . . . I watched his speech Thurs­day, and if I closed my eyes, I could smell the camp­fire smoke at the Mal­heur refuge and feel the Ore­gon win­ter wind on my face. Here were the con­spir­a­cies, the ref­er­ences to the shad­owy inter­na­tion­al cabals, the whis­pers about the ille­git­i­ma­cy of the Depart­ment of Jus­tice and the Tri­lat­er­al­ist coopt­ing of the FBI. It was like lis­ten­ing to an immod­est Ammon Bundy. We have to pro­tect our­selves from not just the gov­ern­ment (because it is only a pawn) but from the peo­ple who real­ly run it. We should be watch­ful, resilient, ready—and though he is reluc­tant, he will sac­ri­fice him­self, for he is the only one who can save us from the ter­ror. Don­ald Trump shout­ed out every fevered dystopi­an fan­ta­sy I heard on the refuge . . . . I was out­raged by Trump before. But now I am wor­ried. . . . Thurs­day, Don­ald Trump trav­eled a step fur­ther down the path of mil­i­tant right-wing rev­o­lu­tion. It wasn’t a call to arms, exact­ly. But it was far past the point of com­fort. . . .”

A major point of dis­cus­sion con­cerns Trump’s deputy cam­paign man­ag­er, David Bossie. Even as Trump accus­es Hillary of being a tool of the “elites,” Trump is uti­liz­ing Bossie, who is the head of Cit­i­zens Unit­ed. It was a law­suit by Bossie’s orga­ni­za­tion that opened the flood­gates to vir­tu­al­ly unlim­it­ed cam­paign fund­ing by the ultra rich, when the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Cit­i­zens Unit­ed. Bossie and Steven K. Ban­non, Trump’s cam­paign man­ag­er, have uti­lized pro­pa­gan­da tech­niques pio­neered by Hitler, Goebbels and com­pa­ny. ” . . . . The late Andrew Bre­it­bart, founder of the web­site Ban­non went on to lead, called Ban­non the “Leni Riefen­stahl of the Tea Par­ty movement”—a ref­er­ence to the infa­mous cre­ator of Nazi pro­pa­gan­da films. While insist­ing to a Wall Street Jour­nal reporter in 2011 that his work isn’t pro­pa­gan­da, Ban­non went on to cite Riefen­stahl among his main influ­ences. . . . Ivana Trump, the candidate’s first wife, told Van­i­ty Fair in 1990 that her hus­band kept a copy of Adolf Hitler’s My New Order, a col­lec­tion of speech­es that dis­play the Nazi dictator’s excep­tion­al abil­i­ty to manip­u­late real­i­ty, in a cab­i­net near his bed. . . . . The Nazi regime pro­duced a mas­sive amount of pro­pa­gan­da; it had an entire Min­istry of Pub­lic Enlight­en­ment and Pro­pa­gan­da, head­ed by Joseph Goebbels. A cen­tral tech­nique of Nazi pro­pa­gan­dists, accord­ing to the U.S. Holo­caust Memo­r­i­al Muse­um, was to cast Jews as out­siders and dan­ger­ous ene­mies of the Reich, ‘‘sub­hu­man’ crea­tures infil­trat­ing Aryan soci­ety.’ . . . In her analy­sis of Riefenstahl’s ‘Tri­umph of the Will,’ Price not­ed that ‘per­haps most crit­i­cal­ly, Germany’s come­back is por­trayed as well under­way; the view­er need only jump aboard. What is being said implic­it­ly is that there is no alter­na­tive.’ In ‘Bat­tle for Amer­i­ca,’ Ban­non and Bossie fol­low the same for­mu­la, posit­ing the Tea Par­ty move­ment as the band­wag­on to jump on. But the for­mu­la isn’t the only thing about the film that car­ries echoes of Goebbels: a researcher and coun­sel for the film was white nation­al­ist Robert Van­der­voort. . . .”

Pro­gram High­lights Include: The arrest of mili­tia mem­bers in Kansas for plot­ting an attack on Soma­li refugees, sched­uled for the day after Elec­tion Day; dis­cus­sion of UK Inde­pen­dence Par­ty leader Nigel Farage’s sup­port for Trump; the sup­port Trump has received from Russ­ian fas­cist Vladimir Zhiri­novsky; Zhiri­novsky’s fund­ing by Ger­man Nazi Ger­hard Frey; Frey’s dis­sem­i­na­tion of the dis­in­for­ma­tion that Lee Har­vey Oswald fired at Gen­er­al Edwin Walk­er; Frey’s close asso­ci­a­tion with Rein­hard Gehlen; Trump’s close rela­tion­ship with the Steuben Soci­ety.