Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.
The tag 'Fascism' is associated with 44 posts.

Heads We Win, Tails You Lose Your Retirement: Private Equity, Pension Funds, and the CRE Double Down

There’s blood in the water. With region­al banks poten­tial­ly look­ing at years of trou­ble ahead and inter­est rates well above the his­toric lows, dis­tress is per­me­at­ing the US com­mer­cial real estate (CRE) mar­kets. That’s been the CRE news, with the pri­vate equi­ty now pal­pa­bly excit­ed about all the dis­tressed real estate that’s bound to come on the mar­ket. A sup­ply and demand dis­lo­ca­tion that can turn blood in water into a gold laced sil­ver lin­ing for the enti­ties with cash on the side­lines. As we’ve seen, being the ‘cash on the side­lines’ oppor­tunis­ti­cal­ly wait­ing for things to fall apart or blow is a big part of the ‘Heads we win, tails you lose’ pri­vate equi­ty busi­ness mod­el. A busi­ness mod­el also root­ed in the fact that the fund man­agers charge high fees whether they’re invest­ments pan out or not. So we should­n’t be sur­prised to learn that one of the big invest­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties pri­vate equi­ty has been steer­ing bil­lions of dol­lars of pub­lic pen­sion mon­ey into in recent years is...*drumroll*...commercial real estate! With plans on shov­el­ing bil­lions more into the sec­tor going for­ward. JP Mor­gan is now pre­dict­ing these pen­sion funds are going to cre­ate a ‘floor’ in the CRE mar­kets. Yes, pri­vate equi­ty-led pen­sion funds are going to save the CRE mar­ket from com­plete col­lapse. At least that’s the plan. A plan that’s going to pay its pri­vate equi­ty man­agers hand­some­ly no mat­ter how it pans out. It’s all part of how Amer­i­can’s grow­ing retire­ment cri­sis is trans­lat­ing into pri­vate equi­ty’s grow­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty. The kind of cri­sis-dri­ven oppor­tu­ni­ty that pays hand­some­ly whether the under­ly­ing cri­sis grows or not.


The (Schedule F) Purge: Trump’s Big Revenge Plan, Brought to You By the Council for National Policy

It’s not a secret plot to purge the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment of its career staffers and replace them with par­ti­san hacks. It was a secret when then-Pres­i­dent Trump set the plot in motion 13 days before the 2020 elec­tion with an exec­u­tive order. The “Sched­ule F” exec­u­tive order plot — cen­tered around a bureau­crat­ic loop­hole dis­cov­ered in Jan­u­ary of 2019 by an obscure Trump admin­is­tra­tion offi­cial — opened the flood­gates. And while the mass fir­ings nev­er actu­al­ly took place in the final months of the Trump admin­is­tra­tion, those flood­gates remain open along with the plot. That’s the explo­sive rev­e­la­tion described in a pair of arti­cles put out by Axios back in July: The Sched­ule F plot con­tin­ues. The Trump admin­is­tra­tion isn’t wast­ing any time next time. A mass purge of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment will be one of the first moves of a sec­ond Trump admin­is­tra­tion. And now that Don­ald Trump has thrown his hat in the ring one more time the prospect of see­ing this plot put into effect is very real. But as we’re going to see, that ongo­ing plot is real whether or not Trump gets the nom­i­na­tion and ‘wins’ the race. Because the ongo­ing Sched­ule F effort isn’t just a MAGA-land plot. The pow­er­ful Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy (CNP) is deeply invest­ed in it, with the CNP’s Con­ser­v­a­tive Pol­i­cy Insti­tute (CPI) play­ing a lead­ing and grow­ing role. Sched­ule F is the plan. Or at least the start of the plan. As we’re also going to see, there’s a larg­er plot being devel­oped for what to do after the Sched­ule F purge and all the obsta­cles are out of the way. A larg­er plot for that appears to be inspired by none oth­er than Cur­tis “Men­cius Mold­bug” Yarvin, whose ideas for a post-demo­c­ra­t­ic Amer­i­ca are only grow­ing in elite con­ser­v­a­tive cir­cles. That’s the plot we’re going to be cov­er­ing in this post. The plans for Sched­ule F and beyond. Plans and tens of mil­lions of dol­lars and army of CNP-activists work­ing to make them a real­i­ty.


Me Ne Frego

In an ear­li­er post, we not­ed that Mela­nia Trump’s jacket–adorned with the state­ment “I Real­ly Don’t Care, Do U” res­onates with a key fas­cist mot­to. The phrase “Me Ne Frego” was put for­ward by Mus­soli­ni him­self. (“Il Duce” detailed his state­ment in his “The Doc­trine of Fas­cism) as a defin­i­tive state­ment of the exis­ten­tial eth­ic of the fas­cist stormtroop­er. WFMU-FM is pod­cast­ing For The Record–You can sub­scribe to the pod­cast HERE.


FTR #1161 Bio-Psy-Op Apocalypse Now, Part 21: What the Hell Does Dave Emory Mean by Bio-Psy-Op Apocalypse?

Begin­ning with dis­cus­sion of ris­ing dis­trust of Chi­na, the pro­gram notes the role in that ris­ing dis­trust of the coro­n­avirus. First detect­ed in Chi­na, the avail­able evi­dence chron­i­cled in numer­ous pro­grams points to the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic as a bio­log­i­cal war­fare false flag oper­a­tion and provocation–part of the Full Court Press against Chi­na. 

The bulk of the pro­gram con­sists of Mr. Emory read­ing arti­cles from The New York Times pub­lished over the course of the lock­down in the U.S. High­light­ing the stress expe­ri­enced by var­i­ous pop­u­la­tion groups and the behav­ioral and phys­i­o­log­i­cal symp­toms stem­ming from that stress, the articles–covering a peri­od from the spring through fall of 2020–document the man­i­fes­ta­tions of the “bio-psy-op apoc­a­lypse.”

The arti­cles chron­i­cle: Stress on mar­i­tal rela­tion­ships; duress on sex­u­al behav­ior, with New York and Los Ange­les (among oth­er cities) advis­ing peo­ple to mas­tur­bate, rather than engage in sex­u­al encoun­ters with oth­ers; psy­cho­log­i­cal dis­lo­ca­tion of chil­dren, who can’t play with oth­ers; psy­cho­log­i­cal dis­lo­ca­tion of ath­let­ic youths, who can’t com­pete in sports; work­ers who can’t inter­act at the office with their peers; stress on friend­ships; peo­ple los­ing their hair in clumps, because of stress; peo­ple grind­ing their teeth and crack­ing them; the effect of peo­ple wear­ing masks and lim­it­ing the abil­i­ty of oth­ers to respond to facial stimuli–an innate and impor­tant ele­ment of human psy­cho-social behav­ior; cities expe­ri­enc­ing soar­ing mur­der rates because of stress; the effect of lock­downs on street demon­stra­tions pur­suant to the deaths of George Floyd and Bre­an­na Tay­lor; ris­ing rates of domes­tic vio­lence; ris­ing con­sump­tion of alco­hol; ris­ing inci­dence of peo­ple feel­ing sui­ci­dal; ris­ing drug abuse; peo­ple fore­go­ing wear­ing masks and prac­tic­ing social dis­tanc­ing because of what psy­chol­o­gists call “Covid Fatigue;” peo­ple flock­ing to con­trar­i­ans oppos­ing var­i­ous pub­lic safe­ty mea­sures; peo­ple express­ing sup­port for polit­i­cal lead­ers because of feel­ings of inse­cu­ri­ty. 

Mr. Emory also opines that the pan­dem­ic may well have inter­dict­ed the pro­ject­ed “Blue Wave,” because peo­ple who might oth­er­wise have endorsed a more altru­is­tic polit­i­cal agen­da instead were feel­ing fright­ened and–as a result–more needy and self­ish.

Although Belarus­sians had put up with Alexan­der Lukashenko pri­or to the coro­n­avirus: “Trapped inside their coun­try by the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, many Belaru­sians began to chafe at the inhu­man­i­ty in Mr. Lukashenko’s rule and lan­guage that had once been easy to ignore. . . .” 

We con­clude with a look at the past, which may reflect on the future.

An aca­d­e­m­ic paper pro­duced by a Fed­er­al Reserve econ­o­mist posits the socio-polit­i­cal effects of the 1918 flu pan­dem­ic as a fac­tor con­tribut­ing to the rise of Nazism in Ger­many.

Cit­ed by numer­ous pub­li­ca­tions, includ­ing The New York Times, Bloomberg News and Politi­co, the study under­scores some of our asser­tions con­cern­ing the fas­cist and extreme right-wing ram­i­fi­ca­tions of the pan­dem­ic. 

This time­ly and very impor­tant study will be ref­er­enced in future dis­cus­sion of the psy­cho­log­i­cal, soci­o­log­i­cal and socio-eco­nom­ic aspects of the Covid-19 out­break.

Kris­t­ian Blick­le’s analy­sis under­scores points we have made about the demo­graph­ic, eco­nom­ic and psy­cho­log­i­cal dev­as­ta­tion the pan­dem­ic is hav­ing on the body politic.

“A new aca­d­e­m­ic paper pro­duced by the Fed­er­al Reserve Bank of New York con­cludes that deaths caused by the 1918 influen­za pan­dem­ic “pro­found­ly shaped Ger­man soci­ety” in sub­se­quent years and con­tributed to the strength­en­ing of the Nazi Par­ty.

“The paper, pub­lished this month and authored by New York Fed econ­o­mist Kris­t­ian Blick­le, exam­ined munic­i­pal spend­ing lev­els and vot­er extrem­ism in Ger­many from the time of the ini­tial influen­za out­break until 1933, and shows that ‘areas which expe­ri­enced a greater rel­a­tive pop­u­la­tion decline’ due to the pan­dem­ic spent ‘less, per capi­ta, on their inhab­i­tants in the fol­low­ing decade.’ . . .

“. . . . The paper’s find­ings are like­ly due to ‘changes in soci­etal pref­er­ences’ fol­low­ing the 1918 out­break, Blick­le argues — sug­gest­ing the influen­za pandemic’s dis­pro­por­tion­ate toll on young peo­ple may have ‘spurred resent­ment of for­eign­ers among the sur­vivors’ and dri­ven vot­ers to par­ties ‘whose plat­form matched such sen­ti­ments.’ The con­clu­sions come amid fears that the cur­rent coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic will shake up inter­na­tion­al pol­i­tics and spur extrem­ism around the world, as offi­cials and pub­lic health experts look to pre­vi­ous out­breaks for guid­ance on how to nav­i­gate the months and years to come. . . .”


“These Are Dictator Moves”: Is Trump Going Coup Coup?

Even rel­a­tive­ly staid polit­i­cal and nation­al secu­ri­ty insid­ers, as well as media out­lets are open­ly express­ing fear after a series of post-elec­tion shuf­fling by Trump at the Pen­ta­gon. ” . . . . The flur­ry of depar­tures appar­ent­ly sent shock­waves through the Depart­ment of Defense. A defense offi­cial told CNN that the sit­u­a­tion was ‘unset­tling,’ adding that ‘these are dic­ta­tor moves.’ The Asso­ci­at­ed Press wrote that ‘unease was pal­pa­ble inside’ the Pen­ta­gon Tues­day. . . .”


Heads We Win, Tails You Lose: The Fascist Philosophy Behind Private Equity’s Leveraged Buyout of Everything

It’s been the same head­line for months now:
* April of 2020: Amer­i­can bil­lion­aires have got­ten $280 bil­lion rich­er since the start of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic
* May of 2020: Amer­i­can bil­lion­aires got $434 rich­er dur­ing the pan­dem­ic
* August of 2020: Amer­i­can bil­lion­aires got $637 rich­er dur­ing the pan­dem­ic
* Sep­tem­ber of 2020: U.S. bil­lion­aires got $845 bil­lion rich­er since the start of the pan­dem­ic/Wealth of US bil­lion­aires ris­es by near­ly a third dur­ing pan­dem­ic
* Octo­ber of 2020: US bil­lion­aires saw their net worth rise by almost $1 tril­lion between March and Octo­ber — Jeff Bezos remains the rich­est, a study says.

From near­ly the start of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic it’s been clear that the pub­lic health dis­as­ter was­n’t a dis­as­ter for every­one, with the wealth­i­est indi­vid­u­als being not only large­ly insu­lat­ed from the eco­nom­ic lock­down but in many cas­es well posi­tioned to prof­it from it. The pan­dem­ic was turn­ing into a giant upward trans­fer of wealth. And as we’re going to see, giant upward trans­fers of wealth are essen­tial­ly what the pri­vate equi­ty indus­try is all about. The rise of ‘sup­ply-side’ eco­nom­ics in the 1980s coin­cid­ed with the rise of pri­vate equi­ty and that’s no coin­ci­dence. The phi­los­o­phy behind the pri­vate equi­ty move­ment is the phi­los­o­phy of sup­ply-side eco­nom­ics. An anti-New Deal phi­los­o­phy, where ruth­less­ness is a virtue, that fueled a 40 year giant fas­cist lever­aged buy­out of soci­ety.


New Book on Manson Killings and the Intelligence Community (UPDATED on 7/23/’19)

In FTR #809, we high­light­ed evi­den­tiary trib­u­taries run­ning between the assas­si­na­tions of both Kennedy broth­ers and the Man­son crimes, the assas­si­na­tion of Robert F. Kennedy, in par­tic­u­lar. The Reeve Whit­son con­nec­tion may have some con­nec­tion to the infor­ma­tion dis­cussed in that pro­gram. A new book about the Man­son Fam­i­ly and their killings high­lights the prob­a­bil­i­ty that ele­ments of the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty may have had involve­ment with the group and its devel­op­ment. One of the most strik­ing of the appar­ent intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty con­nec­tions to the Man­son inves­ti­ga­tion is the afore­men­tioned Reeve Whit­son. Reeve Whit­son: 1.–Was alleged by Iran­ian immi­grant Shahrokh Hata­mi to have phoned him with knowl­edge of the killings of Sharon Tate, et al, before the crime was report­ed by the news media and before law enforce­ment even arrived at the crime scene!; 2.–Was alleged by the LAPD’s top inves­ti­ga­tor and Sharon Tate’s father (a Colonel in Army intel­li­gence) to have been deeply involved with the Man­son inves­ti­ga­tion; 3.–Was alleged by attor­ney Neil Cum­mings to have main­tained some kind of sur­veil­lance on the Cielo Dri­ve home, as part of some sort of work he was doing for the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty; 4.–Was con­firmed as an offi­cer of the CIA by his own ex-wife; 5.–Was known to have felt that he was–in the end–betrayed by the fac­tion of the CIA for which he worked; 6.–Was asso­ci­at­ed, through his intel­li­gence work with Otto Sko­rzeny and his wife Ilse; 7.–Was the spe­cial advis­er to the chair­man of the board of the Thyssen firm, also as part of his intel­li­gence work; 8.–Was appar­ent­ly a close asso­ciate of retired Gen­er­al Cur­tis LeMay, George Wal­lace’s Vice-Pres­i­den­tial can­di­date in 1968; 9.–Was asso­ci­at­ed with LeMay when the lat­ter became vice-pres­i­dent of a mis­sile parts man­u­fac­tur­er, which was head­ed by Mihai Patrichi. Patrichi was a for­mer Roman­ian army gen­er­al and a mem­ber of the Roman­ian Iron Guard, part of the Gehlen “Org” and the GOP.


The Crusade For Freedom and the Assassination of President Kennedy

We have spo­ken for years about The Cru­sade For Free­dom, a covert oper­a­tion with both for­eign and domes­tic venues. Abroad, the CFF was a vehi­cle for financ­ing the use of East­ern Euro­pean Third Reich alum­ni as “fas­cist free­dom fight­ers” in para­mil­i­tary oper­a­tions in the Sovi­et Union and East­ern Europe. Domes­ti­cal­ly, the CFF spawned a Nazi branch of the Repub­li­can Par­ty, with roots in the Third Reich and the Rein­hard Gehlen spy orga­ni­za­tion. Many of CFF’s mem­bers fig­ure in the milieu of the JFK assas­si­na­tion:
” . . . . Mem­bers of the Texas Cru­sade for Free­dom would become a who’s who of Tex­ans con­nect­ed to the events sur­round­ing the assas­si­na­tion of John F. Kennedy. In addi­tion to Neil Mal­lon, mem­bers includ­ed [Paul] Raig­orod­sky, Lewis W. Mac­Naughton, Everette De Goly­er, and Dal­las may­or Ear­le Cabell, broth­er of Charles Cabell, who was Allen Dulles’s deputy CIA direc­tor [fired by JFK for his con­duct in the Bay of Pigs oper­a­tion along with Dulles him­self]. Anoth­er mem­ber was D. Harold Byrd, who owned the build­ing in down­town Dal­las that would become known as the Texas School Book Depos­i­to­ry. Anoth­er mem­ber was E.M. “Ted” Dealey, pub­lish­er of “The Dal­las Morn­ing News,” who was a harsh crit­ic of Kennedy. . . .”


Memorial Day Broadcast: Uncle Sam and the Swastika

On Mon­day 5/28/2018 from 10 a.m. (Pacif­ic Time) until 7pm, KFJC-FM will fea­ture hours of pro­gram­ming doc­u­ment­ing the pro­found con­nec­tions of U.S. indus­try and finance to the fas­cist pow­ers of World War II. In the decades since the end of the Sec­ond World War, much has been writ­ten about the war and fas­cism, the dri­ving force behind the aggres­sion that pre­cip­i­tat­ed that con­flict. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, much of what has been said and writ­ten has failed to iden­ti­fy and ana­lyze the caus­es, nature and method­ol­o­gy of fascism—German Nation­al Social­ism or “Nazism” in par­tic­u­lar. A deep­er, more accu­rate analy­sis was pre­sent­ed in pub­lished lit­er­a­ture, par­tic­u­lar­ly vol­umes pub­lished dur­ing, or in the imme­di­ate after­math of, the Sec­ond World War. . . . Fas­cism (Nazism in par­tic­u­lar) was an out­growth of glob­al­iza­tion and the con­struc­tion of inter­na­tion­al monop­o­lies (car­tels). Key to under­stand­ing this phe­nom­e­non is analy­sis of the Webb-Pomerene act, leg­is­lat­ed near the end of the First World War. A loop­hole in the Anti-trust leg­is­la­tion of 1914, it effec­tive­ly legal­ized the for­ma­tion of cartels—international monopolies—for firms that were barred from domes­tic monop­o­lis­tic prac­tices. Decry­ing what they viewed as exces­sive and restric­tive “reg­u­la­tion” here in the Unit­ed States, U.S.-based transna­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions invest­ed their prof­its from the indus­tri­al boom of the 1920’s abroad, pri­mar­i­ly in Japan and Ger­many. This process might well be viewed as the real begin­ning of what is now known as “glob­al­iza­tion.” Mon­day’s pro­gram will present an overview of the rein­vest­ment of the wealth gen­er­at­ed by the Amer­i­can indus­tri­al boom of the 1920’s in Ger­man, Ital­ian and Japan­ese strate­gic heavy indus­try. It was this cap­i­tal that drove the engines of con­quest that sub­dued both Europe and Asia dur­ing the con­flict.


FTR #993 Update on Ukraine (Preparations for WWIII?)

High­light­ing recent, alarm­ing aspects of the Ukraine cri­sis, the broad­cast under­scores how past and present may sig­nal the begin­ning of World War III in a man­ner not unlike how frac­tious events in the Balka­ns trig­gered the First World War.

With Ukraine now receiv­ing U.S. arms, includ­ing mod­i­fied stinger anti-air­craft mis­siles, the Nazi “pun­ish­er” bat­tal­ions in that coun­try’s East may be in a posi­tion to trig­ger one or more provo­ca­tions that could lead to con­flict between nuclear-armed Rus­sia, NATO and the U.S.

Since the Don­bass mili­tias have no air force, the stingers would appear to be deployed in the event of a wider, Ukraine/Russia war.

Nazi ele­ments active in the Maid­an coup spawned the Azov and oth­er “pun­ish­er” units. With more infor­ma­tion sur­fac­ing that indi­cates that the Maid­an sniper shoot­ings were a provo­ca­tion-derived event, the pos­si­bil­i­ty that Svo­bo­da and Pravy Sek­tor-linked ele­ments could dri­ve devel­op­ments in the Don­bass toward World War III is one that deserves more atten­tion than it will receive.

A fright­en­ing devel­op­ment, vir­tu­al­ly unre­port­ed in the U.S., con­cerns uni­lat­er­al moves by the Poroshenko gov­ern­ment to move away from the Min­sk peace plan and to rebrand the con­flict in East­ern Ukraine as “occu­pa­tion” by an “aggres­sor” Rus­sia.

This appears to pave the way for a wider, deep­er con­flict which could, ulti­mate­ly, draw in the U.S. and NATO: ” . . . . Accord­ing to [Dmitri] Kise­ly­ov, the new law, which awaits Poroshenko’s sig­na­ture, makes prepa­ra­tions for war and includes lan­guage indi­cat­ing a bel­li­cose new approach to the con­flict. The mis­sion in Don­bass is no longer described as an ‘anti-ter­ror­ist oper­a­tion.’ Rather, the mis­sion now is to send armed forces against ‘mil­i­tary for­ma­tions of the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion’ in Don­bass.

Mil­i­tary head­quar­ters are estab­lished to coor­di­nate the oper­a­tion to be waged in Don­bass. While up until now the self-declared republics of Donet­sk and Lugan­sk were con­sid­ered under the Min­sk Accords as nego­ti­at­ing par­ties, now there are only ‘occu­pa­tion admin­is­tra­tions’ of the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion on these ter­ri­to­ries, with Rus­sia iden­ti­fied as an ‘aggres­sor.’ . . . .”

The dan­ger of Poroshenko seek­ing to play the “war card” to dis­tract from Urkaine’s dire eco­nom­ic cir­cum­stances and his own failed gov­ern­ment are real. Con­flict with Rus­sia could also deflect from Trump’s and the GOP’s fail­ures at home: ” . . . . On the eco­nom­ic front, the Euro­pean Union has refused to extend 600 mil­lion euros of cred­it to Ukraine due to cor­rup­tion. The Inter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund recent­ly refused a tranche of $800 mil­lion over fail­ure to intro­duce reforms. Mean­while, in 2019 Ukraine is due to start repay­ing ear­li­er loans. This will come to $14 bil­lion a year, which amounts to half the state bud­get of Ukraine.

Due to dire eco­nom­ic con­di­tions, Poroshenko and oth­er gov­ern­ment offi­cials in Kiev have become deeply unpop­u­lar, and with dimin­ished chances for elec­toral suc­cess may see war as polit­i­cal­ly advan­ta­geous. . . .”

The Trump admin­is­tra­tion just approved the sale of sniper rifles and, more sig­nif­i­cant­ly, anti-tank Javelin mis­siles to Ukraine. This should be eval­u­at­ed against the back­ground of the recent moves by Kiev (increas­ing the dan­ger for an esca­lat­ed con­flict) as well as  the activ­i­ties of Kurt Volk­er, the “ex”-CIA offi­cer, NATO func­tionary, George W. Bush State Depart­ment offi­cial and Atlantic Coun­ci­cl Senior advi­sor serv­ing as the Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s point-man in Ukraine.

Might anti-air­craft mis­siles be next? As the arti­cle below notes, the Don­bass sep­a­ratists don’t actu­al­ly have an air force, so it would be a curi­ous deci­sion to start send­ing them anti-air­craft weapons. ” . . . . The pro­posed trans­fer — which also would include anti­air­craft arms that would be defined as defen­sive weapon­ry — comes as fight­ing between Ukrain­ian troops and Russ­ian-backed sep­a­ratists. . . . The util­i­ty of anti­air­craft weapon­ry, for exam­ple, is unclear, as the Russ­ian-backed rebel army has no air force. The war is fought along a line of trench­es that has not moved much since Feb­ru­ary 2015. . . .”

Accord­ing to a report back in June, the Pen­ta­gon recent­ly mod­i­fied shoul­der-fired stinger mis­siles to shoot small down drones that are dif­fi­cult for reg­u­lar Stinger mis­siles to hit. It’s not at all incon­ceiv­able that the anti-air­craft weapons the Pen­ta­gon and State Depart­ment have in mind are those Stinger mis­siles, mod­i­fied for the pur­pose of shoot­ing down sep­a­ratist drones.

Also keep in mind that the shoul­der-launched stringer mis­siles are among the weapons that ter­ror­ists would love to obtain and the Ukrain­ian troops get­ting trained on these sys­tems may include the neo-Nazis fight­ing in Ukraine’s army get­ting trained by US mil­i­tary advi­sors like the Azov batal­lion. ” . . . . The Amer­i­can train­ing at the Yavoriv base in west­ern Ukraine is focused on forg­ing a dis­ci­plined, pro­fes­sion­al mil­i­tary from the mix of vol­un­teer groups that first fought the Russ­ian incur­sion, rather than plac­ing bets on any high-tech weapons sys­tems. . . .”

When you read that, remem­ber that the “mix of vol­un­teers groups” includes neo-Nazis, includ­ing the Azov Bat­tal­ion.

In oth­er words, if Stinger mis­siles real­ly are part of the mil­i­tary pack­age, and just not yet announced, those lit­tle night­mares could eas­i­ly end up in neo-Nazi hands and the US mil­i­tary could even be the ones train­ing them on how to use them. We’ll see if that’s how it plays out, but we can’t rule it out.

The arms sales described above are being real­ized under the super­vi­sion of Trump’s new point man for Ukraine, “ex”-CIA, State Depart­ment and NATO func­tionary Kurt Volk­er. From Volk­er’s Wikipedia entry: ” . . . . Volk­er began his career in for­eign affairs as an ana­lyst at the Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Agency in 1986. . . . In July 2005, Volk­er became the Deputy Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of State for Euro­pean and Eurasian Affairs, serv­ing in that posi­tion until he was appoint­ed Unit­ed States Per­ma­nent Rep­re­sen­ta­tive to NATO in July 2008 by Pres­i­dent George W. Bush. . . . and a Senior Advi­sor at the Atlantic Coun­cil since Octo­ber 2009. . . . .”

We note that the arms sales to Ukraine effect­ed on Volk­er’s watch come after the removal of John Cony­ers (D‑MI), one of the most vocif­er­ous Con­gres­sion­al oppo­nents of arm­ing and train­ing the Azov Bat­tal­ion and sim­i­lar Nazi units.

Next, we take stock of how Cony­ers, “The Krem­lin’s Man in Con­gress,” was removed fol­low­ing a gam­bit by “Alt-Right” blog­ger, Trump ally and misog­y­nist Mike Cer­novich to finance the solic­i­ta­tion of pro­fes­sion­al­ly dam­ag­ing infor­ma­tion about polit­i­cal oppo­nents. “. . . . In Novem­ber, the Trump-back­ing social media agi­ta­tor Mike Cer­novich offered to pay $10,000.00 for details of any con­gres­sion­al sex­u­al harass­ment set­tle­ments, and said on Twit­ter that he would cov­er the expens­es of ‘any VICTIM of a Con­gress­man who wants to come for­ward to tell her sto­ry.’ Short­ly before post­ing that offer, a source pro­vid­ed Mr. Cer­novich with a copy of a sex­u­al harass­ment set­tle­ment that led in Decem­ber to the res­ig­na­tion of Rep­re­sen­ta­tive John Cony­ers Jr., Demo­c­rat of Michi­gan, until then the longest-serv­ing mem­ber of the House. . . .”

In FTR #981, we exam­ined the Ukrain­ian fas­cist foun­da­tion of much of the “Rus­sia-Gate” psy-op,” fol­low­ing that with detailed exam­i­na­tion of the pos­si­bil­i­ty that Paul Man­afort may have actu­al­ly been work­ing as a U.S./Western intel­li­gence asset or agent, delib­er­ate­ly pre­cip­i­tat­ing the Maid­an sniper fire that sound­ed the death knell for the Yanukovich regime.

This pro­gram updates the boil­ing sew­er that is Ukraine, uti­liz­ing infor­ma­tion from Ger­man For­eign Pol­i­cy (which feeds along the low­er right-hand page of this web­site.) We take note of sev­er­al key points:

1.–Corruption in Ukraine remains ram­pant and “rule by oli­garch” con­tin­ues unabat­ed under Poroshenko, an oli­garch him­self and the for­mer finance min­is­ter for Yanukovich.
2.–Supporters of Maid­an have been high­ly crit­i­cal of the con­tin­u­a­tion of this grotesque sta­tus quo.
3.–Among the per­pe­tra­tors of ongo­ing, insti­tu­tion­al­ized cor­rup­tion in Ukraine has been the son of Arsen Avakov, the inte­ri­or min­is­ter and a patron of the Nazi Azov Bat­tal­ion. ” . . . . Cor­rup­tion con­tin­ues at high lev­els. For exam­ple, the case of Inte­ri­or Min­is­ter Arsen Avakov’s son, who sold back­packs to the army at six times their nor­mal price, alleged­ly caus­ing dam­age in the six-dig­it euros. . . .”
4.–Investigation of Avakov, jr’s activ­i­ties has been [pre­dictably] inter­dict­ed. ” . . . .When the Nation­al Anti-Cor­rup­tion Bureau searched the man’s house, the Nation­al Guard, under the respon­si­bil­i­ty of the inte­ri­or min­is­ter inter­vened and halt­ed the search — under the pre­text of hav­ing to vacate the build­ing because of a bomb threat. . . .”
5.–The two arti­cle series sets forth greater detail on the sniper shoot­ings at the Maid­an, which look more and more to be a provo­ca­tion. ” . . . . In Feb­ru­ary 2016, Maid­an activist Ivan Bubenchik con­fessed that in the course of the mas­sacre, he had shot Ukrain­ian police offi­cers. Bubenchik con­firmed this in a film that had attract­ed inter­na­tion­al attention.[10] . . . .”
6.–An Ital­ian TV doc­u­men­tary alleges that eth­nic Geor­gian snipers were involved in the Maid­an shoot­ings, fur­ther indi­cat­ing that the Maid­an sniper shoot­ings were a pos­si­ble provo­ca­tion. (The doc­u­men­tary does come from a Berlus­coni-con­trolled out­let, how­ev­er it dove­tails cred­i­bly with oth­er avail­able infor­ma­tion. UNA-UNSO, the lat­est iter­a­tion of the UPA was very active in the cau­ca­sus and Chechens have been work­ing with Pravy Sek­tor and ele­ments asso­ci­at­ed with the Azov Bat­tal­ion. As dis­cussed in FTR #850, for­mer Geor­gian pres­i­dent Mikhail Saakashvili became the gov­er­nor of Odessa province and is very close to Ihor Kolo­moisky, anoth­er patron of the Azov Bat­tal­ion.) “In an Ital­ian TV doc­u­men­tary on the Feb­ru­ary 20, 2014 Maid­an mas­sacre, seri­ous accu­sa­tions were made against sev­er­al politi­cians in Ukraine. . . .  In the doc­u­men­tary, three Geor­gians, incrim­i­nat­ing them­selves for their own par­tic­i­pa­tion, report that some of the lead­ers of the protests, who are today mem­bers of Kiev’s par­lia­ment, had sup­plied weapons to the snipers, who, at the time, indis­crim­i­nate­ly killed police­men and demon­stra­tors. Offi­cial­ly, this mas­sacre is still being attrib­uted to Ukrain­ian repres­sive organs or to unspec­i­fied Rus­sians. The Geor­gians also report that the cur­rent speak­er of the par­lia­ment, Andriy Paru­biy, was often seen in the hotel, from where the snipers were fir­ing that day. As ‘Maid­an Commander,‘Parubiy had been in charge of con­trol­ling armed gangs on that square. The man, whose real role at the time remains unclear, was a guest at a con­fer­ence held by the Kon­rad Ade­nauer Foun­da­tion and a speak­er at NATO events. . . .”
7.–Parubiy was one of the main orga­niz­ers of the Orange Rev­o­lu­tion, which brought Vik­tor Yuschenko to pow­er and installed OUN/B deriv­a­tive orga­ni­za­tions in pow­er in Ukraine, sort of a “pre-Maid­an” Maid­an.” . . . .  Fol­low­ing his retire­ment from the par­ty, this expe­ri­enced protest activist became one of the main orga­niz­ers of the 2004 ‘Orange Rev­o­lu­tion.’  . . .”
8.–Andriy Paru­biy was the first defense min­is­ter of the Ukraine inter­im gov­ern­ment and a mem­ber of the OUN/B‑redux Svo­bo­da Par­ty. His role in the events dove­tails with the pos­si­ble par­tic­i­pa­tion of fas­cist and Nazi snipers who were to par­tic­i­pate in the Azov Bat­tal­ion. “. . . . The Geor­gians’ accu­sa­tions also impli­cate, at least indi­rect­ly, the ‘Com­man­der of the Maid­an,’ Andriy Paru­biy. Paru­biy comes from the Ukrain­ian fas­cist scene. In the ear­ly 1990s he was one of the founders of the extreme right-wing Social Nation­al Par­ty of Ukraine. Since 1996, he was the leader of its mil­i­tarist street fight­ing sub­sidiary ‘Patri­ot of Ukraine.’ Fol­low­ing his retire­ment from the par­ty, this expe­ri­enced protest activist became one of the main orga­niz­ers of the 2004 ‘Orange Rev­o­lu­tion.’ In 2013, he assumed the same func­tion at the Maid­an, where he was respon­si­ble for none oth­er than secu­ri­ty and the ‘self-defense units,’ which were often made up of heav­i­ly armed thugs. In the Ital­ian TV doc­u­men­tary, it was report­ed that Paru­biy was going in and out of Hotel Ukraina, from where numer­ous dead­ly shots were being fired. Paru­biy, claims that the hotel from which these shots were being fired — which was firm­ly under the Maid­an demon­stra­tors’ con­trol — had been tak­en over ‘by snipers who arrived from Rus­sia and who were con­trolled by Rus­sia.’ . . .”

We con­clude with anoth­er exam­ple of just what the con­tem­po­rary Ukrain­ian polit­i­cal estab­lish­ment is man­i­fest­ing. Ukraine’s offi­cial under­stand­ing of its own WWII his­to­ry and the Holo­caust had anoth­er man­i­fes­ta­tion of Orwellian his­tor­i­cal revi­sion­ism. This time it was by Poroshenko rein­forc­ing the Orwellian revi­sion. ” . . . . As we report­ed back in Octo­ber, Ukrain­ian media out­let Radio Svo­bo­da — the Ukrain­ian arm of the US Gov­ern­ment-fund­ed arm of RFERL — post­ed a pic­ture from the US Holo­caust Muse­um. It is an image of Pol­ish Jews being deport­ed to a death camp. There was just one prob­lem. Radio Svo­bo­da claimed the pic­ture was from 1949 of Ukraini­ans being deport­ed to Siberia. In fact, so effec­tive was Radio Svoboda’s forgery that Pres­i­dent Poroshenko him­self tweet­ed it claim­ing it showed Ukraini­ans being deport­ed. . . . Today it emerged that a major Ukrain­ian media out­let has struck again. In a Decem­ber 20th arti­cle about the hor­rors of the NKVD (Sovi­et fore­run­ner of the KGB), media out­let “Ukrin­form” also bor­rowed a pic­ture from the US Holo­caust Muse­um, this time of Ukrain­ian Aux­il­iary Police­men shoot­ing a Jew­ish child and moth­er — and fraud­u­lent­ly claimed it was actu­al­ly of the NKVD shoot­ing peo­ple. The cap­tion reads in trans­la­tion: ‘Atroc­i­ties of the Chekhists: the exe­cu­tion of a moth­er and child by the NKVD’. . . .”

Pro­gram High­lights Include:

1.–Review of the pos­si­ble role of Nazi hack­er, Glenn Green­wald asso­ciate and Ukraine res­i­dent Andrew “Weev” Aueren­heimer in the high-pro­file hacks: ” . . . . [Peter W.] Smith also reached out to ‘Guc­cifer 2.0’—an alias the U.S. intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty has linked to Russ­ian state hackers—and was advised to seek the help of a white nation­al­ist hack­er who lives in Ukraine. . . . [Pax] John­son said he also sug­gest­ed that Smith get in touch with Andrew Auern­heimer, a hack­er who goes by the alias “Weev” and has col­lab­o­rat­ed with John­son in the past. . . .” We note that Charles C. John­son, an asso­ciate of Mike Cer­novich, was involved with this maneu­ver.
2.–Review of Atlantic Coun­cil fel­low Dmitri Alper­ovitch (co-founder and chief tech­nol­o­gy offi­cer of Crowd­strike, the cyber-secu­ri­ty firm that led the charge to attribute the high-pro­file hacks to Rus­sia. Kurt Volk­er is also close­ly affil­i­at­ed with the Atlantic Coun­cil. ” . . . . 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. . . . ”