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

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

FTR #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.

FTR #931 The Trumpenkampfverbande, Part 10: Echoes From the Past, Visions of the Future

With the elec­tion over, the Trumpenkampfver­bande is now posi­tioned to solid­i­fy its pri­ma­ry function—the suc­cess­ful tran­si­tion of the Under­ground Reich from a clan­des­tine insti­tu­tion­al ele­ment into a broad-based, above-ground mass move­ment.

Clos­ing his cam­paign with an overt­ly anti-Semit­ic tweet: “ . . . . From a tech­ni­cal and the­mat­ic per­spec­tive it’s a well made ad. It’s also packed with anti-Semit­ic dog whis­tles, anti-Semit­ic tropes and anti-Semit­ic vocab­u­lary. I’m not even sure whether it makes sense to call them dog whis­tles. The four read­i­ly iden­ti­fi­able Amer­i­can bad guys in the ad are Hillary Clin­ton, George Soros (Jew­ish financier), Janet Yellen (Jew­ish Fed Chair) and Lloyd Blank­fein (Jew­ish Gold­man Sachs CEO). . . . This is an anti-Semit­ic ad every bit as much as the infa­mous Jesse Helms ‘white hands’ ad or the Willie Hor­ton ad were anti-African-Amer­i­can racist ads. Which is to say, real­ly anti-Semit­ic. You could even argue that it’s more so, giv­en cer­tain lin­guis­tic sim­i­lar­i­ties with anti-Semit­ic pro­pa­gan­da from the 1930s. But it’s not a con­test. This is an ad intend­ed to appeal to anti-Semi­tes and spread anti-Semit­ic ideas. . .”
Again, Trump has for­mal­ly legit­imized Nazi/white suprema­cist ele­ments: “. . . .‘Trump has shown that our mes­sage is healthy, nor­mal and organ­ic — and mil­lions of Amer­i­cans agree with us,’ said Matthew M. Heim­bach, a co-founder of the Tra­di­tion­al­ist Youth Net­work, a white nation­al­ist group that claims to sup­port the inter­ests of work­ing-class whites. It also advo­cates the sep­a­ra­tion of the races. . . . ‘For racists in this coun­try, this cam­paign has been a com­plete affir­ma­tion of their fears, wor­ries, dreams and hopes,’ said Ryan Lenz, the edi­tor of the Hate­watch blog at the South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter, which tracks such groups from its head­quar­ters in Mont­gomery, Ala. ‘Most things they believe have been legit­imized, or have been giv­en the stamp of approval, by main­stream Amer­i­can pol­i­tics to the point now where it’s no longer shame­ful to be a racist.’ . . . .”

Trump’s cam­paign will include the overt fas­cists who have sup­port­ed him. ” . . . . ‘I have been very sur­prised that we have not seen attrac­tive, well-spo­ken, racial­ly aware can­di­dates run­ning for local office,’ Jared Tay­lor, head of the white nation­al­ist Amer­i­can Renais­sance pub­li­ca­tion and annu­al con­fer­ence, told TPM in a Wednes­day phone call. ‘I think this will be inevitable, and I think that Trump will have encour­aged this. That our peo­ple will run for school board, city coun­cil, may­or, all that I antic­i­pate cer­tain­ly.’ . . . .”

Trump’s “alt-right” cam­paign man­ag­er Stephen K. Ban­non is being con­sid­ered for White House Chief of Staff: “Pres­i­dent-elect Don­ald Trump is strong­ly con­sid­er­ing nam­ing his cam­paign CEO Steve Ban­non to serve as his White House chief of staff, a source with knowl­edge of the sit­u­a­tion told CNN on Thurs­day. . . .”

In FTR #906, we not­ed the high­ly par­ti­san posi­tion tak­en by FBI direc­tor James Comey in the cam­paign, as well as not­ing the media promi­nence giv­en to the spu­ri­ous book “Clin­ton Cash,” authored by Koch broth­ers’ pro­tégé Peter Schweiz­er (aid­ed by Bre­it­bart edi­tor and Trump cam­paign man­ag­er Stephen K. Ban­non.)

It turns out that Comey’s (prob­a­bly) deci­sive last-minute inter­ven­tion in the cam­paign may well have been pre­cip­i­tat­ed by a “Trumpenkampfver­bande” fac­tion with­in the FBI, who were tak­ing their cues from “Clin­ton Cash!”

Pro­gram High­lights Include: The Trumpenkampfverbande’s com­pi­la­tion of an ene­mies list, a la Richard Nixon; the stun­ning acquit­tal of the Bundy Brigade, after their ille­gal occu­pa­tion of the Mal­heur Nation­al Wildlife refuge; reflec­tions on the impli­ca­tions of that acquit­tal against the back­ground of the mas­sive Trump fac­tion with­in the FBI; Alfa Bank con­sul­tant Richard Burt’s role as a for­eign pol­i­cy advi­sor to Don­ald Trump; Burt’s posi­tion as Regan’s ambas­sador to Ger­many; Burt’s lob­by­ing on behalf of a nat­ur­al gas pipeline financed, in part, by major Ger­man cor­po­ra­tions; review of the links between Alfa Bank and the Trump orga­ni­za­tion; review of the links between Alfa Group and Marc Rich’s oper­a­tions; review of James Comey’s inves­ti­ga­tions of Marc Rich; spec­u­la­tion about the pos­si­ble role of the Alfa/Trump and Alfa/Rich links in Comey’s behav­ior dur­ing the cam­paign.

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.

FTR #927 The Trumpenkampfverbande, Part 6: Locker Room Eclipse

With Don­ald Trump’s sex­u­al habits and speech dom­i­nat­ing the head­lines at the moment, we are see­ing what Trump termed “lock­er room” ban­ter eclipse far more impor­tant aspects of the Trump phe­nom­e­non. The GOP can­di­date con­tin­ues to man­i­fest Nazi-style beliefs, trum­pet­ing the impor­tance of hered­i­ty, breed­ing and genes to suc­cess, with his own Ger­man her­itage hav­ing much to do with his own largesse. In that con­text, we note that his “genes,” in the form of Don­ald, Jr., may well be on the scene for some time.

Although Don­ald, Sr. would appear poised to lose the elec­tion in Novem­ber, the Trumpenkampfverbande–the move­ment that has coa­lesced around him–is poised to con­tin­ue, being (in our opin­ion) the trans­for­ma­tion of the Under­ground Reich into a broad-based mass move­ment. Don­ald, Jr. appears to be a bird of the same polit­i­cal plumage as his father, with a pen­chant for racism and “Alt-right” tweet­ing. As one blog­ger put it: ” . . . And in the last cou­ple of weeks Junior has let his alt-right freak flag fly. . . .” Junior also has polit­i­cal aspi­ra­tions: ” . . . The old­est son of the Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee said that while he still has ‘a lot to do in my own career,’ he would seri­ous­ly con­sid­er fol­low­ing in his father’s foot­steps out of real estate and into polit­i­cal life. . . .” Don­ald, Jr. does not appear on the sur­face to share his father’s destruc­tive sex­u­al prac­tices, and might become a stan­dard-bear­er for an Under­ground Reich in plain view for some time to come.

Anoth­er crit­i­cal aspect of Trump’s polit­i­cal con­nec­tions that has been over­shad­owed by the “lock­er room eclipse” con­cerns Trump’s pro­found, long­stand­ing con­nec­tions to Deutsche Bank, his go-to lender for his myr­i­ad real estate prac­tices. Cur­rent­ly desta­bi­liz­ing equi­ties mar­kets around the world, Deutsche Bank holds the poten­tial to col­lapse the glob­al finan­cial land­scape. Hav­ing ben­e­fit­ted from a “rigged” ECB stress test, hav­ing ben­e­fit­ted from preda­to­ry lend­ing prac­tices dur­ing the sub-prime cri­sis, hav­ing ben­e­fit­ted from a Fed­er­al Reserve bailout fol­low­ing the col­lapse of 2008 and fac­ing a poten­tial $14 bil­lion fine from the U.S. Depart­ment of Jus­tice, Deutsche Bank holds 42 tril­lion euros worth of deriv­a­tives on its books, an amount 11 times the econ­o­my of Ger­many! Trump’s being in hoc to Deutsche Bank for upwards of $100 mil­lion rais­es inter­est­ing ques­tions about his poten­tial posi­tion as head of the U.S. gov­ern­ment.

Anoth­er, relat­ed aspect of Trump’s can­di­da­cy con­cerns his threat to fire Fed­er­al Reserve head Janet Yellen and his advis­ers rang­ing from “Alt-right” ide­o­logues to cham­pi­ons of a return to the gold standard–a move that would col­lapse the Amer­i­can and glob­al economies. [This is against the back­ground of the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the Fed may have to extend anoth­er life­line to Deutsche Bank to pre­vent anoth­er inter­na­tion­al finan­cial melt­down] ” . . . In the first [group of Trump eco­nom­ic advi­sors] are Lar­ry Kud­low and Judy Shel­ton, the intel­lec­tu­als of the bunch, and both advo­cates of a return to the gold stan­dard. While it has become pop­u­lar among some Repub­li­cans in the past few years, return­ing to the gold stan­dard is dis­missed as a dis­cred­it­ed, fringe idea by near­ly all econ­o­mists and mar­ket par­tic­i­pants. And, for their part, gold-stan­dard sup­port­ers typ­i­cal­ly reject the very idea of a Fed­er­al Reserve, so if Trump were to appoint Kud­low, Shel­ton, or anoth­er gold-stan­dard sup­port­er to the Fed, it would be the most rad­i­cal and poten­tial­ly dam­ag­ing eco­nom­ic move since the dawn of our mod­ern eco­nom­ic sys­tem, after the Great Depres­sion. . . .”

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Review of “The Don­ald’s” affin­i­ty for the speech­es of Adolf Hitler; review of Trump’s father’s pos­si­ble mem­ber­ship in the Ku Klux Klan; Trump’s exhor­ta­tions to his fol­low­ers to dis­re­gard “the rigged” elec­tion and the pos­si­bil­i­ty (prob­a­bil­i­ty?) that this will lead to “lone wolf,” lead­er­less resis­tance ter­ror­ism and mur­der; Don­ald Trump’s links to the Steuben Soci­ety.

Krugmenistan vs the Permahawks

Lift Off! That was the announce­ment by the Fed­er­al Reserve this week when the world’s biggest and most influ­en­tial cen­tral bank start­ed the long await­ed rais­ing of its bench­mark short-term rate a quar­ter point from near-zero lev­els, mark­ing the first time the Fed has raised rates since 2006. It was big news, except this rate hike was telegraphed for quite a while now and vir­tu­al­ly every­one was expect­ing the Fed to do exact­ly what it did, so it’s not as big as it could have been. If the Fed had decid­ed not to raise rates, despite all the telegraph­ing, that prob­a­bly would have been a big­ger sto­ry. But would it have been a bad sto­ry if the Fed decid­ed to keep rates at their cur­rent near-zero lev­els? There’s a big debate in the eco­nom­ic com­mu­ni­ty over that. And it’s a debate that pits pru­dent econ­o­mists with excel­lent track-records like Paul Krug­man, some­one who opposed the Fed’s Decem­ber “lift off” deci­sion, against the broad array of “per­ma­hawks”. But it’s not just the ques­tion with respect to Fed. The Euro­pean Cen­tral Bank made a pol­i­cy announce­ment this month too regard­ing its stim­u­lus mea­sure and it was indeed rather sur­pris­ing. And as we’re also going to see in this post, it was sur­pris­ing in the way that just might have done seri­ous dam­age to not just the cred­i­bil­i­ty of ECB Pres­i­dent Mario Draghi but the ECB itself. Or at least cred­i­bil­i­ty in the ECB’s com­mit­ment to its sin­gle man­date of keep­ing infla­tion hov­er­ing around 2 per­cent.

To pla­cate per­ma­hawks (to main­tain cred­i­bil­i­ty) or not pla­cate the per­ma­hawks (to main­tain cred­i­bil­i­ty)? That is the ques­tion. Or at least one of the ques­tions cen­tral banks face. Unfor­tu­nate­ly.

FTR #823 Caution, Banksters at Work, Part 2 (Still More Collateralized “Death” Obligations)

Updat­ing FTR #‘s 772 and 792, the broad­cast high­lights a recent social psy­chol­o­gy exper­i­ment that indi­cat­ed a strong incli­na­tion toward dis­hon­est, crim­i­nal behav­ior on the part of bank­ing pro­fes­sion­als. After not­ing Deutsche Bank’s pre­car­i­ous posi­tion, the pro­gram notes two oth­er sus­pi­cious deaths. Deutsche Bank’s Calogero Gam­bi­no alleged­ly took his own life, fol­low­ing the alleged sui­cide of anoth­er Deutsche banker–William Broeksmit. Cit­i­group’s Shawn Miller sup­pos­ed­ly slit his own throat, this after plac­ing some 911 calls com­plain­ing about being fol­lowed. The Sen­ate bank­ing com­mit­tee recent­ly con­clud­ed an inves­ti­ga­tion of the bank­ing indus­try’s involve­ment in the com­modi­ties’ mar­kets, some­thing that offers tremen­dous oppor­tu­ni­ty for ille­gal spec­u­la­tion, as well as leav­ing banks with poten­tial­ly cat­a­stroph­ic expo­sure to fluc­tu­a­tion in those mar­kets. In Octo­ber, a dra­mat­ic fluc­tu­a­tion in the mar­ket for U.S. Trea­sury bills has raised omi­nous ques­tions con­cern­ing the sta­bil­i­ty of this glob­al finan­cial safe haven. The prob­a­bil­i­ty of such an event hap­pen­ing was once every 1.6 bil­lion years!

More Collateralized “Death” Obligations

“Par­ticipo” alerts us to an arti­cle from The New York Post updat­ing the mor­tal­i­ty rate in the finan­cial indus­try. These deaths are occur­ring as numer­ous inves­ti­ga­tions are under­way into var­i­ous kinds of malfea­sance in the glob­al finan­cial sec­tor, manip­u­la­tion of the for­eign exchange rate, in par­tic­u­lar.

FTR #772 Body Count II: (Collateralized “Death” Obligations)

One of the sur­re­al, almost hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry finan­cial instru­ments that were at the cen­ter of the 2008 finan­cial col­lapse were CDO’s–collateralized debt oblig­a­tions. As a num­ber of legal inves­ti­ga­tions into mis­chief appar­ent­ly com­mit­ted by major finan­cial insti­tu­tions on a num­ber of fronts have gained momen­tum, there has been a rash of sui­cides linked to the busi­ness­es under inves­ti­ga­tion. In addi­tion, a Wall Street Jour­nal reporter dis­ap­peared and an Argen­tine bank repository–supposedly fireproof–burned down. Are we look­ing at col­lat­er­al­ized “death” oblig­a­tions?

FTR #771 The Adventures of Eddie the Friendly Spook, Part 13: Beware of Libertarians Bearing Gifts (1934 Coup Attempt Redux)

Sum­ming up his polit­i­cal out­look, Snow­den wrote that the elder­ly ‘wouldn’t be fuck­ing help­less if you weren’t send­ing them fuck­ing checks to sit on their ass and lay in hos­pi­tals all day.’ The forces for which he fronts are: ” . . . root­ed in a the­ory that, in James Madison’s words, would “speed­ily put an end to the Union itself.”