Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.
The tag 'George W. Bush' is associated with 21 posts.

FTR #957 The National Front and Deep Politics in France, Part 2

With the loom­ing deci­sive sec­ond round in the French elec­tions, there is renewed scruti­ny on the Nation­al Front and its tit­u­lar head Marine Le Pen.

Net­worked with var­i­ous fig­ures rang­ing from the milieu of Don­ald Trump to that of Turk­ish pres­i­dent Erdo­gan, the Nation­al Front and the Le Pens (father Jean-Marie and daugh­ter Marine) are car­ry­ing on the fas­cist tra­di­tion in France.

The sec­ond of two shows, this pro­gram con­tin­ues our exam­i­na­tion of French deep pol­i­tics, scru­ti­niz­ing pow­er­ful eco­nom­ic and finan­cial arrange­ments that deter­mined the Fran­co-Ger­man polit­i­cal dynam­ic through­out most of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry and, thus far, through the twen­ty-first as well.

Crit­i­cal to our under­stand­ing is the dynam­ic of occu­py­ing the high ground on both sides of a polit­i­cal divide. This pro­gram under­scores how this has placed Ger­many in a key strate­gic posi­tion on both sides of key polit­i­cal strug­gles: In the pre-World War II era and post­war era as well; In the right-left polit­i­cal divide in French pol­i­tics; In the strug­gle between anti-immi­grant/an­ti-Mus­lim advo­cates such as the Nation­al Front and Mus­lim-Broth­er­hood linked ele­ments in the Islamist com­mu­ni­ty.

Key ele­ments of dis­cus­sion include:

1. Review of Steve Ban­non’s ide­o­log­i­cal fond­ness for French anti-Semi­te and Vichy col­lab­o­ra­tionist Charles Mau­r­ras. Mau­r­ras’ Action Fran­caise is a direct antecedent of the Nation­al Front. ” . . . . One of the pri­ma­ry prog­en­i­tors of the par­ty was the Action Française, found­ed at the end of the 19th cen­tu­ry. . . .”

2. Review of the rela­tion­ship between for­mer pres­i­dent Fran­cois Mit­terand (a social­ist) and French Holo­caust imple­menter and Vichy police offi­cial Rene Bous­quet, who was close to Mit­terand and helped to finance his cam­paign and those of oth­er left-wing French politi­cians. With finan­cial influ­ence in left-wing par­ties, Ger­many can help moti­vate the French left to band togeth­er to defeat the French Nation­al Front and its anti-EU, anti-NATO ide­ol­o­gy. Poten­tial left­ists can also be chan­nelled into an anti-immi­grant/an­ti-Mus­lim posi­tion along that of the Nation­al Front. ” . . . . . . . The most damn­ing of all charges against Mit­ter­rand and his right wing con­nec­tions is prob­a­bly his long last­ing friend­ship with René Bous­quet, ex secré­taire général of the Vichy police. . . . In 1974, René Bous­quet gave finan­cial help to François Mit­ter­rand for his pres­i­den­tial cam­paign against Valéry Gis­card d’Es­taing. In an inter­view with Pierre Favier et Michel Mar­tin-Roland Mit­ter­rand claimed that he was not the only left wing politi­cian to ben­e­fit from Bous­quet’s mon­ey, as René Bous­quet helped finance all the prin­ci­pal left wing politi­cians from the 1950s to the begin­ning of the 1970s, includ­ing Pierre Mendès France. . . .”

3. Dis­cus­sion of Fran­cois Mit­terand’s pri­ma­ry role in estab­lish­ing the Euro, as a pre­req­ui­site for Ger­man reuni­fi­ca­tion (his alleged “fear” of a reuni­fied Ger­many should be tak­en with a grain of salt in light of his col­lab­o­ra­tionist back­ground and rela­tion­ship with Rene Bous­quet: ” . . . . He [Robert Zoel­lick] explained his under­stand­ing of how Europe got its com­mon cur­ren­cy. . . . it was very clear that Euro­pean mon­e­tary union result­ed from French-Ger­man ten­sions before uni­fi­ca­tion and was meant to calm Mitterrand’s fears of an all-too-pow­er­ful Ger­many. Accord­ing to Zoel­lick, the euro cur­ren­cy is a by-prod­uct of Ger­man uni­fi­ca­tion. . . . in strate­gic terms, Germany’s influ­ence has nev­er been greater. As the con­ti­nent wants to bank on Germany’s AAA rat­ing, Berlin can now effec­tive­ly dic­tate fis­cal pol­i­cy to Athens, Lis­bon and Rome – per­haps in the future to Paris, too. . .”

4. More about the Euro (launched with the crit­i­cal­ly impor­tant assis­tance of Fran­cois Mit­terand: “. . . . It [the euro] has turned the Ger­mans into the new rulers of Europe. And it has con­signed France to be the weak­er part­ner in the Fran­co-Ger­man rela­tion­ship. . . .”

5. Analy­sis of the deci­sive rela­tion­ship between French steel­mak­ers belong­ing to the Comite des Forges and their Ger­man coun­ter­parts and Ruhr coal pro­duc­ers, one of the foun­da­tion­al ele­ments of the Fifth Col­umn that is antecedent to the Nation­al Front: ” . . . . The strug­gle of the inter­war peri­od was not sim­ply a clash between French inter­ests on the one side and Ger­man inter­ests on the oth­er. Dur­ing the devel­op­ment of the Ruhr-Lor­raine indus­tri­al com­plex, like-mind­ed indus­tri­al­ists in France and Ger­many had become direc­tors of joint­ly owned and joint­ly con­trolled finan­cial, indus­tri­al, and dis­trib­ut­ing enter­pris­es. In many cas­es com­mon views on ques­tions of eco­nom­ic orga­ni­za­tion, labor pol­i­cy, social leg­is­la­tion, and atti­tude toward gov­ern­ment had been far more impor­tant to the indus­tri­al­ists than dif­fer­ences of nation­al­i­ty or cit­i­zen­ship. . . . ”

6. The eco­nom­ic col­lab­o­ra­tion between French and Ger­man oli­garchs worked to the advan­tage of Ger­many: ” . . . .It is curi­ous to note that only the French appeared to have this con­flict between pub­lic pol­i­cy and pri­vate activ­i­ties. On the Ger­man side, com­plete co-ordi­na­tion seems to have been pre­served between nation­al and pri­vate inter­ests; between offi­cials of the Ger­man Repub­lic and the lead­ers of Ger­man indus­try and finance. . . .”

7. Exem­pli­fy­ing the oper­a­tion of the pro-Ger­man Fifth Col­umn in the Ruhr-Lor­raine indus­tri­al com­plex is the rela­tion­ship between the De Wen­del and Rochling inter­ests: ” . . . . Dur­ing World War I the De Wen­dels, the influ­en­tial French-Ger­man bank­ing and indus­tri­al fam­i­ly which head­ed the French wing of the Inter­na­tion­al Steel Car­tel through their Comite des Forges and whose mem­bers had sat in the par­lia­ments of both France and Ger­many, were able to keep the French army from destroy­ing indus­tri­al plants belong­ing to the Ger­man enter­pris­es of the Rochling fam­i­ly. . . . . . . . The Rochling fam­i­ly, with their pow­er­ful com­plex of coal, iron, steel and bank­ing enter­pris­es in Ger­many, has for gen­er­a­tions played in close har­mo­ny with the de Wen­del fam­i­ly. . . .”

8. The De Wendel/Rochling links were so pro­found that the Rochlings were called upon to help build the French defen­sive Mag­inot Line: ” . . . . On the oth­er hand, as far as the French steel mak­ers’ asso­ci­a­tion, the Comite des Forges, and in par­tic­u­lar the de Wen­dels who head­ed the Comite, were con­cerned, it was busi­ness as usu­al-or in this case, busi­ness as unusu­al-that pre­vailed. . . . When it came time for France to build its impreg­nable Mag­inot Line, who should be called in to sup­ply steel and tech­ni­cal assis­tance but the Ger­man firm of the broth­ers Rochling. . . .”

9. After the French capit­u­la­tion, the Vichy government–to no one’s surprise–exonerated the Rochlings: ” . . . . Now comes the out­break of World War II. The French army march­ing into the Saar dur­ing the ‘pho­ny war’ peri­od in 1939, received orders not to fire on or dam­age the plants of the ‘war crim­i­nals,’ the broth­ers Rochling. In 1940 came the blitz and the fall of France. The Vichy gov­ern­ment passed a decree exon­er­at­ing the Rochlings and can­cel­ing their forty-year prison sen­tences. . . .”

10. The Fran­co-Ger­man steel car­tel, in turn, belonged to an inter­na­tion­al steel car­tel fea­tur­ing the Thyssen firm Vere­inigte Stahlw­erke (lat­er Thyssen A.G.). The Thyssen inter­ests are inex­tri­ca­bly linked with the Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work. The Thyssens’ prin­ci­pal Amer­i­can con­tacts were the Bush fam­i­ly. ” . . . . They marked the for­ma­tion of the Unit­ed Steel Works in Ger­many, as a com­bi­na­tion of the four biggest steel pro­duc­ers Ernst Poens­gen, Fritz Thyssen, Otto Wolff, and the oth­ers who drew this com­bine togeth­er had man­aged to get over a hun­dred mil­lion dol­lars from pri­vate investors in the Unit­ed States. Dil­lon Read & Com­pa­ny, the New York invest­ment house which brought Clarence Dil­lon, James V. For­re­stal, William H. Drap­er, Jr., and oth­ers into promi­nence, float­ed the Unit­ed Steel Works bonds in the Unit­ed States . . . . ”

11. Dur­ing the occu­pa­tion of France, the Fran­co-Ger­man cor­po­rate con­nec­tion yield­ed fur­ther Ger­man cap­i­tal dom­i­na­tion of French firms: ” . . . The Third Repub­lic’s busi­ness elite was vir­tu­al­ly unchanged after 1940. . . . They regard­ed the war and Hitler as an unfor­tu­nate diver­sion from their chief mis­sion of pre­vent­ing a com­mu­nist rev­o­lu­tion in France. Anti­bol­she­vism was a com­mon denom­i­na­tor link­ing these French­men to Ger­mans. . . . The upper-class men who had been superbly trained in finance and admin­is­tra­tion at one of the two grand corps schools were referred to as France’s per­ma­nent ‘wall of mon­ey,’ and as pro­fes­sion­als they came into their own in 1940. They agreed to the estab­lish­ment of Ger­man sub­sidiary firms in France and per­mit­ted a gen­er­al buy-in to French com­pa­nies. . . .

12. The Fran­co-Ger­man cor­po­rate links and the dom­i­na­tion of that rela­tion­ship by cor­po­rate Ger­many and the Bor­mann net­work con­tin­ued into the post­war peri­od: ” . . . . Soci­ety’s nat­ur­al sur­vivors, French ver­sion, who had served the Third Reich as an exten­sion of Ger­man indus­try, would con­tin­ue to do so in the peri­od of post­war tri­als, just as they had sur­vived the war, occu­pa­tion, and lib­er­a­tion. These were many of the French elite, the well-born, the prop­er­tied, the titled, the experts, indus­tri­al­ists, busi­ness­men, bureau­crats, bankers. . . . Eco­nom­ic col­lab­o­ra­tion in France with the Ger­mans had been so wide­spread (on all lev­els of soci­ety) that there had to be a real­iza­tion that an entire nation could not be brought to tri­al. . . .”

13. Cor­po­rate German/Bormann con­trol of French com­merce and finance is the deter­min­ing fac­tor in con­tem­po­rary French affairs: ” . . . . The under­stand­ings arrived at in the pow­er struc­ture of France reach back to pre­war days, were con­tin­ued dur­ing the occu­pa­tion, and have car­ried over to the present time. [New York Times reporter Flo­ra] Lewis, in her report from Paris, com­ment­ed fur­ther: ‘This hid­den con­trol of gov­ern­ment and cor­po­ra­tions has pro­duced a gen­er­al unease in Paris.’ Along with the unease, the fact that France has lin­ger­ing and seri­ous social and polit­i­cal ail­ments is a residue of World War II and of an eco­nom­ic occu­pa­tion that was nev­er real­ly ter­mi­nat­ed with the with­draw­al of Ger­man troops beyond the Rhine. . . .”

14. The Fran­co-Ger­man cor­po­rate Axis facil­i­tat­ed the De Wen­del fam­i­ly’s post­war assis­tance of Friedrich Flick, anoth­er of Hitler’s top indus­tri­al­ists.: ” . . . . The under­stand­ings arrived at in the pow­er struc­ture of France reach back to pre­war days, were con­tin­ued dur­ing the occu­pa­tion, and have car­ried over to the present time. Lewis, in her report from Paris, com­ment­ed fur­ther: ‘This hid­den con­trol of gov­ern­ment and cor­po­ra­tions has pro­duced a gen­er­al unease in Paris.’ Along with the unease, the fact that France has lin­ger­ing and seri­ous social and polit­i­cal ail­ments is a residue of World War II and of an eco­nom­ic occu­pa­tion that was nev­er real­ly ter­mi­nat­ed with the with­draw­al of Ger­man troops beyond the Rhine. . . .”

15. The seam­less incor­po­ra­tion of the Fran­co-Ger­man cor­po­rate axis into the Ger­man-dom­i­nat­ed EU and EMU has yield­ed the abil­i­ty of the Fed­er­al Repub­lic to inter­fere in the French polit­i­cal process: ” . . . . Like Fil­lon, Macron is con­sid­ered ‘Ger­many-com­pat­i­ble’ by a Ger­man think tank, where­as all oth­er can­di­dates are viewed as unsuit­able for ‘con­struc­tive coop­er­a­tion’ because of their crit­i­cism of the EU and/or of NATO. Recent­ly, Ger­many’s Finance Min­is­ter Wolf­gang Schäu­ble osten­ta­tious­ly rec­om­mend­ed vot­ing for Macron. Berlin’s inter­fer­ence on behalf of Macron shows once again that Ger­man dom­i­na­tion of the EU does not stop at nation­al bor­ders, and — accord­ing to a well-known EU observ­er — sur­pass­es by far Rus­si­a’s fee­ble med­dling in France. . . .”

The pro­gram con­cludes with rumi­na­tion about the role of anti-Mus­lim sen­ti­ment in the French and U.S. polit­i­cal process and the pres­ence of Under­ground Reich-linked ele­ments on both the “anti-immi­grant” side and the Islamist/Muslim Broth­er­hood side.

Pro­gram High­lights Include:

1. Review of the Islamist/Muslim Broth­er­hood Turk­ish Refah Par­ty (the direct antecedent of Erdo­gan’s AKP) and its rela­tion­ship to Ahmed Huber of the Bank Al-Taqwa.

2. Review of the role of Ahmed Huber (lat­er of the Bank Al-Taqwa) in intro­duc­ing Turk­ish Mus­lim Broth­er­hood’s Necmet­tin Erbakan with Marine Le Pen’s father: ” . . . . . . . . A sec­ond pho­to­graph, in which Hitler is talk­ing with Himm­ler, hangs next to those of Necmet­tin Erbakan and Jean-Marie Le Pen [leader of the fas­cist Nation­al Front]. Erbakan, head of the Turk­ish Islamist par­ty, Refah, turned to Achmed Huber for an intro­duc­tion to the chief of the French par­ty of the far right. Exit­ing from the meet­ing . . . . Huber’s two friends sup­pos­ed­ly stat­ed that they ‘share the same view of the world’ and expressed ‘their com­mon desire to work togeth­er to remove the last racist obsta­cles that still pre­vent the union of the Islamist move­ment with the nation­al right of Europe.’. . .”

3. Review of The Camp of the Saints, a racist, anti-immi­grant book val­ued both by French Nation­al Front types and Trump advi­sor Steve Ban­non.


FTR #953 Saint Bernard: Rebel Without A Clue

Against the back­ground of Trumpian polit­i­cal volatil­i­ty made man­i­fest in Syr­ia, we look at St. Bernard [Sanders] and the impli­ca­tions of actions he has tak­en. This pro­gram is pre­sent­ed in the con­text of the “shock to the sys­tem” that Steve Ban­non and oth­er Trump advis­ers see as nec­es­sary and immi­nent.

After detail­ing more about the Hun­gar­i­an fas­cist man­i­fes­ta­tions of Sebas­t­ian Gor­ka, the Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s point man for counter-jihadism, the pro­gram turns to the pos­si­ble use of the Sanders cam­paign as a vehi­cle for the GOP to infil­trate and/or maneu­ver jihadist ele­ments into promi­nence in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty.

In numer­ous pro­grams, we have not­ed the sup­pres­sion of Oper­a­tion Green Quest, which tar­get­ed indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions linked to the Al-Taqwa/­Mus­lim Broth­er­hood milieu on the one hand, and to the Karl Rove/Grover Norquist-gen­er­at­ed Islam­ic Free Mar­ket Insti­tute on the oth­er. Karl Rove, Grover Norquist and Gra­ham E. Fuller, the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood’s and jihadis’ most sig­nif­i­cant backer in the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty, fac­tor into this analy­sis:

1. Rove financed Sanders cam­paign through the Amer­i­can Cross­roads super-PAC. ” . . . Amer­i­can Crossroads—founded by for­mer Bush advis­er Karl Rove—and sev­er­al oth­er con­ser­v­a­tive-backed super PACs have spent the last month inten­tion­al­ly fuel­ing the Bern, but their zeal has more to do with an effort to weak­en Hillary Clin­ton, whom they still see as the like­ly Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­nee and hard­er to defeat in the gen­er­al elec­tion. . . . Cross­roads is one of sev­er­al groups that has released ads that have been aimed at brand­ing Sanders as the only true pro­gres­sive in the race—a strat­e­gy the Ver­mont senator’s cam­paign also embraces. . . .”

2. Gra­ham E. Fuller says that he was ” . . . . gal­va­nized at watch­ing the spec­ta­cle of Bernie Sanders pro­claim­ing issues in his cam­paign that had been vir­tu­al­ly off lim­its for polit­i­cal dis­cus­sion for decades: gap between rich and poor, rapa­cious inter­na­tion­al trade deals, a fair wage, free uni­ver­si­ty edu­ca­tion, the call for US bal­ance (gasp!) in han­dling the Arab-Israeli, issue, etc. The great thing about Bernie — even if he prob­a­bly won’t get nom­i­nat­ed — is that he has pushed hawk­ish, friend-of-Wall-Street Hillary to the left. . . .”

3. Fuller’s actu­al views are the oppo­site of Sanders pol­i­cy points: “. . . Fuller comes from that fac­tion of CIA Cold War­riors who believed (and still appar­ently believe) that fun­da­men­tal­ist Islam, even in its rad­i­cal jiha­di form, does not pose a threat to the West, for the sim­ple rea­son that fun­da­men­tal­ist Islam is con­ser­v­a­tive, against social jus­tice, against social­ism and redis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth, and in favor of hier­ar­chi­cal socio-eco­nom­ic struc­tures. Social­ism is the com­mon ene­my to both cap­i­tal­ist Amer­ica and to Wah­habi Islam, accord­ing to Fuller. . . ‘There is no main­stream Islam­ic organization...with rad­i­cal social views,’ he wrote. ‘Clas­si­cal Islam­ic the­ory envis­ages the role of the state as lim­ited to facil­i­tat­ing the well-being of mar­kets and mer­chants rather than con­trol­ling them. Islamists have always pow­er­fully object­ed to social­ism and communism....Islam has nev­er had prob­lems with the idea that wealth is uneven­ly dis­trib­uted.’ . . . .”

4. Faisal Gill, a for­mer oper­a­tions direc­tor for Norquist’s Islam­ic Free Mar­ket Insti­tute and offi­cial with George W. Bush’s Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty is now the head of Ver­mon­t’s Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty, a post he has used to join Bernie Sanders and Tul­si Gab­bard to pro­mote Kei­th Elli­son as head of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Com­mit­tee. Elli­son is now the deputy chair of the DNC, the post for­mer­ly held by Gab­bard. ” . . . . Yet some offi­cials remain con­cerned that Gill appar­ent­ly enjoys the polit­i­cal pro­tec­tion of Norquist, the archi­tect of the 1994 Repub­li­can elec­tion sweep that brought Geor­gia Repub­li­can Newt Gin­grich to pow­er as House speak­er. Norquist speaks of ‘crush­ing’ his polit­i­cal oppo­nents and dis­miss­es those who don’t agree with his anti-tax, anti-gov­ern­ment agen­da as ‘Bol­she­viks.’ His pow­er derives from a for­mi­da­ble coali­tion of evan­gel­i­cal, busi­ness and oth­er con­ser­v­a­tive groups that he con­trols to push favored GOP issues, as well as from his close rela­tion­ship with White House polit­i­cal chief Karl Rove. . . .”

The pro­gram also notes a num­ber of oth­er things about the Sanders cam­paign:

1. He was pro­mot­ing open pri­maries for the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty, which would enable Karl Rove and the Repub­li­cans to choose the Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­nee.

2. Sanders was a Pres­i­den­tial elec­tor for the Social­ist Work­ers Par­ty, embrac­ing a stance which would have made him ter­mi­nal­ly vul­ner­a­ble had he got­ten the Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­na­tion. ” . . . . In 1980, Sanders served as an elec­tor for the Social­ist Work­ers Par­ty, which was found­ed on the prin­ci­ples of Leon Trot­sky. Accord­ing to the New York Times, that par­ty called for abol­ish­ing the mil­i­tary bud­get. It also called for “sol­i­dar­i­ty” with the rev­o­lu­tion­ary regimes in Iran, Nicaragua, Grena­da, and Cuba; this was in the mid­dle of the Iran­ian hostage cri­sis. . . .”

3. The SWP was a vehi­cle for infil­tra­tion and the acqui­si­tion of a “left cov­er” by Nazis and spooks, includ­ing Lee Har­vey Oswald.

4. The Third Reich saw Leon Trot­sky’s method­ol­o­gy as wor­thy of emu­la­tion. (The SWP is a Trot­skyite polit­i­cal par­ty.) ” . . . . ‘You should read his books,’ he [Hitler] barked. ‘We can learn a lot from him.’ . . .”

5. To what extent have the GOP and the over­lap­ping Under­ground Reich focused on Sanders (with­out his knowl­edge) as a vehi­cle for infil­trat­ing the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty? In FTR #‘s 941, 942 and 945, we not­ed the numer­ous fas­cist con­nec­tions of Tul­si Gab­bard, one of the dri­ving forces behind Sanders’ ascent. To what extent has the Trot­skyite tem­plate served as a vehi­cle for Gab­bard, and, per­haps, Elli­son to infil­trate the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty?


Bern This! Why is Karl Rove a “Bernie Bro’?”

Karl Rove’s Amer­i­can Cross­roads orga­ni­za­tion has been chan­nel­ing mon­ey to Bernie Sanders’ cam­paign. This, alone, should make think­ing peo­ple ask seri­ous ques­tions about Saint Bernard. Oth­er ques­tions the Sanderis­tas are not ask­ing include: why has Sanders been cit­ed by the Fed­er­al Elec­tions Com­mis­sion three times?; why haven’t the media asked ques­tions about his Communist/radical past, includ­ing serv­ing as a Pres­i­den­tial elec­tor for the Trot­skyite Social­ist Work­ers’ Par­ty in 1980; just what was his wife’s role in the col­lapse of Burling­ton Col­lege?; why has Sanders been so reluc­tant to release his tax infor­ma­tion?; why is he repeat­ing the GOP theme of Hillary as “a liar?;” why is Gra­ham E. Fuller, a promi­nent advo­cate of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and rad­i­cal Islam pro­mot­ing Bernie Sanders? All of the con­tents of this web­site as of 12/19/2014–Dave Emory’s 35+ 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 #895 The CIA and the “Privacy” Advocates: Update on the Adventures of Eddie the Friendly Spook

Con­tin­u­ing analy­sis and dis­cus­sion from FTR #891, we fur­ther explore the CIA-gen­er­at­ed back­ground and fund­ing of the “pri­va­cy” advo­cates who com­prise much of “Team Snow­den.” Recall that Snow­den him­self was with CIA when he chose to dou­ble on NSA. We begin by review­ing our scruti­ny of Edward Snow­den from the per­spec­tive of Colonel L. Fletch­er Prouty, the Air Force “Focal Point Offi­cer” who devel­oped a CIA-con­trolled net­work inside of the branch­es of the mil­i­tary and oth­er agen­cies of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment. This “focal point” net­work con­sti­tut­ed a “secret gov­ern­ment with­in a gov­ern­ment” that appears to exist to this day. Next, we set forth the evo­lu­tion of the Broad­cast­ing Board of Gov­er­nors and Radio Free Asia, the par­ent orga­ni­za­tions of the Open Tech­nol­o­gy Fund. The OTF has cap­i­tal­ized much of the encrypt­ed “anti-sur­veil­lance” tech­nol­o­gy that has been devel­oped. “Team Snow­den,” in turn, has evolved from this milieu. In our past dis­cus­sions of the assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Kennedy, we have not­ed that the very same covert action net­works used to over­throw and elim­i­nate gov­ern­ments and indi­vid­u­als deemed hos­tile to U.S. inter­ests were ulti­mate­ly deployed against Amer­i­cans and even the Unit­ed States itself. “Regime change” and desta­bi­liza­tion came home. In a sim­i­lar fash­ion, it is our con­sid­ered opin­ion that a CIA-derived tech­nol­o­gy milieu devel­oped to assist and effect “ops” abroad was used to desta­bi­lize the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion through the Snow­den “op.” ” . . . Read­ers might find it odd that a US gov­ern­ment agency estab­lished as a way to laun­der the image of var­i­ous shady pro­pa­ganda out­fits (more on that soon) is now keen to fund tech­nolo­gies designed to pro­tect us from the US gov­ern­ment. More­over, it might seem curi­ous that its mon­ey would be so warm­ly wel­comed by some of the Internet’s fiercest antigov­ern­ment activists. . . . . You’d think that anti-sur­veil­lance activists like Chris Soghoian, Jacob Appel­baum, Cory Doc­torow and Jil­lian York would be staunch­ly against out­fits like BBG and Radio Free Asia, and the role they have played — and con­tinue to play — in work­ing with defense and cor­po­rate inter­ests to project and impose U.S. pow­er abroad. Instead, these rad­i­cal activists have know­ingly joined the club, and in doing so, have become will­ing pitch­men for a wing of the very same U.S. Nation­al Secu­rity State they so adamant­ly oppose. . . .” Pro­gram High­lights Include: The con­tro­ver­sy over What­sAp­p’s encryp­tion tech­nol­o­gy; the devel­op­ment of What­sAp­p’s encryp­tion tech­nol­o­gy by the CIA-derived Open Tech­nol­o­gy Fund; FBI Direc­tor James Comey’s sup­port for Mitt Rom­ney in 2012; the appar­ent role of Comey in desta­bi­liz­ing the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion and the Hillary Clin­ton cam­paign.


FTR #871 Daniel Hopsicker Rides Again!

Hap­pi­ly recov­ered from major heart surgery, hero­ic inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist Daniel Hop­sick­er rejoins our air­waves to recount some of his inves­ti­ga­tions, old and new. We begin with Daniel’s reportage on Jeb Bush’s role in cov­er­ing up the milieu of Huff­man Avi­a­tion and Mohamed Atta’s activ­i­ties in South Flori­da. Daniel’s inves­ti­ga­tions into intel­li­gence-com­mu­ni­ty-con­nect­ed drug smug­gling began with his inves­ti­ga­tion into Bar­ry Seal. Seal’s involve­ment with spook activ­i­ties appar­ent­ly began with his mem­ber­ship in a Civ­il Air Patrol unit com­mand­ed by CIA offi­cer David Fer­rie, a unit that includ­ed Lee Har­vey Oswald. Much of the pro­gram was spent high­light­ing some of Daniel’s over­lap­ping sto­ries about the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty and the drug traf­fic. Pro­gram high­lights include: the role of H.L. Hunt’s grand­daugh­ter in the activ­i­ties sur­round­ing what Daniel terms “Cocaine One;” the hero­ism of sev­er­al Mex­i­can women who are telling the truth about the involve­ment of the Mex­i­can gov­ern­ment with the car­tels; the bust of a major drug smug­gling flight on prop­er­ty owned by socialite Paris Hilton; a con­stel­la­tion of appar­ent drug smug­gling activ­i­ties sur­round­ing actor Vince Vaugh­n’s moth­er.


FTR #773 The Boston Marathon Bombing, the Third Position and the Leaderless Resistance Strategy

Many of the same ele­ments that fig­ured in the failed inves­ti­ga­tion into the 9/11 attacks crop up in con­nec­tion with the Boston Marathon bomb­ing, as well. In addi­tion to intel­li­gence ele­ments linked to the GOP/Petroleum/Underground Reich ele­ment of the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty, there are indi­ca­tions that the accused bombers may have been indoc­tri­nat­ed with domes­tic fas­cist ide­ol­o­gy. An appar­ent ter­ror­ist attack on a PG & E pow­er sub­sa­tion at the same time may indi­cate that the “lead­er­less resis­tance” strat­e­gy is being man­i­fest­ed here.


FTR #704 Interview with John Loftus

Ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry Rob­ber Barons embraced total­i­tar­i­an sys­tems; “Good for Busi­ness”; fas­cism, the Axis pow­ers, World War II, and 9/11 result from this; Oba­ma gov­ern­ing from the cen­ter and tak­ing heat for it.


GOP-Inspired Violence: Business as Usual

Com­ment: Threats against demo­c­ra­t­ic leg­is­la­tors have become com­mon­place dur­ing the course of the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion. It should not come as a sur­prise that a par­ty that enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly incor­po­rat­ed Nazi war crmi­nals and Mus­lim Broth­er­hood jihadists and ter­ror­ists into its ranks would tac­it­ly encour­age such prac­tices. In lec­tures  we have exam­ined the para­mil­i­tary right as an […]


GOP: Unemployment Insurance Bad for Economy

Com­ment: Yearn­ing for the pre-New Deal days, GOP spokes­men have been char­ac­ter­iz­ing unem­ploy­ment insur­ance as being bad for the econ­o­my, because it dis­cour­ages peo­ple from seek­ing work! “Polit­i­cal Ani­mal: GOP Still Does­n’t Like Unem­ployed” by Steve Benen; Wash­ing­ton Month­ly; 3/8/2010. It’s astound­ing, but in the midst of an unem­ploy­ment cri­sis, promi­nent Repub­li­cans con­tin­ue to cas­ti­gate […]


Grover Norquist’s GOP Jihadists

“Grover Norquist’s Jihad” by Pamela Geller; Amer­i­can Thinker; 3/4/2010. Com­ment: Crit­i­cism of GOP king­pins Grover Norquist and Karl Rove, archi­tects of the Islam­ic Insti­tute (a Mus­lim Broth­er­hood adjunct to the GOP), has been sparse. A con­tin­u­ing tragedy is that much of that sparse crit­i­cism comes from mem­bers of the con­ser­v­a­tive com­mu­ni­ty who have retained enough […]