FTR#‘s 1309 and 1310 Deep Politics and the Death of Iris Chang, Parts 3 and 4
These broadcasts supplement FTR#‘s 509, 1107 and 1108.
Significant sections of the latter two broadcasts are recapped in these programs and this description.
Key Points of Discussion and Analysis Include:
1.–Iris Chang’s mother, Ying-Ying Chang, could not rule out the “dark conspiracy” that Iris was facing. Ying-Ying’s point of view was shaped, in part, by Steven Clemons’ observations.
2.–In an appendix titled “Requiem for Iris Chang,” Steven Clemons noted the alleged “suicide” of his associate Juzo Itami, who was battling the same forces as Iris Chang. “I have never bought the story about Juzo Itami, who was at war in his films with the Japanese right-wing crowd and yakuza.”
3.–Iris’ best-known work, “The Rape of Nanking”, inspired a congressional resolution supporting Japanese compensation for those who had been compelled to labor as slaves and slave prostitutes or “comfort women.”
4.–Iris was working on a book and documentary film project about the survivors of the Bataan Death March. Some of those veterans had been used as slave laborers by Japanese corporations during the war. The Bataan Death March veterans were among those who sued the Japanese corporations that had enslaved them.
5.–The presiding judge ruled against the veterans and for the Japanese corporations. On the day of Iris’ “suicide” Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was meeting with Japanese businessmen to promote California-Japanese trade.
6.–In early September of 2001, Iris spoke at a conference assembled to protest the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the U.S./Japanese treaty of 1951 (negotiated by John Foster Dulles). Iris called “the San Francisco Peace Treaty a travesty of justice, a betrayal of our own American veterans.” Recall the congressional resolution passed in the aftermath of, and because of The Rape of Nanking.
7.–After watching a spirited discussion between Iris and the Japanese ambassador to the U.S., a friend of Iris’ father advised her to hire a bodyguard.
8.–As will be noted at greater length below, Iris was very critical of the George W. Bush administration and had written several articles critical of his policies.
9.–Iris was very critical of the George W. Bush administration, and had taken stances against many features of his foreign policy, Bush’s invasion of Iraq in particular. Iris had long opposed all forms of racism in this country.
10.–Sadly, many of those close to Iris dismissed her fears concerning the government’s targeting of her and the overlapping ideological animosity and targeting of her by the Japanese right-wing. The historical and operational overlap between the two is fundamental and is explored in some of the material below.
11.–When she traveled to Louisville, Kentucky to interview survivors of the Bataan Death March, she felt she was under physical surveillance and harassment. We note below that Kentucky was a place where Bush confidant William Stamps Farish III had powerful connections.
12.–During her book tour for The Rape of Nanking, Iris was approached by someone she felt was recruiting her. He said “You will be safer to join us.” Was this and attempt at recruitment by the CIA?
13.–We repeat the information in #11, for purposes of emphasis.
14.–Iris was convinced to her dying day that she was the focal point of hostility from the Bush administration. A remake of the movie The Manchurian Candidate heightened her anxiety. Her articles critical of the Bush administration and, as we have and shall see, the overlapping dynamics of her work on The Rape of Nanking and Gold Warriors further deepened her peril. She first purchased a firearm for protection and was hoping that John Kerry would defeat Bush in 2004.
15.–Despite the fact that Iris’ corpse was found in her car in the early morning, her parents weren’t notified of her death until almost midnight. Why?
16.–Iris’ corpse was discovered early in the morning with her head against the driver’s side window, her hands crossed in her lap and the gun on her left leg. While not physically impossible, this is altogether unlikely for someone who had allegedly committed suicide by firing a powerful hand gun into her mouth. She felt that her problems were “external,” while those around her thought they were “internal,” i.e. “all in her head.”
17.–Same as 16.
18.–Iris’ ordeal was remarkably similar to what Rita Katz endured following her work on Operation Green Quest and the SAAR investigation.
19.–George W. Bush was pursuing Philippine Golden Lily loot in order to increase U.S. gold reserves and, perhaps more importantly, to fortify his blind trust. That trust was overseen by William Stamps Farish III, who had considerable political and economic gravitas in the state of Kentucky.
20.–Bush’s Harken Energy may well have served as a money laundering front, perhaps for some of the gold recovered in the Philippines. We note that a director of Harken, Talat Othman, interceded directly with then Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill on behalf of the targets of the 3/20/2002 raids. The SAAR network was a primary target of those raids: we have seen how Rita Katz and her fellow investigators came under surveillance and harassment for digging into that case.
21.–We revisit the deep politics of the Bush family, the family of Douglas MacArthur and William and Alan Quasha.
22.–More about the deep politics of the Philippines, the Bush family, father and son Quasha, and the possibility that Alan Quasha’s dominant presence in Harken Energy may be derivative of the clandestine acquisition of Golden Lily loot.
23.–The program concludes with review of the operations of Golden Lily and their involvement with things Iris was investigating. The Rape of Nanking marked the formal beginning of Golden Lily.
24.–Colonel Tsuji Masanobu was heavily involved with Golden Lily and the Bataan Death March, the survivors of which were a focal point of Iris Chang’s research at the time of her death.
“Cain, Where Is Thy Brother Abel? (Or Thy Sister Iris?)”
In “The Death of A Salesman” Arthur Miller (speaking through Mrs. Loman, Willy’s widow) said “Attention must be paid to such a person! You can’t eat the orange and throw the peel away!” Before moving on from FTR #‘s 1107 and 1108, an aspect of the suspicious death of author Iris Chang bears emphasis: The people around her, friends, husband and family, attributed her “suicide” to psychological disturbances, despite evidence that she was the focal point of hostile action by intelligence agents and fascists, as well as subjected to forms of mind control. Ms. Chang said her problems were “external”–those around her felt they were “internal.” Her friend since college, writer Paula Kamen felt that Iris’ fertility treatments may have lay at the core of her problems. In FTR #‘s 1107 and 1108, we compared Iris’ experiences with those of Rita Katz, who helped investigate the 9/11 money trail that led to the Operation Green Quest SAAR network raids. When the Agents of Darkness gather to visit retribution on someone seen as a transgressor, it is, in effect, collaborative to increase the target’s isolation and consequent vulnerability by seeing them as “sick.” Rita Katz wasn’t experiencing what she did because of “fertility treatments.”
FTR #1107 Deep Politics and the Death of Iris Chang, Part 1 and FTR #1108 Deep Politics and the Death of Iris Chang, Part 2
“The Seagraves have uncovered one of the Biggest Secrets of the Twentieth Century”–Iris Chang, quoted on the front cover of Gold Warriors.
Late last year (2019), the city of San Jose (California) opened a park dedicated to the memory of the late author Iris Chang.
These broadcasts update and supplement discussion of Iris Chang’s alleged “suicide,” highlighted in FTR #509. Of particular significance is the fact that the Golden Lily loot and the decisive political and economic factors stemming from the material covered in Gold Warriors, the other books by Sterling and Peggy Seagrave, and Ms. Chang’s “The Rape of Nanking” have enormous and ongoing significance.
(FTR #‘s 427, 428, 446, 451, 501, 509, 688, 689 deal with the subject of the Golden Lily program successfully implemented by the Japanese to loot Asia. That loot was merged with Nazi gold, became the Black Eagle Trust, which not only financed Cold War covert operations but underwrote much of the post-war global economy. Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos recovered a tremendous amount of the Golden Lily loot, some of which was shared with the Japanese, some with the U.S. and much of it kept by Marcos. The Marcos “Black Gold” figures prominently in the deep politics surrounding the death of Ms. Chang.)
In November of 2004, author and investigator Iris Chang was found dead of an allegedly self-inflicted gunshot wound. This program examines the circumstances surrounding her death.
In her landmark book “The Rape of Nanking,” Ms. Chang documented the Japanese atrocities which gave that occupation its name. The rape of Nanking saw the beginning of the Japanese Golden Lily program, which yielded the spectacular looted wealth and postwar economic and political intrigue documented in the Seagraves’ incisive text “Gold Warriors.”
The “Rape of Nanking” drew much hostile reaction from the Japanese right and related forces: . . . . At the same time, torrents of hate mail came in, Brett [her husband] said. ‘Iris is sensitive, but she got charged up,’ he recalled. ‘When anybody questioned the validity of what she wrote, she would respond with overwhelming evidence to back it up. She’s very much a perfectionist. It was hard for her not to react every single time.’ Most of the attacks came from Japanese ultranationalists. ‘We saw cartoons where she was portrayed as this woman with a great big mouth,‘Brett said. ‘She got used to the fact that there is a Web site called ‘Iris Chang and Her Lies.’ She would just laugh.’ But friends say Iris began to voice concerns for her safety. She believed her phone was tapped. She described finding threatening notes on her car. She said she was confronted by a man who said, ‘You will NOT continue writing this.’ She used a post office box, never her home address, for mail. ‘There are a fair number of people who don’t take kindly to what she wrote in The Rape of Nanking.’ Brett said, ‘so she’s always been very, very private about our family life.’ . . . .”
(As we have seen in–among other programs–FTR #‘s 813, 905, 969, 970, the Japanese “ultranationalists” were put right back in power by the American occupation forces, as the Seagraves document in Gold Warriors, as well as The Yamato Dynasty.)
At the time of her death, Ms. Chang was researching a book chronicling the experiences of survivors of the Bataan Death March—the brutal persecution of American POW’s captured in the siege of Bataan in the Philippines during World War II. Many of the survivors were shipped to Japan to work as slave laborers for major Japanese corporations.
Many of these corporations have had profound connections with their American transnational counterparts, and were the beneficiaries of American investment capital in the run-up to World War II. More importantly, many of these corporations are a principal element of the US/Japanese commercial relationship today.
Lawsuits in California targeted those Japanese corporations for compensation for the slave labor wrung from the Battaan POWs. The State Department sided with the Japanese and Judge Vaughn Walker ruled against the Bataan survivors.
Perhaps most importantly, in-depth coverage of the Bataan Death March would uncover the Black Eagle Trust and the fundamental role in post-World War II American and Japanese politics of the vast wealth looted by Japan during World War II. That purloined “black gold” is inextricably linked with U.S. covert operations and is at the epicenter of postwar Japanese power politics and economy.
In addition to the Rape of Nanking and the Bataan Death March survivors, Ms. Chang’s research cut across some deep political dynamics connected to then-President George W. Bush’s administration and his business dealings.
George W. Bush:
1.–Was using U.S. Naval forces to secure Japanese war gold from the Philippines for his personal blind trust, as well as shoring up American reserves.
2.–Was deeply involved with Harken Energy, which may well have been a corporate front for the acquisition and recycling of Golden Lily loot and Bormann money.
3.–Was heir to a deep political heritage involving, among others, the family of William Stamps Farish, the head of Standard Oil of New Jersey during the time it manifested its cartel agreements with I.G. Farben. Dubya benefited from his father’s legacy of involvement with the milieu of Douglas MacArthur. George H.W. Bush’s deep political connections in the Philippines include the involvement of both Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and Trump and GOP trickster Roger Stone with Ferdinand Marcos while the dictator was involved with the recovery of Golden Lily loot.
4. Served as a director of Harken when the head of the firm was Alan Quasha, son of William Quasha, an attorney for the CIA-linked Nugan Hand Bank, a focal point of AFA #25. William had been Alien Property custodian in the Philippines under Douglas MacArthur, which placed him in a position to greatly influence the “Alien Property” placed there by the Japanese under Golden Lily.
There is evidence to suggest that Ms. Chang’s death may have resulted from mind control, administered to neutralize her as a threat to those clandestine economic and national security relationships that have governed US/Japanese affairs in the postwar period. Ms. Chang had received threats ever since the publication of her landmark text The Rape of Nanking.
(For more about the government’s mind control programs, see, among other broadcasts, AFA #‘s 5–7.)
She appears to have been under surveillance, and her “suicide” note alleged that a suspicious internment in a psychiatric hospital may have been initiated at the instigation of the elements opposed to a ruffling of the Japanese/US feathers. In addition to threatening to expose a dominant factor in U.S. covert operations, a key element in the postwar American and global economy, Ms. Chang’s investigation of Japanese war crimes was an irritant to the Japanese establishment that had thrived on the gold and other wealth looted from occupied countries since World War II.
Ms. Chang’s “suicide” note read, in part: “. . . .There are aspects of my experience in Louisville that I will never understand. . . . . I can never shake my belief that I was being recruited, and later persecuted, by forces more powerful than I could have imagined. Whether it was the CIA or some other organization I will never know. As long as I am alive, these forces will never stop hounding me. Days before I left for Louisville I had a deep foreboding about my safety. I sensed suddenly threats to my own life: an eerie feeling that I was being followed in the streets, the white van parked outside my house, damaged mail arriving at my P.O. Box. I believe my detention at Norton Hospital was the government’s attempt to discredit me. . . .”
At the conclusion of the program, we review Rita Katz’s experiences after she helped break the investigation into the SAAR network that became known as Operation Green Quest. That investigation overlapped George W. Bush’s firm Harken Energy. Note the similarity between Iris Chang’s experiences and those of Rita Katz. ” . . . . White vans and SUV’s with dark windows appeared near all the homes of the SAAR investigators. All agents, some of whom were very experienced with surveillance, knew they were being followed. So was I. I felt that I was being followed everywhere and watched at home, in the supermarket, on the way to work . . . and for what? . Now—I was being watched 24/7. It’s a terrible sensation to know that you have no privacy. . . . and no security. That strange clicking of the phones that wasn’t there before. . . the oh-so-crudely opened mail at home in the office. . . and the same man I spied in my neighborhood supermarket, who was also on the train I took to Washington a week ago. . . Life can be miserable when you know that someone’s always breathing down your neck. . . .”
In conversations with friends, Ms. Chang noted that her problems were “external,” not in her head. She also felt she was being “recruited” to become a “Manchurian Candidate” for the CIA–i.e. being subjected to mind control. ” . . . . in her last year she became paranoid about everything from viruses attacking her computer to attempts by the government to “recruit” her, a la The Manchurian Candidate. . . .
Program Highlights Include: The alleged role of Japanese war criminal Tsuji Masanobu in aiding the Marcos gold recoveries in the Philippines; the role of Tsuji Masanobu in implementing the Bataan Death March; William Stamps Farish III’s stewardship of Dubya’s blind trust, for which Philippines war gold was apparently being sought; William Stamps Farish (II) and his stewardship of Standard Oil of New Jersey, when it collaborated with I.G. Farben; George H.W. Bush’s association with the descendants of American corporate figures who collaborated with the Third Reich.
FTR #1027 Send in The Clowns: Reflections on the Kavanaugh Circus
“A frivolous society can only achieve dramatic significance through what its frivolity destroys.”–Edith Wharton.
The largely inept questioning of Brett Kavanaugh about his youthful, drunken sexual behavior eclipsed Kavanaugh’s participation in far more serious, and altogether lethal activities during his pivotal role with the Bush administrations, primarily that of George W. Bush: ” . . . . Kavanaugh, now President Trump’s nominee to the Supreme Court, had an ordinary-sounding title: staff secretary. But he wielded extraordinary influence as the adviser responsible for screening, reviewing and editing documents delivered to Bush, interviews and documents show. . . . But no justice in recent memory has worked as intently as Kavanaugh at the highest levels of the nation’s political machinery, scholars said. . . . Documents and interviews show that while Kavanaugh was not a policymaker, he was directly involved in helping the White House manage a wide array of sensitive matters, including the war on terrorism . . . . ‘It put Kavanaugh at the center of every political and policy decision at the Bush White House,’ said Peter Irons, professor emeritus at the University of California at San Diego and author of several books about the Supreme Court. ‘He is exactly the kind of person that the legal conservative movement wants on the court.’ . . . . Kavanaugh was responsible for managing the process that helped shape the president’s thinking and fueled the Bush administration agenda. ‘He was everywhere,’ said Michael Gerson, a speechwriter in the Bush administration and now a syndicated columnist at The Post. . . . ‘Virtually every piece of paper had to pass through the staff secretary’s hands,’ Rove said. . . .”
Kavanaugh’s wife also had deep ties to the George W. Bush administration. ” . . . . Ashley Estes Kavanaugh worked as media relations coordinator for the George W. Bush Presidential Center from 2009–2010; worked as Director of Special Projects for the George W. Bush presidential Foundation from 2005 to 2009; was President George W. Bush’s personal secretary from 2001 to 2005; was an assistant in the White House from 2001 to 2005; and worked on the Bush-Cheney 2000 campaign from 1996 to 2000. Her time with Bush dates to his work in Texas as governor there. She was assistant to Governor George W. Bush from 1996 to 1999. She attended the University of Texas at Austin from 1994 to 1997. . . .”
In the context of Kavanaugh’s Senate questioning, Mr. Emory made a number of points, including the following:
1.–Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch attended the same high school. Whereas there was a huge commotion over Brett Kavanaugh’s drunken sexual behavior (as there should have been), there was no attention whatsoever paid to Neil Gorsuch’s boasting of participation in a social group of reactionary students who called themselves “The Fascism Forever Club.” (That such a social group existed was corroborated by the editors of Gorsuch’s high school yearbook.) This was covered in FTR #945. A screen capture of the high school yearbook editors’ musings on Gorsuch’s Fascism Forever social circle is included in the written description for the program.
2.–Absent on the Senate Judiciary Committee that queried and vetted Judge Kavanaugh was Al Franken, who was professionally destroyed in one of the most hysterically fascistic, undemocratic events in recent memory. (We discussed this in FTR #998, and supplemented it in FTR #999.) A lynch mob altogether reminiscent of the young women featured in Arthur Miller’s dramatic parable The Crucible, forced Franken’s resignation from the Senate largely on the adolescent, obviously jocular and libidinous events occurring during a USO tour. An obvious gag photo of Franken pretending to grope the breasts of an ostensibly sleeping LeAnn Tweeden (who was not asleep and was wearing a flak jacket) fed the flames of a grotesque political immolation. On the same USO tour, Tweeden was photographed grabbing the butt of a male performer, onstage.
3.–Franken said he welcomed an investigation and vetting of the charges against him. There was NONE! The charges of right-wing flak Tweeden (a Birther according to her friend actor Tom Arnold) were then augmented by an allegation by a Trump backer that Franken groped her while she was having a picture taken with him at the Minnesota State Fair. Her Trump-backing husband and her father were present, and the picture was taken by her family members.
The apparent assault of Christine Blasey (Ford) by a drunken Kavanaugh, although reprehensible, pales by comparison with the enormous destruction of life that took place during the administrations of George W. Bush, including:
1.–The September 11 attacks.
2.–The ongoing war in Afghanistan that stemmed from those attacks.
3.–The war in Iraq, which also stemmed from the 9/11 attacks.
4.–The bloodbath in the war against ISIS, also a result of the invasion of Iraq.
5.–The enormous destruction of life stemming from the financial collapse overseen by Dubya’s administration. In FTR #412, recorded in June of 2003, Mr. Emory forecast the economic collapse of 2008, noting that it was deliberately “engineered,” in order to serve as a pretext for slashing funding for domestic social welfare programs.
The program features an excerpt from FTR #715. Noting that Kavanaugh’s resume stretches back to the Presidency of George H.W. Bush and gathers momentum with the Presidency of his son (for whom Kavanaugh’s wife also worked), it appears prudent to give some consideration of the trans-generational nature of the Bush family and criminal activities that are part and parcel to that family’s involvement with fascism.
Among the key items of discussion is the opaque nature of Dubya’s Harken Energy and the large, mysterious amounts of money flowing into, and out of, the firm. It may well have been a money laundering vehicle, with the presence of Alan Quasha on the board of directors being suggestive.
A native of the Philippines, Quasha is the son of William Quasha, head of the Philippine branch of the Nugan Hand Bank. Part of “Team Marcos,” William was inevitably in close proximity to, if not involved with, the recycling of the enormous gold deposits stashed in the Philippines by the Japanese during World War II. In the discussion with Russ Baker, he suggests that Harken may (among other things) have been used to launder some of the Golden Lily loot from General Yamashita’s treasure.
As noted in FTR #‘s 356 and 1006, among other programs, it was Talat Othman–a former director of Harken Energy, a political adviser and personal friend of both Georges Bush and the managing director of Grover Norquist and Karl Rove’s Islamic Free Market Institute who interceded with then Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill on behalf of the individuals and institutions targeted by the 3/20/2002 Operation Green Quest raids. O’Neill was fired months later and then FBI Director Robert Mueller–that most special of prosecutors–helped derail the Green Quest investigation.
As highlighted in FTR #569, Rita Katz and John Loftus, who initiated the Operation Green Quest investigation and did much of the heavy lifting were surveilled by FBI and/or CIA. Robert Mueller’s FBI covered up Green Quest.
The program concludes with discussion of a horror show that emerged in the aftermath of the kidnapping and murder of Polly Klass (whose slaying led to the passage of California’s “Three Strikes” law.) One can only imagine the extent to which connections like this bear on the Saudi sponsorship of terrorism and the United States’ reluctance (or inability) to do anything about it. What might surface if the U.S. were to truly crack down on the Saudis?
Although what was apparently done to Dr. Ford is reprehensible, it pales by comparison to other horrors visited on young women.
Mr. Emory notes that nothing has been done about this and nothing will be done–by ANY of the people and institutions who weighed in on the Kavanaugh circus.
For to investigate these charges would be to cut across the U.S./Saudi power axis. THAT is absolutely inviolable, as no one knows better than Brett Kavanaugh!
” . . . . Jill saw brothels [in Saudi Arabia] where children were kept. The brothels were plain looking buildings in the center of the town, with yellow doors. Men constantly came in and out, mostly Arabs from the oil fields, but men from other businesses as well. Jill peeked past the yellow door into one of the brothels and saw a room filled with young girls, white-skinned, about twelve-years old. She learned later that many of them were American, abducted and shipped from the United States. The little girls were wearing small, skimpy, see-through skirts. A customer would pick one of them, and take whomever he wanted upstairs.
Later, Jill saw some of the little girls getting air in the back of the brothel, She could tell they were drugged by the way they walked. Although she never learned who ran the brothels, she found out that in two or three years the little girls were turned into the streets where they were left to die. I asked Jill if she ever reported what she saw, little girls who were drugged and forced into sexual slavery. She admitted that she had – to someone in the diplomatic corps. He said he would see what could be done about the abducted American girls – but to her knowledge, nothing was ever done. . . .”
Better Late than Never: Appellate Court Clears the Way for 9/11 Families to Sue Saudi Arabia
An appellate court has cleared the way for families of 9/11 victims to sue Saudi Arabia, focusing on, among other things, charities used to fund al-Qaeda. IF this investigation were to proceed as far as it might, Grover Norquist, Karl Rove and others in the GOP/Bush milieu would come under scrutiny, as would Francois Genoud, Youssef Nada and the Underground Reich. In addition, there is renewed focus on the redacted 28 pages of the Join Intelligence Committee Inquiry, which implicate Saudi Arabia.
Grover Norquist Strikes Again!
Earlier this month, the Tea Party/GOP Right demonstrated their hypocrisy, as well as the degree of solidarity between the Islamic fascists of the Muslim Brotherhood and the GOP. The Jihad Watch website received the “People’s Choice Award” at the 2013 Conservative Political Action Committee. The awarding of the honor was blocked, however by the Tea Party Republicans, who would only consent to give the award if the administrators of the site would agree not to criticize Grover Norquist.
FTR #722 The “9/11 Mosque” Tea Party and its Multiple Mad Hatters
“9/11 Mosque” Imam no moderate; second generation Muslim Brotherhood, his foreign language pronouncements and actions belie his “moderation;” Supporters and opponents ignore profound ties between their “side” and what they oppose.
Harken Energy: A Money-Laundering Vehicle for–among other things–Japanese War Gold?
Comment: The brilliant new book Family of Secrets by Russ Baker analyzes the development of Harken Energy, one of George W. Bush’s energy companies. Detailing the many strange aspects of the company’s development, Baker posits that the firm may well have been a money-laundering vehicle for powerful, reactionary interests around the world. Discussing the Marcos […]
FTR #391 Discussion Points on 9/11 and Related Topics
Fascist and Nazi links dating from the 1920s involving Bush family, Arab and Muslim fascists, the Saudi elite and the Underground Reich, perpetrators of 9/11.
FTR#368 Harken Unto Me, Part II; The Ties that Bind, Part V
George W. Bush’s energy companies linked to drug smuggling and 9/11.
FROM THE LECTURE SERIES
The Political Implications of the UFO Phenomenon and the "ET" Myth Exposes U.S. intelligence influence behind the "brothers from space" industry. Read more »- Spitfire List is licensed under Creative Commons.
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