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.”
“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.
This broadcast commemorates the lives and passing of Peggy and Sterling Seagrave, investigators, journalists, authors and heroes.
A peripheral internet search conducted while re-reading Gold Warriors yielded the sad news that both Peggy and Sterling Seagrave had passed. Peggy passed away in 2016 and Sterling in the spring of 2017.
Authors of a number of ground-breaking and overlapping historical/political exposes, they culminated their remarkable careers with Gold Warriors, which Mr. Emory feels is as important a book as has ever been written and is a MUST read for anyone genuinely concerned with the state of world affairs, past, present and future.
More admirable than even their consummate investigative and literary skills is the fact that they continued their research and reporting in the face of serious death threats and attempts, as well as lethal consequences visited on some of the participants in the “Black Gold” transactions and, apparently, on some of those investigating the machinations of the nations, commercial institutions and individuals involved with the operations.
(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.)
In FTR #‘s 446 and 509, we highlighted and reviewed the death threats and hands-on interference experienced by the Seagraves in response to their investigations. In 509, we also noted the suspicious circumstances surrounding the death of the heroic Iris Chang, who aided the Seagraves in their Gold Warriors project. Having authored a book on the Rape of Nanking and working on another about the Bataan Death March, Ms. Chang had crossed the very power structure delineated at length, depth and detail in the Seagraves volume.
In our last visit with the Seagraves, a 2009 interview that was the focus of FTR #689, Sterling expressed anxiety about the proximity of their residence in Southern France to the Spanish border and the formidable presence of Opus Dei in Franco’s former domain.
(The Vatican’s relationship to fascism, including Opus Dei and the Ustachi in Croatia, is highlighted in, among other programs AFA #17.)
The remarkable Severino Santa Romana, prime mover in the Black Eagle Trust operations in the Philippines and the gold recoveries in those islands was, in addition to his work for U.S. intelligence, an operative of the powerful Vatican order Opus Dei. It appears that Opus Dei was Santa Romana’s primary affiliation and his U.S. intelligence connections were derivative.
With strong connections in Spain, dating to the Franco fascist regime (which maintains powerful presence in contemporary Spain), Opus Dei is a major factor in the contemporary political scene. Sterling opined in FTR #689 that his and Peggy’s proximity to the Spanish border might expose them to violence.
His fear turned out to be prescient. On Christmas Day of 2011, he narrowly escaped assassination while returning home. He felt that the attempt on his life may well have been motivated by the publication of the Spanish language edition of Gold Warriors.
After detailing the attempt on his life, we set forth Santa Romana’s relationship with Opus Dei. Santa Romana’s Opus Dei operations were essential for the fiscal reinforcement of the Vatican’s financial institutions, which benefitted from the Golden Lily-derived treasure from the Philippines.
We have discussed the Vatican bank in, among other programs, AFA #18.
In FTR #446, we highlighted the serious death threats, harassment, and covert disruption experienced by Peggy and Sterling Seagrave in connection with their writing. In 509, we also noted the suspicious circumstances surrounding the death of the heroic Iris Chang, who aided the Seagraves in their “Gold Warriors” project. Having authored a book on the Rape of Nanking and working on another about the Bataan Death March, Ms. Chang had crossed the very power structure delineated at length, depth and detail in the Seagraves’ volume. In our last visit with the Seagraves, a 2009 interview that was the focus of FTR #689, Sterling expressed anxiety about the proximity of their residence in Southern France to the Spanish border and the formidable presence of Opus Dei in Franco’s former domain. His fear turned out to be prescient. On Christmas Day of 2011, he narrowly escaped assassination while returning home. He felt that the attempt on his life may well have been motivated by the publication of the Spanish language edition of “Gold Warriors.” Peggy passed in 2016 and Sterling in the spring of 2017. Listeners/readers may honor these heroes by reading their consummately important books.
In our last post, we highlighted the 1951 “Peace” Treaty between the Allies and Japan, an agreement which falsely maintained that Japan had not stolen any wealth from the nations it occupied during World War II and that the (already) booming nation was bankrupt and would not be able to pay reparations to the slave laborers and “comfort women” it had pressed into service during the conflict. In the context of the fantastic sums looted by Japan under the auspices of Golden Lily and the incorporation of that wealth with Nazi Gold to form the Black Eagle Trust, that 1951 treaty and the advent of the Korean War raise some interesting, unresolved questions. One of the principal figures in the looting of occupied Asia during World War II was the remarkable Kodama Yoshio. Networked with the powerful Yakuza Japanese organized crime milieu, the Black Dragon society (the most powerful of the patriotic and ultra-nationalist societies), the Imperial Japanese military and the Royal family of Emperor Hirohito, Kodama looted the Chinese underworld and trafficked in narcotics with Chiang Kai-shek’s fascist narco-dictatorship. We can but wonder about Kodama Yoshio’s presence along with 1951 “Peace” Treaty author John Foster Dulles at negotiations in Seoul on the eve of the outbreak of the Korean War. ” . . . . In October of 1949, the People’s Republic of China came into being. Eight months later, in June of 1950, the Korean War broke out. Just before the war began, Kodama [Yoshio] accompanied John Foster Dulles to negotiations in Seoul. The Dulles party also included Kodama’s protege Machii Hisayuki, boss of the Korean yakuza in Japan. Efforts to discover under Freedom of Information what Kodama and Machii did during the trip with Dulles have run into a stone wall. In the MacArthur Memorial archive we discovered a personal letter from Kodama to General MacArthur offering to provide thousands of yakuza and former Japanese Army soldiers to fight alongside American soldiers in Korea. According to sources in Korea and Japan, the offer was accepted and these men joined the Allied force on the Peninsula, posing as Korean soldiers. . . . ”
Over the decades, we have spoken at great length about the Second World War and fascism as outgrowths of globalization, a phenomenon generally thought of as having begun in the post World War II period. Most of the discussion has centered on the relationships between German and American corporations and oligarchs. With both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders targeting trade agreements and globalization in their campaign rhetoric, we review the cartel relationships between the Japanese Zaibatsu (family trusts) and their American counterparts.
As well, we note the central role of Emperor Hirohito in the waging of Japan’s war of aggression and the post-war historical revisionism that has eclipsed his activities.
After discussing the re-investment of the profits from the American industrial boom of the 1920’s in Germany and Japan, we analyze the deliberate frustration of the attempted political and economic reform of Japan. Intent on continuing the profound corporate relationships that had boosted Japan into its position as a dominant industrial power, Wall Street interests and allied political, national security and media elites subverted the attempts at reforming Japanese finance, industry and politics.
A major part of the effort involved whitewashing Emperor Hirohito’s central role in waging World War II in the Pacific and profiting from Japanese military conquests.
Program Highlights Include: the suspicious deaths of Japanese officers and members of the Imperial family who were forthcoming about the truth concerning Emperor Hirohito; the apparent murder of State Department officer George Atcheson, who attempted to blow the whistle concerning the subversion of the reform of Japan; the role of General William Draper in frustrating the reform of Japan and review of his career as an investment banker with Dillon, Read & Co.; the decisive role of the MacArthur group within the military in the frustration of Japanese reform and the re-institution of the fascists, militarists and zaibatsu in postwar Japan.
Peter Levenda’s “The Hitler Legacy” is, in Mr. Emory’s opinion, one of the most important political books ever written. This seventh interview with Peter about the book sets forth the powerful Nazi presence in Indonesia prior to, during, and after World War II. In addition to the significant presence of the Dutch Nazi party in Indonesia, the NSDAP also had a significant presence in this former colony of the Netherlands. The most populous Muslim country in the world, Indonesia was seen as the key element in an Islamist bulwark against Communist China. This stratagem was envisioned by Charles Willoughby, General Douglas MacArthur’s intelligence chief and a doctrinaire fascist. Although supportive of Axis conquest of the Netherlands and Indonesia, which he saw as freeing the archipelago from colonial domination, Sukarno espoused a “Third Way” at the conference of Non-Aligned nations in Bandung in 1955. This led the US to see him as a Communist and begin attempts to depose him. In order to provide financing for Indonesia and other Third World countries, Sukarno appears to have turned to Hjalmar Schacht, Hitler’s finance minister, who utilized Nazi gold shipments to Asia to “prime the economic pump” for this abortive project.
In his second stint as Prime Minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe is rebooting the right-wing political agenda he pursued during his first term in the last decade. The grandson of prominent Japanese war criminal Nobosuke Kishi, Abe is implementing revisionist politics designed to obfuscate Japan’s actions during World War II, including editing textbooks to change written history of the war, implementing a new secrecy law, bring the respected NHK television network under government control and negating accounts of Japanese war crimes.
Ukraine moving to commemorate WWII massacres of Polish civilians by Ukrainian fascists from OUN/B. Poland is protesting this historical revisionism. OUN/B head Stepahan Bandera and Roman Stukhevych (who lead the extermination of the Lvov Ghetto during World War II) were named heroes of Ukraine..
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