Former Pravy Sektor Chief Is Advisor to Chief of Staff of Ukrainian Armed Forces UPDATED ON 2/19/2022 and ON 2/22/2022

Rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the impor­tant Nazi role in Ukrain­ian nation­al secu­ri­ty affairs is the appoint­ment of for­mer Pravy Sek­tor chief Dymytro Yarosh as an advis­er to the com­man­der in chief of Ukraine’s armed forces. Yarosh wrote about his appoint­ment on Face­book: “By order of Lieu­tenant Gen­er­al Valery Zaluzh­ny, I was appoint­ed an advis­er to the Com­man­der-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. . . .” We have cov­ered the ascent in Ukraine of the suc­ces­sors to the OUN/B WWII Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tors in numer­ous pro­grams and posts. WFMU-FM is pod­cast­ing For The Record–You can sub­scribe to the pod­cast HERE. Mr. Emory emphat­i­cal­ly rec­om­mends that listeners/readers get the 32GB flash dri­ve con­tain­ing all of Mr. Emory’s 43 years on the air, plus a library of old anti-fas­cist books on easy-to-down­load PDF files.

Trussed Up

In Moscow, British For­eign Sec­re­tary Liz Truss intoned that “Britain would nev­er accept Russ­ian sov­er­eign­ty over Ros­tov and Voronezh – until it was point­ed out to her that these places were not part of Ukraine but in Rus­sia. . . .” Sheesh!!! We have cov­ered the ascent in Ukraine of the suc­ces­sors to the OUN/B WWII Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tors in numer­ous pro­grams and posts. WFMU-FM is pod­cast­ing For The Record–You can sub­scribe to the pod­cast HERE. Mr. Emory emphat­i­cal­ly rec­om­mends that listeners/readers get the 32GB flash dri­ve con­tain­ing all of Mr. Emory’s 43 years on the air, plus a library of old anti-fas­cist books on easy-to-down­load PDF files.

FTR #1110 Miscellaneous Articles and Updates

As the title indi­cates, this pro­gram presents a pot­pour­ri of arti­cles cov­er­ing a num­ber of top­ics.

A com­mon thread unit­ing them is the ongo­ing New Cold War and ele­ments fac­tor­ing in the impeach­ment pro­ceed­ings under­way in Wash­ing­ton. 

Reput­ed evi­dence of a new “hack” alleged­ly done by the G.R.U. does­n’t pass the sniffs test. 

Fac­tors to be weighed in con­nec­tion with the lat­est “hack” of the Ukrain­ian nat­ur­al gas com­pa­ny Buris­ma (on whose board Hunter Biden sits–a fact that has been a focal point of the impeach­ment pro­ceed­ings):

1.–Blake Darche, co-founder and Chief Secu­ri­ty offi­cer of Area 1, the firm that “detect­ed” the lat­est “hack” has a strong past asso­ci­a­tion with Crowd­Strike, the firm that helped launch the New Cold War pro­pa­gan­da blitz about sup­posed Russ­ian hacks. Darche was a Prin­ci­pal Con­sul­tant at Crowd­Strike.
2.–CrowdStrike, in turn, has strong links to the Atlantic Coun­cil, one of the think tanks that is part and par­cel to the Inter­mar­i­um Con­ti­nu­ity dis­cussed in FTR #‘s 1098, 1099, 1100, 1101. Dmitri Alper­ovitch, the com­pa­ny’s co-founder and Chief Tech­nol­o­gy Offi­cer is a senior fel­low at the Atlantic Coun­cil.
3.–An iron­ic ele­ment of the “analy­sis” of the hacks attrib­ut­es the acts to “Fan­cy Bear” and the G.R.U., based on alleged lazi­ness on the part of the alleged per­pe­tra­tors of the phish­ing attack. (Phish­ing attacks are very easy for a skilled actor to car­ry out in rel­a­tive anonymi­ty.) Area 1’s con­clu­sion is based on “pat­tern recog­ni­tion,” which is the embod­i­ment of lazi­ness. We are to believe that the G.R.U./Fancy Bear alleged perp used a “cook­ie cut­ter” approach.

As we have not­ed in many pre­vi­ous broad­casts and posts, cyber attacks are eas­i­ly dis­guised. Per­pe­trat­ing a “cyber false flag” oper­a­tion is dis­turbing­ly easy to do. In a world where the ver­i­fi­ably false and phys­i­cal­ly impos­si­ble “con­trolled demolition”/Truther non­sense has gained trac­tion, cyber false flag ops are all the more threat­en­ing and sin­is­ter.

Now, we learn that the CIA’s hack­ing tools are specif­i­cal­ly craft­ed to mask CIA author­ship of the attacks. Most sig­nif­i­cant­ly, for our pur­pos­es, is the fact that the Agen­cy’s hack­ing tools are engi­neered in such a way as to per­mit the authors of the event to rep­re­sent them­selves as Russ­ian.

” . . . . These tools could make it more dif­fi­cult for anti-virus com­pa­nies and foren­sic inves­ti­ga­tors to attribute hacks to the CIA. Could this call the source of pre­vi­ous hacks into ques­tion? It appears that yes, this might be used to dis­guise the CIA’s own hacks to appear as if they were Russ­ian, Chi­nese, or from spe­cif­ic oth­er coun­tries. . . . This might allow a mal­ware cre­ator to not only look like they were speak­ing in Russ­ian or Chi­nese, rather than in Eng­lish, but to also look like they tried to hide that they were not speak­ing Eng­lish . . . .”

This is of para­mount sig­nif­i­cance in eval­u­at­ing the increas­ing­ly neo-McCarthyite New Cold War pro­pa­gan­da about “Russ­ian inter­fer­ence” in the U.S. elec­tion, and Russ­ian author­ship of the high-pro­file hacks.

With Buris­ma at the cen­ter of the impeach­ment pro­ceed­ings in Wash­ing­ton, we note some inter­est­ing rela­tion­ships involv­ing Buris­ma and its board of direc­tors, on which Hunter Biden sits.

Some of the con­sid­er­a­tions to be weighed in that con­text

1.–Burisma formed a pro­fes­sion­al rela­tion­ship with the Atlantic Coun­cil in 2017: ” . . . . In 2017, Buris­ma announced that it faced no active pros­e­cu­tion cas­es, then formed a part­ner­ship with the Atlantic Coun­cil, a US think-tank active in pro­mot­ing anti-cor­rup­tion efforts in Ukraine. Buris­ma donat­ed between $100,000 and $250,000 to the Atlantic Coun­cil last year . . . .  Kari­na Zlochevs­ka, Mr. [Buris­ma founder Myko­la] Zlochevsky’s daugh­ter, attend­ed an Atlantic Coun­cil round­table on pro­mot­ing best busi­ness prac­tices as recent­ly as last week. . . .”
2.–The firm had on its board of Buris­ma of both Alek­sander Kwas­niews­ki and Cofer Black. ” . . . .When pros­e­cu­tors began inves­ti­gat­ing Burisma’s licens­es over self-deal­ing alle­ga­tions, Mr Zlochevsky stacked its board with West­ern lumi­nar­ies. . . .  they includ­ed for­mer Pol­ish pres­i­dent Alek­sander Kwas­niews­ki, who had vis­it­ed Ukraine dozens of times as an EU envoy, and  . . . .  ex-Black­wa­ter direc­tor Cofer Black. In Mona­co, where he report­ed­ly lives, Mr Zlochevsky joint­ly organ­is­es an annu­al ener­gy con­fer­ence with Mr Kwasniewski’s foun­da­tion. . . . ”
3.–Kwasniewski was not only the EU’s envoy seek­ing ful­fill­ment of the EU asso­ci­a­tion agree­ment, but a key mem­ber of Paul Man­afort’s Haps­burg Group. The evi­dence about Man­afort work­ing with that assem­blage to maneu­ver Ukraine into the West­ern orbit is exten­sive. Some of the rel­e­vant pro­grams are: FTR #‘s 1008, 1009 (back­ground about the deep pol­i­tics sur­round­ing the Hapsburg–U.S. intel­li­gence alliance) and 1022.That the actu­al Maid­an Coup itself was sparked by a provo­ca­tion fea­tur­ing the lethal snip­ing by OUN/B suc­ces­sor ele­ments is per­sua­sive. Some of the rel­e­vant pro­grams are: FTR #‘s 982, 1023, 1024.
4.–Kwasniewski’s foun­da­tion’s annu­al ener­gy con­fer­ences bring to mind the Three Seas Ini­tia­tive and the cen­tral role of ener­gy in it. The TSI and the role of ener­gy in same is high­light­ed in the arti­cle at the core of FTR #‘s 1098–1101. In this con­text, note the role of the Atlantic Coun­cil in the TSI and its ener­gy com­po­nent, along with the part­ner­ship between Buris­ma and the Atlantic Coun­cil. The TSI and its ener­gy com­po­nent, in turn, are a fun­da­men­tal ele­ment of the Inter­mar­i­um Con­ti­nu­ity, the mil­i­tary com­po­nent of which is now being cement­ed in the Impeach­ment Cir­cus: ” . . . . Under the men­tor­ship of Jarosław Kaczyńs­ki, the new Pol­ish pres­i­dent, Andrzej Duda, elect­ed in 2015, relaunched the idea of a Baltic-Black Sea alliance on the eve of his inau­gu­ra­tion under the label of ‘Three Seas Ini­tia­tive’ (TSI). Orig­i­nal­ly, the project grew out of a debate sparked by a report co-pub­lished by the Atlantic Coun­cil and the EU ener­gy lob­by group Cen­tral Europe Ener­gy Part­ners (CEEP) with the goal of pro­mot­ing big Cen­tral Euro­pean com­pa­nies’ inter­ests in the EU.[116] The report, enti­tled Com­plet­ing Europe—From the North-South Cor­ri­dor to Ener­gy, Trans­porta­tion, and Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Union, was co-edit­ed by Gen­er­al James L. Jones, Jr., for­mer Supreme Allied Com­man­der of NATO, U.S. Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Advi­sor, and chair­man of the Atlantic Coun­cil, and Pawel Olech­now­icz, CEO of the Pol­ish oil and gas giant Gru­pa Lotos.[117] It ‘called for the accel­er­at­ed con­struc­tion of a North-South Cor­ri­dor of ener­gy, trans­porta­tion, and com­mu­ni­ca­tions links stretch­ing from the Baltic Sea to the Adri­at­ic and Black Seas,’ which at the time was still referred to as the ‘Adri­at­ic-Baltic-Black Sea Initiative.’[118] The report was pre­sent­ed in Brus­sels in March 2015, where, accord­ing to Fred­er­ick Kempe, pres­i­dent and CEO of the Atlantic Coun­cil, it ‘gen­er­at­ed a huge amount of excite­ment.’ . . . .”
The pres­ence on the Buris­ma board of Cofer Black “ex”-CIA and the for­mer direc­tor of Erik Prince’s Black­wa­ter out­fit is VERY impor­tant. Erik Prince is the broth­er of Trump Edu­ca­tion Sec­re­tary Bet­sy De Vos and the busi­ness part­ner of John­son Cho Kun Sun, the Hong Kong-based oli­garch who sits on the board of Emer­da­ta, the rein­car­nat­ed Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca. Both Cofer Black and Alek­sander Kwas­niews­ki are in a posi­tion to pro­vide detailed intel­li­gence about the oper­a­tions of Buris­ma, includ­ing any data that the sup­posed “Russ­ian hack” might reveal.

With the impeach­ment pro­ceed­ings now head­ing toward their most prob­a­ble conclusion–Trump’s acquit­tal– and with the inces­sant bab­ble about the non-exis­tent “Russ­ian inter­fer­ence” in the U.S. elec­tion, it is worth con­tem­plat­ing Amer­i­can inter­fer­ence in Russ­ian pol­i­tics.

Against the back­ground of decades of Amer­i­can-backed and/or ini­ti­at­ed coups over­throw­ing gov­ern­ments around the world, we high­light U.S. sup­port for Boris Yeltsin. Fol­low­ing the NED’s ele­va­tion of Nazi-allied fas­cists in Lithua­nia and the expan­sion of that Gehlen/CFF/GOP milieu inside the for­mer Sovi­et Union cour­tesy of the Free Con­gress Foun­da­tion, the U.S. hoist­ed Yeltsin into the dri­ver’s seat of the new­ly-mint­ed Rus­sia. (One should nev­er for­get that Jef­frey Sachs, a key eco­nom­ic advis­er to Bernie Sanders and Alexan­dria Oca­sio-Cortez head­ed the team that sent the Russ­ian econ­o­my back to the stone age.)

Key points of con­sid­er­a­tion:

1.–” . . . . . . . . In late 1991, after the fall of the Sovi­et Union, Boris Yeltsin won a year of spe­cial pow­ers from the Russ­ian Par­lia­ment: for one year, he was to be, in effect, the dic­ta­tor of Rus­sia to facil­i­tate the mid­wifery of the birth of a demo­c­ra­t­ic Rus­sia. In March of 1992, under pres­sure from a dis­con­tent­ed pop­u­la­tion, par­lia­ment repealed the dic­ta­to­r­i­al pow­ers it had grant­ed him. Yeltsin respond­ed by declar­ing a state of emer­gency, giv­ing him­self the repealed dic­ta­to­r­i­al pow­ers. Russia’s Con­sti­tu­tion­al Court ruled that Yeltsin was act­ing out­side the con­sti­tu­tion. But the US sided – against the Russ­ian peo­ple and against the Russ­ian Con­sti­tu­tion­al Court – with Yeltsin. . . .”
2.–” . . . . Yeltsin dis­solved the par­lia­ment that had rescind­ed his pow­ers and abol­ished the con­sti­tu­tion of which he was in vio­la­tion. In a 636–2 vote, the Russ­ian par­lia­ment impeached Yeltsin. But Pres­i­dent Bill Clin­ton again sided with Yeltsin against the Russ­ian peo­ple and Russ­ian law, giv­ing him $2.5 bil­lion in aid. . . .”
3.–” . . . . Yeltsin took the mon­ey and sent police offi­cers and elite para­troop­ers to sur­round the par­lia­ment build­ing. Clin­ton ‘praised the Russ­ian Pres­i­dent has (sic) hav­ing done ‘quite well’ in man­ag­ing the stand­off with the Russ­ian Par­lia­ment,’ as The New York Times report­ed at the time. Clin­ton added that he thought ‘the Unit­ed States and the free world ought to hang in there’ with their sup­port of Yeltsin against his peo­ple, their con­sti­tu­tion and their courts, and judged Yeltsin to be ‘on the right side of his­to­ry.’ . . .”
4.–” . . . . On the right side of his­to­ry and armed with machine guns, Yeltsin’s troops opened fire on the crowd of pro­test­ers, killing about 100 peo­ple before set­ting the Russ­ian par­lia­ment build­ing on fire. By the time the day was over, Yeltsin’s troops had killed an uncon­firmed 500 peo­ple and wound­ed near­ly 1,000. Still, Clin­ton stood with Yeltsin. . . .”
5.–” . . . . In 1996, Amer­i­ca would inter­fere yet again. With elec­tions loom­ing, Yeltsin’s pop­u­lar­i­ty was nonex­is­tent, and his approval rat­ing was at about 6 per­cent. Accord­ing to Pro­fes­sor Emer­i­tus of Russ­ian Stud­ies at Prince­ton, Stephen Cohen, Clinton’s inter­fer­ence in Russ­ian pol­i­tics, his ‘cru­sade’ to ‘reform Rus­sia,’ had by now become offi­cial pol­i­cy. And, so, Amer­i­ca bold­ly inter­fered direct­ly in Russ­ian elec­tions. Three Amer­i­can polit­i­cal con­sul­tants, receiv­ing ‘direct assis­tance from Bill Clinton’s White House,’ secret­ly ran Yeltsin’s re-elec­tion cam­paign. As Time mag­a­zine broke the sto­ry, ‘For four months, a group of Amer­i­can polit­i­cal con­sul­tants clan­des­tine­ly par­tic­i­pat­ed in guid­ing Yeltsin’s cam­paign.’ ‘Fund­ed by the U.S. gov­ern­ment,’ Cohen reports, Amer­i­cans ‘gave mon­ey to favored Russ­ian politi­cians, instruct­ed min­is­ters, draft­ed leg­is­la­tion and pres­i­den­tial decrees, under­wrote text­books, and served at Yeltsin’s reelec­tion head­quar­ters in 1996.’ . . . .”
6.–” . . . . Then ambas­sador to Rus­sia Thomas Pick­er­ing even pres­sured an oppos­ing can­di­date to drop out of the elec­tion to improve Yeltsin’s odds of win­ning. . . .”
7.–” . . . . The US not only helped run Yeltsin’s cam­paign, they helped pay for it. The US backed a $10.2 bil­lion Inter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF) loan for Rus­sia, the sec­ond-biggest loan the IMF had ever giv­en. The New York Times report­ed that the loan was ‘expect­ed to be help­ful to Pres­i­dent Boris N. Yeltsin in the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion in June.’ . . .”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pro­gram High­lights Include:

1.–Review of the pos­si­ble role of Nazi hack­er, Glenn Green­wald asso­ciate and Ukraine res­i­dent Andrew “Weev” Aueren­heimer in the high-pro­file hacks: ” . . . . [Peter W.] Smith also reached out to ‘Guc­cifer 2.0’—an alias the U.S. intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty has linked to Russ­ian state hackers—and was advised to seek the help of a white nation­al­ist hack­er who lives in Ukraine. . . . [Pax] John­son said he also sug­gest­ed that Smith get in touch with Andrew Auern­heimer, a hack­er who goes by the alias “Weev” and has col­lab­o­rat­ed with John­son in the past. . . .” We note that Charles C. John­son, an asso­ciate of Mike Cer­novich, was involved with this maneu­ver.
2.–Review of Atlantic Coun­cil fel­low Dmitri Alper­ovitch (co-founder and chief tech­nol­o­gy offi­cer of Crowd­strike, the cyber-secu­ri­ty firm that led the charge to attribute the high-pro­file hacks to Rus­sia. Kurt Volk­er is also close­ly affil­i­at­ed with the Atlantic Coun­cil. ” . . . . Dmitri Alper­ovitch is also a senior fel­low at the Atlantic Coun­cil. . . . The con­nec­tion between [Crowd­strike co-founder and chief tech­nol­o­gy offi­cer Dmitri] Alper­ovitch and the Atlantic Coun­cil has gone large­ly unre­marked upon, but it is rel­e­vant giv­en that the Atlantic Council—which is is fund­ed in part by the US State Depart­ment, NATO, the gov­ern­ments of Latvia and Lithua­nia, the Ukrain­ian World Con­gress, and the Ukrain­ian oli­garch Vic­tor Pinchuk—has been among the loud­est voic­es call­ing for a new Cold War with Rus­sia. As I point­ed out in the pages of The Nation in Novem­ber, the Atlantic Coun­cil has spent the past sev­er­al years pro­duc­ing some of the most vir­u­lent spec­i­mens of the new Cold War pro­pa­gan­da. . . . ”

FTR #992 Hindutva Fascism, Part 5: Political and Historical Context (Connecting the Dots)

This pro­gram con­cludes our FTR series on Hin­dut­va fas­cism (Hin­du nation­al­ist fas­cism). In pre­vi­ous pro­grams, we high­light­ed key fea­tures of the gov­er­nance of Indi­an Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Modi, whose BJP is a polit­i­cal front for the RSS. Formed along the lines of Mus­solin­i’s Black­shirts in 1925, the RSS was the orga­ni­za­tion that assas­si­nat­ed Mahat­ma Gand­hi. (We have dis­cussed Modi, the RSS and the BJP in numer­ous broad­casts, includ­ing FTR #‘s 795, 889, 441, 442, 445, 988 and 989, 990, 991.)

In past dis­cus­sions of the RSS and BJP, we have not­ed the fol­low­ing:

1.–Modi’s polit­i­cal for­tunes were boost­ed with sup­port and appar­ent financ­ing from Pierre Omid­yar, who also helped finance the rise of the OUN/B fas­cist suc­ces­sor orga­ni­za­tios in Ukraine.
2.–Modi and his BJP are viewed with great favor by Bre­it­bart king­pin, for­mer Trump cam­paign man­ag­er and advis­er Steve Ban­non. A num­ber of Trump’s busi­ness asso­ciates in India are asso­ci­at­ed with the BJP.
3.–Bernie Sanders’ prospec­tive Vice-Pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Tul­si Gab­bard helped arrange the details for Mod­i’s Amer­i­can vis­it and is net­worked with the RSS.
4.–The above-men­tioned Tul­si Gab­bard is a mem­ber of the Hare Krish­na cult, as is her hus­band, her in-laws, her par­ents and her Con­gres­sion­al staff.
5.–Gabbard is high­ly regard­ed by Modi admir­er Steve Ban­non as well.
6.–Gabbard was seri­ous­ly con­sid­ered for a cab­i­net posi­tion by Team Trump.
7.–Under Modi, anti-Mus­lim vio­lence has dra­mat­i­cal­ly accel­er­at­ed, jour­nal­is­tic and civ­il free speech has been atten­u­at­ed, oppo­nents of the gov­ern­ment have faced var­i­ous forms of retal­i­a­tion and oppres­sion, jour­nal­ists and activists crit­i­cal of Modi/BJP/RSS have been mur­dered, a vir­u­lent­ly anti-Mus­lim cler­ic has been appoint­ed head of Uttar Pradesh (Indi­a’s largest province), vot­ing machines have appar­ent­ly been tam­pered with, and Indi­ans have expressed pos­i­tive feel­ings about mar­tial law. BJP mem­bers have cel­e­brat­ed Gand­hi’s mur­der.

In this pro­gram, we posi­tion the ideological/political tile of Hin­dut­va fas­cism in the mosa­ic of what free­lance Dan­ish jour­nal­ist Hen­rik Kruger (author of The Great Hero­in Coup: Drugs, Intel­li­gence and Inter­na­tion­al Fas­cism) and Kevin Coogan (author of Dream­er of the Day: Fran­cis Park­er Yock­ey and the Post­war Fas­cist Inter­na­tion­al) call “The Fas­cist Inter­na­tion­al.”

Begin­ning with review of ide­o­log­i­cal and oper­a­tional links between RSS Hin­dut­va fas­cists and the fol­low­ers of Hitler and Mus­soli­ni, we high­light key fea­tures of what may seem to many to be a clas­sic case of polit­i­cal “strange bed­fel­lows.” Key con­sid­er­a­tions in the Hitler/Mussolini/Hindutva fas­cist affin­i­ty include:

1.–Opposition to the British Empire (as con­sti­tut­ed), admi­ra­tion for the domes­tic agen­das of the Fuehrer and Il Duce, as well as the mil­i­tary prowess shown by the Euro­pean Axis nations: “. . . . In the decades pri­or to that momen­tous event, senior RSS mem­bers had direct links to both Ben­i­to Mus­soli­ni in Italy and Adolf Hitler in Ger­many. Part of the RSS’ fas­ci­na­tion with these total­i­tar­i­an regimes was their shared oppo­si­tion to the British Empire — how­ev­er, it went far beyond that. The RSS (as well as mul­ti­tudes of oth­er Hin­du nation­al­ists) admired the way Mus­soli­ni and Hitler reor­ga­nized their respec­tive nations so quick­ly from the wreck­age of war to build a pow­er­ful econ­o­my and mil­i­tary under the ban­ner of patri­o­tism and nation­al­ism. . . .”
2.–The stud­ied nature of the Hindutva/Hitler/Mussolini affin­i­ty: ” . . . . Marzia Caso­lari, an Ital­ian schol­ar who stud­ied Indi­an pol­i­tics, once wrote of RSS’ con­nec­tions with Euro­pean fas­cism: The exis­tence of direct con­tacts between the rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the [Ital­ian] Fas­cist regime, includ­ing Mus­soli­ni, and Hin­du nation­al­ists demon­strates that Hin­du nation­al­ism had much more than an abstract inter­est in the ide­ol­o­gy and prac­tice of fas­cism. The inter­est of Indi­an Hin­du nation­al­ists in fas­cism and Mus­soli­ni must not be con­sid­ered as dic­tat­ed by an occa­sion­al curios­i­ty, con­fined to a few indi­vid­u­als; rather, it should be con­sid­ered as the cul­mi­nat­ing result of the atten­tion that Hin­du nation­al­ists… focused on Ital­ian dic­ta­tor­ship and its leader. To them, fas­cism appeared to be an exam­ple of con­ser­v­a­tive rev­o­lu­tion. . . .”
3.–Belief in the com­mon, mytho­log­i­cal “Aryan” ori­gins of India and Ger­many: ” . . . . Much of Nazi ide­ol­o­gy and imagery came from the sym­bols and his­to­ry of ancient India – indeed, the infa­mous Nazi swasti­ka was based on a Hin­du sym­bol of strength and good for­tune. More­over, the leg­endary his­to­ry (some would say, myth) of the inva­sion of pre­his­toric India by the mys­te­ri­ous ‘Aryan’ tribes would (cen­turies lat­er) pro­vide Hitler with his notion of a ‘super mas­ter race’ that was des­tined to dom­i­nate the world. . . .”
4.–The enthu­si­as­tic embrace of Hitler and Mus­soli­ni by V.D. Savarkar, the ide­o­log­i­cal founder of Hin­dut­va fas­cism and the pri­ma­ry archi­tect of Gand­hi’s assas­si­na­tion: ” . . . . Per­haps there was no greater admir­er of Hitler and Mus­soli­ni in India than Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, anoth­er lead­ing mem­ber of RSS.In a speech deliv­ered in 1940 (after the Sec­ond World War had com­menced), Savarkar said: There is no rea­son to sup­pose that Hitler must be a human mon­ster because he pass­es off as a Nazi or Churchill is a demigod because he calls him­self a Demo­c­rat. Nazism proved unde­ni­ably the sav­ior of Ger­many under the set of cir­cum­stances Ger­many was placed in. . . .”
5.–The Hin­du Mahasab­ha’s sup­port for a Hitler/RSS con­junc­tion: ” . . . . Indeed, many Hin­du nation­al­ists also derid­ed Gand­hi for oppos­ing Nazism and fas­cism. In 1939, a spokesman for the Hin­du Mahasab­ha (Hin­du Par­ty) inti­mate­ly con­nect­ed Ger­many with Indi­an cul­ture and peo­ple. ‘Germany’s solemn idea of the revival of the Aryan cul­ture, the glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of the Swasti­ka, her patron­age of Vedic learn­ing and the ardent cham­pi­onship of the tra­di­tion of Indo-Ger­man­ic civ­i­liza­tion are wel­comed by the reli­gious and sen­si­ble Hin­dus of India with a jubi­lant hope,’ the spokesman blus­tered. ‘Only a few Social­ists head­ed by… Nehru have cre­at­ed a bub­ble of resent­ment against the present gov­ern­ment of Ger­many, but their activ­i­ties are far from hav­ing any sig­nif­i­cance in India.’ He added: ‘Germany’s cru­sade against the ene­mies of Aryan cul­ture will bring all the Aryan nations of the world to their sens­es and awak­en the Indi­an Hin­dus for the restora­tion of their lost glo­ry. . . .’ ”
6.–Other RSS lead­ers saw use­ful sim­i­lar­i­ties in the eth­nic chau­vin­ist phi­los­o­phy of both Hitler and Hin­dut­va fas­cism. ” . . . . Anoth­er senior RSS mem­ber, Mad­hav Sadashiv Gol­walkar, also praised Nazism and believed the ide­ol­o­gy should be applied to India. ‘Ger­man race pride has now become the top­ic of the day,’ he wrote. ‘To keep up the puri­ty of the race and its cul­ture, Ger­many shocked the world by her purg­ing the coun­try of the Semit­ic Races — the Jews. Race pride at its high­est has been man­i­fest­ed here. Ger­many has also shown how well-nigh impos­si­ble it is for races and cul­tures, hav­ing dif­fer­ences going to the root, to be assim­i­lat­ed into one unit­ed whole, a good les­son for us in Hin­dus­tan [India] to learn and prof­it by.’ Gol­walkar enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly advo­cat­ed for an India dom­i­nat­ed by Hin­dus. ‘There are only two cours­es open to the for­eign ele­ments, either to merge them­selves in the nation­al race and adopt its cul­ture, or to live at its mer­cy so long as the nation­al race may allow them to do so and to quit the coun­try at the sweet will of the nation­al race,’ he wrote. . . . ”
7.–The eth­nic ide­o­log­i­cal par­a­digm of Hin­dut­va fas­cism and Nazism meld well: ” . . . . If one were to replace ‘Hin­du’ with ‘Ger­man,’ Golwalkar’s words would match Hitler’s rhetoric almost exact­ly. . . .”
8.–Savarkar also saw Nazi and RSS eth­nic the­o­ry and pol­i­cy as con­verg­ing:  ” . . . . Savarkar also spelled out why Hin­dus should rule India and oth­ers should either be expelled or merged into the Hin­du major­i­ty. ‘The Aryans who set­tled in India at the dawn of his­to­ry already formed a nation, now embod­ied in the Hin­dus,’ he wrote. ‘Hin­dus are bound togeth­er not only by the love they bear to a com­mon father­land and by the com­mon blood that cours­es through their veins and keeps our hearts throb­bing and our affec­tion warm but also by the of the com­mon homage we pay to our great civ­i­liza­tion, our Hin­du cul­ture. . . .”

The late Sav­it­ri Devi was an embod­i­ment of the Hindu/Nazi/Aryan ide­o­log­i­cal con­ver­gence. Devi has been among the ele­ments syn­the­siz­ing Hin­dut­va fas­cism with the con­tem­po­rary “Alt-Right.” Devi has been the focal point of renewed inter­est:

1.–” . . . . I filed her as a curios­i­ty at the back of my mind, until the ris­ing tide of extreme-right pol­i­tics in Europe and Amer­i­ca threw up the name ‘Sav­it­ri Devi’ once again. It isn’t hard these days to find dis­cus­sions of Sav­it­ri Devi’s books on neo-Nazi web forums, espe­cial­ly The Light­ning and the Sun, which expounds the the­o­ry that Hitler was an avatar — an incar­na­tion — of the Hin­du god Vish­nu, and Gold in the Fur­nace, which urges true believ­ers to trust that Nation­al Social­ism will rise again. The Amer­i­can extreme-right web­site Counter-Cur­rents hosts an exten­sive online archive of her life and work. . . .”
2.–More about the resus­ci­ta­tion of Devi: ” . . . . Her views are reach­ing a wider pub­lic, too, thanks to Amer­i­can alt-right lead­ers such as Richard Spencer and Steve Ban­non, for­mer Trump chief strate­gist and chair of Bre­it­bart News, who have tak­en up the account of his­to­ry as a cycli­cal bat­tle between good and evil — a the­o­ry she shared with oth­er 20th Cen­tu­ry mys­ti­cal fas­cists. Dark met­al bands and Amer­i­can right-wing radio sta­tions also roar about the Kali Yuga, the Dark Age of Hin­du mythol­o­gy, which Sav­it­ri Devi believed that Hitler was once des­tined to bring to an end. . . . ”
3.–The psy­cho­log­i­cal and polit­i­cal foun­da­tion of the Aryan/Hindutva con­ver­gence is neat­ly summed up in the BBC Mag­a­zine arti­cle we excerpt: ” . . . . Sav­it­ri Devi her­self is almost for­got­ten in India now, but the Hin­du nation­al­ism she espoused and helped to pro­mote is in the ascen­dant, much to the con­cern of her nephew, the vet­er­an left-wing jour­nal­ist Suman­ta Baner­jee.  ‘In her book A Warn­ing to the Hin­dus, which came out in 1939, she advised the Hin­dus to cul­ti­vate a ‘spir­it of organ­ised resis­tance through­out Hin­du­dom,’ he says. ‘The tar­gets of this resis­tance were the Mus­lims, who were a threat, accord­ing to her, to the Hin­dus. And this is the same fear that is being echoed today.’ . . .” 
4.–More about the dynam­ics behind the “Alt-Right”/Hindutva con­ver­gence: ” . . . . Hin­dut­va is the offi­cial ide­ol­o­gy of Prime Min­ster Naren­dra Mod­i’s rul­ing Bharatiya Jana­ta Par­ty, which claims that Mus­lims and sec­u­lar­ists have under­mined the strength of the Hin­du nation. Though the par­ty’s offi­cial spokes­men con­demn vio­lence, the riots that led to the tear­ing down of the Babri Mosque at Ayo­d­hya in 1992 and the cur­rent waves of attacks — some­times fatal — by vig­i­lante groups on Mus­lims and dis­senters tell a dif­fer­ent sto­ry. . . . ”
5.–Highlighting the nature of the ide­o­log­i­cal sim­i­lar­i­ty between Nazi eth­nic pol­i­cy and Hin­dut­va fas­cist ide­ol­o­gy: “In the US, racism, anti-com­mu­nism and Chris­t­ian fun­da­men­tal­ist notions about the impend­ing apoc­a­lypse have togeth­er pre­pared the ground for the far right’s flir­ta­tion with occult Nazism and Hin­du prophe­cies. And as in India, the tra­di­tion­al rul­ing major­i­ty’s fear of los­ing pow­er has been an effec­tive recruit­ing tool. . . .”

In addi­tion to the posi­tion of Hin­dut­va fas­cism in the Fas­cist Inter­na­tion­al , we exam­ine Pierre Omid­yar, his espousal of neolib­er­al eco­nom­ic doc­trine, his sup­port for Mod­i’s Hin­dut­va fas­cists and his sup­port (along with U.S. intel­li­gence cut-outs like the Nation­al Endow­ment for Democ­ra­cy and the Agency for Inter­na­tion­al Devel­op­ment) for the Ukrain­ian OUN/B suc­ces­sor orga­ni­za­tions like Pravy Sek­tor, Svo­bo­da and the Azov Bat­tal­ion.

In FTR #889, among oth­er pro­grams, we high­light­ed Omi­da­yar’s devo­tion to the Aus­tri­an school of eco­nom­ic the­o­ry.

The political/economic con­text of Omid­yar’s efforts can be seen as a “neo-lib­er­al” flank­ing maneu­ver: putting “free-mar­ket” forces in pow­er and the West­ern and South­east­ern flanks of Rus­sia and Chi­na. Those two nations con­sti­tute much of what geo-politi­cians call “The Earth Island” or “World Island.”

Omid­yar’s neo-lib­er­al, Aus­tri­an eco­nom­ic school can be seen in Mod­i’s enthu­si­as­tic recep­tion by Sil­i­con Val­ley movers and shak­ers, at the same time that the Indi­an leader is mov­ing  to weak­en his coun­try’s child  labor laws.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: 

1.–The Omid­yar-owned Hon­ololu Civ­il Beat­’s curi­ous cov­er-up of Tul­si Gab­bard’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Hin­dut­va fas­cist Hare Krish­na cult.
2.–The par­tic­i­pa­tion of Indi­an sol­diers in the Wehrma­cht and Waf­fen SS dur­ing World War II.
3.–Tulsi Gab­bard’s co-spon­sor­ship of a bill that would label oppo­nents of Ukraine’s entrance into the EU as “ter­ror­ists.”
4.–Omidyar jour­nal­is­tic pro­tege Glenn Green­wald had Andrew “Weev” Aueren­heimer at his par­ty cel­e­brat­ing Green­wald and Lau­ra Poitras’s receipt of the pres­ti­gious Polk Award. Wee­v’s name has been bandied about in con­nec­tion with the [alleged] hack­ing of DNC e‑mails. We note that Weev is appar­ent­ly res­i­dent in Ukraine. ” . . . . [GOP oper­a­tive Peter] Smith also reached out to “Guc­cifer 2.0”—an alias the U.S. intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty has linked to Russ­ian state hackers—and was advised to seek the help of a white nation­al­ist hack­er who lives in Ukraine. . . . [Alt-Right media fig­ure Charles] John­son said he also sug­gest­ed that Smith get in touch with Andrew Aueren­heimer, a hack­er who goes by the alias ‘Weev’ and has col­lab­o­rat­ed with John­son in the past. . . .”

FTR #965 Are We Going to Have a Third World War?

Recent devel­op­ments are sug­ges­tive of the omi­nous pos­si­bil­i­ty of an immi­nent Third World War. We present some new infor­ma­tion and recap and fur­ther ana­lyze sto­ries cov­ered in pre­vi­ous pro­grams in order to under­score and high­light the poten­tial dev­as­ta­tion of these events.

As the furor (“fuehrer”?) sur­round­ing the poten­tial­ly lethal polit­i­cal hoax known as “Rus­sia-gate” gains momen­tum, it should be not­ed that the point man for the Trump busi­ness inter­ests in their deal­ings with Rus­sia is Felix Sater. A Russ­ian-born immi­grant, Sater is a pro­fes­sion­al crim­i­nal and a con­vict­ed felon with his­tor­i­cal links to the Mafia. Beyond that, and more impor­tant­ly, Sater is an FBI infor­mant and a CIA con­tract agent: “. . . . There is every indi­ca­tion that the extra­or­di­nar­i­ly lenient treat­ment result­ed from Sater play­ing a get-out-of-jail free card. Short­ly before his secret guilty plea, Sater became a free­lance oper­a­tive of the Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Agency. One of his fel­low stock swindlers, Sal­va­tore Lau­ria, wrote a book about it. The Scor­pi­on and the Frog is described on its cov­er as ‘the true sto­ry of one man’s fraud­u­lent rise and fall in the Wall Street of the nineties.’ Accord­ing to Lauria–and the court files that have been unsealed–Sater helped the CIA buy small mis­siles before they got to ter­ror­ists. He also pro­vid­ed oth­er pur­port­ed nation­al secu­ri­ty ser­vices for a report­ed fee of $300,000. Sto­ries abound as to what else Sater may or may not have done in the are­na of nation­al secu­ri­ty. . . .”

Sater was active on behalf of the Trumps in the fall of 2015: “. . . . Sater worked on a plan for a Trump Tow­er in Moscow as recent­ly as the fall of 2015, but he said that had come to a halt because of Trump’s pres­i­den­tial cam­paign. . . .”

Sater was ini­ti­at­ing con­tact between the Rus­sians and “Team Trump” in Jan­u­ary of this year: “ . . . . Nev­er­the­less, in late Jan­u­ary, Sater and a Ukrain­ian law­mak­er report­ed­ly met with Trump’s per­son­al lawyer, Michael Cohen, at a New York hotel. Accord­ing to the [New York] Times, they dis­cussed a plan that involved the U.S. lift­ing sanc­tions against Rus­sia, and Cohen said he hand-deliv­ered the plan in a sealed enve­lope to then-nation­al secu­ri­ty advi­sor Michael Fly­nn. Cohen lat­er denied deliv­er­ing the enve­lope to any­one in the White House, accord­ing to the Wash­ing­ton Post. . . .”

A stun­ning devel­op­ment con­cerns extreme ret­i­cence on the part of the U.S. intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty:

The Office of the Direc­tor of Nation­al Intel­li­gence had an “inter­est­ing” response to a Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act law­suit demand­ing the release of the clas­si­fied report giv­en to Pres­i­dent Oba­ma back in Jan­u­ary pur­port­ing to show the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment was behind the hacks. Accord­ing to the ODNI, the request­ed doc­u­ment would present a risk to human intel­li­gence sources by reveal­ing the com­par­a­tive weight giv­en to human vs tech­ni­cal evi­dence, risk­ing US sources and meth­ods. But the ODNI went fur­ther, sug­gest­ing that even releas­ing a ful­ly redact­ed doc­u­ment would present sim­i­lar risks!

It is NOT easy to see the ODNI’s reluc­tance to release even a ful­ly-redact­ed copy of the report as any­thing but disin­gen­u­ous. In the con­text of poten­tial­ly dev­as­tat­ing dete­ri­o­ra­tion of Russian/U.S. rela­tions over Syr­ia, Ukraine, and the Russ­ian “elec­tion-hack­ing” uproar, the ODNI’s behav­ior can­not be any­thing but dis­qui­et­ing:

” . . . . The intel­li­gence offi­cial argued that a redact­ed ver­sion of the orig­i­nal report would allow a trained eye to assess ‘com­par­a­tive weight’ of human intel­li­gence and sig­nals intel­li­gence report­ing includ­ed in the com­pendi­um. Release of some of the infor­ma­tion the pri­va­cy-focused orga­ni­za­tion wants made pub­lic ‘could prove fatal to U.S. human intel­li­gence sources,’ [Deputy Direc­tor of Nation­al Intel­li­gence for Intel­li­gence Inte­gra­tion Edward] Gis­taro warned.

Gis­taro also appears to argue that even if offi­cials blacked out the whole report, high­ly clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion would be at risk.

‘I agree with the [Nation­al Intel­li­gence Coun­cil] that a heav­i­ly or even ful­ly redact­ed ver­sion of the clas­si­fied report can not be pub­licly released with­out jeop­ar­diz­ing nation­al secu­ri­ty infor­ma­tion prop­er­ly clas­si­fied as SECRET or TOP SECRET,’ he wrote. . . . ‘The ODNI should release the com­plete report to EPIC so that the pub­lic and the Con­gress can under­stand the full extent of the Russ­ian inter­fer­ence with the 2016 Pres­i­den­tial elec­tion,’ EPIC’s Marc Roten­berg told POLITICO Tues­day. ‘It is already clear that gov­ern­ment secre­cy is frus­trat­ing mean­ing­ful over­sight. The FBI, for exam­ple, will not even iden­ti­fy the states that were tar­get­ed by Rus­sia.’ . . . ”

With the high-pro­file hacks being attributed–almost cer­tain­ly falsely–to Rus­sia, there are omi­nous devel­op­ments tak­ing place that may well lead to a Third World War. Dur­ing the clos­ing days of his Pres­i­den­cy, Oba­ma autho­rized the plant­i­ng of cyber weapons on Russ­ian com­put­er net­works. Oba­ma did this after talk­ing with Putin on the Hot Line, estab­lished to pre­vent a Third World War. Putin denied inter­fer­ing in the U.S. elec­tion.

The con­clu­sion that Rus­sia hacked the U.S. elec­tion on Putin’s orders appears to have been based on a CIA source in the Krem­lin. Even when that intel­li­gence was deliv­ered, oth­er agen­cies weren’t ready to accept the CIA’s con­clu­sion and it took intel­li­gence from anoth­er nation (not named) to pro­vide the final intel­li­gence tip­ping point that led to a broad-based con­clu­sion the not only was the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment behind the cyber­at­tacks but that Vladimir Putin him­self ordered it.

That ally’s intel­li­gence is described as “the most crit­i­cal tech­ni­cal intel­li­gence on Rus­sia,” how­ev­er the NSA still wasn’t con­vinced based on what sounds like a lack of con­fi­dence in that source. Thus, it looks like a CIA Krem­lin source and an unnamed for­eign intel­li­gence agency with ques­tion­able cre­den­tials are the basis of what appears to be a like­ly future full-scale US/Russian cyber­war.

Of para­mount sig­nif­i­cance is the fact that IF, on Putin’s orders (and we are to believe such) Rus­sia con­tin­ued to hack U.S. com­put­er sys­tems to influ­ence the elec­tion, Putin would have to have gone utter­ly mad. Those hacks would have pre­clud­ed any rap­proche­ment between Rus­sia and the Unit­ed States under a Pres­i­dent Trump. There is no indi­ca­tion that Putin went off the deep end.

Also augur­ing a pos­si­ble Third World War are two devel­op­ments in Syr­ia. Sey­mour Hersh pub­lished an arti­cle in “Die Welt” reveal­ing that, not only was the April 4 alleged Sarin attack NOT a chem­i­cal weapons attack but there was wide­spread knowl­edge of this in Amer­i­can mil­i­tary and intel­li­gence cir­cles.

What did the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty know about the attack? The Russ­ian and Syr­i­an air force had informed the US in advance of that airstrike that they had intel­li­gence that top lev­el lead­ers of Ahrar al-Sham and Jab­hat al-Nus­ra were meet­ing in that build­ing and they informed of the US of the attack plan in advance of the attack and that it was on a “high-val­ue” tar­get. And the attack involved the unusu­al use of a guid­ed bomb and Syria’s top pilots. ” . . . . Russ­ian and Syr­i­an intel­li­gence offi­cials, who coor­di­nate oper­a­tions close­ly with the Amer­i­can com­mand posts, made it clear that the planned strike on Khan Sheikhoun was spe­cial because of the high-val­ue tar­get. ‘It was a red-hot change. The mis­sion was out of the ordi­nary – scrub the sked,’ the senior advis­er told me. ‘Every oper­a­tions offi­cer in the region’ – in the Army, Marine Corps, Air Force, CIA and NSA – ‘had to know there was some­thing going on. The Rus­sians gave the Syr­i­an Air Force a guid­ed bomb and that was a rar­i­ty. They’re skimpy with their guid­ed bombs and rarely share them with the Syr­i­an Air Force. And the Syr­i­ans assigned their best pilot to the mis­sion, with the best wing­man.’ The advance intel­li­gence on the tar­get, as sup­plied by the Rus­sians, was giv­en the high­est pos­si­ble score inside the Amer­i­can com­mu­ni­ty. . . .”

Fol­low­ing the attack, US intel­li­gence con­clud­ed that there was no sarin gas attack, Assad wouldn’t have been that polit­i­cal­ly sui­ci­dal. The symp­toms of chem­i­cal poi­son­ing fol­low­ing the bomb­ing was like­ly due to a mix­ture of chlo­rine, fer­til­iz­ers, and oth­er chem­i­cals stored in the build­ing that was tar­get­ed by the Syr­i­an air­force cre­at­ed by sec­ondary explo­sions from the ini­tial bomb­ing. ” . . . ‘This was not a chem­i­cal weapons strike,’ the advis­er said. ‘That’s a fairy tale. . . .”

The symp­toms of chem­i­cal poi­son­ing fol­low­ing the bomb­ing was like­ly due to a mix­ture of chlo­rine, fer­til­iz­ers, and oth­er chem­i­cals stored in the build­ing that was tar­get­ed by the Syr­i­an air­force cre­at­ed by sec­ondary explo­sions from the ini­tial bomb­ing. ” . . . . A Bomb Dam­age Assess­ment (BDA) by the U.S. mil­i­tary lat­er deter­mined that the heat and force of the 500-pound Syr­i­an bomb trig­gered a series of sec­ondary explo­sions that could have gen­er­at­ed a huge tox­ic cloud that began to spread over the town, formed by the release of the fer­til­iz­ers, dis­in­fec­tants and oth­er goods stored in the base­ment, its effect mag­ni­fied by the dense morn­ing air, which trapped the fumes close to the ground. . . .”

The behav­ior of the Trump admin­is­tra­tion was not only in direct con­flict with intel­li­gence on the attack, but rein­forced pro­pa­gan­da by some of the Al-Qae­da-linked jihadists the West has been using as proxy war­riors in Syr­ia and else­where: ” . . . . ‘The Salafists and jihadists got every­thing they want­ed out of their hyped-up Syr­i­an nerve gas ploy,’ the senior advis­er to the U.S. intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty told me, refer­ring to the flare up of ten­sions between Syr­ia, Rus­sia and Amer­i­ca. ‘The issue is, what if there’s anoth­er false flag sarin attack cred­it­ed to hat­ed Syr­ia? Trump has upped the ante and paint­ed him­self into a cor­ner with his deci­sion to bomb. And do not think these guys are not plan­ning the next faked attack. Trump will have no choice but to bomb again, and hard­er. He’s inca­pable of say­ing he made a mis­take.’ . . .”

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Review of a Trump admin­is­tra­tion warn­ing of anoth­er sup­posed, impend­ing “Syr­i­an chem­i­cal weapons strike”–a warn­ing that has since been retract­ed; dis­cus­sion of bril­liant Nazi hack­er Andrew Aueren­heimer’s orches­tra­tion of an “Alt-right” online intim­i­da­tion cam­paign against CNN employ­ees; Aueren­heimer’s cur­rent res­i­dence in Ukraine; the omi­nous pos­si­bil­i­ty of the activation/manipulation of the NSA cyber-weapons installed on Russ­ian com­put­er net­works by a third par­ty (per­haps some­one with the capa­bil­i­ties of the bril­liant Aueren­heimer); review of the obser­va­tions by a Ger­man professor–opposed to Nazism/Hitler–who described the essence of what it was like, sub­jec­tive­ly, to live through the rise of Hitler–his obser­va­tion pre­sent­ed in the con­text of the ODNI’s deci­sion not to release even a ful­ly-redact­ed ver­sion of the intel­li­gence report on “Russ­ian med­dling” in the U.S. elec­tion: ” . . . . . . . . What hap­pened here was the grad­ual habit­u­a­tion of the peo­ple, lit­tle by lit­tle, to being gov­erned by sur­prise, to receiv­ing deci­sions delib­er­at­ed in secret, to believ­ing that the sit­u­a­tion was so com­pli­cat­ed that the gov­ern­ment had to act on infor­ma­tion which the peo­ple could not under­stand because of nation­al­i­ty secu­ri­ty, so dan­ger­ous that even if the peo­ple the peo­ple could under­stand it, it could not be released because of nation­al secu­ri­ty. . . .”

FTR #964 Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics

As we have not­ed in many pre­vi­ous broad­casts and posts, cyber attacks are eas­i­ly dis­guised. Per­pe­trat­ing a “cyber false flag” oper­a­tion is dis­turbing­ly easy to do.

This is of para­mount sig­nif­i­cance in eval­u­at­ing the increas­ing­ly neo-McCarthyite New Cold War pro­pa­gan­da about “Russ­ian inter­fer­ence” in the U.S. elec­tion.

Com­pound­ing the sit­u­a­tion are some recent dis­clo­sures and devel­op­ments:

1.–We learn that the CIA’s hack­ing tools are specif­i­cal­ly craft­ed to mask CIA author­ship of the attacks. Most sig­nif­i­cant­ly, for our pur­pos­es, is the fact that the Agen­cy’s hack­ing tools are engi­neered in such a way as to per­mit the authors of the event to rep­re­sent them­selves as Russ­ian.

2.–The NSA’s elite hack­ing tech­nol­o­gy has been made wide­ly avail­able to the hack­ing com­mu­ni­ty, cour­tesy of “The Shad­ow Bro­kers.”

3.–During the 2016 Pres­i­den­tial cam­paign, Michael Fly­nn was pro­fes­sion­al­ly involved with numer­ous cyber-secu­ri­ty and cyber arms man­u­fac­tur­ing firms: “ . . . . The month before Fly­nn joined the advi­so­ry board of OSY Tech­nolo­gies, NSO Group opened up a new arm called West­Bridge Tech­nolo­gies, Inc., in the D.C. region. (The com­pa­ny was orig­i­nal­ly reg­is­tered in Delaware in 2014, but formed in Mary­land in April 2016.) Led by NSO Group co-founder Lavie, West­Bridge is vying for fed­er­al gov­ern­ment con­tracts for NSO Group’s prod­ucts. Hir­ing Fly­nn would pro­vide NSO Group with a well-con­nect­ed fig­ure in Wash­ing­ton, to help get its foot in the door of the noto­ri­ous­ly insu­lar world of secret intel­li­gence bud­get­ing. . . .When you’re try­ing to build up your busi­ness, you need some­one who has con­nec­tions, some­one who is seen as an author­i­ty and a legit­i­mate pres­ence,” John­son said. Hir­ing some­one with Flynn’s back­ground in intel­li­gence would ‘open up doors that they wouldn’t have had access to,’ John­son said.Throughout 2016, Fly­nn worked for a num­ber of cyber­se­cu­ri­ty firms per­son­al­ly and through his con­sult­ing firm, Fly­nn Intel Group. In addi­tion to his advi­so­ry board seat at OSY Tech­nolo­gies, he sat on the board of Adobe Sys­tems, a large soft­ware com­pa­ny with Pen­ta­gon con­tracts, and the boards of the cyber­se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­nies Green­Zone Sys­tems and HALO Pri­va­cy. (Though Fly­nn described him­self as an Adobe advi­so­ry board mem­ber in his finan­cial dis­clo­sure paper­work, the group said in a state­ment that he pro­vid­ed only “peri­od­ic coun­sel to Adobe’s pub­lic sec­tor team.”) . . .”

4.–NSO Group and OSY Tech­nolo­gies spe­cial­ize in spear-fish­ing attacks, one of the method­olo­gies used in the hacks of U.S. elec­tion com­put­ers. Is there any link between Fly­n­n’s cyber-secu­ri­ty/­cy­ber arms links and the high-pro­file hacks dur­ing the cam­paign?

5.–A GOP tech database–Deep Root–Exposed the data of almost two hun­dred mil­lion Amer­i­can vot­ers to wide­spread scruti­ny. Is there any con­nec­tion between Deep Root, the GOP and the alleged Russ­ian hack­ing of U.S. vot­ing com­put­ers?

Fol­low­ing a Bloomberg report about wide­spread Russ­ian hack­ing of Amer­i­can elec­tions sys­tems: “ . . . . Kay Stim­son, spokes­woman for the Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Sec­re­taries of State, said the mem­bers of her group — which rep­re­sents the chief elec­tion offi­cials in 40 states — were tak­en aback by the alle­ga­tion that 39 states were hacked. ‘We can­not ver­i­fy any infor­ma­tion in that report,’ Stim­son told Ben­zin­ga. “It has some claims that have raised some red flags. I don’t know where they’re get­ting it. We’re not able to assess to the cred­i­bil­i­ty.’ She said that some cyber­se­cu­ri­ty firms were engag­ing in scare tac­tics at the state and local lev­els. ‘There are cyber­se­cu­ri­ty firms mak­ing some wild claims,’ she said. ‘It is a very aggres­sive indus­try.’ . . .”

With the high-pro­file hacks being attributed–almost cer­tain­ly falsely–to Rus­sia, there are omi­nous devel­op­ments tak­ing place that may well lead to a Third World War. Dur­ing the clos­ing days of his Pres­i­den­cy, Oba­ma autho­rized the plant­i­ng of cyber weapons on Russ­ian com­put­er net­works. Oba­ma did this after talk­ing with Putin on the Hot Line, estab­lished to pre­vent a Third World War. Putin denied inter­fer­ing in the U.S. elec­tion.

The con­clu­sion that Rus­sia hacked the U.S. elec­tion on Putin’s orders appears to have been based on a CIA source in the Krem­lin. Even when that intel­li­gence was deliv­ered, oth­er agen­cies weren’t ready to accept the CIA’s con­clu­sion and it took intel­li­gence from anoth­er nation (not named) to pro­vide the final intel­li­gence tip­ping point that led to a broad-based con­clu­sion the not only was the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment behind the cyber­at­tacks but that Vladimir Putin him­self ordered it.

That ally’s intel­li­gence is described as “the most crit­i­cal tech­ni­cal intel­li­gence on Rus­sia,” how­ev­er the NSA still wasn’t con­vinced based on what sounds like a lack of con­fi­dence in that source. Thus, it looks like a CIA Krem­lin source and an unnamed for­eign intel­li­gence agency with ques­tion­able cre­den­tials are the basis of what appears to be a like­ly future full-scale US/Russian cyber­war.

Of para­mount sig­nif­i­cance is the fact that IF, on Putin’s orders (and we are to believe such) Rus­sia con­tin­ued to hack U.S. com­put­er sys­tems to influ­ence the elec­tion, Putin would have to have gone utter­ly mad. Those hacks would have pre­clud­ed any rap­proche­ment between Rus­sia and the Unit­ed States under a Pres­i­dent Trump. There is not indi­ca­tion that Putin went off the deep end.

Also augur­ing a Third World War are two devel­op­ments in Syr­ia. Sey­mour Hersh pub­lished an arti­cle in Die Welt reveal­ing that, not only was the April 4 alleged Sarin attack NOT a chem­i­cal weapons attack but there was wide­spread knowl­edge of this in Amer­i­can mil­i­tary and intel­li­gence cir­cles.

Omi­nous­ly, the Trump White House is claim­ing they have advance knowl­edge of an impend­ing Syr­i­an chem­i­cal weapons strike and will pun­ish Syr­ia heav­i­ly, and hold Rus­sia account­able.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: The fact that the bulk of activ­i­ty detect­ed by the DHS on U.S. elec­tion sys­tems was “scanning”–standard oper­at­ing pro­ce­dure for hack­ing; a for­mer NSA hack­ing specialist–Jake Williams–said that spear-phish­ing oper­a­tion was of “medi­um sophis­ti­ca­tion” that “prac­ti­cal­ly any hack­er can pull off”; the ques­tion of whether or not GOP Sec­re­taries of State might have delib­er­ate­ly respond­ed to the spear-phish­ing e‑mails that per­mit­ted the “hit” on U.S. elec­tion sys­tems; the Russ­ian autho­riza­tion of the use by the Syr­i­an air force of a smart bomb to elim­i­nate Al-Qae­da-linked jihadists; the release of a chem­i­cal cloud as a result of that strike that was caused by sec­ondary explo­sions; Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca’s hir­ing of GOP online data-bas­ing king­pin Dar­ren Bold­ing.

FTR #940 The Trumpenkampfverbande, Part 14: Unsettling In, Part 2 (German Ostpolitik, part 5)

This pro­gram con­tin­ues our analy­sis of the Trump admin­is­tra­tion as the trans­for­ma­tion of what Mr. Emory has called “The Under­ground Reich” into a mass polit­i­cal move­ment. At a pol­i­cy lev­el, the “Trumpenkampfver­bande” is a vehi­cle for the imple­men­ta­tion of Ger­man Ost­poli­tik, as set forth in FTR #‘s 918 and 919.

Heav­i­ly over­lapped with infor­ma­tion dis­cussed fleet­ing­ly in FTR #939, the pro­gram begins with analy­sis of a pos­si­ble Ukrainian/OUN/B con­nec­tion to the “high-pro­file hacks” alleged­ly per­pe­trat­ed by Rus­sia.
The hack of Clin­ton cam­paign man­ag­er John Podesta’s e‑mail account (blamed on Rus­sia) orig­i­nat­ed with a phish­ing e‑mail from Ukraine. “. . . . The email, with the sub­ject line “*Some­one has your pass­word,*” greet­ed Podes­ta, “Hi John” and then said, “Some­one just used your pass­word to try to sign into your Google Account john.podesta@gmail.com.” Then it offered a time stamp and an IP address in “Loca­tion: Ukraine.” . . . ”

Analy­sis of cyber-war­fare is daunting–a skilled hack­er or hack­ers can mask their iden­ti­ty effec­tive­ly, with the result that “cyber-false flag” oper­a­tions are dif­fi­cult to dis­cern. It is in this con­text that we revis­it the sub­ject of a Ukrain­ian fas­cist link to the “Rus­sia did it” meme.

The OUN/B milieu in the U.S. has appar­ent­ly been instru­men­tal in gen­er­at­ing the “Rus­sia did it” dis­in­for­ma­tion about the high-pro­file hacks. In the Alternet.org arti­cle, Mark Ames high­lights sev­er­al points:

The “Pro­pOrNot” group quot­ed in a Wash­ing­ton Post sto­ry tag­ging media out­lets, web­sites and blogs as “Russian/Kremlin stooges/propaganda tools/agents” is linked to the OUN/B heirs now in pow­er in Ukraine. ” . . . One Pro­pOrNot tweet, dat­ed Novem­ber 17, invokes a 1940s Ukrain­ian fas­cist salute “Hero­iam Sla­va!!” [17] to cheer a news item on Ukrain­ian hack­ers fight­ing Rus­sians. The phrase means “Glo­ry to the heroes” and it was for­mal­ly intro­duced by the fas­cist Orga­ni­za­tion of Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists (OUN) at their March-April 1941 con­gress in Nazi occu­pied Cra­cow, as they pre­pared to serve as Nazi aux­il­iaries in Oper­a­tion Bar­barossa. . . . ‘the OUN‑B intro­duced anoth­er Ukrain­ian fas­cist salute at the Sec­ond Great Con­gress of the Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists in Cra­cow in March and April 1941. This was the most pop­u­lar Ukrain­ian fas­cist salute and had to be per­formed accord­ing to the instruc­tions of the OUN‑B lead­er­ship by rais­ing the right arm ‘slight­ly to the right, slight­ly above the peak of the head’ while call­ing ‘Glo­ry to Ukraine!’ (Sla­va Ukraїni!) and respond­ing ‘Glo­ry to the Heroes!’ (Hero­iam Sla­va!). . . .”

The OUN/B heirs rul­ing Ukraine com­piled a list of jour­nal­ists who were “Russian/Kremlin stooges/propaganda tools/agents,” includ­ing per­son­al data and con­tact infor­ma­tion (like that made pub­lic in the Wik­iLeaks data dump of DNC e‑mails). This list was com­piled by the Ukrain­ian intel­li­gence ser­vice, inte­ri­or min­istry and–ahem–hackers: “. . . . One of the more fright­en­ing poli­cies enact­ed by the cur­rent oli­garch-nation­al­ist regime in Kiev is an online black­list [42] of jour­nal­ists accused of col­lab­o­rat­ing with pro-Russ­ian ‘ter­ror­ists.’ [43] The web­site, ‘Myrotvorets’ [43] or ‘Peacemaker’—was set up by Ukrain­ian hack­ers work­ing with state intel­li­gence and police, all of which tend to share the same ultra­na­tion­al­ist ide­olo­gies as Paru­biy and the new­ly-appoint­ed neo-Nazi chief of the Nation­al Police. . . . Ukraine’s jour­nal­ist black­list website—operated by Ukrain­ian hack­ers work­ing with state intelligence—led to a rash of death threats against the doxxed jour­nal­ists, whose email address­es, phone num­bers and oth­er pri­vate infor­ma­tion was post­ed anony­mous­ly to the web­site. Many of these threats came with the wartime Ukrain­ian fas­cist salute: “Sla­va Ukrai­ni!” [Glo­ry to Ukraine!] So when PropOrNot’s anony­mous “researchers” reveal only their Ukrainian(s) iden­ti­ty, it’s hard not to think about the spy-linked hack­ers who post­ed the dead­ly ‘Myrotvorets’ black­list of “trea­so­nous” jour­nal­ists. . . .”

A Ukrain­ian activist named Alexan­dra Chalu­pa has been instru­men­tal in dis­trib­ut­ing the “Rus­sia did it” dis­in­for­ma­tion to Hillary Clin­ton and influ­enc­ing the progress of the dis­in­for­ma­tion in the media. ” . . . . One of the key media sources [46] who blamed the DNC hacks on Rus­sia, ramp­ing up fears of cryp­to-Putin­ist infil­tra­tion, is a Ukrain­ian-Amer­i­can lob­by­ist work­ing for the DNC. She is Alexan­dra Chalupa—described as the head of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Committee’s oppo­si­tion research on Rus­sia and on Trump, and founder and pres­i­dent of the Ukrain­ian lob­by group ‘US Unit­ed With Ukraine Coali­tion’ [47], which lob­bied hard to pass a 2014 bill increas­ing loans and mil­i­tary aid to Ukraine, impos­ing sanc­tions on Rus­sians, and tight­ly align­ing US and Ukraine geostrate­gic inter­ests. . . . In one leaked DNC email [50] ear­li­er this year, Chalu­pa boasts to DNC Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Direc­tor Luis Miran­da that she brought Isikoff to a US-gov­ern­ment spon­sored Wash­ing­ton event fea­tur­ing 68 Ukrain­ian jour­nal­ists, where Chalu­pa was invit­ed ‘to speak specif­i­cal­ly about Paul Man­afort.’ In turn, Isikoff named her as the key inside source [46] ‘prov­ing’ that the Rus­sians were behind the hacks, and that Trump’s cam­paign was under the spell of Krem­lin spies and sor­cer­ers. . . .”

With tra­di­tion­al, “Atlanti­cist” con­ser­v­a­tive GOP fig­ures align­ing with ele­ments of the CIA to fin­ger Trump as a Putin tool, etc. an epochal event is unfold­ing, in our opin­ion. What the bril­liant Berke­ley pro­fes­sor Peter Dale Scott has termed “The Deep State” is squar­ing off with the Trumpenkampfver­bande, with the lat­ter net­work­ing with Euro­pean fas­cist and cen­ter-left par­ties to improve rela­tions with Rus­sia. NATO and the Atlanti­cist dynam­ic that has dom­i­nat­ed post World War II pol­i­tics are reced­ing, and a Ger­man-led EU mil­i­tary is gain­ing momen­tum.

Again, we fore­cast this in FTR #‘s 918 and 919.

Next, we note the selec­tion of Stephen Miller, anoth­er “alt-right” fig­ure, as an advis­er to Trump. “. . . . Miller is a for­mer staffer for the nativist Sen. Jeff Ses­sions (R‑Ala.), now Trump’s nom­i­nee for attor­ney gen­er­al. The announce­ment of Miller’s new role drew praise from white nation­al­ist leader Richard Spencer. ‘Stephen is a high­ly com­pe­tent and tough indi­vid­ual,’ Spencer, who famous­ly coined the term ‘alt-right’ to describe the insur­gent right-wing move­ment that has attract­ed white nation­al­ists and suprema­cists, told Moth­er Jones on Wednes­day. ‘So I have no doubt that he will do a great job.’ . . . .”

In past pro­grams, we have not­ed the Third Reich ori­gins of the Free­dom Par­ty in Aus­tria. That par­ty is now net­work­ing both with Putin and Trump’s “alt-right” lean­ing Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Advis­er Michael Fly­nn. One of the shared goals of both the Free­dom Par­ty, cor­po­rate Ger­many and–through the latter–the Under­ground Reich is the lift­ing of eco­nom­ic sanc­tions on Rus­sia.

The broad­cast under­scores the con­ti­nu­ity between the “new” Free­dom Par­ty and the old, Nazi-gen­er­at­ed Free­dom Par­ty. The issue of the South Tyrol region is exem­plary in this regard:

” . . . . A TV talk show host, Corin­na Mil­born, grilled [Free­dopm Par­ty pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Nor­bert] . . . Hofer last week for an hour over his alleged nation­al­ist views and his calls for undo­ing the “unjust bor­der” that keeps South Tyrol, a region of north­ern Italy, apart from Austria’s Tyrol. Mr. Hofer’s grin evap­o­rat­ed and he almost blew his cool. . . .”

Aus­tri­an Free­dom Par­ty founder Her­bert Schweiger is no stranger to the issue of the South Tyrol: “. . . . Her­bert Schweiger makes no attempt to hide his Nazi views. At his home in the Aus­tri­an moun­tains, the for­mer SS offi­cer gazes out of a win­dow to a view of a misty alpine val­ley. Described to me as the ‘Pup­pet Mas­ter’ of the far right, Schweiger, 85, is a leg­endary fig­ure for neo-Nazis across the world. Our time is com­ing again and soon we will have anoth­er leader like Hitler,’ he says. Still remark­ably sharp-mind­ed, Schweiger was a lieu­tenant in the infa­mous Waf­fen SS Panz­er Divi­sion Leib­stan­darte Adolf Hitler, an elite unit orig­i­nal­ly formed before WWII to act as the Führer’s per­son­al body­guards. . . .He was a found­ing mem­ber of three polit­i­cal par­ties in Aus­tria – the VDU, the banned NDP and the FPO. He has giv­en his sup­port to the cur­rent leader of the FPO. ‘Stra­che is doing the right thing by fight­ing the for­eign­er,’ says Schweiger. He is now in close con­tact with the Kam­er­ad­schaften, under­ground cells of hard­core neo-Nazis across Aus­tria and Ger­many who, over the past three years, have start­ed to infil­trate polit­i­cal par­ties such as the FPO. His belief that the bul­let and the bal­lot box go hand in hand goes back to 1961, when he helped to train a ter­ror­ist move­ment fight­ing for the reuni­fi­ca­tion of Aus­tria and South Tyrol. ‘I was an explo­sives expert in the SS so I trained Burschen­schaften how to make bombs. We used the hotel my wife and I owned as a train­ing camp,’ he says. The hotel he refers to is 50 yards from his home. Thir­ty peo­ple in Italy were mur­dered dur­ing the cam­paign. One of the men con­vict­ed for the atroc­i­ties, Nor­bert Burg­er, lat­er formed the now-banned neo-Nazi NDP par­ty with Schweiger. . . .”

In France, the cen­ter-left can­di­date for president–Francois Fillon–is push­ing both for an increase in French defense spend­ing and a Ger­man-led dri­ve for an all EU army. Both are goals of the Under­ground Reich and the Trumpenkampfver­bande, as set forth in FTR #‘s 918 and 919. His views on rap­proche­ment with Rus­sia are typ­i­cal of a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of a rel­a­tive­ly broad spec­trum of Euro­pean polit­i­cal par­ties. This res­onates well with the Trumpenkampfver­bande, again, as dis­cussed in FTR #‘s 918 and 919:

” . . . . sim­i­lar trends are play­ing out in sev­er­al Euro­pean coun­tries, along their own par­tic­u­lar nation­al lines. In Ger­many, for instance, cen­ter-left lead­ers are push­ing to aban­don their country’s role in lead­ing Euro­pean efforts to counter Rus­sia. Instead, they advo­cate revert­ing to the Cold War-era pol­i­cy of Ost­poli­tik, in which West Ger­many sought a neu­tral bal­anc­ing role between East and West.

“Often, West Euro­pean politi­cians do not see them­selves as explic­it­ly call­ing for align­ing with Moscow, but rather for aban­don­ing the cost­ly mis­sion to counter Russia’s aggres­sion against far­away east­ern states at a moment when they have more imme­di­ate con­cerns. West Euro­pean lead­ers see them­selves as fight­ing an increas­ing­ly unten­able two-front war: a south­ern front against immi­gra­tion and ter­ror­ism and an east­ern front against Rus­sia.

“ The east­ern front is large­ly a project of pol­i­cy estab­lish­ments that see it as essen­tial to main­tain­ing Europe’s post­war order. Vot­ers are more skep­ti­cal; a 2015 Pew poll found that slight majori­ties in France, Ger­many and Italy said their coun­tries should not uphold their treaty oblig­a­tion to defend an east­ern NATO ally should it be attacked by Rus­sia. Vot­ers, par­tic­u­lar­ly those on the right, have long seen south­ern issues — ter­ror­ism and immi­gra­tion — as more impor­tant. Their threats to install far-right gov­ern­ments that would dis­man­tle the Euro­pean project entire­ly are increas­ing­ly cred­i­ble. . . .”

The broad­cast con­cludes with a look at Rex W. Tiller­son, the CEO of Exxon Mobil, cho­sen by Trump to be Sec­re­tary of State. Tiller­son is opposed to main­tain­ing sanc­tions against Rus­sia: ” . . . . At the cen­ter of the debate are ques­tions about Mr. Tillerson’s vocal oppo­si­tion to Amer­i­can sanc­tions imposed on Rus­sia as he pur­sued oil and gas deals in that coun­try. . . .” This too, is res­o­nant with cor­po­rate Ger­many’s wish­es as set forth in FTR #‘s 918 and 919. Again, cor­po­rate Ger­many is dom­i­nat­ed by the Bor­mann net­work.

We con­clude with a recap of the Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work’s influ­ence with­in Stan­dard Oil of New Jer­sey (Exxon was for­mer­ly Stan­dard of New Jer­sey, now merged with Mobil, Stan­dard of New York.) ” . . .Vast­ly diver­si­fied, it is said to be the largest land-own­er in South Amer­i­ca, and through stock­hold­ings, con­trols Ger­man heavy indus­try and the trust estab­lished by the late Her­mann Schmitz, for­mer pres­i­dent of I.G. Far­ben, who held as much stock in Stan­dard Oil of New Jer­sey as did the Rock­e­fellers. . . .”

Pro­gram High­lights Include: A recap of ele­men­tary fea­tures of Ger­man Ost­poli­tik; a syn­op­sis of the OUN/B and its World War II and post-World War II oper­a­tions; a syn­op­sis of the infor­ma­tion indi­cat­ing Rus­sia was not behind the high-pro­file hacks for which it has been pun­ished.

FTR #924 Technocratic Fascism, the High-Profile Hacks and The Obverse Oswald: Update on the Adventures of Eddie the Friendly Spook

Con­tin­u­ing our analy­sis of the high-pro­file hacks and “Team Snow­den,” we begin with analy­sis of some cryp­tic tweets that Snow­den issued, short­ly before the “Shad­ow Bro­kers” announced their pil­fer­ing of NSA cyber­weapons. The pos­si­bil­i­ty that the tweets were a sig­nal to release the infor­ma­tion is one to be con­sid­ered.

Much of the pro­gram reviews key points of infor­ma­tion from FTR #923 and oth­er broad­casts: Rus­sia appears to have been wrong­ly fin­gered for the DNC hack released by Wik­iLeaks; the Shad­ow Bro­kers’ sup­posed hack of the NSA’s servers does not appear to have been a hack at all but the work of an insid­er who down­loaded the files onto a USB dri­ve; the files offered up by the Shad­ow Bro­kers were from 2013, when Snow­den under­took his oper­a­tion.

Snow­den has sup­port­ed the cov­er sto­ry for the NSA non-hack–that it was, indeed, a hack (it prob­a­bly was­n’t) and that Rus­sia was behind it, which was prob­a­bly not the case.

A chief sus­pect in the release of the NSA files is Jacob Apple­baum, the Wik­iLeak­er who appears to have facil­i­tat­ed Snow­den’s jour­ney from Hawaii to Hong Kong. The pro­gram reviews Apple­baum’s hos­til­i­ty to Hillary Clin­ton, com­par­ing it to the so-called “Shad­ow Bro­kers’ ” hos­til­i­ty to Clin­ton, echo­ing the views of Trump, Assange and Apple­baum. The broad­cast reviews the fact that the “Shad­ow Bro­kers” used an e‑mail account in Ger­many that has been recal­ci­trant to attempts at pen­e­trat­ing its users’ infor­ma­tion.

The pro­gram reviews Apple­baum’s pres­ence in Ger­many, along with oth­er key mem­bers of the WikiLeaks/Team Snow­den cadre.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: review of the fact that Snow­den (at the time he set out to sub­vert the NSA), Apple­baum and oth­er high-pro­file “pri­va­cy activists” have doc­u­ment­ed links to the CIA; a look at Don­ald Trump, Jr. who has been active in tweet­ing and re-tweet­ing “Alt.right” racist and anti-Semit­ic memes; Trump, Jr.‘s expressed will­ing­ness to run for office.

FTR #923 The Obverse Oswald and the High Profile Hacks: Update on the Adventures of Eddie the Friendly Spook (Weighing in for The Trumpenkampfverbande, Part 2)

Sup­ple­ment­ing and sum­ming up the exhaus­tive “Eddie the Friend­ly Spook” series, this pro­gram sets forth the Snow­den “psy-op” and the high-pro­file hacks against the back­ground of Lee Har­vey Oswald, the U.S. spy infil­trat­ed into the Sovi­et Union and then into left­ist orga­ni­za­tions in the Unit­ed States. Oswald was framed for JFK’s assas­si­na­tion and then killed before he could defend him­self.

Where­as Oswald was por­trayed as a vil­lain, Eddie the Friend­ly Spook’s oper­a­tion is the obverse, with Snow­den decamp­ing first to Chi­na and then to Rus­sia, and being por­trayed as a hero.

Snow­den is not only a spy but a fas­cist, who advo­cates the elim­i­na­tion of Social Secu­ri­ty and the return to the gold stan­dard.

Snow­den’s Russ­ian sojourn appears to have been arranged by Wik­iLeaks, which also appears to have arranged his flight to Chi­na from Hawaii. (Snow­den’s jour­ney to Hawaii appears to have been facil­i­tat­ed by Jacob Apple­baum, who may be behind the “Shad­ow Bro­kers” alleged hack of NSA cyber­weapons.) It was Snow­den’s jour­ney to Moscow that threw Oba­ma’s “reboot” with Rus­sia under the bus.

In this pro­gram, we exam­ine infor­ma­tion indi­cat­ing that Rus­sia has been framed for the “Shad­ow Bro­kers” alleged hack of the NSA, much as it appears to have been framed for the DNC hack. Indeed, with both the DNC hack and the “Shad­ow Bro­kers” non-hack of the NSA, the evi­dence points increas­ing­ly toward “Team Snow­den” and Eddie the Friend­ly Spook him­self.

In that con­text, we again point to “The Obverse Oswald.” We strong­ly sus­pect that “Team Snow­den” may have had some­thing to do with this. Snow­den is in Rus­sia and work­ing for a com­put­er firm. The (frankly lame) fram­ing of Rus­sia for the DNC hack and the “Shad­ow Bro­kers” non-hack of the NSA reminds us of the process of “paint­ing Oswald Red.” After review­ing infor­ma­tion about the polit­i­cal, ide­o­log­i­cal and rhetor­i­cal con­ti­nu­ity between Ron Paul (Snow­den’s and Julian Assange’s Pres­i­den­tial can­di­date of choice), David Duke and Don­ald Trump and his “alt.right” asso­ciates, the pro­gram reviews the appar­ent­ly deep and ongo­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion between Julian Assange, Wik­iLeaks and Don­ald Trump’s dirty tricks spe­cial­ist Roger Stone.

The pro­gram reviews at length the over­whelm­ing prob­a­bil­i­ty that Rus­sia was framed for the DNC hacks. Tack­ling the “Shad­ow Bro­kers’ ” pen­e­tra­tion of NSA cyber­weapons tech­nol­o­gy, we note that the evi­dence that this was done by Rus­sia is very poor. The bit­coin auc­tion­ing of the cyber­weapons is extreme­ly unlike­ly, as is the pub­lic announce­ment of the so-called “hack.” In addi­tion, the announce­ment of the so-called “hack” is done in a com­i­cal bro­ken Eng­lish, rem­i­nis­cent of the Boris and Natasha car­toon char­ac­ters from the ear­ly 1960’s.

Next, the pro­gram sets forth the hypoth­e­sis that, rather than a “hack,” this was more like­ly an insid­er pen­e­tra­tion of NSA and down­load­ing of the files onto a USB stick. Long­time NSA observ­er James Bam­ford points a fin­ger of sus­pi­cion at Jacob Apple­baum, the Wik­iLeak­er who appears to have facil­i­tat­ed Snow­den’s flight from Hawaii to Hong Kong. Apple­baum is a res­olute oppo­nent of Hillary Clin­ton, and the Shad­ow Bro­kers’ bro­ken Eng­lish tar­get­ed the Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­nee as well.

It is more than a lit­tle inter­est­ing that Edward Snow­den has gone on record say­ing that Rus­sia was behind this event and that it was a hack. The evi­dence of Rus­sia being behind the Shad­ow Bro­kers and this event being a “hack” is very poor. Nonethe­less, Snow­den is giv­ing cre­dence to the cov­er sto­ry for this event.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: The use of a Ger­man e‑mail provider that has been resis­tant to gov­ern­ment attempts at trans­paren­cy; review of the pres­ence in Ger­many of Apple­baum, Sarah Har­ri­son (Assange’s for­mer girl­friend and the woman who assist­ed Snow­den’s flight from Hong Kong to Moscow), Lau­ra Poitras (close asso­ciate of Snow­den and Glenn Green­wald) and Peter Sunde (who found­ed the Pirate Bay site on which Wik­iLeaks ini­ti­tial­ly held forth); rumi­na­tion about the pos­si­bil­i­ty that Snow­den and Apple­baum may have col­lab­o­rat­ed in the con­text of the “Shad­ow Bro­kers;” review of the links between the CIA-derived Broad­cast­ing Board of Gov­er­nors and Jacob Apple­baum; review of Eddie Snow­den’s work for the CIA at the time he chose to leak NSA doc­u­ments.