“Some Folks Need Killing!” Mark Robinson, David Lane, and the CNP’s American Renewal Project

“Some Folks Need Killing!” So declared North Car­oli­na Lieu­tenant Gov­er­nor Mark Robin­son on June 30. At a church. With the full endorse­ment of the church’s pas­tor, Rev­erend Cameron McGill, who explained how Robin­son only meant the peo­ple ‘try­ing to kill us’ should be killed. Two days lat­er, Her­itage Foun­da­tion Pres­i­dent and Project 2025 leader Kevin Roberts made his now infa­mous “Sec­ond Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion” speech, warn­ing that the rev­o­lu­tion would remain blood­less “if the left allows it”. Days lat­er, Don­ald Trump laugh­ably dis­avowed know­ing any­thing about Project 2025. And while Robert­s’s com­ments have received ample atten­tion, Robin­son’s “Some Folks Need Killing!” com­ments have remained an under-explored top­ic. Because as we’re going to see, Mark Robin­son has become quite a celebri­ty on the far right. With one very notable fan base: The Amer­i­can Renew­al Project ded­i­cat­ed to recruit­ing con­ser­v­a­tive pas­tor to run for office and the Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy (CNP) fig­ures behind it. Not only is Robin­son the star of Amer­i­can Renew­al Project events, but it turns out Rev­erend McGill is a recruiter for the group too. That project, formed in 2005 by polit­i­cal activist David Lane but with roots going all the way back to the for­ma­tion of the CNP in 1981, is what we’re going to explore in this post. Because as dis­turb­ing as Robin­son’s “Some Folks Need Killings” com­ments may have been out of of con­text, they are a lot more dis­turb­ing when placed in con­text. A Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist domin­ion­ist con­text that warns of plans for a lot more than just ‘some’ killing.

The Eyes Over Mike Johnson: the CNP’s Texas Template for God’s Power Grope

Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism isn’t sim­ply on the rise in the Unit­ed States. It’s already at the top, thanks in no small part to the Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy (CNP) and the myr­i­ad of groups oper­at­ing under its theo­crat­ic umbrel­la. The Supreme Court is dom­i­nat­ed by a hard right major­i­ty and there’s even the CNP’s planned mass purges — start­ing with the gov­ern­ment but not end­ing there — under the ‘Sched­ule F’/Project 2025 label. That’s all part of the grim con­text sur­round­ing a series of reports around the new Speak­er of the House, Mike John­son that should raise seri­ous ques­tions about just how much influ­ence the lead­ing Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist hold over new Speak­er of the House. But thanks the House and Supreme Court aren’t the only gov­ern­ment insti­tu­tion under Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism sway. States Repub­li­cans are increas­ing­ly adopt­ing Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist laws, with Texas lead­ing the way under the way under the vision of CNP pseu­do-his­to­ri­an David Bar­ton. It turns out John­son and Bar­ton are long-time allies who share the same vision for the future. A vision in line with the ‘dis­ci­ple­ship’ form of author­i­tar­i­an Chris­tian­i­ty now main­streamed in the CNP-dom­i­nat­ed net­work of 47,000 church­es in the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion (SBC). Which also hap­pens to be a denom­i­na­tion grap­pling with a sex abuse mega-scan­dal haunt­ing­ly rem­i­nis­cent of the Catholic Church’s mega-abuse scan­dal. A mega-scan­dal with a num­ber of major CNP fig­ures oper­at­ing as abusers or enablers. It’s that broad­er inter­sec­tion of Mike John­son’s ties to Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism with this grow­ing SBC abuse mega-scan­dal that we’re going to look at in this post.

FTR #1125 Three-Dimensional Chess and the Covid-19 Outbreak: A Structural Overview

“A nation of sheep will beget a gov­ern­ment of wolves.”–Edward R. Mur­row

This pro­gram is an overview of a num­ber of over­lap­ping con­sid­er­a­tions in the Covid-19 out­break, which Mr. Emory calls a “Bio-Psy-Op.” These over­lap­ping areas will be pre­sent­ed in a series of pro­grams: FTR #1126 Bio-Psy-Op Apoc­a­lypse Now, Part 2: The Democ­ra­cy-Killing Virus; FTR #1127 Bio-Psy-Op Apoc­a­lypse Now, Part 3: The Eugenic Virus; FTR #1128 Bio-Psy-Op Apoc­a­lypse Now, Part 4: The Wealth-Con­cen­trat­ing Virus; FTR #1129 Bio-Psy-Op Apoc­a­lypse Now, Part 5: Walkin’ the Coro­n­avirus; FTR #1130 Bio-Psy-Op Apoc­a­lypse Now, Part 6: Context–The Chi­na-Killing Virus; FTR #1131 Bio-Psy-Op Apoc­a­lypse, Part 7: Pinch­back­’s Per­spec­tive and FTR #1132 Bio-Psy-Op Apoc­a­lypse Now, Part 8: The Nazi Virus.

Before dis­cussing the Covid-19 “op,” per se, we memo­ri­al­ized the bril­liant Kevin Coogan, author of “Dream­er of the Day: Fran­cis Park­er Yock­ey and the Post­war Fas­cist Inter­na­tion­al,” as well as numer­ous arti­cles. Kevin passed away on 2/27/2020 in New York City. We do not know the cause. Kevin was a bril­liant writer and ana­lyst and will be sore­ly missed.

In For The Record #233, we exam­ined Kev­in’s analy­sis of “The Order,” a fascist/mystical con­cept that was for­mu­lat­ed, in part by fas­cist mys­tic Julius Evola. Evola was a dom­i­nant philo­soph­i­cal and ide­o­log­i­cal influ­ence on Steve Ban­non, at the epi­cen­ter of the anti-Chi­na effort. (Mr. Emory mis­spoke himself–the pro­gram is FTR #233, not #312.)

The con­cept of three-dimen­sion­al chess derives from the old “Star Trek” tele­vi­sion series, in which the offi­cers played a vari­a­tion of chess that involved play­ing on three dif­fer­ent lev­els. Under­stand­ing the “Bio-Psy-Op” sim­i­lar­ly involves think­ing and aware­ness on at least three lev­els.

An op-ed col­umn in The New York Times by Bret Stephens goes to the essence of this “bio-psy-op.” ” . . . . The only cer­tain­ty is that, in the midst of a cri­sis, politi­cians are rarely penal­ized for pre­dict­ing the worst pos­si­ble out­come. If it comes to pass, they seem prophet­ic. If it doesn’t, they take cred­it for avert­ing cat­a­stro­phe. In the mean­time, they seek to enhance their pow­ers. . . . we might face not a reces­sion but a full-blown depres­sion, which would be finan­cial­ly ruinous for hun­dreds of mil­lions and have its own dis­as­trous knock-on effects in men­tal, emo­tion­al, and phys­i­cal health, includ­ing for the elder­ly and sick who already face the great­est risks from the virus. . . .”

Key points of dis­cus­sion and analy­sis, which will be devel­oped at much greater length and in much greater detail in the series of pro­grams not­ed above, includ­ing some of the arti­cles which will fig­ure into the analy­sis:

1.–Exemplifying the pro­found psy­cho­log­i­cal aspects of the Covid-19 Psy-Op is the phe­nom­e­non of the hoard­ing of toi­let paper. Mr. Emory views this as a deep Freudian/anal response to feel­ings of help­less­ness on the part of cit­i­zens. Toi­let paper is of no help against the virus, but is symp­to­matic of a deep-seat­ed per­son­al­i­ty dynam­ic seek­ing to man­i­fest some mea­sure of social con­trol. This was the sub­ject of a recent New York­er piece. ” . . . . ‘Con­trol­ling clean­li­ness around B.M.s is the ear­li­est way the child asserts con­trol,’ Andrea Green­man, the pres­i­dent of the Con­tem­po­rary Freudi­an Soci­ety, said. ‘The fact that now we are all pre­sum­ably los­ing con­trol cre­ates a regres­sive push to a very ear­ly time. So, I guess that trans­lates in the uncon­scious to ‘If I have a life­long sup­ply of toi­let paper, I’ll nev­er be out of con­trol, nev­er be a help­less, dirty child again.’ ’ . . . .”

2.–FTR #1126 Bio-Psy-Op Apoc­a­lypse Now, Part 2: The Democ­ra­cy-Killing Virus: The Covid-19 “op” is lead­ing to the atten­u­a­tion or elim­i­na­tion of democ­ra­cy all over the world. In addi­tion to dra­con­ian pow­ers pro­posed by “ex” CIA offi­cer and Attor­ney Gen­er­al William Barr, Trump has boast­ed about pow­ers grant­ed to him “that peo­ple don’t even know about.” Abroad, fas­cists and auto­crats from Vik­tor Orban to Naren­dra Modi are using the Covid-19 out­break to cement con­trol. Even Great Britain has man­i­fest­ed emer­gency pow­ers that one crit­ic termed “Eye-Water­ing.” Civ­il lib­er­ties are tak­ing a beat­ing, with “Pan­dem­ic Sur­veil­lance” enabling a mas­sive ero­sion of pri­va­cy that is unlike­ly to abate. There are ques­tions about whether the elec­tions will be held in Novem­ber. (“Trump Has Emer­gency Pow­ers We Aren’t Allowed to Know About” by Eliz­a­beth Gotein and Andrew Boyle; The New York Times; 4/10/2020.; “DOJ seeks new emer­gency pow­ers amid coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic” by Bet­sy Woodruff Swan; Politi­co; 03/21/2020; “Exclu­sive: Inside the Military’s Top Secret Plans If the Coro­n­avirus Crip­ples Gov­ern­ment” by William M. Arkin; Newsweek; 3/18/2020; “Exclu­sive: U.S. Mil­i­tary Acti­vates Its Nev­er-Before-Used Fed­er­al Response to Com­bat Coro­n­avirus Out­break” by William M. Arkin; Newsweek; 2/27/2020.; “For Auto­crats and Oth­ers, Coro­n­avirus Is a Chance to Grab Even More Pow­er” by Selam Gebrikadan; The New York Times; 3/30/2020.; “Media Dis­sent Fades as Modi Tight­ens Grip” by Vin­du Goel and Jef­frey Gettleman;The New York Times; 4/3/2020.; “Coro­n­avirus Sur­veil­lance Is Enter­ing Dystopi­an Ter­ri­to­ry” by Eric Lutz; Van­i­ty Fair; 4/9/2020.

3.–FTR #1127 Bio-Psy-Op Apoc­a­lypse Now, Part 3: The Eugenic Virus: The dis­pro­por­tion­ate dam­age being inflict­ed by the pan­dem­ic on minorities–African-Americans and Lati­nos in par­tic­u­lar, has received con­sid­er­able dis­cus­sion. Eco­nom­i­cal­ly dis­ad­van­taged to a con­sid­er­able extent and sub­ject to the phys­i­o­log­i­cal, psy­cho­log­i­cal and behav­ioral lia­bil­i­ties stem­ming from that state of affairs, they are more vul­ner­a­ble to the rav­ages of the virus. In addi­tion, “social-dis­tanc­ing” is a lux­u­ry that many poor peo­ple can not afford. Anoth­er major con­sid­er­a­tion con­cerns the rationing of health care. Peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties are afraid they will be shunt­ed “to the back of the line” when it comes time for them to receive prop­er treat­ment. The elder­ly are falling ill and dying all over the world. (“Peo­ple with Dis­abil­i­ties Are Afraid They Will Be Dis­crim­i­nat­ed Against Because of Coro­n­avirus” by Rick Jer­vais; USA Today; 3/26/2020.; “Who Should Be Saved First? Experts Offer Med­ical Guid­ance” by Austin Frakt; The New York Times; 3/24/2020.; “Ear­ly Data Shows African Amer­i­cans Con­tract­ing and Dying of Coro­n­avirus at an Alarm­ing Rate” by Aki­lah John­son and Talia Buford; ProP­ub­li­ca; 4/3/2020.; “Social Dis­tanc­ing Is A Priv­i­lege” by Charles Blow; The New York Times; 4/5/2020. ; “Scape­goat­ing New York Means Ignor­ing Its Des­per­ate Need” by Kim Phillips-Fein; The New York Times; 4/5/2020.

4.–FTR #1128 Bio-Psy-Op Apoc­a­lypse Now, Part 4: The Wealth-Con­cen­trat­ing Virus: In FTR #‘s 1111 and 1112, among oth­er pro­grams, we spoke of the net­work­ing and invest­ing of Steve Ban­non, J. Kyle Bass and Tom­my Hicks, Jr. Bass, you will recall, is asym­met­ri­cal­ly invest­ed with regard to the economies in Hong Kong and Chi­na. He has cer­tain­ly made mon­ey, as have many oth­ers. With the Fed­er­al Reserve esti­mat­ing unem­ploy­ment at rates that may reach 32% and econ­o­mist Paul Krug­man opin­ing that this down­turn will be three to five times as bad as the 2008 finan­cial col­lapse, those who do have mon­ey will be able to buy up assets at pen­nies on the dol­lar. An arti­cle in The Guardian dis­cuss­es hedge fund returns of as much as 4,000+ per­cent for some firms. The pos­si­bil­i­ty of “insid­er knowl­edge” of the com­ing pan­dem­ic sug­gests itself. It should be not­ed that J. Kyle Bass made his for­tune bet­ting against the sub­prime hous­ing mar­ket. In this pro­gram, we will dis­cuss his role in help­ing to bring down Bear Stearns in the 2008 col­lapse. A for­mer employ­ee of that ill-fat­ed com­pa­ny, Bass leaked dam­ag­ing infor­ma­tion about Bear Stearns to a Wall Street Jour­nal reporter, there­by pre­cip­i­tat­ing the col­lapse of the firm. (“Coro­n­avirus job loss­es could total 47 mil­lion, unem­ploy­ment rate may hit 32%, Fed esti­mates” by Jeff Cox; CNBC; 03/30/2020; “Hedge funds ‘rak­ing in bil­lions’ dur­ing coro­n­avirus cri­sis” by Rupert Neate Wealth and Jasper Jol­ly; The Guardian; 04/09/2020.; “WSJ: ‘Twas Kyle Bass that Killed Bear Stearns” by Thorn­ton McEnery; Dealbreaker.com; 3/29/2016 [Updat­ed on 1/14/2019.]; “Nas­sim Taleb-Advised Uni­ver­sa Tail Fund Returned 3,600% in March” by Erik Schatzk­er; Bloomberg; 04/08/2020; “How A Goat Farmer Built A Dooms­day Machine That Just Booked A 4,144% Return” by Antoine Gara; Forbes; 04/13/2020.

5.–FTR #1129 Bio-Psy-Op Apoc­a­lypse Now, Part 5: Walkin’ The Coro­n­avirus: In the Nazi tract Ser­pen­t’s Walk–which we have dis­cussed for decades–the SS go under­ground (which they did), buy into the opin­ion-form­ing media (which they did) and, infil­trate the mil­i­tary (which they have done), and, after a ter­ror­ist attack by genet­i­cal­ly-engi­neered virus­es dec­i­mates large parts of the Unit­ed States, mar­tial law is declared and the Nazis take over. From Ser­pen­t’s Walk: “. . . . ‘Yes. Well. ‘Pacov’ stands for ‘Pan­dem­ic Com­mu­ni­ca­ble Virus,’ one of the ugli­er results of mil­i­tary exper­i­men­ta­tion with recom­bi­nant DNA. Do you know what that is?’. . . . ‘Very well, let me tell you in layman’s terms.’ Mul­der extend­ed a hand to shush Wrench, who had start­ed to speak. ‘Pacov con­sists of two sep­a­rate re-work­ings of two DNA chains of exist­ing virus­es. It’s a pig­gy-back weapon, a two-stage oper­a­tion. You send in the first stage. The vec­tors . . . agents of trans­mis­sion . . . for Pacov‑1 are exten­sive. It trav­els through the air, the water, or direct­ly from per­son-to-per­son and is high­ly con­ta­gious. It spreads for hun­dreds of miles, if con­di­tions are opti­mal.  Pacov‑1 pro­duces only a mild, flu-like infec­tion that dis­ap­pears with­in a day or two. Pub­lic health author­i­ties would over­look it, nev­er con­sid­er it a seri­ous epi­dem­ic, and even if they did they’d have to look care­ful­ly to iso­late it. Once a vic­tim is over the ‘flu,’ Pacov‑1 becomes dor­mant and almost unde­tectable. A month or two lat­er, you send in the sec­ond stage: Pacov‑2 is also a virus, just as con­ta­gious as the first, and just as harm­less by itself. It reacts with Pacov‑1 to pro­duce a pow­er­ful coag­u­lant. . . . you die with­in three min­utes. No warn­ing, no vac­cine, no cure. Those not exposed to both stages remain unharmed. . . . Pacov‑2 goes inert, like Pacov‑1 with­in a week or two. Then you get your victim’s coun­try, all his prop­er­ty, in undam­aged con­di­tion. . . . and a lot of corpses to bury.’ . . . .”

6.–FTR #1130: Bio-Psy-Op Apoc­a­lypse Now, Part 6: Context–the Chi­na-Killing Virus: Ana­lyzes the Covid-19 out­break in the con­text of the anti-Chi­na, full-court press, high­light­ed in, among oth­er, pro­grams, FTR #‘s 1089 through 1095, 1103, 1104, 1105. (“Unleash the Pri­va­teers” by Colonel Mark Can­cion (USMC—Retired) and Bran­don Schwartz; U.S. Naval Insti­tute Mag­a­zine; April 2020 [Vol. 146/2/1,406; “Inside the World Uyghur Con­gress: The US-backed right-wing regime change net­work seek­ing the ‘fall of Chi­na’” by Ajit Singh; The Gray Zone; 03/05/2020; “Coro­n­avirus Alarm Blends Yel­low Per­il and Red Scare” by Joshua Cho; Fair­ness and Accu­ra­cy in Report­ing; 3/6/2020.)

7.–FTR #1131 Bio-Psy-Op Apoc­a­lypse, Part 7: Pinch­back­’s Per­spec­tive: ” . . . .Barag­o­na was a Nazi from Fort Sill. . . . Gar­ri­son also obtained a tran­script of a let­ter writ­ten by Fer­rie to Barag­o­na. Next to Barag­o­na’s name, Gar­ri­son wrote: ‘Note Barag­o­na is impor­tant.’ The let­ter had been sent to Gar­ri­son by Glenn Pinch­back, and a car­bon copy was sent to Mendel Rivers, a con­gress­man from Geor­gia. (Pinch­back worked in the Oper­a­tions Com­mand at Fort Sill, where he inter­cept­ed mail.) In the let­ter, Fer­rie shared his dream of the re-uni­fi­ca­tion of Ger­many and liv­ing in a world where all the cur­ren­cy was in Deutschmarks. Pinch­back­’s sum­ma­tion of the let­ter described a ‘Neo-Nazi plot to enslave Amer­i­ca in the name of anti-Com­mu­nism,’ and ‘a neo-Nazi plot gar­gan­tu­an in scope.’ The Fer­rie let­ter spoke of the need to kill all the Kennedys and Mar­tin Luther King, Jr. . . . Pinch­back also report­ed­ly obtained a let­ter from David Fer­rie to Barag­o­na con­fess­ing his role in the assas­si­na­tion of Robert Gehrig, who was a Nazi and Fort Sill sol­dier. . . .”

8.–FTR #1132 Bio-Psy-Op Apoc­a­lypse Now, Part 8: The Nazi Virus: This pro­gram will syn­the­size the var­i­ous aspects of the “Bio-Psy-Op Apoc­a­lypse Now” series, demon­strat­ing how the var­i­ous con­cep­tu­al com­po­nents set forth here­in con­sti­tute a Nazi “Full-Spec­trum Dom­i­nance.”

FTR #1109 Deutsche Bank, “Suicides,” The Supreme Court and Team Trump (Send in The Clowns, Part 2)

While the pub­lic’s atten­tion is focused on the impeach­ment pro­ceed­ings, high­ly sus­pi­cious infor­ma­tion has sur­faced involv­ing the finances of “Team Trump,” Deutsche Bank, osten­si­ble “sui­cides,” and appar­ent destruc­tion of finan­cial records.

With the fail­ure of a Trump fil­ing in appeals court, this con­cate­na­tion appears to be head­ed to the Supreme Court, where both Neil Gor­such and Brett Kavanaugh clerked for for­mer Jus­tice Antho­ny Kennedy. (Kavanaugh took Kennedy’s seat.) 

Dur­ing the con­fir­ma­tion hear­ings of both judges, none of the occu­pants of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­to­r­i­al Clown Car brought up the fact that Jus­tice Kennedy’s son Justin was in charge of Deutsche Bank’s real estate lend­ing depart­ment when the insti­tu­tion was Trump’s only lender. Justin Kennedy also had strong pro­fes­sion­al trans­ac­tions with Jared Kush­n­er’s real estate oper­a­tions, as well.

Thomas Bowers–a key Deutsche Bank offi­cial involved with Don­ald Trump’s deal­ings with the bank–allegedly com­mit­ted sui­cide in late Novem­ber of 2019, as “The Don­ald” attempt­ed to keep his finan­cial records from Con­gres­sion­al inves­ti­ga­tors. ” Thomas Bow­ers, iden­ti­fied as a for­mer Deutsche Bank exec­u­tive who signed off on con­tro­ver­sial loans to Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, died last week after appar­ent­ly tak­ing his own life at 55.. . . . ‘One source who has direct knowl­edge of the FBI’s inves­ti­ga­tion into Deutsche Bank said that fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tors have asked about Bow­ers and doc­u­ments he might have. Anoth­er source who has knowl­edge of Deutsche Bank’s inter­nal struc­ture said that Bow­ers would have been the gate­keep­er for finan­cial doc­u­ments for the bank’s wealth­i­est cus­tomers.’ . . . .”

In addi­tion to Mr. Bow­ers, a Deutsche Bank exec­u­tive named William Broeksmit alleged­ly com­mit­ted sui­cide in 2014. His son, Val, has giv­en the FBI doc­u­ments involv­ing the bank’s deal­ings with Team Trump. “Fed­er­al author­i­ties are inves­ti­gat­ing whether Deutsche Bank com­plied with laws meant to stop mon­ey laun­der­ing and oth­er crimes, the lat­est gov­ern­ment exam­i­na­tion of poten­tial mis­con­duct at one of the world’s largest and most trou­bled banks . . . . The inves­ti­ga­tion includes a review of Deutsche Bank’s han­dling of so-called sus­pi­cious activ­i­ty reports that its employ­ees pre­pared about pos­si­bly prob­lem­at­ic trans­ac­tions, includ­ing some linked to Pres­i­dent Trump’s son-in-law and senior advis­er, Jared Kush­n­er . . . . The same fed­er­al agent who con­tact­ed Ms. McFadden’s lawyer also par­tic­i­pat­ed in inter­views of the son of a deceased Deutsche Bank exec­u­tive, William S. Broeksmit. . . . . . . . F.B.I. agents met this year with Val Broeksmit, whose father was a senior Deutsche Bank exec­u­tive who com­mit­ted sui­cide in Jan­u­ary 2014. Mr. Broeksmit said he had pro­vid­ed the agents with inter­nal bank doc­u­ments and oth­er mate­ri­als that he had retrieved from his father’s per­son­al email accounts. . . .”

Irreg­u­lar­i­ties sug­gest­ing mon­ey laun­der­ing also involved Deutsche Bank deal­ings with Jared Kush­n­er, Trump’s son-in-law. The bank ignored its employ­ees’ requests to rile reports with the gov­ern­ment. ” . . . . Anti-mon­ey-laun­der­ing spe­cial­ists at Deutsche Bank rec­om­mend­ed in 2016 and 2017 that mul­ti­ple trans­ac­tions involv­ing legal enti­ties con­trolled by Don­ald J. Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kush­n­er, be report­ed to a fed­er­al finan­cial-crimes watch­dog. . . . .But exec­u­tives at Deutsche Bank, which has lent bil­lions of dol­lars to the Trump and Kush­n­er com­pa­nies, reject­ed their employ­ees’ advice. The reports were nev­er filed with the gov­ern­ment. . . .”

In addi­tion to pos­si­ble mon­ey-laun­der­ing trans­ac­tions involv­ing Trump and Kush­n­er, Deutsche Bank lent Kush­n­er $285 mil­lion the day before elec­tion day, a for­tu­itous move that allowed Kush­n­er to net $74 mil­lion on a real estate invest­ment. ” . . . . One month before Elec­tion Day, Jared Kushner’s real estate com­pa­ny final­ized a $285 mil­lion loan as part of a refi­nanc­ing pack­age for its prop­er­ty near Times Square in Man­hat­tan . . . . . . . The Deutsche Bank loan capped what Kush­n­er Cos. viewed as a tri­umph: It had pur­chased four most­ly emp­ty retail floors of the for­mer New York Times build­ing in 2015, recruit­ed ten­ants to fill the space and got the Deutsche Bank loan in a refi­nanc­ing deal that gave Kushner’s com­pa­ny $74 mil­lion more than it paid for the prop­er­ty. . . .”

Deutsche Bank does not have Trump’s tax returns, some­thing flagged by the insti­tu­tion’s employ­ees as unusu­al. The bank had pre­vi­ous­ly informed the Sec­ond Cir­cuit Court of Appeals. Note that Deutsche Bank said in a let­ter to the Unit­ed States Court of Appeals for the Sec­ond Cir­cuit in New York that they had tax returns for two mem­bers of the Trump fam­i­ly! That changed, quick­ly! “If inves­ti­ga­tors are going to get their hands on Pres­i­dent Trump’s tax returns, they will have to find them some­where oth­er than Deutsche Bank. The Ger­man bank — which for near­ly two decades was the only main­stream finan­cial insti­tu­tion con­sis­tent­ly will­ing to lend mon­ey to Mr. Trump . . . Last month, The New York Times and oth­er media out­lets asked the Unit­ed States Court of Appeals for the Sec­ond Cir­cuit in New York to unseal a let­ter from Deutsche Bank that iden­ti­fied two mem­bers of the Trump fam­i­ly whose tax returns the bank pos­sess­es. On Thurs­day, the court reject­ed the request. Part of the rea­son, it said, was that Deutsche Bank had informed the court that ‘the only tax returns it has for indi­vid­u­als and enti­ties named in the sub­poe­nas are not those of the pres­i­dent.’ Cur­rent and for­mer bank offi­cials pre­vi­ous­ly told The Times that Deutsche Bank had por­tions of Mr. Trump’s per­son­al and cor­po­rate tax returns. . . .”

An unnamed Deutsche Bank exec­u­tive not­ed in an e‑mail to the afore­men­tioned David Enrich that this was high­ly unusu­al, and the bank may have destroyed the doc­u­ments and cleansed their servers: ” . . . . David Enrich, finance edi­tor at The New York Times, post­ed to Twit­ter a screen­shot of his con­ver­sa­tion with the unnamed exec­u­tive in which they expressed sur­prise that Deutsche told a fed­er­al appeals court it did not have the president’s tax returns any­more. ‘Holy f**k,’ the exec­u­tive wrote, per the screen­shot. ‘The cir­cum­stance could be that they returned any phys­i­cal copies or destroyed any phys­i­cal copies under an agree­ment with a client and cleansed their servers. Not nor­mal though.’ . . . . ”

A dis­turb­ing per­spec­tive on the alleged “sui­cide” of Thomas Bow­ers, who was in charge of Trump’s deal­ings with the bank, as well as the alleged “sui­cide” of William Broeksmit is pro­vid­ed by an argu­ment voiced by Trump attor­ney William Consovoy in a hear­ing at the Sec­ond Cir­cuit Court of Appeals: ” . . . . [Judge] Dunne brought up Trump’s famous state­ment when he caught fire dur­ing the 2016 Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry, say­ing, ‘I could stand in the mid­dle of 5th Avenue and shoot some­body and I wouldn’t lose any vot­ers.’ ‘If he did pull out a hand­gun and shoot some­one on Fifth Ave,’ Dunne asked, ‘would the local police be restrained?‘Judge Chin raised Dunne’s point. He asked Consovoy for his ‘view on the Fifth Avenue exam­ple.’ ‘Local author­i­ties couldn’t inves­ti­gate, they couldn’t do any­thing about it?’ he asked. ‘No,’ replied a vis­i­bly annoyed Consovoy amid sti­fled chor­tles. ‘Noth­ing could be done? That’s your posi­tion?’ Chin repeat­ed. ‘That is cor­rect, that is cor­rect,’ Consovoy respond­ed . . . .”

It now appears that the Deutsche Bank case will be heard by the Supreme Court. There are already two sim­i­lar cas­es on their way to the court. It will be more than a lit­tle inter­est­ing to see how the SCOTUS rules, and how Judges Gor­such and Kavanaugh per­form in the case. ” . . . . A fed­er­al appeals court said Tues­day that Deutsche Bank must turn over detailed doc­u­ments about Pres­i­dent Trump’s finances to two con­gres­sion­al com­mit­tees, a rul­ing that will most like­ly be appealed to the Supreme Court. . . . Demo­c­ra­t­ic-con­trolled con­gres­sion­al com­mit­tees issued sub­poe­nas to two banks — Deutsche Bank, long Mr. Trump’s biggest lender, and Cap­i­tal One — this year for finan­cial records relat­ed to the pres­i­dent, his com­pa­nies and his fam­i­ly. Mr. Trump sued the banks to block them from com­ply­ing . . . . Mr. Trump’s lawyer, Jay Seku­low, said in a state­ment that ‘we are eval­u­at­ing our next options includ­ing seek­ing review at the Supreme Court of the Unit­ed States.’ He called the con­gres­sion­al sub­poe­nas ‘invalid as issued.’ . . . .”

When the Sen­ate hear­ings for Gor­such and Kavanaugh were held, none of the Sen­a­tors ques­tioned the nom­i­nees about some crit­i­cal rela­tion­ships:

Antho­ny Kennedy’s son Justin was  Trump’s  banker at Deutsche Bank. Fur­ther­more, jurists who clerked for Antho­ny Kennedy fig­ure promi­nent­ly in Trump’s judi­cial appoint­ments:

1.–” . . . . He [Trump] picked Jus­tice Neil M. Gor­such, who had served as a law clerk to Jus­tice Kennedy, to fill Jus­tice Scalia’s seat. . . .”
2.–” . . . . Then, after Jus­tice Gorsuch’s nom­i­na­tion was announced, a White House offi­cial sin­gled out two can­di­dates for the next Supreme Court vacan­cy: Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh of the Unit­ed States Court of Appeals for the Dis­trict of Colum­bia Cir­cuit and Judge Ray­mond M. Keth­ledge of the Unit­ed States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Cir­cuit, in Cincin­nati. The two judges had some­thing in com­mon: They had both clerked for Jus­tice Kennedy. . . .”
3.–” . . . . In the mean­time, as the White House turned to stock­ing the low­er courts, it did not over­look Jus­tice Kennedy’s clerks. Mr. Trump nom­i­nat­ed three of them to fed­er­al appeals courts: Judges Stephanos Bibas and Michael Scud­der, both of whom have been con­firmed, and Eric Mur­phy, the Ohio solic­i­tor gen­er­al, whom Mr. Trump nom­i­nat­ed to the Sixth Cir­cuit this month. . . .”
4.–” . . . . Jus­tice Kennedy’s son, Justin . . . . spent more than a decade at Deutsche Bank, even­tu­al­ly ris­ing to become the bank’s glob­al head of real estate cap­i­tal mar­kets, and he worked close­ly with Mr. Trump when he was a real estate devel­op­er, accord­ing to two peo­ple with knowl­edge of his role. Dur­ing Mr. Kennedy’s tenure, Deutsche Bank became Mr. Trump’s most impor­tant lender, dis­pens­ing well over $1 bil­lion in loans to him for the ren­o­va­tion and con­struc­tion of sky­scrap­ers in New York and Chica­go at a time oth­er main­stream banks were wary of doing busi­ness with him because of his trou­bled busi­ness his­to­ry. . . .”

The Justin Kennedy/Trump fam­i­ly rela­tion­ship does not end there: After Kennedy left Deutsche Bank in 2009 he went on to become co-CEO LNR Prop­er­ty LLC. LNR Prop­er­ty saved Jared Kushner’s mid­town Man­hat­tan prop­er­ty in 2011:

1.–” . . . . from 2010–2013 Justin Kennedy was the co-CEO of LNR Prop­er­ty LLC with Tobin Cobb. . . .”
2.–” . . . . Accord­ing the New York Times, in 2007 Kush­n­er Com­pa­nies pur­chased ‘an alu­minum-clad office tow­er in Mid­town Man­hat­tan, for a record price of $1.8 bil­lion.’ At the time the NYT wrote that this deal was ‘con­sid­ered a clas­sic exam­ple of reck­less under­writ­ing. The trans­ac­tion was so high­ly lever­aged that the cash flow from rents amount­ed to only 65 per­cent of the debt ser­vice.’ . . .”
3.– ” . . . Who came to the res­cue? None oth­er than LNR Prop­er­ty, the com­pa­ny whose CEO at the time was Justin Kennedy. Accord­ing to the NYT and the Real Deal, Mr. Kush­n­er and LNR ‘reached a pos­si­ble agree­ment with LNR Prop­er­ty, a firm spe­cial­iz­ing in restruc­tur­ing trou­bled debt and which over­sees the mort­gage, that would allow him to retain con­trol of the tow­er by mod­i­fy­ing the terms of the $1.2 bil­lion mort­gage tied to the office por­tion of the build­ing.’ . . .”

Last time we checked, Deutsche Bank was not a Russ­ian bank. The pro­gram con­cludes with review of infor­ma­tion from Mar­tin Bor­mann: Nazi in Exile.

Mar­tin Bor­mann: Nazi in Exile; Paul Man­ning; Copy­right 1981 [HC]; Lyle Stu­art Inc.; ISBN 0–8184-0309–8; p. 205.

. . . . The [FBI] file [on Mar­tin Bor­mann] revealed that he had been bank­ing under his own name from his office in Ger­many in Deutsche Bank of Buenos Aires since 1941; that he held one joint account with the Argen­tin­ian dic­ta­tor Juan Per­on, and on August 4, 5 and 14, 1967, had writ­ten checks on demand accounts in first Nation­al City Bank (Over­seas Divi­sion) of New York, The Chase Man­hat­tan Bank, and Man­u­fac­tur­ers Hanover Trust Co., all cleared through Deutsche Bank of Buenos Aires. . . .

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Dis­cus­sion of the alleged “sui­cide” of Calogero Gam­bi­no, a Deutsche Bank attor­ney; the fact that Antho­ny Kennedy only agreed to resign after he was assured that Brett Kavanaugh would be named as his replace­ment. 

FTR #1087 Fascism: 2019 World Tour, Part 2

After review of Carl Lund­strom’s financ­ing of the Swe­den Democ­rats, as well as his cen­tral role in financ­ing the Pirate Bay site (which host­ed Wik­iLeaks, cour­tesy of Joran Jermas/Israel Shamir), we delve into the oper­a­tions of Lund­strom’s Swe­den Demo­c­rat asso­ciates.

Uti­liz­ing the anti-immi­grant theme uti­lized with great effect by fas­cists around the world, the Swe­den Democ­rats are gain­ing ground on the Swedish polit­i­cal land­scape.

Key points of dis­cus­sion include: The Nazi ori­gins of the Swe­den Democ­rats; the Waf­fen SS back­ground of one of the par­ty’s founders; net­work­ing of the Swe­den Democ­rats with fas­cists and reac­tionar­ies in oth­er coun­tries, includ­ing the U.S., France and Ger­many; the piv­otal role of the inter­net in advanc­ing the for­tunes of the Swe­den Democ­rats.

Next, we exam­ine the rise of Jair Bol­sonaro’s fas­cist gov­ern­ment.

Again, in recent pro­grams, we have exam­ined the pro­found role of online tech­nol­o­gy. in the pro­mo­tion of fas­cism, as well as over­lap­ping areas of intel­li­gence activ­i­ty. In that con­text, it is vital to remem­ber that the Inter­net was devel­oped as a weapon, with the focus of the tech­nol­o­gy being coun­terin­sur­gency.

In Brazil, the rise of Jair Bol­sonaro’s fas­cist gov­ern­ment received deci­sive momen­tum from YouTube, which is trans­form­ing the polit­i­cal land­scape in Brazil, as it is in this coun­try.

” . . . .In col­or­ful, far-right rants, Mr. Moura accused fem­i­nists, teach­ers and main­stream politi­cians of wag­ing vast con­spir­a­cies. Mr. Dominguez was hooked.

As his time on the site grew, YouTube rec­om­mend­ed videos from oth­er far-right fig­ures. One was a law­mak­er named Jair Bol­sonaro, then a mar­gin­al fig­ure in nation­al pol­i­tics — but a star in YouTube’s far-right com­mu­ni­ty in Brazil, where the plat­form has become more wide­ly watched than all but one TV chan­nel. Last year, he became Pres­i­dent Bol­sonaro.

‘YouTube became the social media plat­form of the Brazil­ian right,’ said Mr. Dominguez, now a lanky 17-year-old who says he, too, plans to seek polit­i­cal office. . . .”

Two excerpts from the sto­ry below encap­su­late and epit­o­mize the grow­ing, suc­cess­ful man­i­fes­ta­tion of inter­net fas­cism: “An Ecosys­tem of Hate” and the “Dic­ta­tor­ship of the ‘Like’ ”

“. . . . An Ecosys­tem of Hate

. . . . As the far right rose, many of its lead­ing voic­es had learned to weaponize the con­spir­a­cy videos, offer­ing their vast audi­ences a tar­get: peo­ple to blame. Even­tu­al­ly, the YouTube con­spir­acists turned their spot­light on Deb­o­ra Diniz, a women’s rights activist whose abor­tion advo­ca­cy had long made her a tar­get of the far right.

Bernar­do Küster, a YouTube star whose home­made rants had won him 750,000 sub­scribers and an endorse­ment from Mr. Bol­sonaro, accused her of involve­ment in the sup­posed Zika plots.

As far-right and con­spir­a­cy chan­nels began cit­ing one anoth­er, YouTube’s rec­om­men­da­tion sys­tem learned to string their videos togeth­er.

How­ev­er implau­si­ble any indi­vid­ual rumor might be on its own, joined togeth­er, they cre­at­ed the impres­sion that dozens of dis­parate sources were reveal­ing the same ter­ri­fy­ing truth.

‘It feels like the con­nec­tion is made by the view­er, but the con­nec­tion is made by the sys­tem,’ Ms. Diniz said.

Threats of rape and tor­ture filled Ms. Diniz’s phone and email. Some cit­ed her dai­ly rou­tines. Many echoed claims from Mr. Küster’s videos, she said.

Mr. Küster glee­ful­ly men­tioned, though nev­er explic­it­ly endorsed, the threats. That kept him just with­in YouTube’s rules.

When the uni­ver­si­ty where Ms. Diniz taught received a warn­ing that a gun­man would shoot her and her stu­dents, and the police said they could no longer guar­an­tee her safe­ty, she left Brazil. . . .

. . . . ‘The Dic­ta­tor­ship of the Like’

Ground zero for pol­i­tics by YouTube may be the São Paulo head­quar­ters of Movi­men­to Brasil Livre, which formed to agi­tate for the 2016 impeach­ment of the left-wing Pres­i­dent Dil­ma Rouss­eff. Its mem­bers trend young, mid­dle-class, right-wing and extreme­ly online.

Renan San­tos, the group’s nation­al coor­di­na­tor, ges­tured to a door marked ‘the YouTube Divi­sion’ and said, ‘This is the heart of things.’

Inside, eight young men poked at edit­ing soft­ware. One was styl­iz­ing an image of Ben­i­to Mus­soli­ni for a video argu­ing that fas­cism had been wrong­ly blamed on the right.

. . . . The group’s co-founder, a man-bunned for­mer rock gui­tarist name Pedro D’Eyrot, said ‘we have some­thing here that we call the dic­ta­tor­ship of the like.’

Real­i­ty, he said, is shaped by what­ev­er mes­sage goes most viral. Even as he spoke, a two-hour YouTube video was cap­ti­vat­ing the nation. Titled ‘1964’ for the year of Brazil’s mil­i­tary coup, it argued that the takeover had been nec­es­sary to save Brazil from com­mu­nism.

Mr. Dominguez, the teenag­er learn­ing to play gui­tar, said the video per­suad­ed him that his teach­ers had fab­ri­cat­ed the hor­rors of mil­i­tary rule.

Ms. Borges, the his­to­ry teacher vil­i­fied on YouTube, said it brought back mem­o­ries of mil­i­tary cur­fews, dis­ap­peared activists and police beat­ings. ‘I don’t think I’ve had my last beat­ing,’ she said. . . .”

FTR #1024 Ukrainian Fascism, Maidan Snipers and Implications for the Syrian War, Part 2

On the 17th anniver­sary of the Sep­tem­ber 11th attacks, we con­tin­ue with analy­sis of the Maid­an shootings–an appar­ent “false flag” operation–and muse about the impli­ca­tions of that for the con­flict in Syr­ia, as well as Russ­ian and Amer­i­can polit­i­cal life.

In the first part of the pro­gram, we fin­ish read­ing the poster pre­sen­ta­tion that pro­fes­sor Ivan Katchanovs­ki, PhD of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ottawa pre­sent­ed at The 2018 Con­fer­ence of Amer­i­can Polit­i­cal Sci­ence Asso­ciates.

Katchanovs­ki has done a deep, detailed foren­sic study of the evi­dence in the Maid­an sniper attacks. He has a rig­or­ous, suc­cinct dig­i­tal mul­ti­me­dia ‘poster’ (an ‘iPoster’) for his find­ing that the Maid­an sniper attacks were a false flag oper­a­tion. That poster was pre­sent­ed dur­ing the 2018 Amer­i­can Polit­i­cal Sci­ence Asso­ci­a­tion con­fer­ence in Boston. It gives a high lev­el overview of his research and is heav­i­ly embed­ded with sub­stan­tive, doc­u­men­tary videos. Here are the con­tents of the poster. Be sure to check out the numer­ous images and videos includ­ed in the actu­al iPoster online.

He con­cludes his pre­sen­ta­tion with: “ . . . . Maid­an mas­sacre tri­al and inves­ti­ga­tion evi­dence have revealed var­i­ous evi­dence that at least the absolute major­i­ty of 49 killed and 157 wound­ed Maid­an pro­test­ers on Feb­ru­ary 20, 2014 were mas­sa­cred by snipers in Maid­an-con­trolled build­ings. Such evi­dence includes tes­ti­monies of the major­i­ty of wound­ed pro­test­ers and many wit­ness­es, foren­sic med­ical and bal­lisitic exam­i­na­tions, and inves­ti­ga­tion own find­ing that about half of Maid­an pro­test­ers were wound­ed from oth­er loca­tions than the Berkut police. Var­i­ous indi­ca­tions of stonewalling of the Maid­an mas­sacre inves­ti­ga­tions and the tri­als by the Maid­an gov­ern­ment offi­cials and by far right orga­ni­za­tions. Var­i­ous indi­ca­tions of the cov­er-up of much of the key evi­dence of the mas­sacre. Such rev­e­la­tions from the Maid­an mas­sacre tri­als and inves­ti­ga­tions cor­rob­o­rate pre­vi­ous stud­ies find­ings that this mas­sacre was a false flag mass killing with involve­ment of ele­ments of Maid­an lead­er­ship and the far right and that it includ­ed the mas­sacre of the police. The puz­zling mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the Maid­an mas­sacre, its inves­ti­ga­tion, and the tri­al by West­ern media and gov­ern­ments require fur­ther research con­cern­ing rea­sons for such mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion . . . . ”

Note: Since FTR #1023 was record­ed pro­fes­sor Katchanovs­ki has post­ed a 59-minute-long video of the Maid­an shoot­ings. The video fea­tures TV footage from that day, with many clips clear­ly show­ing snipers oper­at­ing from Maid­an-con­trolled build­ings. It also includes Eng­lish sub­ti­tles and foren­sic descrip­tions of scenes. The footage includes a num­ber of peo­ple being shot and killed–a griz­zly 59-min­utes, but absolute­ly invalu­able in terms of estab­lish­ing what actu­al­ly hap­pened.

The pre­sen­ta­tion of pro­fes­sor Katchanovski’s research in this pro­gram begins with the sec­tion titled “Cov­er-Up and Stonewalling.”

Addi­tion­al per­spec­tive on the appar­ent non-inves­ti­ga­tion of the Maid­an sniper shoot­ings is pro­vid­ed by Ana­toliy Matios, Ukraine’s Deputy Pros­e­cu­tor and Chief Mil­i­tary Pros­e­cu­tor:

Matios, Ukraine’s chief mil­i­tary pros­e­cu­tor, gave an exten­sive inter­view where he said that Jews are behind all wars and want to “drown eth­nic Slavs in blood.”

Also recall the cryp­tic state­ment Matios made back in 2016 about the iden­ti­ty of the peo­ple involved with the 2014 sniper attacks: “When pub­lic learns who is involved in this, peo­ple will be very sur­prised.” In FTR #‘s 982, 993,  1004, 1023, we exam­ined evi­dence that Ukrain­ian fas­cists may well have exe­cut­ed those sniper attacks. It is omi­nous that the chief mil­i­tary pros­e­cu­tor who is involved in that inves­ti­ga­tion is a neo-Nazi. ” . . . . In an exten­sive inter­view with the Ukrain­ian news out­let Insid­er, Ana­toliy Matios, Ukraine’s chief mil­i­tary pros­e­cu­tor, espoused anti-Semit­ic con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries in which he implied that Jews want to drown eth­nic Slavs in blood. . . .”

Return­ing to pro­fes­sor Katchanovski’s thought-pro­vok­ing con­clu­sion to his online poster: “ . . . . The puz­zling mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the Maid­an mas­sacre, its inves­ti­ga­tion, and the tri­al by West­ern media and gov­ern­ments require fur­ther research con­cern­ing rea­sons for such mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion . . . . ”

With the Syr­i­an gov­ern­ment appar­ent­ly com­menc­ing an offen­sive to van­quish Al-Qae­da jihadis in Idlib province (with Russ­ian mil­i­tary sup­port), the stage is set for a pos­si­ble Russian‑U.S./Western mil­i­tary con­flict.

Against the back­ground of the Maid­an snip­ing as a prob­a­ble false flag provo­ca­tion, the impend­ing Syr­i­an offen­sive to re-cap­ture the last ter­ri­to­r­i­al enclave of the Islamists in Syr­ia should be viewed with appre­hen­sion. As not­ed in the arti­cle we present, the so-called “rebels” are Al-Qae­da off­shoots. Omi­nous­ly, they have appar­ent­ly suc­cess­ful­ly exe­cut­ed false-flag chem­i­cal weapons attacks before, includ­ing in Idlib province.

Rus­sia has warned that such a provo­ca­tion is in the wings–an unre­mark­able deduc­tion in light of past his­to­ry. In turn, the West has warned of retal­ia­to­ry action if such actions are under­tak­en.

The stage appears set for an Islamist/Al-Qae­da chem­i­cal weapons false flag/provocation, upon which U.S., British and French mil­i­tary inter­ven­tion will be pred­i­cat­ed.

In this con­text, one should not lose sight of the fact that Chech­nyan Islamist vet­er­ans of the Syr­i­an war have already made their appear­ance in the com­bat in East­ern Ukraine, part­ner­ing with Pravy Sek­tor in their deploy­ments. (The Chechen/Right Sector/Islamist link is dis­cussed in FTR #‘s 857, 862, 863, 872, 878, 893, 911.)

We note pos­si­ble out­comes of U.S./Western Russ­ian com­bat:

1.–If the Western/U.S. forces are vic­to­ri­ous, this will cov­er Trump’s rump  with regard to the “Rus­sia-Gate” so-called inves­ti­ga­tion and bol­ster the GOP’s posi­tion in upcom­ing 2018 midterm elec­tions.
2.–If the Western/U.S. forces pre­vail, it will weak­en Putin polit­i­cal­ly, which is a goal of the West.
The last part of the pro­gram con­sists of a par­tial read­ing of an arti­cle by CFR mem­ber Bruce Hoff­man. Not­ing Al Qaeda’s resur­gence and Al Qaeda’s empha­sis on the Syr­i­an con­flict, Hoff­man cites the so-called “Arab Spring” as the key event in Al Qaeda’s resur­gence. ” . . . . The thou­sands of hard­ened al-Qae­da fight­ers freed from Egypt­ian pris­ons in 2012–2013 by Pres­i­dent Mohammed Mor­si gal­va­nized the move­ment at a crit­i­cal moment, when insta­bil­i­ty reigned and a hand­ful of men well-versed in ter­ror­ism and sub­ver­sion could plunge a coun­try or a region into chaos. Whether in Libya, Turkey, Syr­ia, or Yemen, their arrival was prov­i­den­tial in terms of advanc­ing al-Qaeda’s inter­ests or increas­ing its influ­ence. . . . It was Syr­ia where al-Qaeda’s inter­ven­tion proved most con­se­quen­tial. One of Zawahiri’s first offi­cial acts after suc­ceed­ing bin Laden as emir was to order a Syr­i­an vet­er­an of the Iraqi insur­gency named Abu Moham­mad al-Julani to return home and estab­lish the al-Qae­da fran­chise that would even­tu­al­ly become Jab­hat al-Nus­ra. . . .”

In FTR #‘s 733 through 739, we pre­sent­ed our view that the so-called Arab Spring was a U.S. intel­li­gence oper­a­tion, aimed at plac­ing the Broth­er­hood in pow­er in Mus­lim coun­tries dom­i­nat­ed either by a sec­u­lar dic­ta­tor or absolute monar­chy.

It is our view that the Broth­er­hood was seen as use­ful because of its mil­i­tary off­shoots (Al-Qae­da in par­tic­u­lar) were use­ful proxy war­riors in places like the Cau­ca­sus and the Balka­ns and because the Broth­er­hood’s cor­po­ratist, neo-lib­er­al eco­nom­ic doc­trine was in keep­ing with the desires and goals of the trans-nation­al cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ty.

In FTR #787, we solid­i­fied our analy­sis with defin­i­tive con­fir­ma­tion of our work­ing hypoth­e­sis pre­sent­ed years ear­li­er.

About the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood’s eco­nom­ic doc­trine: ” . . . . The Mus­lim Broth­er­hood hails 14th cen­tury philoso­pher Ibn Khal­dun as its eco­nomic guide. Antic­i­pat­ing sup­ply-side eco­nom­ics, Khal­dun argued that cut­ting tax­es rais­es pro­duc­tion and tax rev­enues, and that state con­trol should be lim­ited to pro­vid­ing water, fire and free graz­ing land, the util­i­ties of the ancient world. The World Bank has called Ibn Khal­dun the first advo­cate of pri­va­ti­za­tion. [Empha­sis added.] His found­ing influ­ence is a sign of mod­er­a­tion. If Islamists in pow­er ever do clash with the West, it won’t be over com­merce. . . .”

Stephen Glain’s cita­tion of Ibn Khal­dun res­onates with Ronald Rea­gan’s pre­sen­ta­tion of “sup­ply-side eco­nom­ics.” ” . . . . Respond­ing to a ques­tion about the effects of tax and spend­ing cuts that began tak­ing effect yes­ter­day, Mr. Rea­gan said the sup­ply-side prin­ci­ple dat­ed at least as far back as Ibn Khal­dun, who is gen­er­al­ly regard­ed as the great­est Arab his­to­ri­an to emerge from the high­ly devel­oped Ara­bic cul­ture of the Mid­dle Ages. . . .”

FTR #1023 Ukrainian Fascism, The Maidan Snipers and Possible Implications for the Syrian War

In this pro­gram we con­tin­ue and expand analy­sis of the Euro­Maid­an sniper killings which led to the ouster of the Yanuukovych gov­ern­ment. A sto­ry from BNE Intellinews, since tak­en down but avail­able via the Way Back Machine, details Paul Man­afort’s net­work­ing with the Haps­burg Group milieu, pro­vid­ing more details that sup­ple­ment pre­vi­ous dis­cus­sion of the rela­tion­ship.

Most impor­tant­ly, how­ev­er, the arti­cle pro­vides impor­tant infor­ma­tion on Man­afort’s post-Maid­an doings in Ukraine! He spent more time in post-Maid­an Ukraine than before the coup.

Even more impor­tant­ly, the arti­cle pro­vides sig­nif­i­cant details on Man­afort’s pos­si­ble col­lab­o­ra­tors in arrang­ing the vio­lence that led to Yanukovy­ch’s ouster.

Before dis­cussing the sig­nif­i­cant details of Man­afort and his asso­ciates’ pos­si­ble roles in the vio­lence that led to Yanukovy­ch’s ouster, we present the first part of the arti­cle, in order to flesh out the Man­afort-Haps­burg net­work­ing.

Key points of infor­ma­tion include:

1.-Manafort’s close rela­tion­ship with Ser­hiy Lovochkin, a key aide to Vik­tor Yanukovich and own­er of a pre­mier Ukrain­ian TV sta­tion, and his sis­ter Yulia Lovochk­i­na, who owns an air­line whose planes fer­ried Man­afort in his deal­ings with the Haps­burg group.
2.-The impor­tant role of Ser­hiy Lovochkin and his sis­ter in pro­mot­ing the EU Asso­ci­a­tion Agree­ment. It was Yanukovich’s even­tu­al rejec­tion of that agree­ment that led to the demon­stra­tions that led up to the Maid­an coup.
3.-The dual role played by Haps­burg Group mem­ber Alexan­der Kras­niews­ki, who was ran the EU’s Ukraine Obser­va­tion Group.
4.-The pro­found degree of involve­ment of Man­afort with the Haps­burg Group.
5.-Of para­mount sig­nif­i­cance for our pur­pos­es, is the behav­ior of Man­afort, Lovochkin, Lovochk­i­na, Dmytro Fir­tash and Vic­to­ria Nuland.

Not­ing the pro­found rela­tion­ship between Man­afort, Ser­hii Lovochkin, Yulia Lovochk­i­na, the Haps­burg Group and the EU, it is impor­tant to eval­u­ate the Manafort/Lovochkin rela­tion­ship in the con­text of the Maid­an snipers. (In FTR #‘s 982, 993, we not­ed evi­dence that the Maid­an shoot­ings may have been a provo­ca­tion.)

1.-” . . . . The pri­vate jet flights and per­son­al con­nec­tions show that Manafort’s part­ner in this lob­by­ing effort was Yanukovych’s chief of staff Lovochkin. . . . Manafort’s Ukraine engage­ments actu­al­ly increased fol­low­ing Yanukovych’s ouster in Feb­ru­ary 2014. In March to June 2014, he spent a total of 27 days in Ukraine, where­as dur­ing the four pre­ced­ing Euro­maid­an months, Novem­ber-Feb­ru­ary 2014, Man­afort only vis­it­ed Ukraine three times for a total of nine days. . . .”
2.-” . . . . Lovochkin is the junior part­ner of bil­lion­aire oli­garch Dmytro Fir­tash . . . . Lovochkin and Fir­tash togeth­er also con­trol Ukraine’s largest TV chan­nel, Inter. . . .”
3.-” . . . . Manafort’s con­tin­ued par­tic­i­pa­tion in post-Yanukovych Ukraine also points to his ties to Lovochkin and Fir­tash. While most mem­bers of the Yanukovych admin­is­tra­tion fled to Rus­sia or were arrest­ed after Feb­ru­ary 2014, Lovochkin has con­tin­ued his polit­i­cal career with impuni­ty, despite hav­ing served at the heart of Yanukovych’s regime for four years. . . .”
4.-” . . . . Euro­maid­an was trig­gered by events in Kyiv on the night of Novem­ber 29, when police vio­lent­ly dis­persed a small demon­stra­tion of pro-EU stu­dents who were protest­ing after Yanukovych refused to sign the Asso­ci­a­tion Agree­ment. The vio­lence prompt­ed a huge demon­stra­tion occu­py­ing the heart of Kyiv on Decem­ber 1. . . .”
5.-” . . . . Accord­ing to mes­sages between the sis­ters dis­cussing Manafort’s actions in Ukraine, it was Manafort’s idea ‘to send those peo­ple out and get them slaugh­tered. Do you know whose strat­e­gy that was to cause that Revolts [sic] and what not […] As a tac­tic to out­rage the world and get focus on Ukraine.’ Manafort’s daugh­ter called her father’s mon­ey ‘blood mon­ey.’ . . .”
6.-” . . . . The remarks were made by those privy to the deep­est secrets of Manafort’s per­son­al life. They evoke the sus­pi­cion that Man­afort manip­u­lat­ed the Maid­an protests and the police vio­lence to influ­ence inter­na­tion­al opin­ion. The appear­ance of the Man­afort mes­sages in 2016 reignit­ed spec­u­la­tion in Ukraine that none oth­er than Lovochkin insti­gat­ed the attack on the stu­dents’ demon­stra­tion on Novem­ber 29, 2013, to trig­ger out­rage against Yanukovych. . . .”
7.-” . . . . Some of the time­line fits this inter­pre­ta­tion: On the day before the police attack, reporters not­ed Yulia Lovochk­i­na open­ly frater­nising with the stu­dents on the Maid­an. Lovochkin’s TV crews cov­ered the 4am events close­ly, and Lovochkin imme­di­ate­ly ten­dered his res­ig­na­tion in protest at the police vio­lence. . . .”
8.-” . . . . The next day, Lovochkin’s TV chan­nel played footage of the worst of the police vio­lence on heavy rota­tion on prime time news. News anchors intoned that Yanukovych had ‘shed the blood of Ukrain­ian chil­dren.’ Where­as the stu­dent protests had attract­ed hun­dreds, protests on Sun­day Decem­ber 1 against the police vio­lence attract­ed hun­dreds of thou­sands. This was the start of Euro­maid­an. . . .”

Of great sig­nif­i­cance as well, is the maneu­ver­ing around a war­rant for the arrest of Ukrain­ian oli­garch and Lovochkin part­ner Dmytro Fir­tash. The role of Vic­to­ria Nuland in this maneu­ver­ing is par­tic­u­lar­ly sig­nif­i­cant: ” . . . . On Octo­ber 30 2013 — as Yanukovych was waver­ing over the Asso­ci­a­tion Agree­ment with the EU — the US issued an arrest war­rant for Fir­tash. The US with­drew the arrest war­rant four days lat­er — after US deputy sec­re­tary of state Vic­to­ria Nuland met Yanukovych in Kyiv, and received assur­ances that Yanukovych would sign the Asso­ci­a­tion Agree­ment, Fir­tash said dur­ing extra­di­tion hear­ings in Vien­na in 2015 that first revealed the details of the case. But come the Vil­nius Sum­mit, Yanukovych failed to sign. The arrest war­rant was reis­sued in March 2014, and Fir­tash was arrest­ed in Vien­na on March 12, 2014. . . . .”

Cana­di­an aca­d­e­m­ic Ivan Katchanovs­ki has done a deep, detailed foren­sic study of the evi­dence in the Maid­an sniper attacks. He has a rig­or­ous, suc­cinct dig­i­tal mul­ti­me­dia ‘poster’ (an ‘iPoster’) for his find­ing that the Maid­an sniper attacks were a false flag oper­a­tion. That poster was pre­sent­ed dur­ing the 2018 Amer­i­can Polit­i­cal Sci­ence Asso­ci­a­tion con­fer­ence in Boston. It gives a high lev­el overview of his research and is heav­i­ly embed­ded with sub­stan­tive, doc­u­men­tary videos. Here are the con­tents of the poster. Be sure to check out the numer­ous images and videos includ­ed in the actu­al iPoster online.

“ . . . . Maid­an mas­sacre tri­al and inves­ti­ga­tion evi­dence have revealed var­i­ous evi­dence that at least the absolute major­i­ty of 49 killed and 157 wound­ed Maid­an pro­test­ers on Feb­ru­ary 20, 2014 were mas­sa­cred by snipers in Maid­an-con­trolled build­ings. Such evi­dence includes tes­ti­monies of the major­i­ty of wound­ed pro­test­ers and many wit­ness­es, foren­sic med­ical and bal­lisitic exam­i­na­tions, and inves­ti­ga­tion own find­ing that about half of Maid­an pro­test­ers were wound­ed from oth­er loca­tions than the Berkut police. Var­i­ous indi­ca­tions of stonewalling of the Maid­an mas­sacre inves­ti­ga­tions and the tri­als by the Maid­an gov­ern­ment offi­cials and by far right orga­ni­za­tions. Var­i­ous indi­ca­tions of the cov­er-up of much of the key evi­dence of the mas­sacre. Such rev­e­la­tions from the Maid­an mas­sacre tri­als and inves­ti­ga­tions cor­rob­o­rate pre­vi­ous stud­ies find­ings that this mas­sacre was a false flag mass killing with involve­ment of ele­ments of Maid­an lead­er­ship and the far right and that it includ­ed the mas­sacre of the police. The puz­zling mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the Maid­an mas­sacre, its inves­ti­ga­tion, and the tri­al by West­ern media and gov­ern­ments require fur­ther research con­cern­ing rea­sons for such mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion . . . . ”

Note: Since FTR #1023 was record­ed pro­fes­sor Katchanovs­ki has post­ed a 59-minute-long video of the Maid­an shoot­ings. The video fea­tures TV footage from that day, with many clips clear­ly show­ing snipers oper­at­ing from Maid­an-con­trolled build­ings. It also includes Eng­lish sub­ti­tles and foren­sic descrip­tions of scenes. The footage includes a num­ber of peo­ple being shot and killed–a griz­zly 59-min­utes, but absolute­ly invalu­able in terms of estab­lish­ing what actu­al­ly hap­pened.

This descrip­tion con­cludes with mate­r­i­al that will be dis­cussed in future pro­grams. It is pre­sent­ed here for perusal and con­sid­er­a­tion by the read­ers in light of con­tin­ued alarm­ing devel­op­ments in Syr­ia.

Against the back­ground of the Maid­an snip­ing as a prob­a­ble false flag provo­ca­tion, the impend­ing Syr­i­an offen­sive to re-cap­ture the last ter­ri­to­r­i­al enclave of the Islamists in Syr­ia should be viewed with appre­hen­sion. As not­ed in the arti­cle below, the so-called “rebels” are Al-Qae­da off­shoots. Omi­nous­ly, they have appar­ent­ly suc­cess­ful­ly exe­cut­ed false-flag chem­i­cal weapons attacks before, includ­ing in Idlib province.

Rus­sia has warned that such a provo­ca­tion is in the wings–an unre­mark­able deduc­tion in light of past his­to­ry. In turn, the West has warned of retal­ia­to­ry action if such actions are under­tak­en.

The stage appears set for an Islamist/Al-Qae­da chem­i­cal weapons false flag/provocation, upon which U.S., British and French mil­i­tary inter­ven­tion will be pred­i­cat­ed.

In this con­text, one should not lose sight of the fact that Chech­nyan Islamist vet­er­ans of the Syr­i­an war have already made their appear­ance in the com­bat in East­ern Ukraine, part­ner­ing with Pravy Sek­tor in their deploy­ments. (The Chechen/Right Sector/Islamist link is dis­cussed in FTR #‘s 857, 862, 863, 872, 878, 893, 911.)

FTR #1017 Supreme Court Trump Card: Family Trump, Family [Anthony] Kennedy and Peter Thiel

 Much has been said about Don­ald Trump’s nom­i­na­tion of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to become a Supreme Court jus­tice, replac­ing Antho­ny Kennnedy.

In this pro­gram, we high­light exten­sive net­work­ing between the Trump and Kennedy fam­i­lies and, in turn, some appar­ent “deep net­work­ing” between some of the indi­vid­u­als in the Trump/Kennedy nexus and insti­tu­tions linked to key ele­ments of the remark­able and dead­ly Bor­mann flight cap­i­tal net­work.

Deutsche Bank and the shad­ow of the I.G. Far­ben chem­i­cal com­plex fig­ure into the lat­ter part of this equa­tion.

The con­nec­tions between the fam­i­ly of Antho­ny Kennedy and the Trump milieu run deep. Antho­ny Kennedy’s son Justin was  Trump’s  banker at Deutsche Bank. In FTR #919, we ana­lyzed a New York Times arti­cle high­light­ing Don­ald Trump’s alto­geth­er opaque real estate devel­op­ments and evi­dence that those projects had sig­nif­i­cant links to ele­ments of the Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work.

In that pro­gram we set forth the pri­ma­ry role of Deutsche Bank in financ­ing Trump’s real estate projects.

” . . . While many big banks have shunned him, Deutsche Bank AG has been a stead­fast finan­cial backer of the Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial candidate’s busi­ness inter­ests. Since 1998, the bank has led or par­tic­i­pat­ed in loans of at least $2.5 bil­lion to com­pa­nies affil­i­at­ed with Mr. Trump, accord­ing to a Wall Street Jour­nal analy­sis of pub­lic records and peo­ple famil­iar with the mat­ter. That doesn’t include at least anoth­er $1 bil­lion in loan com­mit­ments that Deutsche Bank made to Trump-affil­i­at­ed enti­ties. The long-stand­ing con­nec­tion makes Frank­furt-based Deutsche Bank, which has a large U.S. oper­a­tion and has been grap­pling with rep­u­ta­tion­al prob­lems and an almost 50% stock-price decline, the finan­cial insti­tu­tion with prob­a­bly the strongest ties to the con­tro­ver­sial New York busi­ness­man. . . .”

The fact that Deutsche Bank is the pri­ma­ry finan­cial backer of “Trump Incor­po­rat­ed” is of pri­ma­ry impor­tance. The bank is cen­tral to the Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work.

The con­nec­tions between the fam­i­ly of Antho­ny Kennedy and the Trump milieu run deep. Antho­ny Kennedy’s son Justin was  Trump’s  banker at Deutsche Bank.

Fur­ther­more, jurists who clerked for Antho­ny Kennedy fig­ure promi­nent­ly in Trump’s judi­cial appoint­ments:

1.–” . . . . He [Trump] picked Jus­tice Neil M. Gor­such, who had served as a law clerk to Jus­tice Kennedy, to fill Jus­tice Scalia’s seat. . . .”
2.–” . . . . Then, after Jus­tice Gorsuch’s nom­i­na­tion was announced, a White House offi­cial sin­gled out two can­di­dates for the next Supreme Court vacan­cy: Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh of the Unit­ed States Court of Appeals for the Dis­trict of Colum­bia Cir­cuit and Judge Ray­mond M. Keth­ledge of the Unit­ed States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Cir­cuit, in Cincin­nati. The two judges had some­thing in com­mon: They had both clerked for Jus­tice Kennedy. . . .”
3.–” . . . . In the mean­time, as the White House turned to stock­ing the low­er courts, it did not over­look Jus­tice Kennedy’s clerks. Mr. Trump nom­i­nat­ed three of them to fed­er­al appeals courts: Judges Stephanos Bibas and Michael Scud­der, both of whom have been con­firmed, and Eric Mur­phy, the Ohio solic­i­tor gen­er­al, whom Mr. Trump nom­i­nat­ed to the Sixth Cir­cuit this month. . . .”
4.–” . . . . Jus­tice Kennedy’s son, Justin . . . . spent more than a decade at Deutsche Bank, even­tu­al­ly ris­ing to become the bank’s glob­al head of real estate cap­i­tal mar­kets, and he worked close­ly with Mr. Trump when he was a real estate devel­op­er, accord­ing to two peo­ple with knowl­edge of his role. Dur­ing Mr. Kennedy’s tenure, Deutsche Bank became Mr. Trump’s most impor­tant lender, dis­pens­ing well over $1 bil­lion in loans to him for the ren­o­va­tion and con­struc­tion of sky­scrap­ers in New York and Chica­go at a time oth­er main­stream banks were wary of doing busi­ness with him because of his trou­bled busi­ness his­to­ry. . . .”

After Kennedy left Deutsche Bank in 2009 he went on to become co-CEO LNR Prop­er­ty LLC. LNR Prop­er­ty saved Jared Kushner’s mid­town Man­hat­tan prop­er­ty in 2011:

1.–” . . . . from 2010–2013 Justin Kennedy was the co-CEO of LNR Prop­er­ty LLC with Tobin Cobb. . . .”
2.–” . . . . Accord­ing the New York Times, in 2007 Kush­n­er Com­pa­nies pur­chased ‘an alu­minum-clad office tow­er in Mid­town Man­hat­tan, for a record price of $1.8 bil­lion.’ At the time the NYT wrote that this deal was ‘con­sid­ered a clas­sic exam­ple of reck­less under­writ­ing. The trans­ac­tion was so high­ly lever­aged that the cash flow from rents amount­ed to only 65 per­cent of the debt ser­vice.’ . . .”
3.– ” . . . Who came to the res­cue? None oth­er than LNR Prop­er­ty, the com­pa­ny whose CEO at the time was Justin Kennedy. Accord­ing to the NYT and the Real Deal, Mr. Kush­n­er and LNR ‘reached a pos­si­ble agree­ment with LNR Prop­er­ty, a firm spe­cial­iz­ing in restruc­tur­ing trou­bled debt and which over­sees the mort­gage, that would allow him to retain con­trol of the tow­er by mod­i­fy­ing the terms of the $1.2 bil­lion mort­gage tied to the office por­tion of the build­ing.’ . . .”

The links between Trump­World and Antho­ny Kennedy’s sons is deep­er still. Kennedy’s oth­er son Gre­go­ry, has long-stand­ing ties to Trump Sil­i­con Val­ley advis­er Peter Thiel, whom we first ana­lyzed in FTR #718.

” . . . . . . . . Kennedy’s seat, mean­time, seemed des­tined to go to Kavanaugh, thanks in part to the glow­ing review of Kennedy, whose son, Justin, knows Don­ald Trump Jr. through New York real estate cir­cles, and whose oth­er adult child has con­nec­tions to Trump World via the president’s 2016 Sil­i­con Val­ley advis­er Peter Thiel, most recent­ly when the Kennedy firm Dis­rup­tive Tech­nol­o­gy Advis­ers worked with Thiel’s Palan­tir Tech­nolo­gies. . . .”

Gre­go­ry Kennedy’s DTA has an unusu­al­ly close rela­tion­ship with Palan­tir, a com­pa­ny that has helped the Trump admin­is­tra­tion.

Kennedy’s DTA has oth­er per­son­al con­nec­tions to Palan­tir. Alex Fish­man and Alex Davis, two oth­er DTA founders, “enjoyed a very close rela­tion­ship” with Palan­tir co-founder Alex Karp, accord­ing to the law­suit.

It should be not­ed that the alleged secre­cy with which Palan­tir treats its oper­at­ing and invest­ing infor­ma­tion is char­ac­ter­is­tic of Bor­mann orga­ni­za­tions. A clos­et­ed, insid­ers-only oper­at­ing eth­ic serves the need for this con­sum­mate­ly pow­er­ful orga­ni­za­tion to main­tain a rel­a­tive­ly low pro­file, even as it gains pow­er, influ­ence and wealth.

” . . . . Yet Palan­tir — whose stock changes hands only through pri­vate trades — goes to great lengths to keep any detailed infor­ma­tion about its busi­ness pri­vate. . . .”

A law­suit by Palan­tir investor KT4 Part­ners alleges that Palan­tir is ille­gal­ly block­ing investors from sell­ing shares in the com­pa­ny and that Kennedy’s Dis­rup­tive Tech­nol­o­gy Advi­sors (DTA) is a key part­ner and ben­e­fi­cia­ry of this strat­e­gy.

KT4 claims that when it tried to sell its shares of Palan­tir to a third-par­ty, Palan­tir would have DTA con­tact the third-par­ty and con­vince them to have Palan­tir sells them the shares direct­ly instead. DTA would then col­lect a com­mis­sion.

The cen­tral dynam­ic in the alle­ga­tions of plain­tiff (and Palan­tir investor) KT4 is set forth as fol­lows: ” . . . . But remark­ably, KT4 claims that when Palan­tir receives infor­ma­tion from an investor about a planned sale, it uses that infor­ma­tion to con­tact the buy­er and per­suade them instead to buy shares direct­ly from the com­pa­ny or from cer­tain Palan­tir insid­ers. One par­tic­u­lar bro­ker, Dis­rup­tive Tech­nol­o­gy Advis­ers, or DTA, repeat­ed­ly gets com­mis­sions from these sales, even when it ‘per­formed no legit­i­mate work,’ KT4 claims. KT4 says it expe­ri­enced inter­fer­ence by Palan­tir when it tried to sell shares to High­bridge Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment, a hedge fund that was owned by JPMor­gan Chase, in May 2015. After KT4 noti­fied Palan­tir of the planned sale, Palan­tir turned around and instruct­ed DTA to ‘take the oppor­tu­ni­ty, on Palantir’s behalf,‘and arrange a sale from Palan­tir to High­bridge instead, accord­ing to the law­suit. . . .”

In FTR #946, we exam­ined Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca, its Trump and Steve Ban­non-linked tech firm that har­vest­ed Face­book data on behalf of the Trump cam­paign.

Peter Thiel’s Palan­tir was appar­ent­ly deeply involved with Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca’s gam­ing of per­son­al data har­vest­ed from Face­book in order to engi­neer an elec­toral vic­to­ry for Trump, set­ting the GOP cam­paign to con­trol the Supreme Court in a deep­er, broad­er con­text.

Thiel was an ear­ly investor in Face­book, at one point was its largest share­hold­er and is still one of its largest share­hold­ers. ” . . . . It was a Palan­tir employ­ee in Lon­don, work­ing close­ly with the data sci­en­tists build­ing Cambridge’s psy­cho­log­i­cal pro­fil­ing tech­nol­o­gy, who sug­gest­ed the sci­en­tists cre­ate their own app — a mobile-phone-based per­son­al­i­ty quiz — to gain access to Face­book users’ friend net­works, accord­ing to doc­u­ments obtained by The New York Times. The rev­e­la­tions pulled Palan­tir — co-found­ed by the wealthy lib­er­tar­i­an Peter Thiel — into the furor sur­round­ing Cam­bridge, which improp­er­ly obtained Face­book data to build ana­lyt­i­cal tools it deployed on behalf of Don­ald J. Trump and oth­er Repub­li­can can­di­dates in 2016. Mr. Thiel, a sup­port­er of Pres­i­dent Trump, serves on the board at Face­book. ‘There were senior Palan­tir employ­ees that were also work­ing on the Face­book data,’ said Christo­pher Wylie, a data expert and Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca co-founder, in tes­ti­mo­ny before British law­mak­ers on Tues­day. . . . The con­nec­tions between Palan­tir and Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca were thrust into the spot­light by Mr. Wylie’s tes­ti­mo­ny on Tues­day. Both com­pa­nies are linked to tech-dri­ven bil­lion­aires who backed Mr. Trump’s cam­paign: Cam­bridge is chiefly owned by Robert Mer­cer, the com­put­er sci­en­tist and hedge fund mag­nate, while Palan­tir was co-found­ed in 2003 by Mr. Thiel, who was an ini­tial investor in Face­book. . . .”

Pro­gram High­lights Include:

1.–Review of Peter Thiel’s high regard for Carl Schmitt: “. . . . a Nazi and the Third Reich’s pre­em­i­nent legal the­o­rist. For Thiel, Schmitt is an inspir­ing throw­back to a pre-Enlight­en­ment age, who exalts strug­gle and insists that the dis­cov­ery of ene­mies is the foun­da­tion of pol­i­tics. . .” 
2.–Review of Peter Thiel’s ear­ly legal expe­ri­ence with Sul­li­van & Cromwell, the Dulles law firm.
3.–A recount­ing of the role of John Fos­ter Dulles and Sul­li­van & Cromwell’s roles in the for­ma­tion of I.G. Far­ben.
4.–Review of Thiel’s Ger­man her­itage and his father’s prob­a­ble role with one of the I.G. suc­ces­sor com­pa­nies.

Order of the Day

For years, we have warned about the dan­gers of eco­nom­ic con­cen­tra­tion and how that con­cen­tra­tion leads to fas­cism. We have done so in many pro­grams, posts and books. “L’Or­dre du Jour ” (“The Order of the Day” in Eng­lish) has won a top lit­er­ary prize in France and will soon be pub­lished in Eng­lish. ” . . . . ‘L’Or­dre du Jour’ [offi­cial­ly a nov­el] is based on his­tor­i­cal doc­u­ments and pho­tographs. It opens with a friend­ly meet­ing in 1933 between Hitler and 24 major fig­ures in Ger­man indus­try and finance, includ­ing brands like Bay­er and Allianz that are famil­iar today. ‘They are here beside us, among us,’ Mr. Vuil­lard writes. ‘They are our cars, our wash­ing machines, our house­hold goods, our radio-alarms, our home­own­er’s insur­ance, our watch bat­ter­ies. They are here, there and every­where, as all sorts of things. Our dai­ly life is theirs.’ Mr. Vuil­lard . . . said by tele­phone that he had been inspired by Mon­tesquieu’s warn­ing that the con­cen­tra­tion of pow­er and mon­ey in the hands of a few was ‘dan­ger­ous for every­body.’ . . .” Echo­ing Mon­tesquieu’s sen­ti­ment, we not­ed on May 23rd of 1980 that what hap­pened in Ger­many in the 1920’s and 1930’s was under­way in the Unit­ed States.

The US Falls Down the GOP’s Tax Scam Memory Hole. Again.

When is a tax cut more than just a tax cut? When it’s a GOP tax cut. Because when the GOP cuts tax­es, it’s nev­er just an attempt to cut tax­es because tax cuts are just one ele­ment of the GOP’s much larg­er agen­da of cre­at­ing a soci­ety run by and for the super-rich. And mas­sive amounts of pro­pa­gan­da and decep­tion are part of the tax cut pack­age too. It’s why GOP tax cuts tend to be so much more than just tax cuts for the rich. They’re Big Lies designed to fool soci­ety into dis­man­tling itself. So it should come as a sur­prise to no one that the cur­rent GOP tax cut plans are hor­ri­ble abom­i­na­tion being sold to the pub­lic by a web of lies. But what is gen­uine­ly sur­pris­ing about the cur­rent GOP tax push is just how shod­dy that web of lies is turn­ing out to be this time. As we’re going to see, it’s almost as if the fail­ure to pass Trump­care only increased the resolve of Amer­i­ca’s right-wing oli­garchs to final­ly pass leg­is­la­tion that’s even more polit­i­cal­ly awful than Trump­care. But as we’re also going to see, even if the tax cuts turn into a polit­i­cal dis­as­ter for the GOP that will still be fine for the GOP as long as the pub­lic for­gets to remem­ber that we’ve been here before.