TBR News January 25, 2017

Jan 25 2017

The Voice of the White House 

Washington, D.C. January 25, 2017:  “Trump is doing what he said he would do during his successful campaign. Compare his actions with those of other presidents who promised much on the hustings but delivered only what the machinery permitted.

Trump is his own machinery and there is no reason why K Street bribers need to carry bags of hundred dollar bills to the Oval Office as they have been doing for so many years and with great success for their clients.

The old joke that it was so cold in Washington one winter that they saw a Congressman with his hands in his own pockets is, unfortunately for the texpayers, very true.

Mexico is hysterical over the wall which prevents her from shipping her unwanted poor to the States to be supported by American taxpayers and China, who threatened the US regularly to behave, is strangely silent when Trump warned them to behave.

These are indeed interesting times and times do change and we must change with them.”

 

Descending into Darkness: The Making of a Wartime President

By Brian Harring

www.amazon.com  kindle ebooks $3.99

 “THE HARRING REPORT IS ANOTHER ‘DEEP THROAT’”

 

Published for the first time ever, Descending Into Darkness shows the actual, as opposed to the propaganda, background to the upheavals in the Middle East and the reasons for the 9/11 attacks. It also includes the complete, as contrasted with the false, official (at the time this book went to press) DoD listings of U.S. Military casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Also in Prelude to Disaster:

  • Events leading up to Operation Iraqi Freedom
  • War in Iraq – Russian Military Intelligence Reports & Assessment [March 17-April 8, 2003]
  • The “Nazi” Neocons – Who are they?
  • The Secret Downing Street Memo – Setting the Stage for 9/11
  • Israeli Espionage Against the United States

 

 

Table of Contents

  • Taking the Long View
  • The Neocon Lament
  • Seymour Hersh Blasts Media for Uncritically Promoting Russian Hacking Story
  • Trump to order Mexican border wall, ban refugees from 7 Muslim countries
  • Trump to act on Mexico border wall, bolster immigration police
  • Defenders of American Democracy in Action!
  • Trump bans agencies from ‘providing updates on social media or to reporters’
  • How to contact the Guardian securely
  • ‘Fix crime rate or I’ll send in feds’ – Trump to Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel
  • ‘Mein Kampf’: Murphy translation: Part 17

 Taking the Long View

Dismantling the empire won’t happen overnight

January 25, 2017

by Justin Raimondo

AntiWar

The other day on Twitter someone tweeted me the news of the latest drone strike in Yemen, with the taunting message: “Congrats, @JustinRaimondo.” I had to laugh, and bemoan my fate: “I am now to be held responsible for everything the Trump administration does, especially their failure to go full pacifist!” Of course, you don’t have to be a pacifist to oppose our drone campaign, in Yemen or elsewhere, as I do, but the comment and my response underscore a basic flaw in the thinking of Trump’s anti-interventionist critics.

I have been writing this column for over twenty years, commenting on current events as they impact the US on the international stage. I’ve watched as this country fought a series of unnecessary and debilitating wars, exhausting its resources and sacrificing the lives of its young people in bloody crusades from Belgrade to Baghdad. I’ve navigated the tides of public opinion, as support for this suicidal policy waxed and waned, according to the caprices of the moment and the push and pull of external events. And if I can draw a single important lesson from all this experience, it is this: the albatross of empire won’t be easily lifted from our necks.

There are too many interest groups with both a financial and psychological stake in maintaining the status quo. The worldwide string of bases, alliances, protectorates, and US-protected corporate enclaves that make up the architecture of empire are so vast, and so profitable (for the war profiteers), that the task of dismantling it is the work of generations.

There was a window of opportunity that opened after the collapse of international communism and the end of the cold war that might have cut that timeline short. The events of September 11, 2001, put an end to that bright hope. Just as the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor ended the hope of the biggest antiwar movement in our history – the America First Committee – that we might stay out of the European war, so 9/11 put on hold the idea that America could finally put down the sword and “come home” after the decades-long cold war.

In short, the lesson of the past twenty-plus years is that we must take the long view. As a corollary to that, anti-interventionists must understand that ours is a battle of ideas. The enemy is the concept that America must maintain a hegemonic position on every continent, that we are entrusted with upholding and defending the “international liberal order,” and that we alone are capable of carrying out that supposedly sacred task. It is a conceit that arose in the wake of World War II and it has guided US foreign policy since that time. Both parties have historically agreed that “politics stops at the water’s edge,” and, since 1952 – when the America First “isolationist” wing of the GOP led by Sen. Robert A. Taft was finally defeated — bipartisan support for our policy of global intervention has been de rigueur for all major presidential candidates.

That is, until now.

Although we are still in the grip of what I call the 9/11 Effect, the aftershocks of that seminal event have largely worn off. A war-weary public, and a visible decline in our economic condition, has turned the public inward and greatly decreased the War Party’s influence. The key to maintaining that influence was always in maintaining the political isolation of the anti-interventionist forces, which were largely confined to the far left wing of American politics. As long as the neoconservatives dominated the GOP, and “centrists” maintained control of the Democratic Party, the postwar foreign policy consensus reigned supreme for the simple reason that the American people were never given a choice. As Garet Garrett, the Cassandra of the Old Right, put it in 1952:

“Between government in the republican meaning, that is, Constitutional, representative, limited government, on the one hand, and Empire on the other hand, there is mortal enmity. Either one will forbid the other, or one will destroy the other. That we know. Yet never has the choice been put to a vote of the people.”

More than half a century after those words were written, it has been put to a vote in the 2016 election, and the winner is someone who is challenging – in a fundamental way – the very basis of the longstanding internationalist consensus. I’ve detailed the various ways in which Trump has issued his challenge in this space, at length, and so I won’t repeat myself here. Suffice to say that his revival of the “America First” tradition is, in and of itself, a mortal threat to the War Party, and they recognize the danger he poses to them. That’s why every faction with an interest in maintaining the Empire – the neocons, the liberal internationalists, the national security bureaucracy, the CIA, the cold war Democrats – have pulled out all the stops in their unrelenting assault on the Trump administration. They know who their enemies are.

That Trump is inconsistent, and an imperfect vessel, hardly needs to be said. That the danger of war still looms over us is also a fact that none can deny. Yet all this is irrelevant in the face of the conceptual victory his winning the White House represents. Here is a candidate who campaigned against GOP foreign policy orthodoxy, explicitly rejecting the legacy of the Iraq war and even going so far as to call out the Bush administration for lying us into that war. Even if he had been defeated in the general election, Trump’s triumph in the Republican primary signaled the end of neoconservatism as a viable political force, at least inside the GOP. What this means is that the War Party’s monopoly on the foreign policy positions of both parties is ended: Garrett’s lament is now outdated, because the voters do have a choice. They can choose between republic and Empire.

Yes, the Trump administration will take many actions that contradict the promise of their victory: that is already occurring. And we are covering that in these pages, without regard for partisan considerations: and yet it is necessary to step back and see the larger picture, looking past the journalistic details of the day-to-day news cycle. In short, it is necessary to take the long view and try to see what the ideological victory that was won this past November augurs for the future.

If we look past Trump and his administration and scout out what the road ahead looks like, the view is encouraging: the obstacles that loomed large in the past – the neoconservative hegemony in the GOP, the war hysteria that dominated the country post-9/11, the public’s largely unquestioning acceptance of what the “mainstream” media reported – have been swept away. What’s more, a global rebellion against regnant elites is threatening the status quo. All the elements that make for the restoration of our old republic are in place, including a growing mass movement in this country that rejects the old internationalist dogma.

Ideas rule the world: not politicians, not parties, not range-of-the-moment fluctuations in public opinion. This isn’t about Trump, the politician, or the journalistic trivia of the moment: we are engaged in a battle of ideas – and, slowly but surely, we are winning.

No matter what one thinks of Trump, or his appointees, the election of 2016 is without doubt the biggest victory opponents of empire have enjoyed since the country turned its back on the interventionism of Woodrow Wilson and enjoyed a “return to normalcy” in 1920. The victor that year was Warren Harding, who declared: “America’s present need is not heroics but healing; not nostrums but normalcy; not revolution but restoration.” After the posturing Teddy Roosevelt’s aggressive imperialism and the more studied “idealism” of Woodrow Wilson, America was ready to return to the foreign policy of the Founders.

This time, after years of constant warfare, and the stunning realization that our empire has brought us nothing but financial and moral ruin, Americans are again seeking a return to normalcy – or, as Trump would put it, they want to “make America great again.” Having gone down the road that Rome once trod, Americans stand at the abyss of inexorable decline – and they want to turn back.

Yet the road back is by no means an easy one. External events – unpredictable by their very nature – may intervene once again. After all, the history of mankind is the record of chance, human caprice, and endless folly. Yet I am optimistic at this recent turn of events: barring some unforeseen catastrophe, the future is brighter than it has been for quite some time. The chances are good that we may yet become a normal country again, as opposed to a bloated empire beset by external enemies and internal rot. Perhaps not in my lifetime – I’m 65! – but, if all goes well, at least I’ll have seen the beginning of the end of the War Party’s bloody reign.

Since I take the long view, that’s good enough for me.

The Neocon Lament

Nobody wants them in Trump’s Washington

January 24, 2017

by Philip Giraldi

The Unz Review

There is no limit to the hubris driven hypocrisy of America’s stalwart neoconservatives. A recent Washington Post front page article entitled “‘Never Trump’ national-security Republicans fear they have been blacklisted” shares with the reader the heartbreak of those so-called GOP foreign policy experts who have apparently been ignored by the presidential transition team seeking to staff senior positions in the new administration. Author David Nakamura describes them as “some of the biggest names in the Republican national security firmament, veterans of past GOP administration who say, if called upon by President-elect Donald Trump, they stand ready to serve their country again.”

“But,” Nakamura adds, “their phones aren’t ringing.” And I wept openly as he went on to describe how they sit forlorn in a “state of indefinite limbo” in their law firms, think tanks and university faculty lounges just thinking about all the great things they can do for their country. Yes, “serve their country,” indeed. Nothing personal in it for them. Nothing personal when they denounced Trump and called him incompetent, unqualified, a threat to the nation and even joined Democrats in labeling him a racist, misogynist, homophobe, Islamophobe and bigot. And they really got off when they explained in some detail how The Donald was a Russian agent. Nothing personal. It’s was only business. So let’s let bygones be bygones and, by the way, where are the jobs? Top level Pentagon or National Security Council only, if you please!

And yes, they did make a mistake about some things in Iraq, but it was Obama who screwed it up by not staying the course. And then there was Libya, the war still going on in Afghanistan, getting rid of Bashar and that funny business in Ukraine. It all could have gone better but, hey, if they had been fully in charge for the past eight years to back up the greatly loved Vicki Nuland at the State Department everything would be hunky dory.

Oh yeah, some of the more introspective neocons are guessing that the new president just might be holding a grudge about those two “Never Trump” letters that more than 200 of them eventually signed. Many now believe that they are on a blacklist. How unfair! To be sure, some of the language in the letters was a bit intemperate, including assertions about Trump’s personality, character and intelligence. One letter claimed that the GOP candidate “lacks self-control and acts impetuously,” that he “exhibits erratic behavior,” and that he is “fundamentally dishonest.” Mitt Romney, who did not sign the letters but was nevertheless extremely outspoken, referred to Trump as a “phony” and a “fraud.”

One of the first anti-Trump letter’s organizers, Professor Eliot Cohen described presidential candidate Trump as “a man utterly unfit for the position by temperament, values and policy preferences.” After the election, Cohen even continued his scathing attacks on the new president, writing that “The president-elect is surrounding himself with mediocrities whose chief qualifications seem to be unquestioning loyalty.” He goes on to describe them as “second-raters.”

Cohen, who reminds one of fellow Harvard bombast artist Alan Dershowitz, might consider himself as “first rate” but that is a judgment that surely might be challenged. He was a prominent cheerleader for the Iraq War and has been an advocate of overthrowing the Iranian government by force. He opposed the nomination of Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense because Hagel had “made it clear that he [did] not want to engage in a confrontation with Iran.” Cohen, a notable Israel Firster in common with many of his neocon brethren, has aggressively condemned even well-reasoned criticism of the Israel Lobby and of Israel itself as anti-Semitism. Glenn Greenwald has described him as “extremist a neoconservative and warmonger as it gets.”

One has to wonder at the often-professed intelligence and experience of Cohen and his neocon friends if they couldn’t figure out in advance that backing the wrong horse in an election might well have consequences. And there is a certain cynicism intrinsic in the neoconservative whine. Many of the dissidents like Cohen, Robert Kagan, Max Boot, Eric Edelman, Kori Schake, Reuel Gerecht, Kenneth Adelman and Michael Morell who came out most enthusiastically for Hillary Clinton were undoubtedly trimming their sails to float effortlessly into her anticipated hawkish administration. Gerecht, who has advocated war in Syria, said of the Democratic candidate that “She’s not a neoconservative, but Hillary Clinton isn’t uncomfortable with American power.”

That the defeat of Hillary was also a defeat of the neoconservatives and their alphabet soup of institutes and think tanks is sometimes overlooked but was a delicious dish served cold for those of us who have been praying for such a result. It was well worth the endless tedium when watching Fox News on election night to see Bill Kristol’s face when it became clear that Trump would be victorious. Back to the drawing board, Bill!

And there may be yet another shocker in store for the neocons thanks to Trump. The fact that the new administration is drawing on the business world for staffing senior positions means that he has been less interested in hiring think tank and revolving door academic products to fill the government bureaucracies. This has led Josh Rogin of the Washington Post to warn that the death of think tanks as we know them could be on the horizon. He quotes one think-tanker as opining that “the people around Trump view think tanks as for sale for the highest bidder. They have empowered other centers of gravity for staffing this administration.” Rogin adds “If the Trump team succeeds in diminishing the influence of Washington think tanks and keeping their scholars out of government, policymaking will suffer. Many of these scholars hold the institutional knowledge and deep subject matter expertise the incoming administration needs.”

Rogin, who is himself a neocon who has been an associated “expert” with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) affiliated Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), is peddling bullshit. The record of the geniuses who have been guiding U.S. foreign policy ever since the Reagan Administration has not been exactly reassuring and can be considered downright disastrous if one considers Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria. Think tanks have agendas that in most cases actually work against the public interest. Their designation of staff as “scholars” is a contrivance as their scholarship consists of advocacy for specific causes and ideologies. They should be seen for what they are and what they are is not very pretty as they are into endless self-promotion. Fear mongering Danielle Pletka, who is vice president for foreign policy at the American Enterprise Institute, has supported every war coming out of the past two Administrations and has called repeatedly for more of the same to close the deal on Syria and Iran. Like Cohen, Rogin, Kagan, Gerecht and many other neocons she is both Jewish and an Israel Firster. And her annual salary is reported to be $275,000.

It is a pleasure to watch the think tanks begin thinking of their own demises. It is also intriguing to speculate that Trump with his populist message might just take it all one step farther and shut the door on the K Street lobbyists and other special interests, which have symbiotic relationships with the think tanks. The think tanks sit around and come up with formulationsthat benefit certain groups, individuals and corporate interests and then reap the rewards when the cash is handed out at the end of the year. How fantastic it would be to see lobbies and the parasites who work for them put out of business, particularly if our much beloved neoconservatives are simultaneously no longer calling the shots on national security policy and their think tanks are withering on the vine. What a wonderful world it would be.

Seymour Hersh Blasts Media for Uncritically Promoting Russian Hacking Story

January 25, 2017

by Jeremy Scahill

The Intercept

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh said in an interview that he does not believe the U.S. intelligence community proved its case that President Vladimir Putin directed a hacking campaign aimed at securing the election of Donald Trump. He blasted news organizations for lazily broadcasting the assertions of U.S. intelligence officials as established facts.

Hersh denounced news organizations as “crazy town” for their uncritical promotion of the pronouncements of the director of national intelligence and the CIA, given their track records of lying and misleading the public.

“The way they behaved on the Russia stuff was outrageous,” Hersh said when I sat down with him at his home in Washington, D.C., two days after Trump was inaugurated. “They were just so willing to believe stuff. And when the heads of intelligence give them that summary of the allegations, instead of attacking the CIA for doing that, which is what I would have done,” they reported it as fact. Hersh said most news organizations missed an important component of the story: “the extent to which the White House was going and permitting the agency to go public with the assessment.”

Hersh said many media outlets failed to provide context when reporting on the intelligence assessment made public in the waning days of the Obama administration that was purported to put to rest any doubt that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the hacking of the DNC and Clinton campaign manager John Podesta’s emails.

The declassified version of the report, which was released January 7 and dominated the news for days, charged that Putin “ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the U.S. presidential election” and “aspired to help President-elect Trump’s election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him.” According to the report, the NSA was said to have had a lower confidence level than James Clapper and the CIA about the conclusion that Russia intended to influence the election. Hersh characterized the report as full of assertions and thin on evidence.

“It’s high camp stuff,” Hersh told The Intercept. “What does an assessment mean? It’s not a national intelligence estimate. If you had a real estimate, you would have five or six dissents. One time they said 17 agencies all agreed. Oh really? The Coast Guard and the Air Force — they all agreed on it? And it was outrageous and nobody did that story. An assessment is simply an opinion. If they had a fact, they’d give it to you. An assessment is just that. It’s a belief. And they’ve done it many times.”

Hersh also questioned the timing of the U.S. intelligence briefing of Trump on the Russia hack findings. “They’re taking it to a guy that’s going to be president in a couple of days, they’re giving him this kind of stuff, and they think this is somehow going to make the world better? It’s going to make him go nuts — would make me go nuts. Maybe it isn’t that hard to make him go nuts.” Hersh said if he had been covering the story, “I would have made [John] Brennan into a buffoon. A yapping buffoon in the last few days. Instead, everything is reported seriously.”

Few journalists in the world know more about the CIA and U.S. dark ops than Hersh. The legendary journalist broke the story of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, the Abu Ghraib torture, and secret details of the Bush-Cheney assassination program.

In the 1970s, during the Church Committee investigations into the CIA’s involvement in coups and assassinations, Dick Cheney — at the time a top aide to President Gerald Ford — pressured the FBI to go after Hersh and seek an indictment against him and the New York Times. Cheney and then-White House Chief of Staff Donald Rumsfeld were furious that Hersh had reported, based on information from inside sources, on a covert incursion into Soviet waters. They also wanted retaliation for Hersh’s exposé on illegal domestic spying by the CIA. The aim of targeting Hersh would be to frighten other journalists from exposing secret or controversial actions by the White House. The attorney general rebuffed Cheney’s requests, saying it “would put an official stamp of truth on the article.”

Although critical of the Russia coverage, Hersh condemned the Trump administration’s attacks on the news media and its threats to limit the ability of journalists to cover the White House. “The attack on the press is straight out of national socialism,” he said. “You have to go back into the 1930s. The first thing you do is destroy the media. And what’s he going to do? He’s going to intimidate them. The truth is, the First Amendment is an amazing thing and if you start trampling it the way they — I hope they don’t do it that way — this would be really counterproductive. He’ll be in trouble.”

Hersh also said he is concerned about Trump and his administration assuming power over the vast surveillance resources of the U.S. government. “I can tell you, my friends on the inside have already told me there’s going to be a major increase in surveillance, a dramatic increase in domestic surveillance,” he said. He recommended that anyone concerned about privacy use encrypted apps and other protective means. “If you don’t have Signal, you better get Signal.”

While expressing fears about Trump’s agenda, Hersh also called Trump a potential “circuit breaker” of the two-party political system in the U.S. “The idea of somebody breaking things away, and raising grave doubts about the viability of the party system, particularly the Democratic Party, is not a bad idea,” Hersh said. “That’s something we could build on in the future. But we have to figure out what to do in the next few years.” He added: “I don’t think the notion of democracy is ever going to be as tested as it’s going to be now.”

In recent years, Hersh has been attacked for his investigative reports on a variety of policies and actions authorized by the Obama administration, but he has never backed down from his aggressive approach to journalism. His reporting on the raid that killed Osama bin Laden dramatically contradicted the administration’s story, and his investigation on the use of chemical weapons in Syria cast doubts on the official claim that Bashar al Assad ordered the attacks. Although he has received many awards for his work, Hersh said praise and condemnation have no impact on his work as a journalist.

Trump to order Mexican border wall, ban refugees from 7 Muslim countries

January 25, 2017

RT

A red-letter day on “national security” is in the cards for US President Donald Trump, who is expected to sign executive orders on construction of a wall on the US-Mexico border and suspension of visas for citizens of Syria and six other countries.

Trump, who announced on Twitter that a “big day” was planned on national security on Wednesday, is set to ban the entry of refugees into the US for “at least four months,” AP reported, citing a representative of a public policy organization that monitors refugee issues. There is likely to be an exception for Christians fleeing Muslim-majority nations.

Another order will block visas from being issued to individuals from Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen, according to Reuters, citing presidential aides and experts speaking on condition of anonymity. On the campaign trail, Trump proposed a temporary ban on Muslims entering the US, arguing that the measure would help shield Americans from jihadist attacks.

Stephen Legomsky, who was chief counsel of the US Citizenship and Immigration Services in the Department of Homeland Security during the Obama administration, said the president had the authority to limit refugee admissions and the issuance of visas to certain countries.

“From a legal standpoint, it would be exactly within his legal rights,” Legomsky told Reuters.

“But from a policy standpoint, it would be terrible idea because there is such an urgent humanitarian need right now for refugees,” he added.

Another immigration expert, Hiroshi Motomura, noted, however, that the visa ban could meet legal action from detractors, since all six countries mentioned have Muslim majority populations.

“His comments during the campaign and a number of people on his team focused very much on religion as the target,” Motomura told Reuters.

Trump is said to still be mulling over the details of the plans, and is expected to sign the first actions during a visit to the Department of Homeland Security on Wednesday.

There are allegedly plans to hire 5,000 more US border agents and a call for local law enforcement to work with federal immigration authorities, two unnamed congressional aides told Reuters. Trump is also likely to cut the refugee cap in half for fiscal year 2017, down to 50,000, they added.

The Obama administration said in August that it met its goal of admitting 10,000 Syrian refugees in the 2016 fiscal year, and was looking to increase the target by a few thousand in 2017.

“While refugee admissions are only a small part of our broader humanitarian efforts in Syria and the region, the president understood the important message this decision would send, not just to the Syrian people but to the broader international community,” then-National Security Advisor Susan Rice said in a statement.

“We will admit at least 85,000 refugees in total this year, including vulnerable individuals and families from Burma, Democratic Republic of the Congo, El Salvador, Iraq, Somalia, Ukraine, and many other countries,” she added.

The United States took in 29 Syrian refugees in fiscal 2011, 31 in fiscal 2012, 36 in fiscal 2013, 105 in fiscal 2014 and 1,682 in fiscal 2015, according to US State Department statistics. In 2016, the number jumped to 12,587.

Critics slammed Obama’s decision to increase the number of Syrian refugees admitted to the country amid concerns over potential terrorist attacks.

‘Pay for the Wall’ promise

To restrict illegal immigration, Trump also famously promised to build a wall along the southern border with Mexico, and that Mexico would pay for it, provoking a war of words on the campaign trail.

Trump said construction of the wall would first be paid for with a bill approved by Congress, and Mexico will later reimburse Washington.

“Any money spent on building the Great Wall (for sake of speed), will be paid back by Mexico later!” he wrote on Twitter earlier this month.

Trump is due to meet Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto at the White House next week.

A number of Republican lawmakers believe that Trump has authority under the Secure Fence Act of 2006 to commence construction on the wall.

The law, backed by then-President George W. Bush, mandated 700 miles of “reinforced fencing” on the US-Mexico border along with enhanced surveillance systems, which came to be known as a “virtual fence.” The full complement of barriers was never completed, and GOP lawmakers believe that the law provides sufficient authority to complete a full border wall.

Trump to act on Mexico border wall, bolster immigration police

January 25, 2017

by Julia Edwards Ainsley

Reuters

Washington-President Donald Trump was expected to start signing directives on Wednesday to begin building a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico and to boost the numbers of agents policing illegal immigration, moving quickly on sweeping plans to curb immigration and boost national security.

Trump, who took office last Friday, will begin signing the orders at the Department of Homeland Security, whose responsibilities include immigration and border security, congressional aides with knowledge of the plan said.

In the coming days, the Republican president is also expected to take steps to curb legal immigration including executive orders restricting refugees and blocking the issuing of visas to people from several Muslim-majority Middle Eastern and North African countries including Syria, the sources said.

On Twitter on Tuesday night, Trump reiterated his promise to build a wall along the roughly 2,000-mile (3,200-kilometer) U.S.-Mexico border.

Trump made cracking down on illegal immigration a key element of his presidential campaign, with supporters often chanting “build the wall” during his rallies. Trump has long said that he will make Mexico pay for the wall, but Mexican officials have forcefully resisted this idea.

The cost and nature of the wall have not been made clear. Many Democrats have opposed the plan and could try to thwart any legislation to pay for the construction in the U.S. Congress, although Republicans control both the Senate and House of Representatives.

The border enforcement order includes plans to hire 5,000 more U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents used to apprehend people seeking to slip across the border and to triple the number of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents used to arrest and deport immigrants living in the United States illegally.

The Customs and Border Protection agency has struggled to meet its hiring mandate, with a little more than 19,000 agents on the payroll, out of a congressionally mandated 21,000.

Trump’s actions could fundamentally change the American stance on immigration, as well as further testing relations with Mexico.

Many Americans view their country with pride as “a nation of immigrants,” and President John Kennedy wrote a book with that title more than half a century ago. But Trump successfully tapped into resentment toward the roughly 11 million illegal immigrants already in the United States and said during the campaign he would deport them all.

Trump, who in announcing his presidential bid in June 2015 accused Mexico of sending rapists and criminals into the United States, has also threatened to slap hefty taxes on companies that produce in Mexico for the U.S. market and to tear up the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between the Mexico, Canada and the United States.

Trump and Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto are due to meet next week.

‘EASILY BREACHED’

Asked about Trump’s wall, U.S. Republican Senator John McCain said a physical barrier is not enough to secure the border and called for the additional use of observation towers, drones and other technology.

“Walls can be easily breached,” McCain, whose home state of Arizona borders Mexico, told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program.

Immigration enforcement away from the border is also expected to be strengthened by seeking an end to “sanctuary cities,” often governed by Democrats, where local officials refuse to cooperate with federal authorities on actions against illegal immigrants.

Trump will call for an end to this practice and may instruct the federal government to stop providing certain funds to cities that refuse to comply.

Later in the week, Trump is expected to suspend the issuing of visas to people from countries where it is deemed that adequate screening cannot occur. Immigration experts expect those countries to include Syria, Sudan, Somalia, Iraq, Iran, Libya and Yemen.

Trump is expected to limit the number of refugees admitted to the United States to 50,000 a year, down from 100,000, and to impose a temporary ban on most refugees.

A review will be conducted by the Trump administration to determine what screening must occur before travel for citizens from such countries can resume.

During the campaign, Trump proposed barring non-U.S. citizen Muslims from entering the United States, which he said would protect Americans from attacks by Islamist militants like those targeting European cities.

The proposal prompted a furor at home and abroad. His expected directive would instead focus the restrictions on countries of origin rather than explicitly in religion. Still, critics say that the measure contradicts the American spirit.

“To use world events as an excuse to keep people from coming to the United States who are literally fleeing for their lives disrespects the history of this country. It disrespects the many people that came here and made this country what it is,” said David Leopold, an immigration attorney and former president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

Separately, Trump continues to insist that millions of illegal immigrants voted unlawfully in the Nov. 8 election. He wrote on Twitter on Wednesday he would seek a “major investigation” on alleged voter fraud in the election, despite an overwhelming consensus among state officials, election experts and politicians that such fraud is rare in the United States.

Trump won the state-by-state Electoral College tally that decides the presidency, but he lost the popular vote to Democrat Hillary Clinton by nearly 3 million votes.

(Reporting by Julia Edwards Ainsley; Additional reporting by Mica Rosenberg, Doina Chiacu, Andy Sullivan and Susan Heavey; Writing by Will Dunham; Editing by Frances Kerry)

 Defenders of American Democracy in Action!

January 25, 2017

by Harry von Johnston, PhD.

 

  1. The CIA was behind the attempt to kill Chou En-Lai of China in 1955. An Air India flight that took off from Hong Kong crashed under mysterious circumstances on its way to the Bandung Conference in Bandung, Indonesia. Press reports indicated that a clockwork mechanism was found in the wreckage of the airliner, and that the cause of the crash was two time-bombs that had been planted on the airplane. John Discoe Smith, who was employed at the US Embassy in India from 1954 to 1959, later wrote about having delivered a package to a Chinese nationalist which he later discovered contained the two time-bombs.
  2. The 1975 Senate Committee investigating the CIA reported that it had “received evidence” of CIA involvement in plans to assassinate President Sukarno of Indonesia.
  3. In the 1950s, the Dulles brothers misinterpreted a remark by President Eisenhower that “the Nasser problem could be eliminated,” to mean that he wanted President Nasser of Egypt to be assassinated. Secretary Dulles cancelled the operation once the mistake had been discovered.
  4. The CIA and the opposition forces of the Khmer Serei attempted to assassinate Prince Sihanouk of Cambodia in 1959. The assassin was spotted in a crowd minutes before he was planning to take Sihanouk’s life.
  5. The CIA unsuccessfully tried to kill Costa Rican President Jose Figueres twice from 1955 to 1970. Figueres boasted that he worked with the CIA very often, especially in the overthrow of Dominican Republic President Rafael Trujillo.
  6. In 1975, the Senate’s Church Committee went on record with the conclusion that Allen Dulles had ordered the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, Congo’s prime minister. In September of 1960 the CIA sent the late Dr. Sidney Gottlieb to the Congo with a virus intended for use in an assassination attempt against Lumumba. A CIA cable in November of that year revealed that the CIA had been aiding Mobutu Sese Seko’s search for Lumumba, who was captured by Mobutu on December 1, 1961. Lumumba was then handed over to his bitter enemy, Moise Tshombe, in Katanga province. Lumumba was assassinated the same day.
  7. As early as 1958, the then-CIA Chief of Station in the Dominican Republic, Lear Reed, along with several Dominicans, had plotted the assassination of Rafael Trujillo, which never came to fruition. The CIA armed several opponents of his regime for assassination attempts, which also were never carried out.
  8. The CIA was involved in several plots to kill Cuban leader Fidel Castro.
  9. In 1975, the Chicago Tribune ran a front page story that told of CIA involvement in a plot to kill French President Charles de Gaulle in the late 1960s after de Gaulle ousted American military bases from French soil.
  10. The CIA aided Bolivian efforts to capture and kill Che Guevera, who in the late 1960s was leading a miniscule guerrilla movement there.
  11. The CIA was directly involved in a failed plot to assassinate Jamaican President Michael Manley in 1976.
  12. The CIA proposed a plan to assassinate Libyan leader Muammar el-Qaddafi in 1986, which resulted in the bombing of Libya by the United States, leading to the death of 40 to 100 civilians and the destruction of the French Embassy.
  13. In 1982 and 1983, the CIA was involved in the murder of General Ahmed Dlimi, a Moroccan officer who sought to overthrow the Moroccan monarchy.
  14. In 1983, the Nicaraguan government accused the CIA twice of hatching a plot to kill Foreign Minister Miguel d’Escoto, of which the CIA aborted both attempts.

(more to come!)

Comment: Coming soon will be a book, and a serialization on the Internet, by retired CIA top official, Robert T. Crowley, on the CIA’s long-term and on-going involvement in the world manufacture and distribution of herion. A highly detail memoir, names, dates and all, that will be a must-read. Ed

Trump bans agencies from ‘providing updates on social media or to reporters’

Administration put de facto gag order on EPA and agriculture department staff, following similar guidance for USDA and Department of Transportation, reports say

January 25, 2017

by Jamiles Lartey

The Guardian

The Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Agriculture have been placed under de facto gag orders by the Trump administration, according to documents obtained by news organizations.

The president has banned EPA employees from “providing updates on social media or to reporters,” according to interagency emails first obtained by the Associated Press, and barred them from awarding new contracts or grants as well. Trump is reportedly planning massive cuts and rollbacks for the agency.

This follows similar guidance to USDA employees, who were instructed in an internal memo obtained by Buzzfeed not to release “any public-facing documents” including “news releases, photos, fact sheets, news feeds, and social media content” until further notice. Specifically the request was made to employees of the Agricultural Research Service, the USDA’s primary research wing, which is heavily involved in research regarding climate change.

In a statement Tuesday, the USDA called the email sent to staff “flawed” and said the proposed policy would be replaced. “This internal email was released without departmental direction, and prior to departmental guidance being issued,” the statement read. “ARS values and is committed to maintaining the free flow of information between our scientists and the American public.”

The two blackouts reported on Tuesday bring to at least five the number of federal agencies which have been ordered silent by Trump in as many days. In his briefing on Tuesday, Trump’s press secretary Sean Spicer said he needed to look further into the matter before making any comment.

Over the weekend, the Department of the Interior’s social media privileges were briefly suspended by the president after the National Park Service published a picture comparing Trump’s inauguration crowd to that of Barack Obama in 2009.

The tweet has since been deleted, and the NPS Twitter account has apologized for tweeting it.

“They had inappropriately violated their own social media policies,” Spicer told reporters on Tuesday. “There was guidance that was put out to the department to act in compliance with the rules that were set forth.”

Around the time of Spicer’s briefing, the social media account for the Badlands National Park seemed to defy whatever guidance had been given them by the Trump administration. The Badlands account started tweeting facts about the perils of global warming, noting for instance that there is more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere “than at any time in the last 650,000 years”. No one replied to requests for interviews at the South Dakota branch of the NPS.

As of approximately 5.30pm on Tuesday, their tweet thread had apparently been deleted.

Then, according to Politico, Department of Transportation employees were instructed on Monday “not to publish news releases or engage on Dot’s social media accounts”. This was not described as an order, but a “recommendation”.

Huffington Post also reported that officials at sub-agencies of the Department of Health and Human Services have been told not to send “any correspondence to public officials”.

Social media, and specifically Twitter, was integral to Trump’s campaign for the presidency. Since his inauguration, he has tweeted almost 40 times, from his two accounts.

The Department of Defense tweeted on Monday: “Social media postings sometimes provide an important window into a person’s #mentalhealth”, which some pundits considered a reference to Trump’s occasional early morning Twitter rants.

Additional reporting by Alan Yuhas

Comment: Unhappy with Trump’s orders, the Guardian immediately published the following material to potential informers:

How to contact the Guardian securely

Technical options for people who want to get in touch with journalists in a way that protects both security and anonymity

January 25, 2017

The Guardian

Some of the most important stories published by the Guardian have come from whistleblowers. Their disclosures have been vital in exposing stories of huge public interest, sometimes with global ramifications. Our pledge is to protect our sources ‐ and not to disclose their identities, or our communications with them, unless their approval has been given. If you want to get in touch with us in a way that protects your security and anonymity, there are a number of technical options that may help – although, of course, none of them can be 100% guaranteed.

Messaging apps

Phone apps do little to hide who and where you are, but if your priority is confidentiality rather than anonymity, there are a number of apps that offer “end to end” encryption. They include Signal (from the Open Whisper Systems not-for-profit organisation) and Threema. (These are examples. We don’t endorse any particular security app.) The Guardian investigation team’s Signal number is +44 7584 640566.

End to end encryption means ‐ theoretically ‐ nobody else will be able to see the content of any message you send. To get started, you need to share mobile phone numbers with a reporter. That’s not difficult to do; you can ring the Guardian head office from a landline (preferably not from work or home, which could be easy to trace) to get put through to the reporter concerned, and then share details. Or you can do so using one of the following methods.

Email

If you plan to write an email to a Guardian journalist about a sensitive matter, look into PGP encryption. It’s more complicated than using apps, but is probably more secure in practice, and email is much easier for sending longer messages and attachments. Used properly, PGP should make a message or document unreadable to anyone except the person who sent it and the person for whom it was encrypted.

How does it work? With PGP, you will use a “public key” that belongs to the person you are writing to, but is freely available on the internet. This key turns your message into an unreadable jumble. Your recipient – and no one else – has a corresponding “private key” which can unlock messages that were encrypted by their public key.

Public keys for Guardian journalists can be found on pgp.theguardian.com and on many writers’ profile pages.

Two popular PGP encryption software packages are Gpg4win for Windows and GPG Suite for Macs. If you use a browser to access a webmail service, such as Gmail or Yahoo! Mail, you may want to look at Mailvelope.

PGP can be a bit fiddly. It’s best to play around with it first by sending an email containing relatively innocuous content.

Although there’s no easy way to break PGP codes, it does have shortcomings. An encrypted email message can still reveal the identity of the sender. One way to reduce that risk could be to create an independent email address solely for contacting the Guardian. You may want to use computers that aren’t associated with you when setting up and when using such an account. Going to an internet cafe is one option ‐ just be careful about who can see your screen and whether there are CCTV cameras nearby. And think about the information you provide while signing up to a new account. Does any of it link the new address back to you?

If you’re using a shared computer, remember that email and browser software normally retains a history of what you’ve been doing, unless you clear it or use a private browsing or incognito option. And consider the times at which you send messages. Could that information help prove that you sent them?

Tor

Even an anonymous email address doesn’t conceal the IP address from which a message has been sent, and an IP address could be traced back to you. To help avoid this you could use the Tor network, which bounces your message through a series of relays to hide the source location. To access the Tor network you will need to install Tor software. Tor browsers can be configured to discard your browsing history and to minimise the amount of information you share.

As with email, if your computer is being monitored at source, Tor does not protect you from that.

Tails

Tails, which is short for “The Amnesiac and Incognito Live System”, is a computer operating system designed to preserve security. It connects to the internet using the Tor network; it helps guard against local monitoring; and when you log out, it wipes any unencrypted content. It is far more secure than using a normal computer or phone.

SecureDrop

The best way to contact the Guardian securely is through our SecureDrop document portal.

The SecureDrop site is only accessible over the Tor network. All submitted messages and documents are automatically encrypted. We download those encrypted files on to Tails computers and then decode them in a secure environment on a computer that is completely offline. SecureDrop does not record where things came from: all we can see is what has been sent to us, the time it arrived, and a randomly generated code name for whoever submitted it.

For maximum security and anonymity, contact us via SecureDrop from a computer that you are confident is not being monitored.

You don’t have to provide us with a means of contacting you but it can sometimes be useful for us to be able to do so. It can also help us if you are able to provide some background about what is in the documents and why you think they might be of interest to us.

We previously mentioned WhatsApp in the Messaging Apps section of this page. In view of concerns over its implementation of encryption, we have removed it.

‘Fix crime rate or I’ll send in feds’ – Trump to Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel

January 25, 2017

RT

US President Donald Trump has warned Chicago he will “send in the feds” if city officials fail to bring the crime rate under control. The city has so far had more shootings and homicides in 2017 than at the same time last year, according to reports.

In a tweet on Tuesday, Trump stated that if Chicago doesn’t fix the growing crime problem, which he slammed as “horrible carnage,” he will resort to federal intervention to quell the violence.

The newly-inaugurated president did not specify, however, the kind of federal intervention he meant – whether it is federalization of the local police, sending in the FBI or another federal agency, or some other course of action.

According to figures cited in his tweet, Trump appeared to be reacting to a story published by the Chicago Tribune this Monday, where the news outlet reported that at least 228 people have been shot in Chicago so far this year, which is a 5.5 percent increase from the same period in January 2016. The Tribune also reported at least 42 homicides as of Monday morning, an increase of 23.5 percent.

Chicago Police Department spokesman Frank Giancamilli disagreed with the Tribune over the numbers, noting that according to police data, there have been 182 shootings in the city this January – “exactly flat from last year,” as cited by Reuters.

The Tribune stuck to its figures, however, suggesting the city was on track to exceed last January’s 50 homicides, the most for the month in 16 years.

With a population of 2.7 million people, Chicago had more shootings and homicides last year than any other US city, according to Chicago Police statistics, cited by Reuters. Chicago’s homicide toll for 2016 was 762, the highest since 1996. Its murder clearance rate, which measures the solved and closed cases, remains one of the lowest in the country.

Earlier this month, Trump already pointed to the fact that the city’s murder rate was “record setting,” warning that if the mayor [Rahm Emanuel] can’t cope with the situation, “he must ask for Federal help.” Tuesday’s statement is the first on the matter expressed by Trump as president.

One of Trump’s first promises during his inauguration speech was to “empower our law enforcement officers to do their jobs and keep our streets free of crime and violence.”

“The Trump Administration will be a law and order administration. President Trump will honor our men and women in uniform and will support their mission of protecting the public. The dangerous anti-police atmosphere in America is wrong. The Trump Administration will end it,” reads a brief posted on the White House website right after the inauguration.

The brief comes at a time of widespread support in the US for police reform. Nationwide protests call for transparency and accountability in law enforcement in the wake of the 2014 killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, as well as other cases of police abuse, especially against African Americans.

Less than two weeks ago, the US Justice Department published a damning report on the Chicago Police, accusing them of regularly using force which was “unjustified, disproportionate and otherwise excessive.”

“Chicago Police Department (CPD) engages in a pattern or practice of using force, including deadly force, in violation of the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution,” the DOJ said in the report. The report stated that Chicago Police have unfairly targeted minorities and used “unreasonable force” on predominantly black and Latino neighborhoods, causing a breakdown in police-community trust.

“The city fails to investigate the majority of cases it is required to investigate by law,” the DOJ said. It also pointed out that, even when an investigation is launched, it is “aimed at eliciting information favorable to the officer.”

‘Mein Kampf’: Murphy translation: Part 17

January 25, 2017

There have been a number of translations of Hitler’s seminal book. Most have been heavily edited so as to promulgate disinformation about Hitler’s views and remove passages that might offend the sensitive.

The Murphy translation is considered to be the most accurate and is being reprinted in toto here.

Our next publication of this work will be the unexpurgated original German edition.

German officially- approved historians have recently released a highly doctored edition of ‘Mein Kampf’ that is selling very well in Germany.

Perhaps a free copy of the unredacted original work would do better in the same marketplace. Ed

 

VOLUME II: THE NATIONAL SOCIALIST MOVEMENT

 

CHAPTER X THE MASK OF FEDERALISM

 

In the winter of 1919, and still more in the spring and summer of 1920, the young Party felt bound to take up a definite stand on a question which already had become quite serious during the War. In the first volume of this book I have briefly recorded certain facts which I had personally witnessed and which foreboded the break-up of Germany. In describing these facts I made reference to the special nature of the propaganda which was directed by the English as well as the French towards reopening the breach that had existed between North and South in Germany. In the spring of 1915 there appeared the first of a series of leaflets which was systematically followed up and the aim of which was to arouse feeling against Prussia as being solely responsible for the war. Up to 1916 this system had been developed and perfected in a cunning and shameless manner. Appealing to the basest of human instincts, this propaganda endeavoured to arouse the wrath of the South Germans against the North Germans and after a short time it bore fruit.

Persons who were then in high positions under the Government and in the Army, especially those attached to headquarters in the Bavarian Army, merited the just reproof of having blindly neglected their duty and failed to take the necessary steps to counter such propaganda. But nothing was done. On the contrary, in some quarters it did not appear to be quite unwelcome and probably they were short-sighted enough to think that such propaganda might help along the development of unification in Germany but even that it might automatically bring about consolidation of the federative forces. Scarcely ever in history was such a wicked neglect more wickedly avenged. The weakening of Prussia, which they believed would result from this propaganda, affected the whole of Germany. It resulted in hastening the collapse which not only wrecked Germany as a whole but even more particularly the federal states.

In that town where the artificially created hatred against Prussia raged most violently the revolt against the reigning House was the beginning of the Revolution.

It would be a mistake to think that the enemy propaganda was exclusively responsible for creating an anti-Prussian feeling and that there were no reasons which might excuse the people for having listened to this propaganda. The incredible fashion in which the national economic interests were organized during the War, the absolutely crazy system of centralization which made the whole REICH its ward and exploited the REICH, furnished the principal grounds for the growth of that anti-Prussian feeling. The average citizen looked upon the companies for the placing of war contracts, all of which had their headquarters in Berlin, as identical with Berlin and Berlin itself as identical with Prussia. The average citizen did not know that the organization of these robber companies, which were called War Companies, was not in the hands of Berlin or Prussia and not even in German hands at all. People recognized only the gross irregularities and the continual encroachments of that hated institution in the Metropolis of the REICH and directed their anger towards Berlin and Prussia, all the more because in certain quarters (the Bavarian Government) nothing was done to correct this attitude, but it was even welcomed with silent rubbing of hands.

The Jew was far too shrewd not to understand that the infamous campaign which he had organized, under the cloak of War Companies, for plundering the German nation would and must eventually arouse opposition. As long as that opposition did not spring directly at his own throat he had no reason to be afraid. Hence he decided that the best way of forestalling an outbreak on the part of the enraged and desperate masses would be to inflame their wrath and at the same time give it another outlet.

Let Bavaria quarrel as much as it liked with Prussia and Prussia with Bavaria. The more, the merrier. This bitter strife between the two states assured peace to the Jew. Thus public attention was completely diverted from the international maggot in the body of the nation; indeed, he seemed to have been forgotten. Then when there came a danger that level-headed people, of whom there are many to be found also in Bavaria, would advise a little more reserve and a more judicious evaluation of things, thus calming the rage against Prussia, all the Jew had to do in Berlin was to stage a new provocation and await results.

Every time that was done all those who had profiteered out of the conflict between North and South filled their lungs and again fanned the flame of indignation until it became a blaze.

It was a shrewd and expert manoeuvre on the part of the Jew, to set the different branches of the German people quarreling with one another, so that their attention would be turned away from himself and he could plunder them all the more completely.

Then came the Revolution.

Until the year 1918, or rather until the November of that year, the average German citizen, particularly the less educated lower middle-class and the workers, did not rightly understand what was happening and did not realize what must be the inevitable consequences, especially for Bavaria, of this internecine strife between the branches of the German people; but at least those sections which called themselves ‘National’ ought to have clearly perceived these consequences on the day that the Revolution broke out. For the moment the COUP D’ÉTAT had succeeded, the leader and organizer of the Revolution in Bavaria put himself forward as the defender of ‘Bavarian’ interests. The international Jew, Kurt Eisner, began to play off Bavaria against Prussia. This Oriental was just about the last person in the world that could be pointed to as the logical defender of Bavarian interests. In his trade as newspaper reporter he had wandered from place to place all over Germany and to him it was a matter of sheer indifference whether Bavaria or any other particular part of God’s whole world continued to exist.

In deliberately giving the revolutionary rising in Bavaria the character of an offensive against Prussia, Kurt Eisner was not acting in the slightest degree from the standpoint of Bavarian interests, but merely as the commissioned representative of Jewry. He exploited existing instincts and antipathies in Bavaria as a means which would help to make the dismemberment of Germany all the more easy. When once dismembered, the REICH would fall an easy prey to Bolshevism.

The tactics employed by him were continued for a time after his death.

The Marxists, who had always derided and exploited the individual German states and their princes, now suddenly appealed, as an ‘Independent Party’ to those sentiments and instincts which had their strongest roots in the families of the reigning princes and the individual states.

The fight waged by the Bavarian Soviet Republic against the military contingents that were sent to free Bavaria from its grasp was represented by the Marxist propagandists as first of all the ‘Struggle of the Bavarian Worker’ against ‘Prussian Militarism.’ This explains why it was that the suppression of the Soviet Republic in Munich did not have the same effect there as in the other German districts. Instead of recalling the masses to a sense of reason, it led to increased bitterness and anger against Prussia.

The art of the Bolshevik agitators, in representing the suppression of the Bavarian Soviet Republic as a victory of ‘Prussian Militarism’ over the ‘Anti-militarists’ and ‘Anti-Prussian’ people of Bavaria, bore rich fruit. Whereas on the occasion of the elections to the Bavarian Legislative Diet, Kurt Eisner did not have ten thousand followers in Munich and the Communist party less than three thousand, after the fall of the Bavarian Republic the votes given to the two parties together amounted to nearly one hundred thousand.

It was then that I personally began to combat that crazy incitement of some branches of the German people against other branches.

I believe that never in my life did I undertake a more unpopular task than I did when I took my stand against the anti-Prussian incitement.

During the Soviet regime in Munich great public meetings were held at which hatred against the rest of Germany, but particularly against Prussia, was roused up to such a pitch that a North German would have risked his life in attending one of those meetings. These meetings often ended in wild shouts: “Away from Prussia”, “Down with the Prussians”, “War against Prussia”, and so on. This feeling was openly expressed in the Reichstag by a particularly brilliant defender of Bavarian sovereign rights when he said: “Rather die as a Bavarian than rot as a Prussian”.

One should have attended some of the meetings held at that time in order to understand what it meant for one when, for the first time and surrounded by only a handful of friends, I raised my voice against this folly at a meeting held in the Munich Löwenbräu Keller. Some of my War comrades stood by me then. And it is easy to imagine how we felt when that raging crowd, which had lost all control of its reason, roared at us and threatened to kill us. During the time that we were fighting for the country the same crowd were for the most part safely ensconced in the rear positions or were peacefully circulating at home as deserters and shirkers. It is true that that scene turned out to be of advantage to me. My small band of comrades felt for the first time absolutely united with me and readily swore to stick by me through life and death.

These conflicts, which were constantly repeated in 1919, seemed to become more violent soon after the beginning of 1920. There were meetings–I remember especially one in the Wagner Hall in the Sonnenstrasse in Munich–during the course of which my group, now grown much larger, had to defend themselves against assaults of the most violent character. It happened more than once that dozens of my followers were mishandled, thrown to the floor and stamped upon by the attackers and were finally thrown out of the hall more dead than alive.

The struggle which I had undertaken, first by myself alone and afterwards with the support of my war comrades, was now continued by the young movement, I might say almost as a sacred mission.

I am proud of being able to say to-day that we–depending almost exclusively on our followers in Bavaria–were responsible for putting an end, slowly but surely, to the coalition of folly and treason. I say folly and treason because, although convinced that the masses who joined in it meant well but were stupid, I cannot attribute such simplicity as an extenuating circumstance in the case of the organizers and their abetters. I then looked upon them, and still look upon them to-day, as traitors in the payment of France. In one case, that of Dorten, history has already pronounced its judgment.

The situation became especially dangerous at that time by reason of the fact that they were very astute in their ability to cloak their real tendencies, by insisting primarily on their federative intentions and claiming that those were the sole motives of the agitation. Of course it is quite obvious that the agitation against Prussia had nothing to do with federalism. Surely ‘Federal Activities’ is not the phrase with which to describe an effort to dissolve and dismember another federal state. For an honest federalist, for whom the formula used by Bismarck to define his idea of the REICH is not a counterfeit phrase, could not in the same breath express the desire to cut off portions of the Prussian State, which was created or at least completed by Bismarck. Nor could he publicly support such a separatist attempt.

What an outcry would be raised in Munich if some Prussian conservative party declared itself in favour of detaching Franconia from Bavaria or took public action in demanding and promoting such a separatist policy.

Nevertheless, one can only have sympathy for all those real and honest federalists who did not see through this infamous swindle, for they were its principal victims. By distorting the federalist idea in such a way its own champions prepared its grave. One cannot make propaganda for a federalist configuration of the REICH by debasing and abusing and besmirching the essential element of such a political structure, namely

Prussia, and thus making such a Confederation impossible, if it ever had been possible. It is all the more incredible by reason of the fact that the fight carried on by those so-called federalists was directed against that section of the Prussian people which was the last that could be looked upon as connected with the November democracy. For the abuse and attacks of these so-called federalists were not leveled against the fathers of the Weimar Constitution–the majority of whom were South Germans or Jews–but against those who represented the old conservative Prussia, which was the antipodes of the Weimar Constitution. The fact that the directors of this campaign were careful not to touch the Jews is not to be wondered at and perhaps gives the key to the whole riddle.

Before the Revolution the Jew was successful in distracting attention from himself and his War Companies by inciting the masses, and especially the Bavarians, against Prussia. Similarly he felt obliged, after the Revolution, to find some way of camouflaging his new plunder campaign which was nine or ten times greater. And again he succeeded, in this case by provoking the so-called ‘national’ elements against one another: the conservative Bavarians against the Prussians, who were just as conservative. He acted again with extreme cunning, inasmuch as he who held the reins of Prussia’s destiny in his hands provoked such crude and tactless aggressions that again and again they set the blood boiling in those who were being continually duped. Never against the Jew, however, but always the German against his own brother. The Bavarian did not see the Berlin of four million industrious and efficient working people, but only the lazy and decadent Berlin which is to be found in the worst quarters of the West End. And his antipathy was not directed against this West End of Berlin but against the ‘Prussian’ city.

In many cases it tempted one to despair.

The ability which the Jew has displayed in turning public attention away from himself and giving it another direction may be studied also in what is happening to-day.

In 1918 there was nothing like an organized anti-Semitic feeling. I  still remember the difficulties we encountered the moment we mentioned the Jew. We were either confronted with dumb-struck faces or else a lively and hefty antagonism. The efforts we made at the time to point out the real enemy to the public seemed to be doomed to failure. But then things began to change for the better, though only very slowly. The ‘League for Defence and Offence’ was defectively organized but at least it had the great merit of opening up the Jewish question once again. In the winter of 1918-1919 a kind of antisemitism began slowly to take root. Later on the National Socialist Movement presented the Jewish problem in a new light. Taking the question beyond the restricted circles of the upper classes and small bourgeoisie we succeeded in transforming it into the driving motive of a great popular movement. But the moment we were successful in placing this problem before the German people in the light of an idea that would unite them in one struggle the Jew reacted. He resorted to his old tactics. With amazing alacrity he hurled the torch of discord into the patriotic movement and opened a rift there. In bringing forward the ultramontane question and in the mutual quarrels that it gave rise to between Catholicism and Protestantism lay the sole possibility, as conditions then were, of occupying public attention with other problems and thus ward off the attack which had been concentrated against Jewry. The men who dragged our people into this controversy can never make amends for the crime they then committed against the nation. Anyhow, the Jew has attained the ends he desired. Catholics and Protestants are fighting with one another to their hearts’ content, while the enemy of Aryan humanity and all Christendom is laughing up his sleeve.

Once it was possible to occupy the attention of the public for several years with the struggle between federalism and unification, wearing out their energies in this mutual friction while the Jew trafficked in the freedom of the nation and sold our country to the masters of international high finance. So in our day he has succeeded again, this time by raising ructions between the two German religious denominations while the foundations on which both rest are being eaten away and destroyed through the poison injected by the international and cosmopolitan Jew.

Look at the ravages from which our people are suffering daily as a result of being contaminated with Jewish blood. Bear in mind the fact that this poisonous contamination can be eliminated from the national body only after centuries, or perhaps never. Think further of how the process of racial decomposition is debasing and in some cases even destroying the fundamental Aryan qualities of our German people, so that our cultural creativeness as a nation is gradually becoming impotent and we are running the danger, at least in our great cities, of falling to the level where Southern Italy is to-day. This pestilential adulteration of the blood, of which hundreds of thousands of our people take no account, is being systematically practiced by the Jew to-day.

Systematically these negroid parasites in our national body corrupt our innocent fair-haired girls and thus destroy something which can no longer be replaced in this world.

The two Christian denominations look on with indifference at the profanation and destruction of a noble and unique creature who was given to the world as a gift of God’s grace. For the future of the world, however, it does not matter which of the two triumphs over the other, the Catholic or the Protestant. But it does matter whether Aryan humanity survives or perishes. And yet the two Christian denominations are not contending against the destroyer of Aryan humanity but are trying to destroy one another. Everybody who has the right kind of feeling for his country is solemnly bound, each within his own denomination, to see to it that he is not constantly talking about the Will of God merely from the lips but that in actual fact he fulfills the Will of God and does not allow God’s handiwork to be debased. For it was by the Will of God that men were made of a certain bodily shape, were given their natures and their faculties. Whoever destroys His work wages war against God’s Creation and God’s Will. Therefore everyone should endeavour, each in his own denomination of course, and should consider it as his first and most solemn duty to hinder any and everyone whose conduct tends, either by word or deed, to go outside his own religious body and pick a quarrel with those of another denomination. For, in view of the religious schism that exists in Germany, to attack the essential characteristics of one denomination must necessarily lead to a war of extermination between the two Christian denominations. Here there can be no comparison between our position and that of France, or Spain or Italy. In those three countries one may, for instance, make propaganda for the side that is fighting against ultramontanism without thereby incurring the danger of a national rift among the French, or Spanish or Italian people. In Germany, however, that cannot be so, for here the Protestants would also take part in such propaganda. And thus the defense which elsewhere only Catholics organize against clerical aggression in political matters would assume with us the character of a Protestant attack against Catholicism. What may be tolerated by the faithful in one denomination even when it seems unjust to them, will at once be indignantly rejected and opposed on A PRIORI grounds if it should come from the militant leaders of another denomination. This is so true that even men who would be ready and willing to fight for the removal of manifest grievances within their own religious denomination will drop their own fight and turn their activities against the outsider the moment the abolition of such grievances is counseled or demanded by one who is not of the same faith. They consider it unjustified and inadmissible and incorrect for outsiders to meddle in matters which do not affect them at all. Such attempts are not excused even when they are inspired by a feeling for the supreme interests of the national community; because even in our day religious feelings still have deeper roots than all feeling for political and national expediency. That cannot be changed by setting one denomination against another in bitter conflict. It can be changed only if, through a spirit of mutual tolerance, the nation can be assured of a future the greatness of which will gradually operate as a conciliating factor in the sphere of religion also. I have no hesitation in saying that in those men who seek to-day to embroil the patriotic movement in religious quarrels I see worse enemies of my country than the international communists are. For the National Socialist Movement has set itself to the task of converting those communists. But anyone who goes outside the ranks of his own

Movement and tends to turn it away from the fulfillment of its mission is acting in a manner that deserves the severest condemnation. He is acting as a champion of Jewish interests, whether consciously or unconsciously does not matter. For it is in the interests of the Jews to-day that the energies of the patriotic movement should be squandered in a religious conflict, because it is beginning to be dangerous for the Jews. I have purposely used the phrase about SQUANDERING the energies of the Movement, because nobody but some person who is entirely ignorant of history could imagine that this movement can solve a question which the greatest statesmen have tried for centuries to solve, and tried in vain.

Anyhow the facts speak for themselves. The men who suddenly discovered, in 1924, that the highest mission of the patriotic movement was to fight ultramontanism, have not succeeded in smashing ultramontanism, but they succeeded in splitting the patriotic movement. I have to guard against the possibility of some immature brain arising in the patriotic movement which thinks that it can do what even a Bismarck failed to do. It will be always one of the first duties of those who are directing the National Socialist Movement to oppose unconditionally any attempt to place the National Socialist Movement at the service of such a conflict.

And anybody who conducts a propaganda with that end in view must be expelled forthwith from its ranks.

As a matter of fact we succeeded until the autumn of 1923 in keeping our movement away from such controversies. The most devoted Protestant could stand side by side with the most devoted Catholic in our ranks without having his conscience disturbed in the slightest as far as concerned his religious convictions. The bitter struggle which both waged in common against the wrecker of Aryan humanity taught them natural respect and esteem. And it was just in those years that our movement had to engage in a bitter strife with the Centre Party not for religious ends but for national, racial, political and economic ends. The success we then achieved showed that we were right, but it does not speak to-day in favour of those who thought they knew better.

In recent years things have gone so far that patriotic circles, in god-forsaken blindness of their religious strife, could not recognize the folly of their conduct even from the fact that atheist Marxist newspapers advocated the cause of one religious denomination or the other, according as it suited Marxist interests, so as to create confusion through slogans and declarations which were often immeasurably stupid, now molesting the one party and again the other, and thus poking the fire to keep the blaze at its highest.

But in the case of a people like the Germans, whose history has so often shown them capable of fighting for phantoms to the point of complete exhaustion, every war-cry is a mortal danger. By these slogans our people have often been drawn away from the real problems of their existence. While we were exhausting our energies in religious wars the others were acquiring their share of the world. And while the patriotic movement is debating with itself whether the ultramontane danger be greater than the Jewish, or vice versa, the Jew is destroying the racial basis of our existence and thereby annihilating our people. As far as regards that kind of ‘patriotic’ warrior, on behalf of the National Socialist Movement and therefore of the German people I pray with all my heart: “Lord, preserve us from such friends, and then we can easily deal with our enemies.”

The controversy over federation and unification, so cunningly propagandized by the Jews in 1919-1920 and onwards, forced National Socialism, which repudiated the quarrel, to take up a definite stand in relation to the essential problem concerned in it. Ought Germany to be a confederacy or a military State? What is the practical significance of these terms? To me it seems that the second question is more important than the first, because it is fundamental to the understanding of the whole problem and also because the answer to it may help to clear up confusion and therewith have a conciliating effect.

What is a Confederacy? (Note 22)

[Note 22. Before 1918 Germany was a federal Empire, composed of twenty-five federal states.]

By a Confederacy we mean a union of sovereign states which of their own free will and in virtue of their sovereignty come together and create a collective unit, ceding to that unit as much of their own sovereign rights as will render the existence of the union possible and will guarantee it.

But the theoretical formula is not wholly put into practice by any confederacy that exists to-day. And least of all by the American Union, where it is impossible to speak of original sovereignty in regard to the majority of the states. Many of them were not included in the federal complex until long after it had been established. The states that make up the American Union are mostly in the nature of territories, more or less, formed for technical administrative purposes, their boundaries having in many cases been fixed in the mapping office. Originally these states did not and could not possess sovereign rights of their own.

Because it was the Union that created most of the so-called states.

Therefore the sovereign rights, often very comprehensive, which were left, or rather granted, to the various territories correspond not only to the whole character of the Confederation but also to its vast space, which is equivalent to the size of a Continent. Consequently, in speaking of the United States of America one must not consider them as sovereign states but as enjoying rights or, better perhaps, autarchic powers, granted to them and guaranteed by the Constitution.

Nor does our definition adequately express the condition of affairs in Germany. It is true that in Germany the individual states existed as states before the REICH and that the REICH was formed from them. The REICH, however, was not formed by the voluntary and equal co-operation of the individual states, but rather because the state of Prussia gradually acquired a position of hegemony over the others. The difference in the territorial area alone between the German states prevents any comparison with the American Union. The great difference in territorial area between the very small German states that then existed and the larger, or even still more the largest, demonstrates the inequality of their achievements and shows that they could not take an equal part in founding and shaping the federal Empire. In the case of most of these individual states it cannot be maintained that they ever enjoyed real sovereignty; and the term ‘State Sovereignty’ was really nothing more than an administrative formula which had no inner meaning.

As a matter of fact, not only developments in the past but also in our own time wiped out several of these so-called ‘Sovereign States’ and thus proved in the most definite way how frail these ‘sovereign’ state formations were.

I cannot deal here with the historical question of how these individual  states came to be established, but I must call attention to the fact that hardly in any case did their frontiers coincide with ethical frontiers of the inhabitants. They were purely political phenomena which for the most part emerged during the sad epoch when the German Empire was in a state of exhaustion and was dismembered. They represented both cause and effect in the process of exhaustion and partition of our fatherland.

The Constitution of the old REICH took all this into account, at least up to a certain degree, in so far as the individual states were not accorded equal representation in the Reichstag, but a representation proportionate to their respective areas, their actual importance and the role which they played in the formation of the REICH.

The sovereign rights which the individual states renounced in order to form the REICH were voluntarily ceded only to a very small degree. For the most part they had no practical existence or they were simply taken by Prussia under the pressure of her preponderant power. The principle followed by Bismarck was not to give the REICH what he could take from the individual states but to demand from the individual states only what was absolutely necessary for the REICH. A moderate and wise policy. On the one side Bismarck showed the greatest regard for customs and traditions; on the other side his policy secured for the new REICH from its foundation onwards a great measure of love and willing co-operation.

But it would be a fundamental error to attribute Bismarck’s decision to any conviction on his part that the REICH was thus acquiring all the rights of sovereignty which would suffice for all time. That was far from Bismarck’s idea. On the contrary, he wished to leave over for the future what it would be difficult to carry through at the moment and might not have been readily agreed to by the individual states. He trusted to the leveling effect of time and to the pressure exercised by the process of evolution, the steady action of which appeared more effective than an attempt to break the resistance which the individual states offered at the moment. By this policy he showed his great ability in the art of statesmanship. And, as a matter of fact, the sovereignty of the REICH has continually increased at the cost of the sovereignty of

the individual states. The passing of time has achieved what Bismarck hoped it would.

The German collapse and the abolition of the monarchical form of government necessarily hastened this development. The German federal states, which had not been grounded on ethnical foundations but arose rather out of political conditions, were bound to lose their importance the moment the monarchical form of government and the dynasties connected with it were abolished, for it was to the spirit inherent in these that the individual states owned their political origin and development. Thus deprived of their internal RAISON D’ÊTRE, they renounced all right to survival and were induced by purely practical reasons to fuse with their neighbours or else they joined the more powerful states out of their own free will. That proved in a striking manner how extraordinarily frail was the actual sovereignty these small phantom states enjoyed, and it proved too how lightly they were estimated by their own citizens.

Though the abolition of the monarchical regime and its representatives had dealt a hard blow to the federal character of the REICH, still more destructive, from the federal point of view, was the acceptance of the obligations that resulted from the ‘peace’ treaty.

It was only natural and logical that the federal states should lose all sovereign control over the finances the moment the REICH, in consequence of a lost war, was subjected to financial obligations which could never be guaranteed through separate treaties with the individual states. The subsequent steps which led the REICH to take over the posts and railways were an enforced advance in the process of enslaving our people, a process which the peace treaties gradually developed. The REICH was forced to secure possession of resources which had to be constantly increased in order to satisfy the demands made by further extortions.

The form in which the powers of the REICH were thus extended to embrace the federal states was often ridiculously stupid, but in itself the procedure was logical and natural. The blame for it must be laid at the door of these men and those parties that failed in the hour of need to concentrate all their energies in an effort to bring the war to a victorious issue. The guilt lies on those parties which, especially in Bavaria, catered for their own egotistic interests during the war and refused to the REICH what the REICH had to requisition to a tenfold greater measure when the war was lost. The retribution of History!

Rarely has the vengeance of Heaven followed so closely on the crime as it did in this case. Those same parties which, a few years previously, placed the interests of their own states–especially in Bavaria—before those of the REICH had now to look on passively while the pressure of events forced the REICH, in its own interests, to abolish the existence of the individual states. They were the victims of their own defaults.

It was an unparalleled example of hypocrisy to raise the cry of lamentation over the loss which the federal states suffered in being deprived of their sovereign rights. This cry was raised before the electorate, for it is only to the electorate that our contemporary parties address themselves. But these parties, without exception, outbid one another in accepting a policy of fulfillment which, by the sheer force of circumstances and in its ultimate consequences, could not but lead to a profound alteration in the internal structure of the REICH.

Bismarck’s REICH was free and unhampered by any obligations towards the outside world.

Bismarck’s REICH never had to shoulder such heavy and entirely unproductive obligations as those to which Germany was subjected under the Dawes Plan. Also in domestic affairs Bismarck’s REICH was able to limit its powers to a few matters that were absolutely necessary for its existence. Therefore it could dispense with the necessity of a financial control over these states and could live from their contributions. On the other side the relatively small financial tribute which the federal states had to pay to the REICH induced them to welcome its existence.

But it is untrue and unjust to state now, as certain propagandists do, that the federal states are displeased with the REICH merely because of their financial subjection to it. No, that is not how the matter really stands. The lack of sympathy for the political idea embodied in the REICH is not due to the loss of sovereign rights on the part of the individual states. It is much more the result of the deplorable fashion in which the present régime cares for the interests of the German people. Despite all the celebrations in honour of the national flag and the Constitution, every section of the German people feels that the present REICH is not in accordance with its heart’s desire. And the Law for the Protection of the Republic may prevent outrages against republican institutions, but it will not gain the love of one single German. In its constant anxiety to protect itself against its own citizens by means of laws and sentences of imprisonment, the Republic has aroused sharp and humiliating criticism of all republican institutions as such.

For another reason also it is untrue to say, as certain parties affirm to-day, that the REICH has ceased to be popular on account of its overbearing conduct in regard to certain sovereign rights which the individual states had heretofore enjoyed. Supposing the REICH had not extended its authority over the individual states, there is no reason to believe that it would find more favour among those states if the general obligations remained so heavy as they now are. On the contrary, if the individual states had to pay their respective shares of the highly increased tribute which the REICH has to meet to-day in order to fulfill the provisions of the Versailles Dictate, the hostility towards the REICH would be infinitely greater. For then not only would it prove difficult to collect the respective contributions due to the REICH from the federal states, but coercive methods would have to be employed in making the collections. The Republic stands on the footing of the peace treaties and has neither the courage nor the intention to break them.

That being so, it must observe the obligations which the peace treaties have imposed on it. The responsibility for this situation is to be attributed solely to those parties who preach unceasingly to the patient electoral masses on the necessity of maintaining the autonomy of the federal states, while at the same time they champion and demand of the REICH a policy which must necessarily lead to the suppression of even the very last of those so-called ‘sovereign’ rights.

I say NECESSARILY because the present REICH has no other possible means of bearing the burden of charges which an insane domestic and foreign policy has laid on it. Here still another wedge is placed on the former, to drive it in still deeper. Every new debt which the REICH contracts, through the criminal way in which the interests of Germany are represented VIS-À-VIS foreign countries, necessitates a new and stronger blow which drives the under wedges still deeper, That blow demands another step in the progressive abolition of the sovereign rights of the individual states, so as not to allow the germs of opposition to rise up into activity or even to exist.

The chief characteristic difference between the policy of the present REICH and that of former times lies in this: The old REICH gave freedom to its people at home and showed itself strong towards the outside world, whereas the Republic shows itself weak towards the stranger and oppresses its own citizens at home. In both cases one attitude determines the other. A vigorous national State does not need to make many laws for the interior, because of the affection and attachment of its citizens. The international servile State can live only by coercing its citizens to render it the services it demands. And it is a piece of impudent falsehood for the present regime to speak of ‘Free citizens’.

Only the old Germany could speak in that manner. The present Republic is a colony of slaves at the service of the stranger. At best it has subjects, but not citizens. Hence it does not possess a national flag but only a trade mark, introduced and protected by official decree and legislative measures. This symbol, which is the Gessler’s cap of German Democracy, will always remain alien to the spirit of our people. On its side, the Republic having no sense of tradition or respect for past greatness, dragged the symbol of the past in the mud, but it will be surprised one day to discover how superficial is th devotion of its citizens to its own symbol. The Republic has given to itself the character of an intermezzo in German history. And so this State is bound constantly to restrict more and more the sovereign rights of the individual states, not only for general reasons of a financial character but also on principle. For by enforcing a policy of financial blackmail, to squeeze the last ounce of substance out of its people, it is forced also to take their last rights away from them, lest the general discontent may one day flame up into open rebellion.

We, National Socialists, would reverse this formula and would adopt the following axiom: A strong national REICH which recognizes and protects to the largest possible measure the rights of its citizens both within and outside its frontiers can allow freedom to reign at home without trembling for the safety of the State. On the other hand, a strong national Government can intervene to a considerable degree in the liberties of the individual subject as well as in the liberties of the constituent states without thereby weakening the ideal of the REICH; and it can do this while recognizing its responsibility for the ideal of the REICH, because in these particular acts and measures the individual citizen recognizes a means of promoting the prestige of the nation as a whole.

Of course, every State in the world has to face the question of unification in its internal organization. And Germany is no exception in this matter. Nowadays it is absurd to speak of ‘statal sovereignty’ for the constituent states of the REICH, because that has already become impossible on account of the ridiculously small size of so many of these states. In the sphere of commerce as well as that of administration the importance of the individual states has been steadily decreasing. Modern means of communication and mechanical progress have been increasingly restricting distance and space. What was once a State is to-day only a province and the territory covered by a modern State had once the importance of a continent. The purely technical difficulty of administering a State like Germany is not greater than that of governing a province like Brandenburg a hundred years ago. And to-day it is easier to cover the distance from Munich to Berlin than it was to cover the distance from Munich to Starnberg a hundred years ago. In view of the modern means of transport, the whole territory of the REICH to-day is smaller than that of certain German federal states at the time of the Napoleonic wars. To close one’s eyes to the consequences of these facts means to live in the past. There always were, there are and always will be, men who do this. They may retard but they cannot stop the revolutions of history.

We, National Socialists, must not allow the consequences of that truth to pass by us unnoticed. In these matters also we must not permit ourselves to be misled by the phrases of our so-called national bourgeois parties. I say ‘phrases’, because these same parodies do not seriously believe that it is possible for them to carry out their proposals, and because they themselves are the chief culprits and also the accomplices responsible for the present state of affairs. Especially in Bavaria, the demands for a halt in the process of centralization can be no more than a party move behind which there is no serious idea. If these parties ever had to pass from the realm of phrase-making into that of practical deeds they would present a sorry spectacle. Every so-called ‘Robbery of Sovereign Rights’ from Bavaria by the REICH has met with no practical resistance, except for some fatuous barking by way of protest.

Indeed, when anyone seriously opposed the madness that was shown in carrying out this system of centralization he was told by those same parties that he understood nothing of the nature and needs of the State to-day. They slandered him and pronounced him anathema and persecuted him until he was either shut up in prison or illegally deprived of the right of public speech. In the light of these facts our followers should become all the more convinced of the profound hypocrisy which characterizes these so-called federalist circles. To a certain extent they use the federalist doctrine just as they use the name of religion, merely as a means of promoting their own base party interests.

A certain unification, especially in the field of transport, appears logical. But we, National Socialists, feel it our duty to oppose with all our might such a development in the modern State, especially when the measures proposed are solely for the purpose of screening a disastrous foreign policy and making it possible. And just because the present REICH has threatened to take over the railways, the posts, the finances, etc., not from the high standpoint of a national policy, but in order to have in its hands the means and pledges for an unlimited policy of fulfillment–for that reason we, National Socialists, must take every step that seems suitable to obstruct and, if possible, definitely to prevent such a policy. We must fight against the present system of amalgamating institutions that are vitally important for the existence of our people, because this system is being adopted solely to facilitate the payment of milliards and the transference of pledges to the stranger, under the post-War provisions which our politicians have accepted.

For these reasons also the National Socialist Movement has to take up a stand against such tendencies.

Moreover, we must oppose such centralization because in domestic affairs it helps to reinforce a system of government which in all its manifestations has brought the greatest misfortunes on the German nation. The present Jewish-Democratic REICH, which has become a veritable curse for the German people, is seeking to negative the force of the criticism offered by all the federal states which have not yet become imbued with the spirit of the age, and is trying to carry out this policy by crushing them to the point of annihilation. In face of this we National Socialists must try to ground the opposition of the individual states on such a basis that it will be able to operate with a good promise of success. We must do this by transforming the struggle against centralization into something that will be an expression of the higher interests of the German nation as such. Therefore, while the Bavarian Populist Party, acting from its own narrow and particularist standpoint, fights to maintain the ‘special rights’ of the Bavarian State, we ought to stand on quite a different ground in fighting for the same rights. Our grounds ought to be those of the higher national interests in opposition to the November Democracy.

A still further reason for opposing a centralizing process of that kind arises from the certain conviction that in great part this so-called nationalization does not make for unification at all and still less for simplification. In many cases it is adopted simply as a means of removing from the sovereign control of the individual states certain institutions which they wish to place in the hands of the revolutionary parties. In German History favouritism has never been of so base a character as in the democratic republic. A great portion of this centralization to-day is the work of parties which once promised that they would open the way for the promotion of talent, meaning thereby that they would fill those posts and offices entirely with their own partisans. Since the foundation of the Republic the Jews especially have been obtaining positions in the economic institutions taken over by the REICH and also positions in the national administration, so that the one and the other have become preserves of Jewry.

For tactical reasons, this last consideration obliges us to watch with the greatest attention every further attempt at centralization and fight it at each step. But in doing this our standpoint must always be that of a lofty national policy and never a pettifogging particularism.

This last observation is necessary, lest an opinion might arise among our own followers that we do not accredit to the REICH the right of incorporating in itself a sovereignty which is superior to that of the constituent states. As regards this right we cannot and must not entertain the slightest doubt. Because for us the State is nothing but a form. Its substance, or content, is the essential thing. And that is the nation, the people. It is clear therefore that every other interest must be subordinated to the supreme interests of the nation. In particular we cannot accredit to any other state a sovereign power and sovereign rights within the confines of the nation and the REICH, which represents the nation. The absurdity which some federal states commit by maintaining ‘representations’ abroad and corresponding foreign ‘representations’ among themselves–that must cease and will cease.

Until this happens we cannot be surprised if certain foreign countries are dubious about the political unity of the REICH and act accordingly.

The absurdity of these ‘representations’ is all the greater because they do harm and do not bring the slightest advantage. If the interests of a German abroad cannot be protected by the ambassador of the REICH, much less can they be protected by the minister from some small federal state which appears ridiculous in the framework of the present world order.

The real truth is that these small federal states are envisaged as points of attack for attempts at secession, which prospect is always pleasing to a certain foreign State. We, National Socialists, must not allow some noble caste which has become effete with age to occupy an ambassadorial post abroad, with the idea that by engrafting one of its withered branches in new soil the green leaves may sprout again. Already in the time of the old REICH our diplomatic representatives abroad were such a sorry lot that a further trial of that experience would be out of the question.

It is certain that in the future the importance of the individual states will be transferred to the sphere of our cultural policy. The monarch who did most to make Bavaria an important centre was not an obstinate particularist with anti-German tendencies, but Ludwig I who was as much devoted to the ideal of German greatness as he was to that of art. His first consideration was to use the powers of the state to develop the cultural position of Bavaria and not its political power. And in doing this he produced better and more durable results than if he had followed any other line of conduct. Up to this time Munich was a provincial residence town of only small importance, but he transformed it into the metropolis of German art and by doing so he made it an intellectual centre which even to-day holds Franconia to Bavaria, though the Franconians are of quite a different temperament. If Munich had remained as it had been earlier, what has happened in Saxony would have been repeated in Bavaria, with the difference that Leipzig and Bavarian Nürnberg would have become, not Bavarian but Franconian cities. It was not the cry of “Down with Prussia” that made Munich great. What made this a city of importance was the King who wished to present it to the German nation as an artistic jewel that would have to be seen and appreciated, and so it has turned out in fact. Therein lies a lesson for the future. The importance of the individual states in the future will no longer lie in their political or statal power. I look to them rather as important ethnical and cultural centres. But even in this respect time will do its leveling work. Modern traveling facilities shuffle people among one another in such a way that tribal boundaries will fade out and even the cultural picture will gradually become more of a uniform pattern.

The army must definitely be kept clear of the influence of the individual states. The coming National Socialist State must not fall back into the error of the past by imposing on the army a task which is not within its sphere and never should have been assigned to it. The German army does not exist for the purpose of being a school in which tribal particularisms are to be cultivated and preserved, but rather as a school for teaching all the Germans to understand and adapt their habits to one another. Whatever tends to have a separating influence in the life of the nation ought to be made a unifying influence in the army. The army must raise the German boy above the narrow horizon of his own little native province and set him within the broad picture of the nation. The youth must learn to know, not the confines of his own region but those of the fatherland, because it is the latter that he will have to defend one day. It is therefore absurd to have the German youth do his military training in his own native region. During that period he ought to learn to know Germany. This is all the more important to-day, since young Germans no longer travel on their own account as they once used to do and thus enlarge their horizon. In view of this, is it not absurd to leave the young Bavarian recruit at Munich, the recruit from Baden at Baden itself and the Württemberger at Stuttgart and so on? And would it not be more reasonable to show the Rhine and the North Sea to the Bavarian, the Alps to the native of Hamburg and the mountains of Central Germany to the boy from East Prussia? The character proper to each region ought to be maintained in the troops but not in the training garrisons. We may disapprove of every attempt at unification but not that of unifying the army. On the contrary, even though we should wish to welcome no other kind of unification, this must be greeted with joy.

In view of the size of the present army of the REICH, it would be absurd to maintain the federal divisions among the troops. Moreover, in the unification of the German army which has actually been effected we see a fact which we must not renounce but restore in the future national army.

Finally a new and triumphant idea should burst every chain which tends to paralyze its efforts to push forward. National Socialism must claim the right to impose its principles on the whole German nation, without regard to what were hitherto the confines of federal states. And we must educate the German nation in our ideas and principles. As the Churches do not feel themselves bound or limited by political confines, so the National Socialist Idea cannot feel itself limited to the territories of the individual federal states that belong to our Fatherland.

The National Socialist doctrine is not handmaid to the political interests of the single federal states. One day it must become teacher to the whole German nation. It must determine the life of the whole people and shape that life anew. For this reason we must imperatively demand the right to overstep boundaries that have been traced by a political development which we repudiate.

The more completely our ideas triumph, the more liberty can we concede in particular affairs to our citizens at home.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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