TBR News May 1, 2017

May 01 2017

The Voice of the White House

Washington, D.C. May 1, 2017: “Exceprt and translation of Russian document AZ 1287-801 U concerning some aspects of the 911 attack.

“About three weeks prior to the actual attack, the special code words were developed by Atta. In that case, the Pentagon was called  ‘The Faculty of  Fine Arts”, the Capitol was termed “The Facility of Law;” and the Trade Building tower was termed, as “The Faculty of Town Planning.”  This, of course was part of the cover story that Atta and his people were students, following an educational career in America and used these for international telephone calls to their superiors in Saudi Arabia.

As soon as the date was fixed for the attack, and this information passed by the Mossad agents in Florida working inside the Atta group, the White House warned very senior American officials like the Attorney General and the Secretary of Defense and his staff, not to fly on commercial aircraft because of “rumors of possible hijackings” . No one outside of a very small circle was told the truth. And because of the possibility that the White House might still be a target of opportunity, the President went in early October, well before the projected attack date, to Texas and then later went to Florida where he and his staff remained in safety until after the attack was over.

July 26, 2001: Attorney General Ashcroft stops flying commercial airlines due to a threat assessment but “neither the FBI nor the Justice Department … would identify [to CBS] what the threat was, when it was detected or who made it.”. [Source: CBS, 7/26/01]  He later walks out of his office rather than answer questions about this. [Source: Associated Press, 5/16/02]

August 4-30, 2001: President Bush spends most of August 2001 at his Crawford, Texas, ranch, nearly setting a record for the longest presidential vacation. While it is billed a “working vacation,” ABC reports Bush is doing “nothing much” aside from his regular daily intelligence briefings. [ABC 8/3/01; Washington Post 8/7/01; Salon 8/29/01] One such unusually long briefing at the start of his trip is a warning that bin Laden is planning to attack in the US, but Bush spends the rest of that day fishing (see August 6, 2001). By the end of his trip, Bush has spent 42 percent of his presidency at vacation spots or en route. [Washington Post 8/7/01] At the time, a poll shows that 55 percent of Americans say Bush is taking too much time off. [USA Today, 8/7/01] Vice President Cheney also spends the entire month in a remote location in Wyoming. [Jackson Hole News and Guide 8/15/01]

September 6-7, 2001: 4,744 put options (a speculation that the stock will go down) are purchased on United Air Lines stock as opposed to only 396 call options (speculation that the stock will go up). This is a dramatic and abnormal increase in sales of put options. Many of the UAL puts are purchased through Deutschebank/AB Brown, a firm managed until 1998 by the current Executive Director of the CIA, A.B. “Buzzy” Krongard. [New York Times; Wall Street Journal]

September 10, 2001: 4,516 put options are purchased on American Airlines as compared to 748 call options. [New York Times; Wall Street Journal.]

September 6-11, 2001: No other airlines show any similar trading patterns to those experienced by UAL and American. The put option purchases on both airlines were 600% above normal. This at a time when Reuters (September 10) issues a business report stating “airline stocks may be poised to take off.”

September 6-10, 2001: Highly abnormal levels of put options are purchased in Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, AXA Re (insurance) which owns 25% of American Airlines, and Munich Re. All of these companies are directly impacted by the September 11 attacks.

On September 10, 2001, the NSA intercepted two messages in Arabic. One message read:

“Tomorrow is zero hour” and the second “The match begins tomorrow.” [Source: New York Times, August 10, 2002] On June 19, 2002, CNN reported the contents of these two National Security Agency intercepts. Other news outlets, including The Washington Post, also reported on the intercepts.  [Source: New York Times, August 10, 2002]

September 10, 2001: Bush flew to Florida from Texas to visit with his brother Governor Jeb Bush. Attorney General Ashcroft rejects a proposed $58 million increase in financing for the bureau’s counter-terrorism programs. On the same day, he sends a request for budget increases to the White House. It covers 68 programs, but none of them relate to counter-terrorism. He also sends a memorandum to his heads of departments, stating his seven priorities—none of them relating to counter-terrorism. This is more than a little strange, since Ashcroft stopped flying public airplanes in July due to terrorist threats (see July 26, 2001) and he told a Senate committee in May that counter-terrorism was his “highest priority.” [New York Times, 6/1/02, Guardian, 5/21/02]

  • Final Observations

The final attack varied very little from the last planning stage. One of the hijacked planes, the one intended to hit the Capitol building, was crashed by action of its passengers but the other three struck their targets as anticipated. The flames, smoke and general confusion were indeed a public spectacle, seen by all of America and the buildings, beams severed when the heat reached a certain point, did collapse in great clouds. A third building was tended to from the inside, not struck by an aircraft, and because great tanks of fuel were ignited, burned until it collapsed some time later.

The carnage was not to believe and everyone involved in this felt is was a most profitable operation. As we know, and was intended, the President was acclaimed as a great leader and he was then able to marshal national support into his attack on Iraq. The failure of the commandeered aircraft to strike Congress precluded the enactment by the President of an enabling act but there was sufficient damage for him to establish more civil observations and ultimate control. e military campaign, as foreseen, has proven to be quick and decisive, Hussein and his henchmen were swept away and now the American military and civilian forces are in complete control of Iraq and its extensive untapped oil fields.. Iran has been put on notice and we expect a large, permanent American military base in the area to act as a deterrent to any future manifestation of Arab nationalism. All of our technicians, as opposed to our intelligence people, were immediately evacuated and aside from several who were temporarily detained by American authorities, eventually all were released and returned safe home.

Now, the Americans have moved from a defensive to an offensive posture and, with American support and a large military presence, the ever-present fears of attacks against Israel have been neutralized, hopefully for a very long time.”

Table of Contents

  • Defiant North Korea hints at nuclear tests to boost force ‘to the maximum’
  • Why Defend South Korean Ingrates?
  • More NYT ‘Spin’ on the Syria-Sarin Case
  • Cybersecurity for the People: How to Keep Your Chats Truly Private With Signal
  • Decline in consumption leads to slowest US economy growth in 3 years
  • The Hitler conference transcriptions

 Defiant North Korea hints at nuclear tests to boost force ‘to the maximum’

May 1, 2017

by Soyoung Kim and Nick Macfie

Reuters

SEOUL-North Korea suggested on Monday it will continue its nuclear weapons tests, saying it will bolster its nuclear force “to the maximum” in a “consecutive and successive way at any moment” in the face of what it calls U.S. aggression and hysteria.

U.S. President Donald Trump has said a “major, major conflict” with North Korea is possible over its nuclear and ballistic missile programs, while China said last week the situation on the Korean peninsula could escalate or slip out of control.

In a show of force, the United States has sent the nuclear-powered USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier group to waters off the Korean peninsula to join drills with South Korea to counter a series of threats of destruction from North Korea, formally known as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK).

“Now that the U.S. is kicking up the overall racket for sanctions and pressure against the DPRK, pursuant to its new DPRK policy called ‘maximum pressure and engagement’, the DPRK will speed up at the maximum pace the measure for bolstering its nuclear deterrence,” a spokesman for North Korea’s foreign ministry said in a statement carried by its official KCNA news agency.

North Korea’s “measures for bolstering the nuclear force to the maximum will be taken in a consecutive and successive way at any moment and any place decided by its supreme leadership,” the spokesman said.

Reclusive North Korea has carried out five nuclear tests and a series of missile tests in defiance of U.N. Security Council and unilateral resolutions. It has been conducting such tests at an unprecedented rate and is believed to have made progress in developing intermediate-range and submarine-launched missiles

It test-launched a missile on Saturday which Washington and Seoul said was unsuccessful, but which nevertheless drew widespread international condemnation.

‘TOP PRIORITY’

South Korea said the United States had reaffirmed it would shoulder the cost of deploying the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-missile system to counter the North Korean threat, days after Trump said Seoul should pay for the $1 billion battery.

In a telephone call on Sunday, Trump’s national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, reassured his South Korean counterpart, Kim Kwan-jin, that the U.S. alliance with South Korea was its top priority in the Asia-Pacific region, the South’s presidential office said.

Trump, asked about his message to North Korea after the latest missile test, told reporters: “You’ll soon find out,” but did not elaborate on what the U.S. response would be.

Trump stepped up his outreach to allies in Asia over the weekend to discuss the North Korean threat and make sure all are “on the same page” if action is needed, a top White House official said.

“There is nothing right now facing this country and facing the region that is a bigger threat than what is happening in North Korea,” White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus told ABC’s “This Week.”

The THAAD deployment has drawn protests from China, which says the powerful radar that can penetrate its territory will undermine regional security, and from residents of the area in which it is being deployed, worried they will be a target for North Korean missiles.

The United States is seeking more help from China, the North’s major ally, to rein in Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile development. Trump, in the Reuters interview, praised Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping as a “good man”.

Tension on the Korean peninsula has been high for weeks over fears the North may conduct a long-range missile test, or its sixth nuclear test, around the time of the April 15 anniversary of its state founder’s birth.

North Korea, technically still at war with the South after their 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce, not a treaty, regularly threatens to destroy the United States, Japan and South Korea and has said before it will pursue its nuclear and missile programs to counter perceived U.S. aggression.

(Writing by Nick Macfie; Editing by Robert Birsel

Why Defend South Korean Ingrates?

Trump spills the beans as the “adults” panic

May 1, 2017

by Justin Raimondo,

AntiWar

Like the child who innocently asks “Where are the Emperor’s clothes?” Donald Trump has once again blurted out a truth that none of the “adults” in the room are supposed to acknowledge. In an interview with Reuters, the President averred:

“On the THAAD system, it’s about a billion dollars. I said, ‘Why are we paying? Why are we paying a billion dollars? We’re protecting. Why are we paying a billion dollars?’ So I informed South Korea it would be appropriate if they paid. Nobody’s going to do that. Why are we paying a billion dollars? It’s a billion dollar system. It’s phenomenal. It’s the most incredible equipment you’ve ever seen – shoots missiles right out of the sky. And it protects them and I want to protect them. We’re going to protect them. But they should pay for that, and they understand that.”

Ah, but they don’t understand it – and neither does H. R. McMaster, Trump’s newly-appointed National Security Advisor, who rushed to assure Seoul that the President didn’t really mean what he clearly said. And the South Koreans, who are in the midst of a presidential election – the vote is on May 5 – are in a uproar.

Moon Jae-in, the liberal candidate who is favored to win, opposes the antimissile deployment, and criticizes the decision by his impeached predecessor to go ahead with it without seeking parliamentary approval. He is the author of a recent book wherein he writes that South Korea must learn to “say no to the United States.”

Installation of the system began in March, under the agreement between Washington and Seoul, but now Moon is raising questions about the nature of that agreement. The New York Times reports that “The gap between Mr. Trump’s comments and what South Koreans have been told by their government about the cost of the deployment ‘makes it clear that there was a serious flaw in the decision to deploy Thaad,’ [Moon spokesman] Mr. Youn said on Friday.”

Another candidate, Ahn Cheol Soo, Moon’s chief rival, raised the possibility of a secret clause to the deal, demanding that the interim government make clear whether Trump’s remarks are just “unilateral wishful thinking” or whether the truth about who’s paying is being withheld from the South Korean people.

The headline in the South China Morning Post really said it all: “South Korea’s presidential favorite Moon may force Trump to withdraw demand Seoul pay for ‘$1 billion THAAD missile system.’” We’re protecting them – but they’re “forcing” us! Funny how that works. The article cited Moon’s top foreign policy advisor, Kim Ki-jung, who says Seoul footing the bill for its own defense is “an impossible option.” Of course it is: after all, South Korea is essentially under US military occupation, a province of the Empire, and we are practitioners of a unique form of imperialism where everything goes out and nothing comes in. However much of an ingrate Mr. Ki-jung may be, he gets at the core issue: this is a matter of South Korean sovereignty. “Even if we purchase THAAD,” he says, “its main operation would be in the hands of the United States.” Because that’s what being an American protectorate is all about.

If the leaders of South Korea are worried about preserving their sovereignty, then why won’t they defend it – and shell out the necessary cash? If Moon Jae-in is so opposed to THAAD, then why must we impose it on him? It’s high time we cut these ingrates loose.

Unlike the colonial empires of the past, which extracted wealth in the form of raw materials from their satraps, the American imperium is a Bizarro World version of this arrangement: in exchange for allowing us to occupy their territory, and dictating their foreign policy, we give Seoul relatively free access to our markets while they impose tariffs on our products. Trump brought this up in his Reuters interview, announcing that he would be reviewing the trade agreement with the two countries:

“It’s unacceptable. It’s a horrible deal made by Hillary. It’s a horrible deal. And we’re going to renegotiate that deal, or terminate it.

“QUESTION: When will you announce it?

“Very soon. I’m announcing it now. By the way, with South Korea, just so you know. They’re ready for it. Mike Pence was representing me, he was just over there, he’s told them. And we have the five-year anniversary coming up very shortly. And we thought that would be a good time to start … It’s a great deal for South Korea. It’s a terrible deal for us.”

What’s a terrible deal for us is the policy of Bizarro imperialism, which not only drains us financially but also puts us at risk of war, from the DMZ to the Russo-Polish border. During the presidential campaign, Trump seemed to understand this on some level: once in office, however he reversed himself  – e.g., on NATO, declaring that it’s “no longer obsolete” – and yet still his “America First” impulse continue to reassert itself. With this schizophrenic administration, however, it’s only a matter of time before US trade officials rush to “reinterpret” the President’s remarks on our trade relations with Seoul.

As I recently argued in the Los Angeles Times, Trump has reversed himself on every major foreign policy stance. We bombed Syria despite Trump’s earlier insistence that we stay out, a NATO that was “obsolete” is suddenly “no longer obsolete,” and now – mere months after candidate Trump opined “Wouldn’t it be nice if we could get along with Russia?” – his administration has taken up Russia-baiting. On Korea, Trump once told us that Seoul would have to start defending itself, and yet he told Reuters “There’s a chance that we could end up having a major, major, conflict with North Korea, absolutely.”

A “major, major conflict” has already broken out – within the mind of this President. Pulled this way and that by the various factions within his administration, and by his own mercurial nature, Trump has set the foreign policy of the United States adrift, without any clear direction. What is clear, however, is the danger this poses for the world: veering drunkenly from one extreme to another, he could stumble into a “major, major conflict” at any moment.

When it came to foreign policy, Trump 1.0 was interesting albeit problematic: Trump 2.0 is menacingly unpredictable. Those of us who saw in him some hope that the “America First” agenda he gave voice to would be implemented, at least to some degree, neglected to take into consideration the vital question of character. I ignored the protestations of some of his critics, who said Trump was unstable, without core principles, and therefore perfectly capable of reversing himself in the name of making a supposedly smart deal. The first one-hundred days of his administration have proved them right.

This doesn’t mean the Trump presidency is a total wash: far from it. As I’ve written in this space on previous occasions, the value of Trump 1.0 is that his campaign mobilized a constituency that is hostile to foreign wars and converted several leading conservatives into staunch opponents of interventionism. That’s fine, but one has to wonder if the price we may have to pay is worth it.

More NYT ‘Spin’ on the Syria-Sarin Case

The New York Times is at it again with another slanted report on the April 4 chemical weapons incident in Syria, applying ridicule rather than reason to prevent a real evaluation of this war-or-peace moment

April 28, 2017

by Robert Parry

consortiumnews

In blaming Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for the April 4 chemical incident in Khan Sheikhoun, The New York Times and other Western news outlets have made a big deal out of discrepancies in the timing and other details provided by the Syrian and Russian governments.

The Times and the others also have chided anyone who notes that Assad had no logical reason to undertake a sarin attack since his forces were making solid gains and he had just learned that the Trump administration was dropping the longstanding U.S. goal of “regime change” in Syria.

To those of us outside the mainstream media bubble, there seemed to be little or no military advantage to be gained. Instead,Assad would be risking more international intervention, which has ripped his country apart for the past six years. But the Times and other major outlets dismissed our logic by arguing that Assad was simply announcing his impunity in some particularly brutal Arab-sort-of-way.

However, neither the value that the Times and others placed on the Russian-Syrian timing discrepancies nor the strange explanation of Assad’s motive made any sense. After all, if Assad were making some bizarre public declaration of his impunity, why would he then deny that his forces were responsible for the chemical attack? Wouldn’t he simply say, “yes, I did it and I don’t care what anyone thinks”? Isn’t that what impunity means: that you do whatever you want knowing that no one can hold you accountable? Instead, Assad has consistently denied ordering the attack.

The gotcha observation about the time element of the bombings fails the logic test, too. Why would Syria and Russia say Syrian warplanes carried out a conventional attack on Khan Sheikhoun around noon if the actual attack occurred around 6 a.m., as it apparently did? There was nothing to be gained for them by having the timing off by six hours, since the point that Syria and Russia were making was that there were indeed airstrikes but that they were conventional bombs that may have unintentionally struck an Al Qaeda depot holding chemical weapons and thus released them. The timing element was immaterial to that point.

What this apparent timing error suggests is confusion, not “spin,” as the Times insists in a tendentious April 27 video by Malachy Browne, Natalie Reneau and Mark Scheffler, entitled “How Syria and Russia Spun a Chemical Strike.”

The Syrians and Russians appeared perplexed by what had happened. Their officials understood that a conventional airstrike had been carried out and stated what they believed the time was. The time discrepancy either meant the Syrian air-wing commander had dispatched warplanes earlier than expected or that some other entity carried out the 6 a.m. strike. But the Syrians and the Russians would seem to have no reason to lie about this detail.

The Times also makes a big deal out of Assad denying that the attack took place — and the video then shows some bombs exploding. But that is just the Times deceiving people. Assad is not denying that a bombing raid took place; he’s denying his military’s deployment of chemical weapons.

Intervention by Air

Another false assumption pervading the Western accounts on this and other chemical incidents in Syria is that only the Syrian government and its Russian allies have control of the skies. That is clearly not true. Various military forces, including those of the U.S. and its allies, as well as Israel and – to some degree – the rebels have air capabilities in Syria.

According to Syrian accounts, the rebels have captured some government helicopters and apparently used one in what United Nations investigators were told by multiple eyewitnesses was a staged chemical-weapons attack in 2014 with the goal of sticking the blame on the Syrian regime.

Further, the U.S. and its allies have been conducting airstrikes across much of Syria in campaigns against Islamic State and Al Qaeda-linked terror groups, which have been supported by Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar and other Sunni-led sheikdoms. Turkey has been active, too, with strikes against Kurdish forces. And Israel has hit repeatedly at Syrian targets to promote what it regards as its interests, including destruction of Iranian weapons believed headed to the Lebanese militant group, Hezbollah.

Some – if not all – of these entities had a far stronger motive to create a chemical-weapons incident in Syria on April 4 than the Syrian government did. At the end of March, the Trump administration announced that it was no longer a U.S. priority to overthrow the Assad government, an announcement that upset several of the countries involved in the Syrian conflict, including Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States and Israel.

All of them – having committed resources and prestige to achieve “regime change” in Syria – had motive to overturn President Trump’s pronouncement. (Israel has had “regime change” in Syria at the top of its to-do list since at least the mid-1990s.) How better to keep that hope alive than to stage another chemical-weapons attack and blame it on Assad?(Another sarin attack in August 2013 also now appears to have been a staged incident by Al Qaeda that killed hundreds while almost tricking President Obama into ordering a massive U.S. military strike on government forces.)

Shortly after the incident at Khan Sheikhoun, I was told by an intelligence source that U.S. satellite imagery had picked up what looked like a drone in the vicinity at around the time that the poison gas was released. Despite some technical difficulties in tracking its route, the source said the analysts believed that it may have come from a Saudi-Israeli special operations base in Jordan, used to assist the rebels.

There are also other combinations of factors that should have been carefully evaluated before President Trump jumped to his Assad-did-it conclusion and fired off 59 Tomahawk missiles at a Syrian airbase on April 6, but they weren’t given serious thought in the rush to blame Assad.

For instance, Al Qaeda’s clever propagandists could have again staged a chemical attack on the ground by creating a crater in the road and inserting what was purported to be a chemical-weapons canister. The Times and others have noted that the crater was not visible in earlier satellite images but that observation doesn’t mean the crater had to be created by an aerial bomb; a ground explosion or simple digging could have done the trick – with the crushed canister inserted later.

Dubious Narrative

The canister-in-the-crater story struck MIT’s technology and national security expert Theodore Postol as particularly odd because on-scene photos showed people climbing into the supposedly sarin-saturated crater wearing minimal protection and not keeling over dead. Postol also said the canister appeared to have been crushed rather than exploded.

There is also the possibility that some third party with access to sarin or other powerful chemical weapons could have delivered the poison gas by air – possibly from that drone – with the rebels either coordinating with that delivery before the fact or reacting to the opportunity after the fact.

The hard truth is that intelligence services from a number of countries could fit the bill in terms of producing sarin or some similar substance that could mimic what Syria once had in its arsenal, although those chemical weapons were supposedly destroyed in 2014 as part of an agreement hammered out by Russia and the United States.

And there are plenty of ruthless intelligence operatives on all sides who would have found the deaths of 80 or so people acceptable collateral damage to advance a geopolitical priority. The timing, so close to the Trump administration’s major announcement that Assad no longer had to go, would have represented a logical motive for such a ruse.

The other problem in assessing what has or hasn’t happened in Syria over the past six years is that all sides, but particularly those seeking “regime change,” have deployed sophisticated propaganda operations to the combat zone.

Anti-regime activists – financed and supplied by the West and the Gulf States – understand the emotional value of showing dying children. These propagandists have regular and uncritical access to major Western media outlets, from the hipsters at VICE to the neocons and liberal-interventionists at The New York Times.

In other words, what is still desperately needed in this latest chapter of the Syrian tragedy is some honest broker who could conduct a serious investigation that isn’t contaminated by all the previous propaganda-infused narratives. But the chances of finding that person or group are slim to none.

Cybersecurity for the People: How to Keep Your Chats Truly Private With Signal

May 1 2017

by Micah Lee

The Intercept

Whether your private conversations are personal, professional, or political, what you say or type into your phone may be of interest to snooping governments, both foreign and domestic. Criminals might be interested as well, especially when you send someone a password or credit card number. There are others you might worry about too: You might want to apply for a job without your current employer finding out. You might discuss something with a lawyer. You might talk to your friends about attending a protest, getting an abortion, or buying a gun. You might send private selfies to your partner that you don’t want anyone else to see. You might be dating someone new and not want your coworkers to find out. The list goes on.

Fortunately, privacy is a fundamental human right.

Unfortunately, most ways that people communicate with their phones — voice calls, SMS messages, email, Facebook, Skype, Hangouts, etc. — are not as private as you might think. Your phone company, internet provider, and the corporations that make the apps you use to communicate can spy on what you say. Your chats can be accessed by police, the FBI, and spy agencies like the NSA. They can also be seen by anyone who can pick up your phone and sift through it. Some of them can even be read by anyone in a position to simply glance at your phone’s lock screen and read the notifications displayed there.

But it’s possible to make sure that your private conversations are actually private. It starts with installing an app known as Signal, and getting your friends to install it too. Then you’ll want to tweak the settings to lock everything down.

The Signal app is easy to use, works on both Apple’s mobile operating system iOS and on Google’s Android, and encrypts communications so that only you and the people you’re talking to can decipher them. It also has open source code, so experts can verify its security claims. You can download Signal from the Android Play Store and the iPhone App Store.

Although Signal is well-designed, there are extra steps you must take if you want to maximize the security of your most sensitive conversations. (I outlined some of these steps last year, but Signal has changed significantly since then.) There are also some useful features in Signal that you might not know about.

I discuss these at length below — and in the video above, created with Lauren Feeney.

If you wish to jump ahead to a specific section, you can click the appropriate link:

  • Get your friends to use Signal
  • Lock down your phone
  • Hide Signal messages on your lock screen
  • Don’t retain your messages forever
  • Send and receive private photos and videos
  • Have secure group discussions
  • Make secure voice and video calls
  • Send messages to numbers without adding them to your contacts
  • Verify that the encryption isn’t under attack using safety numbers
  • Using Signal on your computer

Get Your Friends to Use Signal

You can only send encrypted messages, and make encrypted calls, to other people who are on Signal. There’s not much point in having Signal if all of your most private texts are still going over unencrypted SMS, so get your friends to install the app, too.

If you’re an activist, get everyone at your next meeting to install the app. If you’re a journalist, tell your sources and editors. If you’re running for office, consider using Signal to communicate with your campaign staff.

Lock Down Your Phone

Signal uses strong end-to-end encryption, which, when properly verified, ensures that no one involved in facilitating your conversation can see what you’re saying — not the makers of Signal, not your cellphone or broadband provider, and not the NSA or another spy agency that collects internet traffic in bulk.

But Signal’s encryption can’t stop someone from picking up your phone and opening the app to read through your conversations. For that, you need to configure your phone to require a passcode, or some other form of authentication, to unlock. You should also make sure that the storage on your phone is encrypted and that you update your phone’s operating system and apps promptly, which makes it significantly harder for anyone to remotely hack into your phone.

If you’re using Android:

  • Set up screen lock, which requires you to draw a pattern, type a numeric PIN, or type a password to unlock your phone. You can do this from the Settings app under Security > “Screen lock.” Try to make your pattern or passcode random, and avoid using anything obvious such as birthdates. Don’t tell anyone how to unlock your phone unless you’re OK with them reading all of your encrypted messages – and everything else on your phone.
  • Encrypt your phone’s storage. A screen lock is not much use if a thief can copy your phone’s data to a different device. Encrypting the flash memory on your phone blocks such an attack by scrambling your data so that it can only be unlocked using the same pattern, PIN, or password used to unlock your phone. You can do this from the Settings app under Security > “Encrypt phone.” Note that you need to have a full battery before Android lets you encrypt your phone, and you may have to wait up to an hour while your phone is encrypting.
  • Install all updates promptly. Updates fix security bugs, so every day you haven’t installed them is a day you’re vulnerable to attack. You can check for Android updates by opening the Settings app, and under System tap “About phone” > “System updates.” You should also update all of your apps from the Play Store promptly.
  • Lock your Signal app with a passphrase. The Android version of Signal lets you lock down the whole app, requiring a separate passphrase to access it. If you followed the steps above (set up a lock screen and encrypted your phone), this isn’t necessary. However, if you ever let others use your phone, you may want to enable it anyway. Open the Signal app, tap the menu icon in the top-right and go to Settings. Tap Privacy, and then tap “Enable passphrase” to set a passphrase. Important caveat: If you lose your passphrase, you’ll have to delete all of your Signal data and start over to keep using the app.

If you’re using an iPhone:

  • Set a strong passcode. iPhones automatically have encrypted storage, but this encryption only protects your data if you lock your device with a passcode. Everyone should use at least a six-digit passcode, and you should up that to 11 digits if you’re concerned that your phone might fall into the hands of a powerful attacker like a government. Avoid using anything obvious such as birthdates. I wrote about this in detail last year – skip to the bottom of that article for instructions on changing your passcode, and for considerations about using Touch ID.
  • Install updates promptly. Updates fix security bugs, so every day you haven’t installed them is a day you’re vulnerable to attack. You can check for iPhone updates in the Settings app under General > Software Update. You should also update all of your apps in the App Store app under the Updates tab.

Hide Signal Messages on Your Lock Screen

Signal’s encryption won’t necessarily help you if other people can see incoming messages displayed on your lock screen. Displaying messages on the lock screen is Signal’s default behavior, but you should change this if your phone is frequently in physical proximity to people who shouldn’t see your Signal messages — roommates, coworkers, or airport screeners, for example.

Here’s how to lock down your Signal notifications.

If you’re using Android:

  • Open the Settings app, and under “Device” > “Sound & notification” select “When device is locked.”
  • The options are “Show all notification content,” “Hide sensitive notification content,” or “Don’t show notifications at all.” I recommend you choose “Hide sensitive information content” — this way you’ll still be notified when you get a Signal message (or any other sensitive notification), but you’ll have to unlock your phone to see who it’s from and what it says.

If you’re using an iPhone:

  • Open the Signal app and click the gear icon in the top-left to get to Signal’s settings. Under “Notifications” > “Background Notifications,” tap “Show.”
  • The options are “Sender name & message,” “Sender name only,” or “No name or message.” I recommend you choose “No name or message” — this way you’ll still be notified when you get a Signal message, but you’ll have to unlock your phone to see who it’s from and what it says.
  • To completely remove Signal notifications from your iPhone’s lock screen, open the Settings app, tap “Notifications,” scroll down to the list of apps, and tap Signal. From here you can turn off “Show on Lock Screen.”
  • You may also wish to poke through the settings for any other apps that display sensitive notifications on your lock screen and disable them.

Don’t Retain Your Messages Forever

After your encrypted Signal message is sent to someone, copies of the plaintext message exist in only two locations: on your phone and on the recipient’s phone. (Unlike other messaging apps, the Signal server never has access to your plaintext messages, and only stores your encrypted messages on the internet for a short amount of time.) This means that if you delete the message from your phone, and the recipient deletes it from their phone, the message will no longer exist. It’s a good idea to regularly delete old messages, especially if they’re part of a sensitive conversation. This way, if your phone ever gets searched, the conversations you don’t even remember having from a year ago – as well as the sensitive conversations from last week – won’t get compromised.

Signal lets you send messages that disappears from both your phone and the recipient’s phone after a specified amount of time (between 5 seconds and 1 week). This is useful when you and a friend both want to retain messages from your conversation for a short period of time. But keep in mind, nothing stops the recipient from recording the messages anyway before they disappear (like, by taking screenshots).

If you have contacts or Signal groups (more on that below) that you regularly send private text messages to, I recommend setting disappearing messages to 1 week. It’s also easy to temporarily enable disappearing messages and then disable it when you’re done, for example when you need to send someone a password.

If you’re using Android:

  • Open the Signal app and tap on a conversation to open it.
  • Tap the menu icon in the top-right and select “Disappearing messages”, and choose the amount of time after the message has been seen before it disappears.

If you’re using an iPhone:

  • Open the Signal app and tap on a conversation to open it.
  • Tap the name of the person you’re talking to at the top of the screen to get to Conversation Settings.
  • Turn on “Disappearing Messages”, and choose the amount of time after the message has been seen before it disappears.

You can also manually delete individual messages, or whole conversations, from your own phone. Of course, this won’t delete them from the recipient’s phone – only disappearing messages will do that.

If you’re using Android:

  • To delete an individual message: Within a conversation, long-press on the message you’d like to delete to select it. Then tap the trash can icon at the top to delete it. You can also delete records of Signal calls within your conversation the same way.
  • To delete an entire conversation: From the list of Signal conversations, long-press on a contact to select it. Then tap the trash can icon at the top. This will delete all of the messages you’ve ever traded with that contact from your phone.
  • Enable “message trimming”: The Android version of Signal has a feature that lets you automatically delete messages in conversations that exceed a specific length. For example, you choose to retain the newest 200 messages with each contact, and automatically delete everything older than that. From the list of Signal conversations, tap the menu icon in the top-right and go to Settings. Tap “Chats and media”, and under “Message trimming” turn on “Delete old messages.” You can then adjust the conversation length limit, which defaults to 500 messages per conversation.

If you’re using an iPhone:

  • To delete an individual message: Within a conversation, long-press on the message you’d like to delete to select it. Then tap the “Delete” option to delete it. You can also delete records of Signal calls within your conversation the same way.
  • To delete an entire conversation: From the list of Signal conversations, swipe to the left on a contact and choose “Delete.” This will delete all of the messages you’ve ever traded with that contact from your phone.
  • To delete all messages in your Signal app: The iPhone version of Signal includes a nuclear option. To delete all of the messages you’ve ever sent or received, from the list of Signal conversations, tap the gear icon in the top-left to go to Settings. Tap “Privacy,” then “Clear History Logs.”

Send and Receive Private Photos and Videos

Signal makes it simple to send people encrypted photos and videos (including animated GIFs!). While you’re in a conversation with someone, just tap the paperclip icon to browse your photo library, or access your camera directly.

But Signal also includes a subtle security feature: If you take photos or video with your camera from within the Signal app itself, these won’t automatically save to your phone’s library. Likewise, when you receive a Signal message containing a photo or video, this also won’t automatically save to your phone’s library. If you’d like to save a photo to your library, you can long-press the photo and choose to save it.

Why does this matter? Many people automatically sync all of the photos and videos on their phones to iCloud, Google, or other cloud services. And people often allow other apps on their phone, such as Facebook or Instagram, to access their photo library as well. While convenient, this means that, after you’ve uploaded your photos to a cloud service provider, that provider can access them as well. And by extension, so can anyone who can convince the provider to hand over your data, like a law enforcement agency, or who hack your account, as in 2014, when nude photos of female celebrities were published online after their iCloud accounts were compromised.

So, if you’re taking a photo of a top secret document to send to a journalist, or if you’re taking a sexy selfie to send to your bae, make sure to take these photos directly from within the Signal app – this way, they’ll have the same level of encryption and privacy as the rest of your Signal messages.

Have Secure Group Discussions

One of the most useful features of Signal, in my experience, is the ability to create encrypted group chats. Anyone can create a Signal group and add as many people as they’d like, and everyone in the group can send encrypted messages to everyone else. As with one-on-one Signal conversations, group chats support disappearing messages as well as photos and videos. Here are a few cases where Signal groups can prove useful:

  • Communicating as a team on work projects that are too sensitive for non-encrypted tools like Slack or HipChat
  • Keeping track of your friends and colleagues at a conference
  • Keeping track of your affinity group at a protest
  • Organizing a weekly TV watching night
  • Running a rogue Twitter account as a team

Here’s how to use Signal groups.

If you’re using Android:

  • From the list of Signal conversations, tap the menu icon in the top-right and choose “New group.”
  • Give your group a name, and pick which of your contacts you’d like to be a part of your group. Optionally, you can tap the circle to the left of the name field to choose an avatar for your group. Then tap the check in the top-right to create the group.
  • From within a group, you can click the people icon in the top-right to see a list of everyone else in the group.
  • From within a group, you can click the menu icon in the top-right for various options. You can click “Edit group” to change the group’s name or add new contacts. You can click “Leave group” to leave it yourself. You can also click “Mute notifications” if this is a noisy group and you don’t care to get notified for now.

If you’re using an iPhone:

  • From the list of Signal conversations, tap the pen icon in the top-right to start a new message. Then tap the people icon in the top-right to start a new group.
  • Give your group a name, and pick which of your contacts you’d like to be a part of your group. Optionally, you can tap the circle to the left of the name field to choose an avatar for your group. Then tap the plus in the top-right to create the group.
  • From within a group, you can tap the icon in the top-right corner for various options. From there, you can choose “Edit Group” to edit the group name or add new contacts to the group. You can choose “Leave Group” to leave the group yourself. And you can choose “List Group Members” to see who else is in the group with you.

While Signal groups are useful, they’re not without problems. Hopefully these will improve in the future, but as of this writing:

  • Anyone in the group can add new members, and it’s impossible to kick someone out of a group. People have to manually leave groups themselves. If someone who shouldn’t be in the group won’t leave it, you just have to make a new, separate group without them, and invite everyone else.
  • It can be annoying when someone in a group switches phones and their “safety numbers” change. (See more about safety numbers in the section below about verifying that the encryption isn’t under attack.)
  • There is a bug where, after you switch phones yourself, you’ll be able to receive incoming messages from groups you’re a part of, but you won’t be able to send messages to them yourself. There is a workaround: If another member edits the group, such as by changing its name, it will refresh the group settings and you’ll be able to post to it again.

Make Secure Voice and Video Calls

In addition to enabling secure text messaging, Signal can also be used to make encrypted voice and video calls. While you’re in a text conversation with someone, just tap the phone icon to call them. When they answer, you can just start talking to them like on a normal call, but with the assurance that the Signal call is end-to-end encrypted. If you’d like to start a video call, tap the video camera icon on your phone during a voice call to turn on your camera. That’s it.

When you make a voice or video call, it’s possible for the person you’re calling to see what your IP address is, which could be used to learn your location. This probably doesn’t matter most of the time, but occasionally it might — for example, maybe you’d like to have a secure call with someone, but without letting them have any way of knowing what country you’re currently in. Signal has a feature that allows you to relay your calls through their server so that the person on the other end of the call can only see the Signal server’s IP address, and not yours. If you enable it, it will slow down your connection slightly, which might reduce the call quality. Here’s how to enable it:

If you’re using Android:

  • Open the Signal app, tap the menu icon in the top-right and choose “Settings.”
  • Go to Advanced, and turn on “Always relay calls.”

If you’re on an iPhone:

  • Open the Signal app and click the gear icon in the top-left to get to Signal’s settings.
  • Go to Privacy, and turn on “Always Relay Calls.”

Send Messages to Numbers Without Adding Them to Your Contacts

Most people sync their phone contacts to iCloud, Google, their employer, or other cloud services. This can be very convenient: If you lose your phone and buy a new one, you don’t lose all of your contacts. But this means that your contact list is accessible to the service providers you sync to – and by extension, it’s also accessible to law enforcement that can send data requests to those service providers.

You might have some contacts that you need to talk to securely, but don’t want those phone numbers ending up in your contact list. For example, if you want to leak something to a journalist without becoming a suspect in a leak investigation, you’ll need to avoid having the journalist’s phone numbers in your contacts that get synced to the cloud.

Signal allows you to start conversations with people that aren’t in your contact list. To do this, open the Signal app, tap the pen icon to start a new conversation, and type a phone number in the search field. If that phone number has a Signal account, you can then send an encrypted message – without adding the phone number as a contact in your phone.

Verify That the Encryption Isn’t Under Attack Using Safety Numbers

Sorry if this section is confusing for you – the inner-workings of encryption are always somewhat confusing. The important part is that you learn how to verify safety numbers below.

I said earlier that Signal ensures your communications stay private when it is properly verified. Using Signal properly involves verifying that your communications are not subject to a “man-in-the-middle attack.”

A man-in-the-middle attack is where two parties — Alice and Bob, for example — think they’re speaking directly to each other, but instead, Alice is speaking to an attacker, Bob is speaking to the same attacker, and the attacker is connecting the two, spying on everything along the way. In order to fully safeguard your communications, you have to take extra steps to verify that you’re encrypting directly to your friends and not to impostors.

You and each of your Signal contacts share a unique “safety number.” For example, Alice has one safety number with Bob, but she has a different safety number with Charlie. When Alice compares the safety number she sees on her phone with the number Bob sees on his, if the numbers are the same, that means the encryption is secure. But if the numbers are different, something is wrong: Maybe Alice is seeing a safety number between her and an attacker, or Bob is seeing a safety number between him and an attacker, and this is why they don’t match.

Because it’s unlikely that anyone is trying to attack your encryption the very first time you send a contact a message, Signal automatically trusts the first safety number that it sees for each contact. (If you discuss anything sensitive, you might want to confirm anyway).

To verify that your encryption is secure, first navigate to the verification screen:

  • Open the Signal app and tap on a conversation to open it.
  • Tap the contact’s name at the top of the screen.
  • Tap “Verify Safety Number.”

There are different ways to verify with a friend that your safety numbers match. It’s easiest to do when you’re in the same room, but it’s also possible to verify remotely.

Verifying a Contact In Person

If you’re able to meet up in person, one of you simply needs to scan the other’s QR code. Android users tap the QR code circle to scan, and iPhone users tap the “Scan Code” camera icon at the bottom to scan. Point your camera at your friend’s QR code to scan it, and if it’s successful, that means your encryption is secure.

Verifying a Contact Remotely

If you can’t meet up in person, you can still verify that your safety numbers match remotely — however, it’s kind of annoying.

You need to share the safety numbers you see with your contact using some out-of-band communication channel — that is, don’t share it in a Signal message. Instead, share it in a Facebook message, Twitter direct message, email, or phone call. You could also choose to share it using some other encrypted messaging app, such as WhatsApp or iMessage. (If you’re feeling paranoid, a phone call is a good option; it would be challenging for an attacker to pretend to be your contact if you recognize their voice.)

Once your contact gets your safety number, they need to navigate to the verification screen and compare, digit by digit, what you sent them with what they see. If they match, your conversation is secure.

For both Android and iPhone, you can tap the share icon in the top-right corner of the verification screen to share your safety numbers using other apps, or to copy them to your phone’s clipboard.

Verifying a Contact Who Gets a New Phone

From time to time, you might see a warning in a Signal conversation that says “Safety number changed. Tap to verify.” This can only mean one of two things:

1.Your Signal contact switched to a new installation of Signal, most likely because they bought a new phone, or,

2.An attacker is trying to insert themselves into your Signal conversations.

The latter is less likely, but the only way to rule it out completely is to again go through one of the verification processes for text contacts described above.

Using Signal on Your Computer

While you need to install Signal on your phone to begin with, there’s also a desktop app you can install on your computer. It doesn’t have all of the features that the mobile app has – you can’t make calls or modify groups yet. But it can make using Signal much more convenient, especially if you’re like me and are in front of your computer all day long, and rely on Signal for work.

The desktop version of Signal is a Chrome app. So first, you need the Chrome web browser on your computer. Then you can install Signal from the Chrome web store. When you first set up Signal on your desktop, follow the instructions to connect it to the Signal on your phone.

Keep in mind that, by setting up Signal on your computer, you’re opening up new avenues for attackers to read your private Signal conversations. Think of it like this: When you just use Signal on your phone, if someone wants to read your private conversations, they have to hack your phone. But if you use it on both your phone and your computer, they have to hack either your phone or your computer, whichever is easier – and, because of the differences in how desktop and mobile operating systems are designed, chances are it’s easier to hack into your computer.

Your Signal data is also stored more securely on your phone. On Android and iOS, your Signal messages — and your encryption key — are stored within the app, and no other apps have access to it. But on Windows, macOS, and Linux, this same data is stored in a folder on your hard drive, and nearly all of your apps have access to it. So, in some situations, it might be prudent to choose not to use Signal on your computer at all.

Decline in consumption leads to slowest US economy growth in 3 years

April 28, 2017

RT

The US economy showed its weakest performance since 2014 in the first three months of the year after consumer spending sharply slowed and businesses invested less in inventories.

The country’s GDP increased at a mere 0.7 percent annual rate, down from 2.1 percent and 3.5 percent in the second half of 2016. Analysts surveyed by Reuters expected growth of 1.2 percent last quarter.

The decline in growth is due to the smallest increase in consumer spending since the end of 2009, which broadly mirrors fewer car sales. Consumer spending grew only 0.3 percent, reflecting a steep drop from the 3.5 percent gain at the end of 2016.

However, a decline in consumption spending is unlikely to take hold. In the winter, Americans spent less on home heating fuel, clothes and gasoline due to unseasonably warm weather in February.

At the same time, household finances are currently on the up, boosted by stock market gains, gradually rising wages as well as a strong labor market.

Cuts in government spending also had an impact on economic growth. Government spending dropped at a 1.7 percent rate as defense outlays declined by 4 percent, the biggest drop since the fourth quarter of 2014.

Moreover, businesses scaled back on inventory production not to get stuck with lots of unsold goods on warehouse shelves. Companies accumulated stock at a rate of $10.3 billion, down from $49.6 billion in the previous quarter.

Investments in home building rose by 13.7 percent from January to March, marking the construction sector as a major driver for the US economy.

Spending on mining exploration, wells, and drilling rigs swelled at a record pace of 449 percent after growing 23.7 percent in the fourth quarter of 2016.

Spending on nonresidential structures accelerated by 22.1 percent in the first quarter after declining by 1.9 percent in the previous quarter.

Exports increased 5.8 percent, outpacing the 4.1 percent rate increase in imports, leaving a smaller trade deficit that reportedly had a neutral impact on GDP growth.

The Hitler conference transcriptions

May 1, 2017

by Harry von Johnston PhD

Following a misunderstanding at Hitler’s Headquarters after the commencement of Operation Barbarossa in June of 1941, Hitler determined to transcribe all of his military conferences. At the same time, his trusted aide, Reichsleiter Martin Bormann decided to also transcribe Hitler’s late evening personal conversations for posterity. To accomplish, Bormann used the services of several of the stenographers assigned to the Headquarters. One of these was Heinrich Heim and the other was Dr. Henry Picker.

Their notes were typed up after each conversation, two copies prepared and the final drafts signed personally by Bormann. As the final battle for Berlin raged, he had all of these notes smuggled out of Berlin by a special courier.

The records of Hitler’s military conferences ended up at the Obersalzburg and were partially burnt. Surviving documents have been published extensively.

Insofar as the authenticity of these transcripts is concerned, there is absolutely no question whatsoever. These documents exist in their original form in several libraries and private archives and have never been brought into question. There are always questions of the correctness of translations but not of the originality of the documents themselves.

Herewith is an interesting commentary by Hitler about his problems with Jews in Germany.

Transcript V

13th February 1945

Facing the Jewish problem with realism-The stranger who cannot be assimilated-A typically Jewish war- Exit the furtive Jew and enter Judica gloriosa-While Jews exist there will always be anti-semitism-The futility of racial hatred-cross-breeding a failure- Prussian pride justified-The Atticism of the Austrians-The modern German type-In reality there is no such thing as a Jewish race-Superiority of mind over body-My honesty in dealing with the Jews

It is one of the achievements of National Socialism that it was the first to face the Jewish problem in a realistic manner.

The Jews themselves have always aroused anti- semitism. Throughout the centuries, all the peoples of the world, from the ancient Egyptians to ourselves, have reacted in exactly the same way. The time comes when they become tired of being exploited by the disgusting Jew. They give a heave and shake them- selves, like an animal trying to rid itself of its vermin. They react brutally and finally they revolt. It is an instinctive reaction, a reaction of repugnance against a stranger who refuses to adapt himself and become part of the whole, a parasite which clings to the host, imposes on it and exploits it to the utmost. By nature, the Jew is a parasite which cannot and will not be assimilated. A distinguishing feature of the Jew is that, unlike other foreigners, he everywhere claims all the rights of citizenship in the community that shelters him-and at the same time remains always a Jew. He regards it as his right to be allowed to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds; and he is the only man in the whole world to claim such an extravagant privilege.

National Socialism has tackled the Jewish problem by action and not by words. It has risen in opposition to the Jewish determination to dominate the world; it has attacked them everywhere and in every sphere of activity; it has flung them out of the positions they have usurped; it has pursued them in every direction, determined to purge the German world of the Jewish poison. For us, this has been an essential process of disinfection, which we have prosecuted to its ultimate limit and without which we should ourselves have been asphyxiated and destroyed.

With the success of the operation in Germany, there was a good chance of extending it further afield. This was, in fact, inevitable, for good health normally triumphs over disease. Quick to realize the danger, the Jews decided to stake their all in the life and death struggle which they launched against us. National Socialism had to be destroyed, whatever the cost and even if the whole world were destroyed in the process. Never before has there been a war so typically and at the same time so exclusively Jewish.

I have at least compelled them to discard their masks. And even if our endeavors should end in failure, it will only be a temporary failure. For I have opened the eyes of the whole world to the Jewish peril.

One of the consequences of our attitude has been to cause the Jew to become aggressive. As a matter of fact, he is less dangerous in that frame of mind than when he is sly and cunning. The Jew who openly avows his race is a hundred times preferable to the shameful type which claims to differ from you only in the matter of religion. If I win this war, I shall put an end to Jewish world power and I shall deal the Jews a mortal blow from which they will not recover. But if I lose the war, that does not by any means mean that their triumph is assured, for then they themselves will lose their heads. They will become so arrogant that they will evoke a violent reaction against them. They will, of course, continue to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds, to claim the privileges of citizenship in every country and, without sacrificing their pride, continue to remain, above all, members of the Chosen Race. The shifty, the shamefaced Jew will disappear and will be replaced by a Jew vainglorious and bombastic; and the latter will stink just as objectionably as the former-and perhaps even more so. There is, then, no danger in the circumstances that anti-Semitism will disappear, for it is the Jews themselves who add fuel to its flames and see that it is kept well stoked. Before the opposition to it can disappear, the malady itself must disappear. And from that point of view, you can rely on the Jews: as long as they survive, anti-Semitism will never fade.

In saying this, I promise you I am quite free of all racial hatred. It is, in any case, undesirable that one race should mix with other races. Except for a few gratuitous successes, which I am prepared to admit, systematic cross-breeding has never produced good results. Its desire to remain racially pure is a proof of the vitality and good health of a race. Pride in one’s own race-and that does not imply contempt for other races-is also a normal and healthy sentiment. I have never regarded the Chinese or the Japanese as being inferior to ourselves. They belong to ancient civilizations, and I admit freely that their past history is superior to our own. They have the right to be proud of their past, just as we have the right to be proud of the civilization to which we belong. Indeed, I believe the more steadfast the Chinese and the Japanese remain in their pride of race, the easier I shall find it to get on with them.

This pride of race is a quality which the German, fundamentally, does not possess. The reason for this is that for these last three centuries the country has been torn by internal dissension and religious wars and has been subjected to a variety of foreign influences; to the influence, for example, of false Christianity as taught by the many proselyte preachers in today’s churches. When pride of race manifests itself in a German, as it sometimes does and in a most aggressive form, it is in reality nothing more than a compensatory reaction for that inferiority complex from which so many Germans suffer. This, I need hardly say, does not apply to the Prussians. From the time of Frederick the Great they have possessed that quiet and simple pride which is the hall-mark of people who are sure of themselves and who have no need of ostentation to bear witness to what they are. Thanks to those qualities which are inherently theirs, the Prussians were able, as they well showed, to create a united Germany. National Socialism has tried to give to all Germans that pride which hitherto has been possessed by the Prussians alone among us.

The Austrians, too, have in their blood a pride very akin to that of the Prussians, a pride born of the fact that for centuries they have never been dominated by any other race, but have, on the contrary, been for a very long time the ones who gave orders and were obeyed. They possess the accumulated experience of domination and power, and to that is attributable that panache of Atticism which no one can gainsay.

In its crucible National Socialism will melt and fuse all those qualities which are characteristic of the German soul; and from it will emerge the modern German-industrious, conscientious, sure of himself yet simple withal, proud not of himself or what he is, but of his membership of a great entity which will evoke the admiration of other peoples. This feeling of corporate superiority does not in any way imply the slightest desire to crush and overwhelm others. We have, I know. on occasions exaggerated our cult of this sentiment, but that was necessary at the outset and we were compelled to jostle the Germans pretty roughly in order to set their feet on the right road. In the nature of things, too violent a thrust in any direction invariably provokes an equally violent thrust in the opposite direction. All this. of course, cannot be accomplished in a day. It requires the slow- moving pressure of time. Frederick the Great is the real creator of the Prussian type. In actual fact, two or three generations elapsed before the type crystallized  and before the Prussian type became a characteristic common to every Prussian.

Our racial pride is not aggressive except in so far as the Jewish race is concerned. We use the term Jewish race as a matter of convenience. for in reality and from the genetic point of view there is no such thing as the Jewish race. There does, however, exist a community, to which, in fact, the term can be applied and the existence of which is admitted by the Jews themselves. It is the spiritually homogeneous group. to membership of which all Jews throughout the world deliberately adhere, regardless of their whereabouts and of their country of domicile; and it is this group of human beings to which we give the title Jewish race.It is not, mark you, a religious entity, although the Hebrew religion serves them as a pretext to present themselves as such; nor indeed is it even a collection of groups, united by the bonds of a common religion.

 

 

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