TBR News November 15, 2019

Nov 15 2019

The Voice of the White House
Washington, D.C. November 15, 2019:“Working in the White House as a junior staffer is an interesting experience.
When I was younger, I worked as a summer-time job in a clinic for people who had moderate to severe mental problems and the current work closely, at times, echos the earlier one.
I am not an intimate of the President but I have encountered him from time to time and I daily see manifestations of his growing psychological problems.
He insults people, uses foul language, is frantic to see his name mentioned on main-line television and pays absolutely no attention to any advice from his staff that runs counter to his strange ideas.
He lies like a rug to everyone, eats like a hog, makes lewd remarks to female staffers and flies into rages if anyone dares to contradict him.
It is becoming more and more evident to even the least intelligent American voter that Trump is vicious, corrupt and amoral. He has stated often that even if he loses the election in 2020, he will not leave the White House. I have news for Donald but this is not the place to discuss it.
Commentary for November 15: “This bribing the Ukranians to fake up negative information on Biden’s son is not only stupid but indicative of the mentality of a man without morals and addicted to criminal behavior. Now he is in the Oval Office enriching himself and his family but soon, he will be singing another tune. He will scream that he is being framed and beg the very far right to bring their guns to DC and keep him in office. This will not happen and we might see him barricaded in his office, screaming insults at the police trying to break down the door.”

The Table of Contents
• Trump adviser Stone found guilty of lying to Congress, obstruction, witness tampering
• ‘Very intimidating’ – Trump launches Twitter attack on witness during impeachment testimony
• When Did Ukraine Become a ‘Critical Ally’?
• Ukraine for Dummies
• US and NATO’s Ongoing Support for Neo-Nazis in Ukraine
• Giuliani offers bizarre explanation for ‘misleading’ claims about Clinton
• The CIA Confessions: The Crowley Conversations
• Encyclopedia of American Loons

Trump adviser Stone found guilty of lying to Congress, obstruction, witness tampering
November 15, 2019
by Sarah N. Lynch
Reuters
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A jury convicted U.S. President Donald Trump’s longtime adviser Roger Stone on Friday, finding the long-time Republican operative and self-proclaimed “dirty trickster” guilty on seven criminal counts of lying to Congress, obstruction and witness tampering.
The verdict, in a trial arising from investigations of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election, is not only a blow to Stone but renews scrutiny on Trump’s actions as a candidate at a time when he faces an impeachment inquiry that could derail his presidency.
Stone, a 67-year-old veteran Republican political operative and a self-described “dirty trickster” and “agent provocateur” was charged this year by Special Counsel Robert Mueller with obstructing justice, witness tampering and lying to the U.S. House of Representatives Intelligence Committee during its investigation into Russian election interference.
Stone’s colorful trial in federal court in Washington was as much about the rough-and-tumble world of politics as it was about technical legal arguments, such as whether Stone truly lied about WikiLeaks since that website was never explicitly mentioned in the intelligence committee’s publicly stated parameters of its probe.
Stone and his lawyers had no immediate comment.
The trial featured multiple references to the film “The Godfather Part II,” a Bernie Sanders impression by a prosecution witness, and testimony by political heavyweights including former Trump campaign CEO Steve Bannon and former Trump deputy campaign chairman Rick Gates. Those witnesses said they believed Stone had inside information about when WikiLeaks might release more damaging emails about Trump’s Democratic 2016 election opponent Hillary Clinton.
Prosecutors accused Stone of telling lawmakers five different lies related to WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange, which in 2016 disclosed a series of damaging emails about Democrat Clinton that U.S. intelligence officials and Mueller determined had been stolen by Russian hackers.
Some of those lies related to the existence of certain texts or emails, while others pertain to Stone’s conversations with Trump campaign officials and a supposed “intermediary” with WikiLeaks in early August 2016 whom Stone identified to lawmakers as being comedian Randy Credico.
Prosecutors said Stone did not actually start talking to Credico about WikiLeaks until later that month, and the actual person to whom he was referring in testimony as an “intermediary” was conservative author Jerome Corsi, who Stone dispatched in an email to “Get to Assange!” and get the emails.
Corsi was not called as a witness in the trial.
Stone, a close Trump ally who famously has the face of former president Richard Nixon tattooed on his back, was also accused of tampering with a witness, Credico, when Credico was summoned to testify before Congress and speak with the FBI.
Both Stone and Credico have since said that Credico did not act as a WikiLeaks back channel.
WikiLeaks made public a private Twitter exchange between itself and Stone in which the website distanced itself from Stone, saying “false claims of association are being used by the democrats to undermine the impact of our publications.”
In emails and texts, the jury saw messages that Stone had sent Credico that included comments like “Prepare to die,” “You’re a rat. A stoolie,” and “Stonewall it. Plead the Fifth. Anything to save the plan,” in a reference to a famous Nixon Watergate quote.
He also repeatedly urged Credico to “do a Frank Pentangeli” – a reference to a “Godfather II” character who recants his congressional testimony against a mobster amid intimidation.
A lawyer for Stone dismissed the Pentangeli reference, saying Credico had done impressions of the character in the past, and said the “odious language” they used was just part of how they interacted.
Trump is facing an impeachment inquiry in the U.S. House of Representatives focusing on his request that Ukraine carry out two investigations that would be politically beneficial to him including one targeting Democrat Joe Biden.
Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; Additional reporting by Mark Hosenball; Editing by Will Dunham and Grant McCool

‘Very intimidating’ – Trump launches Twitter attack on witness during impeachment testimony
November 15, 2019
by Susan Cornwell, Richard Cowan and Patricia Zengerle
Reuters
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump launched a Twitter attack on a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine on Friday while she was testifying to an impeachment hearing in Congress, in an extraordinary moment that Democrats said amounts to witness intimidation.
Marie Yovanovitch, a career diplomat, was explaining to the second day of televised impeachment hearings how she fought corruption in Ukraine and how the Trump administration pulled her back to Washington abruptly earlier this year.
Democrats say her removal was aimed at clearing the way for Trump allies to persuade Ukraine to launch corruption investigations into Democratic presidential contender Joe Biden and his son Hunter, who was on the board of a Ukrainian energy company.
As Yovanovitch testified, Trump fired off his criticism on Twitter, a move Democrats labeled “real-time” witness intimidation.
“Everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad. She started off in Somalia, how did that go?” Trump asked.
In the most dramatic moment of the impeachment hearings that began on Wednesday, Adam Schiff, the Democrat chairing the hearing in the House Intelligence Committee, asked Yovanovitch for her reaction to the tweet. She said it was “very intimidating.”
“I can’t speak to what the president is trying to do, but I think the effect is to be intimidating,” she said.
Schiff replied: “Well, I want to let you know, ambassador, that some of us here take witness intimidation very, very seriously.”
Afterwards, Democratic Representative Eric Swalwell, a member of the committee, told reporters the Trump attack could be considered for a separate article of impeachment against Trump for obstruction.
“It’s evidence of more obstruction: intimidating, tampering with the witness’s testimony. But it really goes to guilt, his knowledge of what he did,” Swalwell said. “Innocent people just don’t do this.”
But Republican Representative Jim Jordan dismissed any suggestion that Trump’s tweets were witness intimidation.
“The witness is testifying. She wouldn’t even have known about the quote, if Mr. Schiff hadn’t read the tweet,” he said.
The session is part of the Democratic-led impeachment inquiry that threatens Trump’s presidency even as he seeks re-election in November 2020.
Yovanovitch was removed from her post as ambassador to Kiev in May after coming under attack by Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, at a time when he was working to persuade Ukraine to carry out two investigations that would benefit the Republican president politically.
But Republican Representative Jim Jordan dismissed any suggestion that Trump’s tweets were witness intimidation.
“The witness is testifying. She wouldn’t even have known about the quote, if Mr. Schiff hadn’t read the tweet,” he said.
The session is part of the Democratic-led impeachment inquiry that threatens Trump’s presidency even as he seeks re-election in November 2020.
Yovanovitch was removed from her post as ambassador to Kiev in May after coming under attack by Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, at a time when he was working to persuade Ukraine to carry out two investigations that would benefit the Republican president politically.
The money, approved by the U.S. Congress to help U.S. ally Ukraine combat Russia-backed separatists, was later provided to Ukraine.
Trump denies any wrongdoing.
Yovanovitch said her removal had undercut the foreign diplomatic corps and said it made her feel “terrible” and she did not understand it.
“I had no agenda other than to pursue our stated foreign policy goals,” she said. “I still find it difficult to comprehend that foreign and private interests were able to undermine U.S. interests in this way.”
Schiff said Yovanovitch was removed because “she was considered an obstacle to the furtherance of the president’s personal and political agenda. For that she was smeared and cast aside.”
Reporting by Patricia Zengerle, Susan Cornwell, Richard Cowan, David Morgan and Karen Freifeld; Writing by John Whitesides; Editing by Scott Malone and Alistair Bell

When Did Ukraine Become a ‘Critical Ally’?
November 15, 2019
by Patrick J. Buchanan
On hearing the State Department’s George Kent and William Taylor describe President Donald Trump’s withholding of military aid to Ukraine, The New York Times summarized and solemnly endorsed their testimony:
“What clearly concerned both witnesses wasn’t simply the abuse of powerby the President, but the harm it inflicted on Ukraine, a critical ally, under constant assault by Russian forces.”
“’Even as we sit here today, the Russians are attacking Ukrainian soldiers in their own country, and have been for four years,’ Taylor said. ‘I saw this on the front line last week; the day I was there a Ukrainian soldier was killed and four more wounded.’”
Kent compared Ukrainian resistance to Russia’s intervention on the side of the Donbass secessionists to “our own Minutemen in 1776.”
“More than 13,000 Ukrainians have died on Ukrainian soil defending their territorial integrity and sovereignty from Russian aggression. … Americans support in Ukraine’s own de facto war of independence has been critical.”
Kent went on:
“The American colonies may not have prevailed against British imperial might without help from transatlantic friends after 1776. In an echo of Lafayette’s organized assistance to General George Washington’s army and Admiral John Paul Jones’ navy, Congress has generously appropriated over $1.5 billion over the past five years in desperately needed train and equip security assistance to Ukraine…”
“Similar to von Steuben training colonials at Valley Forge, U.S. and NATO allied trainers develop the skills of Ukrainian units at Yavoriv near the Polish border, and elsewhere. They help rewrite military education for Ukraine’s next generation, as von Steuben did for America’s first.”
“One would think, listening to this,” writes Barbara Boland, the American Conservative columnist, “that the U.S. had always provided arms to Ukraine, and that Ukraine has relied on this aid for years. But this is untrue and the Washington blob knows this.”
Indeed, Ukraine has never been a NATO ally or a “critical ally.”
Three decades ago, George H.W. Bush implored Ukraine not to set out on a course of “suicidal nationalism” by declaring independence from the Russian Federation. Despite constant pressure from Sen. John McCain and our neocons to bring Ukraine into NATO, wiser heads on both sides of the Atlantic rejectedthe idea.
Why? Because the “territorial integrity and sovereignty” of Ukraine is not now and has never been a vital interest of ours that would justify a U.S. war with a nuclear-armed Russia.
Instead, it was the avoidance of such a war that was the vital interest that nine U.S. presidents, from Truman to Bush I, secured, despite such provocations as the crushing of the Hungarian Revolution in 1956 and the building of the Berlin Wall.
In February 2014, the elected pro-Russian government of Viktor Yanukovych was overthrown by U.S.-backed protesters in Maidan Square, cheered on by McCain.This was direct U.S. intervention in the internal affairs of Ukraine. Victoria Nuland of the State Department conceded that we had dumped billions into Ukraine to reorient its regime to the West.
To Vladimir Putin, the Kyiv coup meant the loss of Russia’s historic Black Sea naval base at Sebastopol in Crimea. Rather than let that happen, Putin effected an uprising, Crimea’s secession from Ukraine, and the annexation by Russia. In eastern Ukraine, the pro-Russian Donbass rose up in rebellion against the pro-NATO regime in Kyiv.
Civil war broke out. We backed the new regime. Russia backed the rebels. And five years later, the war goes on. Why is this our fight?
During the Obama years, major lethal aid was denied to Ukraine.
The White House reasoned that arming Ukraine would lead to an escalation of the war in the east, greater Russian intervention, defeat for Kyiv, and calls for the U.S. to intervene militarily, risking a war with Russia.
Not until Trump became president did lethal aid begin flowing to Ukraine, including Javelin anti-tank missiles.
So where are we?
Despite dramatic depictions of Ukraine as our embattled ally, Ukraine has never been an ally. We are not now nor have we ever been obligated to fight for its sovereignty or territorial integrity. Efforts to bring Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia into NATO have been repeatedly rebuffed in the United States and by our European NATO allies.
Kent and Taylor are honorable men. But they are career diplomats of the Department of State and veteran advocates of a foreign policy that sees Russia as an enduring aggressor and Ukraine as a fighting ally entitled to U.S. military assistance.
They have, in the old phrase, gone native. They champion the policies of yesterday and the embattled countries to which they are accredited and to whose causes they have become converted.
But Trump was elected to overturn the interventionist policies America has pursued since the century began. He was elected to end Cold War II with Russia, to reach a modus vivendi as Reagan did, and to extricate us from the endless wars into which Presidents Bush and Obama plunged the nation.

Ukraine for Dummies
November 15, 2019
by Ray McGovern
AntiWar
There was no excuse for Congress’ ignorance of Ukraine. Here is a guide to help.
At Wednesday’s debut of the impeachment hearings there was one issue upon which both sides of the aisle seemed to agree, and it was a comic-book caricature of reality.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff led off the proceedings with this: “In 2014, Russia invaded a United States ally, Ukraine, to reverse that nation’s embrace of the West, and to fulfill Vladimir Putin’s desire to rebuild a Russian empire…”
Five years ago, when Ukraine first came into the news, those Americans who thought Ukraine was an island in the Pacific can perhaps be forgiven. That members of the House Intelligence Committee don’t know – or pretend not to know – more accurate information about Ukraine is a scandal, and a consequential one.
As Professor Stephen Cohen has warned, if the impeachment process does not deal in objective fact, already high tensions with Russia are likely to become even more dangerous.
So here is a kind of primer for those who might be interested in some Ukraine history:
•Late 1700s: Catherine the Great consolidated her rule; established Russia’s first and only warm-water naval base in Crimea.
•In 1919, after the Bolshevik Revolution, Moscow defeated resistance in Ukraine and the country becomes one of 15 Republics of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).
•In 1954, after Stalin’s death the year before, Nikita Khrushchev, a Ukrainian, assumed power. Pandering to Ukrainian supporters, he unilaterally decreed that henceforth Crimea would be part of the Ukrainian SSR, not the Russian SSR. Since all 15 Republics of the USSR were under tight rule from Moscow, the switch was a distinction without much of a difference – until later, when the USSR fell apart.
Nov. 1989: Berlin wall down.
•Dec. 2-3, 1989: President George H. W. Bush invites Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to summit talks in Malta; reassures him “the U.S. will not take advantage” of Soviet troubles in Eastern Europe. Bush had already been pushing the idea of a Europe whole and free, from Portugal to Vladivostok.
A Consequential Quid Pro Quo
•Feb. 7-10, 1990: Secretary of State James Baker negotiates a quid pro quo; Soviet acceptance of the bitter pill of a reunited Germany (insideNATO), in return for an oral US promise not to enlarge NATO “one inch more” to the East.
•Dec. 1991: the USSR falls apart. Suddenly it does matter that Khrushchev gave Crimea to the Ukrainian SSR; Moscow and Kyiv work out long-term arrangements for the Soviet navy to use the naval base at Sevastopol.
•The quid pro quo began to unravel in October 1996 during the last weeks of President Bill Clinton’s campaign when he said he would welcome Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic into NATO – the earlier promise to Moscow notwithstanding. Former US Ambassador to the USSR Jack Matlock, who took part in both the Bush-Gorbachev early-December 1989summit in Malta and the Baker-Gorbachev discussions in early February 1990,has said, “The language used was absolute, including no ‘taking advantage’ by the US… I don’t see how anybody could view the subsequent expansion of NATO as anything but ‘taking advantage,’ particularly since, by then, Russiawas hardly a credible threat.” (From 16 members in 1990, NATO has grown to 29 member states – the additional 13 all lie east of Germany.)
•Feb. 1, 2008: Amid rumors of NATO planning to offer membership to Ukraine, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warns US Ambassador William Burns that “Nyet Means Nyet.” Russia will react strongly to any move to bring Ukraine or Georgia into NATO. Thanks to WikiLeaks, we have Burns’s original cable from embassy in Moscow.
•April 3, 2008: Included in Final Declaration from NATO summit in Bucharest: “NATO welcomes Ukraine’s and Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic aspirationsfor membership in NATO. We agreed today that these countries will become members of NATO.”
•Early September 2013: Putin helps Obama resist neocon demands to do “shock and awe” on Syria; Russians persuade President Bashar al-Assad to give up Syrian army chemical weapons for destruction on a US ship outfittedfor chemical weapons destruction. Neocons are outraged over failing to mousetrap Obama into attacking Syria.
Meanwhile in Ukraine
•Dec.2013: In a speech to the U.S.-Ukraine Foundation, Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland says: “The United States has supported Ukraine’s European aspirations. … We have invested over $5 billion to assist Ukraine in these and other goals that will ensure a secure and prosperousand democratic Ukraine.”
•Feb. 4, 2014: Amid rioting on the Maidan in Kiev, YouTube carries Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland’s last minute instructions to US Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt regarding the US pick for new Ukrainian prime minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk (aka “Yats”) and other plans for the imminent coup d’etat in Kiev. (See: ) When Pyatt expresses concernabout EU misgivings about mounting a coup, Nuland says “Fuck the EU.” She then apologizes to the EU a day or two later – for the profanity, not for the coup. She also says that Vice President Joe Biden will help “glue this thing together”, meaning the coup.
•Feb.22, 2014: Coup d’etat in Kyiv; appropriately labeled “the most blatant coup in history” by George Friedman, then President of the widely respected think-tank STRATFOR.
•Feb. 23, 2014: The date that NATO, Western diplomats, and the corporate media have chosen – disingenuously – as the beginning of recent European history, with silence about the coup orchestrated in Kyiv the day before. President Vladimir Putin returns to Moscow from the winter Olympics in Sochi; confers with advisers about Crimea, deciding – unlike Khrushchev in 1954 – to arrange a plebiscite to let the people of Crimea, most of whom strongly opposed the coup regime, decide their own future.
•March16, 2014: The official result from the voters in Crimea voted overwhelmingly for independence from Ukraine and to join Russia. Following the referendum, Crimea declared independence from Ukraine and asked to join the Russian Federation. On March 18, the Russian Federal Assembly ratified the incorporation of Crimeainto Russia.
•In the following days, Putin made it immediately (and publicly) clear thatYatsenyuk’s early statement about Ukraine joining NATO and – even more important – the US/NATO plans to deploy ABM systems around Russia’s western periphery and in the Black Sea, were the prime motivating forces behind the post-referendumre-incorporation of Crimea into Russia.
•No one with rudimentary knowledge of Russian history should have been surprised that Moscow would take no chances of letting NATO grab Crimea and Russia’s only warm-water naval base. The Nuland neocons seized on the opportunity toaccuse Russia of aggression and told obedient European governments to follow suit. Washington could not persuade its European allies to impose stringent sanctions on Russia, though, until the downing of Malaysian Airlines MH17 over Ukraine.
Airplane Downed; 298 Killed
•July 17, 2014: MH17 shot down
•July 20, 2014: Secretary of State John Kerry told NBC’s David Gregory, “We picked up the imagery of this launch. We know the trajectory. We know where it came from. We know the timing. And it was exactly at the time that this aircraft disappeared from the radar.” The US, however, has not shared any evidence of this.
•Given the way US intelligence collectors had been focused, laser-like, on that part of the Ukrainian-Russian border at that time, it is a near certainty that the US has highly relevant intelligence regarding what actually happenedand who was most likely responsible. If that intelligence supported the accusations made by Kerry, it would almost certainly have been publicized.
•Less than two weeks after the shoot-down, the Europeans were persuaded to impose sanctions that hurt their own businesses and economies about as much as they hurt Russia’s – and far more than they hurt the US There is no sign that, in succumbing to US pressure, the Europeans mustered the courage to ask for a peek at the “intelligence” Kerry bragged about on NBC TV.
•Oct.27, 2016: Putin speaks at the Valdai International Discussion Club.
How did the “growing trust” that Russian President Putin wrote about in his September 11, 2013 New York Times op-ed evaporate?
How did what Putin called his close “working and personal relationship with President Obama” change into today’s deep distrust and saber-rattling? A short three years later after the close collaboration to resolve the Syrian problem peacefully, Putin spoke of the “feverish” state of international relations and lamented: “My personal agreements with the President of the United States have not produced results.” And things have gone downhill from there.

US and NATO’s Ongoing Support for Neo-Nazis in Ukraine
April 22, 2019
by Shane Quinn
Global Research
Over the past few months, NATO’s Jens Stoltenberg has continued outlining his organization’s “recognition” for Ukraine “to become a member of NATO”. Two weeks ago Stoltenberg pronounced publicly in Washington that “we work with Ukraine to help Ukraine move forward towards its transatlantic integration… we have trust funds, we have training, we have different kinds of activities which we are helping Ukraine”.
Comments like this are also a well-aimed provocation of nearby Russia. It is the equivalent of the Soviet Union having announced they had “trust funds” and “activities” occurring in Mexico, with the ultimate aim of luring America’s neighbour into the Moscow-led Warsaw Pact. Any such coercion by the Soviets would surely have drawn a swift military response from Washington.
It can occasionally be instructive to cast one’s eyes over a map of Europe, and a quick glance at the Ukraine reveals a long and winding border to the east with Russia; approximately 1,000 kilometres altogether no less. The Ukraine furthermore holds a generations-long history and association with Russia.
During the First World War, 3.5 million Ukrainians fought in the Imperial Russian Army, primarily in opposition to a German Empire which became a military dictatorship run by Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff – from late 1917 Tsarist forces ceased to exist as the October Revolution was implemented, ushering in the creation of Soviet Russia.
Over two decades later, up to seven million Ukrainian soldiers joined the Red Army during its “Great Patriotic War” against the Nazis. By 1945, around 2.5 million Ukrainian infantrymen within Soviet armies were killed by Hitler’s troops. The Ukraine’s young foot soldiers paid a heavy price indeed for their contribution in liberating Soviet lands from Nazi rule.
Andriy Parubiy
It has been rather galling, as a consequence, to witness the Ukraine in recent years led by a throng embedded with fascist figures – individuals with many years of neo-Nazi activism under their belts, such as Andriy Parubiy, Chairman of the Ukraine’s Parliament since April 2016 and co-founder of the fascist Svoboda party. Parubiy is an old associate of other neo-Nazis such as Svoboda chief Oleh Tyahnybok, Oleh Makhnitskyi and Dmytro Yarosh, the latter a Ukrainian Member of Parliament (MP) since late 2014 and a former leader of Right Sector, another fascist party.
These men are all followers of the terrorist Stepan Bandera, a Ukrainian Nazi who collaborated with the Third Reich before and during World War II. In early July 1941, with German soldiers pouring forward onto the frontiers of western Ukraine, Bandera’s “Act of Proclamation” declared,
“The newly formed Ukrainian state will work closely with the National Socialist-Greater Germany” and that Hitler “is forming a new order in Europe and the world and is helping the Ukrainian People to free itself from Moscovite occupation”.
In the postwar years, Bandera and his cronies received extensive protection from the Allied victors, enjoying significant aid and support from American and British intelligence services, the CIA and MI6.
For the meantime, Stoltenberg himself met recently with fascist Ukrainian MP Parubiy; as the NATO chief revealed via his twitter account on 27 November 2018, while he warmly shakes hands with him.
Stoltenberg is a former social-democratic Norwegian prime minister, who in his youth actively protested the Vietnam War. He has for years been servile to Washington’s whims, and is seemingly comfortable mingling with neo-Nazis under the NATO banner.
There are other fascists currently working as MPs in the Ukrainian parliament, such as Ihor Mosiychuk (former Svoboda member), Oleh Lyashko (Radical Party head), Yuriy Bereza (Dnipro Battalion leader), Serhiy Melnychuk (former Aidar Battalion commander) and Andriy Biletsky (founder of the neo-Nazi Social-National Assembly).
Almost all of the Ukraine’s far-right extremists are supporters of NATO and American-led military intervention, whilst many of them have enjoyed trips to see their de facto bosses in America. This includes Parubiy who visited Washington last summer, and he was previously in the US capital during February 2015, where he met among others senator John McCain and John Boehner, then speaker of the House. In the same outing, Parubiy held top level meetings with the US Department of State, Department of Defense and National Security Council. He was graced too with interviews from the editorial boards of the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal.
Parubiy was invited to Ottawa, Canada in February 2016, and can be seen smiling in photographs with prime minister Justin Trudeau. In November 2018 Parubiy had discussions with Antonio Tajani, president of the European Parliament – where Parubiy called on Brussels to strengthen sanctions against Russia, while he pushed forward with proposals for the Ukraine to eventually join both NATO and the EU, moves welcomed by Tajani.
In February 2019, EU Council President Donald Tusk was in Kiev where he spoke to the national parliament, and highlighted among other things that Ukrainian MPs should “be resolute in rejecting the lure of radical nationalism and populism, as you have done so far”. Tusk was seemingly unaware some of those he was addressing hold rather more extreme outlooks than that of “radical nationalists” or “populists”. Indeed, Parubiy himself could be viewed sitting directly in the background while Tusk was speaking.
Prior to the American-led coup in the Ukraine (confirmed by Barack Obama on CNN), it was clear that this action would increase the risk of nuclear war between the US and Russia. It is again by the grace of luck that such a devastating encounter has been avoided. The putsch represented a major antagonization of Russia, which has been a nuclear superpower for decades with understandable concerns relating to what occurs along its boundaries.
The US stations many dozens of its nuclear weapons in four EU and NATO countries: Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Belgium; and also in NATO country Turkey; bringing the total number of nuclear states in reality to over a dozen. The presence of nuclear devices in the countries above constitutes the most serious violation of their sovereignty, while further endangering Europe and the globe.
Despite a heightened risk of nuclear war, the Ukraine crisis has enjoyed consistent Western backing from the beginning. Many press reports regarding the Ukraine are of a particularly propagandist nature, describing the illegal overthrow of an elected leader as a “pro-western revolution” with Russia alone “fomenting a war in eastern Ukraine that has now killed more than 10,300 people and displaced 1.6 million”.
There is not a word explicated in these substandard accounts pertaining to crucial American involvement in the country. No comment is to be read either relating to the Western-supported neo-Nazi units fighting Moscow-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine; such as white supremacists known as the Azov Battalion and Donbas Battalion, which comprise part of the National Guard of Ukraine – along with other Nazi-style squadrons like the Aidar Battalion, that belongs to the Ukrainian Ground Forces. The Dnipro Battalion has provided support too, and is commanded by the above-mentioned far-right Ukrainian MP, Yuriy Bereza.
Rather, the readers are led to believe that it is Russia alone which has been “fomenting a war in eastern Ukraine”. Also unreported are the war crimes committed by the Azov, Donbas, Aidar and Dnipro battalions against Ukrainian civilians, which have gone unpunished; such as murder, torture, sexual assault and deliberate starvation of civilians. The Donbas Battalion commander Semen Semenchenko – another far-right figurehead and Ukrainian MP – has received invitations to America where he saw members of Congress and Pentagon representatives, while seeking “non-lethal aid” from the US.
In September 2014 Semenchenko said that, “I want to make Ukraine into another Israel”. Over four years ago, he was elected as a parliamentary deputy, a position he continues to hold. In December 2018, it was reported that Semenchenko was briefly detained in Tbilisi, Georgia while illegally attempting to purchase weapons there, and avoided arrest due to his possession of a diplomatic passport. President Petro Poroshenko previously praised the much-decorated Semenchenko for his “courage, commander’s endurance and moral fibre” while also eulogizing the Donbas Battalion as “real heroes”.
Poroshenko is in actual fact a US-sponsored proxy leader who has sought NATO and EU membership; he is moreover an ally of Israel, having repeatedly visited the expansionist state, and signed a “free trade agreement” during another trip to Israel in January this year. Poroshenko has toured the US many times, including a particularly ingratiating visit to the White House in June 2017, where president Donald Trump was apparently reluctant to meet him.
Relating to America’s role in the Ukraine, perhaps one should not be too surprised that the superpower implemented an administration with strong neo-Nazi links. US governments and their special services have a history of cooperation with Nazi henchmen dating to the conclusion of World War II. The US State Department and CIA worked willingly with former Nazis like General Reinhard Gehlen and “Butcher of Lyon” Klaus Barbie, employing them in the east to again destabilize the Soviet Union.
In the Ukraine, its 21st century fascist battalions receive much of their funding from oligarchs with ties to the West; such as powerful billionaire businessman Ihor Kolomoyskyi, who is a Ukrainian-Israeli-Cypriot citizen with a US visa and he has spent periods living in America – where he holds vested corporate interests in states like Ohio and West Virginia.
Kolomoyskyi is presently being investigated by the FBI after being accused of “ordering contract killings” along with undergoing probes relating to claims of “financial crimes”, such as embezzlement and the laundering of money into America. Kolomoyskyi is thought to be firmly supporting the campaign of comic actor Volodymyr Zelensky, favourite to become the Ukraine’s new head of state next week.
Kolomoskyi has ownership of major television networks in the Ukraine, which have provided Zelensky with a crucial platform so as to communicate with the nation’s populace. Zelensky has been compelled to deny his connections to Kolomoyskyi, but Poroshenko inevitably pounces upon these ties in order to score political points.
Viktor Yanukovych
Though the Ukraine as a state was far from an idyllic one under the ousted Viktor Yanukovych, conditions have noticeably deteriorated since the June 2014 assumption to power of Poroshenko. Corruption and avarice have increased, so too crime and homelessness, numerous neo-Nazis have gained positions in parliament, the general population is suffering from worsening poverty and disillusionment while state services disintegrate.
Led by a billionaire oligarch for almost five years, the Ukraine is today Europe’s poorest nation with about 60% of its people living below the poverty line. Not much of this bothers privileged elites, so long as the country remains benevolent to wealthy business interests.
Once more, little of these uncomfortable realities are ever covered in press articles. Entering 2019 and the New York Times, on 24 January, is still elaborating on its “pro-Western revolution” line, while denouncing former president Yanukovych as “a widely reviled figure”. The New York Times carefully avoids bestowing such a title upon Poroshenko, in spite of his being a more “widely reviled figure” than Yanukovych.
Just prior to his toppling in early 2014, Yanukovych’s approval ratings stood at 20%. Less than a month ago, Poroshenko’s popularity ratings were once more recorded at less than half that at 9%, making this ranking a “world low” for a government leader.

Giuliani offers bizarre explanation for ‘misleading’ claims about Clinton
Giuliani says of 2016 remarks implying he spoke to ‘active’ FBI agents: ‘I mean they are not old men, they can still do things’
November 15, 2019
by Stephanie Kirchgaessner in Washington
The Guardian
Rudy Giuliani offered the FBI an extraordinary – and seemingly implausible – explanation for “misleading” remarks he made on television just a month before the 2016 election about a “surprise” that could derail the Hillary Clinton campaign
The former New York mayor, who serves as a personal lawyer to Donald Trump, faced justice department scrutiny last year for remarks he made in October 2016 that strongly suggested he had insider knowledge about a secret FBI investigation into Clinton’s handling of classified information.
James Comey, the then FBI director, publicly disclosed that investigators were looking into new material in the Clinton matter shortly after Giuliani’s public comments, in what proved to be one of the most contentious and controversial decisions in the weeks before the 2016 vote, which Trump won.
In an interview with the Guardian this week, in response to questions about a 2018 leak investigation into the matter by the Department of Justice’s inspector general’s office, Giuliani acknowledged that he told the FBI that he had “probably misled” people when he suggested he had spoken to “current” and “active” FBI agents about the “surprise” Clinton was facing.
But far from acknowledging that he had simply made misleading remarks, Giuliani offered the Guardian a seemingly bizarre explanation for why he had used the words “current” and “active agents”.
In short, he suggested that when he used the word “current” agent he meant that the FBI agents were retired but still in the broader US workforce, and that when he said they were “active” agents, he meant they were retired but still physically youthful and able-bodied.
“Sometimes I described them as active agents, and I probably misled people when I said active agents, because what I meant by that one… was that they were people that I work with. I didn’t mean people that were ‘on duty’. I know agents that are 85 years old, and I know agents that are 60 years old, and I consider the 60-years-olds to be active agents,” he said.
Giuliani’s comments to the FBI were not considered “sworn testimony”, his attorney, Robert Costello said. However, Costello acknowledged that false statements to the FBI are punishable by perjury charge.
“I did concede to the FBI that the statements that I made to the press were confusing,” he said. “I use the word ‘active’ and ‘current’ … I mean they are not old men, they can still do things.”
Pressed by the Guardian about the fact that the common understanding of the term “active agent” would mean that an individual was still working for the FBI, Giuliani said his use of the words “current” and “active” were understood by people who work in the security business, though perhaps not be laymen.
“I didn’t want to speak to ‘on-duty’ agents because I knew it would be a problem for them, not for me … it could be a crime or a violation for [an on-duty agent] to do that,” he said.
Giuliani added that he had welcomed the chance to clarify his remarks, because he did not want the inspector general’s office to be “running around” searching for “some poor person that didn’t exist”.
“I have no reason not to tell you if I spoke to an FBI agent. He’s the one who would get in trouble, not me,” he said.
The status of the inspector general’s investigation is unclear. Christopher Wray, the current FBI director, has declined to discuss any leak inquiries in congressional hearings.
Giuliani said the two FBI agents who interviewed him seemed satisfied by his remarks and that he has not heard anything else about the matter.
The inspector general’s office declined to comment.
The Huffington Post, and later the New York Times, previously reported on the existence of the leak investigation, and that Giuliani had told investigators that he did not have prior knowledge that the FBI was investigating the email matter when he referred to a Clinton “surprise”.
Giuliani has emerged as a central figure in the impeachment investigation into Trump, and there are new questions about his honesty. An earlier report by the inspector general’s office into the FBI’s actions in 2016 included remarks by former attorney general Loretta Lynch, who told the DOJ that she had complained about the FBI’s New York field office to Comey in late 2016. Specifically, she complained that there were senior people in the office who hated Clinton.
The email investigation into Clinton ended without any finding of criminal wrongdoing.

The CIA Confessions: The Crowley Conversations
November 15, 2019
by Dr. Peter Janney
On October 8th, 2000, Robert Trumbull Crowley, once a leader of the CIA’s Clandestine Operations Division, died in a Washington hospital of heart failure and the end effects of Alzheimer’s Disease. Before the late Assistant Director Crowley was cold, Joseph Trento, a writer of light-weight books on the CIA, descended on Crowley’s widow at her town house on Cathedral Hill Drive in Washington and hauled away over fifty boxes of Crowley’s CIA files.
Once Trento had his new find secure in his house in Front Royal, Virginia, he called a well-known Washington fix lawyer with the news of his success in securing what the CIA had always considered to be a potential major embarrassment.
Three months before, on July 20th of that year, retired Marine Corps colonel William R. Corson, and an associate of Crowley, died of emphysema and lung cancer at a hospital in Bethesda, Md.
After Corson’s death, Trento and the well-known Washington fix-lawyer went to Corson’s bank, got into his safe deposit box and removed a manuscript entitled ‘Zipper.’ This manuscript, which dealt with Crowley’s involvement in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, vanished into a CIA burn-bag and the matter was considered to be closed forever.
The small group of CIA officials gathered at Trento’s house to search through the Crowley papers, looking for documents that must not become public. A few were found but, to their consternation, a significant number of files Crowley was known to have had in his possession had simply vanished.
When published material concerning the CIA’s actions against Kennedy became public in 2002, it was discovered to the CIA’s horror, that the missing documents had been sent by an increasingly erratic Crowley to another person and these missing papers included devastating material on the CIA’s activities in South East Asia to include drug running, money laundering and the maintenance of the notorious ‘Regional Interrogation Centers’ in Viet Nam and, worse still, the Zipper files proving the CIA’s active organization of the assassination of President John Kennedy..
A massive, preemptive disinformation campaign was readied, using government-friendly bloggers, CIA-paid “historians” and others, in the event that anything from this file ever surfaced. The best-laid plans often go astray and in this case, one of the compliant historians, a former government librarian who fancied himself a serious writer, began to tell his friends about the CIA plan to kill Kennedy and eventually, word of this began to leak out into the outside world.
The originals had vanished and an extensive search was conducted by the FBI and CIA operatives but without success. Crowley’s survivors, his aged wife and son, were interviewed extensively by the FBI and instructed to minimize any discussion of highly damaging CIA files that Crowley had, illegally, removed from Langley when he retired. Crowley had been a close friend of James Jesus Angleton, the CIA’s notorious head of Counterintelligence. When Angleton was sacked by DCI William Colby in December of 1974, Crowley and Angleton conspired to secretly remove Angleton’s most sensitive secret files out of the agency. Crowley did the same thing right before his own retirement, secretly removing thousands of pages of classified information that covered his entire agency career.
Known as “The Crow” within the agency, Robert T. Crowley joined the CIA at its inception and spent his entire career in the Directorate of Plans, also know as the “Department of Dirty Tricks. ”
Crowley was one of the tallest man ever to work at the CIA. Born in 1924 and raised in Chicago, Crowley grew to six and a half feet when he entered the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in N.Y. as a cadet in 1943 in the class of 1946. He never graduated, having enlisted in the Army, serving in the Pacific during World War II. He retired from the Army Reserve in 1986 as a lieutenant colonel. According to a book he authored with his friend and colleague, William Corson, Crowley’s career included service in Military Intelligence and Naval Intelligence, before joining the CIA at its inception in 1947. His entire career at the agency was spent within the Directorate of Plans in covert operations. Before his retirement, Bob Crowley became assistant deputy director for operations, the second-in-command in the Clandestine Directorate of Operations.
Bob Crowley first contacted Gregory Douglas in 1993 when he found out from John Costello that Douglas was about to publish his first book on Heinrich Mueller, the former head of the Gestapo who had become a secret, long-time asset to the CIA. Crowley contacted Douglas and they began a series of long and often very informative telephone conversations that lasted for four years. In 1996, Crowley told Douglas that he believed him to be the person that should ultimately tell Crowley’s story but only after Crowley’s death. Douglas, for his part, became so entranced with some of the material that Crowley began to share with him that he secretly began to record their conversations, later transcribing them word for word, planning to incorporate some, or all, of the material in later publication.

Conversation No. 70
Date: Thursday, February 27, 1997
Commenced: 6:15 PM CST
Concluded: 6:38 PM CST

RTC: Gregory? Have I interrupted your dinner?
GD: Not at all. I eat later, if I think about it that is. I thought you’d be in bed by now, Robert. A problem?
RTC: Actually, yes, there is…or might be. Do you have some time there?
GD: Sure. Not a problem.
RTC: It’s about that Atwood person we spoke of earlier. Remember the one?
GD: Oh, yes, I do remember Atwood. Did old Critchfield off him?
RTC: No, not as I understand but there is unhappiness about Atwood’s proclivity to talk to the wrong people and you are certainly considered the wrong people. By Critchfield’s crowd. Jim does not like me any more over that Angolia business but one of our mutual friends was in touch with me yesterday about this and I thought I ought to discuss it with you. There are, or were, certain aspects to Atwood’s activities, both on and off the board, that there is some anxiety about. It’s known he had very dubious dealings with you six or seven years ago and you are considered to be a loose cannon. Atwood is considered to be a loose mouth and in my calling, that is not considered to be either wise or conducive of a long and happy life. Might I ask you what, if anything, Atwood discussed with you concerning his activities with the Company? Can you recall?
GD: My memory is very good, Robert, as you might have noticed.
RTC: I have. At times a great asset, Gregory, but at other times, a great liability. If you take my meaning?
GD: Oh, I do. Atwood? I got to know him while I was living in Munich in ’65. I was selling German militaria via the Shotgun News….
RTC: And that was….?
GD: Is. It’s a trade paper for gun and military collectors. In Hastings, Nebraska. I was a guest of Franzi von Otting and I used his name. Con premise and he got a percentage of the take. Anyway, Jimmy saw the advert and since he was in Germany, decided to look me up. He wrote and made an appointment and I met him in the lobby of the Vierjahrezeiten.
RTC: Pardon?
GD: A posh Munich hotel. He was staying there with two tarts. Bargirl types if you know what I mean. He was very polite and civil. Slight southern accent. Anyway, we had a long conversation about the collecting trade. Jimmy had written a book on Nazi daggers and was, as he admitted over a drink or two, having these made up in Solingen and selling them. He was making very good money and was highly ambitious. Made up Hermann Goering’s wedding sword and shoved it off on some stupid collector and, as I recall, Hitler’s suicide pistol. A Walther with ivory grips. Got it on the cover of Argosy magazine and sold it to another sucker in Canada. Anyway, we had a talk about creative selling and, as I recall, he was interested in my expertise on the historical aspects. I pointed out to him that in the picture of the alleged Hitler gun, the maker was Walther but their factory was in Ulm, not in what was now the DR. He laughed and said, as I remember, ‘well…you caught me….’ and on we went. I don’t drink very much but he certainly could put it away. And we went out to a restaurant and continued the talking. I learned a lot about him, the more he drank, but he learned nothing about me. Considering everything, that was just as well. I know he had a good opinion of me because in ’90 we went to Austria and dug up some buried Nazi concentration camp loot an SS general buried there in ’45.
RTC: And who might that have been?
GD: A Slovene named Globocnik. Had been the Gauleiter of Vienna until Hitler sacked him for stealing.
RTC: I was told about him. Not a nice person.
GD: No, but you used him after his faked suicide. The Brits sold him to you and you sent him down to Syria to help the rag heads.
RTC: Gregory, you are most interesting and informative. And I hope you are also discreet.
GD: Oh, I can be. Why the interest in Jimmy?
RTC: It has slowly dawned on certain exalted people that perhaps you might have gleaned some forbidden information about brother Atwood in the course of your wild career. Do go on
GD: Well, I don’t know what was, or is, forbidden, and what isn’t.
RTC: Why not just go on and let me be the judge of that. Please continue about Atwood.
GD: I will. Atwood was one of your people and was not only involved in merchandising and otherwise making a profit selling fake German militaria…
RTC: By German, you specifically mean Nazi, don’t you?
GD: Yes, of course. I’ll tell you about the market in a few minutes. Right now, I am going to fill you in on what I learned from James. I give you some background here on the very off chance that you know nothing about it. Since at least 1981 and probably earlier, there exists a worldwide network of ‘free-standing’, or especially and specifically. no direct U.S. government ties companies, including airlines, aviation and military spare parts suppliers, and trading companies, set up that have been put to good use by the CIA and the U.S. government to illegally ship arms and military spare parts to Iran and to the Contras. And, of course, to smuggle people who can’t go by commercial airlines and, let us not forget, drugs
RTC: I rather wish you would forget about drugs. I don’t think brother Atwood was involved with drugs. Do go on.
GD: Yes. These companies were set up with the approval and knowledge of senior CIA officials and other senior U.S. government officials and staffed primarily by ex-CIA, ex-FBI and ex-military officers. I am correct here?
RTC: Yes. Go on.
GD: You will probably end up hating me if I do, Robert, but I note you asked me to continue.
RTC: I think I am above that, Gregory.
GD: OK. Now let’s look at the Iran Contra business. I know all about at least a part of this so we can go into it a little. Secord’s arms shipments, arraigned through the CIA, transferred weapons destined for Central America to Merex. This was known officially as Merex International Arms and was, and is, based in Savannah. The Merex address was occupied by Combat Military Ordinances Ltd., controlled by Jimmy Atwood. He had been in the Army in MI and then went to work for your people. James was involved in major arms trades with your sponsored international buyers, specifically Middle Eastern Arab states. Monzer Al-Kassar utilized the Merex firm for some of his weapons transactions with the Enterprise. Now Merex was originally set up, after the war, by old Skorzeny co-worker, one Gerhard Mertins. Gerhard had been a Hauptmann (captain to you, Robert) in the German paratroopers and got the Knight’s Cross in, I believe, ’45. After the war, Mertins went to work in Bonn and the Merex arms business was considered a CIA proprietary firm. Mertex was close to and worked with the BND, the German intelligence service evolved from the CIA-controlled Gehlen organization. Atwood was involved with Interarmco, run by Samuel Cummings, an Englishman who ran the largest arms firm in the world. Cummings died in Monaco because he had looted his CIA employers and found that principality safer than Warrenton, Virginia. Also connected with Atwood’s firm were Collector’s Armory, run by one Thomas Nelson, whose nickname was ‘Red Nelson’ because of his hair color, not his politics, and a George Petersen of Springfield, Virginia, and one Manny Wiegenberg, a Canadian arms dealer. Jimmy was heavily involved in your support of Canadian separatists and I know something of his role in supplying weapons and explosives to the Quebec Libré movement. The head of your Canada Desk was actively encouraging this group to split away from Canada. I know for a fact that your people do not want ever to mention this little historical aside.
RTC: No, we do not, Go on.
GD:Also, I know all about Atwood’s connections with Skorzeny and the IRA/Provo wing. I can give you chapter and verse on this one if you want it. One of Atwood’s Irish connections is the man who blew up Lord Louis Mountbatten in 1979 and I have a file on this as well in some safe and private place You might also be aware of the shipping of weapons into the southern Mexican provinces by Atwood and his Guatemala based consortium. Atwood had a number of ex-Gestapo and SD people on board, some of whom were wanted. I recall a former SS officer, Frederich Schwend who worked with your people and was down in Lima. Schwend had been trained by the OSS in the early 1940s after he had informed Allen Dulles that the German SS had hidden millions in gold, cash, and loot as the European war was winding down. Atwood knew about the Weissensee gold hoard that Müller told me about. Jimmy knew about it but I had the overlay so he courted me and we ended up, shovels in hand, in the beautiful mountains in ’90.
RTC: Thee are conflicting stories about that business. You murdered two British people as I understand it.
GD: No such thing, Robert. As I understand it, and I was there, they fell off the boat in the middle of the Caribbean. Such lies your people make up.
RTC: Well, there are always two sides to every story, Gregory. You are better than two cups of coffee, I must say. I think I ought to get some Pepto Bismol pretty soon. After the Treasure Island adventure, what happened next?
GD: To Atwood? Well, as Jimmy told me, about 1992, he and your Jimmy Critchfield, along with a Russian Jew, formed a partnership in order to obtain a number of obsolete Soviet atomic artillery shells which they then sold to the Pakistanis. I think the two of them kept the money and no one ever saw the Jew again. If you don’t know this, I can tell you that both Critchfield and the Interarmco people had supplied weapons to the rebels in Afghanistan during their long and vicious guerrilla activities against the Soviet Union. Critchfield also worked with the Dalai Lama of Tibet in a guerrilla war against Communist China and headed a CIA task force during the Cuban missile crisis. He ran regional agency operations when the U.S. and the Soviets raced to secure satellites first in Eastern Europe, then in the Middle East. And note that in the early 1960s, Critchfield recommended to the CIA that the United States support the Baath Party, which staged a 1963 coup against the Iraqi government that the CIA believed was falling under Soviet influence. Critchfield later boasted, during the Iran-Iraq war that he and the CIA had created Saddam Hussein.
RTC: Gregory, where in the sweet hell did you get all of this?
GD: From Atwood when he was drunk.
RTC: You’ve just guaranteed that he will pass to his reward very soon. Does that bother you?
GD: I never liked him. He tried to rip me off once but he was so crude about it that I have no respect for him. Shall I go on?
RTC: I have approach-avoidance conflicts here, Gregory. You might as well ruin the rest of my evening. Proceed.
GD: Are you sure? You don’t sound too happy.
RTC: I am not but do go on.
GD: As you wish. When Arab oil became paramount, your Critchfield became your national intelligence officer for energy and was also an energy policy planner at the White House. He also fronted a dummy CIA corporation in the Middle East known as Basic Resources, which was used to gather OPEC-related intelligence for the Nixon administration. . Critchfield was the chief of the CIA’s Near East and South Asia division in the 1960s and a national intelligence officer for energy as the oil shortage crisis began in the early 1970s. Of course your people, along with the oil barons, forced the price of oil up and up. My, I wonder how much money you all made. Oh well, not important here. Critchfield retired in the mid ‘70s and ended up as both a consultant and the CEO of Tetra Tech International, a Honeywell Inc. subsidiary and which managed oil, gas, and water projects in the strategic Masandam Peninsula. This, in case your geography is weak, is located on the Strait of Hormuz, through which much of the West’s oil is transported. And at the same time, Critchfield was a primary adviser to the Sultan of Oman, focusing on Middle East energy resources, especially those in Oman.
RTC: I should never have asked you about this.
GD: The Bible says ask and ye shall receive.
RTC: Yes. We can forget the Bible here. It has no part in the intelligence business. You mentioned Merex. Do you know of other friendly assets?
GD: Surely, Try Aero Systems, Arrow Air, Global International, and how about Zenith?
RTC: Did you get these names from Atwood?
GD: Of course I did. I told you Jimmy was not discreet while he was drinking. I listened to his tales of self-importance and remembered it all. Oh, and I write it up as well.
RTC: Gregory, for the Lord God’s sake, if not mine, or more important, yours, do not discuss any of this with anyone else, your son or people like Willis Carto. If you aren’t careful, Critrchfield will have you eliminated. I shall have to warn him off on that topic but…I mean why would Atwood tell you such terrible things and if he told you, who else could he have told?
GD: One of his German whores, probably. Jimmy goes on and on.
RTC: So I note. And we can ring the curtain down on that one ASAP.
GD: From your reaction, Robert, I assume Jimmy was accurate.
RTC: No comment but Atwood is a dead man.
GD: Well, I might have gotten my insights from the back of a Wheaties’ box but Jimmy is a better candidate. Do you know why I dislike Jimmy and would frame his death notice? His wife stuck with him when he was arrested for tax evasion in smuggling in the ‘60s and as a mark of his appreciation, he deserted her and his two daughters to run off with one of his bar girls. The rest of his activities are one thing but I do not tolerate such domestic treachery. Do you think I’m being too critical?
RTC: What a question. Who cares about his wife and children? This man has gone way beyond the bounds. Way beyond. Of course I believe you. You could never have made all that up and I can assure you it was never in the New York Times. They might know some of it but they wouldn’t dare publish it. No, you got it from Atwood or someone connected with him. Ah, well, I did ask and I did receive. They hate you Gregory, they hate you with a passion but at the same time, they are scared shitless of you. They would have killed you some time ago but others counseled them against it. Who knows what you put down on paper? If you were run over by a truck in the middle of a shopping mall or attacked and eaten by a leopard in your own living room, who knows what might find its way out of some hiding hole and into the public? The public is happy with its football games and beer so we had best not disturb them with such stories.
GD: They might make a good movie out of all this.
RTC: Never, Gregory, I can promise you that. A studio that even considered this would be bankrupt within a few months. No, none of this will ever see the light of day and if you want to continue walking around, remember that silence is golden.
GD: I have no problem with gold. Just think of all that looted concentration camp gold Jimmy and I dug up.
RTC: Yes and I understand you cheated him out of his share.
GD: When thieves fall out, Robert, honest men prosper.
RTC: Meaning no disrespect but do you consider yourself to be an honest man?
GD: Selectively, Robert, selectively. And Jimmy?
RTC: Don’t make book on his seeing Christmas.

(Concluded at 6:38 PM CST)
.
https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Conversations+with+the+Crow+by+Gregory+Douglas

Encyclopedia of American Loons

Jordan Maxwell
A.k.a. Russell Pine (real name)
Jordan Maxwell is a grand old man of American conspiracy theory, crackpottery and nonsense. His work is largely responsible for the nonsense peddled in the incoherent, made-for-the-Internet “documentary” Zeitgeist, and he has apparently been an important influence on David Icke: Maxwell has long claimed that the world is secretly run by lizards from another dimension. He was also, for a while, editor of the Truth Seeker Magazine, has produced “documentaries” for CBS, and – of course – hosted his own radio show. Maxwell considers himself the world’s leading expert in the occult, based on his powers of imagination and inability to comprehend the significance of aligning one’s belief with reality. He is accordingly notable for having pushed more or less any conspiracy theory or branch of pseudoscientific nonsense you could think of, from ancient aliens and the claim that there is a star-gate in Iraq that teleports people to a military base on Mars, to 9/11 conspiracies.
A main strain of Maxwell’s, uh, thought is astro-theology, an astrological reinterpretation of theology according to which religious doctrines are based on astronomical events. He is also notable for pushing the (rather popular) idea that Christianity is really a variant of the cult of Horus, a conclusion reached by focusing on some similarities and disregarding the vast number of dissimilarities. Maxwell is known to rant for hours about these issues, backed up with a couple of Bible quotes and perceived connections between various events and his presuppositions. Maxwell, however, has little actual knowledge of ancient cultures and belief systems, which is an advantage since it means that there will be fewer facts available to him that would constrain his interpretations.
Much of his work is (in the grand tradition of the insane rantings unfettered by reality or accountability starting with Isidore of Seville) based on drawing ridiculous conclusions about the world based on often imagined etymological connections and similarities in names and expressions. Of course, Maxwell arguably knows even less, if possible, about linguistics than about history, and the technique he applies is the one commonly known as paleo-babble. Some examples of Maxwell’s paleobabble are discussed here. One example: According to Maxwell, “[m]agic wands were always made out of the wood of a Holly tree. It’s made out of Holly wood. Hollywood is a Druidic establishment and the symbols, the words, the terms, the stories, are designed. Think about it. Think about how Hollywood does what they do. I’m not saying they’re evil, I’m just explaining how Hollywood works.” Calling for readers to think for themselves is an effective trick given the critical reasoning abilities required to listen to Maxwell in the first place. Of course, druidic cultures using magic sticks didn’t in fact make these sticks of holly. Bah. Details.
From his website you can currently purchase a set of 28 DVDs containing “the entire works of Jordan Maxwell” for the neat price of $ 570.
Of course, like so many conspiracy theorists of his ilk, Maxwell is himself the target of numerous deranged conspiracy theories (an example), and is often accused of being a tool for the New World Order.
Diagnosis: Utterly ridiculous, of course, yet Maxwell’s influence on contemporary conspiracy theories is significant – he’s been through them all, using techniques and assertions unconstrained by truth, evidence or rules for rational inference

No responses yet

Leave a Reply