TBR News January 19, 2019

Jan 19 2019

The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Isaiah 40:3-8 

Washington, D.C. January 19, 2019:”Metallic sodium, easily available, put into a number 9 geletain capsule along with 00 buckshot is something not to put down a toilet in a tall office building or expensive hotel.

The water will eat through the capsule in time and when it contacts the sodium, it will burst into flame.

Most toilet systems have pockets of methane gas, caused by decaying fecal matter, and methane ignites at once if a flame is present.

And Mucinex, poured into the same toilet system will form thick pockets of goop that blocks the passage of water.

To get at it, or the damage from the sodium, means tearing large holes in walls and ceilings.

Insurance companies will pay out for the first episode but not any that might follow. They only bet on sure things.”

 

The Table of Contents

  • 815 false claims: The staggering scale of Donald Trump’s pre-midterm dishonesty No 18
  • Republicans’ lack of alarm over the shutdown reveals a disturbing truth
  • Trump’s Sex Tape Scandal
  • Russian hooker who had sex with Donald Trump mocks his “tiny penis”
  • Two years in, Donald Trump remains the ‘unprecedented president’
  • The CIA Confessions: The Crowley Conversations
  • Sacred Treasures in the Wrong Hands

 

 

815 false claims: The staggering scale of Donald Trump’s pre-midterm dishonesty No. 18

November 15, 2018

by Daniel Dale Washington Bureau Chief

Toronto Star

WASHINGTON—It took Donald Trump until the 286th day of his presidency to make 815 false claims.

He just made another 815 false claims in a month.

In the 31 days leading up to the midterm elections on Nov. 6, Trump went on a lying spree like we have never seen before even from him — an outrageous barrage of serial dishonesty in which he obliterated all of his old records.

How bad have these recent weeks been?

  • Trump made 664 false claims in October. That was double his previous record for a calendar month, 320 in August.
  • Trump averaged 26.3 false claims per day in the month leading up to the midterm on Nov. 6. In 2017, he averaged 2.9 per day.
  • Trump made more false claims in the two months leading up to the midterms (1,176), than he did in all of 2017 (1,011).
  • The three most dishonest single days of Trump’s presidency were the three days leading up to the midterms: 74 on election eve, Nov. 5; 58 on Nov. 3; 54 on Nov. 4.

As always, Trump was being more frequently dishonest in part because he was simply speaking more. He had three campaign rallies on Nov. 5, the day before he set the record, and eight more rallies over the previous five days.

But it was not only quantity. Trump packed his rally speeches with big new lies, repeatedly reciting wildly inaccurate claims about migrants, Democrats’ views on immigration and health care, and his own record. Unlike many of his lies, lots of these ones were written into the text of his speeches.

Trump is now up to 3,749 false claims for the first 661 days of his presidency, an average of 4.4 per day.

If Trump is a serial liar, why call this a list of “false claims,” not lies? You can read our detailed explanation here. The short answer is that we can’t be sure that each and every one was intentional. In some cases, he may have been confused or ignorant. What we know, objectively, is that he was not telling the truth.

Nov 3, 2018

“We have recognized the capital of Israel that opened the American Embassy in Jerusalem. And we opened it already. We didn’t just — we opened it. We converted a building. They were going to build a new building for probably for about $1.1 billion which would have ended up being $4 billion. How do you build a one-storey building for $1 billion? Any builders in the house? They’ll do it for $65,000. And it will be better but we converted a building that we had for less than $500,000 and it’s beautiful on the best site that we already owned, right in Jerusalem. Best location. We already had it. We already had it.”

Source: Campaign rally in Pensacola, Florida

in fact: The renovations required by the move of the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem will cost far more than $500,000. ABC News reported in July: “Documents filed with the official database of federal spending show that the State Department awarded the Maryland-based company Desbuild Limak D&K a contract for $21.2 million to design and build an ‘addition and compound security upgrades’ at the embassy. These updates will be made to the former consular building in Jerusalem — the embassy’s temporary location.” The ABC article continued: “A State Department official told ABC News today that President Trump’s estimates only factored in that first phase of modifications to the former consular building, not this second round of renovation.”

“…and we gave our great warriors and you have some of them right here. And I know you don’t want this. I know you’re willing to give this up. You don’t care. But regardless, and if you want you can give it back. We’ll work out a system. We gave them the largest pay raise in more than a decade. OK? Take it. You deserve it. Take it.”

Source: Campaign rally in Pensacola, Florida

in fact: The military pay increase in the 2019 defense bill, 2.6 per cent, is the largest in nine years, since the 3.4 per cent increase under Obama in 2010. We’ve let Trump get away with saying this is the largest increase in “a decade,” but “more than a decade” is incorrect.

“We passed Veterans Choice, giving our great veterans the right to see a private doctor when they have to wait in line for a week, for a month, for two months and three months. They’d be online with a very minor problem. Sometimes they wouldn’t be able to see a doctor for so long that by the time they got treatment, they would be terminally ill. Think of that. Just think of that. So now you go out, you see a doctor immediately. We pay for the doctor. We take care of our veterans. And frankly, this I don’t care about it compared to taking care of our veterans, but it’s also less expensive if you can believe that. Much less expensive. That’s another one. They’ve wanted to pass it for four decades. They could never get it passed. I got it passed.

Source: Campaign rally in Pensacola, Florida

in fact: The Veterans Choice health program was passed and created in 2014 under Obama. The law Trump signed in 2018, the VA MISSION Act, modified the Choice program.

“I called up Pfizer. I called up Novartis a month ago. They raised their drug prices very substantially. And there was no reason for them to do that. And I called up the heads of both companies and others, I say you can’t do this. You can’t raise your drug prices. This is not happening like that. And they immediately reduced their drug prices to the same price that it was the day before. They cut out the entire increase. And I respected them for doing that and I appreciated that they did it. Pfizer, Novartis, others, they did it.”

Source: Campaign rally in Pensacola, Florida

in fact: Trump pressured Pfizer and Novartis to reduce their drug prices in July, more than three months prior to these remarks, not “a month ago.” Trump has a habit of moving up the date of good news to make it sound more recent.

 

“We’ve added half a million manufacturing jobs since the election, now that’s going to go to 600,000 very shortly, 600,000 manufacturing jobs. Remember the previous administration said, ‘They’re not coming back. You’d need a magic wand. We found the magic wand.’”

Source: Campaign rally in Pensacola, Florida

in fact: The economy added 446,000 manufacturing jobs between Nov. 2016 and Oct. 2018. (Trump often gives himself credit for job growth at the end of the Obama era; it’s 416,000 jobs if you start counting in his first month in office, Jan. 2017.) Regardless, contrary to Trump’s frequent claim, the Obama administration never said manufacturing jobs “won’t happen anymore.” Rather, at a televised PBS town hall in Elkhart, Indiana in 2016, Obama said that certain manufacturing jobs “are just not going to come back” — but also boasted that some manufacturers are indeed “coming back to the United States,” that “we’ve seen more manufacturing jobs created since I’ve been president than any time since the 1990s,” and that “we actually make more stuff, have a bigger manufacturing base today, than we’ve had in most of our history.” Obama did mock Trump for Trump’s campaign claims that he was going to bring back manufacturing jobs that had been outsourced to Mexico, saying: “And when somebody says — like the person you just mentioned who I’m not going to advertise for — that he’s going to bring all these jobs back, well, how exactly are you going to do that? What are you going to do? There’s no answer to it. He just says, ‘Well, I’m going to negotiate a better deal.’ Well, how exactly are you going to negotiate that? What magic wand do you have? And usually the answer is he doesn’t have an answer.” But, again, Obama made clear that he was talking about a certain segment of manufacturing jobs, not all of them.

“The Democrats only believe in defending the borders of other countries. They don’t believe in defending our country. Open borders, come on in means crime. That’s what it means.”

Source: Campaign rally in Pensacola, Florida

in fact: Democrats do not want open borders. Most of them support a less aggressive immigration policy than the one Trump advocates, but they are not calling for people to be able to walk across from Mexico unbothered.

 

“They want to sign up the illegal immigrants for free healthcare, free welfare, free education and guess what they really want? They want them voting because they believe they’ll be voting for Democrats every single time.”

Source: Campaign rally in Pensacola, Florida

in fact: Trump’s claim about voting is so misleading that we’re calling it false. Many Democrats, and a significant number of Republicans, want to offer the unauthorized immigrants currently in the country a path to citizenship, which would allow them to vote years down the road. They do not want to invite people into the country and “sign them up” to vote immediately, which was Trump’s clear suggestion.

“They (Democrats) want to invite caravan after caravan and it is a little suspicious how those caravans are starting. Isn’t it? Isn’t it a little? And I think it’s a good thing maybe that they did it. Did they energize our base or what?”

Source: Campaign rally in Pensacola, Florida

in fact: Democrats have not invited migrant caravans. Contrary to Trump’s suggestion, there is no evidence that Democrats had anything to do with the caravans being formed.

 

“That’s what they want to do. As we speak, Democrats are openly encouraging millions of illegal aliens to break our laws, violate our sovereignty, overrun our borders and destroy our nation in so many ways and we can’t let it happen.”

Source: Campaign rally in Pensacola, Florida

in fact: There is no basis for this claim.

“Democrats’ plan to destroy health care also includes raiding Medicare to fund illegal immigrants.”

Source: Campaign rally in Pensacola, Florida

in fact: There is no basis for this claim.

“But we will always protect patients with pre-existing conditions. Always. Always.”

Source: Campaign rally in Pensacola, Florida

in fact: This claim is belied by Republicans’ actions. The party has tried repeatedly during Trump’s presidency to replace Obamacare with a law that would give insurers more freedom to discriminate against people with pre-existing health conditions. As part of a Republican lawsuit to try to get Obamacare struck down, Trump’s administration is formally arguing that the law’s protections for pre-existing conditions are unconstitutional and should be voided. Trump has not said what he would like to replace these protections with.

“The Democrat plan would obliterate Medicare and eliminate Medicare Advantage for nearly 2 million Florida seniors who depend on it.”

Source: Campaign rally in Pensacola, Florida

in fact: Democrats’ “Medicare for all” proposals tend to be vague, but they would not take Medicare health insurance away from seniors. Rather, they would extend similar government-provided health insurance to younger people as well, and they would give current Medicare recipients additional coverage for things like vision and dental services.

“If Democrats gain power on Tuesday, one of their very first projects will be a socialist takeover of the American health care system. You can’t have it. They’ll destroy what we’re building and what we’re going to build.

Source: Campaign rally in Pensacola, Florida

in fact: Democrats did not plan to embark on a “socialist takeover of American health care” if they won back control of the House of Representatives. The likely new House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, has not committed to “Medicare for All” single-payer proposals, and she and other party leaders have said their focus would be protecting and improving Obamacare and reducing the cost of prescription drugs. While Democrats might indeed hold hearings or votes on “Medicare for All” at some point, they would be embarking on their efforts knowing they could not get a bill approved by Trump.

“And did you see Mexico’s trying. They are trying. And their military and their police stood guard and the level of viciousness with the rocks being thrown in their face. Their military was hurt. Their police, their law enforcement, they were hurt. We don’t put up with it. We don’t put up with it. We don’t want — we don’t want that in our country. We’re not going to have it in our country. They broke through. Think of it. They broke through the Mexican military and the Mexican police. They broke through. And by the way, these aren’t babies. They broke through viciously. We’re not having them. And you know the good thing, they don’t break through our military.”

Source: Campaign rally in Pensacola, Florida

in fact: Mexico deployed federal police to confront the caravan, not soldiers. CNN correspondent Leyla Santiago reported that she had spoken to the Mexican government; “they tell me two federal police officers were struck by rocks during a confrontation at border. Injuries were ‘not serious or life threatening.’”

“Bill Nelson…joined every other Senate Democrat in supporting open borders legislation sponsored by Diane Feinstein.”

Source: Campaign rally in Pensacola, Florida

in fact: Feinstein’s bill is not “open borders legislation.” Her bill, the Keep Families Together Act, was intended to prohibit Trump’s policy of separating children from their parents at the border. Some Republicans argued that the bill was so vaguely drafted that it would inadvertently prohibit some standard immigration enforcement efforts. But this was not the intent of the bill, and it was not a bill for “open borders” even in its flawed form.

“Diane Feinstein, she did a great job. She did a great job on Judiciary with her obvious leaks. Remember that? Remember? Remember that? Senator Cornyn of Texas: ‘Did you leak?’ ‘Uh — do I leak? Did we leak? Did we leak? Did we leak? No, you didn’t leak. Oh, no we didn’t leak.’ The worst body language we’ve ever seen. What a mess.”

Source: Campaign rally in Pensacola, Florida

in fact: Trump did not accurately recount the answer Feinstein gave when Republican Sen. John Cornyn pressed her, at a meeting of the Senate Judiciary Committee, on the leaking of Christine Blasey Ford’s letter accusing judge Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault. Feinstein didn’t say “Uh — do I leak? Did we leak? Did we leak? Did we leak? No, you didn’t leak. Oh, no we didn’t leak.” She vehemently said she did not leak the letter; asked if her staff leaked it, she said, “Oh, I don’t believe my staff would leak it. I have not asked that question directly, but I do not believe they would.” When Cornyn followed up, she said, “The answer is no. The staff said they did not.”

“But never assume, please go out and vote. They’ve heard that before in this business. Right? They’re doing well. We don’t have to go out and vote. You have that and then you have suppression, where they suppress the polls. You don’t bother to go out and vote. But that didn’t happen with us two years ago did it? Huh? That didn’t happen. One of the most exciting days in political history but honestly one of the highest rated nights in the history of television.”

Source: Campaign rally in Pensacola, Florida

in fact: Contrary to Trump’s frequent claims, there is no evidence that pollsters have intentionally manipulated their numbers to suppress Trump’s vote.

“They have to come in absolutely through a process and they have to come in through merit so that they can help all of the companies that are moving back to Florida and moving back to the United States. We have car companies. We have car companies moving into Michigan and Ohio and Pennsylvania and South Carolina and North Carolina and Florida by the way.”

Source: Campaign rally in Pensacola, Florida

in fact: Trump has repeated this claim, but there is no evidence of auto companies moving into Pennsylvania, Florida or North Carolina, none of which have auto assembly plants. The Los Angeles Times reported: “The facts: Toyota and Mazda announced in August 2017 that they would jointly build a $1.6 billion assembly plant in the United States and in January said the factory would be in Huntsville, Ala. That is the only new U.S. factory announced by any of the major automakers, said Kristin Dziczek, vice president of industry, labor and economics at the Center for Automotive Research, a nonprofit research organization in Ann Arbor, Mich.”

“If we’re going to have a great country, we have to have a great, strong, powerful border. So we’re building the wall, as you know, it started. We did $1.6 billion. We’ve got another $1.6 billion. We’re doing that and we have another third but I want to build it all at one time.

Source: Campaign rally in Pensacola, Florida

in fact: Construction on Trump’s border wall has not started, and Trump has not secured $4.8 billion for the wall. When Trump has claimed in the past that wall construction has begun, he has appeared to be referring to projects in which existing fencing is being replaced. The $1.6 billion Congress allocated to border projects in 2018 is not for the type of giant concrete wall Trump has proposed: spending on that kind of wall is expressly prohibited in the legislation, and much of the congressional allocation is for replacement and reinforcement projects rather than new construction. Trump has requested another $1.6 billion for the 2019 fiscal year, but this has not yet been approved, much less spent. In these comments, Trump also alluded to a “third” $1.6 billion that does not exist.

“And they’ll (Democrats) erase America’s borders. We have to have a border.”

Source: Campaign rally in Pensacola, Florida

in fact: Democrats would not erase America’s borders.

“They’ll (Democrats) take away your health care and they’ll make it impossible. They’ll impose socialism on the state of Florida. Welcome to Venezuela.”

Source: Campaign rally in Pensacola, Florida

in fact: Democrats would not take away people’s health care or impose Venezuela-like socialism on Florida.

“A highway that would take 20 years to get approved. We go through a process. You believe an environmental impact process, I know it well, would take 20 years, 18 years, 15 years, 22 years. We have it down to two and a half years. We want to get it down to one and a half maybe even one. And by the way, we may reject it if it’s not good but you’re not going to devote an entire lifetime and then find out at the end it’s not going to be approved. And it’s going to end up costing 10 times or 20 times more which we have many examples, then it was supposed to. So we have it down really good but we’re going to get it down even lower. And again, if it doesn’t pass environmental standards, if we do anything to interfere with our clean air or our crystal clean, beautiful water, we won’t approve it. Not going to be approved. But we’re going to know. We don’t have to take 20 years to tell you that do we?”

Source: Campaign rally in Pensacola, Florida

in fact: While some controversial and complicated infrastructure projects may have taken 20 to get approved in the past, there is no basis for Trump’s suggestion that this time frame was standard. The Treasury Department reported under Obama: “Studies conducted for the Federal Highway Administration concluded that the average time to complete a NEPA (environmental) study increased from 2.2 years in the 1970s, to 4.4 years in the 1980s, to 5.1 years in the 1995 to 2001 period, to 6.6 years in 2011.” Further, there is no current evidence that Trump has already succeeded in reducing the standard approval time frame to 2.5 years, although he says this is his intention. His Department of Transportation reported a median approval time of 3 years, 10 months in 2017.

“But if crying Chuck Schumer, you know crying Schumer. Nancy Pelosi. Or the legendary genius, Maxine Waters. If they take power, they will try to wipe away all that we’ve done and at the same time double and triple and quadruple your taxes. And we’re not going to let it happen.”

Source: Campaign rally in Pensacola, Florida

in fact: Some Democrats want to marginally increase taxes on wealthy people, but none of them are proposing to double, triple or quadruple taxes. Also, they would not have the power to do so during Trump’s presidency, since he could veto.

“Could the cameras please span out and just show this crowd? It would really be nice. Would really be nice. Would you do that? You know, they never like to do that folks…But I wish they would show the crowds because nobody has any clue.”

Source: Campaign rally in Pensacola, Florida

in fact: Media outlets regularly show images of Trump’s crowds, often while he is complaining that they never show his crowds.

“Republicans passed a massive tax cut for working families and we will soon follow it up with another 10 per cent tax cut for the middle class.”

Source: Campaign rally in Pensacola, Florida

in fact: We do not usually fact-check promises of future action, but there was no sign that Republicans were actually pursuing an additional 10 per cent tax cut for the middle class; Trump suddenly introduced this claim two weeks before the election, with no details attached. We will amend this item if he proves serious.

“Hispanic American, African-American and Asian-American unemployment have all reached their lowest levels in the history of our country.”

Source: Campaign rally in Pensacola, Florida

in fact: Trump was correct about the first two, incorrect about the third. The Asian-American unemployment rate briefly dropped to a low, 2.0 per cent, in May — a low, at least, since the government began issuing Asian-American data in 2000 — but the most recent rate at the time Trump spoke, for October, was 3.2 per cent. This was higher than the rate in Obama’s last full month in office — 2.8 per cent in December 2016 — and in multiple months of George W. Bush’s second term.

“But the unemployment rate just fell to the lowest level in over 50 years.”

Source: Campaign rally in Pensacola, Florida

in fact: The unemployment rate, 3.7 per cent, is the lowest in 49 years, since 1969. We would not count this as false if Trump rounded to “50 years,” but “over 50 years” is objectively false.

“We’re going to take it the way it is and it is something but we’ve added a total of 4.5 million new jobs since the election. Nobody would have thought that’s possible. Including those people back there. Nobody would have said that was possible. Nobody would have said — if I said on the campaign that we would add 4.5 million new jobs they would go and oh, they’d say terrible things.”

Source: Campaign rally in Pensacola, Florida

in fact: The media would not have said Trump was being wildly unrealistic if he had claimed 4.5 million jobs would be created between Nov. 2016 and Oct. 2018. Under Obama, 4.9 million jobs were created during the previous 23-month period.

“So we now have the hottest economy anywhere on earth.”

Source: Campaign rally in Pensacola, Florida

in fact: The New York Times explained why this is false: “The United States does have one of the fastest growing of the world’s largest economies. But it is not the fastest growing in the whole world. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development compiles quarterly growth in real gross domestic product for its 36 member nations and nine other major economies like China, India and Brazil. The United States had the eighth-highest rate in the second quarter of 2018 out of this group. Its rate was the highest among the Group of 7, the largest of the industrialized democracies. Among the entire world, however, the United States is nowhere near ‘the fastest-growing economy.’ Growth rates among developing nations, while volatile, often exceed those of the big industrialized countries. In 2017, the United States’ GDP annual growth rate ranked in the bottom third out of more than 180 countries, according to data from the World Bank. The International Monetary Fund’s projections for GDP growth rate for 2018 place the United States among the bottom half of about 190 countries. Similarly, Harvard University’s Atlas of Economic Complexity projects that the United States will reach an annual growth rate of 3.07 per cent by 2026, placing it No. 104 out of 121 countries.” While China’s growth rate has slowed down in 2018, its 6.5 per cent growth in the third quarter was still about twice the forecasts for the not-yet-announced growth rate in the U.S.

“The Iranian regime, what a deal they made — $150 billion — $1.8 billion in cash.”

Source: Campaign rally in Belgrade, Montana

in fact: The “$150 billion” figure has no basis. Experts said Iran had about $100 billion in worldwide assets at the time; after the nuclear deal unfroze Iranian assets, Iran was able to access a percentage of that $100 billion, but not all of it. PolitiFact reported: “The actual amount available to Iran is about $60 billion, estimates Garbis Iradian, chief economist at the Institute of International Finance. U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew pinned it at $56 billion, while Iranian officials say $35 billion, according to Richard Nephew, an expert on economic sanctions at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy.” It is also an exaggeration to say Iran was “taking over the Middle East” before Trump took office, though it exerted significant influence in several countries.

 

“We passed Veterans Choice, and it’s such a big thing for Matt. You heard the way he talked. And — but we got it passed, and now it’s being perfected.”

Source: Campaign rally in Belgrade, Montana

in fact: The Veterans Choice health program was passed and created in 2014 under Obama. The law Trump signed in 2018, the VA MISSION Act, modified the Choice program.

“You’re going to see drug prices come down substantially. And a month ago, I called up Pfizer and Novartis. I called up these great drug companies. They’re great companies, and I said — they raised the price. You saw that. They announced a big price increase — big. I called up the head, I said, ‘What are you doing? You can’t do that. I’m reducing the price of drugs.’ And you know, the following afternoon, I got a call back. ‘Sir, we’ve decided to roll back. We are not going to increase the price of drugs.’ And then I realized how powerful it is to be the president of the United States. It’s the first time they’ve ever done that. They rolled them back.”

Source: Campaign rally in Belgrade, Montana

in fact: Trump pressured Pfizer and Novartis to reduce their drug prices in July, more than three months prior to these remarks, not “a month ago.” Trump has a habit of moving up the date of good news to make it sound more recent.

 

“We’ve taken the toughest ever action to crack down on China’s very abusive trade practices, and now they’re paying big tariffs on $250 billion…”

Source: Campaign rally in Belgrade, Montana

in fact: China is not paying Trump’s tariffs on U.S. imports of Chinese products. The American importers pay the tariffs.

“We’ve added nearly half a million manufacturing jobs. That number’s gone up rapidly, too, by the way. Remember, ‘You’d need a magic wand. You’re never going to bring — we’re not going to manufacture, right?’ I never understood that one: ‘We’re not going to manufacture anymore.’ Previous administrations. ‘You’d need a magic wand to bring’… Well, we did — 32,000 last month, we got manufacturing jobs alone.

Source: Campaign rally in Belgrade, Montana

in fact: The economy added 446,000 manufacturing jobs between Nov. 2016 and Oct. 2018. (Trump often gives himself credit for job growth at the end of the Obama era; it’s 416,000 jobs if you start counting in his first month in office, Jan. 2017.) Regardless, contrary to Trump’s frequent claim, the Obama administration never said “we’re not going to manufacture anymore.” Rather, at a televised PBS town hall in Elkhart, Indiana in 2016, Obama said that certain manufacturing jobs “are just not going to come back” — but also boasted that some manufacturers are indeed “coming back to the United States,” that “we’ve seen more manufacturing jobs created since I’ve been president than any time since the 1990s,” and that “we actually make more stuff, have a bigger manufacturing base today, than we’ve had in most of our history.” Obama did mock Trump for Trump’s campaign claims that he was going to bring back manufacturing jobs that had been outsourced to Mexico, saying: “And when somebody says — like the person you just mentioned who I’m not going to advertise for — that he’s going to bring all these jobs back, well, how exactly are you going to do that? What are you going to do? There’s no answer to it. He just says, ‘Well, I’m going to negotiate a better deal.’ Well, how exactly are you going to negotiate that? What magic wand do you have? And usually the answer is he doesn’t have an answer.” But, again, Obama made clear that he was talking about a certain segment of manufacturing jobs, not all of them.

“Do you think? But I will say, these people were vicious, and they broke through into Mexico, throwing rocks. And so this is the second caravan, which is made up of some very tough young people — very tough — criminals in some cases, in many cases. They’ll say, ‘Do you have proof?’ Yeah, I have proof. They threw stones in the police’s face. They hurt Mexican police. They hurt Mexican military very badly. They broke through.”

Source: Campaign rally in Belgrade, Montana

in fact: Mexico deployed federal police to confront the caravan, not soldiers. CNN correspondent Leyla Santiago reported that she had spoken to the Mexican government; “they tell me two federal police officers were struck by rocks during a confrontation at border. Injuries were ‘not serious or life threatening.’”

“As we speak, Democrats are openly encouraging millions of illegal aliens to violate our laws, disrespect our rules and overrun our borders. They don’t mind. They don’t mind. They want them to come in. Look at what’s going on in California with your gubernatorial candidate. ‘Come on in. We’re going to pay for your school, your education…’ You know, I jokingly said a couple of weeks ago, ‘And then everybody’s going to get a Rolls Royce.’ And the fake news — one particular person — said, ‘He said that they’re going to get Rolls-Royces, and that is not true.’ Do you believe it? You can’t tell a joke with these people. You can’t be sarcastic with these people. I’m only kidding. They are not giving out Rolls-Royces, please, OK? Fake news.”

Source: Campaign rally in Belgrade, Montana

in fact: This is not what happened. At a rally in Arizona on Oct. 19, Trump did joke about Democrats wanting to give Rolls-Royces to illegal immigrants. But the next day, at a rally in Nevada, he changed the claim from a joke to a statement of fact, saying: “They want to give them cars, they want to give them driver’s licenses. I said last night, we did a great — we did a great, great rally in Arizona last night, and I said — I said last night, what kind of car will they supply them? Will it be a Rolls-Royce?” It was this claim that reporters said was untrue, not the joke.

 

“As we speak, Democrats are openly encouraging millions of illegal aliens to violate our laws, disrespect our rules and overrun our borders. They don’t mind. They don’t mind. They want them to come in.”

Source: Campaign rally in Belgrade, Montana

in fact: There is no basis for this claim.

“Democrats’ plan to destroy healthcare also includes raiding Medicare to fund benefits for illegal immigrants. I know the people of Montana do not mind that at all.”

Source: Campaign rally in Belgrade, Montana

in fact: There is no basis for this claim.

 

“And Republicans will always protect patients with pre-existing conditions. I wish people would get that into their heads…We’re going to protect pre-existing conditions. You heard it here. You’ve been hearing it from me for a long time.”

Source: Campaign rally in Belgrade, Montana

in fact: This claim is belied by Republicans’ actions. The party has tried repeatedly during Trump’s presidency to replace Obamacare with a law that would give insurers more freedom to discriminate against people with pre-existing health conditions. As part of a Republican lawsuit to try to get Obamacare struck down, Trump’s administration is formally arguing that the law’s protections for pre-existing conditions are unconstitutional and should be voided. Trump has not said what he would like to replace these protections with

“The Democrat plan would obliterate Medicare and eliminate Medicare Advantage for more than 40,000 Montana seniors. You know, the Montana seniors are a lot of them here — incredible people. They depend on it. It would be obliterated. Republicans will protect Medicare for our great seniors who earned it, and who, by the way, paid for it, right?”

Source: Campaign rally in Belgrade, Montana

in fact: Democrats’ “Medicare for all” proposals tend to be vague, but they would not take Medicare health insurance away from seniors. Rather, they would extend similar government-provided health insurance to younger people as well, and they would give current Medicare recipients additional coverage for things like vision and dental services.

 

“If Democrats get the majority, one of their first projects will be a socialist takeover of American health care.”

Source: Campaign rally in Belgrade, Montana

in fact: Democrats did not plan to embark on a “socialist takeover of American health care” if they won back control of the House of Representatives. The likely new House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, has not committed to “Medicare for All” single-payer proposals, and she and other party leaders have said their focus would be protecting and improving Obamacare and reducing the cost of prescription drugs. While Democrats might indeed hold hearings or votes on “Medicare for All” at some point, there was no chance they could cause people’s taxes to double or triple; they would be embarking on their efforts knowing they could not get a bill approved by Trump.

“And Greg’s opponent, Kathleen Williams, is a left-wing radical…If she wins, your Second Amendment — and I know this is not something that’s very popular around here — your Second Amendment would be in big trouble.”

Source: Campaign rally in Belgrade, Montana

in fact: Williams, a Democratic candidate for Congress in Montana, would not try to eliminate the Second Amendment; Williams is a gun owner and a hunter who supports various gun control measures but endorses the right to bear arms.

 

“And Greg’s opponent, Kathleen Williams, is a left-wing radical. I don’t get it. What’s going on in Montana? What’s happening here? But truly, a left-wing radical who wants to…eliminate your borders.”

Source: Campaign rally in Belgrade, Montana

in fact: Williams, a Democratic candidate for Congress in Montana, does not want to eliminate America’s borders.

“Tester joined every other Senate Democrat in supporting open-border legislation from the now-legendary Dianne Feinstein.”

Source: Campaign rally in Belgrade, Montana

in fact: Feinstein’s bill is not “open-border legislation.” Her bill, the Keep Families Together Act, was intended to prohibit Trump’s policy of separating children from their parents at the border. Some Republicans argued that the bill was so vaguely drafted that it would inadvertently prohibit some standard immigration enforcement efforts. But this was not the intent of the bill, and even this would not mean “open borders.”

“The Democrats want to invite caravan after caravan of illegal aliens to flood into your communities, depleting our resources and overwhelming our nation. We don’t want that.”

Source: Campaign rally in Belgrade, Montana

in fact: There is no basis for this claim.

“They (Democrats) want to — they want to erase your borders.”

Source: Campaign rally in Belgrade, Montana

in fact: There is no basis for this claim. Most Democrats support a less aggressive immigration policy than the one Trump advocates, but they are not calling for the abolition of America’s borders, as Trump frequently claims.

 

“They’ll (Democrats) end up taking away your health care. You know what’s going on with that. It’s such a disaster. You’ll end up tripling your tax. Your tax is going to go through the roof, and it still won’t pay for it.”

Source: Campaign rally in Belgrade, Montana

in fact: There is no basis for these claims.

“And by the way, you talk about the coal industry; the steel industry was dead. It was going to be dead within a couple of years. It was on its last legs, and now it’s one of the hottest industries in our country.”

Source: Campaign rally in Belgrade, Montana

in fact: The steel industry was not dead or on its last legs before Trump imposed his tariffs, though it was obviously much smaller than it was at the heyday of large integrated steel mills. The American Iron and Steel Institute said then: “The steel industry directly employs around 140,000 people in the United States, and it directly or indirectly supports almost one million U.S. jobs.” Bloomberg reported in an October fact check: “In fact, U.S. steelmakers Nucor Corp. and Steel Dynamics Inc. were two of the healthiest commodity companies in the world before Trump took office and imposed 25 percent tariffs on foreign steel imports.”

“Oh, they’re going crazy over the nice, beautiful, clean coal. And the beautiful thing is, if we have a national emergency, if we have a problem, big problem, there’s nothing like coal. You’ll truck that stuff around. If the roads aren’t there, you’ll turn it around and go through a tree. Those windmills — number one, when the wind doesn’t blow, they tend not to do too well. Right? They tend not to do too well, and they’re extremely costly, and they need subsidy. We’re paying massive subsidy. And of course, they kill all the birds, you know. Other than that, they’re wonderful. No, they don’t work too well in times of national emergency. We say, ‘We need more energy, but the wind isn’t blowing.’ One thing with coal: that sucker, you just keep piling it in there, right? Right? Those miners. The miners knew what they were doing. And I don’t want to speak badly about natural gas, because I know it. But they drop a little something on one of those pipelines — that’s the end of the natural gas, right? But the coal just keeps coming.”

Source: Campaign rally in Belgrade, Montana

in fact: Contrary to Trump’s repeated suggestion, coal, like natural gas pipelines, can also be bombed out of existence in a war; it is not, as Trump has repeatedly said, indestructible. Said Jeremy Richardson, senior energy analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists: “This is patently false, that coal is indestructible. When I saw that headline — I happened to see that this morning — I was like, ‘He does know that we burn it, right? I mean, that’s what we do with it. We shovel it into boilers and we burn it and we make electricity. So from a physics perspective, that’s just false.” Coal mine fires can be particularly difficult to extinguish; one has been burning under the Pennsylvania town of Centralia since the 1960s.

“They (Democrats) want to shut down the timber mills.”

Source: Campaign rally in Belgrade, Montana

in fact: They do not.

“You’ve got to go, and you’ve got to campaign in Wisconsin. You’ve got to campaign harder in Pennsylvania. You’ve got to campaign in Michigan. You’ve got to campaign harder in North Carolina, you know? Not Russia. So they use that — it’s a — I call it ‘the Russian hoax.’ It’s a hoax, and they use that in a — as an excuse for losing the Electoral College that is set up that they should win the Electoral. I mean, you’d have to run the whole East Coast. You have to win so much, and it’s set up. The Democrats should easily win.”

Source: Campaign rally in Belgrade, Montana

in fact: Contrary to Trump’s frequent claim, the Electoral College is not set up in a way that disadvantages Republican candidates.

“When you leave your farm, you leave your ranch, you leave your things to your children, your children don’t have to go out and — remember, they used to have the expression, ‘mortgage the farm’? That was for a reason. They’d mortgage the farm to pay the estate taxes. You don’t have any death tax, estate tax — same thing. You don’t have the death tax anymore. Got rid of that. Steve Daines helped a lot. They all helped. Steve Daines — good guy. Saw him speaking up here before. I saw him speaking. That guy is terrific. Hello, folks. So you don’t have — think of that. Think — think of what that means, though, seriously. Now, if you love your children, you can leave that farm, or the ranch, or your logging equipment, your logging stuff, your trees — you can leave whatever the hell you want, if you like them. If you don’t like them, then you don’t care too much about this particular tax. But if you love them, you can leave them, and they won’t have to mortgage the farm or mortgage whatever it is you’re leaving, because they don’t have to pay estate tax anymore. Nice, right? It’s nice. That’s a big one. A lot of people don’t talk about these things, like that.”

Source: Campaign rally in Belgrade, Montana

in fact: Trump did not eliminate the estate tax. His tax law merely raised the threshold at which it must be paid. Also, it is highly misleading to suggest that the estate tax is a major burden on family farms and small businesses: very few of them were paying the tax even before Trump’s tax law was passed. According to the Tax Policy Center, a mere 80 farms and small businesses were among the 5,460 estates likely to pay the estate tax in 2017, before Trump’s tax law. The Center wrote on its website: “The Tax Policy Center estimates that small farms and businesses will pay $30 million in estate tax in 2017, fifteen hundredths of 1 of the total estate tax revenue.”

 

“And we then did the war on clean, beautiful coal, and we are putting — and you see it better than almost anybody — our coal miners. They’re all back to work, and they’re going back to work. Clean coal, clean coal. Nobody thought that was going to happen so fast, either. You know, I was in West Virginia yesterday — great people. They like the mines, also. You know that, right? Who makes better coal? Who’s got better coal? Huh? Well, they say they do. You both do.” And: “Oh, they’re going crazy over the nice, beautiful, clean coal.”

Source: Campaign rally in Belgrade, Montana

in fact: The term “clean coal” is false in itself. Even if one were to believe that there is indeed “clean coal,” a term that is the creation of industry spin, the term is not meant to be applied to all coal from a country or state, which is how Trump uses it. The phrase, the New York Times reported, “is often understood to mean coal plants that capture the carbon dioxide emitted from smokestacks and bury it underground as a way of limiting global warming.” As the Washington Post wrote: “Saying that the United States exported clean coal is like saying that the United States is shipping bathrobes overseas each time a shipping container full of cotton leaves an American port. Maybe it will be a bathrobe, but that’s not what we’re sending.”

“Republicans passed a massive tax cut for working families, and we will soon follow it up with another 10 per cent tax cut for the middle class.”

Source: Campaign rally in Belgrade, Montana

in fact: We do not usually fact-check promises of future action, but there was no sign that Republicans were actually pursuing an additional 10 per cent tax cut for the middle class; Trump suddenly introduced this claim two weeks before the election, with no details attached. We will amend this item if he proves serious.

“Wages, wages, beautiful wages for the first time in years, wages are rising.”

Source: Campaign rally in Belgrade, Montana

in fact: Wages have been rising since 2014, though the pace has accelerated under Trump, to 3.1 per cent in the third quarter of 2018. As PolitiFact reported: “For much of the time between 2012 and 2014, median weekly earnings were lower than they were in 1979 — a frustrating disappearance of any wage growth for 35 years. But that began changing in 2014. After hitting a low of $330 a week in early 2014, wages have risen to $354 a week by early 2017. That’s an increase of 7.3 percent over a roughly

“African-American, Hispanic-American and Asian-American unemployment has reached the lowest levels in the history of our country. That’s not a bad sound bite. Is that a good sound bite?”

Source: Campaign rally in Belgrade, Montana

in fact: Trump was correct about the first two, incorrect about the third. The Asian-American unemployment rate briefly dropped to a low, 2.0 per cent, in May — a low, at least, since the government began issuing Asian-American data in 2000 — but the most recent rate at the time Trump spoke, for October, was 3.2 per cent. This was higher than the rate in Obama’s last full month in office — 2.8 per cent in December 2016 — and in multiple months of George W. Bush’s second term.

“The unemployment rate just fell to the lowest level in more than 50 years.”

Source: Campaign rally in Belgrade, Montana

in fact: The unemployment rate, 3.7 per cent, is the lowest in 49 years, since 1969. We would not count this as false if Trump rounded to “50 years,” but “over 50 years” is objectively false.

“Since Election Day, we’ve created 4.5 million new jobs. Think of that. If I ever said that during the campaign, they would not have allowed that to happen. They would have cut it. You know the way they cut the good stuff. They cut all the good stuff out. They would have cut that out.”

Source: Campaign rally in Belgrade, Montana

in fact: The media would not have said Trump was being wildly unrealistic, or cut off his comments, if he had claimed 4.5 million jobs would be created between Nov. 2016 and Oct. 2018. Under Obama, 4.9 million jobs were created during the previous 23-month period.

 

 

Republicans’ lack of alarm over the shutdown reveals a disturbing truth

The rightwing, anti-government forces which first took root in the Republican party more than 40 years ago are now in full bloom and Trump is their willing avatar

January 18, 2018

by Ross Barkan

The Guardian

The government shutdown, now in its fourth miserable week, shows few signs of ending. Donald Trump, obsessed with curtailing immigration at all costs, wants money for a border wall House Democrats won’t give to him. Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate majority leader, has been content to do Trump’s bidding, twice blocking Democratic bills to reopen the government.

This is now the longest shutdown ever and it’s striking how little Trump and the Republican Senate majority care. McConnell has turned into a political phantom. Trump gloats about ordering fast food for football players because the cooks in the White House have been furloughed.

It’s easy to see the shutdown as another symptom of Trump’s instability and hatred of Mexican immigrants – and it is. The lack of alarm from his Republican peers is, just as importantly, revelatory of another disturbing truth: the rightwing, anti-government forces which first took root in the GOP more than 40 years ago are now in full bloom and Trump is their willing avatar.

Republican party leaders have long talked about slashing the size of government, reducing the social safety net, and privatizing whatever they can. Paul Ryan, the former House speaker, called social security a “Ponzi scheme”. It has long been the dream of movement conservatives to bring to the knees a federal government that grew dramatically in scope under the Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and Lyndon B Johnson’s anti-poverty programs.

About 800,000 federal workers are currently furloughed. Many of them have the kind of job protections and benefits rightwing intellectuals have long demonized. For many people of color, a government job has been the path to a middle-class existence, with healthcare, a pension and paid time off.

It was Ronald Reagan’s administration that once spoke of “starving the beast” of the federal government to achieve his desired policy outcomes. The idea was simple: deprive the government of tax revenue, reduce its ability to function, and cut spending on as many programs as possible. Nothing domestically should be spared: Medicare, Medicaid, social security, housing programs and welfare.

While Trump appears incapable of reading a book, he has absorbed – through osmosis, as well as through cabinet members such as the vice-president, Mike Pence, and acting the chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, – the philosophies of hardline conservative economists, especially Milton Friedman, Friedrich von Hayek and James Buchanan.

All three men were the godfathers of modern conservatism, which sought to purge the remnants of the Republican party’s liberalism and its taste for a certain element of noblesse oblige. The growing federal government, with its programs for the poor and its ossifying bureaucracy, was the true enemy of liberty in their eyes, and a total war must be waged against it.

Trump’s declaration in early January that he could keep the government shutdown going “months or even years” was taken as a sign, in most circles, of his usual recklessness and his commitment to a farcical border wall. It should also be viewed through another lens: a Republican leader telling the American people the shutdown just doesn’t mean very much to him.

One could imagine a President Ted Cruz saying something similar. The Texas senator was the architect of the last shutdown in 2013, willing to temporarily kneecap the federal government over his hatred of the Affordable Care Act. Cruz and Trump share an equal disdain for a healthcare law that is market-based and anything but socialism. It was their willingness to shred it at all costs that was another reminder of how extreme Republican party leaders have become.

If you believe an expansive federal government is ultimately illegitimate and an impingement on liberty, what difference does a shutdown make? Though it’s unlikely the shutdown will last as long as Trump said it could, what if federal workers, tired of being at home without a paycheck or working without getting paid, simply walked away and hunted for other jobs?

Reagan infamously fired striking air traffic controllers, presaging the long, successful war against once powerful labor unions. In the fantasies of the most fevered rightwing thinkers, Trump could have his own Reagan moment. Conservative columnists are already arguing that “the temporary shutdown of parts of the federal government is a good argument for the permanent shutdown of parts of the federal government”, in the words of the National Review’s Kevin Williamson.

Remember: the conservatives in Trump’s corner have no incentive for government to work well. Ineffective, pared down bureaucracy is merely a further argument for its inability to help people, and the vicious cycle spins on. Starve it so it can’t be of use to anyone. And then hope Americans lose any loyalty to the services it provided.

This chilling vision still may not come to pass. Anti-government fervor is not a mainstream position. Even Republican voters like getting their social security checks and Medicare. Universal healthcare polls well.

This has always been a source of frustration for the most committed fundamentalists of an unfettered free market. Beyond unrestrained capitalism and business owners being left to their own devices, they can’t really offer much else. Most Americans implicitly understand “freedom” doesn’t mean the reduction of healthcare coverage, poorly funded schools or the end of protections for consumers.

It will be up to the next Democratic president to undo the damage Trump has done. Until then, we can only hope somehow, someway, Trump and his allies decide it’s not fun any more to lock hundreds of thousands of people out of work.

 

Trump’s Sex Tape Scandal

January 19, 2019

by Christian Jürs

christian@juersmilitaria.com HACKED <brandie844@c.aanonymous.ml>

To christian@juersmilitaria.com
Reply-To brandie844@c.aanonymous.ml
Date Today 17:57
Priority Normal

 

ATTN: christian@juersmilitaria.com

I have seen your printed articles about your President Trump working for the Russians. I have a picture tape called У президента есть золотой душ. (The President has a golden shower!) that was made by the Russian secret police and that shows Mr. Trump being pissed on by a very nice looking Russian woman in a hotel room. This last three minutes. I got this from a friend in Israel who got it from a Russian. I show you some pictures from it here. If you are interested in buying this and showing it to people, it will cost you but you will have a really first class story for your lookers. Send 2.000 USD to this Bitcoin address immediately:
3GkQCi1v3GeSyRsPsRRX69927FpKS3WCQG
(copy and paste)
1 BTC = 3,580 USD right now, so send exactly 0.564976 BTC
to the address provided above.

If you like these, I can get more things about President Trump that are even more bad so can we not do business?

Brandie

Russian hooker who had sex with Donald Trump mocks his “tiny penis”

A 22-year sex worker named Ivana Kamensky, claims she was one of the prostitutes who had sexual intercourse with Donald Trump in Moscow in 2011, adding that the American President had the smallest penis she had ever seen.

January 19, 2018

World News Daily Report

In an interview with the Moscow Daily Herald, the young woman described in great details the night that she allegedly spent in Mr. Trump’s hotel room five years ago.

Ms. Kamensky claims she was hired by Donald Trump along with two of her friends to perform several degrading sex acts, like urinating on him and on each other.

She said that she had been shocked by the incredibly small size of his penis, and remembers laughing about it with the other two girls.

“Many parts of his body are too small, not only his hands,” she told the Moscow Daily Herald.

“I’ve slept with hundreds of men and I’ve seen some small penises, but he’s by far the smallest I’ve ever seen.”

She described Mr.Trump’s genitals as being the size of a grape, barely one inch (2.5cm) long when fully erect.

“We were not surprised when he asked for some unusual stuff, because he was not physically equipped to engage in any kind of normal penetration.”

Ms. Kamensky says she was paid $10,000 for her night with Mr. Trump, which is more than the average Russian worker earns in a year.

According to Ivana Kamensky, Donald Trump paid $30,000 for one night with her and two other prostitutes in July 2011 and asked them to perform many perverted sex acts.

Ms. Kamensky’s claims seem to confirm the unverified allegations about Mr. Trump being caught on film with prostitutes in both Moscow and St Petersburg, causing a scandal already dubbed as the “Golden Shower Gate” by some media.

The scandal finds its origin in a 35-page dossier compiled by a former MI6 agent, containing unverified allegations that Russian security officials have compromising material on Mr. Trump that could be used to blackmail him.

According to the dossier, the Kremlin had been feeding Trump some compromising information on his opponents for years. It had also acquired compromising information on Trump himself that could be used as blackmail.

There are allegations of “perverted” sex acts and also of frequent contact between Trump’s campaign and Russian government intermediaries.

Mr. Trump angrily denied the claims made in the dossier during his first press conference as president-elect.

He described the allegations as “fake news” and openly criticized the media who had covered the story.

Considering Mr. Trump’s tendency to react personally to most critics on his Twitter account, it is quite probable that he will react to Ms. Kamensky’s claims over the next few days.

 

Two years in, Donald Trump remains the ‘unprecedented president’

Remember the hope that Donald Trump would be mostly tough talk, but little action? At the halfway-mark of his first term it is time to acknowledge the huge impact he’s already had — and wonder how much more could come.

January 19, 2019

by Michael Knigge (Washington)

DW

In his first two years in office, US President Donald Trump pulled the US out of the landmark international nuclear arms agreement with Iran, out of the signature global climate accord and out of the historic trade pact with Asia, the so-called Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

He launched a bruising trade war with China, slapped tariffs on America’s European allies and ordered a speedy withdrawal of all US forces from Syria.

He signed into law one of the largest tax overhauls in recent history, instituted a sweeping crackdown on undocumented immigrants and triggered the longest government shutdown in US history.

And he is in the process of remaking US courts by appointing more federal judges to the bench than any of his recent predecessors at the same time.

‘Very negative effect on American soft power’

These are only some of the most striking examples of the tangible impact Trump has had. And it is important to note that all of these moves, while often rolled out erratically, should not have come as a surprise to anyone as all of them were campaign promises made by then-candidate Trump.

Taken together they have already changed how the US is viewed abroad.

“I think Trump has had a very negative effect on American foreign policy and certainly on American soft power around the world,” saidJoseph Nye, the eminent Harvard University international relations scholar who coined the term soft power.

Because of its potential long-term negative consequences for international efforts to combat global warming, Nye ranks the US withdrawal from the Paris climate compact among Trump’s most damaging political decisions yet.

Meanwhile Washington’s exit from the Iran nuclear deal, which has poisoned relations with America’s European allies, and the Trump administration’s increasingly tough stance versus Teheran are among the most pernicious short-term decisions so far, said Nye.

‘Nobody as unpredictable as Trump’

Add to Trump’s controversial policy decisions his mercurial style and his penchant for speaking falsehoods and he truly is a president in a league of his own, said Nye.

“We have had dangerous and difficult presidents — there is Richard Nixon or Lyndon Johnson. But nobody who has been as unpredictable or as untruthful as Trump.”

Trump’s first two years in office have proven that he really is an outlier among American presidents, concurred Barbara Perry, director of presidential studies at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center.

“I would just say he is the unprecedented president. He is completely off the grid,” she said. “He is not like anything we have ever seen.”

While the US has seen its share of demagogues, noted Perry, they never made it into the White House, but were prevented to rise to the highest office through the help of the US electoral system, which by design is not a direct democracy.

System failure led to demagogue in the White House

She added that Trump’s election — he won the Electoral College tally, not the popular vote — was a worrying sign of system failure.

“The founders wanted the Electoral College to be a check exactly against this kind of person — a demagogue in the White House, in the presidency.”

What distinguishes Trump from earlier rabble rousers is his access to and affinity for the internet and social media which allows him to communicate his messages unfiltered to millions of his followers, said Perry who argues that Trump’s rhetoric bears parallels to the Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels.

‘Not sure we can survive eight years of this’

“He borrows a page from Joseph Goebbels about telling the big lie over and over again in a very effective way,” said Perry.

Asked what to expect for the second half — plus another four years of Trump should he get reelected — Nye advised to brace for even more unpredictability and unpleasant surprises.

Perry was even more unequivocal. “My fear is we can survive four years, but I am not sure we can survive eight years of this.”

 

The CIA Confessions: The Crowley Conversations

January 19, 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 publications

Conversation No. 67

Date: Sunday, February 16, 1997

Commenced: 10:45 AM CST

Concluded: 11:15 AM CST

GD: I got your packet today, Robert, and thank you for it. I have a problem with the classification stamps on them. Would I have any problem putting these into a book with the stamps showing?

RTC: I would suggest that you use them for reference, Gregory, and would appreciate it if you did not photo copy them. As you say, there could be serious trouble for both of us if you did. What did you think of them?

GD: Amazing. I had no idea the blessed Republicans were so underhanded and vicious.

RTC: The Democrats, and my father was an active one, are more interested in social issues, but the GOP wants unfettered economic power and to get and keep it, they have no scruples. Clinton may be left of center, but he’s economically pretty sound. The Republicans, and I used to be the man for connections with really big business, don’t forget, have two goals and two only. They want to establish an ideological police state that is anti-black, anti-Mexican, anti-intellectual and in this category, anti-Jew. Once they have this, their next goal would be to allow unfettered capitalism to rage unchecked throughout the land so that they and their friends can get rich quick on crooked businesses like the huge fraud now going on in the electronics stock. It goes up, Gregory, because it’s rigged and I just know it will go higher and higher.

GD: Yes, and what goes up, must come down. And if it goes up too fast, when it crashes, it takes legitimate businesses with it. My grandfather got out of the market in September of ’29 because it was going up too fast and businesses were heavily overcapitalized. This electronic business is not genuine?

RTC: No, it’s rigged. How it works is this way: The stock fraud people grab some engineering student from MIT, set him up in a nice office in San Francisco and then incorporate him with some fancy, arty name. Next step is to get the stock listed on the New York board. After that, a ring of very reputable stock brokers call up their friends with an offering. They tell them they are going to buy a certain stock at ten dollars for them and then sell it when it gets to, let’s say, twenty. The client goes along with this and when this is repeated across the country, the stock shoots up. The original investors get double their money back, minus brokerage fees, and then the brokers do it again, and again. This forces almost all technology stock up into the heavens. Maybe some of the initial investors gripe when they see stock they bought at ten and sold at twenty up at two hundred, but when all of it will come crashing down, they are satisfied that they have a safe return.

GD: Well, gravity works on the market as well as fat women’s tits.

RTC: (Laughter) There you go again, Gregory, illuminating a serious economic lecture with lewd remarks.

GD: A little levity to offset crude capitalism.

RTC: Oh, if the Republicans have their way, all the restrictions on Wall Street would be lifted and everything would shoot up. Some of it rigged and the rest just being copycats.

GD: You’re not a Republican?

RTC: No, a relatively modest Democrat, but not a poor one.

GD: It’s none of my business, Robert, but what do you have your money in?

RTC: Not communications stock, I can tell you that. Very conservative investments. And you?

GD: I’m almost broke, Robert. I don’t make that much money on the books and now that the rodent brigades from the CIA are starting to squeal that I am a really terrible liar, the sales are slowing down some. But I have an idea that might pay off. I told you about the gold Jimmy Atwood and I dug up in ’90. Well, I have some old gasbag down in Florida who wants me to go over with him to Austria in the future and dig up more. Only this one doesn’t want to dig up gold. He wants to put a party together and get the money from them and come back with me later to get the money which we can split up.

RTC: The concentration camp money?

GD: Oh, yes and lots of it. We had to quit in ’90 because one was sick and the other a total asshole. And Atwood, being one of your people, tried all kinds of transparent tricks to cheat me. Didn’t work. But this Florida phony wants to work with me. I could always go back with him, or stay there after his rich friends went home, and dig up more money. Of course, this time he could have a boating accident and fall into the lake. It’s very deep and very cold. What goes down into it Robert, does not come up.

RTC: And how would you get the loot back?

GD: I would keep it in Europe and invest it.

RTC: Probably not a bad idea. How much did you get last time?

GD: About five million and there must be five times that still left. Yes, I think a boating accident. Sort of like Colby’s assisted departure. If he has any family, I can tell them he ran off to Sofia with a Bulgarian whore instead of being refrigerated at the bottom of a deep lake in Austria. Well, we will see. I have a friend in the electronics business. How long before the stock boom busts?

RTC: I have no idea but eventually. Two years, three years…who knows? You don’t have any electronics stock, do you?

GD: God no. If I did have money, I would stay as far away as I can from the trendy stocks that the press loves to shill for. No, if I had a lot of money, I would put it in gold and property.

RTC: Anything left from your late jaunt?

GD: I invested it in long-term property and kept some of the gold. Of course I got the wedding rings and had to melt them all down and put them into bullet molds I bought in Klagenfurt. Poor Aunt Minnie’s ring is gone forever.

RTC: I wouldn’t let the Jews find out about that, Gregory. They would be very angry with you.

GD: Well, who is to prove that this ring or that gold coin came from such and such a person? The people who owned this are long dead and mostly forgotten. So what?

RTC: For God’s sake, Gregory, don’t even hint at this in your books. Hell hath no fury like a Jew deprived of money.

GD: Well, his own or someone else’s? Jimmy and I got all kinds of gold crucifixes, wedding rings, coins and other material and I melted most of it down. Used a portable acetylene torch and bullet molds working in an Italian hotel room. Cheap hotel and no one complained about the smell of melting metal. Took two weeks to melt it all down. Just think, so many precious memories, gone forever and all mine, Robert, all mine.

RTC: Well, just be discreet.

GD: I don’t mind the concept of screeching and imploring Hebrews, so I invest elsewhere because I would mind the screeching and other problems of the IRS.

RTC: Yes, that would be different, wouldn’t it?

GD: Oh, yes. Now Atwood could get away with it because he belongs to your agency, but I have no such cover. Jimmy got bagged for all kinds of thefts but your people got him off the hook…I think it was in ’62. Anyway, we make our own way in life, don’t we? And remember, we have a pool on how long it will be before the Company ices poor Jimmy for his loud mouth.

RTC: Yes, I remember.

GD: Ah, well, I am going to leave you, Robert, and go to church and see what sort of really awful pornography I can slip into the hymnals.

RTC: Now that’s not Christian, is it?

GD: Disagree, Robert. Quintessentially Christian, absolutely

(Concluded at 11:15 CST)

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Sacred Treasures in the Wrong Hands

January 19, 2019

by Christian Jürs

Once there was a Slovenian Nazi named Odilo Globocnik. An early Austrian Nazi, Globocnik became the Gauleiter, or Governor, of Vienna until Hitler caught him robbing jewelry stores, and he was demoted but his friend, Heinrich Himmler, put him on his staff and eventually, Globocnik was made head of a concentration camp system in Poland where he stole anything of value for his own use.

At the end of the war, after many adventures, Globocnik was captured by a British armored unit and purported by them to have killed himself while under interrogation. In fact, U.S. intelligence reports indicate very clearly that not only did Globocnik survive the end of the war, but ended up in American employment.

He had bought his freedom by bribing the British and turning over to them the contents of two of his buried cases, which consisted of many thousands of British pound notes. The remainder of the wooden chests contained millions of dollars worth of gold coins, religious medals, gold jewelry, platinum, silver, antique coins, gold pencils, containers of dental gold and bridgework, and wedding rings.

These had originated in the concentration camps under Globocnik’s control in the Lublin district of what had been pre-war Poland. While the head of such camps as Belzec and Treblinka, Globocnik who had been fired by Hitler from his official prewar position as Gauleiter, or Governor, of Vienna for theft, took advantage of his situation. He sequestered a large amount of treasure he took from the occupants of his camps as well as additional assets obtained from extensive treasure hunts in the districts he controlled.

When Heinrich Himmler learned of Globocnik’s completely unauthorized activities in his Polish domain, he ordered him to close the camps, destroy any trace of them and remove himself with a promotion, to the city of Trieste where Globocnik, a Slovenian, had been born in 1904. While there, Globocnik managed to acquire more loot and it was this money which he took into the Austrian Alps with a crew of his loyal Ukrainians who had served as camp guards at Treblinka.

Himmler, and the head of the SS economic section, Oswald Pohl, were well aware that the Slovenian SS general had made off with money belonging to the SS, and the U.S. National Archives has an extensive file of correspondence between the trio, a file that also contains lists of stolen valuables. Globocnik, who ended up in Syria as a corresponding member of the CIA-controlled Gehlen Organization, was never able to recover any of his hidden treasure, but his disclosures to his captors, and later employers, led to an extensive treasure hunt after the war.

Globocnik supplied a map overlay which he claimed showed the exact locations of each burial spot along with a brief notation of the contents. The problem, as noted in U.S. reports, was that the overlay did not correspond to the standard German Wehrmacht 1:50 000 scale maps of the Alpen- und Donau-Reichsgaue of 1944. Other military maps were checked with equally negative results and the official opinion expressed both in the United States and England was that Globocnik had sold his captors a bill of goods.

In the following years, the thought of the buried treasure had energized a number of people from various countries and the Weissensee became a very popular vacation spot. In the winter, when the ground was frozen, the visitors were tourists partaking of winter sports. But in the summer, the guest registries in the various inns and pensions indicate a remarkable number of visitors from Germany, England and Israel, all of whom were no doubt seeking rest and relaxation in the deep pine woods or out on the placid lake.

Globocnik, however, had not sold his captors a bill of goods. The transparent overlay was completely accurate and it was the lack of persistence of both the British and Americans that led them to discount the validity of the treasure map.

Obtaining the overlay was one matter, after all no one believed it officially, but trying to find out what kind of a map Globocnik might have used was quite another. Eventually one was found in a shop in Klangenfurt which was of a pre-1938 printing and dealt specifically with the Weissensee area. It had originally been produced for hikers and was never used by the military.

When the overlay was placed over this map, the markings on the edges matched perfectly with the map, even down to penciled in lines showing the roads and trails that existed in the years before the war.

On this overlay, which was folded and repaired with transparent tape, were nine crosses marked in indelible pencil and after each mark was the notation “10 Kisten” or “8 Kisten,” and brief notations about the depth of the burial sites such as “1.5 m.”  The translation of Kisten is box or crate and the metric depths are obvious

When the information about the positive location of Globocnik’s horde was confirmed in 1989, individuals in possession of the overlay and the map embarked on an expedition to recover as much as possible, if not all, of the buried treasure.

Under then-current Austrian law, the treasure trove was to be divided equally between the finder or finders, the government of Austria and the owner or owners of the land on which it was found. Very discreet inquiry with agencies in Vienna disclosed that the Austrian government did not view their former Gauleiter’s money as having been acquired through criminal activities and that, therefore, the division of the find was to follow standard procedure. Had the government decreed that the buried money resulted from a criminal endeavor, the state would assume complete control over it and its eventual disposal.

Given this written assurance, four individuals embarked on a treasure hunt which, if successful, would rival any other such hunt, even the discovery of the Spanish treasure galleons in the waters of Florida. Two of these entrepreneurs were American. One was a CIA employee who worked in Berlin…for both the Company and the East German Stasi. and the other was along because of his possession of the map and overlay. The other two seekers were a German, once an officer in the SS and a former aide to Globocnik, and a Ukrainian SS man who had been involved with the original plantings, but had no specific memory of what he helped bury, and more important, where.

There were nine sites involved. One site had been discovered and looted by Globocnik’s British military captors in 1945, another had been paved over as a parking lot for a postwar inn and was completely inaccessible. Jack hammering up sections of asphalted parking lots was apt to draw the ire of the building’s operators as well as the completely unwelcome attentions of the Austrian gendarmes.

The remaining seven deposits were the goals of the recent arrivals at the towns of Techendorf and Neusach. It was decided to break the group into two sections for security reasons, the two Americans renting quarters at Neusach and the other two remaining at Techendorf.

The German had rented a camper wagon and was pretending to be deeply interested in healthful tours of the woods while his Ukrainian companion developed an equal interest in rowing about the lake in a rented boat, looking for ideal fishing spots.

One of the Americans, who had some artistic abilities, posed as a landscape artist and spent some of his time conspicuously working in watercolors in areas easily observed by the curious. His fellow countryman devoted a good deal of his time in courting various young women, who as often happens, came to the summer resort looking for remote and discreet romance far from permanent boyfriends, husbands or prying relatives. Both were reasonably successful and after two weeks of convincing the local residents that they were indeed both artistic and lecherous, the group came together one night to consolidate their strategy.

The first dig was begun on Sunday, June 10, 1990 at 11:30 p.m. The area selected was just past the town of Neusach where the main road ended. It was about a kilometer past the end of the official road and could easily be reached on foot.

Armed with the map, the overlay, shovels, two tarpaulins and a very expensive metal detector, they spent almost two hours in attempting to finesse Globocnik’s notes. The land had remained the same since 1945, but the growth of new trees since then created a number of problems.

The cache, consisting of four boxes, was located by the detector eventually, surprisingly close to the original location noted on the map and the digging began. The tarps were placed on either side of the opening and dirt from the dig was carefully dumped on top of them to facilitate filling in the excavation when they were finished.

The ground was well-thawed and after thirty minutes of shared digging, a spade resounded from the lid of one of the chests. Very much like 19th century grave robbers, the quartet worked in furtive haste, all of them positive that someone would discover their activities. No one came, however, and the first box was opened in situ. Much of the wood had rotted and the metal fittings were almost shapeless with rust, but the contents of the crate had been carefully packed in tin boxes which had been dipped in wax and were completely intact.

The small boxes, which were pleasantly heavy, were lifted out and carefully stacked at one end of the rectangular hole and the excavation process was continued until all four cases had been located, broken into and emptied.

Without making any attempt, pleasurable though it would have been for all concerned, to open the metal containers, the hole was quickly filled in again. The loose earth was tamped down by stamping on it and finally, a collection of small rocks, twigs, pine needles and forest detritus spread over the surface. The use of the tarps had kept telltale fresh earth from giving the site away and shortly before the sun came up, the German returned along a hiking path with his rented camper to load up the fruits of their nocturnal labors.

The Americans had rented a small vacation home at the edge of Neusach and by the time dawn had touched the tops of the trees and the mountains above the north side of the lake, the small boxes were being opened one by one. Each box had its own inventory and the contents were checked against this. The first expedition had garnered a considerable quantity of jewelry including many gold wedding rings, brooches, cameos, glass frames and gold coins.

These were put into tubes which consisted of black PVC plumbing pipe, about six inches in diameter and one meter long, threaded at both ends, and closed with PVC caps. Each tube was marked with a letter and number and the same markings were inked in at the top of the original typed inventory.

The tin boxes were flattened, put into a fishing bag and later discreetly dumped into the lake by the Ukrainian.

Everyone was tired after the evening’s exertions and with the exception of the Ukrainian’s foray onto the lake, the balance of the day was devoted to rest.

The next dig began on the evening of Monday, June 11, 1990 at the eastern end of the lake. There was a camping ground there and a road that led to Highway E-55, some 9 kilometers away. The site was about two kilometers from the camping ground and it was necessary to be especially vigilant to avoid attracting any unwanted attention from late hikers, inquisitive children or romantic couples seeking a nesting place in the trees.

The second site was discovered to have a pine tree growing over it, and a good deal of time was consumed in procuring a saw, removing the tree, dragging its carcass into the woods and hacking through the extensive root system. There were eight boxes in this horde and the root system had broken into several of them, but as before, the contents were well protected in waxed tin boxes and removed without incident. The camper van became stuck in a deep rut on the way back and it took nearly an hour to extricate it. But stuck vehicles and muddy, unshaven individuals were not out of place and aside from an innocent and athletic young male camper who spent some time in assisting the treasure hunters in getting their loot-packed van back onto the track, there were no incidents.

The sun was well up when the second load was unpacked, checked and put into the PVC tubes. This load consisted almost entirely of rings, jewelry and scrap gold. There were a number of coins and the artistic American was delighted to note that a number of them were very valuable ancient Greek silver and gold coins, the true value of which seemed to be lost on everyone, but himself.

The Ukrainian made another trip with a far larger load of flattened containers, and because of a number of legitimate fishermen on the lake that morning, had to expend considerable effort in rowing around to unoccupied areas to discard the evidence.

The various members were experiencing considerable physical problems with sore muscles and it was generally agreed that they resume their regular social activities for several days to thwart any possible curious tourists. Two French-speaking individuals had been seen moving along the water’s edge between the towns carrying a metal detector. One of the Americans pointed them out to the Austrian proprietor of a restaurant who remarked in a sarcastic tone that they were looking for some treasure a “big Nazi” was supposed to have buried there at the end of the war. When pressed for information, he continued that there was no treasure, but it was considered good business to discuss the probability of it with foreign tourists. There was even one enterprising local gentleman who rented out metal detectors.

The next expedition set out on the night of Friday, June 15. It was decided to avoid the section of the eastern end of the lake and its campers and pot holes so they began early, circling around the end of the lake and commencing to dig about 1 a.m. on the morning of the 16th.

There were no tree roots to deal with and they were far enough from the main roads and unwanted visitors to make their labors much easier. The soil was looser, containing a quantity of sand, and the six boxes were in far better shape than the others they had encountered previously.

This dig went entirely without incident and the contents consisted mainly of gold coins, loose gem stones and a large number of gold bars weighing ten kilos each. These were packed at the bottom of the crates without wrappings, but as gold is relatively impervious to rot or destruction by the elements, they all appeared to be in pristine condition. All these bars had their weight stamped into them and they appeared to have been cast in a mold designed for lead bars. The only other marks on the bars were from an Italian metal foundry which had obviously been put into the molds on manufacture and did not indicate a bank or refinery origin.

The fourth exhumation took place on the night of Sunday, June 17th, about 20 meters west of the third site. It proceeded without incident and the contents of the six chests proved to be more gold coins, several large boxes of gold religious medallions, a quantity of old American paper gold certificates, several jewel-studded, gold-sheathed old Russian religious icons, an 18th century silver Jewish Torah case complete with parchment document inside, a silver table service bearing the double-headed Polish eagle, and a brace of cased, silver-mounted flintlock pistols from the palace of Catherine the Great at Tsarskoe Selo outside of what was then Leningrad. How these got into the hands of General Globocnik was never discovered. There were also a number of original musical scores by the Polish composer Chopin in excellent condition, and a miscellany of other items of value.

The German was beginning to have problems in his lower lumbar region following the exertions and it was decided to take a short break. During this period, the Americans borrowed the camping van and drove off to the city of Villach where they bought a truck. This was painted to resemble a moving van. As a number of people seeking peace and quiet from the more metropolitan areas of Austria bought property in the Weissensee area, the arrival and departure of moving vans was not considered a noteworthy event.

On Thursday, June 21, 1990, the visitation to the fifth site in the cluster of remaining burials was interrupted briefly by a nocturnal party of drunken hikers, who decided to rest within clear view of where the resurrection men were planning to work. What was worse, one of the hikers was possessed of a handgun which he began to discharge on a fairly regular basis at various trees and other objects. This eventually drew the attentions of the local police who drove down the sandy track in a lurching vehicle, frightening off the inebriates, and leaving the field to the treasure hunters who were concealed at some distance in the underbrush.

The German was now complaining of back pains again and his Ukrainian companion was terrified that the police would return, so the digging went much slower. This horde consisted of five cases, two of which had thoroughly rotted, spilling their contents out when the boxes were moved. From this find came more gold coins, several boxes of unset jewels, more wedding rings, a large German Bible from the sixteenth century with silver clasps and an inset coat of arms, another collection of ten kilo gold bars, and a thick file of official German records wrapped in oil skin and sealed in copper tubes. These proved to be the records of Globocnik’s prison camps listing the names, occupations and eventual fates of a large number of inmates.

The gold bars put a strain on the tires of the camper which blew a tire on its trip out of the area and the van had to be emptied to get at the spare. Throughout this process, the German complained constantly about the pains he was suffering, and the Ukrainian joined in as a sort of chorus. His lamentations centered around the fact that the police would certainly return and they would then lose everything they had worked so hard to acquire.

On the forenoon of Friday, June 22nd, an impromptu conference was held on the terrace of a convenient inn with all the parties participating. Over the consumption of various local beverages and a lengthy lunch, the European Union branch of the association declared that it was their unanimous wish to leave the area at once, taking with them their portion of the recovered loot. It was pointed out that two more sites remained and that these sites were sufficiently remote as to virtually preclude discovery. The objectors claimed that they now had more than enough precious metal to satisfy them and would have some problems transporting it to the relative safety of Germany. They agreed to abandon their shares in the remaining two troves in exchange for a larger share of the material already recovered. They had no interest in the guns or the religious artifacts, preferring to take just the coins and the jewels which were more easily transported.

Finally, after much muted disputation, it was agreed that the precious stones, containing a large number of loose diamonds, some of the gold coins, all of the gold jewelry, and a few of the gold bars would go to the German/Ukrainian part of the team. The balance of the heavy gold bars, the coins and the religious artifacts would remain with the Americans.

As one of the Americans later remarked to his fellow national, the value of diamonds was completely artificial and they were always hard to sell for a decent profit. Since the German was fascinated with the cold glitter of the stones, he was given all of them along with large, but flawed natural emeralds, some of the gold coins which would be more difficult to convert to cash, boxes of scrap gold, nineteenth century watches, and a considerable number of wedding rings.

Following this, the participants in this Last Supper went their separate ways, leaving the Americans in possession of a very valuable bible, a collection of ancient coins worth, at the very least, the aggregate value of all the unset stones, the more easily disposed of gold coins, and almost all the gold bars.

There were now two men left to exhume the remaining two sites, and while the panic of the departed team members had some effect on those remaining behind, it did not deter them from going forth twice more on the evenings of the 29th and 30th of July.

The final gathering consisted mainly of gold bars, a small suit of dress 16th century armor designed for a child and set with stones of some value, and a collection of books in Latin which later turned out to have come from the Polish state library at Cracow. With the cleansing of the last site and the scattering of the last armfuls of forest litter, the first part of the saga of the Globocnik gold was over.

The second part was about to begin.

Finding the treasure, unearthing it and dividing it was child’s play compared with the logistical problems inherent in moving a truck full of contraband gold out of Austria, and to an area where it could be removed from the European continent and enjoyed at leisure elsewhere.

On Wednesday, July 4, 1990, the freshly-painted moving van left Weissensee forever, heading the nine kilometers to E-66 and south towards Italy with its inviting port cities on the Adriatic.

The truck was properly registered and a portion of it was loaded with cheap, second-hand furniture purchased in Austria to lend some verisimilitude to the story that an Austrian family was moving to Venice for business reasons. The former CIA man had obtained all the correct forms and was prepared to encounter Italian customs. However, the customs post on the Plocken Pass was closed and he drove straight through without incident.

What happened to the German and his partner is not known, although they both managed to drive into Germany without any incident. It was rumored that the German retired to nurse his bad back in an expensive suburb of Munich while his co-worker married a fellow Slav and opened an ethnic restaurant in Switzerland.

The Americans bought a serviceable ship in a marina at the northern end of the Adriatic, loaded up their cargo and engaged several local fisherman who had a desire to emigrate as far and as quickly from Italy as possible. The boat, which was a large diesel custom-built fishing boat, was entirely capable of transversing the Mediterranean as well as the central reaches of the Atlantic without undue effort.

The first part of the trip was very scenic, the artistic American spending most of his time making sketches of such points of interest as the ancient palace of Diocletian at Split, and taking a brief detour to make drawings of the palace of the Empress Elizabeth of Austria on the Greek island of Corfu.

They sailed through the wine-dark seas of Greece and out, eventually, past the Pillars of Hercules and vanished completely from this narrative.

Later, there were a number of interesting side stories floating around the American intelligence community. One of these was that the CIA operative was scheming to take everything for himself and his employers and the other was that two CIA-hired hands, both British Special Forces men, had mysteriously vanished while crossing the Gulf of Mexico. The other story was that the artistic American, anticipating some kind of high seas piracy, had pried up many small granite paving stones from a parking lot and spray painted them with gold paint. His CIA companion was under the impression these were gold and later, when the boat docked in Oakland, California after a long voyage, he and his suited friends who had met them at the dock, unloaded all the paving stones and drove off with them. The artistic American waved at them and then moved the boat to a discreet moorage so he could enjoy the other cargo at his leisure and in more safety.

It is sad to relate that a bit later, the CIA digger had lunch with some CIA people at a restaurant in Savannah, Georgia and had a sudden seizure, falling quite dead into his soup plate. Pearls cast before swine are one thing but gilded paving stones cast before the CIA brass is quite another.

When someone later asked the artistic American what he planned to do with some of his pieces, he said, jokingly of course, that he planned to sell them and open a whorehouse which he said he would run by hand until he could get some machinery.

 

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