TBR News January 2, 2019

Jan 02 2019

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

Washington, D.C. January 2, 2019:” President Trump is starting to feel that he is surrounded by deadly enemies and is frantically searching for the means to neutralize their expected movement against him. One of his top aides has been very quietly working with very far right militant groups seeking their assistance. The emails between these groups and the White House people have been hacked and will most certainly be published. They suggest “militant, armed” support of the President, a march on Washington and a suggestion of physical force against various members of Congress, (and certain media outlets hostile to Trump) In short, a far-right wing revolt designed to keep the President in office and to neutralize his enemies, either by creating an image of universal public outrage at the thwarting of a President who is trying to make American great again or blunt force against his perceived enemies. A putsch in other words. The American military command does not like Trump so his frantic people are looking elsewhere for aggressive support which will neutralize his foes in Congress and secure his reign in the Oval Office.”

 

The Table of Contents

  • 815 false claims: The staggering scale of Donald Trump’s pre-midterm dishonesty No 6
  • S. agents fire tear gas into Mexico at ‘violent mob’ near border
  • The CIA Confessions: The Crowley Conversations
  • Neo-Nazi Al Qaeda
  • Hacker group threatens to leak 9/11 ‘truth’ unless paid in bitcoin

 

815 false claims: The staggering scale of Donald Trump’s pre-midterm dishonesty No 6

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.

  • Oct 13, 2018

“Not going to happen. Eighty-four judges — think of that, it’s a record — it’s a record — and we actually have a lot to go, 84 judges approved.”

Source: Campaign rally in Richmond, Kentucky

in fact: Trump’s 84 judge confirmations did not set a record, according to Russell Wheeler, an expert on the subject and a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution. As of the same date in their terms, Wheeler said, Bill Clinton had appointed 128 judges, John F. Kennedy 110 judges. Thomas Jipping, deputy director of legal and judicial studies at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said “Trump’s record is in appointing judges to the U.S. Court of Appeals,” not the federal judiciary as a whole: “29 so far,” to the appeals court, “is a significant record (previous record was 22 for George H.W. Bush).”

 

“I withdrew the United States from the horrible, one-sided Iran nuclear deal. You know, when I came to office, weeks before I was given rundowns of what’s happening, and Iran was just a question of when will they take over the entire Middle East.”

Source: Campaign rally in Richmond, Kentucky

in fact: It is an exaggeration to claim “Iran was just a question of when will they take over the entire Middle East” before Trump took office. Hussein Banai, a professor who studies Iran at the international studies school at Indiana University, said in an email: “The claim that Iran was on the verge of taking over the Middle East prior to Trump taking office is utterly false. In fact, quite the opposite was the case, as the Sunni-majority Arab states in the region — most vocally led by Saudi Arabia and with the expressed support of the US and Israel — had already begun to curb Iran’s influence in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen. There is no question that the perception of many of Iran’s rivals in the region after the nuclear deal was that the Islamic Republic had emerged with a stronger geopolitical hand. But the reality was that Iran had merely emerged from nearly 40 years of isolation from which many of these rivals had benefited. So, I would say that the major grievance at the time was that the Obama administration had allowed for the Islamic Republic to become a ‘normal’ country. The issue was never Iran’s military might — its defense expenditures and capabilities are dwarfed by those of Israel and Saudi Arabia — but the fact that it was on the verge of a major economic boom in a post-sanctions world.”

 

“We also passed Veterans Choice, giving our veterans the right to see a private doctor instead of waiting online for 12 days, for 24 days, for 38 days. We have our great veterans — we’re doing a great job with our veterans — we have our — but this was one of the most important things — because they’d be waiting in line for sometimes months if you can believe it. We had people waiting in line and they weren’t very sick. By the time they saw a doctor, they were terminally ill. Now, if there’s a line, if there’s a way, because we have great doctors in the V.A. That’s one thing we — I’ll tell you, everybody tells me. You can’t get to them. Now, if there’s a wait, you go to a local doctor, you get yourself taken care of, and we pay for the bill. We pay for the bill. That was another one. That was another one. Took over 40 years. I used to say to people, why don’t we do that? I thought I was so smart. I said, listen, I got a great idea. These lines are terrible, 28 days, 30 days. I got a great idea. It’s the greatest idea I think I’ve ever had. We’re going to have them go to a private doctor instead of waiting on line. Sir, we’ve been trying to get that passed for 40 years. Oh, you’ve heard about it before? Everybody heard — they couldn’t get it passed. But we’re good at getting things passed. We got it passed.”

Source: Campaign rally in Richmond, Kentucky

in fact: The Veterans Choice health program was created in 2014 under Obama. The law Trump signed merely modified the program.

“We have taken historic action to reduce the price of prescription drugs. You saw three weeks ago, Pfizer, Novartis, a lot of drug companies announced a very substantial increase. Then I said to Secretary Alex Acosta — and I said to Alex Azar, this is no good. This is no good. We got to do something.”

Source: Campaign rally in Richmond, Kentucky

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

“I have great respect and like him for President Xi, the absolute head — this is an absolute head of China. But you know what? They’ve been making $300 billion to $500 billion a year, taking it out of our country.”

Source: Campaign rally in Richmond, Kentucky

in fact: The U.S. has never once had a $500 billion trade deficit with China, according to U.S. government data. The deficit was $337 billion in 2017, $375 billion if you only count trade in goods and exclude trade in services.

“I apologize to the women in the room. Remember, I got 52 per cent — remember, they kept saying, he’s not — the fake news — that’s right. Remember he said — they were all saying he will not do well with women? Wow, did we do well with women. Did we do well. Fake news. We did really well with women.”

Source: Campaign rally in Richmond, Kentucky

in fact: Trump won a majority of white women, according to 2016 exit polls, not a majority of all women, as he was claiming here. Exit polls found that had the support of 52 per cent of white women but 42 per cent of all women.

“Hispanic American and Asian-American unemployment has reached its lowest level in history. I can’t believe I’m still saying this.”

Source: Campaign rally in Richmond, Kentucky

in fact: The unemployment rate for Hispanics was indeed at a record low, at least for the period since the government began releasing data for this group in the 1970s. The Asian-American unemployment rate, however, was not close to a record. It 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 September, was 3.5 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.

“Remember, manufacturing’s never going to come back? Never going to come back, remember? The previous administration: ‘Oh, you think that’s going to happen? You’d need a magic wand.’ Well, I guess we had the magic wand. We had the magic wand.”

Source: Campaign rally in Richmond, Kentucky

in fact: The Obama administration did not say manufacturing jobs were “never going to come back.” 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.

“We’ve added nearly 600,000 manufacturing jobs.”

Source: Campaign rally in Richmond, Kentucky

in fact: The economy added 378,000 manufacturing jobs between January 2017 and September 2018.

“Since the last election — and these are numbers that the fakers back there, the fake news, would never have allowed me to say. They’d never in a million years, if I ever said this during the campaign, they would’ve had headlines. We’ve created over 4.2 million new jobs.”

Source: Campaign rally in Richmond, Kentucky

in fact: Trump would not have been silenced if he had predicted there would be 4.2 million jobs added in the 22 months after the election. Over the previous 22-month period, under Obama, 4.7 million jobs were added.

“So we had a man, horrible person, the west side in Manhattan, where I live, where I love, right along the Hudson River. He’s driving a car down this roadway where the speed limit is 35. He’s going about 70. And he decides to make a right turn into a beautiful park that goes along the river with lots of people. Many people were killed. Nobody ever talks about the people that were horribly injured. They lost legs, they lost arms.”

Source: Campaign rally in Richmond, Kentucky

in fact: Nobody lost an arm in the terror attack on Manhattan’s West Side Highway in 2017. The Associated Press reported that one woman, a Belgian tourist, lost two legs. The commissioner of New York’s fire department offered corroboration, saying the attack led to one double amputation.

“And then you have chain migration. You know what that is, right? So we had a man, horrible person, the west side in Manhattan, where I live, where I love, right along the Hudson River. He’s driving a car down this roadway where the speed limit is 35. He’s going about 70. And he decides to make a right turn into a beautiful park that goes along the river with lots of people. Many people were killed. Nobody ever talks about the people that were horribly injured. They lost legs, they lost arms. These are people that were running. They want to keep themselves in shape. They were working out. Now, what happens? What happened to him? It will be years of litigation. He came in, and then he took chain migration, and he brought his mother, and his father, and his brother, and his sister, and his aunt, and his grandfather. None of them working. It ended up being approximately 22 people who came in. It’s called a chain. Isn’t that wonderful? A chain. And we’re stuck with them. We’re stuck with these people. And I don’t want a chain.”

Source: Campaign rally in Richmond, Kentucky

in fact: There is no evidence that Sayfullo Saipov, the alleged perpetrator of the terror attack in 2017 on Manhattan’s West Side Highway, brought 22 relatives into the U.S. through “chain migration.” Even Trump’s own aides have declined to endorse this claim, and even anti-immigration advocates say it is wildly improbable that one man with a green card could have sponsored 22 people.

“Lottery. Lottery. Lottery. OK? Names, you pick them out, coming to the United States. Now, let me ask you, these countries set up lotteries. Do you really believe they’re giving us their finest? No. This is a lottery.”

Source: Campaign rally in Richmond, Kentucky

in fact: This is, as usual, an inaccurate description of the Diversity Visa Lottery program. Foreign countries do not “set up lotteries”; there is one lottery, conducted by the U.S. State Department. Also, foreign countries do not “give” anyone to the lottery. Would-be immigrants sign up on their own, as individuals, of their own free will, because they want to immigrate.

“The only immigration policy Democrats support is catch and release. How about that one? You catch a criminal thug, you take their name, and then you release them, say please show up in five years to court. Now, number one, it’s ridiculous. Number two, they never show up. What a mess.”

Source: Campaign rally in Richmond, Kentucky

in fact: It is not true that people “never show up” for their immigration hearings. A 2017 report released by the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that advocates a hard line on illegal immigration, concluded that 37 per cent of people who were free pending trial did not show up for hearings over the past two decades. The author of the report, a former immigration judge, said the number was 39 per cent in 2016. In other words, even according to vehement opponents of illegal immigration, most unauthorized immigrants are indeed showing up for court.

“The new platform of the Democrat Party is radical socialism and it’s open borders. Democrats want to abolish ICE and they want to turn America into a giant sanctuary for criminal aliens and MS-13 thugs. And don’t kid yourself, that’s what’s going to happen. And they want to get rid of ICE.”

Source: Campaign rally in Richmond, Kentucky

in fact: The Democrats do not have a platform of “open borders.” There is new Democratic momentum behind the movement to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement, but that is not the position of “the Democrat Party” as a whole. While a smattering of Democratic House members and two prominent senators, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand and Elizabeth Warren, have joined the call for abolition at the time Trump spoke, the party’s leadership remains opposed to the proposal. Democratic Senate Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters: “Look, ICE does some functions that are very much needed. “Reform ICE? Yes. That’s what I think we should do. It needs reform.” Democratic House Leader Nancy Pelosi, through a spokesperson, has called for a “drastic overhaul of its immigration functions,” but has not endorsed abolition.

“And Republicans only will always protect patients with pre-existing conditions.”

Source: Campaign rally in Richmond, Kentucky

in fact: This is nonsensical: Democrats have already implemented a plan to protect people with pre-existing conditions: Obamacare, which made it illegal for health insurance companies to discriminate against these people. It is Republicans, who are trying to repeal Obamacare, who have not put forward a clear plan. As part of a Republican lawsuit to try to get the Affordable Care Act 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 terminate Medicare Advantage for nearly 250,000 Kentucky seniors who depend on it. Republicans want to protect Medicare, and we will, for our great seniors who have earned it and who have paid for it.”

Source: Campaign rally in Richmond, Kentucky

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.

“Now, Amy supports a socialist takeover of your health care, which by the way means your taxes are going to triple if you’re lucky. She supports open borders. She needs the tax hikes to cover the through-the-roof garbage that you want no part of. And she wants to immediately decimate your now-thriving coal industry.”

Source: Campaign rally in Richmond, Kentucky

in fact: McGrath does not support a “socialist takeover of your health care.” McGrath explicitly opposes Canada-style single-payer health care; on her website, she says, “I side firmly with former Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear, the man who implemented the ACA in a manner that made Kentucky the gold standard among states as far as how it’s supposed to work. Beshear said recently, ‘If we were starting from scratch, I would be for single-payer, too…But we aren’t starting from scratch. There are too many stakeholders to be able to sweep them away and begin all over again.’ In fact, currently proposed single-payer legislation would represent such a sweeping overhaul that it would put our healthcare system into massive upheaval. I do not support such an approach.” McGrath also does not support “open borders.” And Trump is free to argue that McGrath’s policies would decimate the industry, but he is wrong to say she “wants to immediately decimate” the industry. McGrath says on her website: “Kentucky’s energy future need not be an either/or choice between coal and sustainable sources. We can provide support for our coal communities and boost coal consumption here in Kentucky by using local coal-generated electricity for electric vehicles while we work to transition the energy infrastructure and expertise that we already have to renewables like wind and solar. ”

“A vote for Andy’s opponent, I had to do a little checking, who’s he running against? Who? This is an extreme liberal named Amy McGrath. Chosen by Nancy Pelosi, Maxine Waters, that’s a real beauty…”

Source: Campaign rally in Richmond, Kentucky

in fact: There is no evidence that McGrath, a Democratic candidate for a Kentucky congressional seat, was “chosen by Nancy Pelosi,” and there is certainly no evidence that McGrath was chosen by Waters — a California Democrat who is not a party leader.

“But I’ll tell you what, I’ve seen the — you know, outside, you have 25,000, 35,000, some crazy number of people, and we set up movie screens. We set up beautiful movie screens. And to those people outside, we love you. We love you. You have to see the lines, they go all the way back, many miles. But a lot of them

Source: Campaign rally in Richmond, Kentucky

in fact: The Washington Post’s Jenna Johnson was outside the rally. Before Trump’s comment, she posted a picture that showed, at most, 200 people watching on a screen. She wrote: “When the doors closed for President Trump’s rally tonight in Eastern Kentucky, a few thousand people were still in line and couldn’t get in. Most have left — it’s 47 degrees! — but this group is staying to watch on a video screen outside.” After Trump’s claim that there were 25,000 or 35,000 people outside, she wrote, “Everyone out here laughed as the president gave these numbers. ‘What?!?’ one woman said as she scanned the crowd herself.”

“Something about this place (Kentucky). Boy, did we win by a lot. What did we win by, 38? Thirty-eight. We won by a lot.”

Source: Campaign rally in Richmond, Kentucky

in fact: Trump won Kentucky by 30 percentage points in 2016, not 38.

“We had Obamacare repeal-and-replaced.” (Crowd applauds.) “We didn’t get one Democrat vote, but we’ll get it done. We had a little disappointment that night. A little bit of a disappointment. But it’s essentially done anyway, because when you get rid of the mandate, the individual mandate, it’s done.”

Source: Campaign rally in Richmond, Kentucky

in fact: Trump’s claim that he “had Obamacare repeal-and-replaced” was so misleading that the crowd applauded after he said it — before he implicitly made clear that Obamacare was not repealed and replaced. As Trump suggested in his next sentence, his favoured plan failed by one vote in the Senate; his comments were a bit like a losing hockey team saying “we won the Stanley Cup, we just didn’t get the overtime goal in Game 7.” The other part of Trump’s statement was also inaccurate: Obamacare is not “essentially done anyway.” Trump has weakened Obamacare in several ways, most notably by eliminating the “individual mandate” that required people to obtain health insurance, but the law is far from dead. Trump did not eliminate Obamacare’s expansion of the Medicaid insurance program for low-income people, the federal and state Obamacare marketplaces that allow other uninsured people to buy insurance, or the subsidies that help many of them make the purchases.

“If Nancy Pelosi, Cryin’ Chuck Schumer, and the radical Democrats take over Congress, they will try to raise your taxes, they will immediately restore job-killing regulations, they will impose, believe it or not, socialism, take away your health care, your health care and your whole life will be unaffordable, shut down immediately, oh, forget this one, shut down your coal mines in about two minutes. You see what’s going on with the Second Amendment? They will destroy your Second Amendment. And the Democrats want to open our borders to a flood of deadly drugs and ruthless gangs.”

Source: Campaign rally in Richmond, Kentucky

in fact: Almost none of this is true. Even if they won Congress, Democrats would not be able to immediately restore regulations or to impose socialism or to take away health care or to shut down coal mines or to destroy the Second Amendment: Trump would still be president, and he could veto any of their proposals. Also, Democrats are not looking to “impose socialism” as a system of government, though some of them favour some social-democratic policies like single-payer health care, and they are certainly not going to “take away your health care.”

“I just don’t think they’re ready yet. They’ve made too much money for too long. What they’ve done to our country is take out anywhere from $300 billion to $500 billion a year. Rebuilt China.”

Source: Remarks to reporters before Marine One departure

in fact: The U.S. has never once had a $500 billion trade deficit with China, according to U.S. government data. The deficit was $337 billion in 2017, $375 billion if you only count trade in goods and exclude trade in services.

 

“Now, one of the reasons it was my first pick is, if you remember, it was $110 billion of military that they were going to buy, but they were going to invest $450 billion in our country through the companies. I think you were there. And all of these — Raytheon, and General Electric, and General Motors — they were there getting contracts for $25 billion, $30 billion, $40 billion. Nobody has ever seen anything like it. So when you say that was my first country, that was my first country because no other country is going to be investing $450 billion. $110 billion in the military. It’s a lot of money.” And: “Well, there are many other things we can do. But when we take away $110 billion of purchases from our country, that hurts our workers, that hurts our factories, that hurts all of our companies. You know, you’re talking about 500,000 jobs.”

Source: Remarks to reporters before Marine One departure

in fact: As the Associated Press and others noted, there has never been evidence that Trump has secured even close to $110 billion in Saudi military purchases. The AP wrote: “Trump’s wrong to suggest that he has $110 billion in military orders from Saudi Arabia. A far smaller amount in sales has actually been signed…Details of the $110 billion arms package, partly negotiated under the Obama administration and agreed upon in May 2017, have been sketchy. At the time the Trump administration provided only a broad description of the defense equipment that would be sold. There was no public breakdown of exactly what was being offered for sale and for how much…The Pentagon said this month that Saudi Arabia has signed ‘letters of offer and acceptance’ for only $14.5 billion in sales, including helicopters, tanks, ships, weapons and training. Those letters, issued after the U.S. government has approved a proposed sale, specify its terms…Trump’s repeated claims that he’s signed $110 billion worth of new arms sales to Riyadh are ‘just not true,’ said Bruce Riedel, a senior fellow at Brookings Institution and former CIA and Defense Department official.”

“But our country is doing — we’re the hottest country in the world, economically, by far. You take a look at us compared to China, compared to everybody else, we’re the hottest country in the world.”

Source: Remarks to reporters before Marine One departure

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.

“We have great car companies entering our country again. This hasn’t happened for 35 years.”

Source: Remarks to reporters before Marine One departure

in fact: It is not true that this is the first time in decades that automotive companies are moving manufacturing operations into the U.S. or expanding existing U.S. operations. While they have indeed announced major investments under Trump, they also announced major investments under Obama. In 2015, for example, Volvo announced that it would open its first U.S. car plant, in South Carolina. General Motors announced in 2013 that it would invest $1.2 billion to upgrade an Indiana truck plant. Ford announced in 2015 that it would invest $1.3 billion to upgrade a Kentucky truck plant. That same year, Ford shifted production of the Ford F-650 and F-750 medium-duty trucks from Mexico to a plant in Avon Lake, Ohio.

“Now everybody wants to come in. And they come in illegally and they use children. In many cases, the children aren’t theirs. They grab them and they want to come in with the children.” And: “If they feel there’s separation — in many cases, they don’t come. But also, in many cases, you have really bad people coming in and using children. They’re not their children. They don’t even know the children. They haven’t known the children for 20 minutes, and they grab children and they use them to come into our country. You got some really bad people out there.” And: “It’s really a humanitarian tragedy, and we’re taking care of it. But this isn’t a case where people are coming up with children — coming in with children. People are grabbing children and they’re using children to come into our country, in many cases.”

Source: Remarks to reporters before Marine One departure

in fact: The U.S. government has presented no evidence for Trump’s suggestion that “this isn’t a case where people are coming in with children” but rather that it’s more common that adults are “grabbing children” they don’t know in an attempt to fraudulently gain entry. The Department of Homeland Security told the Washington Post that there were a mere 46 cases of fraud of this kind (“individuals using minors to pose as fake family units”) in the 2017 fiscal year, 191 cases in the first five months of the 2018 fiscal year. That was an increase, but these cases were still nowhere near the norm: “there were 75,622 family units apprehended at the border in fiscal 2017,” the Post reported, “and 31,102 in the first five months of this fiscal year.” In other words, the alleged fraud cases represented a tiny fraction. Also, it is far from clear that the fraud cases involved people grabbing children they haven’t known “for 20 minutes.” As Vox reported, the government classifies family claims as fraudulent when “the adult isn’t the parent or legal guardian of the child they’re traveling with — even if it’s a grandparent who is raising the child as their own,” or when “the family’s documentation can’t be verified by the embassy of the family’s home country.”

“This is the same situation that President Obama found himself in. He had separation, and people didn’t talk about.”

Source: Remarks to reporters before Marine One departure

in fact: Obama’s situation was not “the same” as Trump’s. While Obama administration policies did result in some parents being separated from children — former Obama officials say this happened in exceptional circumstances like the parent being found carrying drugs — it was Trump who decided to attempt to criminally prosecute everyone found crossing the border illegally. This decision resulted in the routine separation of parents and children, which did not occur under Obama.

“Well, we’ll be sitting together with all of the folks here, and a lot more. And we’ll have to make a determination. I do think this: That I worked very hard to get the order for the military. It’s $110 billion. I believe it’s the largest order ever made. It’s 450,000 jobs.” And: “But in terms of the order of $110 billion — think of that — $110 billion — all they’re going to do is give it to other countries. And I think that would be very foolish for our country. But there are other things we can do that will be very severe.”

Source: Meeting with pastor Andrew Brunson after his release from Turkey

in fact: As the Associated Press and others noted, there has never been evidence that Trump has secured even close to $110 billion in Saudi military purchases, nor that the Saudi purchases would create or support 450,000 jobs. The AP wrote: “Trump’s wrong to suggest that he has $110 billion in military orders from Saudi Arabia. A far smaller amount in sales has actually been signed…Details of the $110 billion arms package, partly negotiated under the Obama administration and agreed upon in May 2017, have been sketchy. At the time the Trump administration provided only a broad description of the defense equipment that would be sold. There was no public breakdown of exactly what was being offered for sale and for how much…The Pentagon said this month that Saudi Arabia has signed ‘letters of offer and acceptance’ for only $14.5 billion in sales, including helicopters, tanks, ships, weapons and training. Those letters, issued after the U.S. government has approved a proposed sale, specify its terms…Trump’s repeated claims that he’s signed $110 billion worth of new arms sales to Riyadh are ‘just not true,’ said Bruce Riedel, a senior fellow at Brookings Institution and former CIA and Defense Department official.”

“Chairman Kim was really great to us. I think that started the relationship that we have now in North Korea, with three hostages, as you know. Egypt — we had Aya. Aya was, they said, a spy. She was sentenced to 25 years. They told President Obama, ‘We will not let her out under any circumstances.'”

Source: Meeting with pastor Andrew Brunson after his release from Turkey

in fact: Aya Hijazi, the Egyptian-American charity worker, was imprisoned in Egypt for three years, but she was never sentenced at all. She was acquitted by an Egyptian court and freed in 2017.

“Not only that, human trafficking, so much is coming, it’s ridiculous, and we’re very much into fixing — I mean, I’d like to say totally eliminating, but sometimes that’s awfully difficult to say — but fixing the drug problem — you know it’s down about 15 per cent, and the opioid distribution is down more than 15 per cent.”

Source: Interview with WKYT Lexington

in fact: Opioid “distribution” might indeed be down 15 per cent, depending on what you’re counting and over what time period. In April, for example, health data firm IQVIA’s Institute for Human Data Science reported a 12 per cent decline in the total dosage of opioid prescriptions filled in 2017 as compared to 2016. But there is no sign that the entire “drug problem” is down 15 per cent. The Centers for Disease Control release monthly estimated numbers in which overdose deaths for a month in 2018 are compared to overdose deaths for a month in 2017, using a method that adjusts for the fact that many overdose deaths are not immediately classified as overdose deaths. In the CDC’s most recent estimates at the time Trump spoke, for March 2018, overdose deaths were estimated to be up 3.5 per cent.

U.S. agents fire tear gas into Mexico at ‘violent mob’ near border

January 1, 2018

Reuters

TIJUANA, Mexico (Reuters) – U.S. border agents launched tear gas into Mexico early on Tuesday to deter a group of migrants that one official called “a violent mob” from crossing over from Tijuana, according to a Reuters witness and the U.S. government.

Clouds of the noxious gas could be seen wafting up from around the fence at the border. One migrant picked up a canister and threw it back into U.S. territory.

U.S. officials said the group had attacked agents with projectiles but a Reuters witness did not see any migrants throwing rocks at U.S. agents.

Tijuana has become a flashpoint in the debate over U.S. immigration policy, which has been intensified by the recent deaths of two migrant children in American custody and a partial U.S. government shutdown over U.S. President Donald Trump’s demand for $5 billion in funding for a wall along the border with Mexico.

A previous incident in November when U.S. agents fired gas into Mexico to disperse migrants triggered a call from Mexico’s government for an investigation, as well as international condemnation.

Mexico Foreign Ministry spokesman Roberto Velasco said the government “regrets the events” at the border. He said Mexico “advocates respect for migrants’ human rights, security and integrity, while calling for respect for laws on both sides of the border.”

More than 150 Central American migrants approached an area of the border in Tijuana in the Playas neighborhood near the beach late on Monday. Migrants said they thought security measures might be relaxed due to the New Year’s holiday.

U.S. security personnel fired tear gas into Mexico after midnight as some migrants prepared to climb a border fence, according to the Reuters witness. During a second attempt, migrants began to pass youths and children over the razor wire along the fencing to the U.S. side.

U.S. Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Katie Waldman called the group “a violent mob” and said they had thrown projectiles at agents who responded with “the minimum force necessary to defend themselves.”

“Congress needs to fully fund the border wall,” Waldman said in a statement.

‘CRUEL, INHUMANE’

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) said in a statement the gas was aimed upwind of people throwing rocks on the Mexican side who obstructed agents from helping the children being passed over razor wire.

The CBP statement said agents had not directly targeted the migrants attempting to cross the fence with tear gas and pepper spray.

A Reuters witness documented in one photo where a migrant had been hit by what appeared to be a gas canister.

Human rights group Amnesty International’s deputy director of research Justin Mazzola described the use of tear gas against migrants “cruel and inhumane” and called for an independent investigation.

“The Trump administration is defying international law and orchestrating a crisis by deliberately turning asylum-seekers away from ports of entry, endangering families who see no choice but to take desperate measures in their search for protection,” he said in a statement.

CBP said most of the migrants attempting to cross returned to Mexico while 25 people, including two teenagers, were detained.

Thousands of Central American migrants have been camping at shelters in Tijuana since arriving in November after traveling in caravans across Mexico to reach the U.S. border, where many have hoped to request asylum.

Mexico’s new leftist president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, has sought not to antagonize Trump over the U.S. president’s demands for a border wall. He obtained a pledge from the United States to contribute billions of dollars for development in Mexico’s poor south and Central America in order to deter migration.

Trump has backed away from his campaign pledge to make Mexico pay for a wall, but just last week he threatened to close the border with Mexico unless he gets the money he wants from U.S. lawmakers for a barrier.

The United States has also pushed Mexico to house Central American migrants while they seek U.S. asylum.

Reporting by Mohammed Salem; Additional reporting by David Shepardson in WASHINGTON, Mica Rosenberg in NEW YORK and Michael O’Boyle in MEXICO CITY; Editing by Jonathan Oatis, Paul Simao and Paul Tait

The CIA Confessions: The Crowley Conversations

January 2, 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. 84

Date: Tuesday, May 27, 1997

Commenced: 10:07 AM CST

Concluded: 10:32 AM CST

GD: Good morning to you, Robert. How goes it with you today?

RTC: Quite well, thank you. And yourself?

GD: I can always complain but then there is the alternative. I’ve been going over this Kennedy business and I was very curious to know why it is that the role of certain people never became public. Or why such silly stories about Oswald’s non-visit to Mexico and his certainly non-visits to the Russian or Cuban embassies were never challenged.

RTC: Well, we have such a lock on the media here that no paper would ever publish anything about this if we asked them not to. And, of course, we did. And when the Warren Commission report came out, terribly flawed as it was, the New York Times raved about it and turned it into a best seller.

GD: They put it in the fiction section, naturally.

RTC: No, they treated it like what it was: A precious revelation of the truth, cutting through a jungle of lies. Actually, we also created the jungle of lies.

GD: Ah yes, one hand washing the other.

RTC: Precisely. I mean, Gregory, one could not cover up such an action unless one had complete control over the media and the major publishing houses. And some of the really nut books were done for us just to create literary smoke screens. And besides, the further away we get from the actual happening, and this was way back in ’63, don’t forget, the safer we all are. The circles of fanatics and nuts will always remain but the chance of their uncovering anything of importance is growing more impossible. The public has other things to think about, Gregory. More silly stories about whether this bimbo actress is in love with some pretty boy actor who actually is a cocksucker. No, that business is buried in a jungle of vines and palm trees and no explorer wants to go there. Hell, they can talk about Clinton’s latest muncher instead. And don’t forget the most important fact of all Gregory. Kennedy is still dead. And so is his pest of a brother although Hoover did him, not us.

GD: I have a friend who was a cook at the Ambassador Hotel on the night Bobby was offed and he saw the whole thing. Down in the kitchen . Sudden eruption of people, loud voices,, television lights, jostling, pushing and so on. And this man jumps out and shoots at Kennedy. Screaming, stampeding masses of idiots. He said the main chef, some Swiss, jumped over the steam tables and tackled Sirhan. The autopsy said the fatal shot was fired from about two inches away from the back of Bobby’s head but my friend said Sirhan was shooting at Kennedy with, as he called it, some little popgun and was never closer to Bobby than four to five feet. He was right there and saw the whole thing. Knew nothing about the autopsy and when I told him, he said flat out that the shooter was never, ever, that close to Bobby.

RTC: I told you Hoover had it done. One of the bodyguards did it. Latrine rumor but then they did Sullivan in because he was threatening to talk. Mistaken for a deer, poor Sullivan was. Some kid shot him right through the head using a telescope rifle. I suppose the telescope didn’t show the red jacket very well. That’s the way it goes. No, your friend was right but that’s another story that will never see the light of day. Good riddance to both of them. And God took care of old Joe the bootlegger. Sat around in a wheelchair in his dignity pants until God decided he needed another janitor up in Heaven and off Joe went. I hope he suffered, the vicious old fuck.

GD: Such violence Robert.

RTC: Gregory, you have no idea what a bad person Joe was. I put some of his background into that box I sent you. You read it?

GD: Read everything. None of that surprised me. I mean none of it. Very Renaissance Italy in nature. Machiavelli said that it was fine for the leader to be hated only so long as he was feared.

RTC: I’m told you are feared.

GD: Me? Why I’m a mixture of the Easter Bunny and some of the holier saints in the calendar. Never hurt a man in my life.

RTC: I said nothing about hurting people. Injured people can identify you.

GD: Yes, Robert, they can. But I’ve never had that problem.

RTC: No, I would think not. But you understand why Kennedy had to die, don’t you?

GD: I can see why you and your friends thought so.

RTC: Treasonable swine. And Kennedy, I mean Jack, disgraced the office.

GD: What about Clinton?

RTC: Seedy, very seedy. Back seat of an old Chevvy type.

GD: He should have kept sheep. Then the Christian right nut fringe wouldn’t get so hysterical over a blowjob or two. There idea of sex is face to face in bed with your wife, once a year, fully clothed and followed by a good bath and long prayers. God, I would hate to have such freaks as parents. I would either spike their elderberry wine with rat poison or run off and become a shill in a carnival. Which I did, by the way, when I was fourteen.

RTC: Did your family, Gregory?

GD: No, ran off and worked in a carnival. Much fun and very instructive.

RTC: You are always a source of entertainment and surprise. The Kimmel people would have us believe you were suckled by a werewolf but I always defended you. I said it was a vampire.

GD: Oh the horror of it all. What we have now is a situation wherein the lunatics are running the asylum. And Monica saved her stained dress.

 

(Concluded at 10:32 AM CST)

https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Conversations+with+the+Crow+by+Gregory+Douglas

Neo-Nazi Al Qaeda

by William Grim

On the surface there would seem to be little to unite the Aryan racialists of the neo-Nazi movement with the terrorists of radical Islam. To the neo-Nazis, Muslims are almost all members of “inferior” races; and to the Islamic terrorists, the neo-Nazis are almost without exception either atheists or members of fringe quasi-Christian sects.

But the reality is that there has been close cooperation between Muslim extremists and Fascists ever since the founding of the Nazi movement in the 1920`s. For all of their differences, Muslim extremists and Nazis have always been united by a common group of beliefs and goals: hatred of Judaism (and conventional Christianity), hatred of democracy, and a desire for the destruction of Israel and the United States.

A little background is in order. During World War II the rabidly anti-Semitic Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin Al-Husseini, pledged his unequivocal support to Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist movement. The Grand Mufti was put on the Nazi payroll in 1937 after he met with Adolf Eichmann in Palestine. In fact, when the Grand Mufti had to flee the Middle East in 1941 after the failure of the pro-Nazi coup in Iraq, he was welcomed to Berlin by Hitler and provided with high-power transmitters in order to broadcast pro-Nazi propaganda to the Middle East.

The Grand Mufti also organized an all-Muslim unit of the SS for Hitler and was instrumental in forming the pro-Nazi Muslim Hanschar brigades in Yugoslavia. After the war and his conviction for war crimes by the Nuremberg Tribunal, the Grand Mufti fled to Egypt where, as part of the ODESSA network of former SS operatives, he maintained close ties to former high-ranking Nazis who were now engaged in gun-running operations to Arab countries fighting the fledgling State of Israel.

One such ex-Nazi gunrunner was Major General Otto Ernst Remer (1912-1997), known as the “Godfather of the neo-Nazi movement.“ Remer had a major part in thwarting the Generals` Plot against Hitler in July 1944. Hitler rewarded Remer by putting him in charge of his protection detail. In the chaos of the immediate post-war period, Remer escaped de-Nazification and returned to Germany.

In 1949 Remer and his associates founded the Sozialistische Reichspartei in Lower Saxony, but the party was banned in 1952 as a neo-Nazi political organization. Remer then settled in Egypt where he began his close friendship with the Grand Mufti and also became security adviser to Gamal Abdel Nasser.

Remer, along with his associate Alois Bunning (who was Eichmann`s assistant in the SS), operated his gunrunning company, the Orient Trading Company, out of Damascus for many years. In the 1980`s, when the statute of limitations expired for the crimes he was alleged to have committed, Remer retired and returned to Germany where he became a close adviser to Michael Kuehnen, the most important neo-Nazi leader of the postwar period in Germany.

It should be pointed out that National Socialism had a profound impact on the political philosophies of many radical Islamic political organization, particularly the Muslim Brotherhood (founded in Egypt in 1928), Nasser`s Young Egypt movement, the Social Nationalist Party of Syria founded by Anton Sa`ada, and the Ba`ath Party of Iraq. One of the main leaders of the 1941 pro-Nazi coup in Iraq was Khairallah Tulfah, the uncle and guardian of Saddam Hussein. When Saddam failed in his attempt to assassinate the Iraqi leader Abdel Karim Qassim in 1959, he fled to Egypt where he was given protection by Grand Mufti-protégé Nasser and ODESSA-connected former Nazis. The rest, as they say, is history.

The Third Position

The rise of Al Qaeda and the explosion of neo-Nazi activity in Germany and elsewhere coincided with the breakup of the USSR in the early 1990`s and the political vacuum created by the absence of the former Soviet behemoth. Neo-Nazis in both Europe and the United States began making overtures to Islamic terrorists and even to Louis Farrakhan`s Nation of Islam movement. The resulting admixture of Nazi and Islamicist ideologies is something that is termed the “Third Position.“

Simply put, adherents of the “Third Position“ oppose both communism and capitalism, the latter category subsuming Israel, the United States and all other democratic countries which are believed to be under the control of “International Jewry.“ To this end, the socialist portion of Nazi beliefs is emphasized (as opposed to Hitler`s reliance on corporatism), but the core belief in anti-Semitism is left unaltered. Like the original Nazis, the Third Positioners are eager to form alliances with Muslim (and black) extremists who share their anti-Semitic beliefs.

In Germany, the neo-Nazi leader Gottfried Kuessel has maintained close ties to Farrakhan`s Black Muslims, and Karl-Heinz Hoffmann, thought to have been involved in the murder of Jewish publisher Shlomo Levin as well as the Oktoberfest bombing of September 26, 1980, in which 13 persons were killed and over 200 injured, has long maintained ties with Arafat`s PLO and even moved his paramilitary training camp to Lebanon in 1980 with PLO assistance.

In France, the neo-Nazi leader Robert Faurisson maintains close ties with Ahmed Rami, the former broadcaster of the now-defunct Radio Islam, a viciously anti-Semitic station that operated out of Stockholm for a number of years. And for some time, Sweden`s neo-Nazis have provided skinheads for use as Rami`s bodyguards.

Much of the coordination of neo-Nazi/Muslim terrorist activities is done in the United States. Since overt Nazi activity is outlawed in Germany and many other European countries, neo-Nazis and Islamic extremists have taken advantage of America`s First Amendment protection of almost all political activity. In fact, the headquarters today of the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterrpartei is in Lincoln, Nebraska. The Internet and electronic banking make communication and the transfer of funds instantaneous. Even when the transfer of funds needs to be done in person, American law permits every individual to enter or leave the country with $10,000 in cash or negotiable securities without reporting it.

The First Gulf War in 1991 was a catalyzing event in the development of neo-Nazi and Islamic terrorist relations. Early in 1991, the German neo-Nazi leader Michael Kuehnen contacted the Iraqi Embassy in Bonn and offered to train and equip a squadron of neo-Nazi mercenaries to assist Saddam in the coming war against the alliance led by the United States. Indeed, when Kuehnen was arrested for the last time by German police in April of 1991 (Kuehnen died shortly afterwards of AIDS), included among the documents found in his apartment was a copy of a draft treaty between the “Anti-Zionist League“ and the “Government of Iraq.“

Another German neo-Nazi leader, Heinz Reisz, appearing live on Hessian state television on January 25, 1991, gained a great deal of notoriety by proclaiming, “Long live the fight for Saddam Hussein, long like his people, long live their leader, God save the Arab people.“

Although upwards of as many as 500 neo-Nazi mercenaries, formed into a so-called Freedom Corps, were sent to Iraq in 1991, their military effect was negligible at best. Eyewitness accounts say that most of the mercenaries did little other than parade around Baghdad in SS uniforms. The members of the `Freedom Corps“ fled Iraq after the first night of Alliance bombing. Regardless of the ignominious military performance of the neo-Nazis in Iraq in 1991, this was an important event because it led to greater ties and cooperation among American right-wing extremists, European neo-Nazis and Islamic terrorists.

Oklahoma City

Domestic terrorism in the United States also rose greatly in the aftermath of the first Gulf War. Timothy McVeigh, himself a veteran of that conflict, stunned the world by his bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in 1995 in Oklahoma City. But the evidence suggests that the neo-Nazi/Islamic terrorist network played a significant role in this act of terrorism.

First, the choice of a terrorist target in Oklahoma is very telling. Although Oklahoma is a conservative southern state that has a reputation for patriotism and sends an unusually high percentage of its young people into the military, it is also one of the bastions of the neo-Nazi movement in the United States. In 1991, the Oklahoma Klan leader Dennis Mahon led a rally in support of Saddam Hussein in Tulsa. And Oklahoma is also home to Elohim City, a neo-Nazi paramilitary compound that has served as a training ground for right-wing extremists for the past thirty years. Groups associated with Elohim City have included The Order, Covenant Sword and Arm, White Aryan Resistance and the Aryan Republican Army. The latter group included Timothy McVeigh among its members.

Extremists residing at Elohim City received military-style training from a number of sources. One of the trainers there was Andreas Carl Strassmeir of Germany, a neo-Nazi and the son of Guenter Strassmeir, a chief aide of disgraced former German chancellor Helmut Kohl. The elder Strassmeir is widely regarded as the architect of Kohl`s reunification plan that merged the former East Germany with the Federal Republic in 1991.And Guenter`s father was one of the original members of the Nazi Party in the early 1920`s.

Andreas Strassmeir is important to this story because he not only became a close friend and confidant of Timothy McVeigh, but also because he is regarded by many investigators as John Doe #2, the unknown person assisting McVeigh and Terry Nichols at the scene of the Oklahoma City bombing who was seen by a number of eyewitnesses.

In addition to training various neo-Nazi and militia groups, Strassmeir was involved in a number of very curious activities. According to an FBI report dated May 10, 1995, “Additional documents reveal that at one time Strassmeir was attempting to purchase a 747 aircraft from Lufthansa; however, the reason for the purchase is not reflected in the documents.“

In 1995 it would not have been unreasonable for an FBI investigator to give Strassmeir`s attempted purchase of a Boeing 747 mere passing notice. In light of 9/11, however, Strassmeir`s aborted airliner purchase gives one pause and raises the real possibility that 9/11 type attacks were being planned as far back as 1995 by insiders in the neo-Nazi/Islamic terrorist network. (And flying a privately owned jet or one operated by remote control would save the problem of hijacking airliners en route.) Strassmeir left the United States shortly after the bombing and currently resides in Berlin.

Mutual Enemies, Mutual Interests

The many points of contact between the neo-Nazis and the Islamic terrorists and their mutual targets of large public buildings demonstrate what I would like to term the “Strangers on a Train“ scenario of current terrorist activity. In the Alfred Hitchcock movie of that name, two men unknown to each other meet on a train and start talking. Each needs to dispose of a person. They agree to kill each other`s intended victim, thereby eliminating the element of motive from the ensuing police investigations. In a similar manner, evidence of late tends to support the idea that Al Qaeda is farming out terrorist work — which is why American investigators have been so interested in the remote area of South America where Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay border each other.

It is there that wealthy German ex-Nazis, Islamic terrorists, Basque and IRA terrorists on the lam as well as narco-terrorists are known to be in steady contact. The possibilities for Mafia-style terrorist “contracts“ are virtually unlimited.

It may come as something of a surprise to some when they realize just how well funded the various neo-Nazi organizations are. Authorities have known for years that a Swiss banker by the name of Francois Genoud has been funding neo-Nazi activities throughout the world. Genoud first gained prominence as the financial adviser to the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. He is alleged to have funded neo-Nazi activities through the use of confiscated Jewish funds that were deposited in Swiss banks by the Nazis. Genoud funded the legal defense of Eichmann during his trial in 1961. And most chilling of all, Genoud was closely associated with the Palestinian terrorists who murdered Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972.

Another Swiss financier of neo-Nazi and Islamic terror is Ahmed Huber, (nee Albert Huber), a former journalist who converted to Islam. Swiss authorities raided Huber`s suburban home outside of Berne on November 8, 2001, when U.S. officials identified him as one of the chief financial operators for Al Qaeda. Huber had been very active with the Al Taqwa (literally “Fear of God“) international banking group, an Islamic terrorist front organization that had been funding the activities of Hamas and other Muslim extremists. According to a report released by Germany`s Bundesamt fuer Verfassungsschutz (“Office for the Protection of the Constitution“), Huber “sees himself as a mediator between Islam and right-wing groups.“

Huber and others of his ilk have found that Holocaust denial organizations provide the ideal venues for coordinating the efforts of the neo-Nazis and the Islamic terrorists. Indeed, Holocaust denial is the one area in which the beliefs of the neo-Nazis and Islamic terrorists coincide completely. And given the levels of post-9/11 security, international Holocaust denial conferences now have greater importance for planning and coordination among the neo-Nazi/Islamic terrorist networks.

This is due to the unfortunate fact that Holocaust denial organizations have the patina of scholarly respectability. Groups such as the Santa Barbara, California-based Institute for Historical Review produce glossy quasi-academic-style journals complete with footnotes and bibliography and well-designed and user-friendly websites. Holocaust denial groups sponsor international meetings that allow representatives of neo-Nazi and Islamic terrorist groups to meet because they narrowly fall within guidelines in most Western countries allowing for the free exchange of “ideas.“ And with the current embrace of anti-Semitism by most leftist academics (in addition to their traditional anti-Americanism), there is now often very little difference between the symposia sponsored by officially recognized Middle Eastern Studies organizations in America and Europe and those organized by Holocaust denial groups.

While American forces continue to identify and destroy Al Qaeda`s ability to conduct terrorist activities on its own, we must become more vigilant to the increasing possibility of “terror by hire“ as neo-Nazi and other right-wing extremists step up to fill the void.

The next 9/11-style terrorist attack may not be attempted by a keffiya-wearing Arab terrorist spouting quotations from the Koran, but by an IRA terrorist whose services were purchased by a left-wing European intellectual attending a Middle Eastern Studies caucus of some leftist academic group during an annual conference in Omaha or Chicago or San Francisco

 

 

Hacker group threatens to leak 9/11 ‘truth’ unless paid in bitcoin

January 2, 2018

RT

The Dark Overlord hacker group has threatened to leak thousands of “secret” documents stolen from insurers and government agencies that they claim reveal the truth about 9/11 – unless they’re paid not to.

The Dark Overlord, a “professional adversarial threat group” known for their hacks of Netflix, plastic surgery clinics, and other sensitive targets, posted a link to a 10GB encrypted archive of documents related to 9/11 litigation, promising to release the encryption keys if their demands were not met in a post on Pastebin on Monday.

The group claims the documents tell the story of what really happened on one of the most notorious dates in recent history, tweeting “We’ll be providing many answers about 9.11 conspiracies through our 18,000 secret documents leak.” They published a “teaser” consisting of letters, emails, and various documents that mention law firms, the Transport Security Administration, and the Federal Aviation Administration, with a promise of more to come.

They claim to have hacked documents from not only major global insurers like Lloyds of London and Hiscox, but also Silverstein Properties, which owned the World Trade Center complex, and various government agencies. The material, which supposedly includes confidential government documents that were meant to be destroyed but were instead retained by legal firms, allegedly reveals “the truth about one of the most recognizable incidents in recent history and one which is shrouded in mystery with little transparency and not many answers.”

Also on rt.com Federal law enforcement agencies sued for keeping Americans in the dark about hacking activities

Anyone worried they might be named in the documents can have their names redacted – for a fee, according to the announcement. “Terrorist organizations” and “competing nation states of the USA” are also offered first dibs on the info – if they pay up. Otherwise, the hackers write, the insurers can pay an unspecified bitcoin ransom – or “we’re going to bury you with this.”

Some of the documents were nabbed in an April hack of a law firm associated with Hiscox that the firm acknowledges could have exposed 1,500 of its US commercial policyholders. The Dark Overlord claims that while their ransom was paid in relation to that earlier hack, their victim violated the “agreement” by cooperating with law enforcement, necessitating further extortion.

The group emerged in 2016 with hacks on medical centers, advertising sensitive data for sale on the dark web in order to force victims to pay for its removal. They infamously leaked an entire season of Netflix’s Orange is the New Black last year to prove to that company they meant business and have stolen data from more than 50 companies, according to Vice.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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