TBR News June 30, 2019

The Voice of the White House Washington, D.C. June 30, 2019:

“Working in the White House as a junior staffer is an interesting experience.

When I was younger, I worked as a summer-time job in a clinic for people who had moderate to severe mental problems and the current work closely, at times, echos the earlier one.

I am not an intimate of the President but I have encountered him from time to time and I daily see manifestations of his growing psychological problems.

He insults people, uses foul language, is frantic to see his name mentioned on main-line television and pays absolutely no attention to any advice from his staff that runs counter to his strange ideas.

He lies like a rug to everyone, eats like a hog, makes lewd remarks to female staffers and flies into rages if anyone dares to contradict him.

His latest business is to re-institute a universal draft in America.

He wants to do this to remove tens of thousands of unemployed young Americans from the streets so they won’t come together and fight him.

Commentary for June 30:”With Trump out of the country, strutting around like a three year old with a dripping ice cream cone, the White House offices are much less tense.

We never know what the nut will do, ranting, lying, threatening to destroy anyone who dares to contradict him and, worse, to make fun of him.

His hair is a joke, he uses a tanning machine and has an orange face, and he has a huge gut and wears some kind of a girdle to keep it from press photographers.

He bought the White House by bribing social media like Facebook and once he got in, he started behaving like Nero.

The man is nuttier than a fruitcake, obnoxious to one and all and given to roaring death threats about anyone who even remotely might either challenge his gross conduct or, worse, to make fun of his huge stomach, triple chins, silly comb-overs or egomaniacal rantings.

I predict that either he will die suddenly of a stroke or get impeached.

I heard him say once that he would not leave the White House and if anyone tried to oust him, he would activate the right wing neo-nazis and foaming Jesus freaks to come to his aid and attack, physically, his enemies, real or imagined.

There will be many books written later about this one.

I might even try.”

 

The Table of Contents

• Democrats must just bring down Trump – for the sake of the world
• Official Government Disinformation Methodology 
• Accidents on Purpose
• Israel is arming neo-Nazis in Ukraine
• christian@juersmilitaria.com HACKED <brandie844@c.aanonymous.ml>
• The Observer view on Donald Trump’s uncontrolled and increasingly reckless behaviour
• Chinese Intelligence Collection Capabilities–An Overview
• Encyclopedia of American Loons
• The CIA Confessions: The Crowley Conversations
• The Ball at Killiemuir

 Democrats must just bring down Trump – for the sake of the world

We do not need 20 candidates having confusing fights over healthcare. We need urgent action to defeat a would-be tyrant

June 30, 2019

by Robert Reich

The Guardian

Imagine an opposition political party in a land being taken over by an oligarchy, headed by a would-be tyrant.

The tyrant and the oligarchy have convinced many voters the reason they feel powerless and economically insecure isn’t because the oligarchy has taken most of the economic gains and overwhelmed the government with its money. It’s because the country has been taken over by undocumented migrants, Latinos, African Americans and a “deep state” of coastal liberals, intelligence agencies and mainstream media.

This is rubbish, of course, but the tyrant is masterful at telling big lies and he is backed by the oligarchy’s money.

Imagine further that the opposition party will soon face another election in which it could possibly depose the tyrant and overcome the oligarchy. But at the rate they are consolidating power – over the courts, politics and the media – this could be the opposition’s last chance.

What would it do?

Would it allow virtually anyone to seek to be the party’s candidate for president (and gain valuable brand recognition along the way), including spiritual gurus, one-issue entrepreneurs and minor elected officials who have never even run for state office?

I doubt it. The party would establish criteria to filter out those who had no real chance.

Would it let almost every one of them go on television to debate one other, thereby placing a premium on one-line zingers, fast talk and rapid-fire putdowns? Would it assign them randomly to one of two nights, so several candidates with the most support would not even get to debate one other?

Of course not. Instead, it would take the half-dozen who had the best chance and structure the debates so they could demonstrate their understanding of the issues and the forcefulness of their ideas in lengthy back-and-forth exchanges.

Would it encourage them to split the party over policy issues that almost no one understands, such as the meaning of “Medicare for all”, thereby causing some voters to become alarmed about a government takeover of the healthcare system and others to worry the government won’t go far enough?

No. It would encourage the candidates to emphasize the larger goal, in this case to provide health insurance to everyone, and have them explain that a so-called “public option” to buy into Medicare would eventually displace for-profit private insurers anyway, because it would be so much cheaper.Would it let any of this deflect attention from the tyrant keeping children in cages at the border, coddling foreign dictators and inviting them to help him in the next election, shattering alliances with other democracies, using his office to make money for himself and his family, lying non-stop, subsidizing fossil fuels and downplaying climate change, claiming the media is guilty of treason, and undermining other democratic institutions and norms?

Of course not. Although it would want its candidates to float some ambitious and sensible proposals that would get people hopeful about the future, it would also want them to keep attention on what the tyrant was doing and the dangers he posed.

Finally, given the extraordinarily high stakes in the upcoming election, would it decide on its candidate in much the same way it has done in the recent past – solely on the basis of who can attract the most primary voters and caucus attenders?

No. It would have its eye on the general election. It would be thinking strategically about how to attract voters in places the tyrant won in the last election but could swing back. In America, that would be Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona and North Carolina.

This doesn’t mean it would support a “moderate” or “centrist” candidate. These terms mean little in a land succumbing to tyranny and oligarchy.

It would do best with a candidate able to create a multiracial coalition to fight the tyrant and his oligarchy – a coalition combining poor, working class and middle class whites, blacks and Latinos.

It would need a candidate who could explain how the tyrant uses racism and xenophobia to divide and conquer, turning the majority against each other. A candidate who could help people understand that a necessary part of fighting tyranny is fighting racism, and a requisite for fighting inequality is reversing climate change. A candidate who could unite the country around an agenda of robust democracy and shared prosperity.

This may sound fanciful but the challenge is real and the Democratic party must meet it over the next 17 months.

What may be fanciful is that today’s Democratic party has the power to select its candidate in the ways I’ve suggested.

Yet the stakes in the 2020 election are larger than any election in living memory. The Democrats’ selection of a candidate therefore is no ordinary thing. In a very real sense, the fates of America and the world depend on it.

The question is whether the Democratic party is up to the task.

Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. He is also a columnist for Guardian US

 

Official Government Disinformation Methodology 

Prior to the event of printed, and later television, media, it was not difficult for the world’s power elites and the governments they controlled, to see that unwelcome and potentially dangerous information never reached the masses of people under their control. Most of the general public in more distant times were completely illiterate and received their news from their local priest or from occasional gossip from travelers, The admixture of kings, princes and clergy had an iron control over what their subject could, or could not hear. During the Middle Ages and even into the more liberal Renaissance, universities were viewed with suspicion and those who taught, or otherwise expressed, concepts that were anathema to the concept of feudalism were either killed outright in public or permanently banished. Too-liberal priests were silenced by similar methods. If Papal orders for silence were not followed, priests could, and were, put to the torch as an example for others to note.

However, with the advent of the printing press and a growing literacy in the population, the question of informational control was less certain and with the growing movements in Europe and the American colonies for less restriction and more public expression, the power elites found it necessary to find the means to prevent unpleasant information from being proclaimed throughout their lands and unto all the inhabitants thereof.

The power elites realized that if they could not entirely prevent inconvenient and often dangerous facts to emerge and threaten their authority, their best course was not censorship but to find and develop the means to control the presentation and publication of that they wished to keep entirely secret.

The first method was to block or prevent the release of dangerous material by claiming that such material was a matter of important state security and as such, strictly controlled. This, they said, was not only for their own protection but also the somewhat vague but frightening concept of the security of their people.

The second method was, and has been, to put forth disinformation that so distorts and confuses actual facts as to befuddle a public they see as easily controlled, naïve and gullible.

The mainstream American media which theoretically was a balance against governmental corruption and abuses of power, quickly became little more than a mouthpiece for the same government they were supposed to report on. In the latter part of the nineteenth century, most American newspapers were little better than Rupert Mudoch’s modern tabloids, full of sound and fury, and signifying nothing but during the First World War, President Wilson used the American entry into the First World War as an excuse for setting up controls over the American public.

Aside from setting up government control over food distribution, the railroads, much industry involved in war production, he also established a powerful propaganda machine coupled with a national informant system that guaranteed his personal control. In 1918, citing national security, Wilson arrested and imprisoned critical news reporters and threatened to shut down their papers.

Wilson was a wartime president and set clear precedents that resonated very loudly with those who read history and understood its realities.

During the Second World War, Franklin Roosevelt, another wartime leader, was not as arrogant or highhanded as Wilson (whose empire fell apart after the end of the war that supported it) but he set up informational controls that exist to the present time.

And after Roosevelt, and the war, passed into history, the government in the United States created a so-called cold war with Soviet Russia, instead of Hitler’s Germany, as the chief enemy. Control of the American media then fell into the hands of the newly-formed Central Intelligence Agency who eventually possessed an enormous, all-encompassing machine that clamped down firmly on the national print, and later television media, with an iron hand in a velvet glove.

Media outlets that proved to be cooperative with CIA propaganda officials were rewarded for their loyalty and cooperation with valuable, and safe, news and the implication was that enemies of the state would either be subject to scorn and derision and that supporters of the state and its policies would receive praise and adulation.

The methodology of a controlled media has a number of aspects which, once clearly understood, renders its techniques and goals far less effective.

Mainstream media sources (especially newspapers) are notorious for reporting flagrantly dishonest and unsupported news stories on the front page, then quietly retracting those stories on the very back page when they are caught. In this case, the point is to railroad the lie into the collective consciousness. Once the lie is finally exposed, it is already too late, and a large portion of the population will not notice or care when the truth comes out.

Accidents on Purpose

June 30, 2019

by Christian Jürs

Pity the poor Ukrainians, so far from God and so close to the United States.

When the Ukraine separated from Russia, it was with the assistance of the American CIA and when a pro-Russian president came into office there, the same CIA moved to remove him.

The Ukraine is important to the United States because she then controlled the strategically important Crimea with its extensive offshore oil deposits and, more important, the large former Soviet naval base at Sevastopol. One of the demands of the CIA when it worked to remove the pro-Russian president was that the lease the Russians had on this base would be cancelled and the U.S. Navy given the same lease.

This would give the US a naval presence in the Black Sea, part of the encirclement of Russia. To facilitate this, a CIA-trained unit started protest meetings in Kiev and to sharpen their demands, on February 20, 2014, a large public meeting in Kiev’s Maidan square had hidden snipers shoot into the crowd, killing over 50 people. This created the necessary push for a successful anti-Russian putsch.

Acts of violence resulting in the deaths of many people seemed to be the norm in the encirclement campaign against Russia

On 10 April 2010, a Tupolev Tu-154 aircraft of the Polish Air Force crashed near the city of Smolensk, Russia, killing all 96 people on board. Among the victims were the President of Poland Lech Kaczyński and his wife Maria, the former President of Poland in exile Ryszard Kaczorowski, the chief of the Polish General Staff and other senior Polish military officers, the president of the National Bank of Poland, Polish Government officials, 18 members of the Polish Parliament, senior members of the Polish clergy and relatives of victims of the Katyn massacre. The group was arriving from Warsaw to attend an event commemorating the 70th anniversary of the massacre, which took place not far from Smolensk.

The pilots were attempting to land at Smolensk North Airport – a former military airbase – in thick fog, with visibility reduced to about 500 meters (1,600 ft). The aircraft descended far below the normal approach path until it struck trees, rolled inverted and crashed into the ground, coming to rest in a wooded area a short distance from the runway.

In this case, a man code-named ‘Corey’ was able to alter the signals on the airport landing area to show the ground twenty-seven feet lower than it actually was.

‘Corey’ was a member of a CIA group called ‘Summerfield II’ that was run by a CIA officer named Russle.

His real name is George Macalister, his date of birth is 5.29.42 and his American Social Security number SS # 465-80-9315, his email address is :

george_macalister@hotmail.com  (G137596.)

The reason why the aircraft was destroyed is because the US wanted Poland to be a supportive member of countries facing Russia who were to form a bloc of American-supportive entites designed to threaten Russia both militarily and economically. The Poles were flying to Smolensk to take part, with Russian officials in a memorial to the Stalin-killed Polish officers at Katyn during the Second World War. This rapproachment was anathema to the CIA and had to be somehow disrupted. Hence we had the entire Polish government wiped out in a single action as an object lesion to others.

After the installation of a CIA-friendly government in the Ukraine and a pending revoking of the Russian lease on the Sebastopol naval base, on April 15, 2014, CIA Director John Brennan and is staff flew into Kiev and met with Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk and First Deputy Prime Minister Vitaliy Yarema to discuss the formation of new, more secure channels for sharing U.S. intelligence with the country now fighting pro-Russian secessionists in its eastern cities.

Shortly after this, on July 17,  2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (MH17) a scheduled passenger flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur was shot down while flying over eastern Ukraine, killing all 283 passengers and 15 crew on board. The rocket projectors used in this attack were of Russian origin but had been sold to the Ukrainian military ten years earlier.

This operation was also run by the ‘Summerfield II’ people.

And note that the two ships that caught on fire were dealing in oil from a country that the US had sanctioned. It has been reliably reported that external sabotage was the reason for the explosions and fire and that the group responsible for the sabotage are headquarted in the same building in Kiev that also houses the large CIA unit.

Mr. Macalister, now retired, lives in Vienna, Virginia and no doubt enjoys leafing through his scrapbook filled with photographs and old newspaper clippings depicting international incidents involving large death tolls.

Israel is arming neo-Nazis in Ukraine

Israeli arms are being sent to a heavily armed neo-Nazi militia in Ukraine, The Electronic Intifada has learned.

Azov Battalion online propaganda shows Israeli-licensed Tavor rifles in the fascist group’s hands, while Israeli human rights activists have protested arms sales to Ukraine on the basis that weapons might end up with anti-Semitic militias.

In a letter “about licenses for Ukraine” obtained by The Electronic Intifada, the Israeli defense ministry’s arms export agency says they are “careful to grant licenses” to arms exporters “in full coordination with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other government entities.”

The 26 June letter was sent in reply to Israeli lawyer Eitay Mack who had written a detailed request demanding Israel end all military aid to the country.

Azov’s official status in the Ukrainian armed forces means it cannot be verified that “Israeli weapons and training” are not being used “by anti-Semitic or neo-Nazi soldiers,” Mack and 35 other human rights activists wrote.

They had written that Ukrainian armed forces use rifles made in Israel “and are trained by Israelis,” according to reports in the country.

The head of the Israeli arms export agency declined to deny the reports, or to even discuss cancellation of the weapons licenses, citing “security” concerns.

But Racheli Chen, the head of the agency, confirmed to Mack she had “carefully read your letter,” which detailed the fascist nature of Azov and the reports of Israeli arms and training.

Israeli rifles in Ukraine

The fact that Israeli arms are going to Ukrainian neo-Nazis is supported by Azov’s own online propaganda.

On its YouTube channel, Azov posted a video “review” of locally produced copies of two Israeli Tavor rifles

The rifles are produced under licence from Israel Weapon Industries, and as such would have been authorized by the Israeli government.

IWI markets the Tavor as the “primary weapon” of the Israeli special forces.

It has been used in recent massacres of unarmed Palestinians taking part in Great March of Return protests in Gaza.

Fort, the Ukrainian state-owned arms company that produces the rifles under license, has a page about the Tavor on its website.

The Israel Weapon Industries logo also appears on its website, including on the “Our Partners” page.

Starting as a gang of fascist street thugs, the Azov Battalion is one of several far-right militias that have now been integrated as units of Ukraine’s National Guard.

Staunchly anti-Russian, Azov fought riot police during the 2013 US and EU-supported “Euromaidan” protests in the capital Kiev.

The protests and riots laid the ground for the 2014 coup which removed the pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych

When the civil war began in eastern Ukraine against Russian-backed separatists, the new western-backed government began to arm Azov. The militia soon fell under the jurisdiction of the Ukrainian interior ministry, and saw some of the most intense frontline combat against the separatists.

The group stands accused in United Nations and Human Rights Watch reports of committing war crimes against pro-Russian separatists during the ongoing civil war in the eastern Donbass region, including torture, sexual violence and targeting of civilian homes.

Today, Azov is run by Arsen Avakov, Ukraine’s interior minister. According to the BBC, he pays its fighters, and has appointed one of its military commanders, Vadym Troyan, as his deputy – with control over the police.

Avakov last year met with the Israeli interior minister Aryeh Deri to discuss “fruitful cooperation.”

Azov’s young founder and first military commander Andriy Biletsky is today a lawmaker in the Ukrainian parliament.

As journalist Max Blumenthal explained on The Real News in February, Biletsky has “pledged to restore the honor of the white race” and has advanced laws forbidding “race mixing.”

According to The Telegraph, Biletsky in 2014 wrote that “the historic mission of our nation in this critical moment is to lead the white races of the world in a final crusade for their survival. A crusade against the Semite-led untermenschen.”

At a military training camp for children last year, The Guardian noticed that several Azov instructors had Nazi and other racist tattoos, including a swastika, the SS skull symbol and one that read “White Pride.”

One Azov soldier explained to The Guardian that he fights Russia because “Putin’s a Jew.”

Speaking to The Telegraph, another praised Adolf Hitler, said homosexuality is a “mental illness” and that the scale of the Holocaust “is a big question.”

An Azov drill sergeant once told USA Today “with a laugh” that “no more than half his comrades are fellow Nazis.”

An Azov spokesperson played that down, claiming that “only 10-20 percent” of the group’s members were Nazis.

Nonetheless, the sergeant “vowed that when the war ends, his comrades will march on the capital, Kiev, to oust a government they consider corrupt.”

After Azov’s founder Andriy Biletsky entered parliament, he threatened to dissolve it. “Take my word for it,” he said, “we have gathered here to begin the fight for power.”

Those promises were made in 2014, but there are early signs of them being fulfilled today.

This year the battalion has founded a new “National Militia” to bring the war home.

This well-organized gang is at the forefront of a growing wave of racist and anti-Semitic violence in Ukraine.

Led by its military veterans, it specializes in pogroms and thuggish enforcement of its political agenda.

Earlier this month, clad in balaclavas and wielding axes and baseball bats, members of the group destroyed a Romany camp in Kiev. In a YouTube video, apparently shot by the Azov thugs themselves, police turn up towards the end of the camp’s destruction.

They look on doing nothing, while the thugs cry, “Glory to the nation! Death to enemies!”

Israel’s military aid to Ukraine and its neo-Nazis emulates similar programs by the United States and other NATO countries including the UK and Canada.

So obsessed are they with defeating a perceived threat from Russia that they seem happy to aid even openly Nazi militias – as long as they fight on their side.

This is also a throwback to the early Cold War, when the CIA supported fascists and Hitlerites to infiltrate from Austria into Hungary in 1956, where they began slaughtering Hungarian communist Jews and Hungarian Jews as “communists.”

Recent postings on Azov websites document a June meeting with the Canadian military attaché, Colonel Brian Irwin.

According to Azov, the Canadians concluded the briefing by expressing “their hopes for further fruitful cooperation.”

Irwin acknowledged receipt of an email from The Electronic Intifada, but did not answer questions about his meeting with the fascist militia.

A spokesperson for the Canadian defense department later sent a statement claiming that their “training of Ukrainian Armed Forces through Operation Unifier incorporates strong human rights elements.”

They said Canada is “strongly opposed to the glorification of Nazism and all forms of racism” but that “every country must come to grips with difficult periods in its past.”

The spokesperson, who did not provide a name, wrote that Canadian training “includes ongoing dialogue on the development of a diverse, and inclusive Ukraine.”

The statement said nothing about how alleged Canadian diversity training goes down with the Azov Battalion.

Also part of Colonel Irwin’s meeting was the head of Azov’s officer training academy, an institution named after right-wing Ukrainian nationalist Yevhen Konovalets.

Konovalets is one of the group’s idols, whose portrait frequently adorns its military iconography.

Konovalets was the founder of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), which later allied itself to Nazi Germany during its invasion of the Soviet Union.

The OUN took part in the notorious 1941 Lviv massacre, when the Nazis invaded Soviet territory.

During the pogrom, thousands of Jews were massacred in the now-Ukrainian city.

US aid to Nazis

Canada is of course not the only NATO “ally” to be sending arms to Ukraine.

As Max Blumenthal has extensively reported, US weapons, including rocket-propelled grenades, and training have been provided to Azov.

Under pressure from the Pentagon, a clause in the annually renewed defense bill banning US aid to Ukraine from going to the Azov Battalion was repeatedly stripped out.

This went on for three straight years before Democratic lawmaker Ro Khanna and others pushed it through earlier this year.

For his trouble Khanna was smeared in Washington as a “K Street sellout” who was “holding Putin’s dirty laundry.”

Despite the ban finally passing, Azov’s status as an official unit of the Ukrainian armed forces leaves it unclear how US aid can be separated out.

In 2014, the Israel lobby groups ADL and the Simon Wiesenthal Center refused to help a previous attempt to bar US aid to neo-Nazi groups in Ukraine.

Attempts by some in Congress to bar US military aid to Nazis in Ukraine may explain military aid from Israel.

Israel’s “deepening military-technical cooperation” with Ukraine and its fascist militias is likely a way to help its partner in the White House, and is another facet of the growing Zionist-White Supremacist alliance.

Israel has historically acted as a useful route through which US presidents and the CIA can circumvent congressional restrictions on aid to various unsavory groups and governments around the world.

In 1980s Latin America, these included the Contras, who were fighting a war against the left-wing revolutionary government of Nicaragua, as well as a host of other Latin American fascist death squads and military dictatorships.

It also included the South African apartheid regime, which Israeli governments of both the “Zionist left” and Likudnik right armed for decades.

As quoted in Andrew and Leslie Cockburn’s book Dangerous Liaison, one former member of the Israeli parliament, General Mattityahu Peled, put it succinctly: “In Central America, Israel is the ‘dirty work’ contractor for the US administration. Israel is acting as an accomplice and an arm of the United States.”

Amid an alarming rise in anti-Semitism and neo-Nazism, Israel now appears to be reprising this role in eastern Europe.

 

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The Observer view on Donald Trump’s uncontrolled and increasingly reckless behaviour

Observer editorial

The Observer

The US president’s actions on all fronts are now a matter of global concern

If Donald Trump forces a shutdown of the US federal government, as happened this weekend, that in the end is a matter for Americans. When the president’s personal charity, the Trump Foundation, is closed following accusations of “a shocking pattern of illegality”, as was the case last week, the nation’s voters are free to form their own conclusions. Whether or not the US head of state is a criminal adulterer who allegedly conspired to pay hush money to former mistresses will ultimately be decided in the US courts.

But when Trump abandons the fight against Islamic State terrorists and places British, Kurdish and other allied forces in Syria and Afghanistan at increased risk by withdrawing US troops, as he did last week, when he ignores European partners and does the bidding of authoritarian leaders hostile to western democratic values, and when he indulges in a destructive tariff war that helped crash the markets last week, stokes international tensions and threatens global prosperity, then his reckless behaviour is everybody’s business.

This is the situation, almost halfway through Trump’s four-year term, that now confronts all those around the world who look to the US for leadership and example. Americans have a right to elect whoever they wish as president. Equally, the rest of us have a right to expect that the person they choose honours the multilateral alliances, commitments and responsibilities agreed by predecessors. Otherwise, America’s ability and fitness to lead will be lost.

James Mattis, the US defense secretary who quit last week over Trump’s Syrian volte-face, understands this very well. His resignation letter is a classic of its kind. He declared that America’s strength was “inextricably linked” to its international partnerships, especially Nato. Trump has consistently denigrated Nato, as part of his war on multilateralism. Coming from a highly respected figure, this was a stunning rebuke.

But Mattis wasn’t finished. It was essential to be “clear eyed” about the threat posed by “malign actors and strategic competitors”, he wrote. “It is clear that China and Russia, for example, want to shape a world consistent with their authoritarian model.” Given Trump’s notorious chumminess with Vladimir Putin, and the continuing FBI investigation into his 2016 campaign’s alleged collusion with Russia, it was a telling blow. Mattis’s letter ended abruptly, without any of the customary flourishes or thanks. Trump, reportedly, was incandescent with fury.

The reasons why Trump behaves the way he does are matters for conjecture or for a judge. In a scathing editorial, the New York Times likened the president to Petyr Baelish, a dysfunctional character in Game of Thrones who thrives on chaos. “For most people, uncertainty and disorder are scary, unsettling forces to be avoided. But for Mr Trump, they are cherished friends and strategic assets… The president clearly believes that throwing everyone else off balance gives him an edge,” the paper said.

This explanation in no way excuses Trump’s recent actions, nor was it meant to. Suggestions that Trump is simply acting to shore up his electoral base, for example by insisting on funding the promised border wall with Mexico, are not the whole story, either. In part at least, a person – any person – is defined by the friends they make and the company they keep. Since taking office, Trump has squandered the counsel and goodwill of many able people, Mattis among them. At the same time, he has cosied up to unelected foreign dictators, autocrats and “strongmen” such as Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who pushed him into last week’s U-turn on Syria.

Trump is a liability on foreign policy, a global security risk and an untrustworthy, unreliable partner. But worse than all of that, the depth of his commitment to representative democracy and rule by consent is open to serious doubt. If things get really bad in America in the next two years, that’s the biggest worry.

 

Chinese Intelligence Collection Capabilities–An Overview

June 30, 2019

by Christian Jürs

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has a significant intelligence collection capability, much of which is focused on regional adversaries, in particular, Russia. The United States is a primary target of China because of its role as a global superpower, its substantial military, political, and economic presence in the Pacific Rim and Asia, and its role as a developer of advanced technology China requires for its economic growth. Intelligence functions in China are controlled through the Central Committee of the Communist Party and through the General Staff Department of the Central Military Commission. Intelligence operations are coordinated through the General Office of the Central Committee, and all intelligence reports must be reviewed by this office prior to presentation to the Chinese leadership. China has four intelligence organizations that conduct collection activities directed at the United States: the Ministry of State Security, the Military Intelligence Department, the Third or Technical Department of the Central Military Commission, and the New China New] Agency.

Chinese Intelligence Collection Organizations

Ministry of State Security (MSS)

The MSS was created in June 1983 by the Central Committee to centralize foreign intelligence and counterintelligence functions. The MSS is headed by the Minister of State Security, who reports to the Central Committee. It conducts counterespionage operations within China, and HUMINT and limited SIGINT operations both inside and outside of the PRC. The MSS centers its collection operations on regional adversaries with which China has shared borders, including Russia, India, and Vietnam, and on nations that are militarily, politically, or economically important to China. The latter category includes the United States, Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan. Key intelligence collection objectives for the MSS include:

• Acquiring foreign military and civilian high technology
• Collecting information on adversary military planning, foreign policy, and foreign trade positions concerning China
• Monitoring Chinese dissident groups overseas.

HUMINT is the primary discipline used by the MSS for intelligence collection in the United States and other targeted nations. The MSS may also have a limited covert SIGINT capability. The Chinese use both overt and clandestine HUMINT collection to gather information required by their leaders. Additionally, the MSS attempts to gain information on foreign targets through surveillance of foreigners visiting China.[35]

Military Intelligence Department (MID)

The MID is responsible for basic order-of-battle intelligence, studies of foreign weapons systems, and analyses of the capabilities of foreign military organizations. It obtains information through military attaches, review of open source literature, clandestine HUMINT operations, and joint business ventures. The MID is believed to play an integral role in obtaining advanced military technologies to bolster China’s military capabilities and improve weapons systems vital to China’s export arms business. The MID has also played a significant role in the development of clandestine relationships with Israel and other nations to gain expertise in the development of advanced weapons systems. Together with the Commission on Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense (COSTIND), the MID works to obtain military technologies for application to the Chinese military. Much of this technology is obtained through technological diversion and reverse engineering of products purchased from the West. The MID is also responsible, in concert with the COSTIND, for the development of China’s space reconnaissance program

Technical Department

The Technical Department, or Third Department of the General Staff Department of the Central Military Commission, is the national agency responsible for managing China’s strategic SIGINT program. The Department was established in the early 1950s with Soviet assistance to provide the Chinese General Staff with a limited SIGINT capability and strategic communications support.

New China News Agency (NCNA)

The NCNA is the primary domestic and international news agency for the PRC. The NCNA has a staff of over 5,000 employees operating out of over 90 bureaus and 300 offices in China and abroad. NCNA has served as a cover for clandestine Chinese intelligence operations. The NCNA monitors newspapers, magazines, and broadcasts from around the world, and conducts open source analysis for the Chinese leadership.

Chinese Intelligence Operations

HUMINT

The MSS is the primary Chinese HUMINT collection organization, although the MID is also involved in HUMINT collection. The MID is primarily involved in the overt collection of technical information through visits to trade shows, military exchange programs, and through the military attache program. The MSS is responsible for both overt and clandestine collection. It uses students, diplomats, businessmen, and scientists in its attempts to gain information. China has been extremely aggressive in its HUMINT collection activities in the United States. The PRC has more than 2,600 diplomatic and commercial officials in the United States. A substantial percentage of these personnel are actively involved in collecting intelligence. More than 40,000 students from the PRC also attend schools in the United States, and many of these students have been tasked to collect information by the Chinese government. In addition to these personnel, over 25,000 Chinese visit the United States each year as members of official delegations, and an additional 20,000 Chinese emigrate to the United States annually

The MSS has been able to obtain high- and mid-level technologies not cleared for export to the PRC through its activities. It has used three principal means to obtain such technology: first, recruiting agents in China and sending them abroad to acquire technology; second, acquiring American firms that produce a desired technology; and third, the use of MSS operated front companies in Hong Kong. The Chinese have used a number of different methods to gather HUMINT. They have used pressure to gain information from the Chinese immigrant community, especially on those Chinese that have access to high technology or military data. The MSS has also encouraged Chinese students to remain in the United States as long-term penetration agents. MSS personnel have acted as intelligence collectors using cover as NCNA reporters, trade office representatives, and accredited diplomats.

Scientific exchange programs have proven to be extremely useful means for the Chinese to gather information. The FBI has stated that virtually all Chinese allowed to leave the PRC for the United States are given some type of collection requirement to fulfill. Although the bulk of Chinese operations are not sophisticated operations, the large number of ongoing Chinese operations greatly increases the difficulty of countering their espionage activities. In recent years, the Chinese have been the subject of approximately half of all cases initiated by U.S. law enforcement agencies concerning the illegal diversion of technology from the United States.

SIGINT

The Technical Department provides the PRC with a wide range of SIGINT capabilities. The Chinese maintain, by far, the most extensive SIGINT capability of any nation in the Asia/Pacific region. The Chinese operate several dozen SIGINT ground stations deployed throughout China. They monitor signals from Russia, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, India, and Southeast Asia. Signals from U.S. military units located in the region are of significant interest to these monitoring stations. A large SIGINT facility at Hainan Island is principally concerned with monitoring U.S. naval activities in the South China Sea. The Chinese appear to be developing a spaceborne ELINT system that is mounted on their photoreconnaissance and communications satellites. There is no indication at this point that this capability presents a significant threat to U.S. forces in the region. The Chinese actively monitor international communications satellites from SATCOM intercept facilities on Hainan Island, and outside Beijing. Additionally, the Chinese have developed a series of SIGINT collection vessels that monitor U.S. military operations and exercises in the Asia/Pacific region.

IMINT

The Chinese currently have a limited spaceborne photoreconnaissance capability that focuses on collecting imagery over the Russian border. The Chinese also use a variety of fixed wing aircraft to collect photographic imagery. None of these systems present a substantial intelligence collection threat to U.S. forces in the region. U.S. intelligence agencies believe that China will likely develop a mid-resolution electro-optic imaging system in the future that will provide the Chinese with improved capabilities.

Chinese Intelligence Collection Trends

The PRC will continue to use its intelligence services to gather information about the United States, and to obtain access to advanced technologies. An integral part of this effort will be the use of open source information gathered by students, scientific researchers, and the NCNA. China will likely improve both its SIGINT and IMINT capabilities, increasing the collection threat to the United States. The Chinese will continue to use intelligence collection to improve their economic position in the global economy.

Chinese Port Operator Linked to Weapons Smuggling

A ship owned by a Chinese government-run company that currently operates two giant terminals at the Port of Long Beach, California was found 10 years ago to have been used to smuggle a huge cache of illegal weapons – with the smugglers saying they planned to import missiles that could “take out a 747.”

On the night of March 18, 1996, undercover Customs and BATF agents discovered 2000 AK-47’s in a container smuggled aboard the Empress Phoenix, a ship owned by the China Ocean Shipping Company [COSCO] docked at the Port of Oakland.

The guns were manufactured by another state-run company, Poly Technologies, the international outlet for Chinese weapons sales.

According to Vanity Fair magazine, which covered the episode in detail, the Empress Phoenix’s gun cargo was earmarked for sale to deadly Los Angeles street gangs.

It was the largest seizure of fully operational automatic weapons in the history of U.S. law enforcement.

Operatives nabbed after the seizure told investigators that they were ready to smuggle in everything from grenade launchers to shoulder-fired Red Parakeet surface to air missiles, which they boasted could “take out a 747.”

The Empress Phoenix episode has largely been forgotten as the debate rages over whether Dubai Ports World should be allowed to operate several dozen terminals at 21 U.S. ports.

But it begs the question, if Dubai Ports World – a company with no history of terrorism or smuggling operations into the United States – is unfit to play a role in U.S. ports management, what about Chinese companies?

In fact, the 1996 weapons smuggling operation was far from the only instance where questionable cargo has been discovered aboard COSCO vessels. Ships owned by the Chinese line have been repeatedly caught smuggling illegal immigrants in the United States.

In 2001, COSCO ships delivered weapons to Cuba, a move that triggered calls in the United States for sanctions against China, according to the Washington Times.

Still, Americans might come to regret giving COSCO the boot from U.S. port operations – a move currently favored by Sen. Hillary Clinton, who wants to ban all foreign ownership of U.S. ports.

In 2001, for instance, COSCO ships carried 434,000 containers to the United States, representing 12.1 percent of all the goods shipped between China and the United States.

Undoubtedly those numbers have increased in the last five years.

In 1998, when COSCO first tried to lease terminal space at the Port of Long Beach formerly used by the U.S. Navy, Congress blocked the deal over national security concerns.

Three years later, however, other tenants at the port vacated space and COSCO was able to build its own terminal.

COSCO now operates terminals in a joint venture with a U.S. company, Stevedoring Services of America, with the Chinese company acting as the majority lease holder with 51 percent control.

By the end of the decade, COSCO plans to expand its Long Beach facility into a giant five terminal operation covering 300 acres, according to the Long Beach Press Telegram.

China’s Mass Counterfeiting of American coins 

With the collapsing American economy, many Americans are rushing to invest in gold; either coins or bar, and also silver. One of the most popular forms of this investment are American coins.  Where there is a need, there is always someone to fill it and in this case, the filling consists of  the massive counterfeiting of gold coins, silver coins, and even Swiss gold bars in China. Initially, it appeared they were only faking Morgan dollars, but then it turned out they were also making $20 Liberty, and Indian Head gold $2.50, $5, and $10 coins, of all dates. Evidently, this is extremely easy with today’s computer-and-laser-die-cutting technology, and the fakes are being die-struck in vast quantities, not cast, and visually at least, are superb copies.

The good news is that these fakes are readily detectable with a 0.01 – gram scale, as the Chinese in their greed are using lower carats of gold and lower grades of silver than the genuine coins, to maximize profit, and thus, in most cases, the fake coins and bars are lighter than the real ones. In a few cases, the silver coins of high numismatic interest are actually OVER weight – it appears that the supply of accurate planchet stock is a major difficulty for the forgers.

Here are links to a two-part article about this in Coin World Magazine:

http://www.coinworldonline.com/counterfeits/articles/20081203/counterfeit_1.asp

http://www.coinworldonline.com/counterfeits/articles/20081203/counterfeit_2.asp

Note: They are even faking PCGS and ANACS slabs!!:

http://www.coinworldonline.com/counterfeits/articles/20081203/counterfeit_3.asp

A friend who has an extremely wealthy friend in Europe (on the order of several hundreds of millions) asked this person to make enquiries at his bank. The bank told him candidly that indeed, the Chinese are also faking sovereigns, half sovereigns, French 20 Franc gold, and various denominations of Nicholas II Russian Rubles, of all dates, as well as Swiss gold bars. They said any gold bars they are offered for purchase are both weighed and the serial numbers checked with the manufacturers. The Chinese do not know the serial and manufacture date numbering systems on the gold bars, and so that error is quickly detectable.

The US Secret Service has been made aware of this problem, which was new to them, and if they decide to launch an investigation, they have indicated that while they cannot do anything about the operations in China, they can, and will, seize any counterfeit US coins they come across. Dealers in these fakes would also be liable to fines and jail time. Foreign fakes are not under their purview, but if that business turns out to be substantial, there could conceivably be an FBI investigation of fraud in interstate commerce, targeting companies who are mail-ordering fake foreign coins. Individuals who have been cheated might also sue their suppliers – in short, this could turn into a huge mess.

General appearance aside, it is very easy it is to spot fakes – just with a scale reading to 1/00th of a gram, and a table of the correct weights and sizes of the coins or bars they are buying. (In the case of large-size bargold, unless buying from the manufacturer or a reputable bank, the serial numbers need to be verified, so that one does not buy a Chinese bar with a lead or mercury core)

Herewith a listing of what habeen uncovered so far:

1; The U.S .Morgan silver dollar. All dates and all mint marks;

2: The U.S. gold coins viz the $2.50, $5.00 and $10.00 Indian head issues

3. The U.S. copper penny viz 1909 S  vdb
4. Three gold Imperial Russian roubles from the reign of Nicholas II
5. A gold 20 franc coin with the head of Napoleon I on the obverse
6. The South African Krugerrand
7. British sovereigns and half sovereigns of different monarchs and dates

And in addition, they are also making fake gold bars from the Credit Suisse people.

It was always considered that numismatics as a relatively fraud-free area of collecting, but it appears that a coin collector today has to carry a digital scale around. This doesn’t affect me very much, but I too have wondered at the sudden appearance of all the Morgan dollars. Fortunately, the ones I have came down to me from my grandfather, and I’ll be very careful picking up individual pieces that fill blanks

As for Krugerands and similar gold pieces that are traded for bullion prices, it is obvious that the Chinese have lowered the purity and thus debase the value; otherwise, a fake Krug would have as much gold as a real one.

 

Encyclopedia of American Loons

Henry Schaefer III

Henry Frederick “Fritz” Schaefer III is a computational and theoretical chemist, Graham Perdue Professor of Chemistry and Director of the Center for Computational Chemistry at the University of Georgia, and a genuine authority on the issues within his field of expertise. He is also a creationist, or at least creationist sympathizer (he describes himself as sympathetic to teleological arguments, but primarily a “proponent of Jesus”), and his background and status lends him considerable weight in the Intelligent Design movement, whose members don’t care so much that evolutionary biology definitely isn’t within his area of expertise. His Wikipedia article reads as a bizarrely laudatory paean to his expertise and achievements, which fits a pattern: The Discovery Institute has also previously been caught exaggerating Schaefer’s credentials. Schaefer is a signatory to the Discovery Institute’s silly petition A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism, as well as a Fellow of the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture and Dembski’s International Society for Complexity, Information, and Design, even contributing to the Dembski-edited collection Darwin’s Nemesis(the one with a foreword by Rick Santorum).

Schaefer, of course, doesn’t really understand evolution, opting instead for religiously motivated arguments from incredulity, things like the demonstrably false claim that evolution doesn’t make useful predictions; he has often been cited for that claim by his followers, who don’t care any more for truth or accuracy than he does (nor are they, of course, interested in actually doing science to support any of their own hypotheses). Other concerns Schaefer has with the theory of evolution – addressed in some more detail here – are concerns about abiogenesis, which is not part of the theory, that “the time frame for speciation events seems all wrong to me” (argument from incredulity again, made in blissful ignorance of punctuated equilibrium), and that “I find no satisfactory mechanism for macroevolutionary changes” (you guessed it: incredulity again, this time relying on a bogus creationist distinction between micro- and macroevolution).

Diagnosis: Mostly uncommitted waffling – one suspects that Schaefer senses he’s on the wrong side of science here – but Schaefer has nevertheless obtained a status as something of an authority in the intelligent design cargo cult movement, which is even more an indictment against them than it is against him (though he is clearly a loon, too, for running with it).

 

Religiously Motivated Incredulity

by Reed A. Cartwright

Nobel Nominated?

In an ARN report on the recent ID conference at Biola University (formerly known as the Bible Institute of Los Angeles), the following caught my attention.

Featured speakers included Dr. Henry Schaefer, University of Georgia and five-time nominee for the Nobel Prize, and Dr. Michael Behe, Professor of Biochemist [sic] at Lehigh University.

The description of Dr. Henry Fritz Schaefer III as a “five-time nominee for the Novel Prize” is common amongst anti-evolutionists. In fact he often leads their lists of scientists who “challenge Darwinism.” However, there is no official record of Dr. Schaefer’s nominations because the Nobel Foundation doesn’t release nominations.

According to the Statutes of the Nobel Foundation, information about the nominations is not to be disclosed, publicly or privately, for a period of fifty years. The restriction not only concerns the nominees and nominators, but also investigations and opinions in the awarding of a prize.

From Nobel.se.

The idea that Dr. Schaefer has been nominated five-times is speculation in the December 23, 1991 U.S. News and World Report. That’s right; the source for Dr. Schaefer’s near-Nobel-laureate credentials is the speculation of a weekly news magazine.–Not what I’d consider ironclad enough to state as a sure thing.–The Nobel Prize is not like the Academy Awards, where it is a great honor to be nominated. Nominators may invite recommendations from many sources before making their final nominations. Because the nomination process is secretive, we have no way of knowing how serious a nomination is taken, even if we happen to know that someone was nominated. If Schaefer was indeed a frequent Nobel nominee, his best chance to actually win the Prize came in 1998, when the Nobel Committee awarded it for the development of theoretical and computational methods to study the behavior of molecules (Dr. Schaefer’s own field of study). However, Drs. Kohn and Pope won the Prize for that work.

Credential Inflation

It is very interesting to watch the evolution of the description of Schaefer’s credentials, as anyone can do through some Googling. To his credit, Dr. Schaefer appears to be honest about the source of the five-nomination claim. The biographical sketches on his websites (here, here, and here) include a statement that the “U.S. News and World Report cover story of December 23, 1991 speculated that Professor Schaefer is a ‘five-time nominee for the Nobel Prize’.” However, similar information is not available at a multitude of anti-evolution sites that refer to him. The speculated existence of five Nobel nominations has become an actual existence for creationist activists, who are desperate to obtain any sort of indirect scientific legitimacy for their pseudo-scientific pronouncements of evolution. (And they complain that we confuse a theory as a fact.) In fact, credential inflating is modus operandi of such activists who rely on misplaced appeals to authority to support their anti-scientific agendas

Incredulity

I am a doctoral student in evolutionary biology at the same university at which Dr. Schaefer is the Graham Perdue Professor of Chemistry. Our university has the honor of having a world class evolutionary biology program. Given his support for the anti-evolution movement, one might assume that Dr. Schaefer must have some interest in the science of evolution. However, I have never seen him at any of our evolutionary biology seminars, which do involve major scientists of the discipline. As far as I can tell, he takes no advantage of the resources the campus has to offer in the science of evolution yet is a vocal supporter of anti-evolution movement.

If his interest in evolution is not scientific in nature, what is it then? Dr. Schaefer is a devoutly religious man, and I suspect, based on past experience, that Dr. Schaefer’s interest is religious in nature. At UGA he was a founder of the Christian Faculty Forum, which is responsible for organizing the anti-evolution lectures that have occured on campus in recent years. As far as I can tell, Dr. Schaefer is a devoutly religious and conservative chemistry professor who has little or no experience with the science of evolutionary biology, and thus his objections to evolution amount to little more than religiously motivated incredulity.

“What are his objections?” you might ask. Well he lists them (circa 2002):

My first concern is that, with the collapse of the Miller-Urey model, there is no plausible scientific mechanism for the origin of life, i.e., the appearance of the first self-replicating biochemical system. The staggeringly high information content of the simplest living thing is not readily explained by evolutionists.

Second, the time frame for speciation events seems all wrong to me. The major feature of the fossil record is stasis, long periods in which new species do not appear. When new developments occur, they come rapidly, not gradually.

My third area of reservation is that I find no satisfactory mechanism for macroevolutionary changes. Analogies between a few inches of change in the beaks of a Galapagos finch species and a purported transition from dinosaur to bird (or vice versa) appear to me inappropriate.

From an AJC editorial.

Addressing the First Concern

His first concern defiantly shows that he is arguing against a straw man. What he is concerned about is not part of “the standard evolutionary model.” Evolutionary biology does not explain where the first self-replicating system came from, due to the simple fact that evolution cannot happen until after the first self-replicator comes into existence. Being concerned by evolutionary biology’s inability to explain the origin of life is like being concerned that music theory can’t explain the origin of mankind.

However, with that being said, it is important to point out that the significance of the Miller-Urey experiment of 1953 was not that it explained the origin of life, but that it was the first demonstration of the production of amino acids from abiotic conditions. It was a piece of the puzzle. Since then, experiments with different abiotic conditions have also generated a wide array of organic compounds. It is clearly a false dichotomy to think Miller-Urey 1953 or no explanation. For more information, read this interview with Dr. Stanley L. Miller.

Addressing the Second Concern 

Dr. Schaefer’s second concern is another one based on incredulity and ignorance. Stasis in the fossil record refers to the observation that species will vary in a certain range of morphology and that range is static for a significant period of time. The rapid turnover that Dr. Schaefer is referring to is the fact that in the fossil record species often abruptly disappear and are replaced without any recorded species to species transitions between them. However, he is guilty of equivocation by confusing what is considered gradual and rapid in biological time (evolution) with what is considered gradual and rapid in geologic time (fossilization).

Dr. Schaefer is not a paleontologist, and thus I cannot imagine that he has much first-hand exposure to the fossil record. So the question is “where did he get his information on it?” Probably not from Gould and Eldredge who first described the broad pattern of species stasis and abrupt replacement in the fossil record (punctuated equilibrium) and who also demonstrated how it was logically the result of “the standard evolutionary model.” Dr. Schaefer probably encountered the bastard versions of punctuated equilibrium that are popular in anti-evolution literature, whose authors misconstrue the work of Gould and Eldredge to support their agendas. Simply put, he was had.

Gould and Eldredge explained how evolution, which is biologically gradual, coupled with the rare event of fossilization would produce stasis and abrupt replacement in the fossil record. Because fossilization is rare, the species most likely to be represented in the fossil record are ones that have body parts able to be fossilized, die in areas and in ways prone to cause fossilization, and are numerous. Now assume we have a species complex that reasonably satisfies the first two conditions. The species in this complex most likely to be represented in the fossil record are the most populous ones. However, large populations also evolve slower than small populations. Thus fossilization most likely will preserve species that evolve slowly, explaining the observed stasis.

Because large populations evolve slowly, “the standard evolutionary model” predicts that most speciation events will happen in the periphery of the population range where there can exist small subpopulations and, more than likely, different habitats. It is in these locations that gradual evolution will lead to speciation. However, fossilization is unlikely to preserve the event. From ecology and demography we know that population replacement can be relatively rapid (over a few thousand years). One example would be a pathogen wiping out the parent species, and a daughter species, which before was on periphery invading the newly open central habitat.

Together, the evolutionary, demographic, ecological, geographic, and geological forces would produce a fossil record showing a species with a stable range of morphology existing for–say–100,000 years disappearing and being replaced by another species in less than–say–5,000 years. The interesting thing in all of this is that “the standard evolutionary model” was already elucidated before Gould and Eldredge describe and explained punctuated equilibrium using it. Punctuated equilibrium is not an application of the fossil record to evolution as is commonly claimed by anti-evolutionists, but rather an application of standard evolutionary theory to the fossil record. For more information on punctuated equilibrium see Gould (2002), ch 9.

Addressing the Third Concern 

Dr. Schaefer’s third concern is similar to his second. He says he can’t “find a satisfactory mechanism for macroevolutionary changes,” but I have to wonder how hard he is looking. There was much debate in the early part of the twentieth century about whether microevolutionary changes could lead to macroevolutionary changes. Many scientists thought that they were different processes, but since the middle of that century biological data has demonstrated that they are not.

One of the most important tenets of the theory forged during the Evolutionary Synthesis of the 1930s and 1940s was that “macroevolutionary” differences among organisms–those that distinguish higher taxa–arise from the accumulation of the same kinds of genetic differences that are found within species. Opponents of this point of view believed that “macroevolution” is qualitatively different from “microevolution” within a species, and is based on a totally different kind of genetic and developmental repatterning. The iconoclastic geneticist Richard Goldschmidt (1940), who held this opinion, believed that the evolution of species marks the break between “microevolution” and “macroevolution”–that there is a “bridgeless gap” between species that cannot be understood in terms of the genetic variation within species. Genetic studies of species differences have decisively disproved Goldschmidt’s claim. Differences between species in morphology, behavior, and the process that underlie reproductive isolation all have the same genetic properties as variation within species: they occupy consistent chromosomal positions, they may be polygenic or based on few genes, they may display additive, dominant, or epistatic effects, and they can in some instances be traced to specifiable differences in proteins or DNA nucleotide differences. The degree of reproductive isolation between populations, whether prezygotic or postzygotic, varies from little or none to complete. Thus, reproductive isolation, like the divergence of any other character, evolves in most cases by the gradual substitution of alleles in populations.

Futuyma 1998 pp 477-478

Or to put it another way, differences between individuals of different species (macroevolutionary changes) are no different than differences between individuals of the same species (microevolutionary changes); they just have had longer to accumulate. Dr. Schaefer’s third concern is a view of biology that the evidence dismissed over fifty years ago.

Conclusion  

Although Dr. Schaefer is a very good computational chemist, he is a lousy when it comes to biology. His concerns are not informed by biology, but rather by anti-evolution propaganda in which all three are popular. His name might initially look good in a press release for critics of modern biology, but upon further examination his support lacks the authority they want it to have.

• Futuyma D (1998) Evolutionary Biology, 3rd ed. Sinauer Associates, Inc.
• Gould SJ (2002) Structure of Evolutionary Theory Harvard Univ Press

 

The CIA Confessions: The Crowley Conversations

June 30, 2019

by Dr. Peter Janney

On October 8th, 2000, Robert Trumbull Crowley, once a leader of the CIA’s Clandestine Operations Division, died in a Washington hospital of heart failure and the end effects of Alzheimer’s Disease. Before the late Assistant Director Crowley was cold, Joseph Trento, a writer of light-weight books on the CIA, descended on Crowley’s widow at her town house on Cathedral Hill Drive in Washington and hauled away over fifty boxes of Crowley’s CIA files.

Once Trento had his new find secure in his house in Front Royal, Virginia, he called a well-known Washington fix lawyer with the news of his success in securing what the CIA had always considered to be a potential major embarrassment.

Three months before, on July 20th of that year, retired Marine Corps colonel William R. Corson, and an associate of Crowley, died of emphysema and lung cancer at a hospital in Bethesda, Md.

After Corson’s death, Trento and the well-known Washington fix-lawyer went to Corson’s bank, got into his safe deposit box and removed a manuscript entitled ‘Zipper.’ This manuscript, which dealt with Crowley’s involvement in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, vanished into a CIA burn-bag and the matter was considered to be closed forever.

The small group of CIA officials gathered at Trento’s house to search through the Crowley papers, looking for documents that must not become public. A few were found but, to their consternation, a significant number of files Crowley was known to have had in his possession had simply vanished.

When published material concerning the CIA’s actions against Kennedy became public in 2002, it was discovered to the CIA’s horror, that the missing documents had been sent by an increasingly erratic Crowley to another person and these missing papers included devastating material on the CIA’s activities in South East Asia to include drug running, money laundering and the maintenance of the notorious ‘Regional Interrogation Centers’ in Viet Nam and, worse still, the Zipper files proving the CIA’s active organization of the assassination of President John Kennedy..

A massive, preemptive disinformation campaign was readied, using government-friendly bloggers, CIA-paid “historians” and others, in the event that anything from this file ever surfaced. The best-laid plans often go astray and in this case, one of the compliant historians, a former government librarian who fancied himself a serious writer, began to tell his friends about the CIA plan to kill Kennedy and eventually, word of this began to leak out into the outside world.

The originals had vanished and an extensive search was conducted by the FBI and CIA operatives but without success. Crowley’s survivors, his aged wife and son, were interviewed extensively by the FBI and instructed to minimize any discussion of highly damaging CIA files that Crowley had, illegally, removed from Langley when he retired. Crowley had been a close friend of James Jesus Angleton, the CIA’s notorious head of Counterintelligence. When Angleton was sacked by DCI William Colby in December of 1974, Crowley and Angleton conspired to secretly remove Angleton’s most sensitive secret files out of the agency. Crowley did the same thing right before his own retirement, secretly removing thousands of pages of classified information that covered his entire agency career.

Known as “The Crow” within the agency, Robert T. Crowley joined the CIA at its inception and spent his entire career in the Directorate of Plans, also know as the “Department of Dirty Tricks. ”

Crowley was one of the tallest man ever to work at the CIA. Born in 1924 and raised in Chicago, Crowley grew to six and a half feet when he entered the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in N.Y. as a cadet in 1943 in the class of 1946. He never graduated, having enlisted in the Army, serving in the Pacific during World War II. He retired from the Army Reserve in 1986 as a lieutenant colonel. According to a book he authored with his friend and colleague, William Corson, Crowley’s career included service in Military Intelligence and Naval Intelligence, before joining the CIA at its inception in 1947. His entire career at the agency was spent within the Directorate of Plans in covert operations. Before his retirement, Bob Crowley became assistant deputy director for operations, the second-in-command in the Clandestine Directorate of Operations.

Bob Crowley first contacted Gregory Douglas in 1993 when he found out from John Costello that Douglas was about to publish his first book on Heinrich Mueller, the former head of the Gestapo who had become a secret, long-time asset to the CIA. Crowley contacted Douglas and they began a series of long and often very informative telephone conversations that lasted for four years. In 1996, Crowley told Douglas that he believed him to be the person that should ultimately tell Crowley’s story but only after Crowley’s death. Douglas, for his part, became so entranced with some of the material that Crowley began to share with him that he secretly began to record their conversations, later transcribing them word for word, planning to incorporate some, or all, of the material in later publication.

 

Conversation No. 19

Date: Thursday, June 27, 1996

Commenced: 9:30 AM CST

Concluded: 9:45 AM CST

GD: Good morning, Robert.

RTC: And to you, Gregory.

GD: Do you have some time now or could I get back to you later?

RTC: Now is just fine. What’s on your mind?

GD: You had been speaking of the overall CIA organizational control in certain domestic areas. I’ve been making rough notes and I would like to get a bit more from you.

RTC: I don’t mind discussing these matters with you, Gregory, but I must ask you to be very, very careful about whom you discuss these things with. Do not, I beg you, ever tell Tom Kimmel about what you and I discuss. He would run to his superiors so fast he would make Jesse Owens look like a paraplegic.

GD: No, no, I wouldn’t even consider that. I know about him. My assurances on all of this. You see, sometime, I might like to upgrade the Müller books and since he worked for you in D.C., some detailed background might be in order. If I put in enough detail, it would shock the brass there into comparative silence. They wouldn’t have to get their paid rats to squeal about me being a fraud or worse.

RTC: OK. Just so we understand each other. These pissheads keep calling me to warn me about how horrible you are and I really don’t want to keep hanging up on them.

GD: Can they make trouble for you, Robert? If so…

RTC: No, retired old crock as I am, I could wipe them out with one phone call and they know it. While we’re on the subject, I have made it very clear that if they overtly go after you, they will have me to answer to.

GD: Thanks for the support. I must tell you that I always wear a bulletproof vest but on my back. That’s where I need it, believe me.

RTC: (Laughter) Ah, well, Gregory, welcome to the club. Now what were you interested in discussing?

GD: All right. Fine. Here we go. We have spoken…or rather you have…about the size and complexity of the CIA. From its humble beginnings as a sort of digest of foreign intelligence for the President. And now, it’s huge. And you discussed the press and business and so on. How great is the overall power or control and how obvious is is? Do you have agents in the local Post Office for instance?

RTC: No, not that finely tuned. As you said, we started out small and ended up big. That’s the way of bureaucracies. Expand or die. Old Hoover hated us and tried his best to take us over but he failed. There were more of us that there were of him and while initially we dealt only with foreign matters, as a matter of pure survival, we turned our eyes and attention to the domestic market. Hoover was in a constant attack mode, whispering, rumor spreading, attempts at internal spying on us, aggravated turf wars and so on.  We not only had to get around him, and did so by being more than useful to the President and also, note this Gregory, by expanding and getting more power. These things have a life of their own but with increasing power comes increasing omnipotence. Eventually, we did an end run on Hoover, although we continued to work with him but very gingerly, and then we moved with caution into the domestic business and political field. For both security and, I might add, profit. I was in charge of business contacts as it were and often a CEO would come to me complaining that this or that country was interfering with their business. Could I help? Of course I would try and if the interference was bad enough, we would try to help our friend by replacing the troublemaking government or president, or king, involved. We justified this by telling the President or his top people that the target country, or president or king was a current serious threat to the security of the United States. In order to support our thesis, we went to one of our wholly-owned think tanks like the RAND people and have them prepare a supportive paper on order. This I would look at and make suitable changes if needed and forward it to our man, or men as it were, on the staff of the New York Times followed by a personal call to the publisher or senior editor and hey presto, the very next day a wonderful story would be on the front page of that influential paper.

GD: Above the fold?

RTC: Yes, above the fold. On the upper right. And the president and his people would see this just before we paid him a solemn visit with our RAND evaluation added to our own. It never failed and pretty soon, the public would learn that the Shah of Iran was running away or that this or that tinhorn dictator like Trujillo got snuffed by what we liked to call ‘dissident internal elements.’

GD: I knew about Guatemala from my uncle. The family had connections with Grace and United Fruit…

RTC: Well, you know what I mean. You know, this usually works but in one case, it did not. We were asked by our mob friends to get rid of Battista in Cuba who was shaking them down more than usual so we were happy to oblige fellow workers in the vineyard of the Lord. Unfortunately, one of our people put Fidel Castro forward as a brilliant reformer and out went Battista and in went Fidel. Of course we do not talk about that.

GD: What happened to the careless agent?

RTC: We don’t talk about that, either.

GD: Robert, have you heard about the joys of finely ground glass? I mean ground in a pestle until it’s like face powder, not gravel.

RTC: Oh, yes, indeed I have. It destroys someone careless enough to eat something the stuff is mixed into. But it takes quite a bit of time before the arteries give way. I don’t recommend it for emergency situations. Still, shooting someone is so public. Better the heart attack, don’t you think?

GD: Yes. A French medical fellow originally developed the drug and Müller got it. Gave it to the CIA. He said it worked better than chucking inconvenient people out of the window. Heini was, all in all, a very considerate person. He used to be concerned, he once told me, about the people and vehicles that might be down below. Someone rapidly descending from ten floors up would do terrible damage to a casual pedestrian, not to mention the damage they could do to a parked car. No, once he got in with your people there, I notice defenestrating seemed to stop and the heart attack surged forward. Harry Dexter White is a case in point.

RTC: Ah, my yes, old Harry. Got him before he was up for sentencing and decided to talk. Although perhaps Stalin had a hand in that, don’t you think? Qui Bono, Gregory?

GD: A good point.

(Concluded at 10:01 AM CST)

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The Ball at Killiemuir

A reader has sent us an old Scottish song for our interest. This is the sort of song that would be sung by our half Scottish President at family affairs like Christmas and Yom Kippur. The expressions of kindness, culture and class are plainly evident and this so accurately reflects the President’s character that we are publishing it in toto.

 

Oh the Ball, the Ball,

The Ball at Killiemuir,

Four and twenty maidens,

And each of them a whore.

 

*Chorus*

Singing balls to your partner,

Arse against the wall,

If you’ve never been fucked on a Saturday night,

You’ve never be fucked at all.

(Chorus)

 

Four and twenty virgins,

Came down from Inverness,

And when the ball was over,

There were four and twenty less.

(Chorus)

 

Four and twenty prostitutes,

Came up from Glockamore,

And only one went home that night,

And she was double-bore.

(Chorus)

 

The village plumber was there,

He felt an awful fool,

He’d come eleven leagues or more,

And forgot to bring his tool.

(Chorus)

 

Mrs. McLaud was there,

And she had the crowd in fits,

By jumping off the mantelpiece,

And landing on her tits.

(Chorus)

 

Reverend John was there,

And in the corner he sat,

Amusing himself by abusing himself,

And catching it in his hat.

(Chorus)

 

The Vicar’s wife was there,

Sitting by the fire,

Knitting prophylactics,

Out of balls of rubber wire.

(Chorus)

 

The Vicar’s daughter was there,

Getting very merry,

Swinging from the chandelier

And peeing in the sherry

(Chorus)

 

A bride was in the kitchen,

Explaining to her groom.

The vagina, not the rectum,

Is the entrance to the womb.

(Chorus)

 

A groom was in the parlor,

Explaining to his bride.

The penis not the scrotum,

Is the part that goes inside.

(Chorus)

 

The village magician was there,

Doing his favorite trick,

Pulling his foreskin over his head,

And vanishing up his dick.

(Chorus)

 

The village cripple was there,

He wasn’t really much,

He lined them up against the wall

And shagged them with his crutch.

(Chorus)

 

The village smithy was there,

Also by the fire,

Doing abortions by the score,

With a red-hot piece of wire.

(Chorus)

 

The blacksmith’s brother was there,

A mighty man was he,

He lined them up against the wall,

And fucked them three by three.

(Chorus)

 

Now farmer Giles was there,

His sickle in his hand,

And when he swung the blade around,

He circumcised the band.

(Chorus)

 

Officer James was there,

The pride of all the force.

They found him in the stable,

Wanking off his horse.

(Chorus)

 

His Little James was there,

The leader of the choir,

He hit the balls of all the boys,

To make their voices higher.

(Chorus)

 

Tiny Tom was there,

He was only eight,

He was too small for the women,

So he had to masturbate.

(Chorus)

 

The village doctor was there,

He had his bag of tricks,

And in between the dances,

He was sterilizing pricks.

(Chorus)

 

The village postman was there,

The poor man had the pox,

He couldna fuck the lassies,

So he fucked the letter box.

(Chorus)

 

The village witch was there,

In an upstairs’ room,

The men were ignoring her,

So she squatted on her broom.

(Chorus)

 

The village shepherd was there,

And he began to weep,

All these willing women,

And not a single sheep.

(Chorus)

 

The village nurse she was there,

Checking all the cocks,

She said of all these blisters,

It isn’t chicken pox.

(Chorus)

 

The local harlot she was there,

A lay’in on the floor,

And every time she spread her legs,

The vacuum shut the door.

(Chorus)

 

The village leper he was there,

Sitting on a log.

Peeling off his foreskin,

And feeding it to the dog.

(Chorus)

 

The village vampire was there,

He had the hall in howls,

He lined the girls against the walls

And sucked their sanitary towels.

(Chorus)

 

There was fucking in the haystacks,

Fucking in the ricks,

You couldna hear the music,

for the rustling of the pricks.

(Chorus)

 

And when the ball was over,

Everyone confessed,

They all enjoyed the dancing,

But the fucking was the best.

(Chorus)