TBR News May 22, 2019

May 22 2019

The Voice of the White House Washington, D.C. May 22, 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 May 22:”Like a huge Anaconda, the government is slowly encircling Trump, trapping him and eventually breaking his bones and then swallowing what is left. He bought this coming storm on himself but the small army of neo-Nazis coupled with an even smaller army of Jesus Freaks will scream and denounce everyone not wearing a black SS uniform and enormous crucifix stuck up their fundament.Trump will not go quietly into involuntary retirement so the nation will have to put up with months of cursing, screaming and threatening before blessed silence falls.”

 

The Table of Contents

  • Trump turns on Fox News over 2020 coverage: ‘What’s going on there?’
  • N.Y. lawmakers pass bill to allow Congress access to Trump’s state tax returns
  • Worried by Iran tensions, U.S. lawmakers seek end to law of ‘endless war’
  • Europe and nationalism: A country-by-country guide
  • Millions of Europeans are being exposed to far-right propaganda on Facebook ahead of the EU elections, a report by the Avaaz NGO shows.
  • Muslims rule major Swedish city
  • Israel’s War Criminals In Their Own Words
  • Almost two-thirds of Americans oppose pre-emptive US strike on Iran, fresh poll finds
  • Trump blasts Pelosi ‘cover-up’ accusation, balks on infrastructure
  • Encyclopedia of American Loons
  • The CIA Confessions: The Crowley Conversations

 

 

Trump turns on Fox News over 2020 coverage: ‘What’s going on there?’

President criticized Fox News at a rally on Monday for giving Democrats airtime after candidate Pete Buttigieg appeared on the channel

May 22, 2019

by Adam Gabbatt in Montoursville, Pennsylvania

The Guardian

Anyone watching Donald Trump’s rally in Pennsylvania on Monday would have been introduced to an unlikely new attack figure for the president: Fox News.

The rightwing cable network is a well-known Trump cheerleader. Literally: in November Fox News host Sean Hannity appeared with Trump at a campaign rally. But on Monday night, under an azure Keystone state sky, Trump was not happy.

“What’s going on with Fox by the way? What’s going on there?” Trump asked his supporters in Montoursville, northern Pennsylvania.

“Someone’s going to have to explain the whole Fox deal to me.”

Some of the crowd booed, a sort of Pavlovian response to Trump criticizing something or someone. But others looked confused. Could Trump really be attacking Fox News?

He was. Specifically it was the appearance of Democratic 2020 presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg on the channel that had upset Trump

“They’re putting more Democrats on than you have Republicans. Something strange is going on at Fox. Something very strange,” Trump said.

“Did you see this guy last night? I didn’t want to watch it. You always have to watch the competition, if you call it that. And he was knocking the hell out of Fox.”

It was jarring to anyone who has witnessed the obsequiousness that is Fox & Friends, the Fox News morning show where the hosts seem to wake up each morning amazed anew that it was possible for such a glorious man as Trump to exist. (Even the recent revelation that Trump’s business empire had managed to lose more than $1bn over a 10-year period from 1985, as revealed by the New York Times, was described as “pretty impressive” by one host.)

But the truth is Trump has been souring on Fox News – Fox & Friends and other sycophants such as Hannity and Laura Ingraham aside – for some time. Trump had already tweeted his displeasure at Buttigieg on Sunday, after the Democrat drew applause at the town hall for saying he wanted to abolish the Electoral College, and criticized Tucker Carlson and Ingraham.

Back in February Trump criticized Fox News’ White House correspondents as having “even less understanding of the Wall negotiations than the folks at FAKE NEWS CNN & NBC”. In March he kicked up a stink after Jeanine Pirro was dropped from the network for viciously criticizing Democratic congresswoman Ilhan Omar, and in April Trump seemed to suggest Fox News had barred his supporters from a Bernie Sanders town hall.

As ever, it’s unclear how long Trump’s focus will remain on Fox News. But at least, amid this new found animosity, there’s one show that has been remained safe: Fox & Friends.

The morning after Trump had assailed Fox News on Twitter, Fox & Friends were right there in lockstep with the president, hitting out at Buttigieg for his appearance on their network.

“Don’t hop on our channel and continue to put down the other hosts on the channel or the channel. If you feel that negative about it don’t come,” said Brian Kilmeade.

“For him to go out there and take shots on our primetime lineup, without going on our primetime lineup, shows to me absolutely no courage.”

 

N.Y. lawmakers pass bill to allow Congress access to Trump’s state tax returns

Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo is expected to sign the legislation.

May 22, 2019

by Allan Smith

NBC News

The New York state Assembly passed legislation Wednesday to give Congress access to President Donald Trump’s state tax returns.

Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo is expected to sign the bill, which passed the state Senate earlier this month.

The legislation, which passed 84 to 53, would amend New York law to permit the commissioner of the state Department of Taxation and Finance to release the state tax returns of those in federal, state and local elected or higher-level public offices, along with entities those people control or have a large stake in, that are requested by the leaders of congressional tax-writing committees.

Existing laws generally prohibit such a release, and those congressional panels — the House Ways and Means Committee, the Senate Finance Committee and the Joint Committee on Taxation — could file a request with the state only after efforts to gain access to federal tax filings through the Treasury Department failed.

“Secrecy in government breeds corruption,” Thomas Abinanti, a Democratic assemblyman, said as the legislation was being debated, adding that Trump has “intentionally and publicly thwarted the le

“Congress must guarantee that no government official is selling government policy for personal gain,” he said.

Opponents criticized the legislation as “political,” with one Republican assemblyman, Doug Smith, saying lawmakers were “using this body as a weapon against” Trump.

Michael Benedetto, a Democratic lawmaker, expressed concern with both this legislation and a bill that passed Tuesday that would weaken presidential pardon power.

“When I see a couple of bills coming to us where the purpose is obvious, political in nature, then it gives me pause,” Benedetto said. “We are traveling down a path that we should not be traveling down. No legislature should craft legislation for political reasons just to get a few people they consider their enemies.”

Over the weekend, members of the Assembly made several key changes to the legislation originally passed by the state Senate. The bill had allowed for “any” state tax return Congress requested to be provided, language that critics said was too broad and should make any taxpayer in New York state nervous.

The new version of the legislation also changed the purpose for which the returns can be obtained, swapping out “specified and legitimate legislative purpose” for any “legitimate task” of the Congress. Additionally, the bill would now require that New York state redact any federal tax information that might appear alongside state returns.

Those changes to the legislation were passed separately Wednesday in an 85-49 vote and are expected to be approved quickly by the state Senate.

“While I don’t necessarily think that the amendments were required to get the bill passed, this and other (changes) made the bill stronger and better, and that’s what the legislative process is all about,” David Buchwald, the Democratic assemblyman sponsoring the legislation, told NBC News earlier this week. Buchwald noted that Cuomo’s office was “involved in discussions” on the legislation.

State Sen. Brad Hoylman, a Democrat who sponsored the legislation, responded to criticism that the bill is political, telling NBC News it’s “a maneuver in support of the constitutional principle that no one is above the law.”

The bill would apply only to Trump’s state returns, not the federal returns currently at the center of a battle between House Democrats and the Treasury Department. The state filings would still provide a trove of information, however, because New York is Trump’s home state and the headquarters of his business. The state returns are likely to contain much of the same information members of Congress are seeking from Trump’s federal filings.

Both the state Senate and Assembly are under Democratic control.

Last week, the Treasury Department said it would not comply with congressional subpoenas to provide six years of Trump’s tax returns to the House Ways and Means Committee — making it ever more likely that Democrats will take the fight over Trump’s returns to court.

On Tuesday, The Washington Post reported that a draft IRS memo it obtained said the Treasury Department must turn over tax returns to Congress unless the president asserts executive privilege. Federal law gives the three congressional tax committees the right to obtain and review the otherwise confidential federal tax information of any taxpayer from the Treasury.

The Treasury Department has denied repeated requests from the House Ways and Means Committee to turn over Trump’s tax returns. The president has refused to make his returns public, the first president in four decades to do so. Trump has cited ongoing audits as preventing him from releasing his tax filings, although such a review does not preclude him from releasing the information.

 

Worried by Iran tensions, U.S. lawmakers seek end to law of ‘endless war’

May 22, 2019

by Patricia Zengerle

Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Rising tensions between the United States and Iran prompted some Democratic and Republican lawmakers on Wednesday to call for the repeal of a law that presidents have used for two decades to justify U.S. military action around the world.

Representative Barbara Lee, a Democrat, and Thomas Massie, a Republican, held a news conference with other members of the House of Representatives to call for the repeal of the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), passed days after the Sept. 11 attacks on New York on Washington.

A House subcommittee on Tuesday approved an amendment to a defense spending bill that would repeal the AUMF.

The lawmakers said that, after nearly 18 years, it was time for Congress to repeal and replace the law, stressing that it was too broad from the start and saying it definitely should not be used to justify war with Iran.

Washington and Tehran have this month escalated rhetoric against each other, following President Donald Trump’s decision to try to cut Iran’s oil exports to zero and beef up of the U.S. military presence in the Gulf in response to what he said were Iranian threats.

Lee, the only member of Congress to vote against the 2001 authorization, said it has been used “as a blank check for endless war by three administrations.”

When she voted against the 2001 AUMF, Lee said it gave too much leeway for presidents to pursue military action. “It was so broad, it covered almost every military operation in perpetuity,” she said.

Lawmakers have expressed fears that Trump might order an attack on Iran. Top administration officials sought to tamp down such concerns at classified briefings on Tuesday for every member of Congress at which they also described what they see as a heightened threat from long-term rival Tehran.

Massie said backers of the effort to repeal the 2001 AUMF simply want Congress to reclaim its constitutional right to declare war. “This is not a partisan issue,” he said.

Reporting by Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Alistair Bell

 

Europe and nationalism: A country-by-country guide

April 29, 2019

BBC News

With European elections weeks away, nationalist and far-right parties across Europe are sensing an opportunity.

A boom in voter support has led to the far right sharing power in Austria and the nationalist League forming a populist coalition in Italy. Spain – once thought a barren ground for such politics – elected multiple far-right politicians to parliament for the first time since the country returned to democracy in 1975.

Now, some of these parties are attempting to organise into a pan-European power bloc.

In part, this can be seen as a backlash against the political establishment, but the wave of discontent also taps into concerns about globalisation, immigration, a dilution of national identity and the EU itself.

Poll success in the 23-26 May elections could have a major impact on the balance of power in the European Parliament.

So where in Europe’s political landscape do nationalists hold sway?

Italy

Italy’s Matteo Salvini has emerged as the dominant figure trying to unify Europe’s nationalist parties at a European level. A former MEP himself, his right-wing League party formed a government in June 2018 with the anti-establishment Five Star Movement after an inconclusive election.

The League’s rise to power coincided with the aftermath of the financial crisis and a big influx of sub-Saharan migrants from North Africa in 2016. As interior minister, Mr Salvini spearheaded the new government’s anti-immigration stance, turning away humanitarian rescue ships from Italian ports.

His party has long had a Eurosceptic reputation, and a number of its candidates for the European elections want to leave the euro.

Mr Salvini formed an alliance with like-minded parties this month.

How many parties will ultimately join up is unclear, but Italy’s League has found common cause with Germany’s main opposition party, AfD, as well as the Finns Party, the Danish People’s Party, Austria’s Freedom Party, France’s National Rally and several others.

Earlier this month, French far-right leader Marine Le Pen posted a picture with Mr Salvini, saying they were in great shape and ready to win the May 26 elections.

Germany

Formed just six years ago, in 2017 the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) entered the federal parliament for the first time with 12.6% of the vote, becoming Germany’s biggest opposition party.

From its beginnings as an anti-euro party, it has pushed for strict anti-immigration policies, tapped into anxieties over the influence of Islam and broken decades-old anti-Nazi taboos. It enjoyed a surge in popularity as Germany allowed in over a million undocumented migrants.

An AfD rally attracted 5,000 people last month, although some 20,000 held a counter-protest

Despite attempts by Chancellor Angela Merkel to toughen her stance on immigration, AfD has added to its electoral success and now has representatives in every state parliament.

AfD is also a Eurosceptic party and Nigel Farage, who has returned to the political stage to lead the UK’s Brexit Party, took part in its 2017 election campaign.

His former party, UKIP, came top in European Parliament elections in the UK in 2014, but the Brexit vote in 2016 led to most of its MEPs leaving. UKIP has no MPs in the UK parliament.

Spain

One of the big political stories in Spain has been the sudden rise of the far-right Vox party, which entered parliament for the first time in elections on 28 April, with 24 seats and more than 10% of the vote.

Vox styles itself as defending the unity of the Spanish state, with a promise to deport illegal immigrants and repeal laws against gender violence. It has made major gains by calling for a suspension of autonomy for the north-eastern Catalonia region, after separatists failed in their push for independence in October 2017.

Many believed that Spaniards would never endorse a far-right party due to its history under dictator Francisco Franco, who died in 1975. Just a single seat had been won by a far-right candidate since then – in 1979. Yet Vox saw its first major success in Andalusia’s regional elections in late 2018, entering government there with other right-leaning parties.

Austria

The Freedom Party (FPÖ) became the only far-right party in power in Western Europe when it joined a coalition as junior partner with conservative Chancellor Sebastian Kurz in 2017. His People’s Party, along with the centre-left Social Democrats, have long dominated Austrian politics.

As in Germany, the migrant crisis that unfolded in 2015 is also seen as key to the FPÖ’s success, and an issue they long campaigned on.

Since it came to power, the Freedom Party has become caught up in a series of race rows. Its leader Heinz-Christian Strache was earlier this month accused of linking on his Facebook page to a website accused of Holocaust denial.

France

Despite the efforts of leader Marine Le Pen to make the far right palatable to France’s mainstream, she was comprehensively defeated by Emmanuel Macron for the presidency in May 2017.

Her far-right party, the National Front (FN), failed to break through in parliamentary elections the following month.

So the FN became the National Rally (Rassemblement National) and latest opinion polls give the rebranded party a lead over President Macron’s ruling liberal LREM ahead of the European elections.

Ms Le Pen’s party is opposed to the euro and blames the EU for mass immigration, and she has found a common voice with other nationalist and far-right parties in Europe.

She appeared alongside Dutch anti-Islam and anti-EU politician Geert Wilders on Thursday, talking of a “democratic movement of patriots”.

Although many are sceptical that any pan-EU alliance of nationalist parties would work, Marine Le Pen is expected to take part in a pre-election rally with Italian’s Matteo Salvini and other parties in Milan next month.

Sweden

The anti-immigration Sweden Democrats (SD) made significant gains in the 2018 general election, winning about 18% of the vote.

The party has its roots in neo-Nazism, but it rebranded itself in recent years and first entered parliament in 2010. It opposes multiculturalism and wants strict immigration controls.

As with many of the countries featured here, though, the picture is complex. Sweden has welcomed more asylum seekers per capita than any other European country and has one of the most positive attitudes towards migrants.

Finland

The far-right Finns Party were narrowly beaten into second place in the April 2019 general election, coming within 0.2% of the left-wing Social Democratic Party (SDP).

Its success was built on two policies: opposition to immigration and a rejection of ambitious policies aimed at combating climate change.

It was an extraordinary recovery for a party that had also done well in the previous vote in 2015 but had since faded in popularity because of party splits.

“I could not expect a result like this, and no-one could,” party leader Jussi Halla-aho said – putting the party forward for negotiations for government for a second time.

Estonia

Estonia’s far-right Conservative People’s Party of Estonia (EKRE) won its first seats in parliament in the 2015 election.

Four years later, EKRE has more than doubled their share of the vote to nearly 18%, making it the third-largest party. It used that power to negotiate a place in government, as it joined fellow runners-up the Centre and Pro Patria parties to stop liberal leader Kaja Kallas from becoming Estonia’s first woman prime minister.

EKRE campaigned on an anti-immigration platform, and is also critical of same-sex marriage. Its leader, Martin Helme, once said that only white people should be allowed to move to Estonia.

Hungary

In 2018, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban secured a third term in office with a landslide victory in an election dominated by immigration.

The victory, he said, gave Hungarians “the opportunity to defend themselves and to defend Hungary”.

Mr Orban has long presented himself as the defender of Hungary and Europe against Muslim migrants, once warning of the threat of “a Europe with a mixed population and no sense of identity”.

But his Fidesz party remains inside Europe’s mainstream centre-right grouping, the EPP. In March 2019, the EPP suspended the party because of its anti-EU stance. So far Mr Orban has been keen to remain under the centre-right umbrella, but he is due to meet Matteo Salvini next week.

Hungary has two nationalist parties – with Jobbik attempting to escape its far-right past and appeal to centrist voters – and gaining 19% of the vote in 2018.

Slovenia

Although it fell a long way short of a majority, the anti-immigrant Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS) was the largest party in this year’s general election.

The party is led by former Prime Minister Janez Jansa, a supporter of Hungary’s Viktor Orban. He has said he wants Slovenia to “become a country that will put the wellbeing and security of Slovenians first”.

Elsewhere in Europe…

Immigration rules in Denmark are among Europe’s toughest, reflecting the power of the right-wing Danish People’s Party, which is the second largest party in parliament. Denmark allows its police to seize migrants’ property to pay for their upkeep and has pledged to boost contraception aid to developing countries to “limit the migration pressure”

In the build-up to the 2017 election in the Netherlands, the anti-immigration Freedom Party of Geert Wilders had been tipped to win, but in the end came a distant second despite increasing their number of seats. Provincial elections in 2019, however, saw newcomer Forum for Democracy (FvD) win the most seats – more than double the Freedom Party.

The Czech Republic’s Prime Minister, Andrej Babis, says recent elections in Slovenia and Italy show the stance of the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary and Slovakia on immigration is spreading.

Millions of Europeans are being exposed to far-right propaganda on Facebook ahead of the EU elections, a report by the Avaaz NGO shows.

The activists say their research prompted an “unprecedented” cleanup by Facebook.

May 22, 2019

by Darko Janjevic

DW

Fake news, fake quotes, and movie clips presented as proof of migrant misdeeds are only some of the tactics used by far-right Facebook pages, activists from the US-based Avaaz movement said when presenting a new report on Wednesday.

The malicious content was seen 533 million times in the last three months alone, or six million times per day, according to the Avaaz estimate.

While European voters prepare for this week’s EU parliamentary polls, the EU is “drowning in disinformation,” Avaaz’s campaign director Christoph Schott said.

“What we’ve seen is like a vast usage of fake accounts and a vast usage of misleading tactics,” Schott told DW. “So it’s more disinformation tactics that are being used to pretend that a specific issue which is often very hateful or very racist or anti-migrant is more popular than it actually is.”

Avaaz discovered around 500 suspicious pages and groups while researching far-right propaganda in Germany, France, the UK, Spain, Poland, and Italy. Facebook has already removed 77 of them. The removed pages alone had 5.9 million followers. In comparison, official Facebook pages dedicated to the Italian League, Germany’s AfD, Spain’s Vox, Poland’s PiS, France’s National Rally and the UK’s Brexit Party have only two million followers combined.

Movie clips and hate speech

As one of the examples of far-right propaganda, Avaaz points to an Italian page supporting Matteo Salvini’s League party. The page published a video which allegedly shows migrants smashing a police car. The video is actually a movie scene, and the report has been debunked several times, but it is still “widely shared,” Avaaz says in the report. Similarly, a page in Polish used a screenshot from a movie to support a fake news story about migrant taxi drivers raping women.

Another tactic used by far-right pages in Spain and elsewhere, is to start a group under an inconspicuous title, such as a “watchmoviesforfree.es” and then gradually change the name to “Watch Movies”, then “Movies of Spain” and then “Fight for Spain”, serving up far-right and nationalist content to its old user base. A similar page was discovered in Italy, which started as a support group for farmers in northern Sicily and ended up as a page supporting Salvini’s party.

“Bad actors are able to to copy the Russian playbook; they have understood how they do it,” Schott said. “They build groups; sometimes they put lifestyle groups, music groups and then slowly but surely put a bit of far-right content behind it.”

In Germany, the activists list posts in defense of Holocaust denier Ursula Haverbeck or images with swastikas on them. They also name AfD politician Peter Schmalenbach for sharing a fake quote on migration attributed to EU Commission Vice-President Frans Timmermans. The AfD official accused Timmermans of wanting to “wipe out” European states.

In France, the group identified multiple platforms uploading identical content to artificially boost the visibility of their hate messages. The pages do not use Facebook’s “share” function but instead post the content as original on every page. Avaaz points out to three identical posts, which speak of France being “invaded by millions of foreigners” who “rape our children, your women, and declare war on us.”

Avaaz wants corrections from Facebook

In addition to removing 77 pages, Facebook has also taken down 230 individual accounts since being contacted by Avaaz. The activists described it as an “unprecedented” cleanup of the platform, but said it was “nowhere near enough.”

“They’ve done an emergency operation but social media is so sick that that’s not enough,” Avaaz campaign manager Schott told DW. “You have to do a full-body scan, do the work themselves and not have a few wonderful ‘elves’ do that work for you. And that’s what we call on Facebook to do.”

“Millions of Europeans have been exposed to the lies, manipulation, and hate described in this report, and the overwhelming majority of them will never find out about it,” the report states. “And neither will the billions more who will be exposed during the next election, and the next one after that — unless Facebook acts now.”

Teri Schultz contributed to this report

 

Comment: The right wing is rapidly growing throughout Europe and one notes that any left-leaning media is horrified and claims the swastika will again be seen fluttering over buildings and Jews, Moslems and occasional rabbits will be rounded up and shoved into the non-existent Auschwitz camp immense 600 acre gas chambers,  where, it is well-known, 60,000,000 Jews were killed in a two hour period in 1943.

 

Muslims rule major Swedish city

An exclusive series of translations from the Swedish press, made for Jihad Watch by Ali Dashti:

Sweden is one of the worst hit countries in Europe of Muslim immigration and Political Correctness. Now, the police themselves have publicly admitted that they no longer control one of Sweden’s major cities. I have made some exclusive translations from Swedish media. They show the future of Eurabia unless Europeans wake up.

I’ve seen the future of Eurabia, and it’s called ‘Sweden.’ Malmø is Sweden’s third largest city, after Stockholm and Gothenburg. Once-peaceful Sweden, home of ABBA, IKEA and the Nobel Prize, is increasingly looking like the Middle East on a bad day.

All following links to major Swedish newspapers, with a brief translation:

http://www.aftonbladet.se/vss/nyheter/story/0,2789,529910,00.html

Malmø, Sweden. The police now publicly admit what many Scandinavians have known for a long time: They no longer control the situation in the nations’s third largest city. It is effectively ruled by violent gangs of Muslim immigrants. Some of the Muslims have lived in the area of Rosengård, Malmø, for twenty years, and still don’t know how to read or write Swedish. Ambulance personnel are attacked by stones or weapons, and refuse to help anybody in the area without police escort. The immigrants also spit at them when they come to help. Recently, an Albanian youth was stabbed by an Arab, and was left bleeding to death on the ground while the ambulance waited for the police to arrive. The police themselves hesitate to enter parts of their own city unless they have several patrols, and need to have guards to watch their cars, otherwise they will be vandalized. “Something drastic has to be done, or much more blood will be spilled” says one of the locals.

http://w1.sydsvenskan.se//Article.jsp?article=10092861

The number of people emigrating from the city of Malmø is reaching record levels. Swedes, who a couple of decades ago decided to open the doors to Muslim “refugees” and asylum seekers, are now turned into refugees in their own country and forced to flee their homes. The people abandoning the city mention crime and fear of the safety of their children as the main reason for leaving.

http://w1.sydsvenskan.se/Article.jsp?article=10090830

ALL of the 600 windows at one of the schools in Malmø have been broken during the summer holiday. Window smashing alone costs the city millions every year. City buses have been forced to avoid the immigrant ghetto, as they are met with youths throwing rocks or bottles at them if they enter. Earlier this year, a boy of Afghan origin had made plans to blow up his own school.

http://w1.sydsvenskan.se//Article.jsp?article=10093267

People working at the emergency ward at the major hospital in Malmø receive threats every day, and are starting to get used to it. Patients with knives or guns are commonplace. They have discussed having metal detectors at the emergency entrance, but some fear this could be seen as a provocation.

http://w1.sydsvenskan.se//Article.jsp?article=10093495

Lisa Nilsson has lived in Manhatten, New York City, for 25 years. After moving back to Malmø, Sweden, she now misses the safety of New York. She never walks anywhere in Malmø after dark, but takes a taxi everywhere she goes.

http://www.expressen.se/index.jsp?a=180423

Rapes in Sweden as a whole have increased by 17% just since the beginning of 2003, and have had a dramatic increase during the past decade. Gang rapes, usually involving Muslim immigrant males and native Swedish girls, have become commonplace. Two weeks ago, 5 Kurds brutally raped a 13-year-old Swedish girl.

http://www.aftonbladet.se/vss/nyheter/story/0,2789,528363,00.html

22-year-old Swedish woman going out for fresh air gang raped by three strange men. The only said one word to her: “Whore!”

Ali Dashti comments: “Stories like this are in Swedish newspapers every week. Swedish media usually take great care not to mention the ethnic background of the perpetrators, but you can usually read it between the lines.”

One more: how have Swedish politicians reacted to the chaos caused in one of their major cities because of Muslims of whom even the police seem to be afraid? By making it easier for Muslims to enter Sweden:

http://www.cphpost.dk/get/81008.html

Sweden’s politicians view arranged marriages as a positive tradition: a cultural pattern that immigrants should be allowed to preserve even in Sweden. The Swedish government feels that interfering in arranged marriages is an encroachment upon private life. In addition, immigrant couples can apply for family reunification in Sweden even if they’ve never seen each other before – as long as the marriage is entered in a culture with a tradition of parents arranging marriages on behalf of their children. A 2002 study by Växjö University economics professor Jan Ekberg found that immigration cost Swedish taxpayers DKK 33 billion that year, compared to just DKK 10 billion in Denmark. And while one might assume that the rise in costs would result in knee-jerk opposition to immigration, just the opposite has happened in Sweden. A Swedish government commission has proposed abolishing the so-called “seriousness requirement.”

A few years ago, the extreme leftist Guardian newspaper called Sweden the most successful society the world has ever known. But Sweden today is being transformed by a large influx of immigrants from the Middle East.

This report, first published on CBN.com, has the details:

Sweden’s third largest city, Malmö, sits just across the water from Copenhagen, Denmark. To visitors, Malmö seems quiet, nice, maybe a little boring; in other words, quintessentially Swedish. But under the surface, Malmö has serious problems.

On Saturday when Israel played Sweden in a Davis cup tennis match in Malmö, an estimated 6,000 Leftists, Arabs, Muslims and anarchists protested the Israeli presence in the city, and hundreds attacked police.

Almost no fans were allowed inside to watch the tennis series, because authorities feared disruptions or possible violence against the Israeli team.

Massive immigration has made Malmö today one quarter Muslim, and stands to transform it into a Muslim majority city within just a few decades.

One of the most popular baby names is not Sven, but Mohammed. Pork has been taken off some school menus. Want to learn to drive? You can attend Malmö’s own “Jihad Driving School.”

But despite Malmö’s usually placid appearance, this experiment in multiculturalism has not gone well. In the Rosengaard section of Malmö, a housing project made up primarily of immigrants, fire and emergency workers will no longer enter without police protection.

Unemployment in Rosengaard is reported to be 70 percent. An immigrant-fuelled crime wave affects one of every three Malmö families each year. The number of rapes has tripled in 20 years.

But Malmö has been so accommodating toward immigrant Muslims that a local Muslim politician, Adly Abu Hajar, has declared that “The best Islamic state is Sweden!”

Don’t ask Malmö’s Jews to give the city the same glowing assessment. Jews who dare walk the streets wearing their yarmulkes risk being beaten up.

“It’s true. Jews cannot walk the streets of Malmö and show that they’re Jews,” said Lars Hedegaard.

Hedegaard lives across the water from Malmö in Copenhagen, Denmark, where he was a columnist for one of Denmark’s largest newspapers. He says pro-Israel demonstrations in Malmö, like the ones during the fighting in Gaza earlier this year, were met with rocks, bottles and pipe bombs from Arabs and Leftists.

“I was there for demonstration; a pro-Israeli demonstration with about 400 or 500 people,” Hedegaard told CBN News.  “Jews and non-Jews, and I came over to cover it. The police allowed, I’d say a hundred Palestinians or Arabs to shout and threaten and throw bombs and rockets at us. A homemade bomb landed about ten yards from me, and went off with a big bang. And now of course, I thought the police were going to jump these guys, get them out of the way. They didn’t. They just let them stand there.”

Swede Ted Ekeroth helped film the Arab-Left counter-demonstrations. He saw Arabs throwing rocks at a 90-year-old holocaust survivor.

“I filmed the police chief and asked him why are they not reacting to this,” Ekeroth said. “Why are they not doing anything? And he simply answered, ‘It’s their right according to the Swedish constitution.’  We apparently did not have the same right, because we were forced out of there. Our manifestation for Israel is always peaceful, and theirs is always the quite opposite — Death, hate and killing of Jews. They come and they shout different slogans,” he continued. “It can be everything from Arabic slogans inciting killing of Jews to in Swedish and Danish, ‘Kill the Jews.’

And like all over the Western world, some on the Left, along with Arabs and Muslims and anarchists, have formed a political alliance against Israel and Jews. They demonstrate together, and in Sweden, they vote together. Muslims are a core constituency of the Left.

The immigrant issue is a big reason the right-wing Swedish Democrats are the fastest growing political party in the country. Matthias Karlsson is the Swedish Democrats’ Press Secretary. “In many parts of Sweden, people are, as I said, fed up,” Karlsson said. “And they’re being pushed too far and they want to make a stand.”

Swedish Democrats, who stand for traditional Christian values and limits on immigration, have been stigmatized by the Swedish media as fascist and bigoted.

Erik Almqvuist is national youth leader for the Swedish Democrats. “The media has tried to portray us as extremists, racists,” he said.  “People think we’re almost inhuman.”

Almqvuist faces regular death threats, and was almost killed recently in a Left-wing knife attack.

“The multicultural model in Sweden has polarized society,” Almqvuist explained. ”We have a political polarization. We have also an ethnic polarization. And the extremes are growing and it’s harder and harder to get to consensus.”

Hedegaard says as Malmö goes, so goes the rest of Sweden.

“I think the best prediction is that Sweden will have a Muslim majority by 2049, so we know where that country’s going,” he said.

CBN News was unable to get a response from Malmö’s mayor, Ilmar Reepalu. But he told a Swedish publication that he does not think anti-Semitism is greater in Malmö than in other Swedish cities, and said that harassment of Jews is “not good.”

CBN News also asked a number of Malmö Jewish leaders to appear on camera to discuss the climate of anti-Semitism. They all declined, with one saying it would only make the situation worse.

 

Israel’s War Criminals In Their Own Words

Shooting unarmed Palestinian demonstrators “preserves Israeli values”

May 21, 2019

by Philip Giraldi

The Unz Review

Israel’s public face, sustained and propagated by a wealthy and powerful diaspora that has significant control over the media, insists that the country is the Middle East’s only true democracy, that is operates under a rule of law for all its citizens and that its army is the “most moral in the world.” All of those assertions are false. Israel’s government favors its Jewish citizens through laws and regulations that are defined by religion. It in fact now identifies itself legally as a Jewish state with Christians and Muslim citizens having second class status. Israel’s army, meanwhile, has committed numerous war crimes against largely unarmed civilian populations in the past seventy years, both in Lebanon and directed against the Palestinians on the West Bank and Gaza.

In response to the past year’s Great March of Return protests staged by Gazans along the fence line that separates them from Israel, Israeli army snipers have shot dead 293 Palestinians and wounded seven thousand more. Twenty-thousand other Gazans have been harmed by other weapons used by the Israelis, to include canisters from the volleys of tear gas and rubber bullets. The numbers include hundreds of children and medical personnel trying to help the wounded, which reportedly have been particularly targeted.

The United Nations has reported that many of the wounded have been shot in their legs, which the Israeli army regards as “restraint” on its part. Many of those injured will likely need to have limbs amputated because Gaza lacks the medical facilities required to properly treat their wounds. Israel has bombed hospitals and blocked the importation of medical supplies into Gaza while also not allowing Gazans to leave the enclave for medical treatment elsewhere in the Middle East.

One hundred and twenty amputations have already been performed this year. Jamie McGoldrick, the U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator for the Occupied Territories explained “You’ve got 1,700 people who are in need of serious, complicated surgeries for them to be able to walk again…[requiring] very, very serious and complex bone reconstruction surgery over a two-year period before they start to rehabilitate themselves.”

The U.N. would like to provide $20 million in assistance to enable medical treatment rather than amputations but the United States has refused to support emergency funding for the Palestinians through the Relief Works Agency (UNRWA), a step presumably taken to benefit Israel by punishing the Palestinian people.

Interestingly, a document has recent re-surfaced describing in chilling terms the Israel Army’s viewpoint on shooting protesting Arabs. One year ago former British diplomat Craig Murray posted on his blog, “Condemned By Their Own Words”, which provided a translated from Hebrew-to-English transcript of an Israeli radio broadcast that had taken place on April 21st. An Israeli Brigadier-General, named Zvika Fogel, was responding to reports of the killing by soldiers of an unarmed fourteen year-old boy. He explained in some detail why his soldiers are absolutely doing the right thing to shoot to kill Palestinians who approach the barrier separating Gaza from Israel.

General Fogel’s comments are reflective of the Israeli government view of how to control the “Palestinian problem.” Only the rights, including the right to life, of Israeli Jews are legitimate and Arabs should be grateful for what the Jewish state allows them to have.

Fogel responded to interviewer Ron Nesiel’s first question “Should the IDF [Israeli army] rethink its use of snipers?” by saying that “Any person who gets close to the fence, anyone who could be a future threat to the border of the State of Israel and its residents, should bear a price for that violation. If this child or anyone else gets close to the fence in order to hide an explosive device or check if there are any dead zones there or to cut the fence so someone could infiltrate the territory of the State of Israel to kill us …”

Nesiel: “Then, then his punishment is death?”

Fogel: “His punishment is death. As far as I’m concerned then yes, if you can only shoot him to stop him, in the leg or arm – great. But if it’s more than that then, yes, you want to check with me whose blood is thicker, ours or theirs. It is clear to you that if one such person will manage to cross the fence or hide an explosive device there …”

Nesiel: “But we were taught that live fire is only used when the soldiers face immediate danger. … It does not do all that well for us, those pictures that are distributed around the world.”

Fogel: “I know how these orders are given. I know how a sniper does the shooting. I know how many authorizations he needs before he receives an authorization to open fire. It is not the whim of one or the other sniper who identifies the small body of a child now and decides he’ll shoot. Someone marks the target for him very well and tells him exactly why one has to shoot and what the threat is from that individual. And to my great sorrow, sometimes when you shoot at a small body and you intended to hit his arm or shoulder it goes even higher. The picture is not a pretty picture. But if that’s the price that we have to pay to preserve the safety and quality of life of the residents of the State of Israel, then that’s the price.

“[And] look, Ron, we’re even terrible at it [at suppressing those pictures]. There’s nothing to be done, David always looks better against Goliath. And in this case, we are the Goliath. Not the David. That is entirely clear to me. … It will drag us into a war. I do not want to be on the side that gets dragged. I want to be on the side that initiates things. I do not want to wait for the moment where it finds a weak spot and attacks me there. If tomorrow morning it gets into a military base or a kibbutz and kills people there and takes prisoners of war or hostages, call it as you like, we’re in a whole new script. I want the leaders of Hamas to wake up tomorrow morning and for the last time in their life see the smiling faces of the IDF. That’s what I want to have happen. But we are dragged along. So we’re putting snipers up because we want to preserve the values we were educated by. We can’t always take a single picture and put it before the whole world. We have soldiers there, our children, who were sent out and receive very accurate instructions about whom to shoot to protect us. Let’s back them up.”

One might reasonably suggest that Fogel’s comments reflect a consensus among Israelis on how to deal with the Arabs. And the United States is fully complicit in the slaughter. American Ambassador to Israel David Friedman has repeatedly praised the restraint of the Israeli armed forces and has blamed the Gazans for their plight. The United States continues to subsidize illegal Israeli settlements that fuel the conflict and is putting the final touches on an Israeli approved peace plan that will now and forever make the Palestinians a non-people, without a nation of their own and without any hopes for the future. Meanwhile, they are target practice for Israeli snipers. The world should be mortified by Israeli arrogance and behavior and the United States should bow its head in shame each time a pandering American politician comes out with the line “Israel has a right to defend itself.

 

 

Almost two-thirds of Americans oppose pre-emptive US strike on Iran, fresh poll finds

May 22, 2019

RT

A sizeable majority of US citizens oppose the idea of pre-emptive strikes on Iran, and massively disapprove of Trump’s policy towards the Islamic Republic, a survey has revealed as tensions continue to flare in the Gulf.

Some 60 percent of Americans believe that the US should not attack Iranian armed forces first, while a measly 12 percent supported carrying out a pre-emptive attack, according to a Tuesday poll by Reuters/Ipsos. That’s despite 53 percent of American adults referring to Iran as a “serious” or “imminent” threat.

That figure, overlooked by many mainstream media outlets, was almost as large as the number of American adults (51 percent) who believed their country is set to go to war against Iran in the next few years.

Nerves in the troubled Gulf region were put more on edge last week after Donald Trump delivered a veiled threat to Iran via Twitter, saying that any conflict with the US would mean “the official end of Iran.” During two years of his presidency, he also quit the hard-fought 2015 nuclear deal and re-imposed sweeping sanctions on Iran’s economy.

Now, nearly half – 49 percent – of Americans were notably unappreciative of Trump’s handling of Iran.

US-Iran tensions were fueled by a string of American military deployments this month. The Pentagon has already sent an aircraft carrier strike group, a squadron of B-52 bombers, and a battery of Patriot missiles to the Middle East, stirring up fears of a looming conflict.

Iran was skeptical about the US’ willingness to engage in an all-out military confrontation, saying Washington lacked both the political will and military assets. In the meantime, Tehran stated that while it does not want war, it remains ready for any eventuality.

 

Trump blasts Pelosi ‘cover-up’ accusation, balks on infrastructure

May 22, 2019

by Steve Holland, Jeff Mason and Richard Cowan

Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump fired back on Wednesday at U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s accusation that he is engaged in a cover-up over the Mueller Russia investigation, saying at a hastily arranged White House appearance, “I don’t do cover-ups.”

Visibly angered by Pelosi’s remarks, Trump also said he would not work with Democrats, who control the House of Representatives, on a major infrastructure proposal because of “phony” investigations they are pursuing in Congress.

The Republican president added that he was upset that Democratic lawmakers discussed the possibility of impeaching him before a White House meeting on infrastructure.

Trump repeated his previous rhetoric about Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe of Russia’s interference in Trump’s favor in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and whether Trump impeded Mueller’s inquiry. “No collusion, no obstruction, no nothing,” Trump said. “This whole thing was a take-down attempt at the president of the United States.”

Regarding the infrastructure meeting, Trump said, “I walked into the room and I told Senator (Chuck) Schumer, Speaker Pelosi, I want to do infrastructure. I want to do it more than you want to do it. I’d be really good at that – that’s what I do. But you know what? You can’t do it under these circumstances. So get these phony investigations over with.”

Afterward, at a press conference with Senate Democratic Leader Schumer, Pelosi told reporters Trump may have lacked the confidence to work with Democrats on infrastructure. She said she prays for Trump.

Schumer said watching what happened at the meeting between the president and Democratic lawmakers “would make your jaw drop.” He said that when Trump was asked how he would pay for an infrastructure plan, “he had to run away.”

As Democrats in Congress debated impeaching Trump, Pelosi said on Wednesday, about an hour before a White House meeting with him, that Trump is engaged in a “cover-up.”

The president is stonewalling multiple congressional investigations by ignoring subpoenas, refusing to allow current and former advisers to testify, and not handing over documents, steps that have aggravated a confrontation with Congress.

“No one is above the law, including the president of the United States. And we believe that the president of the United States is engaged in a cover-up,” Pelosi told reporters after a morning meeting of House Democrats.

She and other congressional leaders met briefly with Trump just before his appearance before reporters to talk about a potential bipartisan infrastructure development plan, although a firm proposal for funding any such effort has yet to emerge. The meeting lasted only a few minutes.

Trump and Democrats who control the House are engaged in a high-stakes power struggle over their ability to investigate him, with the president increasingly asserting that his advisers need not respond to lawmakers’ inquiries.

Their probes range from whether Trump obstructed justice during Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s inquiry into Russian meddling in Trump’s favor in the 2016 U.S. presidential election to his personal finances and businesses.

As the confrontation has escalated, Pelosi and other senior House leaders have been trying to tamp down demands from more junior Democratic lawmakers to kick off impeachment proceedings, urging them to give court enforcement actions time to progress.

The Democratic House Intelligence Committee chairman has agreed to hold off enforcing a subpoena against Attorney General William Barr after the Justice Department said it would turn over materials relating to Mueller’s probe. The decision ended a standoff between the committee and the Justice Department for access to counterintelligence reports generated by Mueller.

“The Department of Justice … this week will begin turning over to the committee twelve categories of counterintelligence and foreign intelligence materials,” committee Chairman Adam Schiff said in a statement on Wednesday.

Several House Democrats left Wednesday morning’s meeting telling reporters that Schiff’s deal might cool some of the passion for immediately moving toward impeachment

But impeachment demands have mounted since former White House Counsel Don McGahn ignored a subpoena from the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday to appear before it and testify.

Democratic Representative Gerry Connolly told reporters that Pelosi was working to balance the demands of Democrats in the House. But he added, “I am increasingly concerned that this president has committed impeachable offenses.”

Democratic Representative Bill Pascrell, a member of the House Ways and Means Committee that is demanding Trump’s tax returns, said he agrees with Pelosi and most committee chairs on not jumping to impeachment now.

Pascrell has been a Pelosi critic, but he said, “On this one I think she’s absolutely correct; the methodical approach.”

Reporting by Steve Holland, Jeff Mason, Roberta Rampton, Susan Heavey, Richard Cowan, Mohammed Zargham and Doina Chiacu; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Jonathan Oatis

 

Encyclopedia of American Loons

Burt Prelutsky

 

“Columnist for the WND” is not a badge of honor, but Burt Prelutsky is one and has none. As a fundie wingnut with a persecution complex, Prelutsky is very concerned about the marginalization and persecution of Christians in the US. As evidence for such (widespread) persecution and marginalization, Prelutsky cites for instance the, well, claim that when conservative politicans are criticized for their political views it is really intended an attack on their religion. Which, for course, is merely a restatement of the hypothesis. A tendency to take a restatement of one’s (ridiculous) hypothesis to be evidence for the hypothesis can help explain quite a bit of Prelutsky’s thinking on these issues. Prelutsky is for instance very concerned with the War on Christmas, which he blames on “my fellow Jews” who are trying to “pull off their own version of the Spanish Inquisition, forcing Christians to either deny their faith and convert to agnosticism or suffer the consequences.” When it comes to “pushing the multicultural, anti-Christian agenda, you find Jewish judges, Jewish journalists and the largely Jewish funded ACLU at the forefront,” writes Prelutsky: “anti-Semitism is no longer a problem in society; it’s been replaced by a rampant anti-Christianity,” a claim splendidly undermined by his own column. (He went on to attack Jewish Americans for not showing enough support for the Republican Party and not being grateful that America is “a Christian nation”.)

Part of the problem, as Prelutsky sees it, may also be that Christians in the US are too nice and timid. That’s why Prelutsky had to remind them that it is wrong for Christians to care for undocumented immigrants, pointing out that such actions as treasonous, and leading to the sad state of affair that Christians are currently helping Latinos “overrun America by destroying our schools, undermining our economy and over-taxing our social services” and “encouraging one specific group, Hispanics, to invade this nation” in order to “fill their respective pews.” Most blame, however, should be placed on “homicidal” progressives like then-President Obama and congressional Democrats, of course, who are actively seeking to “destroy America”.

No fan of Obama (a “friend and close associate” of Satan because he threatened to close the Guantanamo camp), Prelutsky has also complained that Obama shared “the instincts of Stalin, Hitler, Franco, Mao, Castro and Mussolini, but, fortunately, he lacks their power to kill dissidents or even have them exiled to Siberian gulags.” Because anyone who disagrees with Prelutsky on politics is Hitler. And if you disagree with him you want to murder him – an idea that tells you nothing about those who disagree with him but may suggest something rather disconcerting about how Prelutsky would have wanted to treat his political opponents if he had the opportunity. A further illustration: Prelutsky wants us to “bomb Mecca off the face of the earth, not concerning ourselves in the least with collateral damage, letting the Muslims [or “swamp creatures”, as he calls them] know once and for all that our God is far more powerful and, yes, vengeful than their own puny deity.” We should apparently do so because Muslims are “savages”.

In the internal WND competition to come up with the silliest attempt to compare Obama to an evil person, Prelutsky went with John Hinckley, arguing that the president “is every bit as delusional” as the guy who attempted to assassinate Ronald Reagan in a stream-of-consciousness rant that would be incoherent even by WND’s (lack of) standards. Here is his take on whether Obama is the Antichrist.

Prelutsky has also weighed in on issues connected to race with his usual combination of insightfulness and sharp wit. Here he compares Mandela and MLK in a way that is impossible to sum up; it is, however, at least telling that his criticism of MLK is based on the premise that “the relations between blacks and whites in America not only haven’t improved since the late ’60s, they have become far worse,” which, given segregation laws and lynchings, might tell you something about what Prelutsky thinks is the proper way of treating black people. He certainly has a thing for stereotypes. (Apparently he thinks they are humorous.)

Vehemently anti-science, Prelutsky is both (apparently) a creationist and (definitely) a global warming denialist. Science, as Prelutsky sees it, is a liberal conspiracy: “Liberals are always given to landing on the side of what they insist is science, whether the topic is Darwin’s theory of evolution versus intelligent design or man’s ability to control the weather. That’s because they believe that scientists are, like themselves, much smarter than other people,” says Prelutsky. As examples of the folly of science, Prelutsky then goes on to highlight the Piltdown Man, which scientists revealed was a hoax, and Pluto, “which for a long time, was regarded as one of the planets in our solar system. Then, without warning, Pluto woke up one morning to find it had been demoted to the status of a plutoid.” And, not least, the Brontosaurus, where “anthropologists mistakenly mixed up a few bones. What it was actually was something called an Apatosaurus.” It is not entirely clear what Prelutsky thinks his examples are supposed to illustrate, apart from the fact that science is a self-correcting enterprise, given that it is scientists, and not delusional wingnut bloggers, who discovers that corrections are needed and then go on to make them; it seems, though, that a guiding idea is the delusion that because scientists adjust their theories in the face of new evidence and better models, Prelutsky is correct when he rejects science for religious and political purposes. Apparently, this illustrates something about Obama, gay people (Prelutsky has problems with gay people) and leftwing professors.

Diagnosis: OK, so he is ultimately a relatively minor figure, but he is awfully silly so we couldn’t help but describe him at some length here. Though ostensibly a “humorist” the way in which he is funny – he sort of is, if you can disregard the hate, rage, evil and stupid – is not the way he intends.

 

 

The CIA Confessions: The Crowley Conversations

May 22, 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. 44

Date: Tuesday, October 29, 1996

Commenced: 8:45 AM CST

Concluded:    9:05 AM CST

 

GD: Good morning, Robert. How is life treating you?

RTC: Well enough, I suppose. Yourself?

GD: Not too badly. I heard from Corson who wants me to come back for a meeting with you and himself soon. He neglected to mention Kimmel for some reason.

RTC: Kimmel will probably be along to subject you to his brilliant interrogative techniques.

GD: Good. That ought to be entertaining. Corson mentioned the University Club.

RTC: Yes. Up on Sixteenth Avenue past the White House. We can have lunch.

GD: Is the food good?

RTC: It’s not the Jockey Club but it will do. Do you have any idea when you will come?

GD: Probably early in December. Willis Carto wants to meet with me over the weekend in DC so we can get together just after that. I’ve been reading over this ZIPPER business and checking various dates out. Fascinating story, Robert, and hopefully it will make a good book. And before you say it, no, I won’t publish until after you’re gone. They were all of them into it, weren’t they?

RTC: Just a few of the top people, actually. We were talking about the Army plot to start a war with Cuba by attacking our planes and setting off a few bombs here. I believe we did talk about this.

GD: Yes.

RTC: Jim Bamford knows all about this. It’s called ‘Operation Northwoods’ and the plans are in the National Archives. I wouldn’t recommend your asking your friend Wolfe about it because he’d run to Langley with his tongue hanging out and then they would vanish without a trace. If you’re going to be here, I’ll give you chapter and verse so you can find them yourself. Oh and one other thing. You mentioned an Army file on top Nazis we used. Wolfe sent it to you?

GD: Yes, I got it from him.

RTC: If I gave you chapter and verse on it, would you confirm?

GD: Certainly.

RTC: Let me just find this…..always putting….here. ‘P&O file 311.5 TS, sections one two and three.’ Dated 1948. Is that the one?

GD: It sounds like it. I’m bad on numbers. Let me pull it out. Take about a minute.

RTC: Go ahead.

(Pause)

GD: That’s it.

RTC: That stupid son of a bitch had no right to give that to you. He’s playing both ends against the middle. When you come back here, could you make a copy and give it to me?

GD: I will do that.

RTC: That man is a rat, Gregory, a sewer rat.

GD: Don’t drag me into it, please. I never solicited it and he sent it to me so I would give him some Müller papers dealing with his employment by your people. Naturally, since I never asked for it, once it came and I read it, I pretended I never got it. This scared yesterday’s dinner out of him because he put his return address on it. He thinks some post office employee will find it and turn it over to the FBI. I think he’s afraid of going to jail.

RTC: He damned well ought to.

GD: Who knows, Robert? He might like it inside the big house. You know what they say, don’t you? If you can’t get a woman get a clean old man.

RTC: (Laughter)

GD: My, and such a lot of Gestapo and SD people, not to mention a few Einsatzgruppen people we transported here, gave new names and ID to and made them GS18s… I think Wolfe wanted me to publish this and embarrass the CIA and the Army. He can’t, of course, so he thinks he is very clever using me as a cat’s paw. And to show you how brilliant an operative he is, the thing came in a NA envelope with his name written above the return address. Is he typical of the type of pseudo-academics you use?

RTC: These are useless attention-craving idiots but useful in their way.

GD: As fertilizer in your garden? You know the old saying that those who can, do, and others teach? Fits them perfectly. I have been running into academics for years. Petty, puffed-up bags of shit who squall and attack each other with their purses over the most trivial things. And, of course, they steal from everyone and then call it research. I might cite the case of Stephen Ambrose, the wonderful historian. He published a book once called a ‘Handbook on German Military Forces.’ Problem was, the book had been published in 1945 by the War Department as TM-E 30-451. Of course it wasn’t illegal to steal it, page by page, because it was public domain, but after I brought this to the attention of his publishers, the next edition had certain credit corrections. He probably blamed it all on his careless typist. You know, I always recommend an Ambrose book because you can get three books for the price of one. Why ever do you use such slugs? I’ll bet that even now, Mortimer Z. Tinsley, PhD, DVM is working on a devastating attack on the Müller book. He probably teaches at some obscure school like Antelope Valley Teacher’s College, in the history department, and his doctoral thesis, which he stole in its entirely, was entitled ‘A History of Fraud in Bulgarian Bar Mitzvahs in the Nineteenth Century.’  He will point out that Müller died in 1945 and my book is fuller of shit than a Christmas turkey. Of course he’s prating about Dr. Heinrich Müller, not Gestapo Müller, but I’ll just bet The New York Times Sunday book section will carry a wonderful review of it. I love that section. They push forward deeply moving books about a black orphan boy raised in Georgia by two vegetarian lesbians and his poignant and deeply moving struggles to become a champion purse snatcher-cum-pimp in Hell’s Kitchen. The sort of silly shit that no one reads but the editor knows the publisher.

RTC: Oh, we do have our stable of weird people working for us. Did I ever tell you about the Pedophile Academy, Gregory?

GD: Are you speaking of Yale, Robert?

RTC: No, no we actually had one down at Camp Peary. Right near Jim Critchfield’s place. I don’t know if you are aware of it but we called it The Farm and it was supposed to be a secret training center for young agents. Anyway, Allen Dulles set up this training center down there for pedophiles. They were in training to seduce, molest and, most especially, photograph the young children of targets. Not only, Allen reasoned, would our graduates have a spanking good time but they could get wonderful action pictures of the wee ones to blackmail their families with.

GD: Sick.

RTC: One could say that. I understand they broke it up when one of the graduates nailed a Deputy Director’s son at a summer camp.

GD: Another boat trip?

RTC: I really don’t know. I heard he had a sudden heart attack. We do those very well, you know.

GD: I am aware. A French doctor invented the drug. The Gestapo used it internally and externally and through Müller, we got it. Is that what you’re talking about?

RTC: I think so.

GD: Müller told me that when he came to Washington, they were tossing people out of windows. Forrestal went crazy and they chunked him out of the sixteenth floor clinic at Bethesda. That’s the special floor where they keep Senators who flip out and run around the Mall in the nude.

RTC: I think it’s more of a drunk tank, Gregory. McCarthy was locked up there for a time.

GD: They should have put him out the window. Müller used to say that this showed no consideration for people passing on the sidewalk below or expensive parked cars. Imagine an overweight official descending ten stories onto your new Packard or worse, on your Christmas shopping wife. Think of the lost gifts, Robert, and you too will weep.

RTC: Gregory, you are a terrible person.

GD: I know that, Robert. I once put angel hair…you know, the spun glass insulation…into my sister’s underwear before a family dinner and she spent most of the time scratching her crotch and other unmentionable body areas right at the table. I told everyone she had crabs and she had to leave the table. I understand her swollen pudenda looked like an eggplant.

RTC: (Laughter) Gregory, you are really very bad. But entertaining.

GD: I know. Anyway, when I come back to see you I have some ZIPPER questions for you.

RTC: Yes, I much prefer a face-to-face. But, my God, not at the University Club lunch.

GD: Of course not.

RTC: If Tom Kimmel ever got wind of what we were up to, he would have my place raided.

GD: Oh my God, Robert, he might find the Swiss Music Box.

RTC: Speaking of that, it seems to be working. At least it scares off all the birds and every time I put it on, the dogs in the neighborhood howl like demons.

GD: Maybe the poor Swiss are soaking their embassy floor with urine. Did you ever think of that?

RTC: It did occur to me. But enough merriment for today. I have to get ready to go to the doctor’s office so I will speak with you later.

 

(Concluded at 9:05 AM CST)

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

 

 

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