August 12, 2022

Trump got his Roy Cohn.

Talk about Karma.



Roy Cohn Condemned the Rosenbergs as Soviet Spies. Their Granddaughter Just Made a Film About Him.

Ivy Meeropol, the director of Bully. Coward. Victim., discusses the life of the Trump mentor who remains one of America's most infamous villains.

By Gabrielle Bruney
Esquire, JUN 18, 2020

EXCERPT…

Cohn was just 23 when his role as a prosecutor in the Rosenberg trial made him a nationally-known figure. Electrical engineer Julius and his secretary wife Ethel were native New Yorkers who met in the Young Communist league in the 1930s, and were arrested in 1950. In a trial riddled with prosecutorial misconduct, the Rosenbergs were convicted of passing to Russia secrets of the atomic bomb. One of their allies later confessed that Julius did commit espionage—but historians generally agree that the information he relayed was not at all crucial to Soviet bomb-building efforts. Alan Dershowitz, a true Trump-era Forrest Gump, says in the film that Cohn told him the trial amounted to “fram[ing] guilty people.”

But Ethel was almost certainly innocent. Her brother and spy ring co-conspirator David Greenglass testified during the trial that his sister was involved in the plot, but later recanted his account, saying that, with Cohn’s encouragement, he lied to spare his own wife and family. Unlike everyone else involved in the spying operation, Ethel was never given a codename. Still, Cohn boasted in his autobiography that when trial judge Irving Kaufman, torn over whether or not to sentence Ethel to death, called him for advice, he urged the judge to condemn her. “The way I see it,” he told Kaufman, “she is worse than Julius.”

The Rosenbergs’ extended family members were too afraid of falling under the taint of communism to take in their orphaned sons. Robert and Michael were eventually adopted by Abel Meeropol, writer of the anti-lynching protest song “Strange Fruit,” and his wife Anne, after the children were introduced to the couple at a party at W.E.B. Du Bois’ home. Both grew up to be university professors.

CONTINUES…

https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/movies/a32894716/roy-cohn-bully-coward-victim-documentary-julius-ethel-rosenberg-true-story/

August 11, 2022

Ya gotta know somebody to get into Mierda-del-Loco.

The arrest of a woman carrying a USB stick with malware into Mar-a-Lago exposes glaring flaws in the resort's security, as FBI reportedly investigates whether she is a Chinese spy

https://www.businessinsider.com/mar-a-lago-arrest-exposes-bad-security-fbi-probes-chinese-espionage-2019-4

August 10, 2022

"Mole? What mole?"

“WTF? We work here.”

August 9, 2022

Trump is a fucking spy!

WaPo just reported, Ari Melber on MSNBC said, some of the papers at Merde de Lardo may be “so sensitive, they cannot be described in public.”

The former Mueller investigator guy Andrew Weissmann said it sounds like sensitive compartmentalized information.

August 8, 2022

Manafort owed the Russian Mob millions.

Which is why ALL ROADS LEAD TO PUTIN.



What Malcolm Nance said:

Anyone who has ever talked to a bookie knows that a person in debt never insults the person that they owe money to. So, by bringing this up, and making Donald Trump… Using his natural populous traits. When he used to do worldwide wrestling, he came on as the evil guy with a big check, and then by the end of the wrestling match he would be embracing the guy who was the hero, the good guy. Putin, I’m sure, and his psychologist, and his scholars, saw that he had a draw for the base level American, the Wal-Mart shopping American. Even though he was a brash, supposedly rich guy, he had a way of touching them. I am absolutely certain that this was the calculation that they made, that he was not only popular in Russia, he was the kind of authoritarian Putin would like to fund, because Putin had been funding authoritarian governments all over Europe. To get the United States, and put this guy in as an ally, would just be monumental.

Snip...

Then they found the black book with all of the cash payments in there, which identified that Manafort may have made somewhere between $20 and $70 million of black money that he was money laundering into the United States. The very fact that he would come back again as Donald Trump’s campaign manager, shows a level of George Smiley-John le Carré level coordination, that those of us in the intelligence community just would have to chase down. Because as I like to say, “Coincidence takes a lot of planning.” That’s an old intelligence community dictum.

Continues...

Source: https://whowhatwhy.org/2019/11/22/from-useful-idiot-to-working-asset/

August 6, 2022

Sweden sent Raoul Wallenberg to Hungary

A Swedish Rescuer in Budapest

After the occupation of Hungary on March 19, 1944, the Swedish degation launched a rescue operation to save Jews from being deported to the death camps. The newly created American War Refugee Board decided to work with the Swedish government in order to help Hungary’s Jews. Soon the Swedish legation in Budapest reported that they were under enormous pressure of Jews seeking protection in the form of passports or visas. They asked to send a special envoy whose principal task would be to deal with passports. It was decided to appoint Raoul Wallenberg as secretary in the Swedish Embassy in Budapest with full diplomatic privileges. Before leaving, Wallenberg asked to be given a free hand and authorization to meet with Hungary’s leaders.

Wallenberg was born in 1912 to a prominent aristocratic banking family. He studied architecture in the United States before joining his family’s business. In the early 1940’s he made several business trips to Nazi occupied countries, including Hungary. This made him become a witness to Nazi Germany’s policies.

Wallenberg arrived in the Hungarian capital on 9 July 1944 with a list of Jews whom he was to help and 650 protective passports for Jews who had some connection with Sweden. However he soon widened the scope of his work and began to issue thousands of protective letters and to purchase houses which he put under the Swedish flag thus making them ex-territorial, and where he housed Jews for extra protection. The protective letter authorized its holder to travel to Sweden or to any of the other country Sweden represented. About 4,500 Jews had these papers, which protected them from forced labor and exempted them from wearing the yellow star.

In October 1944, the situation in Budapest took a turn for the worse. Although the Red Army was already approaching, the fascist "Arrow Cross" seized power and established a reign of terror. Jews were being killed in the streets; others were dragged to the Danube river where they were shot or drowned in the freezing water. The number of Jews with protective papers quickly rose. Wallenberg used unconventional methods, including bribery and blackmail, in order to finance and run his huge rescue operation. He soon employed approximately 340 people in his office. In view of the grave situation, he began to issue protective papers without distinction, and had 32 buildings protected by Sweden, with 2 hospitals, and a soup kitchen. Wallenberg together with other legations and international organizations set up the international ghetto, protected by the neutral countries. Jewish youngsters who looked "Aryan" served as guards; some of them were especially bold and wore "Arrow Cross" uniforms.

With the establishment of the Arrow Cross rule, Eichmann returned to Budapest on 17 October 1944, and immediately ordered the deportation of the city’s Jews. The protective letters were declared null and void. After protests by Wallenberg and his colleagues, they were reinstated, although it should be noted that the Arrow Cross regime had little respect for documents and legalities. The plan to deport the Jews to the camps was paralyzed for other reasons – the railway lines were too close to the front. Not wanting to give up, Adolf Eichmann ordered a "death march" of tens of thousands of persons to the Austrian border. Wallenberg and representatives of other neutral countries followed the marchers in their vehicles, and distributed food, clothing and medications. He was able to extricate many Jews from the death march by claiming that they were his "protected" Jews. He continued to distribute passes even when the Arrow Cross guards threatened him with their guns.

Wallenberg’s bold methods put him in great danger, but he never thought of stopping. He remained in the city during the Soviet siege of Budapest with the "protected" Jews and threatened the German commander and the Arrow Cross leader not to go through with the idea to harm the remaining Jews. Before the Soviets entered the city, he told Per Anger, his colleague in the Swedish legation: “I’ve taken on this assignment, and I will never be able to go back to Stockholm without knowing inside myself that I’d done all a man could do to save as many Jews as possible”.

When the Soviets entered the city, Wallenberg was taken away by Russian soldiers supposedly to meet with the top Soviet general Malinovsky. This was on 17 January 1945. He must have felt danger, because as he was led to the Russian vehicle he said: “I don’t know whether I am being taken as a guest of the Soviets or as their prisoner”. Wallenberg, who was 32 years old at the time, was never seen again. In the first years after his disappearance, the Soviets claimed that they had no knowledge of a person named Wallenberg. Nevertheless, people who were incarcerated in Soviet prisons claimed that they had met him in various prisons. In 1956, the Soviets finally stated that he had died in prison in 1947.

Continues…

https://www.yadvashem.org/righteous/stories/wallenberg.html

This history will be forgotten, if the conservatives, Rupert Murdoch and their evil toad swarm around the world have their way.

August 6, 2022

Final solutions for a small planet - the Use of Computers to Support Oppression

The Use of Computers to Support Oppression

Computer technology enabled the government to organize and enforce such an atrocious system of segregation and control.

More than any other single technological advancement, the computer fostered the concentration of administrative power in the hands of Africa's white elite. (NAR82)

Despite the U.N. arms embargoes, American computers were in widespread use throughout South Africa. The United States was the largest supplier of computers used in South Africa. American computers were in use in virtually every governmental agency, the police system, and the military, all of which contributed to the control system known as apartheid. Computer technology did not merely support the system of oppression, rather the entire country was utterly dependent upon it. As the managing director of the South African subsidiary of Burroughs Corporations said,

We are entirely dependent on the U.S. The economy would grind to a halt without access to the computer technology of the West. No bank could function; the government couldn't collect its money and couldn't account for it; business couldn't operate; payrolls could not be paid. Retail and wholesale marketing and related services would be disrupted. (NAR82)

The extensive history of the export of American computer technology began in 1952 with an order for the first "electric tabulator" to IBM-South Africa. Three years later, the streamlining of the hated pass system resulted in an automated population register implemented on foreign computers. 1970 found South Africa with an estimated four hundred computers -- a value of about one hundred million dollars. The number of computers continued to grow, totaling more than forty five hundred in 1982. In 1977, only the U.S. and Britain spent more on computer technology than South Africa as a percentage of gross national product, while in 1980, 75% of the computers in South Africa were purchased from American corporations. South Africa continued to import a large number of computers despite an attempt by the government to promote domestic production. Local products accounted for less than 5% of South African computer equipment sales in 1988. Many of these sales occured despite restrictions in U.S. law.

American corporation IBM was the largest computer supplier in South Africa throughout the years of apartheid. In 1978 alone, IBM's South African sales jumped 250%; total annual sales amounted to approximately three hundred million dollars in 1982. Not only did IBM contribute tremendous computing power to the South African apartheid system, but of the fifteen hundred South African workers employed by IBM in 1982, less than 20% were classified as coloured, black or Asian. IBM continually asserted that the applications of their computers were not used to abridge human rights, despite acknowledgment that the uses to which their computers were put could not be known in all cases. In fact, the South African Parliament made it illegal for companies to report the uses of their computers. Although IBM officially divested from South Africa in 1987, their products continued to be distributed by Information Services Group.

CONTINUED...

http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~cale/cs201/apartheid.comp.html

August 6, 2022

Hey, CPAC! Where Hungary's Viktor Orban is coming from, politically.

From Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center:

…This year marks (78) years since the destruction of Hungarian Jewry. As such, we have dedicated this newsletter to the tragedy of Hungarian Jewry, which literally occurred at the last moment in the Holocaust. In fact, what makes the Holocaust in Hungary unique is that over half a million Hungarian Jews were murdered in such a short time, beginning in the spring of 1944 and continuing throughout the winter…

Source: https://www.yadvashem.org/education/newsletter/31.html



… On the banks of the Danube River in Budapest, not far from the Hungarian Parliament building, sit sixty pairs of old-fashioned shoes, the type people wore in the 1940s. There are women's shoes, there are men's shoes and there are children's shoes. They sit at the edge of the water, scattered and abandoned, as though their owners had just stepped out of them and left them there.

If you look more closely, you see that the shoes are rusted, made of iron and set into the concrete of the embankment. They are a memorial and a monument to the Hungarian Jews who, in the winter of 1944-1945, were shot on the banks of the Danube River by the members of the Arrow Cross Party. Known as "The Shoes on the Danube Promenade", the memorial was conceptualized by film director Can Togay, and was created by Togay together with the sculptor Gyula Pauer. It was installed on the Pest bank of the Danube River in Budapest in 2005. At three separate places on the memorial, cast iron signs read in Hungarian, English and Hebrew: "To the memory of victims shot into the Danube by Arrow Cross militiamen in 1944-45."

During that autumn and winter, after the Germans had toppled the government of Miklos Horthy bringing Ferenc Szálasi and his fascist, violently antisemitic Arrow Cross Party to power, the Arrow Cross introduced a reign of terror in Budapest. The Arrow Cross militiamen ran amok in the streets of Budapest, beating, plundering, and killing Jews publicly. Thousands of Jews were murdered all over the city. Shooting the Jews into the Danube was convenient because the river carried the bodies away. Often, the Arrow Cross murderers would force their terrified Jewish victims to remove their shoes before shooting them into the Danube. Shoes, after all, were a valuable commodity during World War II. The killers could use them, or trade them on the black market. This, then, is the historical reality behind the monument. Sometimes, though, the victims' shoes were so worn-out and useless, that the militiamen killed the Jews with their shoes still on. And sometimes, the Arrow Cross pulled the shoestrings out of children's shoes, and used them to tie the helpless Jewish victims' hands together before they were shot. Sometimes they used rope instead. The killers faced their victims without mercy; the victims faced the killers without blindfolds. In some cases the Arrow Cross men tied together the hands of two or three Jews – adults or children. Then they would shoot only one of the people who were tied together. When they did their work properly and positioned their victims at the edge of the water, all three would fall into the Danube, the dead body pulling the still-living victims with it.1 All the bodies, tied together by shoelaces or rope or fate, would either sink or float away down the river. If the militiamen noticed that Jews were still alive, they used them for target practice. However, most of the Jews – especially the children – died immediately because the water was freezing cold.2 During the days of horror in the winter of 1944-1945, the Danube was known as "the Jewish Cemetery."3…

Source: https://www.yadvashem.org/articles/general/shoes-on-the-danube-promenade.html

August 3, 2022

Fascism financed personally by Peter Thiel

Blake Masters Is Peter Thiel’s Dream Candidate—and a Total Nightmare for Democracy

The right-wing tech giant, who has said he believes freedom and democracy are incompatible, has poured millions into his protégé’s Senate campaign.

NOAH LANARD
Mother Jones, JULY 18, 2022

In the spring of 2012, Blake Masters, who was in his final year at Stanford Law, sat in on a computer science class taught by Peter Thiel, the billionaire co-founder of PayPal. During a lecture titled “Founder as Victim, Founder as God,” Thiel argued a kinglike leader was essential to innovation. “A startup is basically structured as a monarchy,” he explained. “We don’t call it that, of course. That would seem weirdly outdated, and anything that’s not democracy makes people uncomfortable.”

Afterward, Masters tweeted that the lecture was the best 90 minutes he’d ever spent in a classroom and linked to the exhaustive notes he’d been taking on Thiel’s course. For months, everyone from tech bros to New York Times columnist David Brooks headed to Masters’ Tumblr to read them. It was heady stuff for a CrossFit-obsessed libertarian described by a law school classmate as being “notable for not being notable.”

Masters was the perfect Thiel protégé. Both men attended Stanford and Stanford Law as proud iconoclasts who chafed at limits on their freedom. But while Thiel alienated dormmates by performatively downing vitamins as they nursed hangovers, Masters had the social skills to make friends in environments as ideologically hostile as the vegetarian co-op he lived in at Stanford. He had the ideal résumé to help a famously awkward billionaire popularize his unorthodox views.

Masters would never leave Thiel’s orbit. After finishing law school in 2012, Masters worked on a legal research startup with funding from his former teacher, co-authored a bestseller with Thiel based on the notes he’d taken from that class, and served as Thiel’s chief of staff and the president of his charitable foundation. Now, Masters is running for US Senate in Arizona with more than $13 million from Thiel behind him. If Masters wins his August primary, he will face Mark Kelly, the former astronaut and husband of former Congress member Gabby Giffords, in one of several races expected to decide which party controls the Senate.

Years ago, the two men’s focus on electoral politics would have seemed unlikely. Earlier in his career, Thiel wrote about creating floating colonies in the ocean, while Masters told people not to vote. Since then, both have had changes of heart about means, not ends. Instead of escaping state control, Masters and Thiel now hope to use its power to solidify the dominance of the founder class and end the technological stagnation they believe could lead to humanity’s extinction. To do so, they are willing to move fast and break things. But instead of disrupting taxi companies or hotels, American democracy is in their sights. A decade after his startup lectures, there should no longer be any doubt that Thiel’s sympathy for authoritarianism extends well beyond the private sector.

Continues…

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/07/blake-masters-peter-thiel-donald-trump-arizona-senate-mark-kelly/

August 3, 2022

Hitler learned a hell of a lot from US jurisprudence.

How the Nazis Were Inspired by Jim Crow

To craft legal discrimination, the Third Reich studied the United States.

BECKY LITTLE, MAR 26, 2021: AUG 16, 2017

In 1935, Nazi Germany passed two radically discriminatory pieces of legislation: the Reich Citizenship Law and the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor. Together, these were known as the Nuremberg Laws, and they laid the legal groundwork for the persecution of Jewish people during the Holocaust and World War II.

When the Nazis set out to legally disenfranchise and discriminate against Jewish citizens, they weren’t just coming up with ideas out of thin air. They closely studied the laws of another country. According to James Q. Whitman, author of Hitler’s American Model, that country was the United States.

“America in the early 20th century was the leading racist jurisdiction in the world,” says Whitman, who is a professor at Yale Law School. “Nazi lawyers, as a result, were interested in, looked very closely at, [and] were ultimately influenced by American race law.”

In particular, Nazis admired the Jim Crow-era laws that discriminated against Black Americans and segregated them from white Americans, and they debated whether to introduce similar segregation in Germany.

Yet they ultimately decided that it wouldn’t go far enough.

“One of the most striking Nazi views was that Jim Crow was a suitable racist program in the United States because American Blacks were already oppressed and poor,” he says. “But then in Germany, by contrast, where the Jews (as the Nazis imagined it) were rich and powerful, it was necessary to take more severe measures.”

Continues…

https://www.history.com/news/how-the-nazis-were-inspired-by-jim-crow