If the notion that, ‘truth always lies 180 degrees opposite to the direction pointed by the corporate media’ is not yet a modern maxim, it should be. A useful corollary might be added to the effect that, ‘the depth to which an event is consigned to the establishment memory hole is inversely related to its actual significance’.
Such an event is the occasion of the October, 2001 anthrax attacks in the United States, for coming close upon the heels of those of 9/11, the anthrax attacks of early October seemed to stamp with the imprimatur of destiny itself the coming of a new age, a new ‘clash of civilizations’, and, of course, a new conflictual modality, ‘The Global War on Terror’. It is ironic then that barely a decade later the entire episode should be so completely forgotten as almost never to have happened.
So what did happen?
The bald facts – as detailed by author Graeme MacQueen – are these:
From early October until November 20, some twenty-two people became infected by anthrax spores contained in letters sent through the US public mail system. Of these five died. A number of letters containing the spores were sent to several major news organizations and two were sent to the offices of US Senators Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy.
The US Administration immediately laid blame for the attacks at the door of Al Qaeda – and, significantly, Iraq, even though the latter had in no way been implicated in the 9/11 attacks themselves.
A number of crude ‘Islamic’ propaganda letters also accompanied some of the anthrax mailings. As it turned out, these proved so crude as to convince virtually no one, but rather as to suggest blatant fraud. Even more problematic was that the ordained authorities chose early on to push the notion that the spores had physical characteristics whose provenance could only be that of Iraq.
This tactic was quickly seen to backfire for when thoroughly analyzed the strain of anthrax used was found, egads!, to have come from US government labs. Shocking.
Needless to say, the Al Qaeda / Iraq motif was quietly dropped as was the heavy curtain of amnesia over the entire wayward affair. In 2010, just by way of tying up loose ends, a government anthrax vaccine researcher, one Dr. Bruce Ivins, was, after conveniently committing suicide, judged in absentia as the ‘lone wolf’ culprit. Case closed.
Well not quite.
In 2008, following Ivins’ death and under pressure from Congress, the FBI reluctantly asked the National Academy of Sciences to review its scientific methodology in the case.
The NSA, after hurdling multiple bureaucratic and technical obstacles placed in its way by the FBI, concluded (in 2011) that, far from being airtight, the case against Ivins was, in fact, built on a foundation of sand.
Thus, not only was Ivins’ alleged ‘deception’ of authorities strongly called into question, but so was the actual physical link between Ivins’ research and the anthrax spores used in the mailings. The NAS findings received reinforcement that same year from an unexpected source.
The relatives of Robert Stevens – the first fatality and the first victim to be identified as suffering from anthrax, (Oct. 5) – in suing the US government for liability in the death of their loved one, incurred a raucous split between the government’s civil and criminal divisions.
The subsequent court battle witnessed the civil branch attacking the results of the FBI and concluding, as per the NAS report, that there was no substantive link between Ivins and the anthrax mailings.
For the government narrative, things got uglier still. In 2011 and 2012 two articles appeared in the Journal of Bioterrorism and Biodefense. The lead author of the two papers, Martin Hugh-Jones, was listed by the FBI itself as a “renowned anthrax expert”.
The papers argued that the spores used in the 2001 anthrax attacks were not only highly weaponized, but employed a very specialized ‘silicone coating with a tin catalyst’. As the authors concluded,
Potential procedures that might be applicable for silicone coating of spores, barely touched on here, are complex, highly esoteric processes that could not possibly have been carried out by a single individual”.
‘Highly esoteric processes that could not possibly have been carried out by a single individual’.
So if not by Ivins, then by who?
The authors of the papers answered this question too.
“The known clues point to Dugway [Proving Grounds in Utah] or Battelle [Memorial Institute in Ohio], not USAMIIRD as the site where the attack spores were prepared. Crucial evidence that would prove or disprove these points either has not been pursued or has not been released by the FBI”.
In short, all the evidence relating to the 2001 anthrax letters points, not just to a domestic false flag attack – that much is conceded – but to a collective conspiracy at the highest levels of the US state apparatus.
But then why? What was all this in aid of?
As mentioned earlier, the context of the 2001 anthrax attacks involved not just the assaults on the Trade Towers themselves, but the whole edifice of the subsequent ‘global war on terror’ that was so rapidly prosecuted by the Bush Administration.
Thus, within just one day of 9/11, i.e. on Sept. 12, Attorney General Ashcroft put forward a ‘use of force’ proposal that leant the President unprecedented wartime powers.
Within a week the Patriot Act was on the table and this was followed in short order by proposals for military tribunals and (on Oct. 4) bulk surveillance powers for the NSA. On October 7th, the US invaded Afghanistan.
As MacQueen shows, the entire ideological thrust of the US executive during this time was to phrase the attacks as acts of war rather than as terrorist incidents, this so as to replace the ‘legal system with the war system’.
And so, within a matter of mere weeks following 9/11, the nation witnessed a naked seizure of power by the Executive Branch such as had not been experienced during its entire two hundred plus years of existence.
But all was not entirely clear sailing for the Bush neo-cons.
The Patriot Act, for one, was, in late September and early October, meeting tepid, if nevertheless substantive, resistance from the Democrat-controlled Senate. And who by chance were the two people most implicated in this resistance? You guessed it, Senators Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy.
Thus, Daschle as Senate Majority Leader and Leahy as Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee were the two key figures controlling passage of the legislation and who, though largely in obeisance to the Administration’s will, were yet a tad taken aback by the sheer scope and breadth of the powers being ceded by the proposed Act.
Moreover, they protested the unseemly haste with which the Administration was attempting to ram through the legislation. Following reception of the anthrax-laced letters on Oct. 15th, however, their opposition, such as it was, collapsed. The Patriot Act was then quickly signed into effect on Oct. 26.
Though jettisoned of necessity by the revelation of US government affiliation, the overweening importance of the Al Qaeda / Iraq anthrax narrative to the Bush Administration’s whole ‘war on terror’ meme cropped up again, almost two years later, when Colin Powell made his infamous bogus presentation to the United Nations in the lead up to the assault on Iraq.
Holding up a vial of simulated anthrax Powell inveighed not just against Iraq’s ‘weapons of mass destruction’ in general, but also against Iraq’s ‘aerial dispersion’ techniques. That it was all a load of total manure matters less for our concerns here than does the significance that the Bush Administration still placed, and had long placed, on the anthrax narrative – and on the idea of ‘aerial dispersion’.
Both of these, it turns out, have a fascinating connection to the alleged perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks themselves.
It is first pertinent to note, however, that the date of confirmation of the first anthrax attack, i.e. against Robert Stevens, was Oct. 3rd. Prior to this date no one knew – or was supposed to know – that the nation was, once again, ‘under attack’. Strange to tell, then, that the press was, all through September, chock-a-block full of reports and analyses of possible anthrax attacks.
The New York Times alone, between Sept. 12 and Oct. 3, fielded some 76 articles related to biological and chemical weapons attacks, of which 27 of these were specifically to do with anthrax.
Furthermore, on Sept. 22, the FAA, responding to special information (that we will visit in a moment) pointing to the possibility of a mass aerial anthrax assault, grounded all of the nation’s 4000 or so crop-dusting planes. Finally, it eventually came out that the White House staff had been placed on the anthrax antibiotic, Ciprofloaxcin, on the very day of Sept. 11.
Now one might at first suppose that all this seeming foreknowledge was merely prudent calculation on the part of both government and media. In short, perhaps this was not ‘foreknowledge’ but rather ‘foresight’. But this supposition is misleading. There was, as such, no obvious, no compelling reason to think that a follow-up terrorist plot by the likes of ‘Al Qaeda’ would come in the form of a biological attack. After all, purely conventional means (i.e. planes, bombs, etc.) offered the far simpler, the far greater threat.
And here we need take note, not only of the extreme technical difficulties in the weaponizing of anthrax, but of the overwhelmingly disproportionate emphasis on the threat of it throughout the period in question.
Nor can one credit the boys in blue – or the media – with some flashy detective intuition, for the plain fact of the matter is that they got it completely wrong, i.e. the provenance of the anthrax attacks were neither Al Qaeda nor Iraq – but US government-military labs!
Still, the FAA did seem to have been on to something when they grounded the nations’ crop-dusting fleet, and that ‘something’ turned out to be the startling revelation that a number (at least a dozen) of the alleged 9/11 hijackers had, over the previous year, been busying themselves attempting to procure crop-dusting planes. And not just procuring, but of making a big, very public splash of it to boot.
On Sept. 24, 2001, for instance, Ashcroft testified before Congress relating how Mohamed Atta, the supposed ringleader of the hijackers, “had been compiling information about crop-dusting before the 9/11 attacks.”
The following day it was revealed that Atta had, in early May, walked into US Department of Agriculture office in Florida and inquired about getting a loan to buy a crop-dusting plane adding that he was looking to modify the plane to carry a large additional chemical tank. After being turned down for the $650,000 loan he sought, Atta apparently then threatened to cut the throat of the loan officer and simply take the money from the safe. He made further blatant allusions to ‘Al Qaeda’ and ‘Osama Bin Laden’ and so on throughout the interview.
Apart from the fact that it is hard to reconcile this behaviour – and a large corpus of similar material relating to the behaviour of the 9/11 hijackers – with a group of men planning an ultra-secret mission of terror, it is also more than curious that the hijackers of 9/11 would be bothering to associate themselves with (presumably) spreading anthrax when it was clear, even according to the government’s own narrative, that ‘Al Qaeda’ was hardly likely to harbour the technical capability for weaponizing the bacteria.
This is, of course, where the link with Iraq insinuates itself, i.e. a state actor is required to provide the weaponized material.
The equation then becomes simple: The anthrax narrative equals the pretext for the invasion of Iraq. Here we may see Powell’s seemingly anomalous waving of the ‘anthrax card’ before the UN, in a new light, i.e. as part of an erstwhile, deeply entrenched (if, by then, completely discredited) script to attack Iraq.
A question now begs to be asked: Is there yet any connection between the hijackers – and the anthrax letters themselves?
The answer is yes, and the link between them is Robert Stevens, i.e. the very first person to be identified as having contracted anthrax (on Oct. 3; he died Oct. 5). Stevens worked as a photo-editor for a tabloid called The Sun in Baca Raton, Florida.
As it transpires, Gloria Irish, the wife of the head of the Sun, just happened to be the real estate agent not only for Stevens himself, but for two of the hijackers, Marwan al-Shehhi and Hamza al-Ghamdi. Two other hijackers moved in with al-Shehhi and al-Ghamdi and, in all, investigators later connected nine of the nineteen hijackers to the apartments located by Mrs. Irish.
But remember, the anthrax attacks did not actually involve Al Qaeda or the hijackers. They originated as a purely domestic conspiracy. Could then a ‘lone wolf’ agent like Bruce Ivins perhaps have deliberately targeted Stevens knowing his physical proximity to the hijackers?
No. The information linking Stevens and the hijackers came out only after Steven’s death.
That leaves either the pure coincidence theory, i.e. that, out of some 285 million people then living in the United States, a number of the hijackers just happened to be connected with the first anthrax victim, or that the entire anthrax narrative – including the reports of hijackers seeking crop-dusting planes etc – was meant to be linked with 9/11, this as a pretext to implicate Iraq in the 9/11 attacks themselves.
Moreover, as Graham MacQueen aptly notes, it matters not “whether actual hijackers were involved in sending out letters laden with anthrax spores: the question is whether fictions, verbal or enacted, were intentionally created to make this narrative seem credible. The Hijackers did not have anthrax, but the script portrayed them as likely to have it.”
The association between the alleged hijackers and the anthrax letters do not, of course, exhaust the many and profound connections linking the hijackers to a false-flag scenario.
There are, for instance, the known connections of a number of the hijackers to Western intelligence services. Of especial interest is the possible relation between the hijackers and Israeli intelligence agents operating in the US at the time. Still, as discussion of these fascinating threads would lead us far astray, let us conclude this exhibit with a final bizarro-world flourish known as ‘Dark Winter’.
Less than three months before the 9/11 attacks a bioterrorism exercise called ‘Dark Winter’ was held at Andrews Air Force Base. Whilst the holding of such exercises are not in themselves unusual, the peculiar parallels between this simulation and the subsequent anthrax attacks are yet worth noting.
Thus, like the anthrax attacks themselves ‘Dark Winter’ involved: contaminated letters being sent to the mainstream media; letters being sent to high state officials; preparations for the drastic restriction of civil liberties; and finally, an emphasis on a ‘double perpetrator’ narrative, even spelling out “Iraq” as the state sponsor in collusion with “terrorist groups in Afghanistan”. Also intriguing are the personnel who were involved in the exercise. Of these, three stand out: Judith Miller, James Woolsey, and Jerome Hauer.
Miller reprised for the simulation her real-world role as reporter for the New York Times ; a role she leant zealously towards the framing of Iraq in the lead up to invasion. Also worthy of note is the bio-weapons book she co-authored, entitled ‘Germs’, which was released on Oct. 2/01, just in time to clean up on the anthrax scare and soar up the best-seller list.
Woolsey, reprising his former real-world role as CIA director (under Clinton), was also an erstwhile and virulent proponent of invading Iraq. Hauer played the role of FEMA director in Dark Winter.
In real life, Hauer was both a bioterrorism expert and had been, up until early 2000, the director of the Office of Emergency Management (OEM) for New York City. The OEM had been located on the 23rd floor of the World Trade Center #7. Since the Hijackers of 9/11 fame were connected to the anthrax attacks, and since the anthrax attacks manifestly had to be planned and carried out by deep insiders in the US, there is no avoiding the implication that the 9/11 attacks were also carried out by insiders. There is, as it happens, a large body of evidence which supports this thesis.
And that, Ladies and Gentlemen, is where, in the lawyering biz they say with steely finality: ‘I rest my case’.
Nevada state authorities have voiced fears that radioactivity could be released into the environment by powerful tremors, regularly hitting the proposed site of a nuclear waste repository, set to store thousands of tonnes of hazardous reactor fuel, according to the federal government’s plans.
Nevada Governor Steve Sisolak and the state’s six Congressmen and Congresswomen have confronted the country’s Department of Energy over plans to license a nuclear waste repository in Yucca Mountain in the Mojave Desert. The letter addressed to Energy Secretary Rick Perry followed powerful earthquakes in California in early July that hit an area just 100 miles northeast of the proposed waste dump site. It insisted that the seismic hazards in Yucca Mountain showed “one of the many geologic problems with the site as a nuclear waste repository”.
He stated that the quakes have only strengthened his “resolve to fight any continued federal effort to use Nevada as the nation’s nuclear dumping ground”.
“I’m proud to join our bipartisan group of federal representatives in once again sending the loud and clear message that Yucca has never been, and will never be, good for Nevada”, the letter from 16 July published by The Nevada Current reads.
The governor, joined by Senators and Representatives, threatened to challenge the DOE’s license application if its licensing resumes and criticised the federal government for considering proceeding with the development of the repository “at a location that evidences serious safety concerns and mounting uncertainties regarding its geological status”.
The letter cites the conclusions of the expert teams from the University of Nevada, Reno, and UNLV (University of Nevada in Las Vegas). In a separate letter to the governor from Reno’s experts, Nevada State Geologist James Faulds and Nevada State Seismologist Graham Kent noted that the proposed site “lies in a very dynamic, seismically active region, as evidenced by the Ridgecrest earthquakes as well as other historical temblors”. They insisted that more research is needed before the Yucca Mountain site can be determined as suitable for a nuclear waste storage.
The US government picked the area, stretching across the border between Nevada and California to store the by-products of reprocessing of old nuclear fuel into nuclear weapons-grade material in 2002. The state has fought these plans since then, debating whether the federal authorities are minimising seismic hazards there in their application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. In 2008, Nevada challenged the department’s conclusions during a NRC licensing hearing, and the project was put on hold two years later.
However, in March 2019, the current energy secretary decided to revive the licensing proceedings, allocating $116 million for the project.
Despite his “sweetheart” deal and having seemingly evaded justice, billionaire sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was arrested earlier this month on federal charges for sex trafficking minors. Epstein’s arrest has again brought increased media attention to many of his famous friends, the current president among them.
Many questions have since been asked about how much Epstein’s famous friends knew of his activities and exactly what Epstein was up to. The latter arguably received the most attention after it was reported that Alex Acosta — who arranged Epstein’s “sweetheart” deal in 2008 and who recently resigned as Donald Trump’s Labor Secretary following Epstein’s arrest — claimed that the mysterious billionaire had worked for “intelligence.”
Other investigations have made it increasingly clear that Epstein was running a blackmail operation, as he had bugged the venues — whether at his New York mansion or Caribbean island getaway — with microphones and cameras to record the salacious interactions that transpired between his guests and the underage girls that Epstein exploited. Epstein appeared to have stored much of that blackmail in a safe on his private island.
Claims of Epstein’s links and his involvement in a sophisticated, well-funded sexual blackmail operation have, surprisingly, spurred few media outlets to examine the history of intelligence agencies both in the U.S. and abroad conducting similar sexual blackmail operations, many of which also involved underage prostitutes.
In the U.S. alone, the CIA operated numerous sexual blackmail operations throughout the country, employing prostitutes to target foreign diplomats in what the Washington Post once nicknamed the CIA’s “love traps.” If one goes even farther back into the U.S. historical record it becomes apparent that these tactics and their use against powerful political and influential figures significantly predate the CIA and even its precursor, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). In fact, they were pioneered years earlier by none other than the American mafia.
In the course of this investigation, MintPress discovered that a handful of figures who were influential in American organized crime during and after Prohibition were directly engaged in sexual blackmail operations that they used for their own, often dark, purposes.
In Part I of this exclusive investigation, MintPress will examine how a mob-linked businessman with deep ties to notorious gangster Meyer Lansky developed close ties with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) while also running a sexual blackmail operation for decades, which later became a covert part of the anti-communist crusade of the 1950s led by Senator Joseph McCarthy (R-WI), himself known throughout Washington for having a habit of drunkenly groping underage teenaged girls.
Yet, it would be one of McCarthy’s closest aides who would take over the ring in later years, trafficking minors and expanding this sexual blackmail operation at the same time he expanded his own political influence, putting him in close contact with prominent figures including former President Ronald Reagan and a man who would later become president, Donald Trump.
As will be revealed in Part II, after his death, this blackmail operation continued under various successors in different cities and there is strong evidence that Jeffrey Epstein became one of them.
Samuel Bronfman and the Mob
The Prohibition Era in the United States is often used as an example of how banning recreational substances not only increases their popularity but also causes a boom in criminal activity. Indeed, it was Prohibition that greatly increased the strength of the American mafia, as the top crime lords of the day grew rich through the clandestine trade and sale of alcohol in addition to gambling and other activities.
It is through the bootlegging trade of the 1920s and the early 1930s that this story begins, as it brought together key figures whose successors and affiliates would eventually create a series of blackmail and sex trafficking rings that would give rise to the likes of Jeffrey Epstein, the “Lolita Express” and “Orgy Island.”
Samuel Bronfman never planned to become a major producer of liquor but true to his family’s last name, which means “brandy man” in Yiddish, he eventually began distributing alcohol as an extension of his family’s hotel business. During Canada’s Prohibition period, which was briefer than and preceded that of its southern neighbor, the Bronfman family business used loopholes to skirt the law and find technically legal ways to sell alcohol in the hotels and stores the family owned. The family relied on its connections with members of the American mafia to illegally smuggle alcohol from the United States.
Soon after Prohibition ended in Canada, it began in the United States and, by the time the flow of illegal alcohol had turned the other way, the Bronfmans – whose business ventures were then being led by Sam Bronfman and his brothers — were relatively late to an already flourishing bootlegging trade.
“We were late starters in the two most lucrative markets – on the high seas and across the Detroit River. What came out of the border trade in Saskatchewan was insignificant by comparison,” Bronfman once told Canadian journalist Terence Robertson, who was then writing a biography of Bronfman. Nonetheless, “this was when we started to make our real money,” Bronfman recounted. Robertson’s biography on Bronfman was never published, as he died under mysterious circumstances soon after warning his colleagues that he had uncovered unsavory information about the Bronfman family.
Samuel Bronfman pictured in 1937 with his sons Edgar and Charles
Key to Bronfman’s success during American Prohibition were the ties his family had cultivated with organized crime during Canada’s Prohibition, ties that led many prominent members of the mob in the United States to favor Bronfman as a business partner. Bronfman liquor was purchased in massive quantities by many crime lords who still live on in American legend, including Charles “Lucky” Luciano, Moe Dalitz, Abner “Longy” Zwillman and Meyer Lansky.
Most of Bronfman’s mob associates during Prohibition were members of what became known as the National Crime Syndicate, which a 1950s Senate investigative body known as the Kefauver Committee described as a confederation dominated by Italian-American and Jewish-American mobs. During that investigation, some of the biggest names in the American mafia named Bronfman as a central figure in their bootlegging operations. The widow of notorious American mob boss Meyer Lansky even recounted how Bronfman had thrown lavish dinner parties for her husband.
Years later, Samuel Bronfman’s children and grandchildren, their family’s ties to the criminal underworld intact, would later go on to associate closely with Leslie Wexner, allegedly the source of much of Epstein’s mysterious wealth, and other mob-linked “philanthropists,” and some would even manage their own sexual blackmail operations, including the recently busted blackmail-based “sex cult” NXIVM. The later generations of the Bronfman family, particularly Samuel Bronfman’s sons Edgar and Charles, will be discussed in greater detail in Part II of this report.
Lewis Rosenstiel’s dark secret
Crucial to Bronfman’s Prohibition-era bootlegging operations were two middlemen, one of whom was Lewis “Lew” Rosenstiel. Rosenstiel got his start working at his uncle’s distillery in Kentucky before Prohibition. Once the law banning alcohol was in force, Rosenstiel created the Schenley Products Company, which would later become one of the largest liquor companies in North America.
Though he was a high school drop-out and not particularly well-connected socially at the time, Rosenstiel happened to have a “chance” meeting with Winston Churchill in 1922 while on vacation in the French Riviera. According to the New York Times, Churchill “advised him [Rosenstiel] to prepare for the return of liquor sales in the United States.” Rosenstiel somehow managed to secure the funding of the elite and respected Wall Street firm Lehman Brothers to finance his purchase of shuttered distilleries.
Officially, Rosenstiel is said to have built his company and wealth after Prohibition, by following Churchill’s advice to prepare for Repeal. However, he was clearly involved in bootlegging operations and was even indicted for bootlegging in 1929, though he evaded conviction. Like Bronfman, Rosenstiel was close to organized crime, particularly members of the mostly Jewish-American and Italian-American mob alliance known as the National Crime Syndicate.
Subsequent New York state congressional investigations would allege that Rosenstiel “was part of a ‘consortium’ with underworld figures that bought liquor in Canada [from Samuel Bronfman]”, whose other members were “Meyer Lansky, the reputed organized crime leader; Joseph Fusco, an associate of late Chicago gangster Al Capone and Joseph Linsey, a Boston man Mr. Kelly [the congressional investigator testifying] identified as a convicted bootlegger.” Rosenstiel’s relationship with these men, particularly Lansky, would continue long after Prohibition and Samuel Bronfman, for his part, would also maintain his mob ties.
In addition to his friends in the mob, Rosenstiel also cultivated close ties with the FBI, developing a close relationship with longtime FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and making Hoover’s right-hand man and longtime assistant at the FBI, Louis Nichols, the Vice President of his Schenley empire in 1957.
Despite their similar backgrounds as bootlegger barons turned “respectable” businessmen, Bronfman’s and Rosenstiel’s personalities were drastically different and their relationship was complicated, at best. One example of the dissimilarities between North America’s top liquor barons was how they treated their staff. Bronfman was not necessarily known for being a cruel boss, whereas Rosenstiel was known for his erratic and “monstrous” behavior towards employees as well as his unusual practice of bugging his offices in order to hear what employees said about him when he wasn’t present.
Rosenstiel was connected to both the FBI and to organized crime
Such differences between Bronfman and Rosenstiel were also reflected in their personal lives. While Bronfman married only once and was loyal to his wife, Rosenstiel was married five times and was known for his relatively closeted bisexual antics, a part of his life that was well-known to many of his close associates and employees.
Though for years there were only hints to this other side of the controversial businessman, details emerged years later during a divorce proceeding brought by Rosenstiel’s fourth wife, Susan Kaufman, that would back the claims. Kaufman alleged that Rosenstiel hosted extravagant parties that included “boy prostitutes” that her husband had hired “for the enjoyment” of certain guests, which included important government officials and prominent figures in America’s criminal underworld. Kaufman would later make the same claims under oath during the hearing of the New York’s State Joint Legislative Committee on Crime in the early 1970s.
Not only did Rosenstiel organize these parties, but he also made sure that their venues were bugged with microphones that recorded the antics of his high-profile guests. Those audio recordings, Kaufman alleged, were then kept for the purpose of blackmail. Though Kaufman’s claims are shocking, her testimony was deemed credible and held in high regard by the former chief counsel of the Crime Committee, New York Judge Edward McLaughlin, and committee investigator William Gallinaro and aspects of her testimony were later corroborated by two separate witnesses who were unknown to Kaufman.
These blackmail “parties” offer a window into an operation that would later become more sophisticated and grow dramatically in the 1950s under Rosenstiel’s “field commander” (a nickname given by Rosenstiel to an individual to be named shortly in this report). Many of the people connected to Rosenstiel’s “field commander” during the 70s and 80s have again found their names in the press following the recent arrest of Jeffrey Epstein.
The “Untouchable” Mobster
Bronfman and Rosenstiel became legendary in the North American liquor business, in part due to their fight for supremacy in the industry, which the New York Times described as often erupting “into bitter personal and corporate battles.” Despite their dueling in the corporate world, the one thing that united the two businessmen more than anything else was their close connection to American organized crime, particularly renowned mobster, Meyer Lansky.
Lansky is one of the most notorious gangsters in the history of American organized crime and is notable for being the only famous mobster that rose to notoriety in the 1920s that managed to die an old man and never serve a day in jail.
Lansky’s long life and ability to avoid prison time was largely the result of his close relationships to powerful businessmen like Bronfman and Rosenstiel (among many others), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the U.S. intelligence community as well as his role in establishing several blackmail and extortion rings which helped him keep the law at arm’s length. Indeed, when Lansky was finally charged with a crime in the 1970s, it was the Internal Revenue Service that brought the charges, not the FBI, and he was charged with and acquitted of tax evasion.
Lansky was remarkably close to both Bronfman and Rosenstiel. Bronfman regularly threw “lavish dinner parties” in Lansky’s honor both during and after Prohibition. These parties were remembered fondly by Lansky’s wife, and Lansky, in turn, did favors for Bronfman ranging from exclusive protection of his shipments during Prohibition to getting him tickets to coveted “fight of the century” boxing matches.
Rosenstiel also threw regular dinner parties honoring Lansky. Susan Kaufman, Rosenstiel’s ex-wife, claimed to have taken numerous pictures of her ex-husband and Lansky socializing and partying together, photos that were also seen by Mary Nichols of The Philadelphia Inquirer. In addition, Lansky, per Kaufman’s recollection, was one of the individuals that Rosenstiel sought to protect from legal scrutiny as part of his child prostitution and blackmail ring targeting high-ranking officials, and he was overheard saying that if the government “ever brings pressure against Lansky or any of us, we’ll use this [a specific recording taken at one of the “parties”] as blackmail.”
Lansky was known to address Rosenstiel as “Supreme Commander,” a title that would later be used to refer to Rosenstiel by another individual deeply connected to the mob and sexual blackmail operations, previously referred to in this report as Rosenstiel’s “Field Commander.”
Lansky also had close ties to the CIA and U.S. military intelligence. During World War II, Lansky –along with his associate Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel — worked with Naval intelligence in what was codenamed “Operation Underworld,” an operation that the government denied for over 40 years.
Journalist and noted chronicler of CIA covert activities, Douglas Valentine, noted in his book The CIA as Organized Crime: How Illegal Operations Corrupt America and the World that the government’s cooperation with the mafia during World War II led to its expansion after the war and set the stage for its future collaboration with U.S. intelligence.
According to Valentine:
Top government officials were also aware that the government’s Faustian pact with the Mafia during World War II had allowed the hoods to insinuate themselves into mainstream America. In return for services rendered during the war, Mafia bosses were protected from prosecution for dozens of unsolved murders. […]
The Mafia was a huge problem in 1951 [when the Kefauver Committee was convened], equivalent to terrorism today. But it was also a protected branch of the CIA, which was co-opting criminal organizations around the world and using them in its secret war against the Soviets and Red Chinese. The Mafia had collaborated with Uncle Sam and had emerged from World War II energized and empowered. They controlled cities across the country.”
Indeed, the CIA forged ties with Lansky not long after its creation at the behest of CIA counterintelligence chief James J. Angleton. The CIA would later turn to the Lansky-linked mob in the early 1960s as part of its consistently fruitless quest to assassinate the Cuban leader, showing that the CIA maintained its contacts with Lansky-controlled elements of the mafia long after the initial meeting with Lansky took place.
The CIA also had close connections to associates of Lansky, such as Edward Moss, who did public relations work for Lansky and was said to be of “interest” to the CIA by the agency’s then-inspector general J.S. Earman. Harry “Happy” Meltzer was also another Lansky associate that was a CIA asset and the CIA asked Meltzer to join an assassination team in December 1960.
In addition to the CIA, Lansky was also connected to a foreign intelligence agency through Tibor Rosenbaum, an arms procurer and high-ranking official in Israel’s Mossad, whose bank – the International Credit Bank of Geneva – laundered much of Lansky’s ill-gotten gains and recycled it into legitimate American businesses.
Lansky outside the High Court of Israel where he sought permission to emigrate in 1972. Photo | AP
Journalist Ed Reid, author of the Virginia Hill biography The Mistress and the Mafia, wrote that Lansky was attempting to entrap powerful people through sexual blackmail as far back as 1939. Reid contends that Lansky sent Ms. Hill to Mexico, where his West Coast connections had established a drug ring that later involved the OSS, the forerunner to the CIA, to seduce numerous “top politicians, army officers, diplomats and police officials.”
Eventually, Lansky was credited with obtaining compromising photos of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover sometime in the 1940s, which showed “Hoover in some kind of gay situation”, according to a former Lansky associate who also said that Lansky had often claimed, “I fixed that sonofabitch.” The photos showed Hoover engaged in sexual activity with his long-time friend, FBI deputy director Clyde Tolson.
At some point, these photos fell into the hands of CIA counterintelligence chief James J. Angleton, who later showed the photos to several other CIA officials, including John Weitz and Gordon Novel. Angleton was in charge of the CIA’s relationship with the FBI and Israel’s Mossad until he left the agency in 1972 and, as was recently mentioned, he was also in contact with Lansky.
Anthony Summers , former BBC journalist and author of Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover, has argued that it was not Lansky, but William Donovan, the director of the OSS, who obtained the original photos of Hoover and later shared them with Lansky.
Summers also stated that “To [gangster Frank] Costello and Lansky, the ability to corrupt politicians, policemen and judges was fundamental to Mafia operations. The way they found to deal with Hoover, according to several mob sources, involved his homosexuality.” This anecdote shows that Lanksy and the CIA maintained a covert relationship, which included, among other things, the sharing of blackmail material (i.e. “intelligence”).
It is also possible that Hoover was ensnared by the mob during one of Rosenstiel’s blackmail “parties,” at which Hoover sometimes found himself in attendance with prominent figures of the mafia. Hoover was said to have worn women’s clothing at the some of the events and Meyer Lansky’s wife later said that her husband had photos of the former FBI director in drag. Furthermore, Hoover is on record showing an unusual concern in the FBI’s handling of Rosenstiel’s criminal links as early as 1939, the same year that his close associate Lansky was actively orchestrating the sexual blackmail of powerful political figures.
The blackmail acquired on Hoover and the mob’s possession of the evidence has been cited as a major factor in Hoover’s decades-long denial that nationwide networks of organized crime were a serious issue. Hoover asserted that it was a decentralized, local issue and therefore outside of the bureau’s jurisdiction. By the time Hoover finally acknowledged the existence of national organized crime networks in 1963, it was so entrenched in the U.S. establishment that it was untouchable.
Congressional crime consultant Ralph Salerno told Summers in 1993 that Hoover’s willful ignorance of organized crime for most of his career as FBI director “allowed organized crime to grow very strong in economic and political terms, so that it became a much bigger threat to the wellbeing of this country than it would have been if it had been addressed much sooner.”
J. Edgar Hoover: Blackmail Victim?
Most records place the beginning of Hoover’s relationship with Rosenstiel in the 1950s, the same decade when Susan Kaufman reported that Hoover was attending Rosenstiel’s blackmail parties. Rosenstiel’s FBI file, obtained by Anthony Summers, cites the first Rosenstiel meeting as taking place in 1956, though Summers notes that there is evidence that they had met much earlier. After requesting the meeting, Rosenstiel was granted a personal face to face with the director in a matter of hours. The FBI file on Rosenstiel also reveals that the liquor baron heavily lobbied Hoover to aid his business interests.
During that time, the salacious details of Hoover’s sex life were already known to the U.S. intelligence community and to the mob, and Hoover was aware that they knew of his closeted sexuality and penchant for women’s clothing. Yet, Hoover apparently seemed to embrace the very type of sexual blackmail operation that had compromised his private life, given that he was seen at many of Rosenstiel’s “blackmail” parties in the 1950s and 1960s, including at venues such as Rosenstiel’s personal home and later at Manhattan’s Plaza Hotel. Hoover’s penchant for dressing in drag was also described by two witnesses who were not connected to Susan Kaufman.
Hoover with Dorothy Lamour on the set of The Greatest Show on Earth in 1951
Soon after their first “official” meeting, the public relationship between the two men quickly flourished, with Hoover even sending Rosenstiel flowers when he fell ill. Summers reported that, in 1957, Rosenstiel was heard telling Hoover during a meeting, “your wish is my command.” Their relationship remained close and intimate throughout the 1960s and beyond.
Like Rosenstiel, Hoover was well-known for amassing blackmail on friend and foe alike. Hoover’s office contained “secret files” on numerous powerful people in Washington and beyond, files he used to gain favors and protect his status as FBI director for as long as he wished.
Hoover’s own propensity for blackmail suggests that he may have associated with Rosenstiel’s sexual blackmail operation more directly, given he already knew he was compromised and his involvement in the operation would have served as a means of procuring the blackmail he coveted for his own purposes. Indeed, if Hoover was merely being blackmailed and extorted by the Lansky-Rosenstiel connected mob, it is unlikely that he would have been so friendly to Rosenstiel, Lansky and the other mobsters at these gatherings and participated in them with such regularity.
According to journalist and author Burton Hersh, Hoover was also tied to Sherman Kaminsky, who ran a sexual blackmail operation in New York involving young male prostitutes. That operation was busted and investigated in 1966 extortion probe led by Manhattan District Attorney Frank Hogan, though the FBI quickly took over the investigation and photos of Hoover and Kaminsky together soon disappeared from the case file.
Hoover and Rosenstiel’s deep ties would continue to develop over the years, an example of which can be seen in Rosenstiel’s hiring of long-time Hoover aide Louis Nichols as the Vice President of his Schenley liquor empire and Rosenstiel’s donation of over $1 million to the J. Edgar Hoover Foundation, which Nichols also ran at the time.
There is also more than one documented occasion wherein Hoover attempted to use blackmail to protect Rosenstiel and his “field commander,” none other than the infamous Roy Cohn, the other key figure in Rosenstiel’s sexual blackmail operation involving minors.
The Making of a Monster
Decades after his death, Roy Cohn remains a controversial figure in large part because of his close, personal relationship with current U.S. President Donald Trump. Yet reports on Cohn, both in recent and in past years, often miss the mark in their characterization of the man who became closely associated with the Reagan White House, the CIA, the FBI, organized crime and, incidentally, many of the figures who would later surround Jeffrey Epstein.
To understand the true nature of the man, it is essential to examine his rise to power in the early 1950s, when at just 23 years old, he became a key figure in the high-profile trial of Soviet spies Ethel and Julius Rosenberg and later in the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) led by Senator Joseph McCarthy.
Cohn’s dedication to anti-communist activities in the 1950s is allegedly what first endeared him to J. Edgar Hoover who he first met in 1952. During that meeting, as described by Hersh in Bobby and J. Edgar: The Historic Face-Off Between the Kennedys and J. Edgar Hoover That Transformed America, Hoover expressed admiration for Cohn’s aggressive and manipulative tactics and told Cohn to “call me directly” whenever he had information worth sharing. From that point on, Cohn and Hoover “traded favors, effusive compliments, gifts and elaborate private dinners. It quickly became ‘Roy’ and ‘Edgar.’” Hersh also describes Hoover as Cohn’s soon to be “consigliere.”
The date and circumstances around Cohn’s introduction to Rosenstiel is harder to come by. It is possible that the connection was made through Roy Cohn’s father, Albert Cohn, a prominent judge and an influential figure in the New York City Democratic Party apparatus then-run by Edward Flynn. It was later revealed that the Democratic organization dominated by Flynn and based in the Bronx had long-standing connections to organized crime, including associates of Meyer Lansky.
Regardless of how or when it began, the relationship between Cohn and Rosenstiel was close and was often likened to that of a father and son. They were said to frequently salute each other in public and remained close until Rosenstiel was near death, at which point Cohn attempted to trick his then-barely conscious and senile “friend” and client into naming him the executor and trustee of the liquor magnate’s estate, valued at $75 million (more than $334 million in today’s dollars).
LIFE magazine reported in 1969 that Cohn and Rosenstiel had for years referred to one another as “Field Commander” and “Supreme Commander,” respectively. Media references to these nicknames appear in other articles from the period.
Though LIFE and other outlets had interpreted this as merely an anecdote about the nicknames shared in jest between close friends, the fact that notorious crime lord Meyer Lansky also called Rosenstiel “Supreme Commander” and the fact that Cohn and Rosenstiel would later become intimately involved in the same pedophile sex ring, suggests that there may have been more to these “nicknames.” After all, the mob to which Rosenstiel was connected often used military-themed titles like “soldier” and “lieutenant” to differentiate the rank and importance of its members.
Once he had made his connection with Hoover, Cohn’s star began to rise even higher in Washington. Hoover’s recommendation of Cohn would become the deciding factor in his appointment as Sen. McCarthy’s general counsel over Robert Kennedy, a rival and bitter enemy of Cohn’s.
McCarthy covers the mic while having a whispered discussion with Cohn during a 1954 committee hearing. Photo | AP
Though Cohn was ruthless and seemingly untouchable as McCarthy’s counsel and helped the Senator destroy many careers during both the red and lavender scares, his antics in relation to his work on the committee would eventually lead to his downfall after he attempted to blackmail the Army in return for preferential treatment for committee consultant and Cohn’s rumored lover, David Schine.
After he was forced to leave McCarthy’s side due to the scandal, Cohn returned to New York to live with his mother and practice law. A few years later New York Judge David Peck, a long-time associate of former CIA director Alan Dulles, orchestrated Cohn’s hire to the New York law firm, Saxe, Bacon and O’Shea, which would later become Saxe, Bacon and Bolan after Tom Bolan, a friend of Cohn’s, became a partner in the firm. Upon his hire, Cohn brought the firm a slew of mafia-linked clients, including high-ranking members of the Gambino crime family, the Genovese crime family and, of course, Lewis Rosenstiel.
What happened in Suite 233?
The connections Roy Cohn built during the 1950s made him a well-known public figure and translated into great political influence which peaked during the presidency of Ronald Reagan. Yet, as Cohn built his public image, he was also developing a dark private life which would come to be dominated by the same blackmail pedophile racket that appears to have first begun with Lewis Rosenstiel.
One of the “blackmail” parties Susan Kaufman attended with her then-husband Lewis Rosenstiel was hosted by Cohn in 1958 at Manhattan’s Plaza Hotel, suite 233. Kaufman described Cohn’s suite as a “beautiful suite… all done in light blue.” She described being introduced to Hoover, who was in drag, by Cohn, who told her that Hoover’s name was “Mary” in a fit of barely concealed laughter. Kaufman testified that young underage boys were present and Kaufman claimed that Cohn, Hoover and her ex-husband engaged in sexual activity with these minors.
New York attorney John Klotz, tasked with investigating Cohn for a case well after Kaufman’s testimony, also found evidence of the “blue suite” at the Plaza Hotel and its role in a sex extortion ring after combing through local government documents and information gathered by private detectives. Klotz later told journalist and author Burton Hersh what he had learned:
Roy Cohn was providing protection. There were a bunch of pedophiles involved. That’s where Cohn got his power from — blackmail.”
Perhaps the most damning confirmation of Cohn’s activities in Suite 233 comes from statements made by Cohn himself to former NYPD detective and ex-head of the department’s Human-Trafficking and Vice-related Crimes division, James Rothstein. Rothstein later told John Decamp, a former Nebraska state senator who investigated a government-connected child sex ring based in Omaha, among other investigators, that Cohn had admitted to being part of a sexual blackmail operation targeting politicians with child prostitutes during a sit-down interview with the former detective.
Rothstein told John DeCamp the following about Roy Cohn:
Cohn’s job was to run the little boys. Say you had an admiral, a general, a congressman, who did not want to go along with the program. Cohn’s job was to set them up, then they would go along. Cohn told me that himself.”
Rothstein later told Paul David Collins, a former journalist turned researcher, that Cohn had also identified this sexual blackmail operation as being part of the anti-communist crusade of the time.
The fact that Cohn, per Rothstein’s recollection, stated that the child-sex blackmail ring was part of the government-sponsored anticommunist crusade suggests that elements of the government, including Hoover’s FBI, may have been connected at a much broader level than Hoover’s own personal involvement given that the FBI closely coordinated with McCarthy and Cohn for much of the red scare.
It is also worth noting that among Hoover’s many “secret” blackmail files was a sizeable dossier on Senator McCarthy, the contents of which strongly suggested that the Senator himself was interested in underage girls. According to journalist and author David Talbot, Hoover’s file on McCarthy was “filled with disturbing stories about McCarthy’s habit of drunkenly groping young girls’ breasts and buttocks. The stories were so widespread that they became ‘common knowledge’ in the capital, according to one FBI chronicler.”
Talbot, in his book The Devil’s Chessboard, also cites Walter Trohan, Washington Bureau Chief of the Chicago Tribune, as having personally witnessed McCarthy’s habit of molesting young women. “He just couldn’t keep his hands off young girls,” Trohan would later say. “Why the Communist opposition didn’t plant a minor on him and raise the cry of statutory rape, I don’t know.” Perhaps the answer lies in the fact that those “planting” minors on their political foes were McCarthy’s allies and close associates, not his enemies.
The question that necessarily arises from revelations regarding Cohn’s activities in Suite 233 is who else was Cohn “protecting” and servicing with underage prostitutes? One of them could very well have been one of Cohn’s close friends and clients, Cardinal Francis Spellman of the Archdiocese of New York, who was said to have been present at some of these parties Cohn hosted at the Plaza Hotel.
Spellman, one of the most powerful figures in the Catholic Church in North America who was sometimes referred to as “America’s Pope” was accused of not only condoning pedophilia in the Catholic church and ordaining known pedophiles including Cardinal Theodore “Uncle Teddy” McCarrick, but also engaging in it himself to such an extent that many New York area priests widely referred to him as “Mary.” Furthermore, J. Edgar Hoover was said to have a file detailing the Cardinal’s sex life, suggesting Spellman’s involvement in the ring and pedophile protection racket in which Cohn and Hoover were personally involved.
Cardinal Francis ‘Franny’ Spellman. Photo | Museum of the City of New York
People close to Cohn often remarked that he was frequently surrounded by groups of young boys, but seemed to think nothing of it. Similar off-handed comments about Epstein’s penchant for minors were made by those close to him prior to his arrest.
Controversial Republican political operative and “dirty trickster” Roger Stone, who — like Donald Trump — was also a protégé of Cohn, said the following about Cohn’s sex life during an interview with The New Yorker in 2008:
Roy was not gay. He was a man who liked having sex with men. Gays were weak, effeminate. He always seemed to have these young blond boys around. It just wasn’t discussed. He was interested in power and access.” (emphasis added)
Compare this quote from Stone to what Donald Trump, who was also close to Cohn, would later say about Jeffrey Epstein, with whom he was also closely associated:
I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy. He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it — Jeffrey enjoys his social life.” (emphasis added)
Though it is unknown how long the sex ring at the Plaza Hotel continued, and if it continued after Cohn’s death from AIDS in 1986, it is worth noting that Donald Trump purchased the Plaza Hotel in 1988. It would later be reported and confirmed by then-attendees that Trump “used to host parties in suites at the Plaza Hotel when he owned it, where young women and girls were introduced to older, richer men” and “illegal drugs and young women were passed around and used.”
Andy Lucchesi, a male model who had helped organize some of these Plaza Hotel parties for Trump said the following when asked about the age of the women present: “A lot of girls, 14, look 24. That’s as juicy as I can get. I never asked how old they were; I just partook. I did partake in activities that would be controversial, too.”
The Roy Cohn Machine
Roy Cohn was only at the beginning of his career when he waded his way into the underground sexual blackmail ring apparently led by Lewis Rosenstiel. Indeed, when Cohn first met Hoover, he was only 23 years old. Over the next three decades or so, before his death from AIDS-related complications in 1986 at the age of 56, Cohn built a well-oiled machine, largely through his close friendships with some of the country’s most influential figures.
Among Cohn’s friends were top media personalities like Barbara Walters, former CIA directors, Ronald Reagan and wife Nancy, media moguls Rupert Murdoch and Mort Zuckerman, numerous celebrities, prominent lawyers like Alan Dershowitz, top figures in the Catholic Church and leading Jewish organizations like B’nai B’rith and the World Jewish Congress. Many of the same names that surrounded Cohn until death in the late 1980s would later come to surround Jeffrey Epstein, with their names later appearing in Epstein’s now-infamous “little black book”.
Reagan meets with Rupert Murdoch, U.S. Information Agency Director Charles Wick, and Roy Cohn in the Oval Office in 1983. Photo | Reagan presidential library
While President Trump is clearly connected to both Epstein and Cohn, Cohn’s network also extends to former President Bill Clinton, whose friend and longtime political advisor, Richard “Dirty Dick” Morris, was Cohn’s cousin and close associate. Morris was also close to Clinton’s former communications director, George Stephanopoulos, who is also associated with Jeffrey Epstein.
Yet, these were only Cohn’s connections to respectable members of the establishment. He was also known for his deep connections to the mob and gained prominence largely for his ability to connect key figures in the criminal underworld to respected influential figures acceptable to the public sphere. Ultimately, as New York attorney John Klotz stated, Cohn’s most powerful tool was blackmail, which he used against friend and foe, gangster or public official alike. How much of that blackmail he acquired through his sexual blackmail operation will likely never be known.
As Part II of this exclusive investigation will reveal, Cohn and Epstein, and the sexual blackmail operations they ran share many things in common, including not only many of the same famous friends and patrons, but also connections to intelligence agencies and consortiums of mob-linked businessmen, the modern-day equivalents of Samuel Bronfman and Lewis Rosenstiel who have since rebranded as “philanthropists.”
Part II will also reveal that Cohn’s operation was known to have successors, as revealed by a series of scandals in the early 1990s that have since been swept under the rug. The significant amount of overlap between Epstein’s and Cohn’s covert activities in sexual blackmail and their ties to many of the same powerful individuals and circles of influence strongly suggest that Epstein was one of Cohn’s successors.
As will be shown in the final installment of this report, Epstein is only the latest incarnation of a much older, more extensive and sophisticated operation that offers a frightening window into how deeply tied the U.S. government is to the modern-day equivalents of organized crime, making it a racket truly too big to fail.
Whitney Webb is a MintPress News journalist based in Chile. She has contributed to several independent media outlets including Global Research, EcoWatch, the Ron Paul Institute and 21st Century Wire, among others. She has made several radio and television appearances and is the 2019 winner of the Serena Shim Award for Uncompromised Integrity in Journalism.
David K. Levine is an economist at the European University Institute and at Washington University in St. Louis. He is the author with Michele Boldrin of Against Intellectual Monopoly, an empirical study of the economics of intellectual property that concludes that IP is not necessary for innovation and as a practical matter is damaging to growth, prosperity and liberty.
Radiation levels in the Marshall Islands, where the US government tested its nuclear arsenal during the Cold War, are even higher than those found in Fukushima and Chernobyl, according to a newly released peer-reviewed study.
The research, published by scientists at Columbia University in New York, found that tests of soil samples taken from four of the islands contain radiation levels that are “significantly” higher than those found at the sites of the two worst nuclear power plant disasters in history, in Japan and Ukraine. On one of the islands, the concentrations of radioactive particles were found to be higher by a magnitude of 1,000.
One particularly disturbing find was the presence of plutonium-238 on Naen, an island in the Rongelap Atoll, some 100 miles away from the test sites on Bikini, Enjebi and Runit. That isotope is not a product of fallout, but is generally associated with nuclear waste, raising the possibility that Naen was used as a dumping ground.
“We can’t say for sure that is what happened,” said Ivana Nikolic Hughes, a chemistry professor at Columbia and one of the study’s authors. “But people should not be living on Rongelap until this is addressed.”
Another study also tested fruit from several of the islands and found that contamination levels were above safety levels established in countries affected by nuclear fallout – including Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Japan.
The US government performed 67 nuclear tests in the South Pacific islands between 1946 and 1958, during its early arms race with the Soviet Union. The exercises left a trail of contamination throughout 21 islands roughly halfway between Hawaii and Australia. Although representing just 6 percent of the total US nuclear bomb testing activity, the denotations were responsible for over half of the total energy expended.
The most famous of them took place on Bikini Atoll, where Operation Crossroads and Operation Castle were launched in 1946 and 1954 respectively. The former has been described as “the world’s first nuclear disaster” while the latter resulted in an explosion (Castle Bravo) 1,000 times more powerful than the blasts caused by the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II.
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Bikini Atoll’s inhabitants were cleared from the island to make way for the tests and resettled on the barren neighboring atoll of Rongerik. Struggling to survive, the Bikinians have tried to leave the island twice since. The US government had promised them that they would be able to return to Bikini once it was safe to do so.
In 1968, US President Lyndon Johnson allowed several hundred to return. Soon afterward, researchers found that nuclear contamination had entered the food chain. Bikini was abandoned again, and no residents have returned to the island since 1978.
The US Congress has backed an amendment to the 2020 US Defense budget which could force an investigation into allegations that the pentagon had weaponized insects, including ticks, in a secret program.
Rep. Christopher Smith (R-New Jersey), co-chair of the House Lyme Disease Caucus, asked a series of hard-hitting questions about the alleged ‘bioweaponization’ program and its potential side-effects, including the possible spread of a bacterial infection.
“Americans have a right to know whether any of this is true,” Smith said in a news release. “And have these experiments caused Lyme disease and other tick-borne disease to mutate and to spread? Who ordered it? Were any ticks released by design?”
Lawmakers are considering whether or not to include Smith’s amendment in the final version of the budget which will ultimately be presented to President Donald Trump.
The amendment to the House version of the Defense budget for 2020 would require the Department of Defense Office of the Inspector General to explain whether the US military had indeed experimented with weaponizing ticks and other insects between 1950 and 1975.
If found to be true, the inspector general must present Congress with information regarding the full extent and scope of the research.
Rumors have persisted for years of researchers at New York’s Plum Island and Maryland’s Fort Detrick conducting experiments on insects to turn them into biological weapons though no conclusive evidence of such biowarfare programs has been found. Yet.
A friend of mine recently commented that if the current trend to reduce the study of history in schools to easily digestible politically correct soundbites that are being successfully pushed by social justice warriors continues, we will soon be limited to discussing how horrible slavery was, the Stonewall Inn riots and the so-called holocaust. Indeed, it seems that those who complain the loudest are the only ones listened to and no one complains more often or at greater volume than American Jewish groups intent on preserving the benefits that are derived from always being able to claim their perpetual victimhood.
Recent media accounts from Florida detail how low pandering to Israeli and Jewish interests can go. A high school principal identified as Dr. Willian Latson was removed from his position after he revealed to a parent that he considered the holocaust to be a belief and not a demonstrated fact. According to statement made by the school district, the action was taken “out of an abundance of concern” for students and staff after Latson had “made a grave error in judgment.” It added that “In addition to being offensive, the principal’s statement is not supported by either the School District Administration or the School Board.”
The story took place in the School District of Palm Beach County. Latson, now the ex-principal of Spanish River High School in West Palm Beach, presided over his school in a heavily Jewish district that includes Boca Raton. Latson is currently being considered for reassignment by the school district though there are have also been recurring calls from county and state legislators to fire him, which will undoubtedly occur.
The tale is somewhat convoluted and there are some disagreements about what actually took place, but it goes basically like this: roughly one year ago a high school parent, unidentified but presumably Jewish, emailed Latson asking him to confirm that holocaust education was a top priority in Spanish River H.S. He responded by email that the school has a “variety of activities” for holocaust education but “Not everyone believes the Holocaust happened. And you have your thoughts, but we are a public school and not all of our parents have the same beliefs.” He added that an educator has “the role to be politically neutral but support all groups in the school… I can’t say the Holocaust is a factual, historical event because I am not in a position to do so as a school district employee.”
After the emails were revealed to school officials, presumably by the parent, a year-long investigation commenced in which Latson apologized for having caused offense, saying his emails “did not accurately reflect my professional and personal commitment to educating all students about the atrocities of the Holocaust.” The school board initially ruled that he had not done anything meriting disciplinary action or a reprimand, but the story did not end there. Simultaneously, an online petition which eventually included 6,000 signatures was initiated demanding Latson’s replacement and he was subsequently removed from his position. The school board officials justified their change of course by citing his apparent unwillingness to comply with instructions, stating that they previously had ordered him to “expand the Holocaust curriculum at Spanish River and ordered him to spend ‘several days at the United States Holocaust Museum to increase his personal knowledge.’”
Latson responded that his emails and comments were not “accurately relayed” to the media: “I have been reassigned to the district office due to a statement that was not accurately relayed to the newspaper by one of our parents. It is unfortunate that someone can make a false statement and do so anonymously and it holds credibility but that is the world we live in.”
His statement implicitly blaming a school parent generated new problems for Latson with two Palm Beach County state lawmakers and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) calling for his firing because he had not groveled sufficiently. ADL stated that “ADL had hoped his apology was sincere and Latson could learn from his mistakes. Given that he cannot take responsibility for his actions, Latson should resign, and if not we believe the district should end his employment.”
The two state officials, Senator Kevin Rader and Representative Tina Polsky issued a statement saying “By his latest email, Dr. Latson has shown no remorse for his actions and we call on the district to immediately terminate him.”
The publication of Latson’s comments also unleashed heavy criticism from a broad range of other Florida public officials. Governor Ron DeSantis, who calls himself the most pro-Israel governor in American, joined in with “Look, to act like the Holocaust is a matter of debate, I mean, is just absurd.”
Senator Rick Scott called Latson’s comments anti-Semitism and tweeted that the “fact that someone charged with educating children would be unable to speak unequivocally on the realities & horrors of the holocaust is incredibly concerning.” Jewish State Representative Randy Fine, who recently introduced legislation officially banning “anti-Semitism” in Florida public schools, said “the law does not allow a Holocaust-denier to serve as a public school principal.” In a published statement he expanded on that point, writing that “anti-Semitism by public employees in our K-20 public education system must be treated the same as racism.”
The controversy inadvertently revealed the extent to which state law now requires the holocaust to be taught in all Florida public schools. Ironically, Spanish River High has one of the country’s most rigorous holocaust education programs with the subject being taught both in ninth- and 10th-grade English classes as well as a component of both U.S. and world history. There is also an elective course as well regular holocaust assemblies for the entire school featuring keynote speakers. After the Latson controversy started, the school district required all 10th graders to read “Night” by Elie Wiesel. There are now plans to add multiple annual assemblies for students in every grade in the school district this year.
So, if you go to school in Florida your English and history courses will be about the holocaust and you will have to attend holocaust assemblies just in case some alleged atrocity has not been described extensively enough in class. Well, when does it end? When does the almost incessant pandering to Zionists and Jewish groups become too much for the deliberately kept-in-ignorance American public to tolerate?
The so-called holocaust was an historical event that took place in Europe seventy-five years ago. It has an established but very debatable narrative that pretty much has been contrived over the past fifty years for political reasons, see Professor Norman Finkelstein’s brilliant deconstruction of it in his book“The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering.” Those inconsistencies in the holocaust story and its general lack of credibility may have been what Latson was referring to.
The imposed holocaust narrative is full of holes and contradictions in terms of who was killed and how, but it is impossible for genuine academics to critique it if they want to stay employed. Books like Wiesel’s “Night” are largely works of fiction. The narrative exists to perpetuate the belief in Jewish suffering, which brings with it a number of practical advantages. First, it is regularly deployed to excuse the horrific treatment of the Palestinian people by Israel – Jewish suffering means that the creation of a homeland is a debt that all the world owes to the Jews without regard to what has been done to the area’s other inhabitants. Second, guilt over the alleged holocaust means that reparations from countries involved must be continued indefinitely. Currently the Poles are resisting new Jewish claims while the Germans have been paying for years. It is now being asserted that the descendants of so-called holocaust survivors have been genetically psychologically damaged, in the womb as it were, so reparations will presumably continue forever.
Third, holocaust guilt is used in the United States to counter any criticism of what Israel and Jewish groups are up to, as they use their wealth and access to power to corrupt America’s institutions and drive the country to needless wars. One might well ask, when confronted by the taxpayer funded holocaust museums that appear to spring up like mushrooms, why so much interest in a possible crime that has nothing to do with the United States? Where are the museums and courses in Florida schools discussing the mass killing that happened on our own shores, the genocide of the native Americans?
Lest we forget, the holocaust industry operates everywhere in America, particularly in the education system. Eight states already have laws mandating holocaust education (California, New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Florida, Illinois, Indiana and Michigan) and there is considerable pressure to make it universal in the United States. An alarmed World Jewish Congress (WJC) is urging required holocaust education for everyone everywhere “citing statistics from a 2018 poll revealing half of millennials can’t name a single Nazi concentration camp.”
A currently circulating WJC petition in Congress expresses concern over the rise in anti-Semitism, with a warning that “the horrors of the Holocaust are fading from our collective memory…” A bill to brainwash students so they will not forget, ‘The Never Again Education Act’, is currently making the rounds in the House of Representatives. It would make holocaust study mandatory in public schools and set up a Department of Education program that would train teachers to properly instruct students about the story of Jewish suffering.
Yes, the “Never Again Education Act” will soon be sucking up taxpayer money like an enormous vacuum cleaner and creating lots of new jobs for holocaust instructors, who will, of course, all be Jewish. Public schools will be teaching the next generation about what a great place Israel is and how the holocaust justifies vigilant groups like AIPAC and ADL, though it will not mention how they have corrupted the U.S. government and turned America’s foreign policy into an Israeli wag-the-dog. But who’s complaining? It’s good for the Jews, isn’t it?
So Dr. William Latson will be unemployed and possibly unemployable because he spoke the truth, a lesson to all of us that one must never cross the red lines established by the wielders of Jewish power in America. One might reasonably currently expect that serial pedophile Jeffrey Epstein will use the holocaust get-out-of-jail-free card in his defense, claiming that his recollection of the event has so traumatized him that he did bad things that he would not have otherwise considered. Poor Jeffrey. He has suffered so much.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org
The UK’s sprawling nuclear processing Sellafield plant in Cumbria has a powerful claim to fame, dubbed the “most hazardous industrial building in western Europe”.
There have been 25 safety breaches reportedly logged at the huge Sellafield nuclear waste plant in the UK over the past two years, according to The Sun on Sunday.
The cited incidents include radiation ominously leaking from a water pipe, a nuclear waste container for some reason not welded completely shut, spilt uranium powder and a burst pipe found to be leaking acid, to name just a few.
Logs show a bomb squad was summoned in October 2017 after potentially unstable chemicals sparked a scare, while just a month later it was revealed that a worker had been exposed to a low level of radiation.
Earlier this year, when a high-voltage cable was sliced, causing a power loss, the Office for Nuclear Regulation was swift to hit Sellafield with an improvement notice.
The Cumbria compound has a 140 tonne plutonium stockpile and takes in radioactive waste from the UK’s working reactors.
As bosses insist nuclear safety is an “overriding priority”, the 6km long, razor-wired site has, nonetheless, been dubbed the most hazardous place in Europe.
Locals live in constant fear of a serious incident happening there, said Janine Smith, from the campaign group Cumbrians Opposed to a Radioactive Environment.
“One safety breach is one too many. There just shouldn’t be any. Just one error could be catastrophic. The buildings at Sellafield are all so close together that if something was to happen at that site it would be a disaster. It could be worse than Chernobyl”, said Smith.
In response to the nuclear security scares, Sellafield Ltd said it is “never complacent about safety.”
“None of the events recorded in the past two years have been above the lowest level of classification. In line with our commitment to openness and transparency, we investigate all incidents and report details on our website,” said a spokesman.
It is one of just two nuclear energy disasters rated at the maximum severity level of 7, with the other being the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in Japan.
Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei waves to tens of thousands of Basij members from Tehran province at Azadi Stadium, Oct. 4, 2018. (Photo by Khamenei.ir)
Part 1 of this article discussed why the recent US sanctions on Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei provoked laughter in Iran, and derision even from Iranophobic Western mainstream media.
Beyond Ayatollah Khamenei, I can very briefly explain how and why the West can persist with its “Millionaire Mullah” mythology:
There are many economic principles that guide the Iranian economy which have no basis in the West – they are, after all, “revolutionary”. Many are based on the principles of Islamic charity and of Islamic finance; many are also based on the anti-capitalist principles which were obviously drawn from the 20th century socialism. There are almost too many to list, but in Part 2 of this 3-part article I will pick a few key ones which specifically relate to the clergy, and which – when added with Iranophobia – create such widespread and ignorant propaganda.
One of the five pillars of Islam is to give to charity (zakat), but one of the five additional pillars of Shia theology is that businessmen must give 20% of their profits to charity (khums). Thus, it should be clear why some say that Iran has an “alms-based economy”. That’s an exaggeration, because there are state taxes as well, but this money goes directly to religious authorities and has gone there for over 1,000 years.
For example, Ayatollah Khamenei was raised in a family (lower middle class clerics on both sides of his parents) which would have never received this money directly – they would have been the recipients of this charity from the much higher-ranking clergy.
Ayatollah Khamenei, through hard work, sacrifice and other virtues, is now a “Marja’” (top religious authority). He now heads various religious foundations which receive – and redistribute downwards – this zakat and khums money.
Of course, he heads these foundations, but this money cannot (and is not) be used by him to buy a Ferrari for his favourite nephew, for example. The Iranian press would die of happiness at the sales prospects caused by such a sensational, unheard-of event! These are “religious foundations” not “The Clinton Foundation”: These foundations serve the poor – they do not trade high-level political access and favours in return for funding a jet-set lifestyle. Of course, most Western media cynically assume that everyone – even a Marja’ as publicly present as Ayatollah Khamenei – secretly operates on shameless Western capitalist principles.
Let’s clarify two key issues: zakat and khums are individual choices – they are not compelled to go to Ayatollah Khamenei. Iranians can send their charity to a Marja’ in Iraq if they like, and many do. Secondly, drastically changing this historic process of zakat and khums would certainly constitute a major revolution in Iran – however, for many it would constitute a rather “un-Islamic Revolution”, and there is no doubt that the democratic majority wanted an “Islamic Revolution”.
Therefore, Islamic charity is a reality of modern economics and finance in Iran. It is not something which non-Muslims can easily comprehend, perhaps, but the failure to do so will help fuel nonsense like “Millionaire Mullahs”. Unlike neoliberalism in the West, these financial principles have the virtue of being democratically-supported, and I can easily argue that they have the additional virtue of far more efficiently increasing economic equality than neoliberalism does.
Ayatollah Khamenei, as the Supreme Leader, is also often listed as the head of companies simply out of respect by the company’s founders. It is often purely honorary. Ayatollah Khamenei is not, for example, giving ideas on product improvement or production strategies to such companies (now the rare ex-president Rafsanjani – rare because he was an Iranian Islamic Revolutionary cleric from a rich, business-oriented background – might have gotten involved, but Ayatollah Khamenei has evinced no such interest)and he is absolutely not in any control of the companies’ assets. He is there in name only as a sign of respect for him, Islam, Iran, etc. Of course, this is distorted/misunderstood by Western pro-capitalist papers.
The Iranian Islamic Revolution also did something which no doubt enrages Western imperialist-capitalists, and about which they have no desire to spread honest information: the revolution took a huge chunk of the factories and industries owned by the Shah and his tiny coterie and gave them to charity.
These are called the bonyads, and they are an estimated 15-20% of the entire Iranian economy. A staggeringly revolutionary concept, no?
The bonyads are thus different from the Islamic charity I have described, and the Islamic foundations which administer that charity, because the bonyads were expressly charged with getting involved in economic production.
The bonyads are not designed for capitalist profit, but are cooperatives which exist to create low-cost goods and jobs for Iranians. This planned” inefficiency” – in attaining maximum profit, but not in social cohesion and equality – is falsely branded as“corruption” by raging Western capitalists, sadly.
Ayatollah Khamenei heads some bonyads, and this gives him economic influence, of course, because the popular, democratic, openly-debated decision to award a significant chunk of the Iranian economy to the administration of religious authorities was a popular, democratic, openly-debated decision of the Iranian people. Oppose decisions arrived at in this manner, and you oppose democracy for Iran.
Bonyads are not specifically proscribed in the Qur’an, unlike zakat and the ubiquitous concepts of charity and anti-usury (high interest/compound interest), but if one tries to overturn them, well, all I can say is – prepare for a serious fight. If you think the millions of bonyad workers and recipients of bonyad lower-cost goods want all that to be replaced by (mostly-Western) stockholders, good luck with your efforts.
Very obvious, but of course not perfect, parallels can be made elsewhere: the lower class supporters of Chavismo’s collectivos have won an unprecedented number of votes (and street battles) to preserve similar anti-neoliberal economic concepts and structures. Iran is not nearly as susceptible to Washington’s meddling, in large part because such gains have been consolidating democratic support for the government for a generation longer than in Venezuela. Cuba adopted similar (though not Islamic-influenced) concepts a generation earlier than Iran did. China is a generation up on Cuba, and aren’t they doing rather well? China doesn’t have bonyads, of course, but Beijing and Tehran have such a strong and long-term alliance because they obviously have much in common.
The common threat here is modern economic solutions designed to fight imperialism, and also those forms of capitalism which are rapacious and undemocratic.
So, between zakat, khums, the bonyads, generalized Iranophobia and a desire to denigrate any economic thought which is not far-right neoliberal capitalism, this is how we have arrived at Western nonsense like “Millionaire Mullahs”, and the propaganda is unrelenting.
Like, for example, the 2013 Reuters report on Setad, a bonyad headed by the Leader, was absurdly titled, “Khamenei controls massive financial empire built on property seizures”.
Part 3 will examine this report, which is still being cited today despite its obvious bias, misrepresentations and clear goal of spreading Iranophobic and Islamophobic propaganda.
Ramin Mazaheri is the chief correspondent in Paris for PressTV and has lived in France since 2009. He has been a daily newspaper reporter in the US, and has reported from Iran, Cuba, Egypt, Tunisia, South Korea and elsewhere. He is the author of “I’ll Ruin Everything You Are: Ending Western Propaganda on Red China”.
On August 1, 1914, as dreadful war was breaking out in Europe, the German ambassador Prince Lichnowsky paid a visit to Britain’s Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey. Dr Rudolf Steiner commented as follows upon this meeting – in a 1916 lecture which he gave in Switzerland:
‘A single sentence and the war in the West would not have taken place.’
At that meeting, he averred that, with just one sentence, ‘this war could have been averted.’[1]
To examine that outrageous-sounding claim, we delve into what is a bit of a mystery, that of the first conflict between Germany and Britain for a thousand years: two nations bound by the same royal family, with every statesman in Europe loudly proclaiming that peace is desired, that war must at all costs be avoided; and then the bloodbath takes place, terminating the great hopes for European civilization and extinguishing its bright optimism, as what were set up as defensive alliances mysteriously flipped over and became offensive war-plans.
The ghastly ‘Schlieffen plan’ became activated, as the master-plan of Germany’s self-defense, which as it were contained the need for the dreadful speed with which catastrophe was precipitated. France and Russia had formed a mutual defense agreement (everyone claimed their military alliances were defensive). While Bismarck the wise statesman who founded Germany had lived, this was avoided, such an alliance being his darkest nightmare. But Kaiser Wilhelm did not manage to avoid this, and so Germany’s neighbors to East and West formed a mutual military alliance. The Schlieffen plan was based on the premise that Germany could not fight a war on two fronts but might be able to beat France quickly; so in the event of war looming against Russia in the East, its troops had to move westwards, crashing though Belgium as a route into France. It all had to happen quickly because Germany’s army was smaller than that of Russia.
The timing over those crucial days shows its awful speed: Russia mobilized its army on July 29th, in response to hostilities breaking out between Austro-Hungary and Serbia; two desperate cables were sent by the Kaiser to the Tsar on the 29th and 31st, imploring him not to proceed with full mobilisation of his army because that meant war; the French government ‘irreversibly decided’ to support Russia in the war on the evening of 31st, cabling this decision to the Russian foreign minister at 1 am on August 1st [2]; then, on the afternoon of that same day Germany proceeded to mobilise and declared war on Russia, and two days later went into Belgium. Britain’s House of Commons voted unanimously for war on 5th August, viewing Germany as the belligerent warmonger.
Kaiser Wilhelm’s Nemesis
The Kaiser had enjoyed the reputation of a peacemaker:
Now … he is acclaimed everywhere as the greatest factor for peace that our time can show. It was he, we hear, who again and again threw the weight of his dominating personality, backed by the greatest military organisation in the world – an organisation built up by himself – into the balance for peace wherever war clouds gathered over Europe. ‘(‘William II, King of Prussia and German Emperor, Kaiser 25 years a ruler, hailed as chief peacemaker,’ New York Times, 8 June, 1913. [3])
A former US President, William Howard Taft, said of him: ‘The truth of history requires the verdict that, considering the critically important part which has been his among the nations, he has been, for the last quarter of a century, the single greatest force in the practical maintenance of peace in the world.’ ([4],[5]). That is some tribute! In 1960 a BBC centenary tribute to the Kaiser was permitted to say: ‘Emphasis was placed on his love of England and his deep attachment to Queen Victoria,’ his grandmother.
A lover of peace …. skilled diplomat … deep attachment to Queen Victoria .. so remind me what the Great War was for, that took nine million lives?
Might the war have been averted if the Kaiser had, perhaps, focussed a bit more on the art of war – how to refrain from marching into Belgium? There was no ‘plan B’! In later days the Kaiser used to say, he had been swept away by the military timetable. Who wanted the war which locked Europe into such dreadful conflict? Did a mere sequence of interlocking treaties bring it on?
On the night of 30-31st of July, feeling entrapped by a seemingly inevitable march of events, Kaiser Wilhelm mused to himself doomily:
Frivolity and weakness are going to plunge the world into the most frightful war of which the ultimate object is the overthrow of Germany. For I no longer have any doubt that England, Russia and France have agreed among themselves – knowing that our treaty obligations compel us to support Austria – to use the Austro-Serb conflict as a pretext for waging a war of annihilation against us… In this way the stupidity and clumsiness of our ally [Austria] is turned into a noose. So the celebrated encirclement of Germany has finally become an accepted fact… The net has suddenly been closed over our heads, and the purely anti-German policy which England has been scornfully pursuing all over the world has won the most spectacular victory which we have proved ourselves powerless to prevent while they, having got us despite our struggles all alone into the net through our loyalty to Austria, proceed to throttle our political and economic existence. A magnificent achievement, which even those for whom it means disaster are bound to admire.’ [6]
‘Those dreadful fields of senseless carnage’
Did hundreds of thousands of young men, the flower of England, want to go out to muddy fields, to fight and die? Shells, bayonets, gas, machine guns – what was the point? In no way were they defending their country or its Empire – for no-one was threatening it. No European nation benefitted: it spelt ruin for all of them. Do we need to fear the imbecility of the poet’s words:
If I should die, think only this of me
There is some corner of a foreign field
That is forever England’? (Rupert Brooke)
A leading British pacifist, E.D. Morel, was widely vilified for the views expressed in his book Truth and the War (1916), and had his health wrecked (as Bertrand Russell described) by being put into Pentonville jail. In haunting words of insight, his book described how: ‘Those dreadful fields of senseless carnage’ had been brought about by ‘futile and wicked Statecraft’ – by ‘an autocratic and secret foreign policy’ carried out by those ‘who by secret plots and counter-plots … hound the peoples to mutual destruction.’ Of the war’s outbreak, Morel wrote: ‘It came therefore to this. While negative assurances had been given to the House of Commons, positive acts diametrically opposed to these assurances had been concerted by the War Office and the Admiralty with the authority of the Foreign Office. All the obligations of an alliance had been incurred, but incurred by the most dangerous and subtle methods; incurred in such a way as to leave the Cabinet free to deny the existence of any formal parchment recording them, and free to represent its policy at home and abroad as one of contractual detachment from the rival Continental groups.’ [7] A total analogy exists here with Blair taking Britain into the Iraq war, making a deal with Bush while continually denying back home that any such deal existed. Two Cabinet members resigned in August 1914, once the central importance of this concealed contract became evident: Viscount Morley and John Burns.
A more orthodox, deterministic view was given by Winston Churchill: ‘the invasion of Belgium brought the British Empire united to the field. Nothing in human power could break the fatal chain, once it had begun to unroll. A situation had been created where hundreds of officials had only to do their prescribed duty to their respective countries to wreck the world. They did their duty’. [8] That necessary chain leading to ruin began only after the crucial discussion alluded to by Dr Steiner, we observe.
Considering that Germany went into Belgium on the 3rd of August, whereas Churchill and Mountbatten, the First and Second Sea Lords, had ordered the mobilising of the British fleet over July 26 -30th, so that by days before the 3rd much of the world’s biggest navy was up north of Scotland all ready to pounce on Germany – his words may appear as some kind of extreme limit of hypocrisy. The mobilising of the British fleet was a massive event which greatly pre-empted political discussion, a week before Britain declared war. [9], [10]
A Secret Alliance
Britain was obliged by no necessity to enter a European war, having no alliance with France that the people of Britain or its parliament knew about, and having a long indeed normal policy of avoiding embroilment in European conflicts. However, ministers especially Grey the Foreign Minister had covertly made a deal with France. To quote from Bertrand Russell’s autobiography: ‘I had noticed during previous years how carefully Sir Edward Grey lied in order to prevent the public from knowing the methods by which he was committing us to the support of France in the event of war.’ [11] Would Britain be dragged into a European war on the coat-tails of France – for centuries, its traditional enemy – given that France had signed a treaty obligation to enter war in consequence of a German-Russian conflict? France was keen to avenge past grievances over the French-German border, aware of the superiority of troops which it and Russia combined had against Germany – and convinced that it could drag Britain into the fray.
On 24 March 1913, the Prime Minister had been asked about the circumstances under which British troops might land on the Continent. He replied, ‘As has been repeatedly stated, this country is not under any obligation not public and known to parliament which compels it to take part in any war’ – a double negative which concealed a hidden but then-existing accord!
Last Hope of Peace
We turn now to the question put, on August 1st by Germany’s ambassador to Britain’s Foreign Secretary, normally omitted from history books on the subject. If war and peace did indeed hinge upon it – as Dr Steiner averred – it may be worth quoting a few judgements about it. Here is Grey’s own letter, written that day:
Grey’s letter to the British ambassador in Berlin: 1 August, concerning his meeting with Prince Lichnowsky:
‘He asked me whether, if Germany gave a promise not to violate Belgian neutrality we would engage to remain neutral. I replied that I could not say that: our hands were still free, and we were considering what our attitude should be….I did not think that we could give a promise on that condition alone. The ambassador pressed me as to whether I could formulate conditions on which we would remain neutral. He even suggested that the integrity of France and her colonies might be guaranteed. I said that I felt obliged to refuse definitely any promise to remain neutral on similar terms, and I could only say that we must keep our hands free.’ [12],[13]
Swiss author George Brandes summarised this meeting:
‘Now Prince Lichnowsky, the German Ambassador in London, asked whether England would agree to remain neutral if Germany refrained from violating Belgium’s neutrality. Sir Edward Grey refused. Britain wanted to retain ‘a free hand’ (‘I did not think we could give a promise of neutrality on that condition alone’). Would he agree if Germany were to guarantee the integrity of both France and her colonies? No.’ [14]
The US historian Harry Elmer Barnes: ‘The only way whereby Grey could have prevented war, if at all, in 1914 would have been by declaring that England would remain neutral if Germany did not invade Belgium…,’ but Grey ‘refused to do’ this: ‘After Grey had refused to promise the German Ambassador that England would remain neutral in the event of Germany’s agreeing not to invade Belgium, the German ambassador asked Grey to formulate the conditions according to which England would remain neutral, but Grey refused point-blank to do so, though he afterwards falsely informed the Commons that he had stated these conditions’. [15] Barnes commended the editorial of the Manchester Guardian July 30th – opposing the pro-war jingoism of The Times – which declared: ‘not only are we neutral now, but we are and ought to remain neutral throughout the whole course of the war.’
The British judge and lawyer Robert Reid was the Earl of Loreburn as well as the Lord Chancellor of England from 1905 to 1912, so he should know what was going on. His book ‘How the War Came’ described how it was the secret deal with France which wrecked everything:
The final mistake was that when, on the actual crisis arising, a decision one way or the other might and, so far as can be judged, would have averted the Continental war altogether … The mischief is that Sir Edward Grey slipped into a new policy, but without either Army, or treaty, or warrant of Parliamentary approval … This country has a right to know its own obligations and prepare to meet them and to decide its own destinies. When the most momentous decision of our whole history had to be taken we were not free to decide. We entered a war to which we had been committed beforehand in the dark, and Parliament found itself at two hours’ notice unable, had it desired, to extricate us from this fearful predicament… If the government thought that either our honour or our safety did require us to intervene on behalf of France, then they ought to have said so unequivocally before the angry Powers on the Continent committed themselves to irrevocable steps in the belief that we should remain neutral. Instead of saying either, they kept on saying in the despatches that their hands were perfectly free, and told the Commons the same thing. The documents show conclusively that till after Germany declared war our Ministers had not made up their minds on either of the two questions, whether or not they would fight for France, and whether or not they would fight for Belgium. Of course Belgium was merely a corridor into France, and unless France was attacked Belgium was in no danger. [16]
After it was over, US President Woodrow Wilson in March of 1919 summed up its avoidability: ‘We know for a certainty that if Germany had thought for a moment that Great Britain would go in with France and Russia, she would never have undertaken the enterprise.’ (p.18, Lorenburn). That was the sense in which Britain precipitated the dreadful conflict. Clear words of truth could have avoided it – had that been desired.
We remind ourselves of Dr Steiner’s comparison: that the British Empire then covered one-quarter of the Earth’s land-surface; Russia one-seventh; France and her colonies one-thirteenth; and Germany, one thirty-third. (Karma, p.11)
Upon receiving a telegram from Prince Lichnowsky earlier in the day of August 1, the Kaiser ordered a bottle of champagne to celebrate, as if there might be hope of reaching a deal with Britain. Even though he was just that afternoon signing the order for mobilisation of the German army, he could in some degree have recalled it … but, it was a false hope, and a telegram from King Edward later that day explained to him that there had been a ‘misunderstanding’ between Britain’s Foreign Secretary and the German ambassador. [17]
Gray’s Duplicity
On the 26th or 27th, Grey told the Cabinet that he would have to resign, if it did not support his initiative to take Britain into war in support of ‘our ally,’ France. He would not be able to go along with British neutrality. Over these days up until the 1st, or 2nd, when the war was just starting, all the Cabinet of Britain’s Liberal Party government except for Churchill and Grey favoured British neutrality. It was those two who dragged Britain into war. Grey did not yet know whether the Belgian government would say ‘no’ to the German request to be allowed to pass through. To get his war, Grey had to swing it on the ‘poor little Belgium’ angle. Once Belgium had said ‘No’ and yet Germany still went in – as its only way to enter France – a cabinet majority would then became assured.
On August 2nd, Grey gave to the French ambassador what amounted to British assurance of war-support. On August 3rd, Grey gave the Commons an impassioned plea in favour of British intervention on behalf of France – making no mention of the German peace-offer. The MP Phillip Morrell spoke afterwards in the sole anti-war speech that day, and pointed out that a guarantee by Germany not to invade France had been offered, on condition of British neutrality, and spurned. As to why Grey did not mention the German offer, the view was later contrived that the German ambassador had merely been speaking in a private capacity! [18]
The supposed neutrality of Belgium was a sham, as ministers of that country had secretly drawn up detailed anti-German war-plans with Britain and France. No wonder the Kaiser had a sense of being ‘encircled’ by enemies, because ‘“neutral” Belgium had in reality become an active member of the coalition concluded against Germany’ [19] – i.e. it had plotted against a friendly nation. Quoting the commendably insightful George Bernard Shaw, ‘The violation of Belgian neutrality by the Germans was the mainstay of our righteousness; and we played it off on America for much more than it was worth. I guessed that when the German account of our dealings with Belgium reached the United states, backed with an array of facsimiles of secret diplomatic documents discovered by them in Brussels, it would be found that our own treatment of Belgium was as little compatible with neutrality as the German invasion.’ [20]
Steiner’s View
Rudolf Steiner’s judgement in his December 1916 lecture (during which Britain was declining a peace offer from Germany) was:
‘Let me merely remark, that certain things happened from which the only sensible conclusion to be drawn later turned out to be the correct one, namely that behind those who were in a way the puppets there stood in England a powerful and influential group of people who pushed matters doggedly towards a war with Germany and through whom the way was paved for the world war that had always been prophesied. For of course the way can be paved for what it is intended should happen. ..it is impossible to avoid realising how powerful was the group who like an outpost of mighty impulses, stood behind the puppets in the foreground. These latter are of course, perfectly honest people, yet they are puppets, and now they will vanish into obscurity …. [21]
Grey and Churchill were the two consistently pro-war cabinet ministers. The Conservative Party was solidly pro-war, and Churchill was ready to offer them a deal if perchance too many of the Liberal-party cabinet were going to resign rather than go to war. Steiner here remarked:
‘Anyone [in England] voicing the real reasons [for war] would have been swept away by public opinion. Something quite different was needed – a reason which the English people could accept, and that was the violation of Belgian neutrality. But this first had to be brought about. It is really true that Sir Edward Grey could have prevented it with a single sentence. History will one day show that the neutrality of Belgium would never have been violated if Sir Edward Grey had made the declaration which it would have been quite easy for him to make, if he had been in a position to follow his own inclination. But since he was unable to follow his own inclination but had to obey an impulse which came from another side, he had to make the declaration which made it necessary for the neutrality of Belgium to be violated. Georg Brandes pointed to this. By this act England was presented with a plausible reason. That had been the whole point of the exercise: to present England with a plausible reason! To the people who mattered, nothing would have been more uncomfortable than the non-violation of Belgian territory!’ [22]
Could powers behind Grey have wanted war, and steered events towards that end? Steiner argued against the widespread view of an inevitable slide into war: ‘You have no idea how excessively irresponsible it is to seek a simple continuity in these events, thus believing that without more ado the Great World War came about, or had to come about, as a result of Austria’s ultimatum to Serbia. (p.82)
We are here reminded of Morel’s account, of how secret plotting had paralysed debate:
‘The nemesis of their own secret acts gripped our ministers by the throat. It paralysed their sincere and desperate efforts to maintain peace. It cast dissension amongst them… They could not afford to be honest neither to the British people nor to the world. They could not hold in check the elements making for war in Germany by a timely declaration of solidarity with France and Russia, although morally committed to France.. In vain the Russians and the French implored them to make a pronouncement of British policy while there was still time.’ [23]
On August 4th, Britain declared war, and that same night cut through the transatlantic undersea telephone cables coming out of Germany, [24] enabling British atrocity propaganda to work largely unchallenged. Quoting a recent work on the subject, ‘The hallmark of Britain’s successful propaganda efforts were alleged German atrocities of gigantic proportions that strongly influenced naive Americans yearning for a chivalrous war from afar’. [25] Such consistent, intentional mendacity was fairly innovative, which was why it worked so well: ‘In that war, hatred propaganda was for the first time given something like organised attention’. [26] Thus, a nemesis of what Morel described as ‘futile and wicked statecraft’ here appeared, in that British soldiers were motivated to fight, by a nonstop torrent of lies – from their own government. [27]
In conclusion, can we agree with Dr Steiner? Quoting Barnes, ‘It is thus apparent that the responsibility for the fatal Russian mobilisation which produced the war must be shared jointly, and probably about equally, by France and Russia.’ This was because of the French cabinet’s general encouragement, then its final decision to embark upon war on the 29th July, of which Barnes remarked: ‘The secret conference of Poincaré, Viviani and Messimy, in consultation with Izvolski, on the night of 29th of July, marks the moment when the horrors of war were specifically unchained in Europe.’ (pp.328, 242) This had to be the time, it was the only opportunity, because these war-plotters would have known of the mobilisation of the world’s biggest navy, that of Great Britain, over these fateful days, all ready for war. The Russian generals browbeat the Tzar into signing the documents giving his assent – for a war he didn’t want [28]. On the 31st one more desperate telegram arrived from the Kaiser about how ‘The peace of Europe may still be maintained’ if only Russia would stop its mobilisation, but the Tzar no longer had that ability. Germany placed itself at a military disadvantage by refraining from declaring war or taking steps to mobilise until the afternoon of August 1st, much later than any of the other great powers involved. Had a deal been reached in London on that afternoon, a conflict in Eastern Europe would presumably still have taken place, but it would have been limited and diplomats could have dealt with it: yes, a world war could have been averted.
Essential texts:
Alexander Fuehr, The Neutrality of Belgium, NY 1915
E.D. Morel, Truth and the War, 1916
The Earl Lorenburn, How the War Came, 1919
Harry Elmer Barnes, The Genesis of the World War an Introduction to the Problem of War Guilt, 1926
British documents on the origins of the war 1898-1914, Vol XI, HMSO 1926.
Memorandum on Resignation by John Viscount, Morley, 1928, 39pp.
Alfred von Wegerer, A Refutation of the Versailles War Guilt Thesis, 1930
Winston Churchill, The Great War Vol. 1, 1933
Captain Russell Grenfell, Unconditional Hatred, German War Guilt and the Future of Europe (mainly about WW2) NY, 1954
M. Balfour, The Kaiser and His Times, 1964
Stewart Halsey Ross, Propaganda for War, How the United States Was Conditioned to Fight the Great War of 1914-18, 2009.
Notes:
[1] Rudolf Steiner, The Karma of Untruthfulness Vol. 1 (13 lectures at Dornach, Switzerland, 4-31st December 1916), 1988, p.19. NB it’s available online as a Google-book, with the same pagination as here used. The new 2005 edition (subtitled Secret Societies, the Media, and Preparations for the Great War) has a fine Introduction by Terry Boardman.
[2] Barnes 1926, pp.284-8.
[3] Balfour, 1964, p.351.
[4] Ross, 2009, p.9. For a letter by US diplomat and presidential advisor Colonel E.House, concerning the pacific philosophy of the Kaiser, after a visit he paid in July 1914, see Barnes, p.523. For the ex-Kaiser’s view on ‘proof of Germany’s peaceful intentions’ i.e. how Germany had not prepared for war or expected it, see: My Memoirs, 1878-1918 by Ex-Kaiser William II, 1992, Ch.10 ‘The Outbreak of War.’
[5] Morel, p.122: Germany had ‘for forty and four years kept the peace when war broke out in August … No other Great Power can boast such a record.’ (Morel’s book may be viewed online)
[6] Balfour, 1964, p.354
[7] Morel, 1916, pp.6, 8, 13 and 42.
[8] Churchill, 1933, Vol. 1, p.107.
[9] Churchill, ibid., has the British fleet secretly mobilised over the night of 29-30th July. Hugh Martin, in Battle, the Life-story of the Rt Hon. Winston Churchill, 1937: ‘Churchill, upon his own responsibility and against the express decision of the Cabinet, ordered the mobilisation of the Naval Reserve’ On the 27th, ‘the fleet [was] sent North to prevent the possibility of it being bottled up,’ p.105. A ‘Test Mobilisation’ of the entire Royal Navy paraded before the King on July 26th, at Spitalhead, after which the Navy was held full battle-readiness (The Life and Times of Lord Mountbatten, John Terrence 1968, p11-14); then, ‘On July 29th Churchill secretly ordered the core of the fleet to move north to its protected wartime base .. riding at top speed and with its lights out, it tore through the night up the North sea.’ (To End All Wars, How WW1 Divided Britain, 2011, Adam Hochschild, p.85).
[10] The first indication for the Kaiser of war-imminence, was when he learned that the English fleet ‘had not dispersed after the review at Spitalhead but had remained concentrated.’ (My Memoirs, p.241).
[11] Bertrand Russell, Autobiography, Vol. 1, 1967, p.239. H.G. Wells judged that: ‘I think he (Gray) wanted the war and I think he wanted it to come when it did … The charge is, that he did not definitely warn Germany, that we should certainly come into the war, that he was sufficiently ambiguous to let her take a risk and attack, and that he did this deliberately. I think that this charge is sound.’ (Experiment in an Autobiography, II, 1934, p.770)
[12] Edward Grey letter Aug 1st: Britain’s ‘Blue Book,’ HMSO, 1926, p.261. See also Morley 1928, p.38-9.
[13] The noncommittal attitude expressed by Grey on August 1st to the German ambassador had been endorsed by the Cabinet and Prime Minister: Roy Jenkins, Asquith 1964, p.363.
[14] Steiner, Karma, p.18: Georg Brandes, Farbenblinde Neutralität, Zurich 1916 (Brandes was Danish). Steiner quotes extensively from it, Karma, pp. 14-23.
[15] Barnes, 1926, p.497.
[16] Loreburn, 1919, pp.15-19.
[17] Annika Mombauer, Helmuth von Moltke and the Origins of the First World War 2001 CUP p.219-223: Lichinowsky’s telegram misunderstood (NB I’m not endorsing her thesis of German war-guilt).
[18] Grey told cabinet about talk with Lichinowsky on 3rd, with a claim that the latter’s views were ‘merely personal and unauthorised.’ (Morley, pp.13-14) If so, why was the conversation recorded and published in Britain’s ‘White Book’ of key wartime documents? How could a German Ambassador make a merely personal proposal? Other such ‘White Book’ documents were recorded as personal, but not this one. As Morel pointed out (pp.26-7), the UK’s ‘Blue Book’ published its account of this interview with no hint that the Ambassador was merely acting privately – and Lichinowsky’s telegram to his Government dated 8.30 pm, August 1, indicated that he had been acting on ‘instructions.’ His offer was generally concordant with telegrams then being sent by the Kaiser and German Minister of Foreign Affairs. (Morel, p.26)
[19] Fuehr, 1915, pp.90, 117. (For comments on Fuehr see Ross 2009, pp.116-7: Fuehr’s account was ‘certainly biased’ but ‘well-documented.’) For the incriminating documents, see Ross p.300, note 55. The Kaiser recalled how piles of British army-coats and maps of Belgium were found concealed around the Belgian border, in anticipation of the war: My Memoirs, p.251-2.
[20] Ross, 2009, p.42.
[21] Steiner, Karma, pp.84-5.
[22] Ibid, p.86.
[23] Morel 1916, p.297.
[24] Ross, 2009, pp.15, 27.
[25] Ibid, p.3.
[26] Grenfell, 1954, p.125.
[27] Likewise from the French government: Barnes, …For a general comment see Georges Thiel, Heresy: ‘One grows dizzy at the listing of all those lies [against Germany] which, afterwards, were demolished one after the other.’ Historical Review Press, 2006, p.31.
[28] For the Ex-Kaiser’s account of how, as he later learned, his telegrams considerably affected Tzar Nicholas in those crucial days, see: My Memoirs, Ch.10.
Former FBI Director Robert Mueller and a number of top-level Department of Justice officials may find themselves “caught up” in the Jeffrey Epstein sex scandal, say Wall Street analyst Charles Ortel and the US lawyer known by alias Techno Fog on Twitter.
Billionaire paedophile Jeffrey Epstein was arrested on 6 July and charged with sex trafficking of minors by federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York (SDNY). According to the indictment, the financier, who pleaded not guilty, “sexually exploited and abused dozens of minor girls” at his mansions in Manhattan and Palm Beach from 2002 to 2005.
The Epstein sex scandal first caught the headlines in the 2000s. In May 2006, Palm Beach police filed a probable cause affidavit stating that Epstein should be charged with four counts of unlawful sexual activity with a minor and a lewd and lascivious molestation count.
However, the Palm Beach County state attorney referred the case to a grand jury, which indicted the billionaire on the lesser count in July 2006, as The New York Timesrevealed at the time, citing the Palm Beach police concerns over a potential “preferential treatment”. The police sent the case to the FBI, which launched an investigation into Epstein in July 2006.
Meanwhile, in 2007-2008 Epstein lawyers managed to reach an agreement with federal prosecutors led by then-US attorney for the Southern District of Florida Alex Acosta and Department of Justice (DOJ) officials. According to the non-prosecution agreement, Epstein pleaded guilty for state charges of solicitation of prostitution and served just a 13-month sentence instead of possible 10 years in prison. He was also registered as a sex offender. It is still unclear how the FBI inquiry ended and whether the bureau also reached a deal with Epstein.
Epstein Sex Scandal & FBI Directors Robert Mueller and James Comey
Not only the sex trafficking scandal but also the controversial plea deal concluded by the DOJ with Jeffrey Epstein in 2008 is likely to become the focus of federal prosecutors from the Southern District of New York, according to Wall Street and investigative journalist Charles Ortel. The analyst suggested that Robert Mueller and James Comey apparently were well-informed about the first Epstein scandal.
“The indictment revealed on 8 July covers alleged crimes that began in 2002, when Robert Mueller headed the FBI, and while James Comey was US Attorney in the Southern District of NY [in 2002-2003 and then Deputy Attorney General from 2003 to 2005 – Sputnik], where today’s charges were unsealed”, Ortel pointed out. “Mueller was still head of the FBI when Epstein’s attorneys appear to have brokered a highly favourable resolution that allowed Epstein to plead guilty to state crimes and avoid prosecution for federal crimes. One wonders what records may exist concerning Mueller’s and/or the FBI’s analysis of this resolution?”
Citing reports that the Epstein case is being handled by the SDNY Public Corruption Unit (PCU), Ortel presumed that “authorities aim to convict not only Epstein, but many other powerful people and they are taking extra care and time to build their cases and develop their lines of attack so as to cast the widest net possible”.
“One wonders how much damaging information Epstein had already shared with the FBI by 2008, and then, whether the FBI swiftly acted upon this damaging information, or chose to sit on it, or use it as leverage”, the investigative journalist remarked.
“Numerous decisions made at the FBI while Robert Mueller was director, and afterwards under James Comey, need to reassessed including the Uranium One case, the Anna Chapman case, the Epstein case and the failure to prosecute the Clinton ‘charity’ network when the FBI might easily have added the Justice Department in mounting unassailable arguments for convictions of many back as early as 2001”, Ortel, who has been looking into the Clinton Foundation’s alleged fraud for the past three years, pointed out.
‘DOJ Had More Than Enough Evidence to Prosecute Epstein for Sex Trafficking in 2008’
While the MSM is blaming the controversial plea deal largely on Alex Acosta, the US administration labour secretary who announced his resignation on 12 July, Alan Dershowitz, Jeffrey Epstein’s lawyer admitted in his January tweet that “the plea bargain went through numerous levels of approval at main justice”.
Techno Fog, a pseudonym for a US lawyer, who has long been looking into the Epstein case, presumes that the whole Department of Justice (DOJ) was involved in the controversial plea deal up to its eyeballs.
”Consider for a moment that this is the DOJ covering its ass for the prior sweetheart deal”, he said, commenting on the reopening of the case in 2019 and referring to conservative activist Mike Cernovich and TheMiami Herald journalists’ relentless work as the trigger for the case.
”Court documents demonstrate that the DOJ had more than enough evidence to prosecute Epstein for trafficking young girls. This included witness interviews, bank records, travel records, and victim interviews. We know for certain that Epstein was a cooperating witness”, he emphasised.
The American lawyer did not rule out that Epstein could have had “intelligence ties (not to mention powerful friends) that protected him from more serious charges by the DOJ and the State of Florida”.
In 2018, Techno Fog suggested that the FBI, then headed by Robert Mueller, struck a separate deal with Epstein in 2007-2008 citing FBI Vault documents. One of them, dated 18 September 2008 said: “Epstein has also provided information to the FBI as agreed upon”. The lawyer asked rhetorically whether “pedophile Jeffrey Epstein an informant for Mueller’s FBI”.
He also drew attention to the fact that the non-prosecution agreement was signed by Epstein on 27 September 2007, while on 31 October 2007 emails indicated that at that time, FBI agents had still not interviewed all the victims.
”Per court records, we have determined that the FBI continued to investigate the case after the NPA was signed because the terms of the NPA were not yet executed by Epstein”, the lawyer said. “How legitimate was the Epstein deal? Legally it’s legitimate. Morally it’s bankrupt”.
As for the reports that the Epstein case is now being handled by the SDNY Public Corruption Unit (PCU), Techno Fog noted that “it’s very possible that the PCU is looking into whether corrupt acts contributed to the original Epstein deal”.
“This is no guarantee that they’ll find anything illegal. Federal prosecutors have a great deal of leeway in making their decisions”, he added.
The scandal resurfaced after 12 years, in February 2019, when US Senator Ben Sasse, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, announced that the DOJ had responded to his numerous requests and opened a probe into the handling of Epstein’s prosecution.
On 6 July 2019, Epstein was arrested at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey charged with sex trafficking. It was ordered on 8 July that he would be held in custody without bail pending a detention hearing on 15 July.
UN Special Rapporteur Michael Lynk has suggested that the international community should consider cutting ties with Israel if it goes ahead with further colonial settlement expansion and annexation, according to a report by Al Jazeera. Non-binding requests or suggestions from the UN, however, are unlikely to go beyond rhetoric, given the international community’s political investment in Israel and complicity in the colonial occupation itself.
Had Israel been a country marked for foreign intervention, the international community would have no qualms about implementing Lynk’s suggestions. However, the persistent, non-binding nature of UN recommendations will only serve to create further ambiguous discourse when it comes to Israel and human rights violations.
“The international community has to look at the available menu of countermeasures that is commonly used to a wide range of countries involving gross human rights violations and has to decide what are the appropriate ones to consider to use with respect to Israel,” Lynk told Al Jazeera. Yet the UN is failing repeatedly to consider Israeli colonialism as a “gross human rights violation”. Indeed, the international organisation has served as a platform for Israeli ventures, especially since the state has started to market itself to African countries with regard to sustainable development and agriculture practices. The UN has perpetually excused Israel’s massacres and adopted the colonial entity’s purported security and “self-defence” narrative. In fact, like other entities, the UN has singled out settlement expansion as the only violation worth speaking about.
This begs the question, is the UN seeking out safe measures when it decides to push forward, at least in discourse, the need for punitive measures when it comes to Israel?
Settlement expansion in UN narratives is completely dissociated from the 1948 Nakba and the ongoing colonisation of Palestinian land. It is a subject which enjoys international consensus and which focuses strictly on buildings rather than the ideology and political context behind their construction. When the international community speaks about settlement expansion, it does not draw attention to the resultant Palestinian dispossession, nor does it bring into question the fate of Palestinians and how the right of return for the Palestinian people must be revised to cater for a perpetual, intentional, forced displacement.
Lynk’s argument that Israel’s military occupation will become further entrenched if there is no international economic pressure is not completely accurate. Having positioned and marketed itself to developing countries, Israel has sought to expand its economic possibilities globally. It has prepared itself for possibilities which might see it fall out of favour by extending its reach to countries rich in natural resources. Meanwhile, diplomatically and politically, Israel has gained enough ground to assure itself of minimum repercussions if a hypothetical fallout does occur, which is, by the way, unlikely in any meaningful sense.
Lynk has also suggested the possibility of suspending Israel’s UN membership. This move would be instrumental in implementing the first divide between the international community and the self-styled “Jewish state”. However, Israel is also the UN’s lasting colonial project. As a facilitator of colonialism, it is not in a position to set the rules that penalise Israel. Of course, the Israelis know this. They also know that the UN is much more likely to take measures which restrict Palestinians’ political demands in order to continue its two-state diplomacy. The global level of conspiracy, once again, provides Israel with its greatest level of impunity.
Former Pfizer chief toxicologist Helmut Sterz presents a critical examination of the development, approval, and global rollout of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines—particularly those produced by Pfizer/BioNTech. The Vaccine Mafia details the failure of pharmaceutical companies, regulatory authorities, politicians, and international organizations to follow established scientific and ethical standards during the pandemic. Drawing on the author’s decades of experience in pharmaceutical toxicology, Sterz reveals the many ways the vaccines’ inadequate or omitted preclinical safety testing put the world’s population at risk.
Sterz demonstrates how “emergency” approvals allowed manufacturers to bypass long-standing international guidelines governing toxicity testing, especially with regard to reproductive and cancer risks. They also allowed governments and health authorities to ignore or conceal evidence of serious adverse effects that occurred, including myocarditis, reproductive harm, and other long-term health risks.
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