Attacking local and state government: Trump’s Nazi playbook

[menti...@gmail.com]

According to Wayne Madsen Report,

Trump following Hitler playbook down the line.

Donald Trump has made no secret of his admiration for Nazism and Adolf Hitler. After neo-Nazis marched in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017, Trump called them “fine people.” Trump’s first wife, Ivana Trump, wrote that one of the only books Trump kept readily available was a compendium of Adolf Hitler’s speeches. According to Trump’s niece, Mary Trump, Donald Trump was raised in a household of constant racist and anti-Semitic words and deeds.

Mr. Trump’s conflict with America’s cities and states began as a war or words and tweets. Today, the war has grown into a full-fledged invasion of America’s cities by a political police force loyal to Trump. The paramilitary forces that invaded Portland, Oregon and began kidnapping citizens from the streets by forcing them into unmarked rental vehicles and speeding away include private contractors working for various agencies of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Many of these contractors work for descendant companies of Blackwater, Dyncorp, Triple Canopy, and other mercenary companies responsible for heinous human rights violations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, as well as on the streets of New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The presence in Trump’s Cabinet of the sister of Blackwater founder Erik Prince, Betsy DeVos – the Secretary of Education – shines a bright spotlight on the nepotism of fascist policies, including the dispatch of mercenaries, to Portland and other cities.

Trump and his two Nazi-like cronies, acting Homeland Security Secretary and former Senate staffer and lobbyist Chad Wolf and Roman Catholic fascist Opus Dei adherent Attorney General William Barr, decided to conduct a test run of their personal Gestapo during peaceful June 1 “Black Lives Matter” civil rights protests on Lafayette Square in front of the White House. Trump requested the governors of 11 states to send members of their state National Guards to “restore order” in Washington. The paramilitary action in Washington was neither requested by nor assented to by the mayor of Washington and the city council of the District of Columbia.

Trump also ordered Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman, General Mark Milley, to accompany him to a church on Lafayette Square for nothing more than a political photo op. Milley later apologized for participating in Trump’s display of what amounted to fascist theatrics befitting another fascist dictator openly admired by Trump, Italy’s “Il Duce,” Benito Mussolini.

The only violence, including arson, that occurred during the Washington, DC protests that Trump and Barr later cited as their reason for sending in the non-descript camouflage-clad paramilitary forces and National Guard units was carried out by white right-wing provocateurs. These and other false flag operatives in cities across the United States are no different than the Nazis who set fire to the Reichstag in Berlin in 1933 in order to give Hitler an overwhelming electoral victory in the federal election held on March 5, 1933, a week after the arson attack. Hitler used the Reichstag fire as an excuse to tear up the Weimar Constitution by forcing through the Reichstag on March 23, 1933 the infamous Enabling Act while official propaganda media blamed the arson attack on a mentally ill Dutch Communist. Trump’s DHS began referring to protesters as “violent anarchists” and “anti-fascist (antifa)” mobs, loaded language drawn right out of the propaganda lexicon of Hitler’s Nazis.

On January 30, 1934, with the adoption of the "Law for the Reconstruction of the Reich,” Hitler abolished the Landtags (parliaments) of each German state, including the Senates of the Free and Hanseatic Cities of Hamburg, Bremen, and Lübeck and the parliaments of the Free States of Prussia, Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, Bavaria, Anhalt, Thuringia, Württemberg, and Mecklenburg-Schwerin, the Republic of Baden, and the People’s State of Hesse, and transferred the powers of all the states to the new unitary national government in Berlin. In 1938, upon the German union with Austria, the Nazis abolished the Austrian states. In 1939, upon the German invasion of Poland, the Free City of Danzig was abolished and absorbed into the Nazi Reichsgau of Danzig-West Prussia. Hitler also transferred from city and township governments control of the local civilian police to Heinrich Himmler’s militarized Gestapo and Schutzstaffel (SS).

Trump and his proto-fascist administration are carrying out a similar suppression of state, municipal, and county government in the United States. The Justice Department’s Operation Legend (also called LeGend) has seen federal law enforcement personnel dispatched to Democratic Party-run cities, including Kansas City, Albuquerque, and Chicago. The Justice Department’s Operation Legend and DHS’s Operation Diligent Valor are military-like deployments designed to carry out Trump’s order to “dominate the streets” of America’s cities. By sending federal forces into the aforementioned cities, as well as Portland, Seattle, Philadelphia, Detroit, Baltimore, Oakland, Cleveland, and Milwaukee – the latter the site of the modified 2020 Democratic National Convention -- against the expressed desires of the respective mayors and governors, Trump and his fascist administration are violating the 10th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which specifies that the states are responsible for establishing and maintaining their own laws and policies, including those dealing with local and state law enforcement.

Acting Homeland Security Secretary Wolf boasted on Fox News, “I don't need invitations by the state, state mayors, or state governors to do our job. We're going to do that, whether they like us there or not.” Wolf’s acting deputy secretary, Ken Cuccinelli, also warned of additional DHS troop deployments if “intelligence” warranted such moves. Wolf’s and Cuccinelli’s statements were the closest yet to a public admission of the goals of the Trump administration to negate the 10th Amendment by fiat and do exactly what Hitler’s Nazis did to German state and local government after the passage of the Enabling Act. Ominously, the Trump administration is coordinating their seizure of local police powers with city police departments and county sheriffs that are resisting efforts of Democratic Party mayors, city councils, and county boards of supervisors to curb police abuses within their jurisdictions.

In Portland, DHS paramilitary troops, many of them untrained in urban law enforcement and all of them identifiable only by alpha and alphanumeric trigraph patches on their camouflage and black uniforms, for example ZT1, DZ1, and SRT, and patches bearing the words “Police DHS,” descended upon largely peaceful protesters and began clubbing them with batons, tear gassing them with pepper spray, firing rubber bullets and throwing flash bang grenades at them, and kidnapping them off the streets. The trigraph patches made it impossible, by design, to identify those DHS government and contractor personnel who committed what are considered war crimes against civilians under stipulations of the Geneva Conventions and proclamations by various United Nations High Commissioners for Human Rights, let alone the precepts of the Constitution of the United States.

The fascist abuses by the Trump administration could take even darker turns. In Portland, protesters formed what were called a “Wall of Moms” – protesting mothers – and a “Wall of Veterans” – former and retired military personnel from all of the branches of the U.S. Armed Forces. Some of the veterans reported that some federal paramilitary personnel aimed automatic weapons directly at them. Others apprehended by the paramilitary units claimed the DHS security personnel stole their phones, identification, and other personnel effects. Those arrested for shooting fireworks at the Portland federal building were charged with using “improvised explosive devices,” the same designation the military uses for car bombs. Some female protesters in Portland who were apprehended by the federal paramilitary reported that they had been sexually assaulted by male DHS personnel while in their custody. The sexual assault charges against DHS personnel were a painful reminder of the infamous rape rooms at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, where American military and private mercenary contractors systematically raped both female and male detainees.

Americans are beginning to fight back against the Trump administration’s increasingly fascist moves. In cases when camouflaged and heavily armed security personnel, who fail to denote their law enforcement agencies, decide to use force against any American citizen, 25 states have enacted “stand your ground” self-defense laws. If such paramilitary personnel, including private contractors, attempt kidnapping, false arrest, or assault under false color of authority, it is the right of residents of the 25 states to use deadly force to protect themselves and their families at home, place of work, or any other location. Ironically, stand your ground laws were enacted with the support of the very same right-wing forces, including the National Rifle Association (NRA), who have consistently backed Trump and his policies. Those laws may now come back to bite them.

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http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/articles/august-34-2020-trump-and-hitler-analogy-not-wanted-some

http://medium.com/p/cff08ff81351 -- Trump’s Nazi playbook

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/seattle.politics/44-WGACRVds/yay4tIYVBQAJ

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayne_Madsen

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In news:db29cd06-b68f-45bb...@googlegroups.com, menti...@gmail.com
<menti...@gmail.com> typed:

> According to Wayne Madsen Report,

> Trump following Hitler playbook down the line.

> Donald Trump has made no secret of his admiration for Nazism and Adolf Hitler. After neo-Nazis
> marched in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017, Trump called them "fine people." Trump's first
> wife, Ivana Trump, wrote that one of the only books Trump kept readily available was a compendium
> of Adolf Hitler's speeches. According to Trump's niece, Mary Trump, Donald Trump was raised in a

> household of constant racist and anti-Semitic words and deeds....

Yet his daughter converted to Judaism and his grandchildren are Jewish.

> Mr. Trump's conflict with America's cities and states began as a war or words and tweets. Today,
> the war has grown into a full-fledged invasion of America's cities by a political police force

> loyal to Trump....

Does this guy really believe this crap?

[menti...@gmail.com]

According to Wayne Madsen Report,

If Trump refuses to leave office, some U.S. embassies abroad may be up for grabs.

August 4-5, 2020 -- Gaming Trump's undemocratic intentions

Washington

Recently, leading players in the Democratic and Republican Parties conducted "war games" that dealt with Donald Trump refusing to concede an electoral loss to Democratic candidate Joe Biden. The gaming scenarios included one in which Trump refuses to leave the White House on Inauguration Day, January 20, 2021.

The games were carried out on-line in June by a group called the "Transition Integrity Project" and included as participants John Podesta, the chief of staff to Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama; Michael Steele, former Republican National Committee chairman; retired Army Colonel Larry Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell; former Michigan Democratic Governor Jennifer Granholm; conservative pundit Bill Kristol; and former Republican political consultants and members of Congress.

Trump has repeatedly told interviewers that be may decline to concede an election he believed was "rigged" or otherwise "unfair." Both Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have voiced fears that Trump may refuse to leave office if he loses the November 3 election. In July, Biden told "The Daily Show" host Trevor Noah, "I am absolutely convinced they [the military] will escort him [Trump] from the White House with great dispatch [if he refuses to leave]." Pelosi, fearing that the presidential transition will not be orderly, told MS-NBC, "It has nothing to do with [whether] the certain occupant of the White House doesn’t feel like moving and has to be fumigated out of there.”

There is another possibility that the Transition Integrity Project may or may not have considered. That is Trump, refusing to concede an electoral loss, simply declares himself to be a rival president outside of the White House. Such a scenario may conjure up images of an "emperor with no clothes" issuing meaningless dictates from his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach or from the penthouse of Trump Tower in New York, but there could be other ramifications.

If Trump refuses to concede, he could authorize the formation of a government-in-exile abroad. Trump's Russian friends have already shown a keen interest in backing U.S. secessionist groups. One such group led by American Louis Marinelli, a former Saint Petersburg State University (Vladimir Putin's alma mater) student. Marinelli, from Russian soil, has been calling for California's secession. Marinelli's group, Yes California (formerly called Sovereign California), may claim it is based in San Diego, but in reality, he commands the group from his apartment in Yekaterinburg in Siberia. Russia has also promoted the Texas independence movement, a right-wing group that has subsided politically during the Trump administration but will most certainly become active again during a Biden administration, just as it was during Barack Obama's presidency.

Trump has in place in several U.S. embassies abroad ambassadors who are totally committed to Trump. These ambassadors, particularly the hyperactive and highly-opinionated Richard Grenell in Berlin and the romanticist of Nazis, Pete Hoekstra, in Wassenaar, Netherlands [right] may refuse to leave their posts upon a Biden victory. Moreover, these pro-Trump activist ambassadors may continue to insist to the governments to which they are accredited that they continue to represent the "legitimate" president, Trump. A President Biden could and likely would order the embassies' U.S. Marine detachments to escort pro-Trump renegade ambassadors from embassy grounds, but that would also involve the host countries' police forces and televised footage of the various standoffs would further agitate Trump supporters at home and abroad.

Trump adviser Steve Bannon has formed an alliance of fascist parties and activists around Europe, Latin America, and other countries. Pro-Trump renegade ambassadors could merely call on various pro-Trump fascist groups to help defend U.S. embassies by sending their cadres into various posts to help disarm the Marine contingents, expel diplomats loyal to the new president -- Biden -- and protect the embassy grounds from local police who may accede to Washington's requests to storm the premises.

Trump has appointed more political ambassadors, rather than career diplomats, than any previous presidents. These political cronies, for the most part, will take their orders not from Biden or his Secretary of State, but from a rival Trump presidency and a rival Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. A diplomatic war between Biden and a recalcitrant Trump may play out before the news cameras in places like Reykjavik, where Trump is represented in Iceland by an acerbic dermatologist and Trump campaign donor, Jeffrey Ross Gunter.

Trump billionaire campaign donor Woody Johnson, the overtly-racist and corrupt U.S. ambassador to the Court of St. James, could stage a major diplomatic brouhaha in London, one of the world's most active media centers. And Mar-a-Lago club member and handbag designer Lana Marks, Trump's ambassador in Pretoria, could rely on some of Bannon's die-hard pro-apartheid fans in South Africa to provide the muscle to keep the U.S. embassy in South Africa in the hands of a Trump government-in-exile.

Defeated governments establishing governments-in-exile and maintaining control of embassies abroad have historical precedents. Upon the fall of the Spanish Republic in 1939 to General Francisco Franco's fascist forces, the republic continued to enjoy diplomatic support in exile. The Republican government-in-exile continued to hold the keys to Spanish embassies and legations in Mexico City, Belgrade, Panama City, Caracas, Warsaw, Budapest, Bucharest, Prague, and Guatemala City. The Spanish Republic continued to own the Spanish embassy in Mexico City until 1977 and the dissolution of the government-in-exile.

After the 1944 Soviet re-annexation of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, the ambassadors and envoys of these nations continued to operate in the United States, Australia, Britain and other countries. The Estonian exiled government operated from Oslo and its legation in New York was run out of the Estonian consulate. Latvian legations and consulates continued to be recognized in London, Washington, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, Melbourne, Brussels, Toronto, St. John's (Newfoundland), Copenhagen, Paris, Hamburg, Rotterdam, Stockholm, Oslo, and Geneva. Although there was no Latvian government-in-exile per se, the Latvian legation in Washington served many of the functions of one. Similarly, the Lithuanian diplomatic service continued to represent the interests of Lithuania from its legation in Washington. However, Lithuanian diplomatic property in Italy, Germany, Sweden, and France was turned over to the Soviet government.

More recently, the government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and rival "president," opposition leader Juan Guaido, have battled for control of Venezuelan embassies abroad, including the mission in Washington, DC.

Governments-in-exile have come with varying degrees of diplomatic might. The Spanish and Baltic States, as well as the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, currently headquartered in exile in Algeria and with diplomatic relations with 40 United Nations member states, serve as examples. Others, lacking a major diplomatic presence abroad, the Tibetan government-in-exile in Dharamsala, India, for example, have much less clout.

Trump's close ties with Presidents Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil, Vladimir Putin of Russia, Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines, Andrzej Duda of Poland, Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, and Ivan Duque of Colombia, as well as Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, could present a rival Trump presidency with more than an iota of diplomatic strength and a major unneeded headache for a President Biden.

https://www.waynemadsenreport.com/articles/august-45-2020-gaming-trumps-undemocratic-intentions

[max headroom]

In news:9b1c2ada-1950-4a4b...@googlegroups.com, menti...@gmail.com
<menti...@gmail.com> typed:

> According to Wayne Madsen Report,

> If Trump refuses to leave office, some U.S. embassies abroad may be up for grabs.

> August 4-5, 2020 -- Gaming Trump's undemocratic intentions

> Washington

> Recently, leading players in the Democratic and Republican Parties conducted "war games" that
> dealt with Donald Trump refusing to concede an electoral loss to Democratic candidate Joe Biden.
> The gaming scenarios included one in which Trump refuses to leave the White House on Inauguration

> Day, January 20, 2021....

Isn't it great that they have nothing better to do than play fantasy games?

[menti...@gmail.com]

According to Wayne Madsen Report,

Trump presiding over a "medical holocaust."

August 5-6, 2020 -- Trump's pathological racism and Covid-19

Washington

Donald Trump's pathological racism, which he displays every day, has hampered international efforts to stem the spread of Covid-19. Trump's insistence on using terms like the "Chinese flu" or "China flu" to describe Covid-19 is merely designed to stoke tensions with China and, by default, between Trump's racist white nationalist base and Asian-Americans. Worse is Trump's use of the blatantly racist "kung flu" to denote Covid-19.

Trump also calls the deadly 1918 influenza pandemic, which killed Trump's grandfather and some 50 million others around the world, the "1917 Spanish flu." In Trump's drug-addled and sick mind, he has not only altered the year that the 1918 pandemic began but uses the term "Spanish" as yet another dog whistle to his anti-Hispanic base. The 1918 flu did not even start in Spain. The deadly influenza began in the battlefield trenches in France but because of wartime censorship, the first cases of the virus were reported from Spain, a neutral nation not under press censorship controls.

Where the Covid-19 pandemic began is less important than how patient zero was infected to spread the virus to the rest of the world. There is not even any sound scientific proof that Covid-19 began in China. Scientists at the University of Barcelona detected the presence of Covid-19 in frozen samples of Barcelona's sewage water in March 2019, eight months before the virus was first detected in humans in Wuhan, China. The Catalonian scientists published their findings in a report titled, "SARS-CoV-2 detected in wastewater in Barcelona on March 12, 2019."

Italian scientists discovered the presence of Covid-19 in sewage in Milan and Turin on December 18, 2019, before the first infection was reported in Wuhan. The Spanish Society of Virology admitted that some influenza deaths diagnosed as regular influenza by primary care physicians in Spain earlier in 2019 were probably caused instead by Covid-19. Brazilian scientists discovered that SARS-CoV-2 had been circulating in Brazil "since late November 2019, much earlier than the first reported case in the Americas." The Brazilian scientists discovered Covid-19 in sewage samples taken in Florianopolis, Santa Catalina, Brazil. Trump's ally and political doppelganger, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, has also accused China for the spread of Covid-19, a virus he once called a "hoax." As it turns out, Bolsonaro's Brazil may have had cases of the virus a month before China.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that some Americans who died from influenza earlier in 2019 may, in fact, have died from Covid-19. The director of the CDC, Dr. Robert Redfield, admitted that some of the influenza deaths in 2019 were "misdiagnosed." The science-averse Trump will not hear of suggestions that Covid-19 could just as well be called the "American flu" rather than the "Chinese flu." That runs counter to Trump's racist political platform.

It is clear that for Trump and his two Nazi-like advisers, Jared Kushner and Stephen Miller, Covid-19 provided an opportunity to conduct a "medical holocaust" never before seen on such a scale in human history. Kushner sequestered, warehoused, and hijacked ventilators and personal protective equipment destined for Democratic states and cities, while Miller figured out the best methods for exposing minorities, including African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, and Native Americans, to the virus. Miller pressed for in-person voting in primary elections and an end to unemployment assistance, thus forcing minimum wage minority employees back to work and into higher risk of being infected with the virus.

In the current race for a Covid-19 vaccine, some scientists are calling out certain nations for practicing "vaccine nationalism." The same racist and nationalist government leaders who lost valuable time in practicing a blame game for responsibility for the virus now seek to capitalize on a potential vaccine. The politicization of science and medicine proves why politicians should be kept far away from the laboratories and international scientific exchange networks.

https://www.waynemadsenreport.com/articles/august-56-2020-trumps-pathological-racism-and-covid19

[max headroom]

In news:a33cb827-e36d-492d...@googlegroups.com, menti...@gmail.com
<menti...@gmail.com> typed:

> According to Wayne Madsen Report,

> Trump presiding over a "medical holocaust."

> August 5-6, 2020 -- Trump's pathological racism and Covid-19

> Washington

> Donald Trump's pathological racism, which he displays every day, has hampered international
> efforts to stem the spread of Covid-19. Trump's insistence on using terms like the "Chinese flu"
> or "China flu" to describe Covid-19 is merely designed to stoke tensions with China and, by

> default, between Trump's racist white nationalist base and Asian-Americans....

So POTUS wants to alienate Asian-Americans? The TDS is strong in this one.

> ... Worse is Trump's use of the blatantly racist "kung flu" to denote Covid-19.

It's blatantly funny.

> Trump also calls the deadly 1918 influenza pandemic, which killed Trump's grandfather and some 50

> million others around the world, the "1917 Spanish flu."...

So does most of the world--

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu

[menti...@gmail.com]

According to Wayne Madsen Report,

Finger pointing takes over after Beirut cataclysmic disaster.

August 6-7, 2020 -- There were two explosions in Beirut, one willful and the other an accident

Beirut

WMR has learned that there were two explosions in the port of Beirut, Lebanon on August 5. The first explosion was caused by an Israeli special operations team that was targeting a Hezbollah arms depot in a warehouse at the port. However, the Israeli team failed to perform a survey of surrounding structures and it was unaware that 2750 tons of ammonium nitrate had been stored for the past seven years in a structure adjacent to the Hezbollah weapons warehouse. The first explosion was from the Hezbollah warehouse. The second and more devastating ammonium nitrate explosion and massive supersonic shock wave leveled the port of Beirut, killed hundreds, injured thousands, and caused severe damage throughout most of the city. The blast capsizedand sunk the Orient Queen cruise ship, killing two of itsa crew.

The explosion, dubbed "Lebanon's Hiroshima," was heard for up to two hundred miles away, including in Cyprus, and was registered by seismographic equipment around the world as a 3.3-magnitude earthquake. The Beirut blast occurred on the eve of the 75th anniversary of the American atomic bomb attack that leveled Hiroshima. By comparison, the ammonium nitrate bomb used in the 1995 Oklahoma City Murrah Federal Building bombing was merely 2 tons. It not only destroyed the federal building but causes extensive damage to other buildings in the downtown area.

Donald Trump responded to a question about the bombing at White House press briefing hours after the Beirut catastrophe. He stated that "according to his generals," the explosion was the result of an attack. In fact, the Department of Defense denied that any of its officials told Trump the Beirut explosion was the result of an attack. However, it is likely that Trump heard about the botched Israeli attack on the Hezbollah weapons depot from his son-in-law and adviser, Jared Kushner, who maintains a close relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. One or more Israeli generals had likely briefed Netanyahu on the Israeli special operations mission that had gone horribly wrong, which prompted Netanyahu to pass the information on to Kushner.

The morning after the explosion, Trump again insisted the explosion was caused by an attack, even though the Pentagon was refuting the idea. Trump said, "They don’t really know what it is. Nobody knows yet. At this moment, they are looking, how can you say? Somebody left some terrible explosive type of devices, and the things around, perhaps it was that, perhaps it was on attack. I don’t think anybody can say right now." Publicly, Trump was revealing Israel's closely-guarded secret about the botched mission to blow up the Hezbollah arms warehouse.

It was noted that Netanyahu had ordered his national security adviser, Meir Ben-Shabbat, to contact the United Nations special envoy for the Middle East peace process, Nikolay Mladenov, to pass a message to Lebanese authorities offering them Israeli assistance in dealing with the explosion's aftermath. Israeli observers noted that the offer appeared unusual for Netanyahu and out of the ordinary. Israeli hospitals, at the direction of the Israeli government, also offered to treat UN peacekeepers in Lebanon who were injured by the explosion.

The Israeli press began a pre-emptive political damage control operation shortly after the Beirut catastrophe. Stories ran in Ha'aretz and Israel Hayom and on Channel 12, Israel Army Radio, and the Internet news site Walla that Israeli and some Lebanese officials had previously warned Hezbollah about the danger of warehousing ammunition, missiles, guns and explosives in populated areas. Zvi Barel wrote in Ha'aretz, "Anyone who lives near one [of the Hezbollah arms warehouses] is aware of the threat posed by the possibility of an accident causing an explosion or a deliberate Israeli attack. The explosion at the port makes this threat even more concrete. But dismantling and neutralizing these stockpiles, or moving them away from populated areas, is a sensitive issue politically, because it would mean disarming ‘the Lebanese resistance’ and leaving the country devoid of any force capable of deterring Israel.”

Reports that the initial explosion at the Hezbollah warehouse was caused by an Israeli or American strike were echoed in the Lebanese media, including the television news networks Al-Mayadeen and Al-Manar.

The ammonium nitrate, a highly-combustible substance, was loaded on to the Russian-owned and Moldovan-flagged merchant vessel MV Rhosus in November 2013 in the port of Batumi, in Adjaria in the Republic of Georgia. The ship was owned by Igor Grechushkin, [left] a Russian oligarch and native of Khabarovsk, who lives in Limassol, Cyprus. Grechushkin's shipping company, Teto Shipping Ltd., was registered in the Marshall Islands. The firm is now defunct. Grechushkin bought the Rhosus in 2012 from Cypriot businessman Charalambos Manolis. The Rhosus had been previously registered under the Panamanian company Briarwood Corporation. The ship was heading to Mozambique but detoured to the port of Beirut to take on an additional cargo of farming heavy machinery in order to be able to pay the Suez Canal transit fees.

The ship's captain, Boris Prokoshev, told The New York Times that the additional machinery cargo would not fit on the ship. Without the necessary funds to pay the port of Beirut's port husbanding fees and due to the vessel's non-seaworthiness, the Lebanese authorities impounded the ship and its crew of mostly Ukrainians. Prokoshev had joined the ship at a prior stop in Turkey after the previous crew had mutinied over the failure of the ship's owner to pay them. Grechushkin abandoned the ship and six members of the crew of ten made their way back to Odessa, Ukraine after being freed by Lebanon. The remaining four followed after a year of being stranded on the ship in Beirut. [right] During their one year virtual imprisonment on the Rhosus, the four crewmen warned they were living on a "floating bomb." The Lebanese subsequently offloaded the ammonium nitrate cargo to a storage facility called Hangar 12.

The dangerously-explosive cargo sat in the same facility for seven years even as safety, customs, and port officials urged its transport to a safer location. In 2016, Lebanese customs director Shafik Marei sent a letter stating, "In view of the serious danger posed by keeping this shipment in the warehouses in an inappropriate climate, we repeat our request to demand the maritime agency to re-export the materials immediately."

Cypriot authorities have reported that Grechushkin, unlike many Russian oligarchs who make Cyprus their primary home, does not hold a Cypriot passport. Cypriot law enforcement authorities contacted INTERPOL in Beirut and promised them assistance in apprehending Grechushkin if needed. Grechushkin has reportedly been in contact with the local Russian consulate in Limassol.

https://www.waynemadsenreport.com/articles/august-67-2020-there-were-two-explosions-beirut-one

[menti...@gmail.com]

According to Wayne Madsen Report,

It's back to the 1930s and the "winds of war."

August 7-9, 2020 -- The Axis Reconstituted

August 7-9, 2020 -- The Axis Reconstituted
The fascist Axis of World War II was a tripartite pact between Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan. Other nations were allied with the Axis to varying degrees. They included Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, Bulgaria, and Croatia. Nations that collaborated with the Axis included Vichy France, Argentina, Thailand, and Spain.

Today, the fascists have re-established a de facto “Axis” under the leadership of Russia, China, India, and Brazil. The Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa (BRICS) bloc of nations was originally established in 2009 by Brazil, Russia, India, and China to serve as a counterweight to Western financial systems like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF). The first BRIC summit, sans South Africa, was held on 16 June 2009 in Yekaterinburg, Russia. The heads of state in attendance were Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil, Dmitry Medvedev of Russia, Manmohan Singh of India, and Hu Jintao of China. All of these leaders were to the left, to varying degrees, compared with their replacements.

After the uncontested rise of Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping to unlimited power in Russia and China, respectively, the BRICS is now an alliance of fascist-governed powers with the exception of South Africa. What is more alarming is the fact that the United States and United Kingdom, the two allies that fought the Axis in World War II, are nothing more than associated vassal states of the new Axis. Donald Trump in Washington and Boris Johnson in London were helped into political power by Russian information warfare operations personally approved and overseen by Putin’s intelligence tradecraft network of troll farms, boiler room hacking operations, and affiliated intelligence operations in Israel, the latter thanks to Israeli Prime Minister and close Putin friend, Binyamin Netanyahu. An unimaginable prospect during World War II, the USA and UK have become virtual lackeys under the thumb of the new Axis, not much different than were Vichy France and Spain under the Axis yoke.

The only wrinkle in this new world fascist order is China. Although Chinese President Xi Jinping is as fascistic in his leadership as Putin in Russia, Prime Minister Narendra Modi in India, and President Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, the anti-Chinese rhetoric upon which Trump, Johnson, Bolsonaro, and Modi keep their respective political bases satiated with xenophobic offerings has thrown a fly into the ointment of the neo-fascist world alliance. Thrown into the mix is an increasingly revanchist Japan under the control of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who has romanticized Japan’s imperial past in words and deeds. Japanese imperial designs run counter to China’s goals for its immediate neighborhood in East Asia. Renewed Sino-Japanese mutual hostility has created another rift in the emergent global fascist world order. Modi and Xi are also facing off militarily along the contested Sino-Indian border, over which the two most populous countries in the world fought a brief war in 1962.

The seeds of World War II were sown in the armistices of World War I. The deadly 1918 influenza pandemic and the succeeding worldwide economic depression created the social and political climate for a disgruntled socialist newspaper director named Benito Mussolini, a failed Vienna artist named Adolf Hitler, and an anti-American and anti-Russian Japanese military officer named Hideki Tojo to rise to power in their respective countries, all of which had been functioning as parliamentary proto-democracies.

Today's renewed Axis has arisen as another pandemic has halted world commerce and idled workers to a degree not seen since the Great Depression. The only difference is that as war looms on the horizon, the United States does not have a Franklin Delano Roosevelt as president and there is no Winston Churchill at Number 10 Downing Street to guide Britain through its second "darkest hours" in 100 years.

https://www.waynemadsenreport.com/articles/august-810-2020-the-axis-reconstituted