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Source: FTR #724 Wiki of the Damned
Introduction: The first of two programs dealing with WikiLeaks, this broadcast examines an intelligence-connectedmind control cult with which WikiLeaks kingpin Julian Assange appears to be affiliated. As well connected as it is ruthless and criminal, the Santiniketan Park Association of Anne Hamilton-Byrne conditioned children with drugs, sensory deprivation, sleep deprivation, torture and ritual sexual abuse in order to produce subjects who bent to the will of the group's leader.
Although Assange (pictured at left) claims to have been "on the run" from the cult, his claims of links to Australian intelligence plus his strange, "platinum" colored hair (distinctive of children raised in the group) suggest that the connections may run much deeper. (Recall in this context that the group practices rigorous, sophisticated mind-control methodology and Assange himself may be sincerely unaware of the depth of his apparent links to the group. The organization also develops multiple identities for the children raised in its ranks, as well as obtaining multiple passports for them. Assange's mother claims his hair turned white following a difficult custody case involving a child of his. As will be seen later, Assange claims that Australian intelligence has advised him, and there is an apparent link between Australian intelligence and the cult.)The title of the program comes from two sci-fi/horror movies from the late 1950's and 60's called Children of theDamned and Village of the Damned. Both movies featured a generation of platinum-blonde children with psycho-kinetic powers, preternatural intelligence and a really, really bad attitude. The children are pictured in a promotional poster for the film in the upper left. Cult leader Hamilton-Byrne (inset) and her "children" are pictured above and at right. A still from the film is at right. Assange is pictured twice at left. Is this a case of life imitating art?
Possessing considerable wealth, in control of its own psychiatric hospital, composed largely of well-heeled professional people, utilized as an experimentation center by one of Australia's leading Catholic psychologists, linked to the Australian minister overseeing that country's intelligence service, the "Family" as they like to be called, used these connections to escape the punishment that would certainly have followed their activities. Available evidence suggests that the group is an intelligence front.
Even former cult members who have turned on the organization have been drawn back into its fold and reconciled with Anne Hamilton-Byrne.Targeting Russia, China and some of the Central Asian states that emerged following the breakup of the Soviet Union, WikiLeaks has pursued a political agenda that smacks of a Third Position/UNPO/Underground Reich political orientation. The group has also stung the United States, making an already difficult Afghanistan policy that much more difficult following their leaks of key U.S. documents about NATO involvement in that country.
Program Highlights Include: The group's excessive secretiveness; the group's lack of candor about their sources of financing in particular; pharmaceutical company Sandoz's alleged dispensing of free LSD to Family; partial discussion of WikiLeaks' connections to the milieu ofPirate Bay and Swedish fascist financier Carl Lundstrom; the Hamilton-Byrne cult's "caring" forLord Casey, the Australian cabinet member charged with oversight of the Australian intelligence agency; the Hamilton-Byrne cult's close association with Catholic psychologist Ronald Conway; Conway's alleged molestation of people associated with the cult; Conway's role as an expert commentator on the Church's molestation scandals.1. The program begins with discussion of a cult with which Assange appears to have been affiliated, although he minimizes his connection to them. It is worth noting that fleeing this cult apparently dominated much of his life at this point, yet the group's powerful connections appear to have allowed them to track him and his mother. Note that, although "on the run" from the group, Assange's mother discussed their whereabouts and frequented some of the same places. This may indicate a lack of imagination and/or resources on the part of Mama Assange, or it may indicate a process of creating a legend–a plausible cover for observed phenomenon.For example, if someone noted a resemblance between Julian Assange and children belonging to the cult, it could be neutralized by saying that he was an opponent of the group.In light of the apparent mind control techniques practiced by the group, indications of the group's possible intelligence connections, as well as deliberate and extensive operations to obfuscate the identity of cult members, one should take much of what Assange says about his relationship to the group with a grain of salt. Might he be a member of the cult, who was "sheep-dipped" to mask his links to the group?Assange's own track record indicates a record of deliberate, elusive behavior and statements.. . . . When Assange was eight, Claire left her husband and began seeing a musician, with whom she had another child, a boy. The relationship was tempestuous; the musician became abusive, she says, and they separated. A fight ensued over the custody of Assange's half brother, and Claire felt threatened, fearing that the musician would take away her son. Assange recalled her saying, "Now we need to disappear," and he lived on the run with her from the age of eleven to sixteen. When I asked him about the experience, he told me that there was evidence that the man belonged to a powerful cult called the Family—its motto was "Unseen, Unknown, and Unheard." Some members were doctors who persuaded mothers to give up their newborn children to the cult's leader, Anne Hamilton-Byrne. The cult had moles in government, Assange suspected, who provided the musician with leads on Claire's whereabouts. In fact, Claire often told friends where she had gone, or hid in places where she had lived before. . . ."No Secrets" by Jeff Khatchatourian; The New Yorker; 6/7/2010.2. Wikipedia gives a nice overview of the group. Note that Wikipedia should, as a rule, be scrutinized very carefully. It is frequently in error. When sources and links check out, as they do here, it is generally reliable.Around 1964 Dr Raynor Johnson was hosting regular meetings of a religious and philosophical discussion group led by Hamilton-Byrne at Santiniketan, his home at Ferny Creek in the Dandenong Ranges on the eastern outskirts of Melbourne. Also connected was a series of weekly talks he gave at the Council of Adult Education in Melbourne, entitled "The Macrocosm and the Microcosm". The group purchased an adjoining property which they named Santiniketan Park [1] in 1968 and constructed a meeting hall, Santiniketan Lodge.The association consisted of middle class, professional people; it has been estimated that a quarter were nurses and other medical personnel, and that many were recruited by Johnson who referred them to Hamilton-Byrne's hatha yoga classes.[2] Members mainly lived in nearby suburbs and townships in the Dandenongs, meeting each Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday evening [3] at Santiniketan Lodge, Crowther House in Olinda or another property in the area known as the White Lodge [4].During the late 1960s and 1970s Newhaven Hospital in Kew was a private psychiatric hospital owned and managed by Marion Villimek, a Santiniketan member; many of its staff and attending psychiatrists were also members.Many patients at Newhaven were treated with the hallucinogenic drug LSD [7]. The hospital was used to recruit potential new members from among the patients, and also to administer LSD to members under the direction of the Santiniketan psychiatrists Dr John Mackay and Dr Howard Whitaker . One of the original members of the Association was given LSD, electroconvulsive therapy and two leucotomies during the late 1960s.Although the psychiatric hospital had been closed down by 1992, in that year a new inquest was ordered into the death of a Newhaven patient in 1975 after new claims that his death had been due to deep sleep therapy. The inquest heard evidence concerning the use of electroconvulsive therapy, LSD and other practices at Newhaven but found no evidence that deep sleep had been used on this patient. The Newhaven building was later reopened as a nursing home with no connections to its previous owner or uses.Anne Hamilton-Byrne acquired fourteen infants and young children between about 1968 and 1975. Some were the natural children of Santiniketan members, others had been obtained through irregular adoptions arranged by lawyers, doctors and social workers within the group who could bypass the normal processes. The children's identities were changed using false birth certificates or deed poll, all being given the surname 'Hamilton-Byrne' and dressed alike even to the extent of their hair being dyed uniformly blonde[11].The children were kept in seclusion and home-schooled at Kia Lama, a rural property usually referred to as "Uptop", at Taylor Bay on Lake Eildon near the town of Eildon, Victoria. They were taught that Anne Hamilton-Byrne was their biological mother, and knew the other adults in the group as 'aunties' and 'uncles' They were denied almost all access to the outside world, and subjected to a discipline that included frequent corporal punishment and starvation diets.The children were frequently dosed with the psychiatric drugs Anatensol, Diazepam, Haloperidol, Largactil, Mogadon, Serepax, Stelazine, Tegretol or Tofranil[4]. On reaching adolescence they were compelled to undergo an initiation involving LSD[13]: while under the influence of the drug the child would be left in a dark room, alone apart from visits by Hamilton-Byrne or one of the psychiatrists from the group[4]."Santiniketan Park Association"; Wikipedia.3. More about the cult, from an article about a long-overdue bust of the group. Note the difficulty law enforcement had in bringing this group to justice. One of many indications that the organization was "connected."The leader of Australia's most notorious cult, The Family, remains unrepentant two decades after the raid that shocked the nation.Anne Hamilton-Byrne broke her silence yesterday, saying she was ready to die after reconciling with Sarah Moore, the "daughter" who betrayed her to the authorities.The Family made headlines around the world in 1987 when the Australian Federal Police and Community Services Victoria raided the cult's property at Lake Eildon and took six children into care.Police later found 14 children had been brought up in almost complete isolation believing they were the offspring of Hamilton-Byrne and her late husband Bill.In fact none of them was the Hamilton-Byrnes', but children of single mothers who had been pressured into giving them up for adoption or cult members who did not want them.But it was the way the children had been treated that really shocked the nation.Hamilton-Byrne had ordered the children's hair be dyed peroxide blonde and they be dressed in identical outfits.It was also alleged they had been half-starved, beaten and forced to take large quantities of tranquilisers to "calm them down" and even fed LSD when they became adults.Now, in the first ever interview at her sprawling Olinda compound, the cult leader has defended how she raised the children and attacked those who said she mistreated them as "lying bastards". Of her critics, she said: "I would love to put them right, but I can't." . . ."Anne Hamilton-Byrne, Leader of the Family, Unrepentant but Ready to Die" by James Campbell; Herald Sun; 8/16/2009.4. More about the practices of the group, from a policeman who helped to bring them to heel:Lex De Man, the policeman who spent five years bringing The Family cult leader Anne Hamilton-Byrne to justice, is still haunted by the case and its toll on everyone involved.And while proud that Operation Forest, the taskforce on which he worked from 1989 to 1994, eventually secured her conviction for perjury, he is still angry Hamilton-Byrne escaped punishment for alleged maltreatment of the children in her care.Mr De Man said Hamilton-Byrne was lucky the children who had endured beatings, druggings and starvation at The Family's Lake Eildon property were too traumatised to testify against their alleged tormentor."One girl looked like she was seven but was, in fact, 11. She was suffering from psycho-social dwarfism," Mr De Man said."I didn't think at that time – and even today – that many of the kids would be able to sustain giving evidence in the witness box. I think they'd been damaged too much."The detective's decision to go after Hamilton-Byrne for falsifying documents came in 1991 when the cult's solicitor, Peter Kibby, decided to co-operate with police."Documents don't lie. People lie on documents. A document might be false, but it's a human being that puts the information on it," Mr De Man said.Kibby then persuaded one of the former "Aunties", Pat MacFarlane, to make a statement.After months of interviews, and later armed with the evidence to secure a warrant to arrest Hamilton-Byrne, police still took three years to find her."Painful Justice" by James Campbell; The Herald Sun; 8/16/2009.5a. Another indication of serious institutional support for the cult concerns the participation in their activities of Ronald Conway. One of Australia's most prominent Catholic intellectuals, Conway appears to have engaged in molestation of children placed in his care. Conway has also written dismissively of complaints of sexual abuse against Catholic priests. Of paramount importance here is the fact that the hospital at which he conducted his LSD experiments was under the control of the Santiniketan Park Association, "The Family.". . . Conway's autobiography says that he began his LSD experiments at St Vincent's Hospital. And former patients say that Conway also administered LSD to them at the Newhaven psychiatric hospital which was situated at 86 Normanby Road, Kew, in Melbourne's inner east.In the late 1960s and during the 1970s, Newhaven hospital was owned and managed by Marion Villimek, a member of a "New Age" sect called the Santiniketan Park Association, also known as "The Family". A leader of the sect, Anne Hamilton-Byrne, was also an administrator at the Newhaven. Conway, Eric Seal and other therapists hired consulting rooms there on a sessional basis, and were not involved with the sect. Newhaven ceased being a hospital in 1992.Ronald Conway became one of Australia's most prominent Catholic intellectuals, writing books and newspaper articles about Australian society. He also appeared in radio and television discussion programs as a psychologist and social commentator.When the church's sexual scandals became news in Australia in the 1990s, Conway sometimes commented on the issues of celibacy and sexual abuse. . . ."Ronald Conway: The Hands-On Psychologist Who Helped the Catholic Church's Trainee Priests";clericalwhispers.blogspot.com; 5/17/2010.5b. As one wag who blogged about the Santiniketan Park Association observed; "What good is an LSD mind control religious cult sexual abuse story without the Catholic Church making a guest appearance?". . . "After several sessions with Conway, it was suggested that I undergo LSD therapy in Newhaven Private Hospital as an overnight patient. It was explained to me that this therapy was a way to fast-track psychoanalysis and would be very helpful in accepting my sexuality. Conway, as a psychologist, had no qualifications to administer drugs. I did not understand this at the time."During the last session I came to believe that I had been in the presence of God who authorized me to lead the sexual life which had been chosen for me."Conway then suggested that I continue to see him without the use of LSD.I explained to him that my finances were stretched and that it was not possible. He said that it was important that I continue to see him and that if I were willing he would see me at his home in Torrington Street, Canterbury, gratis."What a shock I got when one night he made advances to me and we ended up on the floor of his sitting room. The room was decorated as if it were the inside of an Egyptian tomb. He said this should not have happened but that, as it had, we should do it properly in his bedroom. It was a spartan room with the bed covers on a single bed already turned down and electric bar heaters turned on resting on tables either side.…"In the early 1990s, when I was 48 years of age, I was a patient in the Freemason's Hospital and woke up one afternoon to find Ron Conway sitting on my bed holding my hand. He had heard from someone that I was in hospital. I made it clear that I was not happy with his presence .He explained to me that he had been following my life through a work colleague of mine, another psychologist."Ron Conway never appeared again." . . .Idem.6. A more detailed–and consequently more horrifying–account of the cult's practices was presented by dissident member Sarah Moore, who eventually reconciled with Anne Hamilton-Byrne. Note the "breeding program" alluded to here, as well as the use of multiple identities, birthdates and passports.Note also, Moore's indication that enemies of the group had "disappeared."My mother was Anne Hamilton-Byrne, the leader of a small sect in the Dandenongs called the Family or the Great White Brotherhood. I was a small part of her plan to collect children in what she herself once called a "scientific experiment". Later I discovered it was her intention that we children would continue her sect after the earth was consumed by a holocaust. She saw us as the "inheritors of the earth". I didn't know that then. In those days I was just a child. A child of a guru, but a child no less.Twenty-two to twenty-eight children in all lived at Uptop in its heyday, although the fosters had varying lengths of stayShe used to say that she couldn't remember all the dates very well because she had so many children. Maybe, in retrospect, we should have realised that was weird but then we never thought it was anything out of the ordinary. She decided upon sets of twins and triplets and gave us ages and birth-dates to fit in with that idea. Birthday changes were just something you accepted. It was as if Anne knew so much more about everything than us and she just might be revealing another piece of our life plan if she changed our birthdays.We were the children of The Family, the children of Anne Hamilton-Byrne. We were dressed alike. Most of the girls' hair was dyed blond, cut into fringes and worn long with identical hairstyles and identically-coloured ribbons. All the boys had bowl haircuts.…Why did she raise us in almost total social isolation, miles from anywhere, with minimal contact with other humans apart from the sect members who looked after us? Why did she subject us to the bizarre and cruel regimen in which we grew up? Was it to demonstrate that she had the power to create a generation that would be reared with her beliefs and believing in her? I suspect perhaps that there were more sinister motives than these alone. Some of us had multiple birth certificates and passports, and citizenship of more than one country. Only she knows why thus was and why we were also all dressed alike, why most of us even had our hair dyed identically blond.I can only conjecture because I will never know for sure. However I suspect that she went to such great lengths in order to enable her to move children around, in and out of the country. Perhaps even to be sold overseas. I'm sure there is a market somewhere in the world for small blond children with no traceable identities. If she did it, it was a perfect scam. Many ex-sect members have said that they were aware that Anne was creating children by a "breeding program" in the late 1960s. These were 'invisible' kids, because they had no papers and there is no proof that they ever existed. Yet we Hamilton-Byrne children had multiple identities. These identities could perhaps have been loaned to other children and the similarity of our appearance used to cover up their absence. One little blond kid looks very like another in a passport photo. I don't suppose we will ever know the truth because only Anne Hamilton-Byrne knows the truth about the whole affair and the truth is something she will never tell.…I am training to be a doctor but sometimes I think my medical career will be sabotaged because there are still many in the sect who have a lot of influence in professional and academic circles. It may sound melodramatic, but I know that some who were Anne's enemies have disappeared in strange circumstances. . . .Unseen, Unheard, Unknown; by Sarah Moore.7. Among those on the receiving end of the cult's services was Lord Casey, former Governor-General of Australia and the minister in charge of overseeing the Australian intelligence service, with which Assange claims to be connected.. . . It has been suggested that Anne would have had no power without a syringe. She claimed a lot of knowledge of medical things. She said she had been the matron of a hospital but there is no evidence she ever did nursing. I can't emphasise the importance of nursing in the sect enough. It was critical to the way she viewed the Aunties and, it was what she planned for the girls' future profession. She said nursing was one of the ideal occupations because it was a form of 'selfless service' that led to spiritual advancement. We knew that on their weeks off from Uptop the Aunties were either training to be nurses or practised as nurses. Several of the Aunties nursed Lord Casey, a former Governor-General of Australia. [Italics are mine–D.E.] Rumour has it that he made a significant donation to the sect. . . .Idem.8. More about Lord Casey, his professional history and ideological outlook:In public, Casey seemed to be a devoted Cold-War warrior, fervently supportive of Britain and the U.S.A., and deeply hostile towards the Soviet Union and China; he was the minister responsible for the Australian Secret Intelligence Service.""Casey, Richard Gavin Gardner"; Australian Dictionary of Biography.9. More about the brutal conditioning program executed by the cult on its accolytes. Notice, again, the use of multiple identities, passports and birthdates for the children. What are they used for?…Once initiated, came the 'go-through' and that meant LSD trips. Everyone knew that it was an inevitable consequence of initiation, one of the rituals that was integral to the spiritual development of the new initiate. I've been present at many 'go-throughs' of people in the sect and ended up having at least a dozen myself.During a 'go-through' you were supposed to look at yourself and see the badness inside, to regress to significant incidents in childhood and in previous lives which affected your personality and retarded your spiritual development. The drug, which Anne sometimes called the 'herb' or the 'dream medicine', was meant to make this easier. It was also meant to make the spiritual bonding easier between master and disciple. You were supposed to recognise her as the "one true master", Christ incarnate.She would come in to people when they were under and ask, "Do you know who I am?" The correct answer was, "the Lord Incarnate". The incorrect answer meant you weren't 'working' hard enough. "Working" was 'looking at yourself' and realising what a "horrible" person you were, repenting for your sins and purifying yourself.Before my first 'go-through' I was deprived of sleep for several nights and made to read 'Yoga and the Bible'. Beforehand I'd watched one of my brothers get down on his knees and beg me not to hate him for being a closet homosexual. This confession had been wrung out of him by Anne after several days of intensive 'working' under the drug. He felt that he was a failure and I did my best to tell him that he'd never be a failure to me because I loved him. We were all scared of revealing our weaknesses but doubted that we would be able to hold anything back once under the influence of the drugs.Anne's technique, pretty typical, of keeping us awake for several days before a 'go-through' meant that we were incredibly vulnerable anyway. You have to hand it to Anne, she knew her stuff; this was chronic sleep deprivation and it added to the strain of the whole experience. Even today, I find if I am really tired I'm prone to flashbacks of LSD and it is harder to cope than it should be. Add to that the sensory deprivation, for I was placed in a quiet and dark room and never knew whether it was day or night.…It was also at this time in 1984, just before my initiation, that Anne changed my name and gave me a new identity. No longer was I to be called Andree who was born in June, July or maybe September. Now, for some reason that I never knew, I was called Sarah. I was now a triplet and had even changed nationalities: I was now born in New Zealand on 16 November 1970. I even had a passport to prove this.It may seem bizarre now but at the time I took this in my stride. I didn't even consider it strange that Anne had never told me this information up to now, that previously I had believed I was someone else. This sort of thing – sudden changes in our reality– was par for the course in our lives and we never questioned surprises. We were used to unpredictability as far as Anne was concerned. I hated the name Andree anyway and being a triplet was more interesting than being a single. I now know that there were several passports in my name, a couple of which were Australian. They all had different birth-dates. I also had several birth certificates in different names and in different states.. . .Unseen, Unheard, Unknown; by Sarah Moore.10. Sarah Moore suggests a possible reason for the group's apparent ability to escape legal retribution for their activities.Of interest and possible significance, also, is the allegation by Moore that Sandoz–part of the old I.G. Farben complex–was providing the group with free LSD. Sandoz also bought the family business of Swiss Nazi financier Carl Lundstrom, thereby empowering him with the capital with which he has realized his political endeavors.Among those endeavors is the Pirate Bay downloading website, with an associated political party (the Pirate Party) and PRQ server, which hosts WikiLeaks. As we will see in FTR #725, the Pirate Party is helping sponsor WikiLeaks' presence in Sweden.…The bulk of the sect was made up of professional people. Without their support and participation, Anne Hamilton-Byrne would never have become what she is today. It was their names, or most importantly, the letters that went after their names, that gave her the credibility and social power she needed. It gave her the means to keep those she already had and to get more and similar people into the cult..These professional people: doctors, lawyers, engineers, architects, psychiatrists, nurses and social workers allowed her successfully to pull the wool over everyone's eyes for more than twenty years.Had The Family been a group of strangely dressed people meeting once or twice a week for meditation, an address by the Master, playing of music and chanting, they would never have gone unnoticed for so long. But pin-striped professionals in their conservative suits with their impeccable social credentials could get away with maintaining in their private life morals that were completely at variance with their professional ethics. They looked respectable, people thought, therefore they must be respectable.Who were these professionals? They were doctors who wrote out the prescriptions that controlled us; lawyers, who wrote out the Deed Polls that were needed to forge passports and birth certificates that created our false identities; social workers, who allowed Anne to by-pass normal channels to allow her to adopt, or simply steal in some instances, sixteen children; doctors and nurses who gave her contacts with rich dying people who then left their estates to her. It was the same doctors who signed their death certificates; psychiatrists who had people committed to Newhaven – the Family owned psychiatric hospital; and doctors and nurses who supervised the abuse of LSD,( which for a while they actually obtained free of charge from the Swiss drug company, Sandoz). . . .Idem.11. WikiLeaks' political orientation is clarified in an article published in The New Yorker. Note that the group's primary targets are "highly oppressive regimes in China, Russia and Central Eurasia"–the Earth Island about which we've spoken so often. They're also willing to work against the United States, obviously.WikiLeaks political orientation smacks of a Third Position, UNPO political orientation–one consistent with the Underground Reich.Do not fail to note the potential damage that could result from publishing the social security numbers of active-duty U.S. military personnel. This could lead to, among other things, the compromising of WMD technology, nukes in particular.. . . Assange, despite his claims to scientific journalism, emphasized to me that his mission is to expose injustice, not to provide an even-handed record of events. In an invitation to potential collaborators in 2006, he wrote, "Our primary targets are those highly oppressive regimes in China, Russia and Central Eurasia, but we also expect to be of assistance to those in the West who wish to reveal illegal or immoral behavior in their own governments and corporations." he has argued that a 'social movement" to expose secrets could " bring down many administrations that rely on concealing reality–including the US administration."Assange does not recognize the limits that traditional publishers do. Recently, he posted military documents that included the Social Security numbers of soldiers, and in the Bunker I asked him if WikiLeaks' mission would have been compromised if he had redacted these small bits. [Italics are mine–D.E.] He said that some leaks risked harming innocent people–"collateral damage, if you will"–but that he could not weigh the importance of every detail in every document. Perhaps the Social Security numbers would one day be important to researchers investigating wrongdoing, he said; by releasing the information he would allow judgment to occur in the open.A year and a half ago, WikiLeaks published the results of an Army test, conducted in 2004, of electromagnetic devices designed to prevent IED's from being triggered. The document revealed key aspects of how the devices functioned and also showed that they interfered with communication systems used by soldiers–information that an insurgent could exploit. By the time WikiLeaks published the study, the Army had begun to deploy newer technology, but some soldiers were still using the devices. I asked Assange if he would refrain from releasing information that he knew might get some one killed. He said that he had instituted a "harm-minimization policy," whereby people named in certain documents were contacted before publication, to warn them, but that there were also instances where the members of WikiLeaks might get "blood on our hands." . . . ."No Secrets" by Raffi Khatchadourian; The New Yorker; 6/7/2010.12. More about the sensitive nature of what WikiLeaks publishes. It might cause loss of life and/or limb by U.S., coalition, or Afghan personnel.. . . . In 2007, he published thousands of pages of secret military information detailing a vast number of Army procurements in Iraq and Afghanistan. He and a volunteer spent weeks building a searchable database, studying the Army's purchase codes and adding up the cost of the procurements–billions of dollars in all. The database catalogued materiel that every unit had ordered: machine guns, Humvees, cash-counting machines, satellite phones. Assange hoped that journalists would pore through it, but barely any did. "I am so angry," he said. 'This was such a fucking fantastic leak: the Army's force structure of Afghanistan and Iraq, down to the last chair, and nothing." . . .Idem.13. Another aspect of WikiLeaks that has attracted interest concerns their obfuscation of funding, creating questions about where the money they collect is actually going.The secret-spilling website WikiLeaks appears to be a frugal spender, tapping less than 5 percent of the funds received through two of its three donation methods, according to the third-party foundation that manages those contributions.WikiLeaks has received 640,000 euros (U.S. $800,000) through PayPal or bank money transfers* since late December, and spent only 30,000 euros (U.S. $38,000) from that funding, says Hendrik Fulda, vice president of the Berlin-based Wau Holland Foundation.The money has gone to pay the travel expenses of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and spokesman Daniel Schmitt, as well as to cover the costs of computer hardware, such as servers, and leasing data lines, says Fulda. WikiLeaks does not currently pay a salary to Assange or other volunteers from this funding, though there have been discussions about doing so in the future, Fulda adds. The details have not yet been worked out. . . .. . . . The site got another boost in donations in April after it published the controversial video showing a 2007 U.S. Army helicopter attack in Baghdad. WikiLeaks claimed it raised more than $150,000 in less than a week after the release of the video. A U.S. Army intelligence analyst named Bradley Manning was since arrested and charged with being WikiLeaks' source for the video. Assange and other WikiLeaks volunteers have claimed that the organization commissioned lawyers to defend Manning, and the group has campaigned for more donations from the public to cover the legal expenses.Fulda said that no money handled by the foundation has gone to pay expenses for Manning's defense. [Italics are mine, D.E.] He didn't know if WikiLeaks obtained money from other sources for the purpose. He said, however, that his foundation would have no problem in principle paying such legal expenses. . . ."WikiLeaks Cash Flows In, Drips Out" by Kim Zetter; wired.com; 7/13/2010.14. Many of the organization's critics have noted the sharp contrast between the opaque nature of its operations and the drive for total transparency it demands on the part of the organizations it scrutinizes. In the next program about WikiLeaks, we will examine the Wau Holland foundation at greater length.The controversial website WikiLeaks, which argues the cause of openness in leaking classified or confidential documents, has set up an elaborate global financial network to protect a big secret of its own—its funding.Some governments and corporations angered by the site's publications have already sued WikiLeaks or blocked access to it, and the group fears that its money and infrastructure could be targeted further, founder Julian Assange said in an interview in London shortly after publishing 76,000 classified U.S. documents about the war in Afghanistan in July. The move sparked international controversy and put WikiLeaks in the spotlight.In response, the site has established a complex system for collecting and disbursing its donations to obscure their origin and use, Mr. Assange said. Anchoring the system is a foundation in Germany established in memory of a computer hacker who died in 2001.WikiLeaks's financial stability has waxed and waned during its short history. The site shut down briefly late last year, citing a lack of funds, but Mr. Assange said the group has raised about $1 million since the start of 2010.WikiLeaks's lack of financial transparency stands in contrast to the total transparency it seeks from governments and corporations. . . ."How WikiLeaks Keeps Its Funding Secret" by Jeanne Whalen and David Crawford; The Wall Street Journal; 8/23/2010.15. Another fascinating detail concerning the tangled web that is WikiLeaks concerns the PRQ server, based in Sweden. In addition to hosting WikiLeaks, it is the base for Pirate Bay, a controlling interest in which is owned by Carl Lundstrom, a prominent Swedish Nazi and financier of that country's leading fascist political party. It is unclear if this would give Swedish Nazi elements to information from documents accessed by WikiLeaks, but that seems a reasonable possibility.Note that Lundstrom sold his family business to the Sandoz company. Part of the old I.G. Farben complex, it is the firm that developed LSD and, according to Sarah Moore, provided it gratis to the Hamilton-Byrne cult. Note that theelements of the old I.G. Farben firm have coalesced into an essential element of the Bormann capital network, the economic component of the Underground Reich.In FTR #725, we will examine more elements of linkage between the Pirate Bay milieu and WikiLeaks.A Swedish Internet company linked to file-sharing hub The Pirate Bay says it's helping online whistle-blower WikiLeaks release classified documents from servers located in a Stockholm suburb. Mikael Viborg, the owner of theWeb hosting company PRQ, on Friday showed The Associated Press the site — the basement of a drab office building — in Solna on the condition that the exact location was not revealed."This is the office. The server room is further inside," the 28-year-old Viborg said, with the door to the office cracked open. Desks with computers, documents, and empty pastry boxes and soda cans could be seen inside before he closed the door.WikiLeaks posted more than 76,900 classified military and other documents, mostly raw intelligence reports from Afghanistan, on its website July 25. The White House angrily denounced the leaks, saying they put the lives of Afghan informants and U.S. troops at risk.The secretive website gives few details about its setup, but says its "servers are distributed over multiple international jurisdictions and do not keep logs. Hence these logs cannot be seized." . . ." Swedish Web Hosting Firm Confirms WikiLeaks Link" by Karl Ritter [AP]; msnbc.com; 8/6/2010.Posted by Dave Emory
Category: For The RecordTags: CIA, Cults, Drug, Earth Island, LSD, Mind Control, MKULTRA, Third Position, Underground Reich, UNPO, Vatican
Introduction: The second program about the WikiLeaks network highlights the organization's links with intelligence services around the world, as well as connections the group has with the Swedish Nazi milieu described in the late Stieg Larsson's novels and the movies made from them. WikiLeaks receives support from Pirate Bay and its associated Pirate Parties. Composed largely of idealistic, relatively young hackers, most left of center, Pirate Bay is controlled by [40%] investor Carl Lundstrom, a prominent Swedish fascist.John Young, one of WikiLeaks' founders turned critic of the organization harbors deep suspicions concerning the group." . . . they're acting like a cult. They're acting like a religion. They're acting like a government. They're acting like a bunch of spies. They're hiding their identity. They don't account for the money. They promise all sorts of good things. They seldom let you know what they're really up to. . .There was suspicion from day one that this was entrapment run by someone unknown to suck a number of people into a trap. So we actually don't know. But it's certainly a standard counterintelligence technique. And they're usually pretty elaborate and pretty carefully run. They'll even prosecute people as part of the cover story. That actually was talked about at (Sunday's) panel. They'll try to conceal who was informing and betraying others by pretending to prosecute them. . . ." [Italics are mine–D.E.]. Young harbors many other suspicions about the group as well.
WikiLeaks kingpin Julian Assange boasts of his links to Australian intelligence and the Wau Holland Foundation in Germany (which is helping with WikiLeaks' financing) consults with the BND, the successor organization to the Gehlen spy outfit that jumped from the Third Reich to the CIA and the Federal Republic of Germany at the end of World War II. Assange's e-mails reveal that the group was founded by dissident expatriates from Russia, China and Tibet–a description that sounds very much like a Western intelligence front of some kind.Central to assessing WikiLeaks' intelligence connections is the concept of the "Turned Hacker Syndrome," to coin a term. It is common for criminal hackers to be "turned" after they are brought to justice–they are put to work for the authorities using their skills against some of their former associates and/or for the benefit of their former adversaries.Assange himself got a wrist slap from the Australian authorities after hacking national security databases maintained by elements of Western intelligence, suggesting the distinct possibility that Assange was "turned" and is working for one or more intelligence services. In addition, the WikiLeaks-associated Wau Holland Foundation also gives evidence of being a "Turned Hacker" element.A fascinating detail not included in the original broadcast concerns the fact that Moneybookers, the company that was handling 0nline contributions to WikiLeaks is a subsidiary of Investcorp, a company that is inextricably linked with the milieu of the BCCI, an intelligence bank that was used for machinations in the Iran-Contra scandal, drug trafficking, the Afghan mujahideen support effort and terrorism. Investcorp is inextricably linked with elements of the Gulf elite who are connected to the Bush family interests, as well as to the events surrounding 9/11.
As discussed in FTR #707, Sweden (in which WikiLeaks has located its operations) hosts a vigorous fascist community, connected to some of its wealthiest citizens, its intelligence servicesand an international criminal milieu involved with various forms of criminal sex trafficking.In remarkable fashion, the world of WikiLeaks overlaps the world portrayed by the late Stieg Larsson in his Millenium novels and the movies made from them (The Girl with the Dragoon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest.) In the Larsson novels/movies, we find the intertwining of the world of computer hackers, Nazis (old and new), sex trafficking and criminal sexuality. We find the same elements in the WikiLeaks story. (A knowledgeable source familiar with the Swedish political landscape assured author Christopher Hitchens that everything in the Larsson novels/movies actually took place!)Program Highlights Include: Review of Assange's relationship with The Family of Anne Hamilton-Byrne; Assange's possible indictment for sexual molestation; PRQ server's hosting of a pedophile chat forum(PRQ also hosts Pirate Bay and WikiLeaks); the Swedish Pirate Party's sponsorship of WikiLeaks in Sweden (the Party is closely connected to Pirate Bay); the Swiss Pirate Party's hosting of WikiLeaks following DNS attacks; the WikiLeaks'use of a company owned by a co-founder (with Lundstrom) of Pirate Bay as an emergency fund-raising conduit; review of the financing of Pirate Bay by Nazi financier Carl Lundstrom; Lundstrom's suggestion that Pirate Bay's operations be moved to Argentina; Pirate Bay's acquisition by a Swedish company; the mysterious offshore entity that is the corporate shell of Pirate Bay; indications that the stock of that Swedish company may have been subject to insider trading; the resignation of the German Pirate Party's lone member of Parliament because of possession of child pornography; WikiLeaks' release of the East Anglia University documents, which cast aspersions on the research underscoring global warming ("progressives" tend to forget this about WikiLeaks); the death of Nobel Prize winning climatologist Stephen Schneider (who was receiving death threats from neo-Nazis and was on a flight from Sweden.)1. Among those who harbor suspicions concerning the possible involvement of WikiLeaks with elements of the intelligence community is one of the group's founders, John Young (now a prominent critic of the group).In addition, he notes that WikiLeaks has behaved in a mercenary manner, seeking generous amounts of funding. Young also notes that the organization has behaved deceptively with regard to its advisory board. Having himself been the focal point of government inquiries, Young is also skeptical of Assange's accounts of being harrassed by sinister "government agents."Lastly, Young doesn't think that WikiLeaks' strategic retreat to Sweden is likely to bear fruit–according to Young, no hacker outfit is "takedown-proof."John Young was one of WikiLeaks' early founders. Now he's one of the organization's more prominent critics.Young, a 74-year-old architect who lives in Manhattan, publishes a document-leaking Web site called Cryptome.org that predates WikiLeaks by over a decade. He's drawn fire from Microsoft after posting leaked internal documents about police requests, irked the U.K. government for disclosing the names of possible spies, and annoyed Homeland Security by disclosing a review of Democratic National Convention security measures.Cryptome's history of publicizing leaks–while not yielding to pressure to remove them–is what led Young to be invited to join Wikileaks before its launch over three years ago. He also agreed to be the public face of the organization by listing his name on the domain name registration.Operating a Web site to post leaked documents isn't very expensive (Young estimates he spends a little over $100 a month for Cryptome's server space). So when other Wikileaks founders started to talk about the need to raise $5 million and complained that an initial round of publicity had affected "our delicate negotiations with the Open Society Institute and other funding bodies," Young says, he resigned from the effort.In the last few weeks, after the arrest of Army intelligence analyst Bradley Manning cast a brighter spotlight on Wikileaks, Young has been trying to trace Wikileaks' money flows. On July 17, Wikileaks asked supporters for $200,000 to pay for Mannings' attorneys, even though co-founder Julian Assange said a few days earlier that the organization had already raised $1 million.CNET caught up with Young at the Next HOPE hacker conference here last weekend, where he was attending the Wikileaks keynote speech. Following is a transcript made from a recorded interview with Young, lightly edited for space.Q: How many hours a day or days a week do you spend on Cryptome?
Young: Well, it varies. When I'm doing professional practice work, it's very little. I just answer e-mail and when something hot comes in, I'll put it up. Most of my time is spent on my architectural practice. So I do Cryptome between when I have time to get to it. It's by no means a full-time activity.What you're doing sounds a lot like what Wikileaks is doing, no?
Young: Only superficially, Declan, because, and we can talk more about this, I initially thought that was what they were going to be doing when I first agreed to participate. But it became clear right away that they were going to set up an operation with multiple people involved. So the first difference is that I don't run an operation. I don't have any people working on this. This is strictly–and I like the term myself, but other people hate it–it's strictly an amateur version.It's not like Wikileaks and their grand goals. I've never had any desire to overturn governments or do any of these noble things that they want to do. Or jack up journalism. This was just a way to get certain kinds of documents out to the public.And so when they explained the amount of money they were going to try to raise, that was the basis for parting company with them. I thought it was going to be more like Cryptome, which is a collective of people contributing their time to it and not a centralized operation raising lots of money. Cryptome is not into that kind of thing. We parted company at that point. We're still not like Wikileaks in that we don't do any promotional work for our activities.Who were the other Wikileaks founders?Young: I'm not going to talk about those. I'll say Julian (Assange) was clearly there. I elected to conceal those names when I published these messages. And I think it's basically a violation of Cryptome's policy–to publish the names of people who do not want to be identified.You had a falling-out with the other Wikileaks founders?
Young: Yes. But it was over this: someone said that the initial goal was $5 million. That caught my attention. One, because I think the type of stuff I was going to publish, you should never do it for money. Only because that contaminates the credibility and it turns it into a business opportunity where there's great treachery and lying going on.And it will contaminate Wikileaks. It always does. In fact, that's the principal means by which noble endeavors are contaminated, the money trail. That's pretty obvious. I happen to think that amateur stuff is better than paid stuff.How long were you involved before you resigned?
Young: Not long. A few weeks. It wasn't long. However, one of the things that happened is that somehow I got subscribed to that list under another name and the messages kept coming in. I got to keep reading what they were saying about me after they booted me off. The messages kept coming in. So I published those too.Did they criticize you for, well, leaking about Wikileaks?
Young: They certainly did. They accused me of being an old fart and jealous. And all these things that come up, that typically happen when someone doesn't like you. That's okay. I know you would never do that and journalists never do that, but ordinary people do this all the time.Because journalism is a noble profession in all its guises?Young: That's right. And there's no back-biting there.Over the years you've been running Cryptome, you've had some encounters with federal agencies. What visits did you have and what were the agents concerned about?
Young: They were most concerned that we published lists. The names of spies. That was the first issue that brought us to their attention. There was a request, so we were told, from one of the British intelligence people to have that list removed.And did you remove it?Young: No. And not only that, but the FBI was always very polite. They said you've done nothing illegal, we're not pursuing a criminal investigation. These are just courtesies we're offering other governments. We had one with the Brits and one with the Japanese that brought them to our door.You had no other interaction with, say, Homeland Security?Young: The other was when we started our eyeball series of publishing photos. That brought one visit and one phone call. But again, they were polite and said there's nothing illegal about this. They never used a negative term. They just said the issue has been raised with us.And by the way, I did a FOIA trying to get records of these visits, but I could never find anything. I did get business cards, though, and I asked for ID. They were very polite and gave me business cards and I published all that. They asked me not to publish their names. But what the hell, Declan, what else do I have to go with?So if you've been publishing sensitive government information for so long, why have you not had the same encounters that Wikileaks has had? [Ed. Note: Wikileaks has claimed its representatives have been harassed by U.S. government agents.]I don't think they've had any encounters. That's bogus. But that's okay. I know a lot of people who talk about how the government's after them. It's a fairly well-worn path. You know it from your own field. It remains to be seen whether any of this stuff holds up or not.One of the tests is: unless you go to jail, it's all bogus. When I go to jail, you'll say he actually did it, finally. He came up with something that offended someone. So far that hasn't happened, no indictments or anything. These polite visits are the closest I've come.Professionals are going to have nothing to do with Wikileaks, as you probably know if you check around. People who know security will not have anything to do with Wikileaks. But the public will.Wikileaks pledges to maintain the confidentiality of sources and stressed that in the presentation over the weekend. Do you offer your contributors the same guarantee?Young: No. That's just a pitch. You cannot provide any security over the Internet, much less any other form of communication. We actually post periodically warnings not to trust our site. Don't believe us. We offer no protection. You're strictly on your own.We also say don't trust anyone who offers you protection, whether it's the U.S. government or anybody else. That's a story they put out. It's repeated to people who are a little nervous. They think they can always find someone to protect them. No, you can't. You've got to protect yourself. You know where I learned that? From the cypherpunks.So Wikileaks cannot protect people. It's so leaky. It's unbelievable how leaky it is as far as security goes. But they do have a lot of smoke blowing on their site. Page after page after page about how they're going to protect you.And I say, oh-oh. That's over-promising. The very over-promising is an indication that it doesn't work. And we know that from watching the field of intelligence and how governments operate. When they over-promise, you know they're hiding something. People who are really trustworthy do not go around broadcasting how trustworthy I am.It sounds like you've become more critical of Wikileaks over time.Young: It's not just them. It's also that they're behaving like untrustworthy organizations. So yes, if the shoe fits, fine.I don't want to limit this to Wikileaks, but yes, they're acting like a cult. They're acting like a religion. They're acting like a government. They're acting like a bunch of spies. They're hiding their identity. They don't account for the money. They promise all sorts of good things. They seldom let you know what they're really up to. They have rituals and all sorts of wonderful stuff. So I admire them for their showmanship and their entertainment value. But I certainly would not trust them with information if it had any value, or if it put me at risk or anyone that I cared about at risk.Nevertheless, it's a fascinating development that's come along, to monetize this kind of thing. That's what they're up to. You start with free samples.You've been trying to follow some of Wikileaks' money flows. You contacted the German charity and posted their response. They said they're going to have some information to you perhaps in early August. Does that make you feel any better about the money trail?Young: No. To clarify, they're going to publish it on their Web site. They said, "you could mirror it or point to it." So it's not just for me.But it's only a tiny sliver of what Wikileaks claims it's raised. whether Wikileaks has raised a million dollars as they've claimed, or whether they're trying to prime the pump, I don't know. (German charity) Wal Holland has only handled a very tiny amount of this, and they've said that, "We know nothing about the rest." . . .. . . There was suspicion from day one that this was entrapment run by someone unknown to suck a number of people into a trap. So we actually don't know. But it's certainly a standard counterintelligence technique. And they're usually pretty elaborate and pretty carefully run. They'll even prosecute people as part of the cover story. That actually was talked about at (Sunday's) panel. They'll try to conceal who was informing and betraying others by pretending to prosecute them. [Italics are mine–D.E.] . . .2. Young leaked WikiLeaks e-mails, which indicate that dissident exiles from China, Russia and elsewhere founded the group. From this description–again, derived from WikiLeaks' own e-mails, it sounds like the group is associated with a right-wing intelligence network–one that is also willing to work against U.S. interests. Among the elements that should be considered in this regard are the UNPO and the Safari Club. It appears that Assange imagined that he would be able to fleece CIA and Western intelligence services."1. WL was founded by Chinese dissidents, mathematicians and startup company technologists, from the US, Taiwan, Europe, Australia and South Africa.1.1 Our advisory board, which is still forming, includes representatives from expat Russian and Tibetan refugee communities, reporters, a former US intelligence analyst and cryptographers.2. There are currently 22 people directly involved in the project.3. We haven't sought public feedback so far, but dissident communities have been been very gracious with their assistance."To: John YoungFrom: WikileaksSubject: martha stuart pgpDate: Sun, 7 Jan 2007 12:20:25 –0500J. We are going to fuck them all. Chinese mostly, but not entirely a feint. Invention abounds. Lies, twists and distorts everywhere needed for protection. Hackers monitor Chinese and other intel as they burrow into their targets, when they pull, so do we.Inexhaustible supply of material. Near 100,000 documents/emails a day. We're going to crack the world open and let it flower into something new. If fleecing the CIA will assist us, then fleece we will. We have pullbacks from NED, CFR, Freedomhouse and other CIA teats. We have all of pre 2005 Afghanistan. Almost all of India fed. Half a dozen foreign ministries. Dozens of political parties and consulates, Worldbank, apec, UN sections, trade groups, Tibet and Fulan Dafa associations and… Russian phishing mafia who pull data everywhere. We're drowning. We don't even know a tenth of what we have or who it belongs to. We stopped storing it at 1Tb."http://cryptome.org/wikileaks/wikileaks-leak.htm3. As discussed in FTR #724, WikiLeaks has been collecting funds (in part) through the Wau Holland Foundation in Berlin. (The foundation has indicated that the group's fundraising is fairly mysterious–they have claimed to be raising money for the defense of Bradley Manning (the apparent source of the "Collateral Murder" documents). Yet it appears that they haven't allocated any funds for that purpose.One of the things that is noteworthy about the Wau Holland Foundation is the organization's apparent links to the German intelligence service–the BND. Central to understanding this program is the concept of what–for lack of a better term– could be called "Turned Hacker Syndrome."Frequently, hackers who have been "taken down" are "turned"–they are put to work for the very governments against whose laws they have transgressed. The possibility that the CCC may have been "turned" is one to be seriously considered.Before WikiLeaks became associated with CCC, members of that group hacked into sensitive NATO and U.S. databases on behalf of the KGB, which rewarded their charges with drugs and money. Following that hack, one CCC luminary was found hanged (an alleged suicide, his feet were still on the ground) and another was burned to death after having been doused with an gasoline. Wau Holland himself died of a stroke at the age of 49.. . . Twenty years later, the CCC now has to continue without its honorary president Wau Holland, also known as Herwart Holland-Moritz. Holland suffered a stroke in late May and fell into a coma; he died Sunday morning, age 49. . . . Holland taught his fellow CCCers to never hack for profit, to alwaysbe open about what they were up to, and to fight for an openinformation society. He was deeply embarrassed when some CCCers soldtheir discoveries from within the U.S. military computer network tothe KGB. This incident and the subsequent discussions in the clubbrought the next generation to the CCCs helm.While the new leadership has a less strict moralistic, more postmodernsense of hacking, it remains true to the CCCs political objectives.Holland became the clubs honorary president. Under his stewardship,the CCC gained considerable status in German politics, with itsspeakers invited by the parliament, telecoms firms, banks and even thesecret service . . .http://lists.jammed.com/ISN/2001/07/0082.html4. Assange himself may be something of a "turned hacker." Is he connected to Australian intelligence, as he claims? Is an element of that connection the wrist slap he received for his criminal hacking in Australia?. . . Programming quickly became hacking once Assange got an Internet connection, and soon he was accessing government networks and bank mainframes. He was arrested in 1991 and charged with more than 30 criminal counts related to his hacking. Facing as many as 10 years in prison, Assange struck a plea deal.During sentencing, the judge ruled that Assange only had to pay a fine. Assange's hacks were not malicious; they were the harmless result of "inquisitive intelligence," said the judge. . . ."Julian Assange: The Hacker Who Created WikiLeaks" by Scott Bland; The Christian Science Monitor;7/26/2010.5. Assange has claimed he was warned by "Australian intelligence" that the "Pentagon" would try to discredit him.A top Swedish prosecutor said on Wednesday she was reopening an investigation into rape allegations against Julian Assange, the founder of whistleblowing website WikiLeaks.…Assange has denied the charges, which a lower official had withdrawn two weeks ago, and said he has been warned by Australian intelligence that he could face a campaign to discredit him after leaking the documents. . . . [Italics are mine–D.E.]"Sweden Reopens WikiLeaks Founder Rape Investigation" by Simon Johnson and Patrick Lannin [Reuters];msnbc.com; 9/1/2010.6.
Recall that in FTR #724, we examined Assange's relationship with "The Family," which has apparent connections to Australian intelligence. (Well-connected beyond anything one could suppose from "coincidence" in the civilian sector, the cult cared for Lord Casey, the Australian governmental minister in charge of overseeing the Australian intelligence service.) Although Assange dismisses his relationship to the group as having spent years fleeing with his mother from the group's attempts at seizing his half-brother, this "flight" entailed his mother repeatedly seeking refuge in the same places and telling friends what she was doing and where she was doing it.Was this "flight" actually part of the creation of a "legend"–a plausibly deniable cover for intelligence work? It should be noted that the group repeatedly caught up with Assange and his mother. Was Assange tipping them off? Was this part of the cover all along? Might this have been intended to explain any future, potentially troublesome eyewitness accounts of contact between the group, Assange and his mother?The possibility that this story involves the creation of a "legend" is not one to be too readily cast aside.Assange's strange white/platinum/blonde hair is a subject of interest. Characteristic of children raised in the Anne Hamilton-Byrne cult, the origins of that odd coif are explained by his mother as stemming from yet another child custody case. Supposedly, his hair turned white because of the trauma of repeated court appearances in connection with attempts at gaining custody of his daughter. Is this part of the creation of a legend, as well. It appears that Assangedies his hair–as illustrated above and at right.. . . In 1999, after nearly three dozen legal hearings and appeals, Assange worked out a custody agreement with his wife. Claire told me, "We had experienced very high levels of adrenaline, and I think that after it all finished I ended up with P.T.S.D. It was like coming back from a war. You just can't interact with normal people to the same degree, and I am sure that Jules has some P.T.S.D. that is untreated." Not long after the court cases, she said, Assange's hair, which had been dark brown, became drained of all color. . ."No Secrets" by Jeff Khatchatourian; The New Yorker; 6/7/2010.7. Interestingly, and significantly, it was while "on the run" from the Hamilton-Byrne cult that Assange began his hacking career. It should be noted that his hacks involved targets that would certainly have placed him on the radar screen of Western intelligence! Again, was the wrist-slap he received symptomatic of "Turned Hacker Syndrome"?. . . While on the run, Claire rented a house across the street from an electronics shop. Assange would go there to write programs on a Commodore 64, until Claire bought it for him, moving to a cheaper place to raise the money. He was soon able to crack into well-known programs, where he found hidden messages left by their creators. . . .. . . He joined with two hackers to form a group that became known as the International Subversives, and they broke into computer systems in Europe and North America, including networks belonging to the U.S. Department of Defense and to the Los Alamos National Laboratory. . . .Idem.8. The conclusion of the program highlights the group's current place of operations–Sweden–and the circumstances under which they arrived in that nation.WikiLeaks has been touting Sweden as a safe base of operations–for those who would work with them. WikiLeaks co-founder and critic John Young says that WikiLeaks' assurances of security are illusory.BBC: What do you think about Wikileaks being based in a country which will protect it from takedown.Cryptome: There is no place where a takedown cannot occur. The distribution system for communication can always be blocked and servers confiscated. Only multiple, growing and changing public outlets for prohibited information can offer a chance of avoiding shutdown, demonization, corruption through finance and bribery and orchestrated distrust. . . ."BBC Interviews Cryptome"; cryptome.org; 1/14/2010.9a. Another fascinating detail concerning the tangled web that is WikiLeaks concerns the PRQ server, based in Sweden. In addition to hosting WikiLeaks, it is the base for Pirate Bay, a controlling interest in which is owned by Carl Lundstrom, a prominent Swedish Nazi and financier of that country's fascist political parties (including the Sweden Democrats, who enjoyed considerable success in the recent Swedish elections.) It is unclear if this would give Swedish Nazi elements access to information from documents accessed by WikiLeaks, but that seems a reasonable possibility. [Knowledgeable contacts in the Silicon Valley have told me that that would have been the case.]Note that Lundstrom sold his family business to the Sandoz company. Part of the old I.G. Farben complex, it is the firm that developed LSD and, according to Sarah Moore, provided it gratis to the Hamilton-Byrne cult. Note that theelements of the old I.G. Farben firm have coalesced into an essential element of the Bormann capital network, the economic component of the Underground Reich.A Swedish Internet company linked to file-sharing hub The Pirate Bay says it's helping online whistle-blower WikiLeaks release classified documents from servers located in a Stockholm suburb. Mikael Viborg, the owner of theWeb hosting company PRQ, on Friday showed The Associated Press the site — the basement of a drab office building — in Solna on the condition that the exact location was not revealed."This is the office. The server room is further inside," the 28-year-old Viborg said, with the door to the office cracked open. Desks with computers, documents, and empty pastry boxes and soda cans could be seen inside before he closed the door.WikiLeaks posted more than 76,900 classified military and other documents, mostly raw intelligence reports from Afghanistan, on its website July 25. The White House angrily denounced the leaks, saying they put the lives of Afghan informants and U.S. troops at risk.The secretive website gives few details about its setup, but says its "servers are distributed over multiple international jurisdictions and do not keep logs. Hence these logs cannot be seized." . . ." Swedish Web Hosting Firm Confirms WikiLeaks Link" by Karl Ritter [AP]; msnbc.com; 8/6/2010.9b. Ultimately, Pirate Bay was sold to Swedish gaming firm GGF. (It ultimately appears that the deal wasn't consummated due to the bankruptcy of GGF. Pirate Bay, in turn, is controlled by an offshore entity called Reservella, registered in the Seychelles.)The ultimate motive for a fascist like Lundstrom to fund Pirate Bay is, obviously, a matter of speculation. One possibility to be considered is the Serpent's Walk scenario, with the Underground Reich gaining control of all world media. (This is discussed at greater length in the long For The Record series about German Corporate Control of U.S. media. Recall BMG's alliance with Napster in the early part of the decade. Might Lundstrom have been grooming Pirate Bay for corporate takeover by an Underground Reich entity?)The lucrative commercialization of Napster may well have been one of the inspirations for GGF's takeover of Pirate Bay.Global Gaming Factory (GGF) has paid 60m kronor (£4.7m) to take over the site from its founders.Once it has taken control, GGF said it would start paying copyright fees for the movies, music and games linked to via the site. . . ."Pirate Bay Site Sold to Game Firm"; BBC News; 6/30/2009.9c. In that same context, it is worth noting that the quasi-populist ideological rhetoric surrounding Pirate Bay dovetails nicely with the sort of "fascist populism" marketed by the political parties financed by Lundstrom.. . . The money man, Carl Lundström, on whose servers The Pirate Bay [and WikiLeaks–D.E.] was housed, is straight out of the crime novels of Stieg Larsson. He inherited a fortune built on crispbread, and has a long history of involvement with extreme rightwing politics. In the 1980s, he was a member of "Keep Sweden Swedish", an anti-immigrant fringe group; he has financially backed the Sweden Democrats, a would-be populist and anti-immigrant party; and only this month the managing director of one of his companies was charged with a robbery in a small west-coast town, part of a feud within a neo-Nazi group. Lundström told the Metro newspaper (http://bit.ly/metro) after he sacked the man that he had known he was a party member, but not that he had gone to collect another member's computer with a submachine gun.Gottfrid Svartholm Varg and Frederik Neij, the nerds who run The Pirate Bay itself, have also been accused by the prosecutor of tax evasion, but deny that they were making any money from their business. Their attitude of sneering entitlement towards the government is all of a piece with their attitude towards the big content companies. . . .. . . I know that a little bit of the rhetoric around The Pirate Bay sounds leftwing – the idea that it is wrong for "international capital" to push Sweden around – but that's just populist, and could be found in the rhetoric of the kind of parties that Carl Lundström has supported too.The overwhelming impression is of a clash between two rightwing views, one that says it is all right to steal from the state, and one which says it is sinful to steal from corporations. . . ."The Pirate Bay trial Is the Collision of 'Can I?' and 'Should I?' Cultures" by Andrew Brown; The Guardian; 2/26/2009.9d. Interestingly, and perhaps significantly, the purchase of Pirate Bay by GGF took place the same week as the death of Michael Jackson. In FTR #695, we examined his untimely demise against the background of Bertelsmann's re-entry into the music business and Michael Jackson's ownership of the highly lucrative Beatles catalog. Might the two events have been linked–part of the Underground Reich's bid to increase its presence in the music business?Just before GGF's purchase of Pirate Bay, the stock increased dramatically in price, causing many to speculate that insider trading may have been involved.There have been two big music-business news stories in the past week. One has been – and still is – dominating all media outlets, and the other pretty much snuck in under the radar.The biggest story, of course, was the death of Michael Jackson and the resulting cancellation of his 50 gigs at the O2. . .. . . There are reports that subscribers are closing their accounts, and GGF is facing an insider-trading investigation after its stock saw a huge upswing in trades on Monday – the day before the deal was announced. . . ."Behind the Music: Pirate Bay's Purchase Proves they're not Altruistic"; The Guardian; 7/03/2009.9e. Lundstrom is alleged to have suggested moving Pirate Bay's operations to Argentina–certainly a hospitable place for a potential Bormann capital network business enterprise!. . . . The paper also talks about knowledge on Lundstrom's side about potential legal ramifications. Prosecutors say Ludstrom personally sent an SMS to Fredrik Neij on May 31st of 2006 to warn him about the raids against The Bay and its owners. Lundstrom supposedly also suggested in an email to move The Pirate Bay's operations to Argentina. . . ."Who Is the Fourth Man in the Pirate Bay Case?" by Janko Roettgers; Gigaom; 2/2/2008.9f. The precise corporate titular parent of the old Pirate Bay remains somewhat mysterious.. . . . Maybe more worrying; it's still unclear who's the owners of The Pirate Bay. There's no company with the name The Pirate Bay registered in Sweden. According to GGF's legal advisor Per Eric Alvsing, The Pirate Bay is owned by a company in the Seychelles, called Reservella, Dagens Industri writes. But he doesn't know who's the owner of Reservella. . . ."The Pirate Bay Sold to Swedish IT Company" by John Nylander; The Swedish Wire; 6/30/2009.9g. Pirate Bay sugar daddy Lundstrom has discussed his political sympathies. [The excerpt below is from Google translations. The Swedish sentence is followed by the English translation.]. . . Lundström har inte gjort någon hemlighet av sina sympatier för främlingsfientliga grupper, och förra året fanns hans namn med på kundregistret hos det nazistiska bokförlaget Nordiska Förlaget. Lundstrom has made no secret of his sympathy for the xenophobic groups, and last year was his name with the customer code of the Nazi publishing house Nordic Publishers.– Jag stöder dem genom att köpa böcker och musik. – I support them by buying books and music. Ni i media vill bara sprida missaktning om olika personer. You in the media just want to spread contempt for different people. Ni i media är fyllda av hat till Pirate Bay, avslutar en mycket upprörd Carl Lundström. You in the media is full of hatred to the Pirate Bay, finishing a very upset Carl Lundström.Nordiska Förlaget säljer vit makt musik och böcker som hyllar rasistiska våldshandlingar. Nordic publishing company sells white power music and books that celebrates the racist violence. Förlaget stöder nazisternas demonstration i Salem och bjöd in Ku Klux Klan ledaren till en föredragturné i Sverige. Publisher supports the Nazi demonstration in Salem and invited the Ku Klux Klan leader for a lecture tour in Sweden. . . ."The Goal: Take over all Piracy" by Peter Karlsson; realtid.se; 3/10/2006.10. As discussed in FTR #707, Sweden hosts a vigorous fascist community, connected to some of its wealthiest citizens, its intelligence services and an international criminal milieu involved with various forms of criminal sex trafficking.In remarkable fashion, the world of WikiLeaks intersects with the world portrayed by the late Stieg Larsson in his Millenium novels and the movies made from them (The Girl with the Dragoon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire andThe Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest.) In the Larsson novels/movies, we find the intertwining of the world of computer hackers, Nazis (old and new), sex trafficking and criminal sexuality. We find the same elements in the WikiLeaks story.Author Christopher Hitchens described the political/social environment portrayed by Larsson. Note that Larsson was the focal point of death threats and plots by Swedish Nazis, and that someone familiar with the Swedish political and legal scene said that everything Larsson wrote about actually happened! Furthermore, Larsson died on the anniversary of Die Krystallnacht (November 9th), a very important date in the Nazi world view. His strategically timed heart attack should be pondered in light of the Swedish Nazi milieu's links to that country's intelligence services. Such elements can simulate an apparent heart attack very easily.. . . In the Larsson universe the nasty trolls and hulking ogres are bent Swedish capitalists, cold-faced Baltic sex traffickers, blue-eyed Viking Aryan Nazis, and other Nordic riffraff who might have had their reasons to whack him. . . His best excuse for his own prurience is that these serial killers and torture fanciers are practicing a form of capitalism and that their racket is protected by a pornographic alliance with a form of Fascism, its lower ranks made up of hideous bikers and meth runners. This is not just sex or crime—it's politics! . . .And this is not the only murk that hangs around his death, at the age of 50, in 2004.To be exact, Stieg Larsson died on November 9, 2004, which I can't help noticing was the anniversary of Kristallnacht. Is it plausible that Sweden's most public anti-Nazi just chanced to expire from natural causes on such a date? Larsson's magazine, Expo, which has a fairly clear fictional cousinhood with "Millennium," was an unceasing annoyance to the extreme right. He himself was the public figure most identified with the unmasking of white-supremacist and neo-Nazi organizations, many of them with a hard-earned reputation for homicidal violence. The Swedes are not the pacific herbivores that many people imagine: in the footnotes to his second novel Larsson reminds us that Prime Minister Olof Palme was gunned down in the street in 1986 and that the foreign minister Anna Lindh was stabbed to death (in a Stockholm department store) in 2003. The first crime is still unsolved, and the verdict in the second case has by no means satisfied everybody.A report in the mainstream newspaper Aftonbladet describes the findings of another anti-Nazi researcher, named Bosse Schön, who unraveled a plot to murder Stieg Larsson that included a Swedish SS veteran. Another scheme misfired because on the night in question, 20 years ago, he saw skinheads with bats waiting outside his office and left by the rear exit. Web sites are devoted to further speculation: one blog is preoccupied with the theory that Prime Minister Palme's uncaught assassin was behind the death of Larsson too. Larsson's name and other details were found when the Swedish police searched the apartment of a Fascist arrested for a political murder. Larsson's address, telephone number, and photograph, along with threats to people identified as "enemies of the white race," were published in a neo-Nazi magazine: the authorities took it seriously enough to prosecute the editor. . . .Still, I have attended demonstrations by these Swedish right-wing thugs, and they are truly frightening. I also know someone with excellent contacts in the Swedish police and security world who assures me that everything described in the 'Millennium' novels actually took place. [Italics are mine–D.E.] And, apparently, Larsson planned to write as many as 10 in all. So you can see how people could think that he might not have died but been 'stopped.'" . . ."The Author Who Played with Fire" by Christopher Hitchens; Vanity Fair; 12/2009.11. In Sweden, Assange his been charged with "molestation," a sexual harassment offense.A top Swedish prosecutorsaid on Wednesday she was reopening aninvestigation into rape allegations againstJulian Assange, the founder of whistleblowingwebsite WikiLeaks.WikiLeaks published more than 70,000 secretmilitary files on Afghanistan in July in what U.S. officials have called one of the biggestsecurity breaches in U.S. military history.Assange has denied the charges, which alower official had withdrawn two weeks ago,and said he has been warned by Australianintelligence that he could face a campaign todiscredit him after leaking the documents.Neither Assange nor his lawyer could beimmediately reached for comment.Director of Public Prosecutions Marianne Nysaid she decided to reopen the investigationafter further review of the case."There is reason to believe that a crime hasbeen committed. Considering informationavailable at present, my judgment is that theclassification of the crime is rape," Ny said in astatement on the Prosecution Authority'swebsite."More investigations are necessary before afinal decision can be made," she added. Shealso said a preliminary investigation intocharges of molestation would be expanded tosexual coercion and sexual molestation."The case has a high priority," she toldReuters. She declined to say whether Assangehad already been questioned or give furtherinformation.Allegations of rape and molestation werebrought against Assange, an Australiancitizen, two weeks ago.The more serious charge was dropped almostimmediately, though prosecutors continued tolook into the molestation charge. . . ."Sweden Reopens WikiLeaks Founder Rape Investigation" by Simon Johnson and Patrick Lannin [Reuters];msnbc.com; 9/1/2010.12. The PRQ server (which serves Pirate Bay and WikiLeaks and is largely financed by Nazi luminary Carl Lundstrom) also serves a site that caters to pedophiles, who use it to "groom" potential partners.One question that suggests itself concerns the sexual abuse to which children of "The Family" were subjected (see FTR #724.) Is there any relationship between the systematic sexual abuse of children by the Hamilton-Byrne cult and the charges leveled against Assange? In turn, is there any link between those considerations and the Nazi-linked PRQ's hosting of both WikiLeaks and a pedophile site?About the pedophile site:Despite a new law designed to tackle grooming of young people by suspected paedophiles on internet websites, police are unable to act against those hosting chat forums, contact sites and advice pages."The so-called grooming law which came into force last July forbids sexually motivated contact with children over the internet. But the adult has to take some sort of initiative in that contact for it to be an offence — to arrange a date, buy a train ticket or such like," said Jonas Persson of the Swedish police to The Local on Friday.In the six months after the law was adopted the police received only 100 reports, despite the fact that more than half of Swedish girls aged 15 to17 claimed to have been subject to grooming attempts by adults over the internet before reaching the age of 15, according to a National Council for Crime Prevention (Brottsförebygganderådet — Brå) report from 2007.The law does not allow for the closure of websites or the prosecution of those behind them. Jonas Persson explained why:"I don't think a tightening of the legislation is desirable — it would come dangerously close to encroaching on freedom of expression legislation," he said.Legal obligations for those behind websites visited by suspected paedophiles and would-be "groomers" extend only to the removal of pictures and films which feature minors, or the publication of personal information.The Local has received information that a man resident in Stockholm is alleged to be behind a chat forum serving as a contact point for paedophiles and hosted by PRQ — a Swedish web-hosting firm run by Pirate Bay co-founders Gottfrid Svartholm Warg and Fredrik Neij, and also noted for hosting the Wikileaks whistle-blower website. [Italics are mine–D.E.]Anti-paedophilia activists claim to have made attempts to persuade PRQ to close the man's website but to no avail. . . ."Police Powerless to Close Paedophile Forums"; The Local [Sweden]; 4/9/2010.13a. Pirate Bay overlaps and is closely associated with a political party–The Pirate Party–that has branches in Sweden, Switzerland and Germany, among other countries. The Swedish Pirate Party is helping sponsor WikiLeaks' presence in the country, helping to provide them with a former underground nuclear shelter for an operating base.One of the world's most controversial websites now has one of the world's coolest datacenters.Andy Greenberg at Forbes has picked up on a Norwegian report that Wikileaks' servers are now hosted in Sweden's Pionen datacentre, housed inside a Cold War-era underground nuclear bunker. 30 metres below Stockholm, it reportedly has a single entrance with half-metre thick metal doors.The move has been initiated by the Swedish Pirate Party, who began looking after Wikileaks' hosting this month. "We have long admired Wikileaks", the Pirate Party's Rick Falkvinge told Norway's VG, claiming that as his party is hosting Wikileaks, an attack on Wikileaks is also regarded as an attack on a political party. . . ."Wikileaks Now Hosted from an Underground Nuclear Bunker" by Martin Bryant; thenextweb.com; 8/30/2010.13b. After WikiLeaks was the focal point of DOS and hacking attacks in November of 2010, the Swiss Pirate Party undertook to access WikiLeaks' material.. . . . On Friday, the Pirate Party of Switzerland — part of an international movement fighting for the free sharing of online content — said it owned the "wikileaks.ch" domain name and was happy to support WikiLeaks."I don't see an opportunity for a foreign government to reach into Switzerland," said Leenaars. "This is a very forward-looking move." . . .""WikiLeaks Diverts Traffic to European Websites amid U.S. Fury" [Reuters]; Vancouver Sun; 12/3/2010.13c. A start-up owned by a co-founder of the Swedish Pirate Bay (a controlling interest in which is owned by Swedish fascist Carl Lundstrom) remains as a conduit for donations for WikiLeaks.While major online financing services such as PayPal, MasterCard, and Visa have shut down their dealings with the embattled WikiLeaks, one microfinancing startup is still hanging on. Flattr, a micropayment startup created by Peter Sunde, co-founder of the infamous BitTorrent sharing site The Pirate Bay, still accepts donations on behalf of the document-leaking non-profit. . . .. . . Sunde has been a public advocate for Assange and WikiLeaks. He has also proposed a peer-to-peer DNS system that would prevent domain name registrations from being revoked, as was done with the WikiLeaks.org domain. . . ."WikiLeaks Still Funded by Pirate Bay Founder's Startup" by Kenneth Musante; Web Newser; 12/9/2010.13d. Following a number of organizations' refusal to continue accepting money for WikiLeaks, members of Anonymous,allied with Pirate Bay/Pirate Party, launched "Operation Payback," attacking numerous websites.
Julian Assange is a man who has made enemies. The editor-in-chief and creator of WikiLeaks is fighting battles on all fronts: legally, financially, personally and professionally, and even now sits in a jail cell in England following his arrest earlier today, after Sweden issued an arrest warrant stemming from four charges of sexual offences, including one of rape. But Assange is not without his allies, either. One of the more potentially powerful groups to throw in its support is the website 4chan, and its some of its members that are collectively known as Anonymous. The group that is either famous or infamous depending on your point of view, have begun a new campaign to support WikiLeaks and its creator that they are calling "Operation Avenge Assange".The hacker friendly website 4chan has begun to organize its members, known collectively as Anonymous, in an effort to prevent "the oppressive future which looms ahead." The "Operation Avenge Assange" will consist of a series of Internet attacks that have begun with PayPal.Operation Avenge Assange is a systematic attack that will target groups that Anonymous has deemed to have essentially treated Assange unfairly. The first target on the list is PayPal, which reports that cyber attacks have already begun. . . ."4chan-based Group 'Anonymous' Targets PayPal to Support WikiLeaks" by Ryan Fleming; Digital Trends; 12/7/2010.14. Whether coincidence or not, the German Pirate Party's lone member of parliament resigned following charges that he possessed child pornography!Former parliamentarian Jörg Tauss, the most prominent member of the German Pirate Party, has resigned from the party following his conviction for possessing child pornography last week.Two days after the Karlsruhe district court handed the 56-year-old a 15-month suspended sentence, Tauss said on Sunday that he would leave the party to avoid damaging its reputation, saying his presence would be "counterproductive.""We must be able to discuss our issues at our information stands and should not allow ourselves to be crippled by the 'Tauss debate.' For this reason I declare my exit from the party," the politician said Sunday on his blog, insisting he would still support the party. . . ."Tauss Leaves Pirate Party after Child Pornography Conviction"; The Local [Germany]; 5/31/2010.15. Although WikiLeaks has garnered publicity for its ostensible antiwar leaks, "progressives" have quickly forgotten that the group leaked the documents which proved to be the foundation of an attempt to discredit the notion of global warming.. . . Though Assange's most recent, well-known projects have had an antiwar bent – the recent Afghan war leaks, the infamous "collateral murder" video of a US helicopter crew gunning down a group that included two Reuters journalists in Iraq – his site does not appear to have an obvious ideology beyond exposing secrets.In other projects, Assange published a trove of text messages sent in the US on September 11, 2001, and e-mails from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit, which led many to believe that scientists were suppressing anti-global warming research and results. . . ."Julian Assange: the Hacker Who Created WikiLeaks"by Scott Bland; Christian Science Monitor; 7/26/2010.16. Recently deceased, Nobel-Prize winning climatologist Professor Stephen Schneider of Stanford University was receiving death threats from Neo-Nazis. These are the same kind of elements that were threatening the life of the late Stieg Larsson before he, too, died of an apparent heart attack.Administering drugs which can produce a fatal heart attack is a capability possessed by most modern intelligence services. The Swedish neo-Nazi milieu maintains close connections with the Swedish intelligence service.Were both men murdered? Might some of the Nazi/intelligence/industrialist links have manifested themselves in both instances?Stephen H. Schneider, a Stanford University biologist on the vanguard of climate-change research for four decades, who argued eloquently on human culpability in global warming and willingly threw himself into the political fray to explain and defend the scientific evidence, has died. He was 65. . . .Schneider had a heart attack Monday while flying to London from a science meeting in Stockholm, according to Stanford spokesman Dan Stober. [Italics are mine–D.E.] . . .. . . . Santer and Schneider were among the scientists who served on the international panel that shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former Vice President Al Gore, who in a statement Monday called Schneider a "prolific researcher and author … and a wonderful communicator" whose contributions to the advancement of climate science will be "sorely missed." . . .. . . He [Schneider] said he had received hundreds of abusive e-mails from critics, particularly since the Copenhagen climate change summit in December. A few weeks ago he told the London Guardian newspaper that his name was among those of several climatologists that appeared earlier this year on a death list on a neo-Nazi website [Italics are mine–D.E.]. . .
"Stephen H. Schneider Dies at 65; Stanford Expert on Climate Change" by Elaine Woo; Los Angeles Times; 7/20/2010.
17. WikiLeaks' has been collecting money through a subsidiary of Investcorp, controlled by the Gulf elite, including elements tied to the Saudi elite, Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood.The whistleblowing group WikiLeaks claims that it has had its funding blocked and that it is the victim of financial warfare by the US government.Moneybookers, a British-registered internet payment company that collects WikiLeaks donations, emailed the organisation to say it had closed down its account because it had been put on an official US watchlist and on an Australian government blacklist. . . .. . . . Moneybookers, which is registered in the UK but controlled by the Bahrain-based group Investcorp, would not make anyone available to explain the decision. Its public relations firm, 77PR, said: "We have never had any request, inquiry or correspondence from any authority regarding this former customer." Asked how this could be reconciled with the references in the correspondence to a blacklist, it said: "We stick with our original statement." . . ."WikiLeaks Says Funding Has Been Blocked after Government Blacklisting" by David Leigh and Rob Evans;guardian.co.uk; 10/14/2010.18. Investcorp features participation by numerous Gulf luminaries, including Abdullah Taha Bakhsh and Khalid bin Mahfouz. The entire milieu is inextricably linked with the BCCI. (Baksh was involved with Harken Energy, George W. Bush's failed energy companies.)Investcorp isn't your everyday investment company. It merely works with the very rich, preferably from the middle-east. In 2005 its portfolio is valued at 8.6 billion dollars.If we would be really accurate we would call Investcorp a leveraged buy-out company. It's WALLSTREET all over. Investcorp holds different funds to which you — not you, but they, the very rich — can subscribe. Investcorp then puts the companies it acquires into these funds and immediately has its money back (with a profit for the real shareholders of Investcorp).According to Time Magazine, Investcorp is known to have worked the books in the ninetees, making a losing company look like a profitmaker.Nemir Kirdar is president and CEO. Forbes puts him at number 206 on the Rich List. His excellency Abdul-Rahman Al-Ateequ, ex-minister of oil and finance of Kuwait, advisor to the emir of Bahrain and the first ambassador of Kuwait to the U.S.A. has been Chairman since the start of the investment company. Vice-president is, Ahmed Ali Kanoo, who manages about 1.5 billion dollars of the family fortune. Among the shareholders we find Sheik Ahmed Zki Yamani, ex minister of oil of Saudi-Arabia and seven members of the House of Saud.Also present in this group is Abdullah Taha Bakhsh, connected to different bank frauds. Until September 11th 2001 he was representative of the Saudi Bin Laden group in the U.S. According to the prospectus of Investcorp from 1992 the Minister of Finance of Bahrain is indirectly one of the major shareholders through a shell-company.This is where it gets really interesting. Abdullah Taha Bakshs, Abdul Rahman Al-Ateeqi were both important shareholders in the Bank of Credit and Commerce International. The BCCI went down in a sea of scandals in the early 90's. 23 billion dollars disappeared in the hole in 73 countries and still is missing. The American Justice Department calls BCCI a criminal organization under cover of a bank.The C.I.A. slushed funds through BCCI to the Mujahedin. This went quite easy because Osama Bin Laden had a few accounts at the BCCI. Illegal finance for arms deals with Iraq and Iran were being done at BCCI. Money laundering for the Escobar and Meddelin-cartel all went through BCCI. When the curtain fell 1 billion dollars worth of loans was booked to a random collection of Kuwaiti from the yellow pages.Khalid binMafhouz holds the number 2 slot at Investcorp with 25% of the shares. He currently is number 210 on the Times rich List. He was member of the board of BCCI and made a deal with the U.S. Justice Department. He paid 225 million dollars for claims, 37 million dollars in lieu of fines and 253 million dollars for claims.In 2003 it transpired that the Bank of England never stopped the British seat of BCCI though it knew the bank laundered money from drugs trade.Former president Manuel Noriega, former President Ferdinand Marcos, and Saddam Hussein were among the clientele. From complaints in South-Korea it is clear that about 120 members of staff from 33 embassies had put money at the BCCI.Khalid bin Mafhouz, explains he has financially backed the Mujahedin in Afghanistan. But then, so did the U.S. It may be useful to remind the reader that Osama Binladen was one of the leaders of the Mujahedin. Bakr Mohammed bin Laden, Osama's brother, has a seat on the executive board. . . .


text:
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subset: commoncrawl