Wars and Psywars

On September 9, 2019, President Donald J. Trump sacked his National Security Adviser, the fanatical neocon and Zionist John Bolton. Of course, as with all things related to Trump, there is controversy over this action, with Bolton insisting that he resigned rather than being dismissed. Regardless, neither men disputes the date of when the decision to part company was made: 9/9/19. If those nines were reversed, one would be left with 6/6/16, which is vaguely close to the number of the beast. Given with how events transpired since then, this interpretation seems surprisingly apt.

On September 14, 2019, Houthi rebels attacked two of the largest oil processing facilities of Saudi Aramco, the House of Saud's "state owned" oil company. The attacks were a blow to energy markets, to put it mildly. But that may only be the beginning of the fallout.

one of the Saudi Aramco facilities that was hit in the drone strike

Despite the Houthis taking responsibility for the attack in retaliation for the Saudi "intervention" in Yemen that has left thousands dead and millions displaced, a case was rapidly made for Iran being behind the attack. This rush to judgment surely brought a smile to the face of the mustached-one. Anyone who has followed Bolton's career knows he has been obsessed with attacking Iran for years now. 

While Bolton will not now get a chance to personally oversee the attack, enough pressure may be brought to bear against Trump to force the Orange One's hand. Bolton has been disappointed before, however. Earlier this summer, Iran shot down an American drone. Reportedly, Trump was poised to launch an attack against Iran in retaliation, with Bolton being one of the biggest proponents of the strike. But at the last minute, the Orange One backed down, probably because a conflict with Iran could escalate into a Third World War.

Bolton seems little concerned over such fallout (har har), however, if his recent comments before the Gatestone Institute are any indications. Gatestone is friendly territory for Bolton --the Mustache was a former chairman of the think-tank, which is predictably anti-Muslim and Zionist to the core. As such, it was also an apt starting point for Bolton's post-Trump tour. Things have not be going well for the Israeli far right of late.

In addition to Bolton's dismissal/resignation, longtime Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is currently fighting for both his political life and to avoid being prosecuted for corruption. Prior to the recent election, Netanyahu had pledged to annex sensitive areas in the West Bank with "maximum coordination" from Trump. The Orange One then announced Bolton's "resignation" literally minutes later on Twitter, paving the way for the right wing Likud party to fall short at the ballots days later.

Netanyahu

It was something of a shot across the bow from Trump, who has largely been Israel's lapdog thus far. Indeed, at least one former senior member of the administration has described the Orange One as having been "played" by Netanyahu since taking office. Certainly, Trump's militancy towards Iran has played well to the US Israeli lobby, but not such much to his America First supporters. And with his own election looming next year, Trump appears to have been attempting to pivot in recent months with regards to Iran. Besides calling off a strike this past summer, he also appears to have been making efforts to meet with Iran's president.

In this context, the Saudi Aramco attack is certainly curious, to put it mildly. Less so is Bolton's publicity tour to rally the troops. Predictably, Bolton repeatedly attacked Trump's foreign policy at the Gatestone lunch and even indicated that the recent Saudi Aramco attacks only occurred because Trump had backed down from bombing Iran during the summer.

At least two donors present at the lunch are most interesting for our purposes here. One was attorney Alan Dershowitz. Dershowitz has of course gained a considerable degree of infamy of late, both due to role he played in helping Jeffrey Epstein get a sweetheart plea deal in 2008, and the allegations that he had "relations" with some of Epstein's girls. Naturally, Dershowitz referred to Bolton's sacking as "a national disaster." Surely it must have warmed Bolton's heart to know that Epstein's former attorney and an accused pedophile had his back.

Dershowitz

Dershowitz wasn't the only donor heaping praise upon the Mustache either. Rebekah Mercer described Bolton as "the best national security adviser our country could have hoped for," presumably without a hint of irony. The presence of a Mercer at this event is most noteworthy, especially in relation to Trump's re-election prospects.

The Mysterious Mercers

In Dark Money, Jane Meyer links the Mercer Klan to the Koch brothers network. The Mercer family appeared on the Koch brothers' donor list at some point during the '00s, and for a time they were close allies, but on the whole the Mercer family appears to be much further to the right. Despite the mainstream media's depiction of the Koch family as the pinnacle of right wing extremism, the Kochs are actually staunch adherents of the Mont Pelerin Society-derived neo-liberalism the dominates the liberal establishment in both the Republican and Democratic parties in these United States. Indeed, the Koch brothers covertly backed Hillary during the 2016 election. 

No, when it comes to financing the far right, it falls upon individuals such as Peter Thiel, and families like the Mercers and the DeVos-Prince Klan. The Mercer and DeVos-Prince families are closely aligned, being among the wealthiest backers of the highly secretive Council for National Policy (CNP). And like Thiel, the Mercer family are also major patrons of the alt-right. Indeed, the Mercer family became the largest financiers of Breitbart in 2012, upon the death of the founder. It was through Breitbart that the Mercers came into contact with Steve Bannon, Kellyanne Conway, and Milo Yiannopoulos, all of whom they became patrons of (after the Mercers cut Milo off, he was picked up by fellow alt-right patron Matthew Mellon, a close Thiel associate, as I noted before here).

The patriarch of the Mercer family is Robert, a former computer scientist turned hedge fund manager. Mercer is often described as a pioneer in early artificial intelligence, though I have found few details concerning what this work may have entailed. Still, it is curious given the bizarre obsession certain fringe elements of the far right have with A.I.

Robert Mercer

What little is out there indications that Mercer's expertise is in computer linguistics, which he won a lifetime achievement award for in 2014. He worked for IBM for over twenty years before joining the hedge fund Renaissance Technologies in 1993. Renaissance is a curious entity, a hedge fund that preferred to hire computer scientists, mathematicians, and physicists rather than business school graduates. The company was founded by a mathematician and prominent Democratic Party donor, Jim Simons, who is also credited with contributing to the string theory. While working with Renaissance, Mercer is credited with transforming the financial industry through the use of trading algorithms.

On the whole, Robert Mercer has spent much of his life around some rather curious locations. He grew up in New Mexico and got his first real job at the Kirland Air Force Base. As regular reader of this blog are well aware, both New Mexico and especially the Kirkland base have been something of a mecca for black projects and general high weirdness for decades.

From there, upon being hired by IBM, he appears to have relocated to New York's Westchester County during the early 1970s. He would remain in the Westchester area for years afterwards, and certainly throughout the rest of the '70s and early '80s. It just so happens that that particular area of New York was allegedly the site of much cult activity during this same time frame. Indeed, the reputed Son of Sam cult was supposedly quite active in Westchester during that era. This bizarre link with Son of Sam would continue with Mercer's next residence, a mansion located on Long Island. Reportedly, mansions in this area were used for sex parties by VIPs and some of the cultists, as I noted before here.

Westchester

With that being said, I have found absolutely no evidence that Mercer was involved in anything nefarious that ties into the above locations. In point of fact, many of the alleged sex parties were for VIPs and Mercer did not cash until the late 1990s, after he left IBM. Still, it is strange that he turns up in locations like Kirkland and Westchester that are so closely associated with high weirdness. But then again, so does your humble researcher. Sometimes, a coincidence is just that. So, let us return to his more tangible outrages.   

Mercer appears to have had very little involvement in politics prior to the Obama years. He established the Mercer Family Foundation in 2004, but during the first few years it possessed an endowment of only half a million dollars and primarily focused on medical research and conventional charities. Things changed in 2008 , however, when the foundation began handing out millions to conservative causes and candidates. In less than a decade Robert Mercer went from being an obscure, inconsequential figure to being one of the driving forces in American politics. In some accounts, Mercer is held to be the single largest donor in the 2016 Us presidential elections. This only adds to the mysteries surrounding Mercer.

The Even More Mysterious SCL

On the note of mysteries, it is now time for the inevitable examination of Cambridge Analytica (CA), the "political consulting" firm believed to have played a crucial role in both Brexit and the election of the Orange One. The firm was able to obtain the data of 50 million Facebook users in these United States that was used to create a digital platform said to possess "unprecedented influence and accuracy." This platform was put to work in the 2016 US presidential elections, though there is much dispute as to how effective it was. It also played a role in Brexit, though there is more secrecy surrounding the latter deployment.

CA first gained notoriety in 2017 when it was linked to alleged Russian efforts to influence the 2016 US presidential elections. While there are some compelling indications that it had ties to shadowy Russian entities, it is the British aspect that is far more unsettling.

CA has its origins in a British company known as the SCL Group (formally Strategic Communications Laboratories). SCL in turn grew out of a company known as Behavioral Dynamics Institute, which was established by Nigel Oakes circa 1990. As the original name implies, the firm was concerned with behavior modification --specifically as it applied to group psychology and profiling. In other words, SCL specialized in psychological warfare. This has led to much speculation over SCL's ties to the British intelligence community, and indeed the company has been described as "MI6 for hire."

As such, it should come as little surprise that its ties to the British establishment are impeccable. Company founder Oakes is himself an Old Etonian, rumored to be an MI5 asset, and at one point dated a member of the Windsor family. But Oakes only scratches the surface of the firm's deep background.

Consider former CEO Alexander Nix, another Old Etonian as well. Nix comes from a long line of City bankers. This probably helped him with his business ventures prior to joining SCL. Upon graduating from the University of Manchester, he went to work for Barings Securities in Mexico. This was a former subsidiary of Barings Bank, one of the oldest merchant banks in the world at the time of its collapse in 1995. Barings was banker to the Queen herself and, according to former Barings employee Gerald James in his classic In the Public Interest, closely tied to the British intelligence community. Nix appears to have signed on after the collapse of the parent firm, though his initial work in Mexico is certainly suggestive: the nation was awash with drug money by this point.

Nix

However, it was Nix's second job that I find most interesting: the Robert Fraser Group (RFG). The RFG is another merchant bank, and a highly mysterious one at that. I have been unable to find virtually anything on its history, other than it having been founded around 1934. As far as this researcher can tell, it doesn't even have an official website.

At one point, it did have a most curious investor: Robert Maxwell, the infamous media tycoon and father of Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein's reputed madam. As was noted before here, Robert Maxwell had numerous intelligence connections, most notably to the KGB, Mossad, and MI6. In Maggie's Hammer, the great Geoffrey Gilson alleges that Maxwell was deeply involved in the illicit arms trafficking that ravaged the UK during the Thatcher years. More information on this traffic can be found here.

As far as the Robert Fraser Group is concerned, Maxwell began investing in it in 1986. During that same year, he became the single largest cash contributor to the bank's new equity and would remain its largest financial patron for the next five years. During this time, the ties between Maxwell and the RFG became quite close indeed. Maxwell's son, Kevin, joined the bank's board while its chairman, Lord Geoffrey Rippon, became a director of Maxwell Communications Corporation (MCC), one of the Maxwell family's various holding companies. The RFG would later be implicated in some of Maxwell's financial shenanigans.

"...  Through Robert Fraser, Maxwell had pumped into MCC and Pergamon Holdings some of the money taken from the pension funds, and had completed three property deals to pump profits into MCC which later investigation would reveal to be dubious. In 1989, no less than 35 per cent of MCC's profits were 'one-off' transactions with Robert Fraser recorded just before the announcement of the interim profits. In 1990, 43 per cent of the Group profits were one-offs with companies incorporated in Liechtenstein and the Isle of Man or with BIM and Robert Fraser..."

(Maxwell: The Final Verdict, Tom Bower, pgs. 69-70)

Maxwell gained infamy for looting the pension funds of his various companies and using these assets to support the stock prices of said companies via covert buybacks. The RFG appears to have been one of the institutions that Maxwell used to launder these pension fund assets back into his own companies.

Maxwell

But was it just the pension funds that Maxwell was using the Robert Fraser Group to launder? Were proceeds from the arms trafficking he was knee deep in also making their way through the RFG?

Certainly, this is very speculative on my part. What's more, Nix did not join the RFG until some time around the late 1990s or early 00s, a good decade or so after Maxwell and his cronies had been outed. Still, it is curious that Nix was able to parlay his limited experience at Barings and the RFG, two banks with a history of shady practices, into a directorship at SCL in 2003, when he would have been all of 28 years old.

What's more, at least two other establishment figures linked to the SCL were old guard Tories who would have been well placed in regards to the arms trafficking Thatcher unleashed during the Iran-Contra era. One was Sir Geoffrey Pattie, a longtime Tory MP who held several crucial posts in Thatcher's administration. The most noteworthy was Minister of State, Industry, and Information Technology. In this capacity, he oversaw the Department of Industry and Trade (DTI). As Gerald James notes throughout In the Public Interest, the DTI was deeply implicated in shady arms deals throughout the Thatcher years. And Sir Pattie directly oversaw the DTI for a time during this era. Before becoming a full blown Minister, he served as Parliamentary Undersecretary of State for Defence Procurement, yet another post linked to arms sales. Indeed, Pattie appears to have spent much of the Thatcher years involved in the arms trade. He apparently impressed someone in this capacity, as he was knighted and made a member of the Privy Council in 1987.

the Right Honorable Sir Pattie

The other old guard Tory is Lord Jonathan Marland. Marland cut his teeth working for the Jardine Lloyd Thompson Group, which began as a division of Jardine Matheson and still maintained ties to the parent company until fairly recently. Marland had been a founding director of the Lloyd Thompson branch of the firm, which was acquired by Jardine in 1997.

Jaridne Matheson has its origins in the late eighteenth century in China and has remained one of the principal British businesses in eastern Asia for nearly two centuries now. For years the firm has been owned by the uber-connected Keswick family. Both Jardine Matheson and the Keswicks made much of their fortunes off of smuggling opium. When Jardine Lloyd Thompson was sold this year (2019), it was revealed that the Keswicks controlled 40 per cent of the company  

Since the beginning of this decade, Marland has held several government posts. But his real power is displayed by a position he held during the last decade: Treasurer of the Conservative Party. As the great Geoffrey Gilson demonstrated in Maggie's Hammer and Dead Men Don't Eat Lunch, this post has been deeply implicated in the funds generated by arms trafficking throughout the Thatcher years and beyond. In more recent years, several Treasurers have become leading Eurosceptics. Marland is no exception. He played a key role in getting Boris Johnson elected London's Mayor and has remained a close political alley since then. Naturally, Marland is a staunch Brexit backers as well.

the Right Honorable the Lord Marland

There are other curious figures linked to SCL, to be sure. Another notable is Lord Ivar Mountbatten. The Mountbatten Klan are part of the extended Royal Family. Ivar's father, David, was tied up in the Profumo scandal, while his brother George is listed in Epstein's black book. And then there's the original Lord Mountbatten, who has been hounded by allegations of sexually abusing children for years. More information on the vile Mountbatten Klan can be found here.

the Right Honorable the Lord Mountbatten

So, to recap: Long before the Mercer family became involved with Cambridge Analytica, its parent company, the SCL group, was deeply tied to the British Royal family, the aristocracy, and the City. But beyond that, at least three leading figures in the company may have been involved in the illicit arms trade that was unleashed by Thatcher. There seems to be little question that Sir Geoffrey Pattie had some connections given the post he held during the Thatcher administration. Elsewhere, SCL CEO Alexander Nix and crucial backer Lord Marland both held posts (with the Robert Fraser Group and as Treasurer of the Conservative Party, respectively), that have been implicated in this illicit trade, especially in regards to Marland. As such, SCL appears to have been an outgrowth of this black network that emerged during the 1980s, just as Nigel Oakes was laying the foundation for SCL. In creating what amounted to a privatized psychological warfare department, Oakes received support from the absolute pinnacle of the British establishment.

And many of these same figures were still present when the Mercers became leading financiers of this network. Indeed, SCL appears to have become a crucial component of the Anglo-American far right. Emerdata Limited, the successor to to Cambridge Analytica, brought together Nix, the Mercers, and Johnson Chun Shun Co, an executive for Erik Prince's Frontier Services Group. There are also rumblings of ties between this network and Peter Thiel as well. In other words, the gang's all present.

Going Forward

What then are we to make of the Mercer family's endorsement of Bolton upon his sacking by Trump? The Mercers were long time supporters of Bolton, and initially pushed for him to be nominated as Secretary of State. Now Bolton's gone, along with other figures backed by the Mercers such as Michael Flynn and Bannon. "Incidentally," their donations to the Republican Party declined during the last election cycle.

Bolton

Across the Pond, BoJo has taken a beating of late. On September 24th, the UK Supreme Court ruled his attempt to suspend Parliament unconstitutional. This came on the heels of Parliament enacting the Benn Bill, which requires BoJo to seek an extension of the Brext deadline --currently October 31, 2019 --if he has not reached a withdraw agreement with the EU and had it approved by Parliament by the nineteenth of that month. In theory, this took away BoJo's bid for a "hard" Brexit (i.e., without a reaching a withdraw agreement with the EU). Curiously, the new withdraw date the bill proposes is January 31, 2020.

A reader has recently pointed out to me that part of the support for Brexit within the UK establishment is driven by a little known piece of legislation being pushed by the EU and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). It is related to their on going concern with cracking down on tax avoidance by large corporations. To this end, the EU and OECD crafted the Anti tax avoidance package. This package has especially strong provisions in regards to the financing of terrorism.

The City of London is of course at the heart of a vast network of tax havens around the world. As such, it is also at the heart of vast network supporting terrorists and international criminals. As Maggie's Hammer demonstrates, this state of affairs grew out of the transformation of the UK's economy under Thatcher, specifically the arms trade. In other words, many of the same players behind the SCL on the UK end grew out of the same City subculture that helps finance much of today's terrorism. And the EU/OECD anti tax avoidance package seems specifically designed to put an end to these state of affairs by bringing the City into compliance with the EU's broader tax laws. No doubt the French and Germans had hard-ons the size of Gibraltar when crafting these regulations.

As such, it is easy to see why figures like those behind the SCL Group have a vested interest in the UK leaving the EU if, for no other reason, to avoid these looming regulations. And when does the anti-tax avoidance package go into effect dear readers? Why, January 1, 2020.

This looming deadline is likely what has driven BoJo's hail marry to ensure a hard Brexit by October 31. It is also likely what is behind the Benn Bill deadline of January 31, 2020, a nearly a month after the tax avoidance regulations are to be enacted. This is a very clever move to get BoJo and his backers to make concessions.

BoJo

BoJo, however, seems hell bent on a snap election. While this may seem insane on the surface given his recent disasters, there's probably some version of Cambridge Analytica still lurking about and ready to spring into action. As such, BoJo is putting his faith in their voodoo and desperation to exit the EU by the new year.

Here in these United States, the Orange One is facing a new scandal, this time over Ukraine. The scandal broke on September 18th, four days after the Saudi Aramco attacks. By the 24th, it had led to the announcement of formal impeachment proceedings.

There are already some indications that this latest "smoking gun" is stillborn. Naturally, the "whistleblower" in this case appears to be a CIA officer who didn't actually hear the controversial conversations between Trump and his counterpart in the Ukraine. Given the timing of when these allegations were made, it was almost surely an intentional leak meant to further pressure Trump over Iran. Was this payback from Bolton, who apparently had been playing the Washington leak game during his final months in office?

The Orange One's reluctance to launch an attack is almost surely driven by his own looming re-election bid in 2020. Another Middle Eastern war would be problematic to that end, but possibly less so than an impeachment hearing, especially if he no longer has the Mercer psy war machine in his corner.

On the other hand, Trump is also dealing with a curious alliance between far right elements in the US and UK, the Israeli Likud/Mossad faction, and nationalist elements in the Russian FSB and mafia (all of these factions were present in the Cambridge/SLC psyops network as well). Iran certainly appears to be a point of contention for this peculiar alliance. For the Orange One, this is a delicate balancing act as he attempts to play to US and Israeli neo-con/Zionists on the one hand, and various nationalists on the other. That the neo-liberal order is being pawned by this shaky alliance is a further testament to its decline.

In any case, it is looking like sparks could really start to fly by Halloween 2019, if not sooner. The fate of Trump, Brexit, Iran, and Netanyahu are all in play while the Epstein scandal continues to loom in the background, a proverbial sword of Damocles over the neo-liberal order. And with that, I shall sign off for now dear readers. Until next time, stay tuned.