Mega Group, Maxwells and Mossad: The Spy Story at the Heart of the Jeffrey Epstein Scandal
- By Whitney Webb - August 07, 2019
The picture painted by the evidence is not a direct Epstein tie to a single intelligence agency but a web linking key members of the Mega Group, politicians, and officials in both the U.S. and Israel, and an organized-crime network with deep business and intelligence ties in both nations.
As billionaire pedophile and alleged sex-trafficker, Jeffrey Epstein sits in prison, reports have continued to surface about his reported links to intelligence, his financial ties to several companies and “charitable” foundations, and his friendships with the rich and powerful as well as top politicians.
While Part I and Part II of this series, “The Jeffrey Epstein Scandal: Too Big to Fail,” have focused on the widespread nature of sexual blackmail operations in recent American history and their ties to the heights of American political power and the U.S. intelligence community, one key aspect of Epstein’s own sex-trafficking and blackmail operation that warrants examination is Epstein’s ties to Israeli intelligence and his ties to the “informal” pro-Israel philanthropist faction known as “the Mega Group.”
The Mega Group’s role in the Epstein case has garnered some attention, as Epstein’s main financial patron for decades, billionaire Leslie Wexner, was a co-founder of the group that unites several well-known businessmen with a penchant for pro-Israel and ethno-philanthropy (i.e., philanthropy benefiting a single ethnic or ethno-religious group). However, as this report will show, another uniting factor among Mega Group members is deep ties to organized crime, specifically the organized crime network discussed in Part I of this series, which was largely led by notorious American mobster Meyer Lansky.
By virtue of the role of many Mega Group members as major political donors in both the U.S. and Israel, several of its most notable members have close ties to the governments of both countries as well as their intelligence communities. As this report and a subsequent report will show, the Mega Group also had close ties to two businessmen who worked for Israel’s Mossad — Robert Maxwell and Marc Rich — as well as to top Israeli politicians, including past and present prime ministers with deep ties to Israel’s intelligence community.
One of those businessmen working for the Mossad, Robert Maxwell, will be discussed at length in this report. Maxwell, who was a business partner of Mega Group co-founder Charles Bronfman, aided the successful Mossad plot to plant a trapdoor in U.S.-created software that was then sold to governments and companies throughout the world. That plot’s success was largely due to the role of a close associate of then-President Ronald Reagan and an American politician close to Maxwell, who later helped aid Reagan in the cover-up of the Iran Contra scandal.
Years later, Maxwell’s daughter — Ghislaine Maxwell — would join Jeffrey Epstein’s “inner circle” at the same time Epstein was bankrolling a similar software program now being marketed for critical electronic infrastructure in the U.S. and abroad. That company has deep and troubling connections to Israeli military intelligence, associates of the Trump administration, and the Mega Group.
Epstein appears to have ties to Israeli intelligence and has well-documented ties to influential Israeli politicians and the Mega Group. Yet, those entities are not isolated in and of themselves, as many also connect to the organized crime network and powerful alleged pedophiles discussed in previous installments of this series.
Perhaps the best illustration of how the connections between many of these players often meld together can be seen in Ronald Lauder: a Mega Group member, former member of the Reagan administration, long-time donor to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel’s Likud Party, as well as a long-time friend of Donald Trump and Roy Cohn.
From cosmetics heir to political player
One often overlooked yet famous client and friend of Roy Cohn is the billionaire heir to the Estee Lauder cosmetics fortune, Ronald Lauder. Lauder is often described in the press as a “leading Jewish philanthropist” and is the president of the World Jewish Congress, yet his many media profiles tend to leave out his highly political past.
In a statement given by Lauder to New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman in 2018, the cosmetics heir noted that he has known Trump for over 50 years, going back at least to the early 1970s. According to Lauder, his relationship with Trump began when Trump was a student at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, which Lauder also attended.
President-elect Trump walks with Ronald Lauder after meeting at Mar-a-Lago, Dec. 28, 2016, in Palm Beach, Fla. Evan Vucci | AP
Though the exact nature of their early friendship is unclear, it is evident that they shared many of the same connections, including to the man who would later count them both as his clients, Roy Cohn. While much has been said of the ties between Cohn and Trump, Cohn was particularly close to Lauder’s mother, Estee Lauder (born Josephine Mentzer). Estee was even counted among Cohn’s most high-profile friends in his New York Times obituary.
A small window into the Lauder-Cohn relationship surfaced briefly in a 2016 article in Politico about a 1981 dinner party held at Cohn’s weekend home in Greenwich, Connecticut. The party was attended by Ronald Lauder’s parents, Estee and Joe, as well as Trump and his then-wife Ivana, who had a weekend home just two miles away. That party was held soon after Cohn had helped Reagan secure the presidency and had reached the height of his political influence. At the party, Cohn offered toasts to Reagan and to then-Senator for New York Alfonse D’Amato, who would later urge Ronald Lauder to run for political office.
Two years later, in 1983, Ronald Lauder — whose only professional experience at that point was working for his parent’s cosmetics company — was appointed to serve as United States Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for European and NATO Affairs. Soon after his appointment, he served on the Dinner Tribute Committee for a dinner hosted by the Jewish fraternal and strongly pro-Israel organization B’nai B’rith, the parent organization of the controversial Anti-Defamation League (ADL), in Roy Cohn’s honor. Cohn’s influential father, Albert Cohn, was the long-time president of B’nai B’rith’s powerful New England-New York chapter and Roy Cohn himself was a member of B’nai B’rith’s Banking and Finance Lodge.
The dinner specifically sought to honor Cohn for his pro-Israel advocacy and his efforts to “fortify” Israel’s economy, and its honorary chairmen included media mogul Rupert Murdoch, Donald Trump and then-head of Bear Stearns Alan Greenberg, all of whom are connected to Jeffrey Epstein.
During his time as deputy assistant secretary of defense, Lauder was also very active in Israeli politics and had already become an ally of the then-Israeli representative to the United Nations and future prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu. Lauder would go on to be one of the most important individuals in Netanyahu’s rise to power, particularly during his upset victory in 1996, and a major financier of Israel’s right-wing Likud Party.
In 1986, the year that Roy Cohn died, Lauder left his post at the Pentagon and became the U.S. ambassador to Austria, where his tenure was shaped by his confrontations with the then-Austrian president and former Nazi collaborator, Kurt Waldheim. Lauder’s interest in Austrian politics has continued well into recent years, culminating in accusations that he sought to manipulate Austrian elections in 2012.
After leaving his ambassadorship, Lauder founded the Ronald S. Lauder Foundation in 1987 and later went on to run for Mayor of New York against Rudy Giuliani in 1989. Lauder was encouraged to run by then-Senator Alfonse D’Amato, who had close ties to Roy Cohn and his long-time law partner Tom Bolan, who was D’Amato’s adviser. At the aforementioned 1983 B’nai B’rith dinner honoring Cohn, D’Amato was the featured speaker.
The likely reason was that Giuliani, though once an ally of the “Roy Cohn machine,” was at the time deeply disliked by the late Cohn’s associates for prosecuting Cohn’s former law partner, Stanley Friedman, for racketeering, conspiracy and other charges. Giuliani also had a history of bitter disagreements with D’Amato. Lauder’s primary campaign, though unsuccessful, was noted for its viciousness and its cost, as it burned through more than $13 million.
A few years later, in the early 1990s, Lauder would join a newly formed group that has long evaded scrutiny from the media but has recently become of interest in connection with the Jeffrey Epstein scandal: the Mega Group.
Lauder, Epstein and the mysterious Austrian passport
Before getting to the Mega Group, it is worth noting one particular act apparently undertaken by Lauder while he was U.S. ambassador to Austria that has recently come to light in relation to the arrest in early July of Jeffrey Epstein, a finding first reported by journalist Edward Szall. When police recently discovered an Austrian passport with Epstein’s picture and a fake name after raiding his Manhattan residence, the source and purpose of the passport came under media scrutiny.
According to the Associated Press, Epstein’s defense lawyers specifically argued that “a friend gave it to him [Epstein] in the 1980s after some Jewish-Americans were informally advised to carry identification bearing a non-Jewish name when traveling internationally during a period when hijackings were more common.” This claim appears to be related to concerns that followed the hijacking of Air France Flight 139 in 1976 when Israeli and Jewish hostages were separated from other hostages based largely on the passports in their possession.
Given that Epstein was unable to meet the conventional qualifications for an Austrian passport — including long-term residency in Austria (the passport lists him as a resident of Saudi Arabia) and fluency in German — it appears that the only way to have acquired an Austrian passport was by unconventional means, meaning assistance from a well-connected Austrian official or foreign diplomat with clout in Austria.
Ronald Lauder, right, and Austrian Chancellor Viktor Klima pose with students from the Lauder Chabad School in Vienna, Austria in 1999. Martin Gnedt | AP
Lauder, then-ambassador to Austria for the Reagan administration, would have been well-positioned to acquire such a passport, particularly for the reason cited by Epstein’s attorneys that Jewish-Americans could be targeted during travel, and in light of Lauder’s very public concerns over threats Jews face from certain terror groups. Furthermore, the passport had been issued in 1987, when Lauder was still serving as an ambassador.
In addition, Lauder was well-connected to Epstein’s former patron — former head of Bear Stearns Alan Greenberg, who had hired Epstein in the late 1970s immediately after the latter was fired from the Dalton School — and Donald Trump, another friend of Lauder and Greenberg who began his friendship with Epstein in 1987, the same year the fake Austrian passport was issued. In 1987, Epstein also began his relationship with his principal financier, Leslie Wexner, who is also closely associated with Lauder (though some sources claim that Epstein and Wexner first met in 1985 but that their strong business relationship was not established until 1987).
Though Epstein’s defense attorney declined to reveal the identity of the “friend” who provided him with the fake Austrian passport, Lauder was both well-positioned to acquire it in Austria and also deeply connected to the Mega Group, which was co-founded by Epstein’s patron Leslie Wexner and to which Epstein has many connections. These connections to both the Austrian government and to Epstein’s mentor make Lauder the most likely person to have acquired the document on Epstein’s behalf.
Furthermore, Epstein and the Mega Group’s ties to the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad, also suggest Lauder was involved in procuring the passport, in light of his close ties to the Israeli government and the fact that Mossad has a history of using ambassadors abroad to procure false, foreign passports for its operatives.
Lauder himself has been alleged to have ties to Mossad, as he is a long-time funder of IDC Herzliya, an Israeli university closely associated with Mossad and their recruiters as well as Israeli military intelligence. Lauder even founded IDC Herzliya’s Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy and Strategy.
Furthermore, Lauder co-founded the Eastern European broadcasting network CETV with Mark Palmer, a former U.S. diplomat, Kissinger aide and Reagan speechwriter. Palmer is better known for co-founding the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), an organization often described as an accessory to U.S. intelligence, and one whose first president confessed to the Washington Post that “a lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.” A 2001 report in the Evening Standard noted that Epstein once claimed that during the 1980s he worked for the CIA, but Epstein later backed away from that assertion.
The origins of the Mega Group Mafia
The Mega Group — a secretive group of billionaires to which Lauder belongs — was formed in 1991 by Charles Bronfman and Leslie Wexner, the latter of whom has received considerable media scrutiny following the July arrest of his former protege Jeffrey Epstein. Media profiles of the group paint it as “a loosely organized club of 20 of the nation’s wealthiest and most influential Jewish businessmen” focused on “philanthropy and Jewishness,” with membership dues upwards of $30,000 per year. Yet several of its most prominent members have ties to organized crime.
Mega Group members founded and/or are closely associated with some of the most well-known pro-Israel organizations. For instance, members Charles Bronfman and Michael Steinhardt formed Birthright Taglit with the backing of then- and current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Steinhardt, an atheist, has stated that his motivation in helping to found the group was to advance his own belief that devotion to and faith in the state of Israel should serve as “a substitute for [Jewish] theology.”
Other well-known groups associated with the Mega Group include the World Jewish Congress — whose past president, Edgar Bronfman, and current president, Ronald Lauder, are both Mega Group members — and B’nai B’rith, particularly its spin-off known as the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). The Bronfman brothers were major donors to the ADL, with Edgar Bronfman serving as the ADL’s honorary national vice-chair for several years.
Former Israeli president Shimon Peres, second from left, listens to Edgar Bronfman during a 1995 lunch thrown in Peres’ honor. From left are: Laurence Tisch, Chairman, President and Chief executive officer of CBS; Israeli Ambassador to the United States. Itamar Rabinowitz and Bronfman. David Karp | AP
When Edgar Bronfman died in 2013, long-time ADL Director Abe Foxman said, “Edgar was for many years Chair of our Liquor Industry Division, Chair of our New York Appeal, and one of our most significant benefactors.” Other Mega Group members that are donors and major supporters of the ADL include Ronald Lauder, Michael Steinhardt and the late Max Fisher. As previously mentioned, Roy Cohn’s father was a long-time leader of B’nai B’rith’s influential New England-New York chapter and Cohn was later a celebrated member of its banking and finance lodge.
In addition, Mega Group members have also been key players in the pro-Israel lobby in the United States. For instance, Max Fisher of the Mega Group founded the National Jewish Coalition, now known as the Republican Jewish Coalition — the main pro-Israel neoconservative political lobbying group, known for its support of hawkish policies, and whose current chief patrons, Sheldon Adelson and Bernard Marcus, are among Donald Trump’s top donors.
Though the Mega Group has officially existed only since 1991, the use of “philanthropy” to provide cover for more unscrupulous lobbying or business activities was pioneered decades earlier by Sam Bronfman, the father of Mega Group members Edgar and Charles Bronfman. While other North American elites like J.D. Rockefeller had previously used philanthropic giving as a means of laundering their reputations, Bronfman’s approach to philanthropy was unique because it was focused on giving specifically to other members of his own ethno-religious background.
Sam Bronfman, as was detailed in Part I of this series, had long-standing deep ties to organized crime, specifically Meyer Lanksy’s organized crime syndicate. Yet, Bronfman’s private ambition, according to those close to him, was to become a respected member of high society. As a consequence, Bronfman worked hard to remove the stain that his mob associations had left on his public reputation in Canada and abroad. He accomplished this by becoming a leader in Canada’s Zionist movement and, by the end of the 1930s, he was head of the Canadian Jewish Congress and had begun to make a name for himself as a philanthropist for Jewish causes.
Yet even some of Bronfman’s activism and philanthropy had hints of the mobster-like reputation he tried so hard to shake. For instance, Bronfman was actively involved in the illegal shipping of arms to Zionist paramilitaries in Palestine prior to 1948, specifically as a co-founder of the National Conference for Israeli and Jewish Rehabilitation that smuggled weapons to the paramilitary group Haganah.
At the same time Bronfman was abetting the illegal smuggling of weapons to the Haganah, his associates in the criminal underworld were doing the same. After World War II, close aides of David Ben-Gurion, who would later become the first prime minister of Israel and was instrumental in the founding of Mossad, forged tight-knit relationships with Meyer Lansky, Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, Mickey Cohen and other Jewish gangsters of the period. They used their clandestine networks to establish a vast arms smuggling network between the United States and Zionist settlements in Palestine, arming both the Haganah and the Irgun paramilitary groups. As noted in Part I of this report, at the same time these gangsters were aiding the illegal arming of ZIonsit paramilitaries, they were strengthening their ties to U.S. intelligence that had first been formally (though covertly) established in World War II.
After Israel was founded, Sam Bronfman worked with future Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres to negotiate the sale of Canadian armaments at half-price to Israel and the bargain weapons purchase was paid for entirely by a fundraising dinner hosted by Bronfman and his wife. Many years later, Peres would go on to introduce another future prime minister of Israel, Ehud Barak, to Jeffrey Epstein.
The rest of the Bronfman family’s march on “the road to respectability” was undertaken by Bronfman’s children, who married into aristocratic families such as the European Rothschilds and the Wall Street “royalty” of the Lehmans and the Loebs.
The Bronfmans’ newfound respectability did not mean that their association with the Lansky-led criminal empire had dissolved. Indeed, prominent members of the Seagrams dynasty came under fire in the 1960s and 1970s for their close association with Willie “Obie” Obront, a major figure in Canadian organized crime, whom Canadian professor Stephen Schneider has referred to as the Meyer Lansky of Canada.
However, Edgar and Charles Bronfman were hardly the only members of the Mega Group with deep and long-standing ties to the Lansky-led National Crime Syndicate. Indeed, one of the group’s prominent members, hedge fund manager Michael Steinhardt, opened up about his own family ties to Lansky in his autobiography No Bull: My Life in and out the Markets, where he noted that his father, Sol “Red McGee” Steinhardt, was Lansky’s jewel fence of choice and a major player in New York’s criminal underworld. Sol Steinhardt was also his son’s first client on Wall Street and helped him jumpstart his career in finance.
The ties between the Mega Group and the National Crime Syndicate don’t stop there. Another prominent member of the Mega Group with ties to this same criminal network is Max Fisher, who has been described as Wexner’s mentor and is also alleged to have worked with Detroit’s “Purple Gang” during Prohibition and beyond. The Purple Gang were part of the network that smuggled Bronfman liquor from Canada into the United State during Prohibition, and one of its founders, Abe Bernstein, was a close associate of both Meyer Lansky and Moe Dalitz. Fisher was a key adviser to several U.S. presidents, beginning with Dwight D. Eisenhower, as well as to Henry Kissinger.
Max Fisher, center, and Henry Kissinger, right, meet with leaders of Jewish organizations prior to Kissinger’s 1975 Middle East trip. Henry Burroughs | AP
In addition to Fisher, Mega Group member Ronald Lauder was connected to Roy Cohn and Tom Bolan, both of whom were closely associated with this same Lansky-led crime network (see Part I and Part II) and who regularly represented top Mafia figures in court. Furthermore, another member of the Mega Group, director Steven Spielberg, is a well-known protege of Lew Wasserman, the mob-connected media mogul and long-time backer of Ronald Reagan’s film and later political career, discussed in Part II of this series.
One surprise connection to Cohn involves Mega Group member, and former president of U.S. weapons firm General Dynamics, Lester Crown, whose brother-in-law is David Schine, Cohn’s confidant and alleged lover during the McCarthy hearings, whose relationship with Cohn helped bring about the downfall of McCarthyism.
Another member of the Mega Group worth noting is Laurence Tisch, who owned CBS News for several years and founded Loews Corporation. Tisch is notable for his work for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the precursor to the CIA, where Donald Barr, who hired Epstein at the Dalton School, also served and which forged ties with Lansky’s criminal empire during World War II.
Wexner’s mansions and the Shapiro murder
Leslie “Les” Wexner, the other Mega Group co-founder, also has ties to organized crime. Wexner’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein have come under scrutiny following the latter’s recent arrest, as Wexner was the only publicly acknowledged client of Epstein’s suspicious hedge fund, the source of much of this wealth, and the previous owner of Epstein’s $56 million Manhattan townhouse, which Wexner transferred to an Epstein-controlled entity for free.
Before Epstein received the townhouse, Wexner appears to have used the residence for some unconventional purposes, noted in a 1996 New York Times article on the then-Wexner-owned residence, which included “a bathroom reminiscent of James Bond movies: hidden beneath a stairway, lined with lead to provide shelter from attack and supplied with closed-circuit television screens and a telephone, both concealed in a cabinet beneath the sink.” The Times article does not speculate as to the purpose of this equipment, though the allusion to famous fictional superspy James Bond suggests that it may have been used to snoop on guests or conduct electronic surveillance.
The 1996 Times article also noted that, after Wexner bought the residence for $13.2 million in 1989, he spent millions more decorating and furnishing the home, including the addition of the electronic equipment in the “James Bond” bathroom, only to apparently never live in it. The Times, which interviewed Epstein for the piece, quoted him as saying that “Les never spent more than two months there.” Epstein told the Times, which identified Epstein as Wexner’s “protege and one of his financial advisers,” that the house, by that time, already belonged to him.
That same year, Epstein was commissioning artwork for Wexner’s Ohio mansion. A recent article from the Times noted that:
In the summer of 1996, Maria Farmer was working on an art project for Mr. Epstein in Mr. Wexner’s Ohio mansion. While she was there, Mr. Epstein sexually assaulted her, according to an affidavit Ms. Farmer filed earlier this year in federal court in Manhattan. She said that she fled the room and called the police, but that Mr. Wexner’s security staff refused to let her leave for 12 hours.”
Farmer’s account strongly suggests that, given the behavior of his personal security staff at his mansion following Epstein’s alleged assault on Farmer, Wexner was well aware of Epstein’s predatory behavior towards young women. This is compounded by claims made by Alan Dershowitz — a former lawyer for and friend of Epstein’s, who has also been accused of raping underage girls — that Wexner has also been accused of raping underage girls exploited by Epstein on at least seven occasions.
The presence of the electronic equipment in his home’s bathroom, other oddities related to the townhouse, and aspects of the links between Epstein and Wexner suggest there is more to Wexner, who has rather successfully developed a public image of a respectable businessman and philanthropist, much like other prominent members of the Mega Group.
Leslie Wexner and his wife Abigail tour the “Transfigurations” exhibit at the Wexner Center for the Arts. Jay LaPrete | AP
However, bits and pieces of Wexner’s private secrets have occasionally bubbled up, only to be subjected to rapid cover-ups amidst concerns of “libeling” the powerful and well-connected billionaire “philanthropist.”
In 1985, Columbus (Ohio) lawyer Arthur Shapiro was murdered in broad daylight at point-blank range in what was largely referred to as a “mob style murder.” The homicide still remains unsolved, likely due to the fact that then-Columbus Police Chief James Jackson ordered the destruction of key documents of his department’s investigation into the murder.
Jackson’s ordering of the documents’ destruction came to light years later in 1996, when he was under investigation for corruption. According to the Columbus Dispatch, Jackson justified the destruction of one “viable and valuable” report because he felt that it “was so filled with wild speculation about prominent business leaders that it was potentially libelous.” The nature of this “wild speculation” was that “millionaire businessmen in Columbus and Youngstown were linked to the ‘mob-style murder.’”
Though Jackson’s efforts were meant to keep this “libelous” report far from public view, it was eventually obtained by Bob Fitrakis — attorney, journalist, and executive director of the Columbus Institute for Contemporary Journalism — after he was “accidentally” sent a copy of the report in 1998 as part of a public records request.
The report, titled “Shapiro Homicide Investigation: Analysis and Hypothesis,” names Leslie Wexner as linked “with associates reputed to be organized crime figures” and also lists the names of businessman Jack Kessler, former Columbus City Council President and Wexner associate Jerry Hammond, and former Columbus City Council member Les Wright as also being involved in Shapiro’s murder.
The report also noted that Arthur Shapiro’s law firm — Schwartz, Shapiro, Kelm & Warren — represented Wexner’s company, The Limited, and states that “prior to his death, Arthur Shapiro managed this account [The Limited] for the law firm.” It also noted that, at the time of his death, Shapiro “was the subject of an investigation by the Internal Revenue Service because he had failed to file income tax returns for some seven years prior to his death, and he had invested in some questionable tax shelters.” It also stated that his death prevented Shapiro from his planned testimony at a grand jury hearing about these “questionable tax shelters.”
As to Wexner’s alleged links to organized crime, the report focuses on the close business relationship between Wexner’s The Limited and Francis Walsh, whose trucking company “[had] done an excess of 90 percent of the Limited’s trucking business around the time of Shapiro’s murder,” according to the report. Walsh was named in a 1988 indictment as a “co-conspirator” of Genovese crime family boss Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno, whose long-time lawyer was Roy Cohn; and the Shapiro murder report stated that Walsh was “still considered associates of the Genovese/LaRocca crime family, and Walsh was still providing truck transportation for The Limited.”
Notably, the Genovese crime family has long formed a key part of the National Crime Syndicate, as its former head, Charles “Lucky” Luciano, co-created the criminal organization with his close friend Meyer Lansky. Upon Luciano’s imprisonment and subsequent deportation from the United States, Lansky took over the syndicate’s U.S. operations and his association with Luciano’s successors continued until Lansky’s death in 1983.
The “Mega” Mystery and the Mossad
In May 1997, the Washington Post broke an explosive story — long since forgotten — based on an intercepted phone call made between a Mossad official in the U.S. and his superior in Tel Aviv that discussed the Mossad’s efforts to obtain a secret U.S. government document. According to the Post, the Mossad official stated during the phone call that “Israeli Ambassador Eliahu Ben Elissar had asked him whether he could obtain a copy of the letter given to [Palestinian leader Yasser] Arafat by [then-Secretary of State Warren] Christopher on Jan. 16, the day after the Hebron accord was signed by Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.”
The Post article continued:
According to a source who viewed a copy of the NSA transcript of the conversation, the intelligence officer, speaking in Hebrew, said, ‘The ambassador wants me to go to Mega to get a copy of this letter.’ The source said the supervisor in Tel Aviv rejected the request, saying, ‘This is not something we use Mega for.’”
The leaked communication led to an investigation that sought to identify an individual code-named “Mega” that the Post said “may be someone in the U.S. government who has provided information to the Israelis in the past,” a concern that subsequently spawned a fruitless FBI investigation. The Mossad later claimed that “Mega” was merely a codeword for the U.S.’ CIA, but the FBI and NSA were unconvinced by that claim and believed that it was a senior U.S. government official that had potentially once been involved in working with Jonathan Pollard, the former U.S. naval intelligence analyst later convicted of spying for the Mossad.
Almost one year to the day after the “Mega” spy scandal broke, the Wall Street Journal was the first outlet to report on the existence of a little-known organization of billionaires that was “informally” called the Mega Group and had been founded years prior in 1991. The report made no mention of the spy scandal that had spread concerns of Israeli espionage in the U.S. only a year prior. However, the group’s distinctive “informal” name and the connections of its members to the Mossad and to high-ranking Israeli politicians, including prime ministers, raise the possibility that “Mega” was not an individual, as the FBI and NSA had believed, but a group.
In 1997, when the “Mega” spy scandal broke, Netanyahu had recently become prime minister of Israel after an upset victory, a victory that was largely credited to one well-connected Netanyahu backer in particular, Ronald Lauder. Beyond being a major donor, Lauder had brought Arthur Finklestein on to work for Netanyahu’s 1996 campaign, whose strategies were credited for Netanyahu’s surprise win. Netanyahu was close enough to Lauder that he personally enlisted Lauder and George Nader to serve as his peace envoys to Syria.
Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife Sara with Ronald Lauder in 1997. Photo | Reuters
Nader, who was connected to the Trump 2016 campaign and Trump ally and Blackwater founder Erik Prince, was recently hit with federal child sex trafficking charges last month, soon after Jeffrey Epstein had been arrested on similar charges. At the time Nader was picked to work with Lauder on Netanyahu’s behalf, he had already been caught possessing large amounts of child pornography on two separate occasions, first in 1984 and later in 1990.
This strong connection between Netanyahu and Lauder during the time of the 1997 “Mega” spy scandal is important considering Mossad answers directly to Israel’s prime minister.
Another possible connection between the Mega Group and the Mossad owes to the Mega Group’s ties to Meyer Lansky’s criminal network. As was detailed in Part I, Lansky had established deep ties to U.S. intelligence after World War II and was also connected to the Mossad through Mossad official Tibor Rosenbaum, whose bank was frequently used by Lansky to launder money. In addition, Lansky collaborated on at least one occasion with notorious Mossad “superspy” Rafi Eitan, who he helped acquire sensitive electronic equipment possessed only by the CIA but coveted by Israeli intelligence. Eitan is best known in the U.S. for being the Mossad handler of Jonathan Pollard.
Notably, Eitan was the main source of claims that the code-word “Mega” used by the Mossad officials in 1997 referred to the CIA and not to a potential source in the U.S. government once linked to Pollard’s spying activities, making his claims as to the true meaning of the term somewhat dubious.
Given that the organized crime network tied to the Mega Group had ties to both U.S. and Israeli intelligence, the “Mega” codeword could plausibly have referred to this secretive group of billionaires. More supporting evidence for this theory comes from the fact that prominent members of the Mega Group were business partners of Mossad agents, including media mogul Robert Maxwell and commodities trader Marc Rich.
The mysterious Maxwells
The Maxwell family has become a source of renewed media interest following Jeffrey Epstein’s arrest, as Ghislaine Maxwell, long described in the media as a British “socialite,” was publicly cited as Epstein’s long-time “on and off” girlfriend, and Epstein’s victims, as well as former wives of Epstein’s friends, have claimed that she was Epstein’s “pimp” and procured underage girls for his sexual blackmail operation. Ghislaine Maxwell is also alleged to have engaged in the rape of the girls she procured for Epstein and to have used them to produce child pornography.
Ghislaine was the favorite and youngest daughter of media mogul Robert Maxwell. Maxwell, born Jan Ludvick Hoch, had joined the British Army in World War II. Afterwards, according to authors John Loftus and Mark Aarons, he greatly influenced the Czechoslovakian government’s decision to arm Zionist paramilitaries during the 1948 war that resulted in Israel’s creation as a state, and Maxwell himself was also involved in the smuggling of aircraft parts to Israel.
Around this time, Maxwell was approached by British intelligence outfit MI6 and offered a position that Maxwell ultimately declined. MI6 then classified him as “Zionist — loyal only to Israel” and made him a person of interest. He later became an agent of the Mossad, according to several books including Robert Maxwell: Israel’s Superspy by Gordon Thomas and Martin Dillon. Furthermore, Seymour Hersh’s The Samson Option: Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy alleges ties between Maxwell and Israeli intelligence.
According to Victor Ostrovsky, a former Mossad case officer:
Mossad was financing many of its operations in Europe from money stolen from Maxwell’s newspaper pension fund. They got their hands on the funds almost as soon as Maxwell made the purchase of the Mirror Newspaper Group with money lent to him by Mossad.”
In exchange for his services, the Mossad helped Maxwell satisfy his sexual appetite during his visits to Israel, providing him with prostitutes, “the service maintained for blackmail purposes.” It was later revealed that the hotel in which he stayed in Israel was bugged with cameras, allowing the Mossad to acquire “a small library of video footage of Maxwell in sexually compromising positions.” As with the CIA, the Mossad’s use of blackmail against both friend and foe is well-documented and known to be extensive.
Maxwell was also a close associate and friend of Israeli “superspy” Rafi Eitan, who, as previously mentioned, was Jonathan Pollard’s handler and who had previously worked directly with Meyer Lansky. Eitan had learned of a revolutionary new software being used by the U.S. government known as “Promis” from Earl Brian, a long-time associate and aide to Ronald Reagan. Promis is often considered the forerunner to the “Prism” software used by spy agencies today and was developed by William Hamilton, who leased the software to the U.S. government through his company, Inslaw, in 1982.
Ariel Sharon (right)meets with Robert Maxwell in Jerusalem on Feb. 20, 1990. Photo | AP
According to author and former BBC investigative journalist Gordon Thomas, Brian was angry that the U.S. Department of Justice was successfully using Promis to go after organized crime and money-laundering activities and Eitan felt that the program could aid Israel. At the time, Eitan was the director of the now defunct Israeli military intelligence agency Lekem, which gathered scientific and technical intelligence abroad from both public and covert sources, especially in relation to Israel’s nuclear weapons program.
A plan was hatched to install a “trapdoor” into the software and then market Promis throughout the world, providing the Mossad with invaluable intelligence on the operations of its enemies and allies while also providing Eitan and Brian with copious amounts of cash. According to the testimony of ex-Mossad official Ari Ben-Menashe, Brian provided a copy of Promis to Israel’s military intelligence, which contacted an Israeli American programmer living in California who then planted the “trapdoor” in the software. The CIA was later said to have installed its own trapdoor in the software but it is unknown if they did so with a version of the already bugged software and how widely it was adopted relative to the version bugged by Israeli intelligence.
After the trapdoor was inserted, the problem became selling the bugged version of the software to governments as well as private companies around the world, particularly in areas of interest. Brian first attempted to buy out Inslaw and Promis and then use that same company to sell the bugged version.
Unsuccessful, Brian turned to his close friend, then-Attorney General Ed Meese whose Justice Department then abruptly refused to make the payments to Inslaw that were stipulated by the contract, essentially using the software for free, which Inslaw claimed to be theft. Some have speculated that Meese’s role in that decision was shaped, not only by his friendship with Brian, but the fact that his wife was a major investor in Brian’s business ventures. Meese would later become an adviser to Donald Trump when he was president-elect.
Inslaw was forced to declare bankruptcy as a result of Meese’s actions and sued the Justice Department. The court later found that the Meese-led department “took, converted, stole” the software through “trickery, fraud and deceit.”
With Inslaw out of the way, Brian sold the software all over the world. Eitan later recruited Robert Maxwell to become another Promis salesman, which he did remarkably well, even succeeding in selling the software to Soviet intelligence and conspiring with Republican Texas Senator John Tower to have the software adopted by the U.S. government laboratory at Los Alamos. Dozens of countries used the software on their most carefully guarded computer systems, unaware that Mossad now had access to everything Promis touched.
Whereas the Mossad’s past reliance on gathering intelligence had relied on the same tactics used by its equivalents in the U.S. and elsewhere, the widespread adoption of the Promis software, largely through the actions of Earl Brian and Robert Maxwell, gave the Mossad a way to gather not just troves of counterintelligence data, but also blackmail on other intelligence agencies and powerful figures.
Indeed, Promis’ backdoor and adoption by intelligence agencies all over the world essentially provided the Mossad with access to troves of blackmail that the CIA and FBI had acquired on their friends and foes for over half a century. Strangely, in recent years, the FBI has sought to hide information related to Robert Maxwell’s connection to the Promis scandal.
According to journalist Robert Fisk, Maxwell was also involved in the Mossad abduction of Israeli nuclear weapons whistleblower Vanunu Mordechai. Mordechai had attempted to provide the media with information on the extent of Israel’s nuclear weapons program, which was eventually published by the Sunday Times of London. Yet, Mordechai had also contacted the Daily Mirror with the information, the Mirror being an outlet that was owned by Maxwell and whose foreign editor was a close Maxwell associate and alleged Mossad asset, Nicholas Davies. Journalist Seymour Hersh alleged that Davies had also been involved in Israeli arms deals.
Per Fisk, it was Maxwell who contacted the Israeli Embassy in London and told them of Mordechai’s activities. This led to Mordechai’s entrapment by a female Mossad agent who seduced him as part of a “honey trap” operation that led to his kidnapping and later imprisonment in Israel. Mordechai served an 18-year sentence, 12 years of which were in solitary confinement.
Then, there is the issue of Maxwell’s death, widely cited by mainstream and independent media alike as suspicious and a potential homicide. According to authors Gordon Thomas and Martin Dillon, Maxwell had sealed his own fate when he attempted to threaten top Mossad officials with the exposure of certain operations if they did not help him rescue his media empire from crippling debt and financial difficulties. Many of Maxwell’s creditors, who had grown increasingly displeased with the media mogul, were Israeli and several of them were alleged to be Mossad-connected themselves.
Thomas and Dillon argue in their biography of Maxwell’s life that the Mossad felt that Maxwell had become more of a liability than an asset and killed him on his yacht three months after he demanded the bailout. On the other extreme are theories that suggest Maxwell committed suicide because of the financial difficulties his empire faced.
Ghislaine Maxwell, far right, Robert Maxwell’s daughter, looks on his casket is unloaded from a plane in Jerusalem, Nov. 8, 1991. Heribert Proepper | AP
Some have taken Maxwell’s funeral held in Israel as the country’s “official” confirmation of Maxwell’s service to the Mossad, as it was likened to a state funeral and attended by no less than six serving and former heads of Israeli intelligence. During his funeral service in Jerusalem, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir eulogized him and stated: “He has done more for Israel than can today be said.” Other eulogies were given by future Prime Ministers Ehud Olmert (then Health Minister) and Shimon Peres, with the latter also praising Maxwell’s “services” on behalf of Israel.
Swimming in the same swamp
As he built his business empire — and even became a member of Parliament, Maxwell was also doing work for Israeli intelligence, as several of the Israeli companies in which he invested became fronts for the Mossad. In addition, as he became a media mogul, he developed a bitter rivalry with Rupert Murdoch, a close friend of Roy Cohn and an influential figure in American and British media.
Maxwell also partnered with the Bronfman brothers, Edgar and Charles — key figures in the Mega Group. In 1989 Maxwell and Charles Bronfman partnered up to bid on the Jerusalem Post newspaper and the Post described the two men as “two of the world’s leading Jewish financiers” and their interest in the venture as “developing The Jerusalem Post and expanding its influence among world Jewry.” A year prior, Maxwell and Bronfman had become top shareholders in the Israeli pharmaceutical company Teva.
Maxwell also worked with Charles Bronfman’s brother Edgar in the late 1980s to convince the Soviet Union to allow Soviet Jews to immigrate to Israel. Edgar’s efforts in this regard have received more attention, as it was a defining moment of his decades-long presidency of the World Jewish Congress, of which Ronald Lauder is currently president. Yet, Maxwell had also made considerable use of his contacts in the Soviet government in this effort.
Maxwell also moved in the circles of the network previously described in Parts I and II in this series. A key example of this is the May 1989 party Maxwell hosted on his yacht, the Lady Ghislaine — named for his youngest daughter and Epstein’s future “girlfriend.” Attendees of the party included Roy Cohn’s protege Donald Trump and his long-time law partner Tom Bolan. A close friend of Nancy Reagan was also present, journalist Mike Wallace, as was literary agent Mort Janklow, who represented Ronald Reagan and two of Cohn’s closest friends: journalists William Safire and Barbara Walters.
The CEO of what would soon become Time Warner, Steve Ross, was also invited to the exclusive event. Ross’ presence is notable, as he had built his business empire largely through his association with New York crime lords Manny Kimmel and Abner “Longy” Zwillman. Zwillman was a close friend of Meyer Lansky, Michael Steinhardt’s father, and Sam Bronfman, father of Edgar and Charles Bronfman.
Another attendee of the Maxwell yacht party was former Secretary of the Navy and former Henry Kissinger staffer Jon Lehman, who would go on to associate with the controversial neoconservative think tank, Project for a New American Century. Prior to being secretary of the Navy, Lehman had been president of the Abington Corporation, which hired arch-neocon Richard Perle to manage the portfolio of Israeli arms dealers Shlomo Zabludowicz and his son Chaim, who paid Ablington $10,000 month. A scandal arose when those payments continued after both Lehman and Perle joined the Reagan Department of Defense and while Perle was working to persuade the Pentagon to buy arms from companies linked to Zabludowicz. Perle had been part of the Reagan transition team along with Roy Cohn’s long-time friend and law partner Tom Bolan (another Maxwell yacht guest).
In addition to Lehman, another former Kissinger staffer, Thomas Pickering was present at Maxwell’s yacht part. Pickering played a minor role in the Iran-Contra affair and, at the time of the Maxwell yacht party, he was U.S. ambassador to Israel. Senator John Tower (R-TX), who allegedly conspired with Maxwell in the Mossad-bugged Promis software at the Los Alamos laboratories, was also present. Tower died just months before Maxwell in a suspicious plane crash.
Ghislaine Maxwell was also at this rather notable event. After her father’s mysterious death and alleged murder on the same yacht that bears her name in 1991, she quickly packed her bags and moved to New York City. There, she soon made the acquaintance of Jeffrey Epstein and, a few years later, developed close ties to the Clinton family, which will be discussed in the next installment of this series.
Jeffrey Epstein and the new “Promis”
After it was revealed that Epstein had evaded stricter sentencing in 2008 due to his links to “intelligence,” it was the Mossad ties of Ghislaine Maxwell’s father that have led many to speculate that Epstein’s sexual blackmail operation was sharing incriminating information with the Mossad. Former CBS executive producer and current journalist for the media outlet Narativ, Zev Shalev, has since claimed that he independently confirmed that Epstein was tied directly to the Mossad.
Donald and Melania Trump with Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell at the Mar-a-Lago club, Palm Beach, Florida in 2000. Photo | Davidoff Studios
Epstein was a long-time friend of former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, who has long-standing and deep ties to Israel’s intelligence community. Their decades-long friendship has been the source of recent political attacks targeting Barak, who is running in the Israeli elections against current Prime Minister Netanyahu later this year.
Barak is also close to Epstein’s chief patron and Mega Group member Leslie Wexner, whose Wexner Foundation gave Barak $2 million in 2004 for a still unspecified research program. According to Barak, he was first introduced to Epstein by former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres, who eulogized Robert Maxwell at his funeral and had decades-long ties with the Bronfman family going back to the early 1950s. Peres was also a frequent participant in programs funded by Leslie Wexner in Israel and worked closely with the Mossad for decades.
In 2015, a few years after Epstein’s release from prison following his conviction for soliciting sex from a minor in 2008, Barak formed a company with Epstein with the chief purpose of investing in an Israeli start-up then known as Reporty. That company, now called Carbyne, sells its signature software to 911 call centers and emergency service providers and is also available to consumers as an app that provides emergency services with access to a caller’s camera and location and also runs any caller’s identity through any linked government database. It has specifically been marketed by the company itself and the Israeli press as a solution to mass shootings in the United States and is already being used by at least two U.S. counties.
Israeli media reported that Epstein and Barak were among the company’s largest investors. Barak poured millions into the company and it was recently revealed by Haaretz that a significant amount of Barak’s total investments in Carbyne was funded by Epstein, making him a “de facto partner” in the company. Barak is now Carbyne’s chairman.
The company’s executive team are all former members of different branches of Israeli intelligence, including the elite military intelligence unit, Unit 8200, that is often likened to Israel’s equivalent of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA). Carbyne’s current CEO, Amir Elichai, served in Unit 8200 and tapped former Unit 8200 commander Pinchas Buchris to serve as the company’s director and on its board. In addition to Elichai, another Carbyne co-founder, Lital Leshem, also served in Unit 8200 and later worked for Israeli private spy company Black Cube. Leshem now works for a subsidiary of Erik Prince’s company Frontier Services Group, according to the independent media outlet Narativ.
The company also includes several tie-ins to the Trump administration, including Palantir founder and Trump ally Peter Thiel — an investor in Carbyne. In addition, Carbyne’s board of advisers includes former Palantir employee Trae Stephens, who was a member of the Trump transition team, as well as former Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff. Trump donor and New York real-estate developer Eliot Tawill is also on Carbyne’s board, alongside Ehud Barak and Pinchas Buchris.
Narativ, which wrote the first expose on Carbyne after Epstein’s arrest, noted that the Chinese government uses a smartphone app very similar to Carbyne as part of its mass surveillance apparatus, even though the original purpose of the app was for improved emergency reporting. According to Narativ, the Chinese Carbyne-equivalent “monitors every aspect of a user’s life, including personal conversations, power usage, and tracks a user’s movement.”
Given the history of Robert Maxwell — the father of Epstein’s long-time “girlfriend” and young-girl-procuring madam, Ghislaine Maxwell — in promoting the sale of Carbyne’s modified Promis software, which was also marketed as a tool to improve government efficacy but was actually a tool of mass surveillance for the benefit of Israeli intelligence, the overlap between Carbyne and Promis is troubling and warrants further investigation.
It is also worth noting that Unit 8200-connected tech start-ups are being widely integrated into U.S. companies and have developed close ties to the U.S. military-industrial complex, with Carbyne being just one example of that trend.
As MintPress previously reported, Unit 8200-linked outfits like Team8 have recently hired former National Security Agency (NSA) Director Mike Rogers as a senior advisor and gained prominent Silicon Valley figures, including former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, as key investors. Many American technology companies, from Intel to Google to Microsoft, have merged with several Unit 8200-connected start-ups in recent years and have been moving many key jobs and operations to Israel with backing from key Republican donors like Paul Singer. Many of those same companies, particularly Google and Microsoft, are also major U.S. government contractors.
Who was Epstein really working for?
Even though Jeffrey Epstein appears to have had ties to the Mossad, this series has revealed that the networks to which Epstein was connected were not Mossad-exclusive, as many of the individuals close to Epstein — Lesie Wexner, for instance — were part of a mob-connected class of oligarchs with deep ties to both the U.S. and Israel. As was discussed in Part I of this series, the sharing of “intelligence” (i.e., blackmail) between intelligence agencies and the same organized crime network connected to the Mega Group goes back decades. With Leslie Wexner of the Mega Group as Epstein’s chief patron, as opposed to a financier with direct ties to the Mossad, a similar relationship is more than likely in the case of the sexual blackmail operation that Epstein ran.
Given that intelligence agencies in both the U.S. and elsewhere often conduct covert operations for the benefit of oligarchs and large corporations as opposed to “national security interest,” Epstein’s ties to the Mega Group suggest that this group holds a unique status and influence in both the governments of the U.S. and of Israel, as well as in other countries (e.g., Russia) that were not explored in this report. This is by virtue of their role as key political donors in both countries, as well as the fact that several of them own powerful companies or financial institutions in both countries. Indeed, many members of the Mega Group have deep ties to Israel’s political class, including to Netanyahu and Ehud Barak as well as to now-deceased figures like Shimon Peres, and to members of the American political class.
Ultimately, the picture painted by the evidence is not a direct tie to a single intelligence agency but a web linking key members of the Mega Group, politicians, and officials in both the U.S. and Israel, and an organized-crime network with deep business and intelligence ties in both nations.
Though this series has so far focused on the ties of this network to main Republican Party affiliates, the next and final installment will reveal the ties developed between this web and the Clintons. As will be revealed, despite the Clintons’ willingness to embrace corrupt dealings during the span of their political careers, their mostly friendly relationship with this network still saw them use the power of sexual blackmail to obtain certain policy decisions that were favorable to their personal and financial interests but not to the Clintons’ political reputation or agendas.
Editor’s note | The original version of this article incorrectly stated that Rafi Eitan was interested in repurposing the American-made Promise software to restore his standing in Israel’s intelligence community caused by the fall-out from the Pollard Affair. The Pollard Affair occurred three years after Eitan had succeeded in repurposing the software and MintPress has removed that incorrect information from the article and regrets the error.
This article also originally neglected to mention that Eitan, at the time of his collaboration with Earl Brian to repurpose the Promis software, was the director of the now-defunct Israeli military intelligence agency Lekem at the time of those events and that information has been added to the story.
Seymour Hersh’s book The Samson Option: Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy does not call Robert Maxwell an “agent” of the Mossad, as was stated originally in this report, but does allege clear links and cooperation between Maxwell and the Mossad. This report was updated to reflect this more accurate description.
Feature photo | Graphic by Claudio Cabrera
Whitney Webb is an investigative journalist for Unlimited Hangout. She also contribute to several independent media outlets including Global Research, EcoWatch, the Ron Paul Institute and 21st Century Wire, among others. She has made several radio and television appearances and is the 2019 winner of the Serena Shim Award for Uncompromised Integrity in Journalism.
Also see: Hidden in Plain Sight: The Shocking Origins of the Jeffrey Epstein Case
Epstein's Private Jet Flight Manifest page 13
The Digital Epstein's Little Black Book
Catherine Austin Fitts Explains the Financial Coup D'état
Published: September 17, 2019
Catherine Austin Fitts has been following the story of the black budget, the missing trillions, and the back door in the US Treasury for decades. Now, her tireless work on this subject has been published in a comprehensive report from Solari.com, "The Real Game of Missing Money" Volumes 1 and 2. Today James Corbett talks to Fitts about FASAB 56, the missing trillions and the financial coup d'état which has liquidated the wealth of the United States and shipped it out the back door. SHOW NOTES AND MP3: https://www.corbettreport.com/?p=33017
The Markets Are Rigged
Published: May 14, 2021
At base, the markets are a con game where the rich and powerful employ a raft of confidence men to lure suckers into the latest mania. In this game, the suckers are the general public who are left holding the bag as the market bubble bursts while the smart money swoops in to buy up the leftover assets at pennies on the dollar. In this week’s edition of The Corbett Report, James Corbett pulls back the curtain on the Wall Street casino and reveals how the house always wins the rigged games.
TRANSCRIPT AND MP3 AUDIO: https://www.corbettreport.com/markets/
FASAB Statement 56: Understanding New Government Financial Accounting Loopholes
How to De-Google – #SolutionsWatch
Published: April 27, 2021
Remember when Google was just a search engine? In the age of Gmail and Google Drive and Google Maps and GooTube and Google phones, it’s truly unsettling to think how much of the average person’s online activity is now directly feeding the Google data behemoth. Today on #SolutionsWatch, James talks to Rob Braxman (The Internet Privacy Guy) about how to de-Google, and why protecting your privacy online is so important. https://www.corbettreport.com/how-to-de-google-solutionswatch/
Android without Google? How is that possible?!
Published: April 21, 2021
How can you have Android without Google? Didn't Google make Android?
We explore the history of Android and how it is possible to have a version of it without a trace of any Google spyware or Google communication. We will deconstruct how you can make a de-Googled phone and see if this is usable. We will discuss the positives of using such a device as well as the expected complexities.
I am the Internet Privacy Guy. I am a public interest technologist. I am here to educate. You are losing your Internet privacy and Internet security every day if you don't fight for it. Your data is collected with endless permanent data mining. Learn about a TOR router, a VPN , antivirus, spyware, firewalls, IP address, wifi triangulation, data privacy regulation, backups and tech tools, and evading mass surveillance from NSA, CIA, FBI. Learn how to be anonymous on the Internet so you are not profiled. Learn to speak freely with pseudo anonymity. Learn more about the dangers of the Internet and the dangers of social media, dangers of email.
I like alternative communication technology like Amateur Radio and data communications using Analog. I am a licensed HAM operator. https://odysee.com/@RobBraxmanTech:6/android-nogoogle:8
Rob Braxman https://brax.me/
Braxman Tech channel on Odysee
Android without Google? How is that possible?!
Bombshell! Manipulated Google Search Results PROVED
How the Government Predicts The Future – Inside the “Sentient World Simulation”
Google’s Selfish Ledger in an Unsettling Vision of Silicon Valley Social Engineering
F-Droid – Free and Open Source Android App Repository
Alternatives to Google Products for 2021
NYU Professor Mark Crispin Miller Fights Back Against the Academic Crybullies
Published: April 20, 2021
Mark Crispin Miller teaches a course on Mass Persuasian and Propaganda at the NYU Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development for 20 years. He is now suing 20 department colleagues for libel after they signed a letter to the dean of his school demanding a review of Miller's conduct. Today we talk to Miller about his course, his views, his libel suit, and the state of free speech in the era of increasing COVID tyranny. SHOW NOTES AND MP3: https://www.corbettreport.com/?p=40981
“Masks Don’t Work” by Denis Rancourt
MCM’s libel lawsuit, complete (thus far)
Help Mark Crispin Miller sue for libel (GoFundMe)
Nope, Aristotle Did Not Say, “It Is the Mark of an Educated Mind to Entertain a Thought Without….”
Conspiracy Theory in America by Lance Dehaven-Smith
Masking ourselves to death: Part 1 of 3
Masking Ourselves to Death:
A Stunning Propaganda Win For Voodoo Epidemiology
- By NYU Professor Mark Crispin Miller - September 01, 2020
It was a bright, hot day in August when I started writing this in New York City: in the mid-90s, and very humid. And yet, as sultry as it was that day, it felt as if the summer world had vanished into late October country, enduring a psychotic Halloween—a lockstep, all-pervasive quasi-Halloween, one not at all like the traditional fun-scary holiday of old (i.e., just last year) in the United States, when troupes of children went out trick-or-treating in their chosen costumes, the little ones watched over by their parents, all going door-to-door, the jack-o'-lanterns grinning at them, to gather goodies from their neighbors. This all-wrong, planetary Halloween is like no holiday on Earth, is not fun-scary, like the movie Halloween (1978), but traumatically abusive; for this one is a mandatory Halloween, a global Halloween, imposed on children and adults alike by governments worldwide at every level, watched over by the cops, and livid, screaming citizens, requiring everybody to stay far apart, and just back off and get out, and keep those masks on everywhere they go.
This forced masquerade has often been quite brutal under governments with low regard for human rights or civil liberties, like Pakistan, where cops zapped maskless people with electric shocks (and "other punishments include[d] standing in the sun for an hour, and a slap from a policeman"); Chechnya, where cops fanned out with long plastic clubs to beat all quarantine violators, included unmasked people; India, where one policeman was himself beat up by his superior for going maskless; Kenya, where the cops' arrest of an unmasked cab driver touched off a pitched battle with outraged citizens, three of whom, according to witnesses, were shot and killed; Ethiopia, where over 1,300 people were swept up and thrown in jail for going unmasked (a sweep condemned as "needless" by the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission); El Salvador, where gangs helped out the state by "threatening citizens strolling in the streets without a mask"; and Israel, where unmasked Jews were mauled so savagely by cops that you might almost think that they were Palestinians.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZR8oFLl4Nyo
https://www.india.com/viral/cops-in-pakistans-faisalabad-are-using-shock-devices-to-punish-people-for-not-wearing-masks-4054067/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lb42rxKN5BI
https://www.ndtv.com/delhi-news/coronavirus-pandemic-delhi-senior-police-official-allegedly-hits-constable-with-baton-for-not-wearin-2212762 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XePY_PBt-M
https://www.aa.com.tr/en/africa/ethiopia-over-1-300-held-for-going-out-without-masks/1839883
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/el-salvador-prison-crackdown-nayib-bukele/2020/04/27/5d3cea4c-88c9-11ea-80df-d24b35a56https://www.kikar.co.il/abroad/366292.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFgQzqrX6T8&feature=youtu.be
And then there's China, whose CDC director, George Gao, was asked, in late March, what guidance he would give to other countries battling COVID-19: "The big mistake in the U.S. and Europe, in my opinion, is that people aren’t wearing masks.”
The virus is transmitted by droplets and close contact. Droplets play a very important role—you've got to wear a mask, because when you speak, there are always droplets coming out of your mouth. Many people have asymptomatic or presymptomatic infections. If they are wearing face masks, it can prevent droplets that carry the virus from escaping and infecting others.
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/03/not-wearing-masks-protect-against-coronavirus-big-mistake-top-chinese-scientist-says
Those Chinese citizens who, for whatever reasons, flouted Dr. Gao's guidance were subjected to the sort of vicious public shaming that was de rigueur throughout the Cultural Revolution—the major difference being that Chairman Mao had let the Red Guards do their thing unhindered by China's police, whereas the unmasked “running dogs” of COVID-19 have been humiliated publicly by cops and citizens together. Such rituals were captured gleefully on videos "shared widely on Chinese platforms like WeChat and Weibo, as well as Western platforms like Twitter," reported David Gilbert, for VICE, on Feb. 18. "One video shows a man being tied up by his neighbors, who forced him to wear a bra as a mask," while another "shows a woman being marched through the street by police officers, her hands chained together."
She was forced to admit her mistake in not wearing a mask, stand beside a sign saying "Please wear a mask," and allow the scene to be recorded. "Another shows a man being tied to a pillar and berated by an official for failing to wear a mask." And so on.
https://www.vice.com/en_au/article/3a8pv5/shocking-videos-show-chinese-authorities-humiliating-people-for-not-wearing-masks
Once upon a time, those living in the "free world" would have felt a certain smugness in the face of all that zealous violence in China, and the sunny climes of Africa, South Asia and El Salvador, presuming that such state repression Could Not Happen Here. But there is no such smugness now—not because the same thing is now happening here, but, far worse, because so many people here see nothing wrong with it, this terrifying global Halloween having completely spooked them, too.
The Chinese way of dealing with the "threat" of unmasked people has recurred all over Europe. In Spain, four cops in a Madrid train station kicked and pummeled a "mask-dodging rail passenger," and threatened a bystander who tried to intervene—a throwback to the long, dark reign of Gen. Franco, and his paramilitary squadrons of police. In Germany, two beefy polizei—both unmasked—tackled to the ground and battered an unmasked man in a supermarket, attacked a woman trying to stop them, and finally clamped a hand over the cellphone being used to video the assault. Under the shadow of la COVID-19, France too has regressed. Having eased its neo-Vichy lockdown strictures—checkpoints nationwide, deployment of surveillance drones in search of escapees from home, and roadblocks to identify, and fine, "those traveling without a government-approved purpose"—Emmanuel Macron's government then ramped up its attack on unmasked citizens. "Police wrestled with a woman refusing to wear a mask after she remonstrated with officers and allegedly bit one of them in angry scenes [sic] at a[n outdoor] market in Aubenas," a village in the south of France, the Daily Mail reported on May 24. "As chaos reigned, the woman was dragged along the ground by four officers and eventually forced into a police car—facing charges of violence against the police." And over in Ukraine, in early July, a "burly shopper" at a supermarket in Kiev assaulted a much smaller man who wasn't wearing a mask, shoved him out of the building, chased after him, and beat him on the face with a large sausage.
https://en.as.com/en/2020/06/19/videos/1592571782_166582.html
https://www.thenewspaper.com/news/69/6922.asp
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8353253/German-state-plans-end-coronavirus-restrictions-June-6-proposal-received-criticism.html
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/11934316/burly-shopper-sausage-ukraine/
All this was going on as the actual threat of COVID-19 was, from mid-April, waning—the virus weakening as it spread; and, as ever more people were exposed to and/or infected by it, the vast majority of “cases” asymptomatic, or presenting mild symptoms, the percentage of those (reportedly) killed by COVID-19 kept on shrinking, until it was comparable to the annual mortality rate of influenza (just as Dr. Fauci had predicted back in February), the crisis having clearly passed by mid-August.
It was just then that the mask mandates became more urgent, sweeping and coercive, the imposition still more punitive: especially in Melbourne, where, suddenly, the police were smashing the car windows of motorists insufficiently forthcoming with their “information,” barging into people’s homes with no forewarning, and without warrants (on suspicion that there might be gatherings there), and brutally assaulting people in the streets—as when, on August 10, a tall Victoria policeman, two heads taller than his victim, grabbed an unmasked woman by the throat, and coolly throttled her as she screamed for help (“He’s choking me! He’s choking me!”), his female partner trying to restrain her, until he finally forced to the ground, still choking her, and kneeling on her back. (She had a medical exemption.)
https://ellenbrown.com/2020/08/22/from-lockdown-to-police-state-the-great-reset-rolls-out/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTgzv8cKuwo
Dr. Fauci's sudden China syndrome
And then there's the United States, whose CDC (now) echoes the stern warning of George Gao, the Chinese CDC director, that "you've got to wear a mask," as Dr. Gao put it on March 27—when the US CDC was saying the opposite:
Wear a facemask if you are sick:
> If you are sick: You should wear a facemask when you are around other people (e.g., sharing a room or vehicle) and before you enter a healthcare provider's office. If you are not able to wear a facemask (for example, because it causes trouble breathing), then you should do you best to cover your coughs and sneezes, and people who are caring for you should wear a facemask if they enter your room. Learn what to do if you are sick. > If you are NOT sick: You do not need to wear a facemask unless you are caring for someone who is sick (and they are not able to wear a facemask). Facemasks may be in short supply and they should be save for caregivers.
http://web.archive.org/web/20200328203152/https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/prevention.html
Thus the CDC, on March 28, took the same position that Dr. Anthony Fauci—head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (within the NIH), and the famous face of US COVID-19 policy—had unambiguously spelled out on March 8, on CBS's "60 Minutes":
Right now, in the United States, people should not be walking around with masks. There's no reason to walk around with a mask. When you're in the middle of an outbreak, wearing a mask might make people [air quotes] feel a little bit better, and it might even block a droplet, but it's not providing the perfect protection that people [air quotes] think that it is. And often, there are unintended consequences, because people keep fiddling with the mask, and they keep touching their face[s].
https://www.cbsnews.com/video/top-health-official-on-the-danger-of-downplaying-risk-of-infectious-outbreak/#x
That consensus—based on the most rigorous scientific studies (as we shall see)—was also spelled out clearly by the WHO, on March 26, in a video for all the world to see:
If you do not have any respiratory symptoms, such as fever, cough, or runny nose, you do not need to wear a medical mask. When used alone, masks can give you a false feeling of protection and can even be a source of infection when not used correctly.
https://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Image0608152020-3.png
Sometime in April, that official truth became (to use a classic Nixonism) "inoperative," replaced by Dr. Gao's position, as abruptly and completely as the Inner Party's foreign policy in 1984. ("Oceania is at war with Eastasia. Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.") "Cover your mouth and nose with a cloth face cover when around others," read the (new) CDC guidelines, first posted on April 29:
Everyone should wear a cloth face cover when they have to go out in public, for example to the grocery store or to pick up other necessities.... The cloth face cover is meant to protect other people in case you are infected.... Do NOT use a facemask meant for a healthcare worker.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/prevention.html And Dr. Fauci too has been on board since then, as he demonstrated (none too clearly) on June 5, in an interview on CNBC's "Halftime Report."
When you have crowds of people together and you have the lack of wearing a mask [sic], that increases the risk of there being transmissibility. I have no doubt about that. When we see that not happening [sic], there is a concern that that may actually propagate the further spread of infection.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/05/dr-anthony-fauci-says-americans-who-dont-wear-masks-may-propagate-the-spread-of-infection.html
Also on June 5, the WHO revised its previous position: “The World Health Organization has changed its stance on wearing face masks during the COVID-19 pandemic.”
People over 60 and people with underlying medical conditions should wear a medical-grade mask when they’re in public and cannot socially distance, the WHO said. The general public should wear a three-layer fabric mask in those situations.
https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20200608/who-changes-stance-says-public-should-wear-masks
Dr. Fauci and the WHO each had a different explanation for their official pivot. “We were concerned that … the N95 masks and the surgical masks were in very short supply,” said Dr. Fauci on TheStreet.com on June 18. “We did not want [healthcare workers] to be without the equipment they needed.” For his part, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom claimed that the turnaround was based on “new research findings,” that masks “can provide a barrier … for potentially infectious droplets.” “Our free press” did not note that those two explanations were at odds, or both to look into those “new research findings,” because their role was not in any way to question the effectiveness of masks, but to demand their use as urgently as Dr. Fauci and the CDC and WHO were doing (now). Far from asking whether Dr. Fauci was now lying about having lied, or if his rationale for having “lied” was even true, some were outraged that he hadn’t called for universal masking from the start, like China did: “When all is said and done, Fauci might be remembered as a folk hero, but he sure has a lot of blood on his hands. And none of this is anywhere close to done,” raged MSN’s Matt Novak on June 16 (when the US COVID-19 death rate had been steadily declining for six weeks).
https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-who-masks/wear-masks-in-public-says-who-in-update-of-covid-19-advice-idUSL8N2DI3BW
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/dr-fauci-made-the-coronavirus-pandemic-worse-by-lying-about-masks/
https://thefederalist.com/2020/07/06/cdc-after-10-week-decline-in-covid-19-deaths-it-may-soon-no-longer-be-an-epidemic/
By thus hammering the CDC/WHO’s sudden new position (with TV newsfolk even wearing masks themselves when doing stander-uppers "on the scene"), the media helped push the USA into the same repressive mask-cult that's had cops and citizens assaulting unmasked people the world over.
"Get out, you fuckin' bitch!": Mandatory masking in America
In Brooklyn on May 13, a woman heading toward the exit of the Barclay Center subway station with her little boy, her face mask down around her neck, was ordered by a cop to pull it up around her nose and mouth, and, being in a hurry, she refused—and was instantly attacked by five beefy members of the NYPD, who forced her to the floor, and cuffed her as she screamed and struggled, her young son looking on. (A sixth cop had him by the hand.) After the video of that assault aired on New York One, Mayor de Blasio half-heartedly deplored the cops' behavior, but stressed the need for everyone to wear a mask, and faulted the young woman's attitude: “No one should disrespect police officers," he said. "No one should ignore police officers." (The woman was white.) That assault came nine days after Patrick Lynch, president of the Policemen's Benevolent Association, demanded that the city "get cops out of the social distancing enforcement business altogether," because of public outrage stoked by a viral video of two savage beatings by police in the East Village, where, first, four cops brutalized a couple "for an apparent social distancing violation" (they were standing too close together?), and then, when a (black) bystander protested, one bulky cop stumped over to him, taser drawn, and, shouting profanities, knocked him down and repeatedly punched him in the head, as one of his confederates rushed over to help "make the arrest."
https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/news/2020/05/14/video-shows-cops-placing-mom-in-handcuffs-in-clash-over-face-mask-regulations
https://www.foxnews.com/us/nypd-officers-say-coronavirus-social-distancing-policing-needs-to-end
https://6abc.com/nypd-violent-arrest-east-village-caught-on-camera-legal-aid/6147837/
The fury over that attack was wholly justified, and Patrick Lynch's stand against "the social distancing enforcement business" was, to say the least, refreshing. But there was little public outrage over the assault in Brooklyn ten days later, and no NYPD official calling for the city to “get cops out of the mask enforcement business altogether." There was still less public outrage in Philadelphia, when, on April 11, an unmasked bus passenger refused the driver's order to disembark, and seven cops showed up to drag him off. The viral video of that police action showed that the passenger was merely manhandled, and not arrested, but all those cops showing up to force one guy off a city bus was worrisome enough to merit TV coverage, and a damage-control statement from the city's transit authority. Nor was there much hue and cry over a video of a cop performing a violent "take-down" of a mask-resistant woman trying to shop in a Wal-Mart in Birmingham, Alabama—picking her up and slamming her onto the floor. "It appears he was trying to handcuff her," AP guessed. While the Birmingham Police Department cast her as a menace—"The officer used a take-down measure to gain control due to the other threat factors in the store," said a BPD spokesman, ambiguously—several of her relatives, who were there at the time, "said the woman was leaving the store when the officer used the measure." In any case, the woman "was charged with disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and criminal trespass." (All the figures in that episode—the woman, the cop who assaulted her, and the BPD spokesman who defended him—are black.)
https://abc30.com/coronavirus-bus-septa-passenger-removed-rider-no-face-mask/6095665/
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/05/08/alabama-woman-without-face-mask-police-officer-viral-video/3094159001/
North of the US border, in Minden, Ontario, things went much worse for a 73-year-old man who went to shop at Valu-Mart. "Police say that after the store employees confronted the man for not wearing a mask, he allegedly assaulted one of the employees before driving away." Two cops then tracked him to his home, where, after an unspecified "interaction," they "opened fire," and "three hours after he refused to wear a mask, he was dead." (Following up, the CBC reported that that old guy was trouble: "Neighbours paint a picture of a reclusive figure who was sometimes even hostile.")
https://www.wakingtimes.com/2020/07/22/elderly-man-shot-dead-by-police-after-refusing-to-wear-a-mask-in-grocery-store/
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/family-members-fatal-haliburton-shooting-siu-1.565414
As in China, so is it in the USA that cops are not the only ones assaulting unmasked people. On May 25, an unmasked woman buying groceries in a ShopRite on Staten Island was accosted by a would-be lynch-mob of masked shoppers, bellowing and shrieking in foul-mouthed hysterics, like coked-out extras in a bad Scorsese movie: "Get out, get the fuck out!" "Get out, you fuckin' bitch!" "Get the fuck outta here!" "You're a loser, bro! [sic]" "[inaudible] that acts like a dirty-ass hick!" "She's a dirty-ass ho', whaddya think?" There was a more restrained reaction in a Colorado Costco on May 21, when a would-be shopper, having loaded up his cart, was approached by a masked employee, who seized the cart and primly ordered him to leave. The shopper was recording it on video. "I work for Costco, and I asked this customer to put on a mask, because that is our company policy," the worker said. "And I'm not doin' it, because I woke up in a free country," said the shopper, optimistically. "Thank you very much, sir. You are no longer welcome here, in our warehouse. You need to leave. Have a great day."
With that, the worker wheeled the cart away, to put the products back on the shelves (maybe after disinfecting them). Similarly, on June 26, a couple and their little girl had just started shopping at a Grocery Outlet in Spokane, when a young woman with big glasses, her hair dyed blue and purple (with her own mask slipping underneath her mouth), strode up and yelled at them for being there unmasked, warning that there were surveillance cameras watching. "Please leave this store! You are not welcome here!" ("You're not well," the outraged mother countered, as the family walked out.) And on July 10, a man shopping in a Wal-Mart, somewhere in the South, was accosted by two women wearing masks, each making a video of his infractions—walking the wrong way down the aisle, and, worse, not wearing a mask. When he protested the surveillance ("You're like two monkeys fallin' out of a tree!"), the maker of the video (on Twitter) exploded in authoritarian rage. "Can you not follow the lines on the floor?? The mayor's askin' us all to wear masks, and look at you! Not wearin' a mask! ... Have you heard of Darwinism, evolution? Evolve, mister! .... Are you burnin' crosses?"
https://www.facebook.com/cquadrello/videos/10163561442140565/?t=2
https://www.silive.com/coronavirus/2020/05/video-shows-angry-mob-berate-woman-without-mask-at-staten-island-supermarket.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8fkVqEZGRA
https://twitter.com/realjuliasong/status/1281667780794814465?s=12
Other assailants haven't been so talkative. At a Wal-Mart in Kimball Junction, Utah, near Salt Lake City, a masked male shopper went ballistic on an unmasked woman (with medical reasons for not wearing one), repeatedly ramming her shopping cart with his, after yelling "Thanks for not wearing a mask!" The encounter left the woman, who has "other medical conditions that affect her back, in “substantial pain.”
And, in what has to be the craziest such incident, a man who had removed his face mask as he was exiting a Costco in Mettawa, Illinois had his shopping cart rammed by a woman—Elizabeth Mach, 42—yelling that he'd taken off his mask too soon. As he ignored her, she shouted, "I am a schoolteacher, and I have COVID-19!”—and then took off her mask, and spat in his face.
It should be obvious to everyone, on either side of this explosive issue, that that reaction was insane (although, to some, it may not be so obvious). As she couldn't have been worried that the man might have infected her, since she was already infected (or so she'd been told), why did she spit on him? To teach him a lesson? Because misery loves company? For revenge? Whatever she was thinking, she did almost exactly what she punished him (and, through him, countless others) for doing—the only difference being that he arguably did it out of insufficient zeal, while she did it on purpose. (Ms. Mach was arrested on charges of battery and disorderly conduct.) Like all dedicated maskers, moreover, that schoolteacher (God help her students) probably believes that asymptomatic carriers are infectious; and so she should have been in quarantine at home, and not in that Costco at all, much less gobbing on the clientele.
https://kslnewsradio.com/1929614/confrontation-over-face-mask-leads-to-alleged-assault-in-park-city-store/
https://www.bnd.com/news/state/illinois/article244115777.html
Such craziness has spread beyond the vast enclosures of America's retail giants, even to those sun-drenched, breezy open spaces where respiratory viruses (if any) pose little threat. On August 1, a bright day in Manhattan Beach, California, two friends were lunching on a bench outside a restaurant, laughing about something, when a young couple, masked, approached them, evidently thinking that the two were laughing at them, and as one of the men (who was wearing a body-cam) tried to explain what they were laughing about, the masked woman said, "Y'all need to be wearing masks." "I can't eat a burrito with my mask on," the other friend replied, and his buddy cheerfully elaborated: "We're on the other side of the fence," he told her. "We don't believe in this stuff." As he went on, calmingly assuring her that he was a longtime local businessman, and quite responsible, his friend and her husband were arguing inaudibly, still (it seems) about the husband's accusation that the two men had been laughing at the couple, and it got ugly. "What are you looking at me for?" said the friend. "I didn't say shit to you. Get the fuck out of my face!"—and then the woman threw her cupful of hot coffee on him.
He jumped up and punched the husband out, as the woman tore his t-shirt and slapped his face, the other buddy trying to break it up. "You shouldn't do that," he told her. "You shouldn't throw hot coffee on people." "I don't give a fuck!" she shouted twice, defiantly, as her husband, his nose bleeding, dialed 911, claiming to have been assaulted for no reason. The cops arrived, watched the body-cam footage, and told the couple to apologize.
https://www.ibtimes.sg/california-couple-throws-coffee-man-not-wearing-mask-gets-beaten-then-play-victim-49383
The viciousness just worsened as the summer sizzled on, the media ramping up the panic, even as (or because) the COVID-19 death rate kept going down. "Two guys were talking towards me, and one of them coughed, so, as they single-filed past, I said, 'One of you coughed. Guess I should cross the street,'" reported Bruce Joshua Miller from Chicago. One of them says, "You should be wearing a mask." "Wrong," I replied; and the other guy says, "Fuck off and die, you piece of shit."
And at a Wal-Mart in Gaineville, Georgia, a tall masked woman marched up to the mother of two little girls, the three of them shopping without masks on. She barked down at the children, whose mother told her that they didn't have to go out masked because they were under ten. "I hope you all die, because you're all gonna kill me!" said the woman as she strode away (thereby proving that she didn't think her own mask was protecting her).
"Our free press" looks the other way of course, not all the aggressors in this sudden civil war have been masked marauders, as rage has also been expressed, and violence perpetrated, by people without masks, especially against those trying to enforce "the rules" in retail warehouses nationwide. Between both sides, however, there is the key difference that the "anti-maskers" don't have allies in police departments, or in the national or international media, which have radically misrepresented what’s been going on.
Nearly all the incidents recounted here thus far, worldwide and in the USA, were caught on video; but none of them, or any of the many others like them, has drawn national or global press attention. The only instances of mask-related violence that have been prominently covered are those in which mask-wearers were the victims of unmasked marauders.
The most notorious example is the horrid story of Philippe Monguillot, the French bus driver who, on July 5, was beaten savagely by four (or three, or two) passengers incensed by his request to put on masks, and, when they refused, to see their tickets, as the rules required. The beating left him comatose, and he died six days later, when his family took him off life support. Although the details of that “barbaric” incident are murky (it evidently wasn't caught on video by any passenger), the assault, and then Monguillot’s death, made wrenching headlines the world over, often with sidebars on the urgent need for everybody to wear masks in public.
That fatal beating of an employee just trying to "keep people safe" recalled a prior story out of Flint, Michigan, where, at a Family Dollar outlet on May 1, a security guard refused admission to a family of four because the daughter had no mask. There was an argument, the family left, and then the father and son returned with guns, and shot Calvin “Duper” Munerlyn, the guard, in the back of the head. (That’s reportedly what happened. The news items were murky, and there's apparently no video.) The story ran worldwide ("US family 'murdered shop guard for enforcing mask policy,'" as the BBC headline put it), highlighting the urgency of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s mask mandate, and hinting that the murder symptomized the general depravity of its opponents. "It is important that the governor's order be respected and adhered to, and for someone to lose their life over it is beyond comprehension," said Genesee County Prosecutor David Leyton, whose pious affirmation of "the governor's order" was quoted in press coverage all throughout the US, and beyond.
https://www.startribune.com/police-probe-killing-of-store-security-guard-over-virus-mask/570175442/?refresh=true
And there was a like barrage of coverage everywhere on May 11, stoked by a surveillance video from a Target store in Los Angeles, showing two unmasked men "brawling" with three security guards who were escorting them outside for their refusal to wear masks—a fracas that left one guard with a broken arm. What really happened isn't clear, either from the (silent) video, or from the LAPD's incoherent report: "As they approached the exit, one suspect, suddenly without provocation, turned and punched a store employee, causing him and the suspect to fall to the floor. While on the ground, the store employee broke his left arm. A fight ensued between the two suspects and store employees." That hazy incident was instantly deployed as further propaganda reaffirming the necessity of mask mandates, and demonizing all who don't obey. "Two men caught on video breaking a Target employee's arm after he asked the shoppers to wear a mask" [sic], screamed the headline on DailyKos, a Democratic Party propaganda mill, whose item ends with this inflammatory shot at all those thugs whose disobedience "puts everyone at risk": “Essential workers across the country are risking infection and now face potential physical harm as individuals rebel and retaliate against regulations."
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-05-11/two-arrested-in-brawl-with-target-employee-over-refusal-to-wear-masks
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/5/12/1944545/-Two-men-caught-on-video-breaking-a-Target-employee-s-arm-after-he-asked-the-shoppers-to-wear-a-mask
Those stories of belligerent anti-maskers have, since May, been spotlighted throughout the "liberal media," in pieces that purport to be impartial overviews of all the tumult on the retail battleground. In "Fighting Over Masks in Public Is the New American Pastime," the New York Times' Jonah Engel Bromwich sides openly with those who see the masks as necessary, interviewing some of them and no one who feels otherwise. "People just don't understand it. If everyone just wore a mask, this would be over." Thus Joe Rogers, "a resident of Dallas" (and brother of a local Democratic politician), helpfully sums up the (second) CDC position on masks. A veteran of several "shouting matches" at his local CVS, and a fistfight in a Minimart, Rogers is a sympathetic figure in the article, his provocations righteous, his punches thrown only in self-defense. (The article is headed by an image from a "recent viral video"—oddly, not a screen-shot, but "an artist's rendering," in which "an employee of a Florida Wal-Mart is seen to be shoved [sic] by a maskless customer, who also falls," although that "employee" is standing.) The anti-maskers' violence (they're all pro-Trump, it is implied) is such a problem nationwide that "[s]ome restaurants even say they'd rather close than face the wrath of various Americans who believe that masks, which help prevent the spread of coronavirus, impinge on their freedom."
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/30/style/mask-america-freedom-coronavirus.html
Just as it's a given that "masks help prevent the spread of coronavirus" (about which more below), so is it a given that the libertarian impulse of those (red-state) anti-maskers would be laughable, if it weren't threatening all of us—and, first of all, those "essential workers"—with death. That's the gist of Bromwich's faux-overview, and also of the Times' "Who's Enforcing Mask Rules? Often Retail Workers, and They're Getting Hurt," by Neil MacFarquhar (a Timesman who, in 2017, won a Pulitzer for his "series on Russia's covert projection of power"). NBC, ABC and CBS have all dished up the same story, on (respectively) "Today," "Good Morning America" and "Moneywatch," while CNN's "When store workers are forced to turn sheriff" has also aired on MSN, and local TV stations nationwide—a media barrage from which millions of Americans have learned that "the onus of ensuring that stores say safe from defiant customers is increasingly falling on these already vulnerable frontline workers" (a line implicitly equating those "defiant customers" with the coronavirus).
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/15/us/coronavirus-masks-violence.html
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/masks-coronavirus-walmart-lowes-family-dollar-dollar-tree/
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/when-store-workers-are-forced-to-turn-sheriff/ar-BB14ncud
Those loaded paeans to "essential workers across the country risking infection" tacitly equates such employees at Wal-Mart, Costco, Target and the like (all of them gigantic beneficiaries of the lockdowns coast to coast) with the embattled healthcare workers on "the front lines" of the coronavirus crisis—an implication hinting that those people who blow up when ordered to wear masks in giant retail outlets might as well be throwing punches at the doctors, nurses, orderlies and ambulance drivers struggling to "save lives" from COVID-19. Thus the deeper subtext of all such inflammatory stories is that enduring relic of the US "war on terror": "Support our troops."
"It works the same in any country"
What we have here—those yellow-journalistic stories of malicious disobedience, and the concurrent media blackout on the scores of videos, and news reports, of violence against unmasked Americans and countless others all across the planet, the whole non-stop, one-note spectacle hypnotically instructing us, through "expert" after "expert," that "you've got to wear a mask"—is a gigantic, and enormously successful, propaganda drive, whose victory is clear, as state and city governments from coast to coast are imposing mask mandates with ever harsher penalties for disobedience, and all the nation's top retailers, airlines, and most small businesses (what's left of them) are refusing to serve unmasked customers—a rolling crackdown that, in late July, was (allegedly) supported by 72% of the American people, including all those masked hysterics prowling chain stores nationwide, and the multitudes of other propagandees harrying the unmasked all over Twitter, Instagram and Facebook (which, in August, started to delete the posts of anti-masking groups). Those muzzled screamers clearly got the two-part message of that propaganda: (1) face masks are protecting all of us from death by "the coronavirus," and, therefore, (2) anyone who isn't wearing one in public is a murderously selfish pig, who should just "get the fuck outta here," or be locked up, in prison or at home, or killed by the coronavirus, along with their whole families, for "putting everyone at risk."
https://www.aarp.org/health/healthy-living/info-2020/retailers-require-face-masks-coronavirus.html
Despite its altruistic rationale (“Wearing is caring”), that view is deeply hateful, driven by a terror of contagion that is itself contagious, infecting others with a boiling rage at anyone who doesn't fear along with everybody else (six feet apart). Thus that view is, in the crudest sense, "political," as those in thrall to it see all who would "rebel"—against "the governor’s order,” or the mayor's, or Costco's and/or Wal-Mart's "regulations" as menacing "deplorables," allied with the detested Trump, who also (until one time in late July) wouldn't wear a mask, since he too doesn't care if people die (unlike the Democratic governors of New York, California, Michigan, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, who ordered nursing homes to take in COVID-19 patients, resulting in as much as 40% of the US COVID-19 toll). As winning propaganda always works in black and white, those swept away by it, their minds crammed full of it, see everything that way, unable to perceive more than just one Great Evil at a time. And so, just as they seem to see "the new coronavirus" as the only cause of death, almost as if nobody died before it came along (and as if there have been no deaths from hunger, suicide, drug overdoses, medical neglect, domestic violence, homicide, despair, or any other consequences of the lockdowns), so do they see Trump, and his disgusting "base," as the only evil in America, the first such evil in our history, as if the USA since World War II was paradise, until that devil Putin made him president.
There's certainly a class dimension to that Manichaean view: "Complaints [about people not wearing masks] have been pouring in from affluent parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn, more so than in other areas, even though these neighborhoods have lower rates of infection and death than lower-income sections of the city," the Wall Street Journal reported in late May. And yet those privileged liberal snitches in Park Slope and SoHo aren't the only ones who see their unmasked fellow-citizens as Trump-supporting slime, as that same animus is also evident among those masked proles shopping at Wal-Mart—"Evolve, mister! Are you burnin' crosses?"—or stocking up at ShopRite on Staten Island, and calling that unmasked mother who was also shopping there (or trying to) "a dirty-ass hick." With three out of four Americans now supporting strict mask mandates, and governors throughout the South imposing them, it's obviously not just blue-state liberals who've been swept away.
We have seen this kind of thing before, though never on so vast a scale, or engineered with such sophistication. This inorganic mass hysteria had its antecedents in the "war on terror" after 9/11, the Red Scare after World War II (miscalled “McCarthyism”), and the rage against "the Hun" in World War I. The basic propaganda strategy for engineering such a frenzy was famously laid out by Hermann Goering, in a chat with Gustave Gilbert, the American psychologist who interviewed the defendants during the first Nuremberg trials, in 1946. "Why, of course, the people don't want war," Goering said.
Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally, the common people don't want war: neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood.
But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship.
Goering's sweeping observation moved the wide-eyed Gilbert to except the USA (apparently forgetting how his government had roused the US masses against Germany some thirty years before): "There is one difference," he insisted. "In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars."
The Reichsmarschall wasn't having it: "Voice or no voice," he replied, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.
Replace "pacifists," "lack of patriotism" and "country" with "anti-maskers" (or "anti-vaxxers"), "selfishness" and "all of us," respectively, to see that Goering's brutal wisdom still applies today—indeed, now more than ever—"we" having not progressed one centimetre since the "war to end all wars" over a century ago, or (therefore) since Hermann Goering and Dr. Goebbels, and their Fuehrer, pursued their dream of "racial hygiene" throughout Europe (and, eventually, the USA). That gang would be delighted by this global Halloween, its cops, and panicked masses, going after those not scared into compliance, with "our free press" all pounding variations on the theme that "it's okay to yell at strangers who don't wear masks" (to quote a headline on the aptly named Yahoo). Although there's much about this mass insanity that would have thrilled the Nazis (as we shall see), what would have awed them most, perhaps, is the entrancement of so many millions, all around the world, by this divisive, terroristic propaganda, whose staggering success has proved the awful truth, observed by David Foster Wallace, "that the people to be most frightened of are the people who are most frightened."
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/ok-yell-strangers-don-t-134608959.html
How to break the spell: (1) Keep your head
That propaganda is a feature of totalitarian regimes, perfected under Hitler, Lenin, Stalin and/or Mao, is itself a propaganda myth, long deployed, projectively, by "democratic" governments to stoke mass fear and loathing of such "closed societies." Although propaganda, both commercial and political, was actually perfected in, and by, Great Britain and the USA, neither one of them (back then) totalitarian, winning propaganda always is itself totalitarian, in that it wants your full attention, all the time, always wants to fill up all the media, thereby filling every mind completely, so that contradiction will become impossible, then inconceivable.
In short, unlike democratic oratory, propaganda wants no argument, hence its need for rigid censorship (often imperceptibly enforced) along with spurious "fact-checking," and the relentless smearing of all dissidents as “conspiracy theorists” (and/or, in this case, "anti-vaxxers," "anti-maskers," "COVID deniers" and/or "Trump supporters"), and the (ever fewer) outlets open to such heretics as rank founts of “disinformation,” "fake news," and/or"junk science." (Certain other current propaganda drives tar all who question them as "racists," "white supremacists," and/or "Trump supporters," "anti-semites" or "transphobic," and their [few] outlets as purveyors of "hate speech" generally.)
Since winning propaganda floods the media (suffusing everything you read, watch, and/or listen to) and thereby floods the mind, the only way to break its spell, at first on you, is to deliberately rise out of it, pull high up and away from it, dry off, and squeeze that salty water from your eyes, and so start looking at it, and not through it, in order to attain that critical distance without which there is no telling truth from lie, or knowing anything about what we might quaintly call "reality." Without that separation from the flood—the Latin criticus, whence "critic" comes," derives from the Greek kritikos ("capable of judgement"), whose root is krinein, "to separate" (or "decide")—it is impossible to keep your head above that rising flood-tide, which, if you don't, will carry you away, along with everybody else.
As we look down on this furious mask propaganda, then, let's not just keep our heads but use them—first, by exercising simple common sense, augmented by some consciousness of history, and of what's been happening elsewhere. It surely tells us something that, in no previous pandemic, were healthy people ordered to stay home, or “social-distance,” nor were schools and businesses shut down; nor has there ever been a state law or directive that "you've got to wear a mask." (In the so-called "Spanish flu" pandemic of 1918/19—a scourge exponentially more lethal than this crisis—some US municipalities passed mask ordinances, but cities nationwide were more concerned with public spitting.) There is, in short, no precedent for the mask mandates imposed worldwide today (and imposed after COVID-19 has, according to the CDC's own data, run its course).
Moreover, a glance beyond our borders, and the borders of those other countries now requiring masks in public, tells us that it makes no sense. Take Hong Kong, whose "particular success in the pandemic" was, on June 25, ascribed by researchers there to the near-universal voluntary use of masks. "Despite [Hong Kong's] proximity to mainland China, its infection rate of COVID-19 is generally modest with only 1,110 cases to-date," noted Dr. Sunny Wong of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, in a letter to the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. “This correlates with an almost ubiquitous use of face masks in the city (up to 98.8% by respondents in a city)." That conclusion was, unfortunately, premature, as, just two weeks later, Hong Kong was hit by what the South China Morning Post called (with some hyperbole) a "third wave" of COVID-19, as a "fresh cluster" of 38 new infections was discovered at a "public housing estate, adding to existing ones centred around [an] elderly care home, restaurants and taxi drivers," notwithstanding the "almost ubiquitous use of faces in the city." This recent "spike" in masked Hong Kong recalls the never-mentioned fact that Wuhan's people were already going masked before the COVID-19 crisis there, since Wuhan's air was so egregiously polluted that, in the summer of 2019, it sparked mass protests; and masks were one way for the people of Wuhan, and other perilously smoggy Chinese cities, to protect themselves from that. (On Feb. 1, Anbound, a think tank in Beijing, proposed that Wuhan's air pollution may have been the cause of what the Chinese then called "Wuhan pneumonia.)
https://www.contagionlive.com/news/hong-kong-masks-independently-significant-coronavirus-intervention https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/health-environment/article/3092611/coronavirus-schools-suspended-hong-kong-over
https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/10/asia/china-wuhan-pollution-problems-intl-hnk/index.html
https://www.eurasiareview.com/01022020-polluted-air-could-be-an-important-cause-of-wuhan-pneumonia-oped/
Meanwhile, New Zealand—whose tough, Chinese-style measures were applauded by the WHO, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern having "crushed the curve" by placing the whole population under house arrest—had no mask mandate (a fact unmentioned by the WHO), as that country's Ministry of Health, having reviewed the scientific literature on masking as protection against COVID-19, found "no convincing evidence one way or [the] other to require the use of non-medical face masks for healthy people in the community to protect from COVID-19." Neither was there any mask mandate in Norway, Denmark of Finland—or in Iceland, which did not lock down, and yet did even better than New Zealand. Masks were not mandated in Belarus, where the issue was (as here) stridently politicized, with masks worn ostentatiously by opponents of President Alexander Lukashenko, whose laid-back approach to COVID-19, though fulsomely assailed throughout the Western media, has been vindicated, as Belarus (where, shrieked CNN on April 12, "COVID-19 is a modern-day Chernobyl") has suffered 538 deaths-by-coronavirus, out of a population of 9.48 million—a mortality rate of 0.006%. Nor, of course, has there been any mask mandate in Sweden, which, despite the thunderous propaganda drive against that state's refusal to lock down, has successfully reached herd immunity, with fewer COVID-19 deaths out of total population than Belgium, Italy or Spain, which are among those European countries lately tightening their mask mandates, while Sweden remains mask-free (and its schools and businesses still open). Meanwhile, despite the uptick in the Netherlands, the Dutch government is not requiring masks, "asserting that their effectiveness has not been proven," reports Reuters (with a hint of incredulity); and Denmark's health officials have agreed: "From a medical point of view, there is no evidence of a medical effect of wearing face masks, so we decided not to impose a national obligation," said Medical Care Minister Tamara van Ark.
https://www.who.int/westernpacific/news/feature-stories/detail/new-zealand-takes-early-and-hard-action-to-tackle-covid-19
https://www.outbreakobservatory.org/outbreakthursday-1/6/11/2020/new-zealand-declares-itself-covid-free
https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/masking-lack-of-evidence-with-politics/ (on Denmark and Norway)
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/06/08/how-iceland-beat-the-coronavirus
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/12/opinions/vitali-shkliarov-belarus-covid-19-chernobyl/index.html
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/whitney-looks-sweden-was-right-after-all
https://news.yahoo.com/dutch-government-not-advise-public-180223717.html
https://fee.org/articles/europes-top-health-officials-say-masks-arent-helpful-in-beating-covid-19/
Even if we just use common sense unaided by some knowledge of past history or the experience of other countries, we see that the hysterical demand for everybody to wear masks to "stop the spread" of COVID-19 is absurd. If masks block transmission of respiratory viruses like COVID-19 (which, in fact, they don't, as Wuhan's and Hong Kong's experience makes clear—and as "the science" also tells us, as we’ll see), how is it rational, much less "okay," for people wearing them to "yell at" those not wearing them? If mask-wearers are, as we so often hear, virtuously acting for the common good, to make sure others aren't infected (a propaganda droplet as contagious as it is sanctimonious), then aren't those unmasked rogues the only ones at risk? Asked this question, zealous maskers have (in my experience) replied, nonsensically, by parroting the WHO’s “new research findings” that the viruses are carried by "droplets," which come from you, and that the masks will keep you from infecting others with those "droplets"—even though the major carriers are said to be asymptomatic, and so not coughing and/or sneezing any "droplets"; and even though those "others" threatened by those non-existent "droplets" are all wearing masks—which, apparently, they don't believe are actually protecting them. Their own belief that masks don't work is obvious enough from how masked people often halt, and turn their heads away, or lurch six feet away, when people without masks walk past them on the street. (“I hope you all die, because you’re gonna kill me!”)
The fact is that, for all their pseudo-altruism, those screaming "Get out, you fuckin' bitch!" at some lone unmasked woman, and or ramming her shopping cart, are beside themselves with terror for themselves, suggesting that they don't believe they're safe, despite their masks—just as parents who have had their children vaccinated with the MMR vaccine, and "our free press," attack those parents who (having studied its grave risks) have decided not to do it to their children. Those parents, and reporters, foaming at the mouth must not believe such "vaccination works"; or maybe unconsciously enraged by the suggestion that the MMR vaccine, like all too many others, is just as dangerous as those damned "anti-vaxxers" say it is. In any case, such fury, whether over masks or vaccinations, is insane. (Try to imagine some masked hothead screaming, "Get out, you fuckin' bitch! You might get sick!")
https://markcrispinmiller.com/2020/09/masking-ourselves-to-death-part-1-of-3/
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