MAINSTREAM COOLER - For those who believe mainstream contemporary facts.

[Leslie Sharp]

LADDER CAPITAL and Donald Trump

Trump's second largest creditor in 2017 Ladder Capital was founded by Brian Harris whose professional bio is reflective of the deepest of the Deep State or more effectively defined, the financial arm of the Military-Industrial Complex.

' . . . As an REIT, Ladder Capital is less transparent than, say, a publicly-traded bank like JPMorgan Chase or Bank of America. We do, however, know that late last year Ladder Capital reportedly looked into the possibility of selling itself to another institution, blaming onerous federal regulations on the business of repackaging and selling loans. That raises important questions about what happens when one of Ladder’s biggest debtors is also the nation’s chief executive who oversees—and might push to change—those very regulations. — Andy Kroll, Mother Jones

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/06/trump-ladder-capital-loan/

Ladder Capital website:
"Prior to forming Ladder, Mr. Harris served as a Senior Partner and Head of Global Commercial Real Estate at Dillon Read Capital Management, a wholly owned subsidiary of UBS, and previously as Head of Global Commercial Real Estate at UBS and a Member of the Board of UBS Investment Bank, as well as Head of Commercial Mortgage Trading at Credit Suisse. Mr. Harris received a B.S. and an M.B.A. from The State University of New York at Albany."

https://www.laddercapital.com/personnel/brian-harris/


Dillon Read:
W. Averell Harriman also formed a partnership with the German industrialist, Fritz Thyssen. In 1926 Harriman and Clarence Dillon of Dillon Read Company helped Thyssen and Friedrich Flick to establish the German Steel Trust. According to Anton Chaitkin: "The Flick-Harriman partnership was directly supervised by Prescott Bush". Dillon Read provided two representatives to the board of the German Steel Trust and took responsibility for its corporate banking.

In 1928 Thyssen formed United Steelworks, a company that controlled more that 75 per cent of Germany's ore reserves and employed 200,000 people. Thyssen started a joint-venture with Harriman called the Union Banking Corporation. This was used to transfer funds between the United States and Germany. In 1931 W.A. Harriman & Company merged with the British-American banking house Brown Brothers. Prescott Bush, along with W. Averell Harriman, E. Roland Harriman and George Herbert Walker, became managing partners in the new company, Brown Brothers Harriman. This was to develop into the most important private banking house in America. — Spartacus Educational.

https://spartacus-educational.com/MDbushPR.htm

Secret Bankers For The Nazis
Michael Hirsch. Newsweek. 6/23/96
'. . . The documents, which include U.S. intelligence reports compiled in the 1940s in an attempt to track German loot, go further than ever in detailing the extent of Swiss involvement with the Nazi regime. The papers also show how the Nazi horror was financed with billions in blood money stolen from its own victims. They weren't only the Jews, but occupied governments and other citizens stripped of gold, jewelry and other property. Many of the documents embarrass Swiss banks that since the war have become world-class institutions renowned for their integrity. One 1944 U.S. intelligence report, for example, accuses Union Bank of Switzerland and Credit Suisse of routinely laundering Nazi money during two months of that year. (Both banks declined to comment on the document. But a Credit Suisse spokesman said that during the war, the bank "had a businesslike relationship with the Germans," operating within the guidelines of the Swiss Bankers Association.) Other banks are cited for falsifying stock certificates so they could fence securities the Germans had looted from France.'

https://www.newsweek.com/secret-bankers-nazis-178724

Edited September 17, 2023 by Leslie Sharp

[Douglas Caddy]

 

[Ron Bulman]

Regarding the paxton decision, it's an embarrassment to the state.  I defer to ZZ Top.

 

[Steve Thomas]

Russian State TV to Its Citizens: Be More Like North Koreans

“Amid Kim Jong Un’s barnstorming tour of Russia, the country’s propagandists have begun extolling the virtues of the hermit kingdom’s spartan lifestyle. “

By Julia Davis. Sept 17, 2023

https://www.thedailybeast.com/russian-state-tv-to-its-citizens-be-more-like-north-koreans?ref=home

“While Kim Jong Un is touring the land, state-controlled media is currently working to convince everyday Russians that instead of looking to the West, they should start emulating North Korea. During Thursday’s broadcast of The Evening With Vladimir Solovyov, Sergey Mikheyev described Kim Jong Un as “a dude with a square head,” whose superpower is being unpredictable. He argued that the people of North Korea are impervious to Western pressure because of their spartan lifestyle.

Mikheyev said, “Yes, life in North Korea is no picnic. But it isn’t as bad as Americans portray it... American sanctions are scary only to those who have been on their hook to begin with! Those who have bank accounts over there, parallel lives [in the West], etc. What can you forbid to North Koreans? To drink Coca-Cola? They don’t have it anyway! To watch Hollywood movies? They don’t have them anyway! You’ll turn off their Internet? They don’t have it anyway! You won’t import IPhones? They don’t have them anyway! You will forbid them to travel to Europe and America? They aren’t traveling anyway! There is no way to get to them.”

Mikheyev praised Vladimir Putin’s rumored plan to visit North Korea in the near future and predicted wide-ranging cooperation between Russia and the “hermit kingdom.” Mikheyev pointed out that in the past, North Korea was ridiculed in Moscow, but now serves as an example of independence and unpredictability Russia would do well to follow.

Mikheyev surmised: “The low living standards are both the weakness and the strength of North Korea! You can’t do to them what you could do to the people—and the elites—in the post-Soviet space that got hooked on what you have to offer. Elites in the post-Soviet space got used to eating good food and having sweet dreams, to keeping their money in [Western] banks. But these people don’t need anything! Well, maybe they do need it, but they don’t have anything.”

On Saturday, the host of “Day Z” Yulia Vityazeva continued the theme, as she played video clips of a Russian military choir and other performers giving a concert in Pyongyang. Russian singers belted out Soviet war songs for the subdued audience, which didn’t seem to move, except to clap—often, in perfect unison. A photo of Kim Jong Un and Putin, hand in hand, was displayed on a giant jumbotron, followed by a notation in Russian and Korean: “Eternal friendship.”

Vityazeva watched the footage with stars in her eyes and then remarked that the audience looked clean, well-fed and had a healthy complexion—contrary to popular stereotypes about the North Korean population that lives on the verge of starvation.

During Friday’s broadcast of the program “Karnaukhov’s Labyrinth,” host Sergey

Karnaukhov added, “Why are we so attentively talking about North Korea right now? North Korea maintained its school of engineering and an economic system that can resist the system of global economic sanctions. We need that!” He complained about the hedonistic lifestyle of many Russians, who are used to eating out in restaurants, golfing and clubbing. Karnaukhov pointed out: “Turns out, there are different values and a different lifestyle. North Korea preserved them and even increased them. It means we can rely on them! We can go there, look at their life and see that what we’ve considered to be valuable in our country isn’t valuable at all. It’s a way to destruction. It’s a road to nowhere. You can’t live this way. Our people are deteriorating! We can see the degradation of our country.” “

Steve Thomas

 

 

 

[Steve Thomas]

Deleted

Steve Thomas

Edited April 6 by Steve Thomas

[Douglas Caddy]

 

Revealed: The Republicans’ three-step plan for classic fascism - Alternet.org

[W. Niederhut]

38 minutes ago, Douglas Caddy said:

 

Revealed: The Republicans’ three-step plan for classic fascism - Alternet.org

Doug,

     There is a related essay this week by historian Heather Cox Richardson, on the occasion of the 4th anniversary of her excellent Letters From An American essays.

     As she described this week, she began publishing these historical essays in September of 2019 in response to Trump's multi-faceted assault on U.S. democracy.  Worth reading.

September 17, 2023 - by Heather Cox Richardson (substack.com)

[Douglas Caddy]

3 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

Doug,

     There is a related essay this week by historian Heather Cox Richardson, on the occasion of the 4th anniversary of her excellent Letters From An American essays.

     As she described this week, she began publishing these historical essays in September of 2019 in response to Trump's multi-faceted assault on U.S. democracy.  Worth reading.

September 17, 2023 - by Heather Cox Richardson (substack.com)

W.N., thank you for this. I recall sitting at the counter in a Hot Schoppe hamburger place three blocks from the White House in 1957 when I was a student at Georgetown U. A man was sitting four stools away talking to himself in a voice that could be overheard. He exclaimed, "It is amazing how much toxic poison our democracy can absorb without it being lethal." His prescient concern over 60 years ago could not be more apt today. His words were burned into my memory.

[W. Niederhut]

2 hours ago, Douglas Caddy said:

W.N., thank you for this. I recall sitting at the counter in a Hot Schoppe hamburger place three blocks from the White House in 1957 when I was a student at Georgetown U. A man was sitting four stools away talking to himself in a voice that could be overheard. He exclaimed, "It is amazing how much toxic poison our democracy can absorb without it being lethal." His prescient concern over 60 years ago could not be more apt today. His words were burned into my memory.

Well, Doug, I hope the Hot Schoppe patron was correct.

But I just finished reading the chapter about Pinochet's 1973 right wing coup in Chile, in Jared Diamond's book, Upheaval, and it scared me.

Chile was Latin America's most functional, stable democracy in 1973, and it rapidly devolved into a right wing terror state after the Pinochet coup.  Thousands of "liberals" were tortured and executed.

The same thing happened in Germany in 1933, and in Indonesia in 1965.

Could it happen here?  I wonder.

[Douglas Caddy]

42 minutes ago, W. Niederhut said:

Well, Doug, I hope the Hot Schoppe patron was correct.

But I just finished reading the chapter about Pinochet's 1973 right wing coup in Chile, in Jared Diamond's book, Upheaval, and it scared me.

Chile was Latin America's most functional, stable democracy in 1973, and it rapidly devolved into a right wing terror state after the Pinochet coup.  Thousands of "liberals" were tortured and executed.

The same thing happened in Germany in 1933, and in Indonesia in 1965.

Could it happen here?  I wonder.

My employer, General Foods Corp., in 1969 sent me to Washington, D.C. to be its Washington representative. For the first year I was to work out of the Robert Mullen company, of which the Corp. was a client. In 1970 Robert Mullen called me and said he was in Chile. I asked him why he was down there. He replied that he was handling the media in an attempt to organize a coup against Allende. It was only after Watergate broke that I learned the Mullen Company was a CIA front organization and General Foods Corp. was a CIA asset. Ultimately, Allende was overthrown in a coup on September 11, 1973. So, the CIA started its effort to overthrow him three-years earlier.

Death of Salvador Allende - Wikipedia

[Douglas Caddy]

[Kirk Gallaway]

I got this NYT opinion letter from Nancy Pelosi about the Nixon/ Kissinger attempts to overthrow  the democratically elected Allende in Chile. Apparently she's been behind the efforts to expose these records and she cites this NYT 50 year anniversary article, which is quite good.

Allende was not a radical socialist. What riled Nixon and Kissinger was the fact that Allende wanted to nationalize Chile's copper industry, as Chile had among the biggest  copper reserves in the world.

Curiously the same situation is happening today in Chile over a valuable new 21st century commodity. Lithium being used in electric vehicle batteries. Chile has now moved to nationalize it's lithium industry, but it looks like it will happen this time.

I don't know if you guys ever saw the movie "Missing" with Jack Lemon, Sissy Spacek and John Shea, but it was about this.

First the Pelosi opinion.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/18/opinion/letters/nancy-pelosi-chile-coup.html?campaign_id=39&emc=edit_ty_20230919&instance_id=103103&nl=opinion-today&regi_id=61798350&segment_id=145128&te=1&user_id=48552702f942aacb0810b9de5ca41c55

Now the NYT article.

50 Years Ago, a Bloody Coup Ended Democracy in Chile

Gen. Augusto Pinochet led the violent overthrow of the socialist government of Salvador Allende, seizing power for nearly 17 years. Here is a selection of photographs from the coup and its aftermath.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/11/world/americas/chile-coup-50-anniversary.html?searchResultPosition=1

Chilean Army troops firing on the La Moneda Palace in Santiago on Sept. 11, 1973, during a coup led by Gen. Augusto Pinochet against President Salvador Allende.Credit...Agence France-Presse — Getty Image

 

 

 

 

 

Edited September 20, 2023 by Kirk Gallaway

[Douglas Caddy]

 

One of the world's largest deposits of Lithium was discovered recently in Nevada. This bodes well for America.

[W. Niederhut]

11 hours ago, Kirk Gallaway said:

I got this NYT opinion letter from Nancy Pelosi about the Nixon/ Kissinger attempts to overthrow  the democratically elected Allende in Chile. Apparently she's been behind the efforts to expose these records and she cites this NYT 50 year anniversary article, which is quite good.

Allende was not a radical socialist. What riled Nixon and Kissinger was the fact that Allende wanted to nationalize Chile's copper industry, as Chile had among the biggest  copper reserves in the world.

Curiously the same situation is happening today in Chile over a valuable new 21st century commodity. Lithium being used in electric vehicle batteries. Chile has now moved to nationalize it's lithium industry, but it looks like it will happen this time.

I don't know if you guys ever saw the movie "Missing" with Jack Lemon, Sissy Spacek and John Shea, but it was about this.

First the Pelosi opinion.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/18/opinion/letters/nancy-pelosi-chile-coup.html?campaign_id=39&emc=edit_ty_20230919&instance_id=103103&nl=opinion-today&regi_id=61798350&segment_id=145128&te=1&user_id=48552702f942aacb0810b9de5ca41c55

Now the NYT article.

50 Years Ago, a Bloody Coup Ended Democracy in Chile

Gen. Augusto Pinochet led the violent overthrow of the socialist government of Salvador Allende, seizing power for nearly 17 years. Here is a selection of photographs from the coup and its aftermath.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/11/world/americas/chile-coup-50-anniversary.html?searchResultPosition=1

Chilean Army troops firing on the La Moneda Palace in Santiago on Sept. 11, 1973, during a coup led by Gen. Augusto Pinochet against President Salvador Allende.Credit...Agence France-Presse — Getty Image

 

Kirk,

      According to UCLA Professor Jared Diamond's chapter-- in his 2019 book, Upheaval-- Allende did, in fact, nationalize Chile's copper industry, without compensating U.S. owners for their 49% share.

      That said, Upheaval is not Jared Diamond's best work.  He isn't very knowledgeable about CIA history and black ops (e.g., in Chile and Indonesia.)

      Diamond is at his best when writing about science and technology (e.g., Guns, Germs, and Steel and The Third Chimpanzee.)

       Missing is a great flick.  I remember it well.

Edited September 20, 2023 by W. Niederhut

[Steve Thomas]

Matt Gaetz: ‘We will have a government shutdown’ — or he’ll attempt to oust Kevin McCarthy
By. Matt Laslo September 20, 2023
https://www.rawstory.com/raw-investigates/matt-gate-government-shutdown/
"In the House, Democrats are in the minority and have no real tools to force McCarthy to work with them. So they’re left standing on the sidelines as the GOP fights itself while driving the government bus off the proverbial cliff in real-time.
“It's going off the cliff. If they don't get their way, they're gonna shut the government down,” Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) told Raw Story. “It's really pretty remarkable that they don't want to govern and they don't know how to govern.”
While Gaetz and company now prepare for a government shutdown of their own making, Democrats aren’t smiling.
“What we're looking at right now is a collapse of government,” Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) told Raw Story. “This is not about shutdowns. I think this is historic. I really do. I don't think there's any example of your governing party — so-called – has lost the capacity to do anything. I don't know how this is gonna end up.”"

It really is pretty remarkable. You have a political party that fought so hard to be in power, and now they don't know what to do with it.
Steve Thomas