I've got some more field research for you guys. It involves one of the strangest spectacles I've ever witnessed. But first, some programming notes...
For the most recent subscribers' episode, I brought back one of my favorite researchers active today. He was the chief of graphics for Cicada 3301 during its mid-period. During this time he encountered figures such as Thomas Schoenberger and Defango, both of whom would later gain infamy thanks to QAnon. More recently his work on Q has been used by the likes of Vice and the HBO Q: Into the Storm docu-series. He also contributed to the TEDxMidAtlantic conference on Q. He is Arturo Tafoyovsky, aka Lestat.
For this round, I wanted to delve more into Ufology and the New Age, both of which are well represented in the QAnon saga. To this end, we tackle Gaia TV, Project Camelot, Foster Gamble, MUFON, and the curious figure of Tyroan Simpson, aka Frank Bacon. The latter had been grifting in UFO circles for years before hitching his cart to the "patriot" movement. Lestat also weighs in on the current Disclosure flap.
We cover a few other odds and sods, such as Jim Watkins, General Stanley McChrystal, and ARGs heavily utilizing themes of secret societies and the occult. The main event, however, is our epic discussion of Pizzagate. We cover Cicada 3301 (and possibly QAnon) puppetmaster Thomas Schoenberger's links to Nora Maccoby; Steve and Tanya Biss; and a host of other figures who turn up in that particular saga. For good measure, we even get into the links Sean Stone, son of the director Oliver, has to this network.
Its one long, strange trip kids. As always, I hope you enjoy and thanks for your support. And remember, this is just the latest addition to the ever-growing roster of exclusive subscriber shows. Prior guests include Diana Walsh-Pasulka, Richard B. Spence, Christopher Knowles, Douglas Valentine, Adam Gorightly, Greg Bishop, Walter Bosley, J. Michael "Doc Future" Bennett, Erica Lukes, Patriots' Soapbox's Radix Verum, David Metcalfe, Neil Sanders, Edmund Berger and Samuel Vandiver. Next up is the parapolitical legend Russ Bellant.
And now, for the main event...
The Weird and the Eerie
That's pretty much day to day life in these United States circa 2021, right? I had thought so to, but not after events that transpired this past Tuesday. That was truly weird, and truly eerie. But before getting to that, let's set the mood:
"I have been to one of their meetings!" a disheveled Philip Jeffries (David Bowie) pronounced to the hear-challenged Gordon Cole (David Lynch) as a confused Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) looked on. This iconic scene from the Twin Peaksmovie Fire Walk With Me(1992) is one of the finest depictions of the Black Lodge and its inhabitants Lynch would grace the fanboys with until the miraculous third season of Twin Peaks rose from the ether in that oh-so-significant-of-years, 2017. Between the twenty-five years that separated the film from Twin Peaks' third season, Bowie's storied sequence and the phrase he uttered became a kind shorthand for encounters with the weird, the powerful, and the unknowable. Michael Malice enlists the "meetings" bit to describe his encounters with the Dark Enlightenment in The New Right: A Journey to the Fringe of American Politics. It was as apt a use as any I've seen.
I myself have steadfastly resisted using that expression. But after this past Captive Nations Week (July 18-24, 2021), I think I may have finally earned the right. Decide for yourselves as a I recount the annual Captive Nations summit sponsored by the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation (VOC).
The pre-registration bit appears to have been announced the day of the event. The event itself (and most importantly, the time and location) was not announced officially until July 15 for some strange reason...
Regular readers of this blog will probably not be surprised to learn that the VOC, like Captive Nations Week itself, is closely connected to the infamous World Anti-Communist League (WACL), an endlessly fascinating netherworld of diehard fascists, international gangsters, and "former" intelligence and military officers the world over. I've chronicled this outfit for years, beginning with a series of blogs in 2013 and continuing with a podcast series on The Farm that originally aired in 2020 and this year. If you haven't followed any of those efforts, check here to catch up on WACL.
Even in 2021, well over 60 years after efforts began to craft what became WACL, some of the movers-and-shakers linger. The 100-year-old General John K. Singlaub, a onetime WACL chairman, sits on the VOC's "national advisory council." Lee Edwards, a mere 89-years-old and a founding member of the Young Americans for Freedom (YAF), first became involved with WACL around 1970. Fittingly, he was a co-founder of VOC and presently serves as its chairman emeritus. He was present for Captive Nations festivities on July 20, 2021, where he introduced a Cuban hip hop video (seriously --more on that below).
And then there's Paula Dobriansky. Her father Lev was a significant figure in WACL circles for decades. He was close to longtime OUN-B head Yaroslav Stetsko, arguably the premier Ukrainian fascist of the twentieth century. Stetsko was also the head of the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN), an outfit with ties to Nazi Germany that later became one of the crucial components of WACL. Lev Dobriansky founded Captive Nations Week and served as the chairman of the committee behind it for years. Stetsko was his co-chairman for decades. It was out of the National Captive Nations Committee that the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation was established in 1993.
Paula Dobriansky opted for more "mainstream" company. She served in the State Department of various Republican administrations for many years, climaxing with her appointment as Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs during the administration of Bush the Lesser. She also did time at the National Security Council and the US Information Agency, which has led to speculation that Paula had a much closer relationship with the CIA than her father. During the 1990s, she became involved with the infamous Project for a New American Century. She also has longstanding ties to Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), for years the leading neo-liberal foreign policy think tank. Its arguably been superseded during the twenty-first century by the Atlantic Council, who's board of directors Dobriansky sits upon. In other words, this woman has been at the heart of the bipartisan, neoliberal foreign policy establishment for decades.
Paula speaking at the VOC's Captive Nations Week event
She is also a trustee of the VOC, and was there on July 20, 2021 to kick off her father's legacy. The company she kept for this event was more in keeping with the circles Lev traveled in. Paula was one of a trio of speakers to set the stage for the broader event. Joining here in these efforts was Edwin Feulner, the founder and longtime president of the Heritage Foundation, one of the two most powerful conservative think tanks since the Reagan years. The other is the Council for National Policy (CNP), which Feulner is also a member and former director of.
I got to shake hands with a confused-looking Paula Dobriansky shortly after her speech wrapped up. I later shook hands with Feulner and exchanged some pleasantries outside the men's restroom. I tried to introduce myself to Lee Edwards as well, but the old man looked like he wanted to kill me with his bare hands.
I'll be honest: I rather liked Paula Dobriansky. I was accompanying my fellow WACL cohort Moss Robeson on this outing. Moss has written some rather inflammatory pieces on Paula and her father. She was surprisingly good spirited about the whole thing and even took the time to say goodbye to Moss before departing for whatever else veeps such as herself do in Washington on a day-to-day basis. No doubt she warrants a lot of criticism, but the woman has class.
Completing the introductory trifecta was Lisa J. Peterson, who was just wrapping up her time as the Acting Under Secretary of State for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights in the Biden administration. She was completely at ease speaking between Paula and Feulner, even emphasizing many of the same talking points as the more right wing presenters. Predictably, Peterson emphasized social justice and other wokism, with a slight emphasis on Russia, but on the whole her speech would have been perfectly at home at a foreign policy rally during the Reagan years.
Despite the fact that an unrepentant Nazi collaborator was instrumental in crafting the Captive Nations Week that this event was celebrating, President Joe Biden had few qualms about endorsing it. Indeed, everyone in attendance got a commemorative letter from the president honoring the event:
I'll always treasure my copy, as the coffee stain in the top right corner is a testament to
It must have been reassuring to many of the participants that neo-cons, neo-libs, and the far right (symbolized by the opening trio) could set aside their differences and find so much common cause. It was a recurring theme throughout the summit.
After this rousing introduction, the panel section of the proceedings began. There were three planned for the day: "Freedom of the Press vs. State Control"; "The Role of Dissidents in Gaining Freedom"; and "Human Rights and the International Community." As one might imagine, the first panel largely centered around "active measures," a Russian phrase for political warfare. The active measures bit has become trendy in recent years among foreign policy circles. It makes the whole political warfare thing seem like it emanated from the Kremlin, or something along those lines.
Naturally, there were resounding calls for better educating the public in detecting active measures. Myroslava Gongadze, a Ukrainian journalist and "activist," filled us in one how effective public education had been against the efforts of the Kremlin in the Ukraine. Slowly but surely, the public was waking up to active measures. Elsewhere, Brian Whitmore of the Atlantic Council suggested that it was time for the United States to take the offensive as far as active measures were concerned. That played well with the audience.
It was around this time I gagged on my coffee, drawing unwelcome attention from the crowd. I decided it was time to take some air. i.e. go back to my hotel room and get high. What awaited me upon my return brought this scene from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas to mind:
On the bright side, I had missed the entire panel on "The Role of Dissidents in Gaining Freedom." On the not so bright side, I walked in on the antics of Rushan Abbas. Abbas is a Uyghur American activist, and one of the foremost critics of the Uyghur genocide allegedly being carried out in China. I say allegedly, as claims of genocide there are highly controversial, to put it mildly. In fact, the VOC has been at the forefront of pushing these claims.
Abbas and the crowd certainly wanted to leave no doubt that something was happening to the Uyghur people in the PCR. Indeed, two of the four people sharing the "Human Rights and the International Community" panel with her visibly began to sob during her presentation. And it was graphic, recounting the various tortures the PRC is allegedly subjecting the Uyghur people to. On the other hand, the outrageous hypocrisy of it all was almost to much to stomach.
You see, Abbas served as a translator at Guantanamo Bay where she assisted in the interrogation of Uyghur men being held there. Of all the Uyghur people in the world, is Abbas really the best they could find to speak for them? Unless the giggle factor is what the VOC was aiming for. Certainly they got plenty of that later in the panel discussion when Abbas called for Chavez's removal in Venezuela. Not to be undone, Suzanna Scholte of the Defense Forum Foundation denounced China's role in spreading the Covid virus. Unsurprisingly, the played well with the audience as well.
From there, it was finally time for the main event: the Dissident Human Rights Awards Ceremony. A certain anti-Castro sentiment had been in the air all morning. Now, we were finally going to cut loose and call for regime change like it was 1961! Lee Edwards himself took the stage for this solemn occasion.
The 2021 Dissident Human Rights Award went to Cuba's San Isidro Movement, which Edwards informed us was driven by artists. At the forefront of these efforts was something known as "rap," which Edwards described as a "new form of communication" to the audience. Apparently, some Cuban hip hop collective was slated to receive the award, but they were unable to attend. Instead, a pre-recorded message was played over the image of a shirtless Cuban rapper. All the while, the thought "Is Lee 'Fucking' Edwards going to introduce a hip-hop video" kept flashing through my mind.
And I was not disappointed! He did in fact bust out the video, and the mostly white and middle-aged audience tried to groove to it, in a sense. I sincerely apologize for not taking pictures of this spectacle dear reader. I confess, I was in a near trance-like state by this time. But in case you're wondering, here is the video:
Marco Rubio was supposed to drop by for this spectacle, but wisely sent roughly third seconds of pre-recorded comments instead. Pity, as I was planning on asking him if the Pentagon's UAP report justified increased defense spending. Originally, I had thought such a question may have been a little over the top during such a serious occasion, but not so after the awards ceremony!
In conclusion, the VOC Captive Nations Week Summit provided a compelling glimpse into Washington's permanent foreign policy establishment. Having witnessed it first hand, I can say that the only fundamental differences between most Democrats and Republicans on these matters is the extent to which LGBTQ+ rights should be emphasized when regime change is advocated.
And make no mistake about it, regime change was seen as desirable the world over: Cuba, Russia, China, Venezuela, Iran, Syria, it was on the table. Other points of emphasis included how democracy could be "strengthened" in the West and how America's enemies were "weaponzinig democracy against democracy." On the whole, one was left with the distinct impression democracy could use a lot of work. Fortunately, we have institutions like the VOC to help us through this process.
