Norway killer tied to Tea Party and the drug trade

Peter Dale Scott -- poet, U.C. Berkeley professor and former Canadian diplomat -- has written a fascinating analysis of the mass killings committed by Anders Breivik, which he views as a "deep" event. "Deep" is Scott-speak for "conspiratorial," although he operates on a wavelength very different from that of the conspira-cranks who gravitate toward Alex Jones.

Even if you disagree with what Scott says, you must appreciate his elegant and thoughtful writing, as well as his (usually) careful use of sources. He asks...

...was 7/22 a systemic deep event, or at least a possible deep event? Having pondered this for a month, my conclusions, all tentative except the first, are these:

1) Breivik most probably did not act alone, despite the latest official reports: “prosecutors and police have said they are fairly certain that Breivik planned and committed them on his own.”

2) We should probably look for his associates in the demi-monde mobilized outside and against the state, rather than in the structures of the state itself.

3) 7/22 is probably not a traditional false-flag operation; the milieu of Breivik’s associates is indeed probably that pointed to, without incrimination, in the alleged Breivik manifesto and video.

4) The motive of 7/22 may have been to maximize publicity for the political message of one particular group in this milieu, the Euronationalist Knights Templar of former neo-Nazi turned counter-jihad publicist Nick Greger.

5) We should look behind the counter-jihad ideology of Breivik and Greger’s Knights Templar to the arms-for-drugs trafficking connections of their avowed heroes and contacts – particularly of the Serbian Mafioso and Red Beret veteran Milorad Ulemek.

Scott has footnotes for all this stuff, in case you are wondering. (He's old school, so expect footnotes instead of in-text hyperlinks.) He goes on to make a number of other "tentative" observations, but what we have above should be enough to chew on right now. And we can check it all against outside sources.

Breivik may indeed be linked to Greger, who in turn links up with the notorious Johnny Adair, an Ulster "loyalist" (that is, protestant) thug. Greger and Adair, in turn, are now the prime movers in the English Defense League, a British far-right group -- "fascist" is not too strong a word, at least not in my view.

Breivik himself had direct links to the group.

Here's where things get very, very strange. The EDL is notorious (in the U.K., at least) for espousing the anti-Semitic forgery The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. Breivik, however, freaked out the world press by mixing a pro-Israel attitude and a pro-fascist agenda. Previously, most believed that those two stances were in conflict.

Not only that: The English Defense League also has strong connections to the American tea party movement -- and to the furiously pro-Israeli, anti-Muslim libertarian propagandist Pamela Geller. From the Guardian:

Geller, darling of the Tea Party's growing anti-Islamic wing, is advocating an alliance with the EDL. The executive director of the Stop Islamisation of America organisation, she recently met EDL leaders in New York and has defended the group's actions, despite a recent violent march in Bradford.

Devin Burghart, vice-president of the Kansas-based Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights, said: "Geller is acting as the bridge between the EDL and the Tea Party. She plays an important role in bringing Islamophobia into the Tea Party. Her stature has increased substantially inside the Tea Party ranks after the Ground Zero mosque controversy. She has gained a lot of credibility with that stuff."

The linkages between Eurofascism and the Tea Party do not surprise me. (See the post below.) But one cannot easily comprehend the contradictory attitudes toward Jews on display here.

Then again, how surprised should we be? On the far right, strange bedfellows shack up all the time. There is a strong overlap between the Tea Party and Christian fundamentalism. The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion does get circulated by certain paranoid evangelicals (like these clowns) -- even though most fundamentalist churches are fanatically pro-Zionist. One should also note that the Mossad supported Chilean fascist dictator Augusto Pinochet -- who (as seen in our preceding post) allowed Tea Party superstar Milton Friedman to run his country's economy, while at the same allowing a Third Reich veteran to torture prisoners.

Bedfellows don't get any stranger than that.

Let us return to the Tea Party-English Defense League connection...

Another Tea Party-associated grouping, the International Civil Liberties Alliance, which campaigns against Sharia law, confirmed that EDL leaders have made "contacts with members of important organisations within the American counter-jihad movement". A statement said: "It seems now that America and Europe are acting as one, and united we can never fail."

Shifren, a Californian senate candidate, said Britain's Jewish community should rally behind the EDL: "The Jewish community is paralysed with fear, exactly what most radical Muslim agitators want. The people of England are in the forefront of this war – and it is a war. One of the purposes of this visit is to put the kibosh on the notion in the Jewish community that they cannot co-operate with the EDL, which is rubbish."

The EDL's website relaunched briefly last week with new US links. Currently shut down for "maintenance", the site featured prominent links to a site called Atlas Shrugs, which is run by Geller, and another US-based site, Jihad Watch, which compiles negative news coverage of Islamic militancy.

Now, about that drug connection...

Scott drects our attention to Milorad Ulemek, whom you've probably never heard of before. This guy has a resume that sounds like the backstory of the bad guy in a Hollywood thriller. Basically, he's a former Yugoslavian spook turned Serbian mobster turned political assassin.

Greger, Ulemek, Adair and Breivik all coalesce in a mysterious paramilitary group called Order 777.

Breivik said he had attended the founding meeting of the “Knights Templar Europe” in London “after visiting one of the initial facilitators, a Serbian Crusader Commander and war hero, in Monrovia, Liberia.”

Both the “compendium” and the Order 777 videos feature a man called Milorad Ulemek...

As noted earlier, Milorad Ulemek belongs to the Serbian mafia, whose involvement in the illegal drug trade (along with a whole bunch of other evil stuff) is well-known: See the Wikipedia entry here. In the Serbian mob world, a "clan" is roughly equivalent to a "family" in the traditional Italian mafia; Ulemek is a member of the Zemun clan. This clan appears to link up with the BIA -- Serbia's version of the CIA.

Just how close are those links? Well, I thought that this was cute:

In September 2001, 700 kilos of heroin was found in a bank vault rented by the BIA in central Belgrade. The illegal safekeeping was never explained nor brought up.[2] The Zemun gang had "special training courses" with the BIA, lending them information on Kosovo Albanian terrorists.[2]

During the period that started with the Yugoslav wars and ended with the assassination of Prime Minister Zoran Đinđić in March 2003, connections between the mafia and the government were obvious and corruption was rampant in most branches of the government, from border patrols to law-enforcement agencies...

You know what I think is really odd? Americans rarely hear about the activities of these mobsters, even though they've been moving large amounts of heroin and cocaine. It's almost as though the U.S. media were told "hands off."

One thing is for sure: We're dealing with a very dangerous network here.

For a while now, I've wondered who has been funding for the Tea Party/libertarian propaganda movement. It takes a lot of money to convince so many Americans to act against their interests, and to buy into ludicrous historical revisionism.

Most lefties presume that the cash all comes the Koch brothers, and from certain Wall Streeters. But is that the full story? Maybe the money trail goes into darker realms.

Hypothesis: Perhaps the Serbian mobsters are being allowed to operate with relative impunity because they have made a deal. Part of the loot is going to fund groups like the EDL in Europe -- and the Tea Party in America.

I do not present that idea as a given. I present it as a hypothesis to be explored (and if need be, debunked) in the future.

But we may note this: Glenn Beck -- a favorite of the tea-stained reactionary set -- notoriously blamed the victims of Breivik's massacre, comparing the slain to "Hitler youth."

Since we are talking about "funny money" and right-wing politics, let us return to Scott:

Breivik’s planted clues about his finances also point mysteriously to international connections beyond what was needed for 7/22 alone. In this case the mystery of his finances is reinforced by evidence we learn independently from the Norwegian police: namely, that in 2007, a year in which he reported little taxable income, the equivalent of $115,000 was mysteriously deposited into Breivik’s bank account. This important clue, not coming from Breivik himself, refers to a time when "Government records suggest that …. his early attempts at business were a failure."

Breivik himself has reportedly heightened the mystery behind the alleged “loner.” He is said to have explained to the police that he had ten times as much money (six million kroner, about $1.1 million) to finance his terrorist attacks.

An even more suggestive lead to this hidden financial dimension is a statement attached to the Breivik manifesto, in which “Breivik” claimed to describe his irregular commercial and banking activity:

2005-2007: Managing director of E-Commerce Group AS (part investment company – 50%, part sales/outsourcing company – 50%). I converted ABB ENK to a corporation (AS). Total of 7 employees: 3 in Norway, 1 in Russia, 1 in Indonesia, 1 in Romania, 1 in the US. Distribution of outsourcing services to foreign companies, sold software/programming solutions. Worked part time with day trading (stocks/options/currency/commodities).

In the words of this statement,

This was a front (milking cow) with the purpose of financing resistance/liberation related military operations. The company was successful although most of the funds were channelled through a Caribbean subsidiary (with base in Antigua, a location where European countries do not have access): Brentwood Solutions Limited with bank accounts in other Caribbean nations and Eastern Europe. E-Commerce Group was terminated in 2007 while most of the funds were channelled in an “unorthodox manner” to Norway available to the coming intellectual and subsequent operations phase.34

Antigua, a small island in the Caribbean, was noted for its corrupt banks with intelligence connections; it was used for example by BCCI and Israeli operatives in the 1980s for illicit arms sales to the Medellin cocaine cartel.35

Side note: This may strike some of you as a bit of a stretch, but Breivik's use of a stock trading front group reminds me of Jonathan Lebed, noted penny stock pump-n-dumper and propagandist for Ayn Rand's philosophy. The astounding thing about Lebed's scheme is that it was relentlessly pushed by Rupert Murdoch's media empire (especially by Glenn Beck, when he played a leading role in that empire), as I documented in this video.

More to come...