Tyranny

Everything you know about Ukraine is wrong

By Mark Ames
Pando: February 24, 2014

Although I’m deep into the reporting of my next story about the Silicon Valley Techtopus, it’s hard for me not to get distracted by events in Ukraine and Russia.

I haven’t lived in that part of the world since the Kremlin ran me out of town, so I’m not going to pretend that I know as much as those on the ground there. Still, I’ve been driven nuts by the avalanche of overconfident ignorance that stands for analysis or commentary on the wild events there. A lethal ignorance, a virtuous ignorance.

Virtuous ignorance about world affairs used to be the exclusive domain of neo-con pundits, but now it’s everywhere, especially rampant on the counter-consensus side — nominally my own side, but an increasingly shitty side to be on.

Nearly everyone here in the US tries to frame and reify Ukraine’s dynamic to fit America-centric spats. As such, Ukraine’s problems are little more than a propaganda proxy war where our own political fights are transferred to Ukraine’s and Russia’s context, warping the truth to score domestic spat points. That’s nothing new, of course, but it’s still jarring to watch how the “new media” counter-consensus is warping and misrepresenting reality in Ukraine about as crudely as the neocons and neoliberals used to warp and Americanize the political realities there back when I first started my Moscow newspaper, The eXile.

So, yes, I wanted to comment on a few simplifications/misconceptions about Ukraine today:

1. The protesters are not “virtuous anti-Putin freedom fighters,” nor are they “Nazis and US puppets”

In fact, the people who are protesting or supporting the protesters are first and foremost sick of their shitty lives in a shitty country they want to make better—a country where their fates are controlled by a tiny handful of nihilistic oligarchs and Kremlin overlords, and their political frontmen. It’s first and foremost a desire to gain some control over their fate. Anger at Kremlin power over Ukraine is not necessarily anti-Russian—although the further west you go in Ukraine, the more this does become about nationalism, and the further east you go—including Crimea and Odessa—the more the politics are a fearful reaction against west-Ukraine nationalism.

This is kind of obvious to anyone who’s spent time in that part of the world. I’ll quote from Jake Rudnitsky’s great piece about the Orange Revolution published in The eXile nearly a decade ago, which aptly describes both what an awful political figure Yanukovych is, what role the US played in that “revolution,” and the aspirations of most Ukrainians who took to the streets. It’s amazing how little has changed in this dynamic:

“Almost all of Ukraine’s oligarchs are from the east or Kiev, and they almost exclusively lined up in support of Yanukovych, a Donetsk native. There are a few exceptions, notably Petro Poroshenko, the owner of car and candy factories and a ship-building yard. He also owns Channel 5, which was an invaluable tool in helping Yushchenko [the pro-West leader of the Orange Revolution] compete….A large part of [Channel 5] programming consists of watching Yanukovych’s team make asses of themselves. They often repeat a speech Yanukovych gave where he was gesturing with his fingers in the air, “paltsami,” a classic bandit gesture. Still, the biggest and most powerful clans are still behind Yanukovych, who is their man.

“Yanukovych is a truly loathsome character. Most Ukrainians agree that if a more palatable candidate had been given the nearly unlimited access to “administrative resources” that Yanukovych had, he would have won handily. But Yanukovych twice served jail time in the Soviet Union, he has no charisma, and is obviously a tool of powerful Russian and Ukrainian interests. Yushchenko, on the other hand, is considered by most western Ukrainians to be something between Gandhi and Christ, while many people in the east worry he has it in for everyone who speaks Russian. Many people who voted for Yanukovych did so out of suspicion of Yushchenko, not because they like Yanukovych (except perhaps in his home turf, Donetsk).”

As for the US role in the Orange Revolution, what Rudnitsky wrote in 2004 applies to the US/EU role today:

“The protests have come under fire as an American-funded coup, particularly in the Russian media. And there’s some truth to it — the US has been bringing in Serbs and Georgians experienced in non-violent revolution to train Ukrainians for at least a year. One exit poll — the one finding most heavily in favor of Yushchenko — was funded by the US. The smoothness and professionalism of the protest, from the instant availability of giant blocks of Styrofoam to pitch the tents on to the network of food distribution and medical points, is probably a result of American logistical planning. It’s certainly hard to imagine Ukrainians having their act together that well. The whole orange theme and all those ready-made flags also smack of American marketing concepts, particularly Burson-Marstellar.

“But the crowds in Kiev, which can swell up to a million on a good day and are always in the hundreds of thousands, are there out of their own homegrown sense of outrage, not because some State Department bureaucrats willed them there. The meetings that happen every day in virtually every city in Ukraine (and in literally every western Ukraine village) are not the result of American propaganda. Rather, they are the result of the democratic awakening of a trampled-on people who refuse to be screwed by corrupt politicians again.”

2. About Ukraine’s neo-fascists:

They’re definitely real, they’re a powerful minority in the anti-Yanukovych campaign—I’d say the neo-fascsists from Svoboda and Pravy Sektor are probably the vanguard of the movement, the ones who pushed it harder than anyone. Anyone who ignores the role of the neo-fascists (or ultranationalists, take your pick) is lying or ignorant, just as anyone who claims that Yanukovych answered only to Putin doesn’t know what they’re talking about. The front-center role of Svoboda and the neo-fascists in this revolution as opposed to the Orange Revolution is, I think, due to fact that the more smiley-face/respectable neoliberal politicians can’t rally the same fanatical support they did a decade ago. Eventually, even the co-leader of the Orange Revolution, Viktor Yushchenko, moved from “respectable” pro-EU neoliberalism to rehabilitating western Ukraine’s fascist mass-murderer, Stepan Bandera, which I wrote about in The Nation.

What role the neo-fascists and descendants of Bandera will play in the near-term future is the big question. Their role in the protest’s vanguard is definitely scaring a lot of people in the east of Ukraine and Crimea, and could precipitate a violent split. On the other hand, by far the most likely scenario is that the neo-fascist/ultranationalists in Svoboda will be absorbed into the pro-West coalition and politics, as they’re still a minority in the coalition. Neoliberalism is a big tent that is happy to absorb ultranationalists, democrats, or ousted president Yanukovych.

The power that the neo-fascists already have is bad enough, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a ton of bullshit hype and propaganda about the neo-fascist threat. A perfect example of fascist-hype propaganda was recently published in Ha’aretz, headlined: “Ukrainian rabbi tells Kiev’s Jews to flee city”:

“Fearing violence against Ukraine’s Jews, the Jewish community asks Israel for assistance with the security of the community.

“Ukrainian Rabbi Moshe Reuven Azman, called on Kiev’s Jews to leave the city and even the country if possible, fearing that the city’s Jews will be victimized in the chaos, Israeli daily Maariv reported Friday.

“‘I told my congregation to leave the city center or the city all together and if possible the country too,’ Rabbi Azman told Maariv. ‘I don’t want to tempt fate,’ he added, ‘but there are constant warnings concerning intentions to attack Jewish institutions.’”

Sounds scary in a Schindler’s List sorta way, doesn’t it?

Later that day, Ha’aretz published this correction, admitting it’d been duped by a Kremlin tool:

“Correction (Feb. 22, 4:20 P.M.): An earlier version of this report incorrectly described Rabbi Azman as the chief rabbi of Ukraine. Azman is not the country’s chief rabbi, but one of two rabbis challenging the official chief rabbi, Yaakov Bleich, in Kiev, and like most Chabad rabbis, is aligned with the Kremlin.”

(If you want to read more about Chabad, read Yasha Levine’s investigative report on the right-wing Jewish cult, and its role in Cory Booker’s rise to power.)

The point is this: What’s happening in Ukraine is not a battle between pro-fascists and anti-fascists. There are fascists on both sides; the opposition happens to like fascist costume parties more, but watch this video of Yanukovych’s snipers murdering unarmed protesters and tell me who the real fascists are in this fight… [WARNING: BRUTAL VIOLENCE]:

3. Everything you think you know about Ukraine is wrong.

Everyone looking for a proxy side to support or oppose in the Ukraine political dynamic will be disappointed. Ukraine politics go by their own rules. Today’s neoliberal ultranationalist could be tomorrow’s Kremlin ally, and visa-versa. Just look at what happened to the Orange Revolution—nothing. To wit:

a) One Orange Revolution leader, Yulia Tymoshenko, wound up turning against her partner Viktor Yushchenko and allying with Yanukovych to strip Yushchenko of presidential powers; later, Tymoshenko allied with the Kremlin against Yushchenko; now she’s free from jail and the presumptive leader of the anti-Yanukovych forces.

b) The other Orange leader—the pro-EU, anti-Kremlin Viktor Yushchenko—wound up allying with pro-Kremlin Yanukovych to jail Yulia Tymoshenko.

c) John McCain has been the big driving force for regime change against Yanukovych, but McCain’s 2008 campaign chief’s lobby firm, Davis Manafort, managed Yanukovych’s political campaigns and his lobbying efforts in the US.

d) Anthony Podesta, brother of President Obama’s senior advisor John Podesta, is another Yanukovych lobbyist; John Podesta was the chief of Obama’s 2008 transition team.

4. Yanukovych was not fighting neoliberalism, the World Bank, or oligarchy — nor was he merely a tool of the Kremlin.

There’s another false meme going around that because the World Bank and IMF are moving in to “reform” Ukraine’s economy — for the umpteenth time — that somehow this means that this was a fight between pro-neoliberal and anti-neoliberal forces. It wasn’t.

Yanukovych enthusiastically cooperated with the IMF and pledged to adhere to their demands. Six months after Yanukovych was elected president, the headline read “International Monetary Fund approves $15 billion loan to Ukraine”. As the AFP reported,

“President Viktor Yanukovych had made restoring relations with the IMF a major priority on taking office.”

Later that year, the Wall Street Journal praised Yanukovych’s neoliberal reforms as “truly transformational” and gushed that Yanukovych “may soon become Europe’s star economic liberalizer.”

The problem was that last November, the Kremlin offered Yanukovych what he thought was a better deal than what the EU was offering. He bet wrong.

The point is this: Ukraine is not Venezuela. This is not a profoundly political or class fight, as it is in Venezuela. Yanukovych represents one faction of oligarchs; the opposition, unwittingly or otherwise, ultimately fronts for other factions. Many of those oligarchs have close business ties with Russia, but assets and bank accounts—and mansions—in Europe. Both forces are happy to work with the neoliberal global institutions.

(Read the full article at Pando)

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Geopolitics/War

The Road to Moscow Goes Through Kiev: A Coup d’Etat That Threatens Russia

By Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya
Global Research: February 25, 2014

The takeover of power in Kiev by the mainstream opposition is a coup that has been executed by force, which overlooks the opinions of at least half of the Ukrainian population. Yet, you would not know this from listening to such media outlets and networks as CNN or Fox News or reading the headlines being produced by Reuters and the state-owned British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). The events in Kiev are misleadingly being billed and framed by these media sources and the so-called “Western” governments they support, either directly or indirectly, as the triumph of people power and democracy in Ukraine.

Utter hypocrisy is at work. When similar protests and riots broke out in Britain and France, the positions taken and the tones used by the above actors was very different. These actors framed the protests and riots in Britain and France as issues of law and order, using language very favourable to the British and French governments. Where were the statements of concern about the rights and safety of protesters from the US government and the European Commission when force was used by the British and French governments or when protesters died?

While not overlooking, disregarding, or devaluing the loss of life in Kiev, the roots of the violence there need to be discussed honestly and traced back. On the same note, it has to be understood that members of the Ukrainian opposition and their supporters were agitating for a violent confrontation against the Ukrainian government. There is no argument here against the right of citizens to protest, but rioting or taking up arms with the intent to oust a democratically-elected government is a different matter that no government in the US or the EU would accept on their own territory.

When the laws that the US and EU countries have in place are quickly glimpsed at, gross double-standards are evident. Universally, the criminal codes of these governments forbid the assembly of their citizens for the purpose of discussing the overthrow of the government alone. Their criminal codes consider whoever advocates, aids, advises, or preaches for the overthrowing or the government by political subversion as a criminal and threat to the state. In the US “anyone with intent to cause the overthrow or destruction of any such government, prints, publishes, edits, issues, circulates, sells, distributes, or publicly displays any written or printed matter advocating, advising, or teaching the duty, necessity, desirability, or propriety of overthrowing or destroying any government in the United States by force or violence, or attempts to do so” is considered a felon under the criminal code. If two or more persons even meet to talk about removing the government in most these countries, they can be imprisoned. In the case of the United States, as the US Criminal Code states, these individuals “shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both, and shall be ineligible for employment by the United States or any department or agency thereof, for the five years next following his conviction.”

Washington and the European Union have aided and encouraged the above acts by openly supporting the campaign of the Ukrainian opposition and even sending officials and politicians to encourage the anti-government forces in Ukraine. The irony is that this is the exact type of behaviour that the US and the European Union have outlawed on their own territories and would not tolerate against themselves whatsoever.

If it were merely a case of ethnocentrisim, this attitude could be called exceptionalism. It, however, is not exceptionalism. To be very candid, it is heartless regime change perpetrated by governments that have a record of insincerely hiding behind democracy and humanitarianism.

How the European Union Enabled the Coup

What has taken place in Kiev is a coup that has unfolded through the manipulation of the emotions and hopes of a significant segment of the Ukrainian population by opposition leaders. It has to be emphasized that many opposition supporters are doing what they believe is right for their country and that they themselves are the victims of their own corrupt leaders. It must equally be emphasized, regardless of which side they support, that the Ukrainian people are all the victims of their corrupt politicians. Both the governing party and opposition parties have taken turns ruling the country and exploiting Ukraine for their personal gains.

The opposition leadership has basically usurped power while the European Union and the United States have given their full support to them. This has been done via EU and US attempts to legitimize the opposition power grab through the portrayal of the coup in Kiev as the climax of a popular revolution in Ukraine.

Albeit the mainstream opposition is not truly united, opposition leaders have grossly refused to fulfill any of their obligations after an agreement was brokered between them and the Ukrainian government by the European Union through mediation by the troika of France, Germany, and Poland. The Ukrainian government and Russia have rightly accused the European Union and the EU mediators of refusing to fulfill their obligations to make sure that the opposition respects the EU-brokered agreement. Instead the European Union has allowed Ukrainian opposition leaders to ignore their commitments and to grossly violate the agreement.

While one faction of the opposition was negotiating another faction of the opposition continued the pressure from the streets, refusing to stop until the government was ousted. The agreement signed between the Ukrainian government and the mainstream opposition on February 21, 2014 had no clause or terms, however, that granted the opposition the rights or power to take over the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of Ukraine or to unilaterally create new legislation. Any information that implies that the agreement allows for this is false and misleading.

Instead the agreement has been used as a disguise for the opposition’s takeover of the state. In truth, the European Union helped broker the agreement as a means of empowering the Ukrainian opposition. The leaked phone conversation between the US Department of State’s Victoria Nuland and Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt, the US ambassador in Kiev, even indicated that the US and EU were planning on creating a new government in Ukraine. The Nuland tape reveals that Washington was working to inaugurate a new opposition-led government in Ukraine with Ukrainian figures that would readily submit and acquiesce to US and EU demands.

What Nuland and Pyatt discussed is regime change in Ukraine, which has nothing to do with what the Ukrainian people want and everything to do with what the US government and its allies need from Ukraine. If the US government really believed that the Ukrainian people have the right to determine their future, it would not be busy working to appoint political figures in the Ukrainian government or trying to configure how the Ukrainian government would be constructed. Instead Washington would leave the creation of government in Kiev to the Ukrainian people.

Using Parliamentary Camouflage in the Rada to Disguise a Coup

The leaders of the opposition are trying to cosmetically deceive Ukrainians and the world by hijacking the legislative branch of their country’s government. There are strong chances that this is being done with the coordination and the encouragement of the US government and the European Union. To legitimize their takeover, the Ukrainian opposition is now using the Ukrainian Parliament or Verkhovna Rada. The Rada was already a heavily corrupt place with notoriously crooked and dishonest politicians dominating both the pro-government and opposition sides of the aisle, now it is functioning as a rubber stamp legislature. In other words, the Ukrainian opposition leadership is trying to legitimize its coup in Kiev by using the dysfunctional Ukrainian Rada.

The Rada has not been at full decorum for all the voting. The opposition initially used the instability and fleeing of the government to opportunistically declare its unchallenged Rada bills as legitimate. This happened while approximately half of Ukraine’s parliamentarians were either absent or in hiding due to the violence and riots in Kiev. In other words, opposition leaders used the absence of about half the parliamentarians in the Rada to falsely give a cover of legality to their coup by taking the opportunity to pass parliamentary legislation that would be defeated if all the Rada’s members were present and voting.

Albeit under the management of the opposition the Rada has retained a sufficient amount of parliamentarians or deputies to hold an emergency session, there are serious ethical, procedural, technical, legal, and constitutional questions about what is taking place. To hold an emergency session, the Rada needs at least two hundred and twenty-six of its parliamentarians to be present. Under opposition management there were initially two hundred and thirty-nine deputies, but this did not entitle the opposition to pass any type of legislature that it pleased or to pretend that the Rada was operating under a regular constitutional session. Moreover, there were important and specific procedures that still needed to be followed that the opposition parties outright ignored and violated.

Ukraine’s biggest political party, the Party of Regions, and the other pro-government parties or independent parliamentarians have not been present for all the Rada votes taking place. Albeit an increasing number of pro-government deputies are now beginning to negotiate with the opposition and a faction of the deputies from the Party of Regions have returned to the Rada to protect themselves, the absence of many of the Rada’s deputies and the fact that all Ukrainian parliamentarians are not inside the Rada to challenge the opposition bills makes, at the very least, the legislation that has been passed questionable. Examining other factors, the laws being passed in the Rada become even more questionable.

The Rada’s chairman (speaker or president), Volodymyr Rybak, has not been present for the reading of Rada bills either. It has been reported that Rybak has resigned from his Rada post. Not only must the individual that has been elected as Rada chairperson by a full constitutional session of the Rada be present for the voting process to be legitimate, but the Rada chairperson must also approve the acts adopted by the Rada with their signature before they are sent to the executive branch of government for promulgation. Nor can Ukrainian bills be passed into law or promulgated after the Rada votes without a final presidential signature. The only way that a presidential veto can be overturned is if two-thirds of the Rada’s deputies or members support a bill after the presidential veto, in which case either the president must sign it or the Rada’s chairperson signs the bill into law.

The opposition has tried to circumvent the necessary presidential approval and the absence of a Rada chairperson. Instead opposition leaders got their parties to unilaterally select a new chairman, Oleksandr Turchynov, so that they can push their political agenda forward without getting challenged. Turchynov’s appointment as Rada chairman was meant to give the Ukrainian opposition’s parliamentary work the cover of legitimacy. The opposition appointed Turchynov to claim that constitutional procedures have been followed, because a Rada chairperson has been overseeing their partisan bills and approving them. Moreover, Oleksandr Turchynov is not only overseeing and approving the unilateral bills of the Ukrainian opposition, but has also signed them into law as the acting president of Ukraine too.

What the opposition has done with Turchynov, however, is illegal for a number of reasons. Firstly, most of the Rada, meaning all the deputies or members of the Ukrainian Parliament, must convene before a new Rada chairman or speaker is selected to oversee parliamentary voting on bills. This did not taken place, because many of the Rada’s members were missing when he was selected. Secondly, Turchynov cannot assume the role of Rada chairperson if there is already a chairperson with a first vice-chairperson (first deputy chairperson) or assume the role of acting president until President Viktor Yanukovych resigns or is impeached by the Rada, which did not take place when he was declared acting president.

Using divisions inside the bewildered Party of Regions hierarchy, the opposition has sought to cover its unconstitutional tracks. Days after Turchynov was appointed chairman of the Rada, the opposition got a faction of the Party of Regions deputies that returned to the Rada and a series of independent Rada deputies to impeach President Yanukovych. These Party of Regions and independent parliamentarians are working with the opposition in order to keep their places or to secure positions for themselves under the new political regime in Kiev.

The Rada is now a rubber stamp body controlled by the opposition. It has already acted illicitly. Although there is still uncertainty or arguments on whether the 2004 version or 2010 version of the Ukrainian Constitution is in operation, Article 82 of the Ukrainian Constitution (regardless of whichever version is in operation) stipulates that the Rada is only “competent on the condition that no less than two-thirds of its constitutional composition has been elected.”

Discussions have also taken place about new media regulations and expelling the Russian media from Ukraine. Exposing just how fake their democratic leanings are, the opposition leadership has threatened to use the Rada to additionally outlaw any of the political parties in Ukraine that have opposed them. This includes banning Viktor Yanukovych’s Party of Regions

The Party of Regions is not only the most widely supported Ukrainian political party; it also holds nearly forty percent of the seats in the Rada. No other political party even comes close to holding this type of support in the Ukrainian political landscape or the Rada. Excluding the parliamentary seats of its political allies in the unicameral Rada, which houses four hundred and forty-two seats in total, the Party of Regions alone has one hundred and sixty-five seats. The opposition political parties and coalitions comprised of the All-Ukrainian Union Fatherland (Batkivshchyna), the Ukrainian Democratic Alliance for Reform, and Svoboda have a combined one hundred and sixty-seven seats. There is no question about which party the majority of Ukrainian voters support. Outlawing the Party of Regions essentially annuls the electoral choice of the most significant plurality of Ukrainians.

Opposition leaders also want to illicitly use the Rada to outlaw the Ukrainian Communist Party. The Ukrainian Communist Party has called the so-called EuroMaidan/Euromaidan protests a foreign-sponsored coup against Ukraine and its people. The opposition threats about banning the Ukrainian Communist Party, and even killing its members in the streets, is meant to punish it for the position it has taken and for the support it has given to the Ukrainian government against the anti-government protests in Kiev.

(Read the full article at Global Research)

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Tyranny

Neo-Nazis in Ukraine, Obama Administration supporting Fascists?

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research: February 24, 2014

Svoboda is a Neo-Nazi Party, Ukraine’s fourth biggest party holding 36 seats out of 450 in parliament.

They’re also part of the Alliance of European National Movements along with the BNP and Jobbik.

Svoboda is supported directly by Washington.

This is Svoboda, the Neo-Nazi group that is doing the fighting in Ukraine.

Update February 24. The BBC headlines read: “We are putting our hopes in a new generation of politicians” amidst unconfirmed reports that an arrest warrant has been issued for the democratically elected president.

Speaker of the Parliament Oleksandr Turchynov who allegedly issued the arrest warrant directed against President Viktor Yanukovych stated “We must move towards a national government by Tuesday”. That government, were it to be formed, would be integrated by Svoboda.

Visit Global Research to meet the “new generation of politicians” supported and financed by the Obama administration.

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Privacy

Gates Foundation Collecting Private Info on 11 Million Students

Gates Foundation Launches Giant Database on School Children ‘inBloom’

By Trey Sanchez
Truth Revolt: February 24, 2014

Private information for over 11 million students is being collected

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation gave $100 million to fund a giant database to collect private information of American school children starting in early education and extending all the way through high school.

Promoted as a technological tool to help teachers tailor education to the individual needs of students, inBloom is a database that stores student’s scores, attendance, special needs, disabilities, etc. The intent is to exploit the technology that is available today to replace antiquated paper records.

Launched in February of 2013, inBloom is working with nine states representing over 11 million students. The nonprofit organization was launched to help educators keep up with the ever changing standards of state Common Core education.

So far, the states include Colorado, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, New York and North Carolina.

(Read the full article at Truth Revolt)

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Health/Environment

More radiation detected near New Mexico nuke site

AP: February 24, 2014

CARLSBAD, N.M. (AP) — More airborne radiation has been detected in southeastern New Mexico from a leak at the nation’s first underground nuclear waste dump.

The U.S. Department of Energy said Monday the results are from samples collected last week at numerous air monitoring stations at and around the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad.

Last week, DOE officials confirmed the first-ever leak at the facility. It stores plutonium-contaminated waste from Los Alamos National Laboratory and other government nuclear sites.

The results are consistent with the kinds of waste stored at the plant, but officials say there’s no public health threat.

(Read the full article at Yahoo)

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Privacy, Tyranny

How Covert Agents Infiltrate the Internet to Manipulate, Deceive, and Destroy Reputations

By Glenn Greenwald
The Intercept: February, 24, 2014

One of the many pressing stories that remains to be told from the Snowden archive is how western intelligence agencies are attempting to manipulate and control online discourse with extreme tactics of deception and reputation-destruction. It’s time to tell a chunk of that story, complete with the relevant documents.

Over the last several weeks, I worked with NBC News to publish a series of articles about “dirty trick” tactics used by GCHQ’s previously secret unit, JTRIG (Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group). These were based on four classified GCHQ documents presented to the NSA and the other three partners in the English-speaking “Five Eyes” alliance. Today, we at the Intercept are publishing another new JTRIG document, in full, entitled “The Art of Deception: Training for Online Covert Operations”.

By publishing these stories one by one, our NBC reporting highlighted some of the key, discrete revelations: the monitoring of YouTube and Blogger, the targeting of Anonymous with the very same DDoS attacks they accuse “hacktivists” of using, the use of “honey traps” (luring people into compromising situations using sex) and destructive viruses. But, here, I want to focus and elaborate on the overarching point revealed by all of these documents: namely, that these agencies are attempting to control, infiltrate, manipulate, and warp online discourse, and in doing so, are compromising the integrity of the internet itself.

Among the core self-identified purposes of JTRIG are two tactics: (1) to inject all sorts of false material onto the internet in order to destroy the reputation of its targets; and (2) to use social sciences and other techniques to manipulate online discourse and activism to generate outcomes it considers desirable. To see how extremist these programs are, just consider the tactics they boast of using to achieve those ends: “false flag operations” (posting material to the internet and falsely attributing it to someone else), fake victim blog posts (pretending to be a victim of the individual whose reputation they want to destroy), and posting “negative information” on various forums. Here is one illustrative list of tactics from the latest GCHQ document we’re publishing today:

Other tactics aimed at individuals are listed here, under the revealing title “discredit a target”:

Then there are the tactics used to destroy companies the agency targets:

GCHQ describes the purpose of JTRIG in starkly clear terms: “using online techniques to make something happen in the real or cyber world”, including “information ops (influence or disruption)”.

Critically, the “targets” for this deceit and reputation-destruction extend far beyond the customary roster of normal spycraft: hostile nations and their leaders, military agencies, and intelligence services. In fact, the discussion of many of these techniques occurs in the context of using them in lieu of “traditional law enforcement” against people suspected (but not charged or convicted) of ordinary crimes or, more broadly still, “hacktivism”, meaning those who use online protest activity for political ends.

The title page of one of these documents reflects the agency’s own awareness that it is “pushing the boundaries” by using “cyber offensive” techniques against people who have nothing to do with terrorism or national security threats, and indeed, centrally involves law enforcement agents who investigate ordinary crimes:

No matter your views on Anonymous, “hacktivists” or garden-variety criminals, it is not difficult to see how dangerous it is to have secret government agencies being able to target any individuals they want – who have never been charged with, let alone convicted of, any crimes – with these sorts of online, deception-based tactics of reputation destruction and disruption. There is a strong argument to make, as Jay Leiderman demonstrated in the Guardian in the context of the Paypal 14 hacktivist persecution, that the “denial of service” tactics used by hacktivists result in (at most) trivial damage (far less than the cyber-warfare tactics favored by the US and UK) and are far more akin to the type of political protest protected by the First Amendment.

The broader point is that, far beyond hacktivists, these surveillance agencies have vested themselves with the power to deliberately ruin people’s reputations and disrupt their online political activity even though they’ve been charged with no crimes, and even though their actions have no conceivable connection to terrorism or even national security threats. As Anonymous expert Gabriella Coleman of McGill University told me, “targeting Anonymous and hacktivists amounts to targeting citizens for expressing their political beliefs, resulting in the stifling of legitimate dissent.” Pointing to this study she published, Professor Coleman vehemently contested the assertion that “there is anything terrorist/violent in their actions.”

Government plans to monitor and influence internet communications, and covertly infiltrate online communities in order to sow dissension and disseminate false information, have long been the source of speculation. Harvard Law Professor Cass Sunstein, a close Obama adviser and the White House’s former head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, wrote a controversial paper in 2008 proposing that the US government employ teams of covert agents and pseudo-”independent” advocates to “cognitively infiltrate” online groups and websites, as well as other activist groups.

Sunstein also proposed sending covert agents into “chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups” which spread what he views as false and damaging “conspiracy theories” about the government. Ironically, the very same Sunstein was recently named by Obama to serve as a member of the NSA review panel created by the White House, one that – while disputing key NSA claims – proceeded to propose many cosmetic reforms to the agency’s powers (most of which were ignored by the President who appointed them).

But these GCHQ documents are the first to prove that a major western government is using some of the most controversial techniques to disseminate deception online and harm the reputations of targets. Under the tactics they use, the state is deliberately spreading lies on the internet about whichever individuals it targets, including the use of what GCHQ itself calls “false flag operations” and emails to people’s families and friends. Who would possibly trust a government to exercise these powers at all, let alone do so in secret, with virtually no oversight, and outside of any cognizable legal framework?

Then there is the use of psychology and other social sciences to not only understand, but shape and control, how online activism and discourse unfolds. Today’s newly published document touts the work of GCHQ’s “Human Science Operations Cell”, devoted to “online human intelligence” and “strategic influence and disruption”:

Under the title “Online Covert Action”, the document details a variety of means to engage in “influence and info ops” as well as “disruption and computer net attack”, while dissecting how human being can be manipulated using “leaders”, “trust, “obedience” and “compliance”:

The documents lay out theories of how humans interact with one another, particularly online, and then attempt to identify ways to influence the outcomes – or “game” it:

(Read the full report at The Intercept)

Full Source Documents: HERE
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Privacy

Cyber-Security Experts Ask If Apple “Flaw” Was Really NSA Backdoor

Security hole appeared just one month before NSA bragged it had penetrated Apple servers

By Steve Watson
Infowars: February 24, 2014

Following an admission by Apple that a “bug” in its operating system had left devices open to potential hacking, experts are questioning whether the security hole was intentional, in order to allow the NSA backdoor access as part of its mass spying program.

On Friday Apple acknowledged that a “goto fail” command in the company’s SecureTansport protocol had left iPhones, iPads, and MacBooks vulnerable to data intercept on networks and wireless connections. Anyone who had knowledge of the security flaw, could have accessed secure data, Apple noted, declaring that ” a software fix will be released very soon.”

Johns Hopkins University cryptography professor Matthew Green told Reuters that the flaw (see below) was “as bad as you could imagine.”

Several coding experts are now raising their eyebrows over the matter, noting that the timeline of the inception of the security flaw matches up with leaked NSA slides that document how the spy agency had managed to gain access to Apple’s severs.

According to coder and App developer Jeffrey Grossman, who has studied the code in question, the flaw only appeared in iOS 6.0 and was not present in iOS 5.11.

Immediately, tech experts began to note that iOS 6.0 was released in September 2012, just one month before Apple was added to the NSA’s list of penetrated servers, according to slides leaked by Edward Snowden.

Noting that while the evidence is circumstantial, blogger John Gruber, a computer scientist, says that “the shoe fits” where the NSA’s Apple breakthrough is concerned.

“Sure would be interesting to know who added that spurious line of code to the file,” he notes. “Conspiratorially, one could suppose the NSA planted the bug, through an employee mole, perhaps. Innocuously, the Occam’s Razor explanation would be that this was an inadvertent error on the part of an Apple engineer. It looks like the sort of bug that could result from a merge gone bad, duplicating the goto fail; line.”

Gruber has laid out five potential scenarios, personally leaning toward number three:

1. Nothing. The NSA was not aware of this vulnerability.
2. The NSA knew about it, but never exploited it.
3. The NSA knew about it, and exploited it.
4. NSA itself planted it surreptitiously.
5. Apple, complicit with the NSA, added it.

“…once the bug was in place, the NSA wouldn’t even have needed to find the bug by manually reading the source code. All they would need are automated tests using spoofed certificates that they run against each new release of every OS.” Gruber states.

“Apple releases iOS, the NSA’s automated spoofed certificate testing finds the vulnerability, and boom, Apple gets “added” to PRISM. ([It] wasn’t even necessarily a fast turnaround — the NSA could have discovered the vulnerability over the summer, while iOS 6 was in developer program beta testing.)” Gruber concludes.

Other tech bloggers concur that it is strange how such a major flaw wasn’t spotted or fixed sooner. “The timing is rather odd, and it makes you wonder how such a serious bug went undiscovered for over a year.” writes Cody Lee of iDownloadblog.

Ashkan Soltani, another security expert has compiled a list of current Apple applications that he believes are vulnerable to security hole that is still open on the current version of OS X for the Mac. The list includes basic apps such as mail, safari, twitter, facetime and calender. These apps transmit and store exactly the type of information NSA has targeted.

Just one month ago, a new Snowden leak revealed that the NSA had infiltrated iPhones with a program known as DROPOUT JEEP, which allowed the agency access to text messages, voicemails and other personal data.

(Read more at Infowars)

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Tyranny

Conservative MP Brad Butt admits he lied in House of Commons

Tory MP Brad Butt retracts claim he saw voter cards stolen

CBC: February 24, 2014

Conservative MP Brad Butt is stepping back from his assertion earlier this month that he saw voter information cards taken from the garbage and given to a candidate’s supporters to be used by people without identification.

The MP for the Ontario riding of Mississauga-Streetsville sits on the procedure and House affairs committee that is looking at proposed changes to Canada’s election laws. One of the changes would eliminate the voter information cards sent by Elections Canada as an acceptable form of identification.

On Feb. 6, Butt described seeing the voter information cards wrongly used by others to cast ballots.

“On mail delivery day when the voter cards are delivered to community mailboxes in apartment buildings, many of them are discarded in the garbage can or the blue box. I have actually witnessed other people picking up the voter cards, going to the campaign office of whatever candidate they support and handing out these voter cards to other individuals, who then walk into voting stations with friends who vouch for them with no ID,” Butt said in the House.

He repeated the story an hour later in response to a question from New Democrat MP Mike Sullivan as debate continued on C-23, the bill containing the proposed changes.

“I will relate to him something I have actually seen,” Butt said.

“On the mail delivery day when voter cards are put in mailboxes, residents come home, pick them out of their boxes, and throw them in the garbage can. I have seen campaign workers follow, pick up a dozen of them afterward, and walk out. Why are they doing that? They are doing it so they can hand those cards to other people, who will then be vouched for at a voting booth and vote illegally. That is going to stop.”
‘I misspoke’

On Monday, Butt retracted that statement in the House.

Butt said on Twitter simply that he “misspoke.”

“I misspoke during debate and corrected the record,” he said.

In an email to CBC News, Butt didn’t respond to questions about what led him to believe he had seen the cards stolen.

“I think you saw that I clarified that I did not personally see it. Over the years I have heard stories about voter cards being collected in common mailrooms. That’s it,” Butt said.

It wasn’t just on the floor of the House of Commons that Butt suggested the voter information cards were used fraudulently. He later told a similar story, this time attributing it to his 12 years as president and CEO of the Greater Toronto Apartment Association, representing owners and operators of apartment buildings.

(Read more at CBC)

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Tyranny

The Ukraine: Neo-Nazi criminal state looming in the centre of Europe

By Oriental Review: February 24, 2014

“There are many who do not know they are fascists but will find it out when the time comes.” -Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls

After signing a void agreement on “crisis settlement” on Friday, the situation in Ukraine has rapidly got out of control of its signatories and “witnesses”. No provisions of this document were fulfilled. The legitimate authorities fled (or tried to flee) the country, the governmental buildings in Kiev are taken by the revolutionary mob. The radicals are dictating the new rules to façade opposition “leaders” who desperately try to bridle the Maidan.

What happened to Ukraine on February 21, 2014 is essentially a criminal coup committed by the radical armed anarchists and Ukrainian Nazis who have been enjoying a comprehensive financial, military, diplomatic and even religious support and instigation from the Western power groups for the last two decades. Many of Ukraine’s cities are now falling into the chaos of lootings, unprovoked violence, lynch law and political repressions.

The first signs of upcoming chaos were clearly seen as the Ukrainian authorities wavered at the three-month siege of the centre of Kiev by the radical guerrilla elements from Galicia and local criminal gangs. They watched silently when furious fanatics were burning unarmed riot police Berkut officers alive, lynching them and pulling out their eyes. They did nothing to stop frantic “freedom fighters” from storming regional administrations, humiliating the officials and looting police and military arsenals in the West Ukraine. They were paralyzed when unidentified snipers were cool-bloodily killing militia personnel, protesters and casual passer-bys from the roofs of Kiev’s buildings. They even declared amnesty (twice!) to those guilty of the brutal crimes against policemen and public order. Thus Yanukovych’s regime itself paved the way for a sinister ghost of the war-torn Libya to come to Ukraine.

Is the guerrilla side a self-organized and self-indoctrinated popular movement tired of a corrupt and inefficient state? That is hardly the case.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union the international power groups have invested billions of the Federal Reserve notes (aka US$) into Ukrainian “pro-democratic” NGOs and politicians. While preaching “Ukrainian commitment to the European choice and democratic values” in the meantime they clearly saw that there is no short-term historical perspective for making Ukraine a state hostile to Russia, which is evidently the final goal of the globalist Eastern policy. The stakes were placed on the ultranationalist elements in the Western Ukraine and in the Uniate Church, a minority religious Greek-Catholic community of the Eastern rite, created by the Holy See in XVI century in a desperate attempt to weaken close ties of Rzeczpospolita’s Orthodox with Moscow. Since the early 1990s the Uniates enjoyed silent support of the newly-independent central authorities in Kiev. Theit tactic was to aggressively occupy Orthodox cathedrals on the canonic territory of the Moscow Patriarchate. The last thing the Uniate clergy used to preach in the occupied churches for all these years was the Christian call for repentance and peace. Instead they propagated a new crusade against the Orthodox and directly instigated and justified race-motivated prosecutions and even killings, acting exactly like radical jihadist preachers of the militant pseudo-Islamic sects. Suffice to watch a “Sunday sermon” by Mykhailo Arsenych, the clergyman from a local Uniate church in Ivano-Frankovsk region, Ukraine saying: “Today we are really ready for a revolution.The only effective methods of combat are assassination and terror! We want to be sure that no Chinese, Negro, Jew or Muscovite will try to come and grab our land tomorrow!”

The products of such indoctrination were not long in coming. A number of NATO-sponsored training centers for the Ukrainian ultranationalist militants were opened on the territory of the Baltic states immediately after they joined NATO in 2004. The detailed photo report on a Ukrainian group taking a course of subversive activities at a NATO training center in Estonia in 2006 is available here (texts in Russian).

Abundant financial and human resources were directed to bolster the paramilitary units of the radical UNA-UNSO, Svoboda and other ultranationalist organizations in the Ukraine. Since 1990s these thugs were participating in the Chechen and Balkan wars on the side of radical Wahhabi (!) militants and committing war crimes against captured Russian and Serbian soldiers and civilian population. One of the notorious guerilla fighters of the Ukrainian origin in Chechnya, Olexander Muzychko (aka criminal leader Sasha Biliy) today is heading a brigade of “Pravyi Sector”, the radical militant driving force of the ongoing coup d’état in Kiev. According to his “official” biography, in 1994 he was awarded by the then top commander of terroristIchkeria enclave Dzhohar Dudayev with the order “Hero of Nation” for “outstanding military successes against Russian troops”. His “military skills” were quite specific: he used to lure the Russian units operating in remote Chechen locations to guerilla ambushes. Then he personally participated in tortures and beheadings of the captured Russian soldiers. After returning to the Ukraine in 1995, he led a criminal gang in Rovno. Eventually he was prosecuted and sentences for 8 years term for kidnapping for ransom and attempted assassination of a Ukrainian businessman. He entered politics after release from prison in late 2000s.

After the end of Chechen and Balkan wars the British and American private military contractors were routinely recruiting Ukrainian mercenaries for operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and elsewhere.The Britam Defense scandal revealed the way and scale of how the Ukrainian personnel of the private military contractors were used in provocative clandestine actions to meet Western political goals in the Middle East. Many of them were sent to Kiev to make the job they are paid for – to target both policemen and protesters on “Euromaidan” from the roofs of surrounding buildings.

The real leaders of the protest have already clearly expressed their radical views to the European press (read e.g. the interview with the Pravyi Sector leader Dmitro Yarosh and several recent Guardian’s publications).

(Read more & find links to sources at Oriental Review)

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Health/Environment

Oil Spill Shuts Down 65 Miles Of The Mississippi River

River Closed at New Orleans After Barge Spills Oil

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS: February 24, 2014

NEW ORLEANS — A 65-mile stretch of the Mississippi River remained closed at New Orleans on Monday following a weekend collision that resulted in crude oil spilling from a barge.

Authorities involved in the cleanup and investigation planned a Monday morning conference call as they worked on estimates of how much oil spilled and when the river would re-open, a Coast Guard spokesman, Petty Officer Bill Colclough, said.

At last count Sunday night, the river closure affected 26 vessels — 16 waiting to go downriver and 10 waiting to go upriver.

Officials reported only a light sheen following the accident but river traffic was halted to avoid contaminating passing vessels and to prevent oil from spreading downriver.

(Read more at NY Times)

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